It seems like in our day and age, a cell phone or two per household is a near necessity. But it can also become a mighty expense. As our goal always is, we want to help you find ways to save in every area of life and so we thought it was time again to talk about cell phone plans and pricing. Before diving into cell phone savings, there are 5 things that you need to know and have figured out even before you start looking at phones or plans. If you don’t have this part figured out, you may get confused and locked into a plan that you really didn’t need.
With that in mind, check out these tips to help you evaluate cell phone plans and find the best value for your household.
Know What You Need
Before you start looking at cell phone plans, you need to figure out which services and features you will need. Do you need a data package? Do you plan to make a large number of phone calls and will you be making any international calls? Write down a list of everything you need in a cell phone plan and mark the items that are must-haves and the items you can take or leave. This list will help you compare plans and evaluate which one is best for you.
Compare Apples to Apples
When looking at cell phone plans, you can’t make an accurate comparison between two or more plans if they are totally different. Strip down each plan to basics that will meet your needs then compare prices and fees. After you have the basic plans to compare, you can start adding extra features and services and making more comparisons as you add things.
Individual or Family Plan
Do you want an individual line plan or a family plan? A family plan will take multiple lines and bundle them into a package. If you have a need for more than one line, a family plan is actually a better cost savings than having multiple individual plans.
Contract Plans vs. Pay As You Go
Customers who don’t want to be locked into long-term (1-2 year) contracts on their cell phone service may prefer to look for a prepaid or a “pay as you go” plan for cell phone service. With a contract plan, you can usually upgrade to a newer phone at a deeply discounted rate, but if you’re not hung up on having the newest, fanciest phone, a prepaid or as you go plan may actually be a better value.
How Much Data Do You Need?
Data charges tend to make up a big chunk of your bill on a cell phone plan. How much data do you really need? Look at each plan carefully as overages on data can become rather expensive. What will you be using data for — to access Facebook, email, watch YouTube videos, look up driving directions, etc.? Find out what your options are if you need to change your data package at any time during the billing cycle. Will there be additional fees? Will you have to wait until the end of the cycle?
Evaluating cell phone plans as you make a decision about the best value for you means doing your homework. Do a careful comparison of all features, fees, charges, and allowances on any plan you are considering before you make your decision.
Be watching for more on this series as we share ideas to save money on cell phones and cell phone plans!
Jessica Prah
When comparing plans, GIV Mobile’s no-contract service provides a lot of benefits at an affordable price. It is a budget-friendly no-contract plan that offers customers four “Unlimited Everything” plans starting at $29/month for talk, text and 2G data and $35/month for talk, text and 4G LTE data. Along with having a wide variety of phones to choose from, GIV Mobile also donates 8% of every customer’s monthly bill to up to three charities of his or her choice including The Conservation Fund, the American Cancer Society and Kids in Need Foundation.
John Pilla
TING! We were with Consumer cellular (Self, Wife, college daughter). It was good, until we started getting some dropped calls. Customer Service, though, was excellent. Then I read about TING on CNET. Like Consumer Cellular, You can buy or bring your own phone. PLUS, although they use Sprint network, when you are out of the Sprint network, it switches, no charge, to verizon network for talk and text. Excellent for us who live in NH and do a lot of outdoor activities, 4 seasons in Northern NH where coverage for most providers is spotty. In addition, we were on great feature phones (Talk and Text with Qwerty keyboard). But when my wife started having problems with hers after 3 years, no longer are good Feature phones available, So either $100 basic smart phone (Moto G) or a basic phone. Then after we heard about TING, I found out that although officially unsupported, we could buy the Boost Mobile version of Moto G at BestBuy for only $60.00 and use with TING. Purchased 3 of them. And aside from not being able to use the phones as a wifi HotSpot, known prior to purchase, they work as advertised with TING! Our first month for three people on TING was $55 vs. $75 with Consumer cellular, and we now have a pretty good Smart Phone to boot.
Steve H
My wife and I just joined the 21st century and finally upgraded to new smartphones. We had our old flip phones for 8 1/2 years. We planned this for quite a while and I spent 3 months (not constantly) comparing plans, services, vendors and phones.
We discovered that to get the minutes, data, texts we wanted, there were three possibilities. 2 Year contract, Verizon’s Edge plan, or No-Contract. The price for all three plans, including the new phones were all within $10.00 per month of each other. There is NO SUCH THING as a free or reduced priced phone. You pay for it one way or another. In the end Verizon’s Edge plan was not the least expensive, but gave us the best flexibility.
There were other cheaper services such as U.S. Cellular or Sprint, but their cell and data coverage is no were near what Verizon offers in our area.
In the end, we got a decent deal on our new phones, and the plan we bought is working for us. Hopefully I won’t have to go through that mess again for at least 8 more years. As far as I’m concerned, there are far too many options, not enough coherent information to base a decision on, and the entire process is almost as bad as buying a car. The cell phone companies really need to clean up their act.
Maximilian Hohenzollern
Perhaps one of the most common problems with phones is very fast discharge. It’s good when you have the opportunity to quickly charge your phone, but if we are talking about some events, then often this opportunity is not available. An excellent solution is mobile device charging station . Now there are different solutions for different numbers of phones, iPhones and Androids, so you can find the most suitable option for a given situation.