So I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 3 months. I initially paid $241.63 to get us set up with phones and minutes.
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.)
AS just used up her first 1,000 minutes, so I bought her another 1,000 at $107.40. (We hope to get this batch to last longer than three months; AS has gotten much better this past month at controlling her conversations with her mom, and at insisting that she call her mom via Skype vs. her mom calling her.)
So our total cost so far is $381.68.
So far, if I divide our total cost by 3, our new plan has cost us $127.23 per month. However, we have a good chance of gradually getting that average down. I've barely used any of my 1,000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March of next year unless I run out of minutes before then.
(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, but any average number below $85 will be a savings.)
Prepaid plan costs update
June 29th, 2009 at 04:43 pm
June 29th, 2009 at 05:31 pm 1246296686
Is it because the service time is getting you guys?
Net10 also has monthly plans that essentially cost the same. The difference is that you can get as "little" as 150 minutes a month for $15. And as a monthly plan, it maintains your service.
You can do this temporarily anyway, to help slim down the extra minutes?
If it's the other way around and you don't have enough minutes, perhaps go for the 4000 minutes? It's a 2 year service, but it also includes 1000 bonus minutes for free. It's about the only rate plan minutes, but it seems pretty good.
June 29th, 2009 at 07:47 pm 1246304840
I would actually rather have NT on T-Mobile because you can buy 1000 minutes for $100 and get service for a year. He does buy 300 minutes every 2 months for $30, which is basically what you're describing except we only purchase every other month. But he doesn't use the minutes very quickly, so I'm not sure he'll need that many, and he's required to pay $180 a year just to keep going on Net10. AS and I on T-Mobile, on the other hand, could potentially spend much less than $15 per month; for instance, I've only used about $8 worth of minutes per month, so I may not have to re-up until the end of the 12 months. If AS can keep her usage down this time, we could actually see some savings quite soon. It's just the initial outlay cost us a bit and then AS had to renew much sooner than I thought she would.
June 29th, 2009 at 08:09 pm 1246306182
June 30th, 2009 at 03:12 pm 1246374753
July 19th, 2009 at 12:26 am 1247963216
But I've been hearing about the new Straight Talk unlimited service for $45 a month and am thinking about checking that out too.