<p>Up to now, I don’t have a cell phone. DW has a family plan with AT & T which allows max of three lines. When I really need to use one, I will borrow DS’s. But he is going to college and there are times I do NEED a cell phone.</p>
<p>Options:<br>
upgrade DW’s plan and add one more line - that will be $20 per month more than current plan. Cost prohibitive.
use AT & T’s pay as you go plan at $0.25 per minute. I don’t think I will use 100 minutes a year. Pro: We already have a two year old AT & T cell phone we paid $10. Con: I will have to let people know that they don’t call me unless there is an absolute emergency.
T-mobile’s gold plan - $100 for 1000 minutes and you get to roll over the unused minutes yearly. Pro - have more minutes to use than option #2. Con: $100 a year and I will need to buy another $10 phone. </p>
<p>Seeking suggestions for a better phone plan. Also, if you are using the $0.25 pay as you go plan, how do you make sure people don’t call you.</p>
<p>BTW, for those who wants to jump on me for getting a cell phone while we have two kids on financial aids - give it a rest. I try as hard as I could to avoid this expense.</p>
<p>We share one cell and usually only use it when one of us is out of town to avoid hotel phones. This pay as you go phone costs $100/year for 1000 minutes and we never use them all. Nobody calls us on it because we don’t give out the # except as needed like if I’m trying to hire somebody in Virginia to do some work and he needs to call me back when I’m on the road out there. </p>
<p>Skip the $250 bicycle and get what plan works best for you.</p>
<p>Once again you do not provide enough information. How much does your wifes family plan cost? What is the base fee? How many minutes a month doe it offer? Do you have a data plan? Text messages? What is the cost? If you are going to ask for help, it would be advisable to provide sufficient information.</p>
<p>Does your wife need her cellphone? Perhaps you can use hers. Again- please clarify-- which family plan do you currently have? How many minutes do you get a month? What features do you have? Are the minutes shared? Do they roll over? Is it free to call family members in your plan? How much does your plan cost? Does it include text messages? data plans? Are they limited or unlimited each month? I am not asking this to be nosey. This information is all important in order to answer your question.</p>
<p>And to answer the question about not having people call you-- how did you handle that when you used your son’s phone? The simple solution is to use the phone only to call family, to tell people you call that you use the phone for emergencies only and not for incoming calls (and tell them what number to use) or have your voicemail message say just that, and DON’T ANSWER YOUR PHONE. This is not rocket science.</p>
<p>Have you considered a non-contract cell phone like Cricket or BoostMobile? I use them because they’re a lot cheaper than my old service (Sprint) and they provide perks like unlimited texting.</p>
<p>Don’t give people the number. If no one has the number, they won’t call you.</p>
<p>Also, you only have to PAY if you answer your phone. If you don’t want to answer and pay, turn the ringer off.</p>
<p>And…you will be able to SEE the number on your phone when it rings. If not someone you know…just don’t answer it. Then it will be no cost to you.</p>
<p>Check with ATT. We also have a family plan with them which allows one primary line for $49.99 a month and up to three additional lines for $9.99 each. Then we added $29.99 for unlimited texting. WE have free mobile to mobile with ATT customers so when I enter folks into my cell phone directory I mark “A” next to the number if they are ATT…that way I know that they are free calls for me. We have this bundled with our internet access and our landline phone at home. Total cost $151 a month for three cellphones, a wall phone and our internet DSL.</p>
<p>Dad II…I would suggest that you look at the ATT plans. Hopefully your wife is not in the middle of a plan contract. Having an ATT plan means you can talk to your kids and wife on the plan…no charge.</p>
<p>Just get whatever phone(s) are offered free with the contract. Don’t pay extra for a phone. If you don’t currently have a cell phone, not get sucked into buying a “smart phone” with a data plan. You probably don’t “need” this now.</p>
<p>Look into a couple of things…does your company offer discounts on cell phones, many do. AAA offers a discount too. So do many professional organizations.</p>
<p>If you want a cheap phone that does calls only…no voice mail…just calls…get a Jitterbug. It’s pay as you go and it’s a phone only. Look in Parade magazine tomorrow.</p>
<p>Edit…Dad II…I almost didn’t post my plan name or the cost…since you seldom provide such information to others, even when it would be helpful. For example…when you got your new car, you boasted about the great deal but would NOT tell the make/model of the car OR the terrific cost. This could have helped others (like me) who were also car shopping.</p>
<p>The only way to make sure that people don’t call you is to not give out the number. That’s it. We’ve also had some awkwardness with my in-laws and the cel phone because what we consider urgent and what they consider urgent are not always the same. Perhaps it’s generational. </p>
<p>My father did this a few years back; only three of us had his number and he had the phone in case of an emergency. I will say that he often forgot to carry it because he just didn’t use it and I forgot I had the phone when a situation did come up. He’d told me about it six months earlier.</p>
<p>Also, if your kids are into texting (most are it seems!), consider a non-contract phone with unlimited text. I was pleasantly surprised how much more often I heard from my son once I figured out texting.</p>
<p>Problem is, if you call anyone from your cell, they will have than number and may, for convenience, store it in their phone or simply call it back to return a call. So to be sure they don’t call it (a) don’t call them with it, (b) TELL them it is not a number to be used and (c) don’t answer if they do call. </p>
<p>We have an expensive family plan, but it has a boatload of shared minutes, data plans, unlimited texts, family to family for free, etc. Bus we are heavy users of the phones, and selected the plan that best fit our usage pattern. So again, dadII, to best help, we need to know your current rate plan, its features and your usage pattern for all 4 of you)</p>
<p>There are NOT a lot of “stand alone” cell plans that cost less than $20 a month. If you NEED a cell phone, get this. You will save that much in money by not having to think about the number of minutes you use to talk to your wife, son and daughter…all ATT cell users.</p>
<p>Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish on this one. If you NEED a cell phone…$20 a month is not a lot to spend on it.</p>
<p>BTW- Although I use my cellphone a LOT, I tell everyone to please not call it during the workday. I keep it on for true emergencies (issues with family members, etc) but cannot take calls during the day. If I turn it off or put it on vibrate I forget to turn it back on. With only a small handful of exceptions (there are a few folks who call it during the day) most people have been very respectful of my parameters and not used it when I cannot answer it and when it disrupts things during the day.</p>
<p>I read the thread title and wondered what the next word was going to be. I thought it was going to say “life”. Guess I should have known better ;)</p>
<p>Come on, DadII, spend the 20 bucks. You can afford it and you’ll find that you’ll use it more than you think you will. I agree with thumper, you’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish.</p>
<p>We have three AT&T Pay as you go phones and one Verizon pay as you go. The Verizon phone is for my son as he had some service issues at his job this summer. We only used to have three phones in all but we have time left over on one so my wife has it now. We’ll decide on renewing it in a few months.</p>
<p>You will get phone calls from unknown numbers - there are cell-phone or sequential number dialers out there. You may just get wrong numbers too or your number may be reused so that people that used to call the old number will continue to do so, even if it is your new number.</p>
<p>What I do on my phone is put pictures of people that I know on my phone and associate those pictures with their phone numbers. When my phone rings, their picture shows up. No picture and I don’t answer the call. My phone is set up with Google Voice for voicemail so I can just go online and get a record of missed calls or messages and then call them back using a landline phone (free) or a softphone (also free).</p>
<p>Our kids don’t answer calls with numbers that they don’t know. They don’t do the picture thing but their eyesight is better - I find it hard to read the numbers on the front of the phone without my glasses which I usually don’t have on when I am away from a desk.</p>
<p>Pay as you go costs $8.33/month. If you have regular access to the internet, you can make all of those long calls for free using Google Voice with a land line or Google Voice with Sipgate. Google Voice allows you to make domestic calls for free but you need a phone. If it’s a landline, the incoming call will be free. If you want to use a computer to make calls, you can get a softphone from sipgate and use Google Voice to place the call - all free.</p>
<p>You can also use Skype for two cents a minute.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your suggestions. We went to the mall and talked to a couple of the vendors. I think we are going to go with a AT & T pay as you go $0.25 per minute plan. </p>
<p>As I fully disclosed in the OP, DW has the AT & T family plan but the max line # allowed is 3. So, DW, DD and DS each has a phone. To add another line will require a upgrade to another plan for $10 more and than $10 more to add a line - totalling $20 a month more.</p>
<p>After much thougt, I think as long as I only call family members and none of others, I should be fine. </p>
<p>The advantage of in AT & T is that I will always has a “new” phone in two years when DW renews her plan and gets new phones. </p>
<p>It starts out pretty fuzz, many thanks to you guys and some open talk to the sales guy made things very clear.</p>
<p>PS. I have all the means of communications at home and at work. The person I carpool with has a cell phone. So, the only time I need to use a cell phone is when I am out alone w/o a plan, which does not happen a lot.</p>
<p>I have 5 lines on my AT&T acct, each costs additional $9.99.
</p>
<p>Dad II - you didn’t just say that, right? I for one try to give you benefit of the doubt every time you post, and I have thought some posters give you a hard time sometimes. But when you come out with a self serving statement like that, and I am just floored. Do you really have no sense on how you portray yourself when you write something like that? You expect your carpool friend to let you borrow his phone, or do you give out his number to your friends and family? I don’t believe you are really like that in real life. You write things like that on CC to stir things up because frankly there was no need to write that PS.</p>
<p>My AT&T family plan is also 5 lines; are you sure you can only have 3 lines? My MIL is on our account to save her money as we have tons of minutes and the kids text more that talk these days.</p>
<p>Agree with oldfort, you come across as a cheapskate and a mooch with that statement. You want everyone else to pay for the minutes you want to use. And you are all about your convenience with the phone, not that of anyone else in your family and friends and coworker’s group. I have to say, my dad (who is 80) is the same way about his phone (does not leave it turned on, does not give out the number – although I have it from when he has called me), and it is a nuisance. If I want to call him and he is not in his house (eg, at his cabin), I can’t reach him. In a family emergency, I would have to call the sheriff’s department to reach him. Also, whenever we do talk on the cell, he is quite abrupt because it is “costing him” for every minute. My dad can afford a better plan. In my opinion it is a way of being cheap with your family and friends to refuse to do something that opens up the lines of family communication more easily.</p>
<p>One way you can save money if you spend more on a cell plan is cut back on your land line service. I didn’t get rid of mine completely mostly because I need to be able to get and send faxes from my house. And I like to use my land line phone for work conference calls. But you may be able to reduce your landline plan down (I am on ‘pay as you go’ for long distance for the land line, which cut my monthly bill down).</p>
<p>One thing to watch out for with a pay as you go plan is what happens in a family emergency. I had a very low minutes plan about 5 years ago when I first had a cell. We had a family crisis, and ended up using my phone a LOT during it. Got my bill from Verizon, and it was over $1,000! I called them immediately and explained the situation, and they backdated me to a cheaper plan so I ended up paying only about $60 for the month. (And they did not make me extend my contract to make the change). I decided to stay on that plan for a few months because I knew this (ongoing) crisis would result in a lot of cell phone use. A couple of months later Verizon called me and said it looked like my usage had gone down again, and did I want to downgrade to a cheaper/fewer minutes plan again (again, without extending my contract). I thought it was great customer service. But I am not sure you would get the same kind of break from other providers, so watch out.</p>