So I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 2.5 months. I initially paid $241.63 to get us set up with phones and minutes.

Our cellphone bill, for three phones on a family plan, used to range from $80-$95, depending on texts, calls to 411, etc. Usually it was close to $85. My goal is to get my average cost below that, preferably to $50 per month.

NT's phone is with Net10, and he started with 60 days of service. So we had to buy more minutes for him in late May, at $32.65 for 300 minutes and another 60 days of service. (He hadn't used up his previous 300, but they roll over as long as you re-up in time.)

So our total cost so far is $274.28. AS will probably need more minutes soon; a few calls with her incessantly talky mom has drained her 1000 minutes much faster than we planned. I'm trying to get her to use Skype, a computer-based calling function that costs next to nothing to use. But it's malfunctioned once or twice, and then her mom flips out when she talks about using it, like trying to cut back on phone costs means we're in the poorhouse or something. (Her mom is one of those chaotic financial people, so we don't worry about her opinion, but she can be very forceful about her flipouts, so AS sort of has to manage her.)

So far, if I divide our total cost by 2.5, our new plan has cost us $109.71 per month. However, if AS can rein in her mom, we have a good chance of gradually getting that average down. I've barely used any of my 1000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March of next year unless I run out of minutes before then.

We'd decided to keep NT's T-Mobile phone when we switched him to Net10; AS and I are both on T-Mobile prepaid, and I worried about a phone breaking (since we can't just trade it in and get a free one in exchange for signing another multiyear contract, which is what we'd do in the past). Really glad I did that, because AS's phone stopped working the other day, and she was able to transfer her SIM card into NT's old T-Mobile phone and keep going. Now, of course, we have to worry about what happens if that one, or my phone, breaks, but hopefully we've bought ourselves some time.

Hmmm...I should look into selling AS's broken phone. I could probably get a buck or two.