Save Money with a Prepaid Cell Phone
July 20, 2009 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
My husband and I have prepaid cell phones . We use Tracfone, and add minutes as we need them. We have camera phones with bluetooth capability. We can text message and play simple games. And our current phones came with double minutes for life: Every time we add minutes to our phone, we get double the minutes. It is easy to manage our accounts — all we have to do is log in and minutes to our phones as needed. The minutes roll over, and as long as we buy some minutes every three months, they don’t expire. It averages out so that we spend between $7 and $8 a month for our cell phone service .
Using a prepaid cell phone can be a great way to save money over buying expensive cell 
plans. MainStreet.com offers a look at some of the plans offered now by prepaid cell phone carriers:
Two Tracfone monthly plans under the brand name “Straight Talk,” available in about half of the country. One plan offers 1,000 voice minutes, 1,000 text or multimedia messages, and 30 MB of data over Verizon’s network for just $30; the other unlimited voice and text, plus 30 MB of web access for $45 .
Boost Mobile offers unlimited voice, text messaging, web, and push-to-talk for $50 per month. Virgin Mobile offers unlimited voice plans for $50 from $80, but charges an additional $10 for unlimited text messaging, and for 50MB of web access.
No, you’re not going to get an iPhone or a Palm Pre when you get prepaid cell phone service . But you can get a pretty decent phone (mine cost $30). As long as you aren’t looking specifically for a smart phone, or if you don’t need some sort of a family plan for several people, you might find that a prepaid cell phone offeres you a better bargain than you thought.
Image source: °Florian via Flickr
The Tracfone Straight Talk packages are the best cellular offer out there at the moment. The $45 plan is the cheapest unlimited style plan available, period. The $30 Straight Talk plan is cheaper than most low-usage contracts but gives you the minutes and texts of a high-usage plan. Coverage is terrific and it is so easy to manage the plans right off the web site. Another benefit of the Straight Talk plans is that 411 calls are FREE.
I used to hate budgets. But I also hated spending money I didn’t have. I dumped my credit cards except for one for EMERGENCIES. Cash or debit card only now.
I also looked carefully at “regular” expenses and decided to dump my AT&T phone for a prepaid phone. Got a Tracfone for 30 bucks but it was kinda-sorta free since it came with 30 bucks worth of air time.
Now I budget my phone use by buying the amount of time I want, up front. I also got a double minutes card which makes it an even better value.
There are some expenses that can be “managed” and those are the ones to budget.
WorkShak:
Tracfone under their Straighttalk plan has unlimited texts and minutes for $45 domestically and INTERNATIONALLY. You pay the same price for a call that you make to let’s say, New York, as a call you would make to, for example, Brazil. AND another great feature that Tracfone has is that it enables you to make calls to many places in the world.
I also made the switch to TracFone after years of paying $45/month for (monstly) unused minutes. Now, I average $10 (if even) a month! This is definitely the way to go for non-phonoholics!
You all make good points about budgeting, and fitting a pre-paid phone into your finances. It can be a good way to save money.
I used to use a TracFone but as good as it was, I gave it to my mother who doesn’t talk much and switched to Net10. It’s only 10¢ a minute to talk and 5¢ per text. Prepaid, too. Really easy and great not to get bills!
I personally think that tracfone is the best overall. The phones are cheap (the cheapest is $10), the plans are cheap, especially with double minutes (every minute you buy you get one free), and international calls are the same price as domestic calls. I saved so much money by swtiching to tracfone and I love it.