Finding Great Deals on Prepaid and Contract Cellular Plans
There are many ways to cut back and streamline your life in these times of economic hardship. One thing that many people are doing is changing there cell phone plans to lower minutes per month and therefore lower cost per month. Some are eliminating their home landlines altogether.
Still other are even switching over to prepaid phones as a way to have more control over their cell phone usage and charges and to essentially “pay as they go.” Prepaid can be a very good way to save money on your bills if your wireless usage habits fit with the overall plan you select. That is to say, you should be prepared by knowing what you are signing up for, which may not be as huge a deal with prepaid because you have no contract. However, you can get hit with costly minutes charges or text charges if you are not careful and do not know the terms of service.
The first thing you want to do is assess your phone habits by looking at your bills from the previous months. You will notice patterns. When I recently did this, I looked at my phone bills and saw I was paying for 700 minutes per month, while only using 250. That’s ridiculous. Once you see the patterns or your usage over the months, you will be able to select a better prepaid phone plan or you may opt for a monthly contract plan.
There’s an interesting article about how to get the best cell phone deal. It is specifically for a UK audience as you will notice the mentioning of pounds and the focus on Vodafone and Virgin Mobile (which operates in the US as well), but it has some good advice for anybody who recently got out of their contract or is trying to find the best deal out there.
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Saw an article by Dave Carpenter in the Washington Post that says pre-paid works out cheaper for people using 300 minutes a month or less. I use a lot less than 200 mintues. After downgrading my contract, I pay almost $40 (not including tax) for 200 contract minutes from a major provider. But I only get 27 daytime minutes. I did some checking around and pre-paid definitely seems like a better deal for people like me who don’t use their cel phone as their main line. One company, TracFone charges under $10 a month for 200 anytime minutes.
CORRECTION! My husband just pointed out that Tracfone doesn’t give you 200 minutes for under $10. Tracfone service averages less than $7 a month, but to get that rate you buy a $20 airtime card which lasts for 3 months and gives you 60 minutes total. Sorry about the error.
Tracfone is one of the options you have for super low rate prepaid wireless. Look into the new Straight Talk plan, which is Tracfone’s latest release. For $45, you get unlimited minutes and text messaging and 30 MB of data usage for 30 days. For $30, you get 1,000 minutes and 1,000 text messages. These are some aggressive options. See more details here: http://prepaidcellphonesguide.com/2009/07/16/will-tracfones-straight-talk-unlimited-prepaid-service-kill-the-competition/