prepaid cell phones??

[lukenick1]

We are looking to get a pre paid cell phone for our 10 year old son. He rides his bike to school and today his bike broke down en route so he was lucky his friend had a cell phone to call me. I want my son to carry it with him for emergency's such as that. Anyway, does anyone know of a pre paid that minutes will not expire? I checked out a go phone but the minutes you buy need to be renewed every 30, 60 or 90 days? Or I can put $100 on for a year. I want to just add $10 and have that until it's gone and then we will add more as needed. Is there a prepaid company that will allow that?

 

[mrsmav]

I have net10 for myself and for my son and my husband has tracfone.

With net10 I add $30 every two months - so it comes to $15/month. I have to do this whether I need the minutes or not.

With tracfone I add $20 (I think) every three months. I have to do this whether I need the minutes or not.

Tracfone can be cheaper if you don't use a lot of minutes. But they don't have QWERTY phones. Since DH doesn't text it works for him. My son wants a texting phone and while I don't text all that much for the times I do I like the QWERTY phone.

I don't know of a plan that lets you add minutes only when you need it.

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

The cheapest pp plan AFAIK is Page Plus with $10 every 120 days.

 

[GoofyMomInOhio]

We have Tracfones for our kids. Every 3 months I add $20 to their accounts. That gets them 60 minutes plus 60 bonus minutes (they have the Double Minutes for Life feature on their phones). Tracfone just released a Blackberry type phone for $29.99 with a Qwerty keyboard and a LG touch screen for $49.99.

 

[angierae]

If you and your husband are already on a family plan, I'd just add your son to your family plan. I know a few years ago we were able to get DD a phone that was a fully-functioning phone, but you could password it so that it could only make/receive calls to numbers programmed into the contacts, and you couldn't add to the contacts unless you had the password. This way, we knew DD wouldn't run up our bill.

It was $10 a month and I never had to worry about it, and the phone was free.

 

[lukenick1]

Thanks everyone,
We went with a Tracfone. Cost me $10 for the phone and we will add $20 every 90 days. Hubby and I are on Virgin Mobile phones and LOVE THEM!

 

[rvchat]

Thanks everyone,
We went with a Tracfone. Cost me $10 for the phone and we will add $20 every 90 days. Hubby and I are on Virgin Mobile phones and LOVE THEM!

can you text with that plan/phone?

 

[JB2K]

Yes, you can text with a Tracfone -- each text costs 0.5 minutes

 

[rvchat]

Yes, you can text with a Tracfone -- each text costs 0.5 minutes

That's a great deal. Wish I could get one with an iphone. ?

 

[lukenick1]

can you text with that plan/phone?

Yes I was told 3 texts = 1 minute. That is incoming or outgoing.

 

[Dani C]

The best thing I have found with tracfone is that international calls charge the same as domestic ones. Additionally, you can add numbers to your phone giving you local numbers in Canada and Mexico for friends and family to use to call you.

 

[disneymarie]

We are looking to get a pre paid cell phone for our 10 year old son. He rides his bike to school and today his bike broke down en route so he was lucky his friend had a cell phone to call me. I want my son to carry it with him for emergency's such as that. Anyway, does anyone know of a pre paid that minutes will not expire? I checked out a go phone but the minutes you buy need to be renewed every 30, 60 or 90 days? Or I can put $100 on for a year. I want to just add $10 and have that until it's gone and then we will add more as needed. Is there a prepaid company that will allow that?

I signed my dd up for a safelink phone with 250 minutes a month free.
It is enough for her to have for emergency's as your son's and too allow her to feel a call away in any reason.

The income guidelines are good, if you have Liheap, food stamps, medical card or programs it is free.
www.safelink.com

Prior to that I had tracfone. Safe link is Tracfone.

 

[lukenick1]

I signed my dd up for a safelink phone with 250 minutes a month free.
It is enough for her to have for emergency's as your son's and too allow her to feel a call away in any reason.

The income guidelines are good, if you have Liheap, food stamps, medical card or programs it is free.
www.safelink.com

Prior to that I had tracfone. Safe link is Tracfone.

Thanks! I will check this out!

 

[lilrooster76]

Virgin mobile has prepaid plans as low as $25 a month for 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited texting...phones are fairly cheap as well

 

[jkc0325]

My dh and I had T-Mobile pay as you go phones. After you've purchases $100 worth of minutes, all your minutes do not expire for one year and if you buy more minutes before the year is up, you roll over unused minutes. So, since I only used about 20 minutes a year, I ended up paying $10 a year for a few years on that plan!

Once we decided to get our dd a phone, we went with a family plan with Verizon. I really miss that $10/yr bill

 

[ceecee]

.

Tracfone can be cheaper if you don't use a lot of minutes. But they don't have QWERTY phones. Since DH doesn't text it works for him. My son wants a texting phone and while I don't text all that much for the times I do I like the QWERTY phone.

I don't know of a plan that lets you add minutes only when you need it.

Tracfone does have a Qwerty phone now, DH has it, it has Bluetooth as well. You can also text without a Qwerty phone, we did it for years that way. Tracfone is 3 texts = 1 minute. It is $100 for a year service and 1000 minutes (with double minutes card) so it's the cheapest. The Qwerty phone is an LG and it's $19.99 with a double minutes card.

 

[rsschneck]

Virgin mobile has prepaid plans as low as $25 a month for 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited texting...phones are fairly cheap as well

This is what my teenage daughter has now. She has the LG phone and she can get free apps just like all her friends. Since teens use it mostly for texting this was cheaper than adding her to my plan plus we can opt not to pay for up to 90 days and then start the monthly plan again. I like this because if she gets into trouble or maybe over the summer if your kids are not going to be using the phone you can save yourself some money. The LG works great too!

Before this we had t-mobile to go. Purchased a phone per year because each time we purchased a phone it did not work too well. Daughter could sometimes call out but never received calls very well. We would usually text and that sometimes did not work too well either. The phones are pretty cheap. The expense was very nominal but if you cannot get a hold of them when you need to or they can't call you when they need to then what is the use of having the phone.

DD is VERY happy with the virgin mobile because her phone is just like all her friends and it only costs $25.00 per month.

 

[PigletsPal2]

If you add minutes to your Tracfone on line, you can add 30 minutes for $10, but they only extend your service for 30 days. Also, the DMFL is $19.95 on line.

Queen Colleen