<p>The recent thread about Stupid Smartphone Question got me thinking…if you have a family plan type of cell phone contract, at what point did your college student break away and get their own contract (and pay bills, etc.)? Are there any issues to consider with that in terms of keeping their number, etc? Our family plan contract is up in a few months and I am thinking maybe it is time for my freshman to get his own plan.</p>
<p>Here’s the link to that other thread. (Lots of good info on carriers, plans, etc. Thanks.)</p>
<p>Family plan usually is cheapest. If you want your student to pay his/her share you can always do that and keep the family plan. We even kept the family plan after my oldest graduated until he decided his needs were different from ours.</p>
<p>Yesterday. My rising junior is now on his own plan because he felt he needed a smart phone, data plan and unlimited texting. It may not have been the most economical arrangement as my H is now considering adding a data plan to his account, but sometimes the family dynamics are such that the independence trumps all.</p>
<p>My older son also moved to his own account during his sophomore year in college because he needed a different carrier and also because he moved to an unlimited data plan that was not in our budget.</p>
<p>Not until it makes economic sense for him to be on his own plan and while he is in college I don’t expect him to pay for his share of the family plan - even though he has smart phone/data etc., and I have basic no frills phone.</p>
<p>Given the family plan discounts, there’s a huge advantage in using them. We had a grad student who lived with us one year and she & her sister & sister’s husband had a family plan to save money. I think she sent the sister a check every month.</p>
<p>Our college grad D will be moving to another city for job, but will remain on our plan. She will pay for her line, data plan and portion of text, taxes etc. Didn’t see point of making her get her own plan–it’s cheaper for her than her own plan, and our cash outlay for AT&T will decrease. College S on plan as well. I’d put my Dad on ours if I could, but AT&T doesn’t work well where he lives.</p>
<p>This was a source of major friction in our family.</p>
<p>When our kids graduated from college and started working, my husband insisted that they get their own cell phone plans as part of “becoming independent.” One of them did not object because he wanted to switch to a different carrier anyway. The other did object. She wanted to stay on the family plan and pay us her share of the monthly bill because it would cost less than having her own plan.</p>
<p>My husband insisted that she had to have her own plan, so she got one. But I still think it’s silly for our family as a whole to be paying more money to the cell phone company than necessary. </p>
<p>If we had kept our grown daughter on our family plan, it might have made sense to put the plan in her name and for my husband and me to pay our share of the bill to her every month instead of doing it the other way around. That way, it would help her to establish a credit rating. My husband and I don’t need help in that department.</p>
<p>Our D who just graduated college is still on our family plan also. For now, all 3 kids have smart phones with the unlimited data plans, which I understand will have to change when H and I upgrade eventually to smart phones. She just started working and will pay us her portion of the bill. She will have to do it by check, as she just severed all our joint accounts, so I can no longer make transactions from her checking account into mine online!</p>
<p>Our son remained on our family plan through grad school; it cost us only $22ish per month to have him on our account.
Since we were paying he made do with the basic non-smartphone we agreed to.</p>
<p>When he got his first real job last year, he decided he wanted an iphone with data plan.
Clear to us all that it was time for him to get his own plan since DH and I don’t yet do smartphones/data and have no plan to supply that for employed son.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the replies. What this is mostly about, and I should have explained, is he wants an iPhone, but our carrier does not offer them. (We do have smartphones and I am not opposed – am quite dependent myself on it.). I am happy with what we have, but was thinking if he wanted to jump off our plan he could maybe go with Virgin Mobile, as people say it is good. But I would want him to pay if he wants the luxury of the iPhone. For him it would be a financial advantage to stay on our plan, but at some point I figure he ought to be independent, so why not soon, I am thinking. The Virgin plan is cheaper as an individual than one phone on our family plan on Tmobile.</p>
<p>D1 needed a carrier that wasn’t the family plan carrier when she went off to college. The phone had to be in our name because she didn’t have credit as a freshman. We paid for the phone during her college years. After college, we paid the bill and she reimbursed us. Finally, we called up the phone company and asked that they transfer the plan to her directly and get rid of our names on the contract. Now that she has credit, they were happy to do so.</p>
<p>S1 got his own plan six months after graduating from college. He lives in another state and is in the military so it was just better for him to handle his own affairs.<br>
S2 just graduated from college in May. He has a low paying part-time job at this point so we are paying his part. We’ll see what happens when he gets full-time work. S2 has already mentioned staying on our plan but DH may have different ideas.</p>
<p>Still on the family plan and don’t intend to get my own. I use something like 200 minutes a month at most (probably more like 100), so it would be a huge waste of money. As long as you’re fairly consistent with minutes usage, there’s no point in splitting off. I looked into opening my own for the 10 seconds it took to realize the jaw-droppingly higher monthly bill.</p>
<p>As long as you’re paying for your share, it makes too much economic sense to stay on the family plan.</p>
<p>S1 got his own contract 3 months after college graduation in 2009. This summer I offered him the chance to be on our family plan since D1and I were getting smartphones. He jumped ship immediately! Even with paying the early contract penalty, his share is much cheaper with us than anything he could get on his own (he “needs” smartphone, data, unlimited text).</p>
<p>All of our phones are prepaid so things are simple. I’m planning on getting the iPhone 5 when it comes out and it will be on a different carrier. My workplace has a discount which can’t be applied to shared plans so I won’t be able to do a family plan anyways.</p>