AS made her 1000 minutes last 3 months and 1 week, so that's a 1-week improvement over the last 1000! But seriously, I think there's no getting around the fact that while she's at home, and doesn't have a work phone with which to conduct calls during the day, her minutes are going to go faster. This situation should change next year, whatever job she ends up with.
RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 6-1/4 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 late-June T-Mobile fillup, 1000 minutes: $107.40.
NT's late-July Net10 fillup: $32.82
NT's late-September Net10 fillup: $32.82
AS's early-October T-Mobile fillup: $107.78
So our total cost so far is $555.10.
So far, if I divide our total cost by 6.25, our new plan has cost us $88.82 per month (our monthly average is up from $74.55 per month as calculated in September). Still, that's close to our $85 average on the T-Mobile family plan.
I've still only 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.)
Prepaid costs plan update
October 6th, 2009 at 10:47 pm