Need a new cell phone plan

[sukaryan]

Hey Budget friends~
I have read so much good advice on the Budget Boards, that I immedietly went here to get some!
We are trying to tighten up our budget and cell phones is one of those items. We have 2 with Verizon at the lowest plans possible. It costs us about 85 a month. We also have a land line. We do not use our cells for anything but three calls home a day from my husband and in case of emergency calls for me. We use about 100 min. a month and would use less if we had to. I don't really like using cell phones; I use our home phone for phone calls. So, what is the cheapest way to have 2 cell phones? My husband is trapped at Verizon till May 09, but my contract is up. Should I just kiss it goodbye and keep only 1 cell phone? What about trac phones? Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[westjones]

I think my DH has the cheapest cell phone possible, it is the same one that the family on Oprah the other day (the most frugal family in America) uses. He has a Virgin prepay phone that charges $15 every three months (so it comes to $5 a month). Honestly I don't know how many minutes he gets. He doesn't use it much, but the minutes roll over every months, so he has a lot of minutes on it right now. The kids and I have Verizon phones with texting, and our bill is HUGE.

The funny thing is there have been times when our phones haven't had any 'bars' and HIS $5 phone has worked.

He is very proud of his cell phone bargain. I think when the girls are grown, we will probably just use one of these, but right now, I text my kids a lot (easier than calling--they are teens and they can check their texts in between classes or when they have breaks during their sports practice).

DJ

 

[AuroraBeauty]

I have researched this topic extensively over the past few weeks. I've come to understand that for those who use very few minutes but want the security of a phone that TracFone is likely the best 'pay as you go' phone. It is a basic phone w/o texting or cameras or add'l bells & whistles. You can get a one year card for $99 which works out to about $8 a month. I think it's 400 minutes. That might work well for you. You'll have the security of having a phone and plenty of minutes if you need it but if you don't use it then you have the minutes all year long.

A few tricks if you do get a prepaid phone:

1. unless you have to, wait until you are home or at a land line somewhere else to check your voice mail b/c it will cost you minutes

2. When setting up your voice mail do it from a land line so it won't cost you minutes.

Hope this helps!

Best Wishes

 

[TiggerMomNine]

My husband and I had Sprint until about a year and a half ago. We switched to Virgin. We "top up" with $15 every 90 days, and the money rolls over. Minutes are $0.20 each.

We love it. We just got a third one for my DS 12.

A cool thing about Virgin Mobile is Sugar Mama. If you spend 5 minutes each day viewing ads on Sugar Mama, you get 5 free minutes. You can get up to 75 free minutes per month!

 

[sukaryan]

I knew you guys would come through for me!!

 

[Dedejf]

My dh and I just switched to Consumer Cellular which uses AT &T towers. They are very reasonably priced and, best of all, THERE IS NO LONGTERM CONTRACT and you can cancel whenever you want to. We had AT &T and I hated that company from activation in 2006 to termination in 2008. Go to consumercellular.com and research it to see if it fits your needs. It worked for us.

 

[Melrosgirl]

I have Verizon and a $40 a month plan. DH rarely uses his phone, so I found him a T-Mobile pay as you go plan. It came with a free phone. For $100 a YEAR, he gets 1000 minutes. He uses about 800 of them. It's by far the best plan we found. Free phone and $100 a year. (Verizon's coverage is slightly better in our area though.)

To add him to my verizon plan would have been another $30 a month which made no sense.

 

[Inigo]

I just to say "Me three" on Virgin. We've got 4 Virgin lines in our family, and have been really happy with the service and price. The only places we've found where we couldn't use the phones was in the valleys of Yellowstone Nat'l Park, and a small area of eastern KY that we drove through on our way south. It's on the Sprint network, so there's good coverage.

If you only use a little time, you can buy by the minute, or pay for a monthly use plan (with various minutes available). If you go with a monthly plan, you aren't locked in. I've switched from a low use plan to a higher plan on those months when we're going on vacation or I'm on call at work, since I know I'll be using more airtime. At the end of the month, I switch back to the lower cost plans.

Funny story: I went to a middle school to check on one of my probation clients. A teacher/friend had just confiscated a cell phone from a student, and was really upset because his phone said "Virgin" on the screen. She couldn't see why a 6th grader needed to have that on his phone! He didn't need to have anything dealing with sex! I simply pulled my phone out, and pointed out my phoned as a Virgin too, and, since I had kids, it obviously didn't relate to my sex history at all. Liz had no idea it was a phone company.