Two posts in quick succession today! I completely forgot that I purchased more minutes for NT's cell phone last week, which means it's time to evaluate costs again.

RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 6 months. We have 2 phones on T-Mobile prepaid and 1 on Net10 prepaid.

Initial layout: $241.63 to get us set up with phones and 2300 minutes.
NT's late-May Net10 fillup: $32.65 (He hadn't used up his previous 300, but they roll over as long as you re-up in time.)
AS's second 1000 minutes with T-Mobile (bought in June): $107.40. (We hope to get this batch to last longer than three months.)
NT's late-July Net10 fillup: $32.82
NT's late-September Net10 fillup: $32.82

So our total cost so far is $447.32.

So far, if I divide our total cost by 6, our new plan has cost us $74.55 per month (our monthly average is down from $103.63 per month as calculated in July). Woo hoo! That's a $10-per-month savings over our $85 average on the T-Mobile family plan.

AS will need to fill up in October, so that average will go up again, but not much. I've used about half of my 1000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March 2010 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.)