YOU PAY HOW MUCH FOR CELL PHONE SERVICE?

A year or so ago someone I know told me that her family of four spends $240 a month on cell phone service. I was shocked. My wife and I spend about $12 a month. Clearly we used our phones a lot less than this family of four, but we get all the service we want. What can account for the difference?

I decided to take a look at various plans offered by cell phone providers and the cost of each. Janet and I are retired. We have internet-connected phones at home, so we don’t have as much need for cell phone service. Like most older couples, our cell phones are primarily for emergencies. What I wanted to do, then, was to compare low-cost cell phones and service for people who wanted a cell phone but didn’t plan to use it a lot.

Another consideration was whether to get a flip for just making and receiving calls or a smart phone with which we can check our email or download Angry Birds as well as make phone calls if we want. In our particular case, it made more sense economically to get a smart phone. I tell you more about that later.

In the last year or so the cost of cell phone service has gone down, so perhaps the woman I told you about in the first sentence does not pay as much for her phone service as she did a year ago. Telephone companies have dropped their prices because of competition from providers who use the internet rather than telephone networks to connect. Cable Vision, a New York area cable company offers a service called Free Wheel. With this service customers can get unlimited talk, text, and data. If you are already For Cable Vision customer the service costs only $10 a month. Others can sign up for $30 a month. You have to have a Moto G phone for Free Wheel, but it is a pretty good phone and costs only $100. The limitation of Free Wheel is that works ONLY in WiFi areas.

A similar service is Google Fi, which uses WiFi if it is available, but otherwise uses regular cell phone networks. Unlimited talk and text are $20 a month. Data is $10 per GB (gigabyte). There is no annual contract with Google Fi, but you must use a Nexus phone. They generally cost from $350 -$500. The one person I know who used Google Fi loves it.

Traditional telephone companies used to offer expensive cell phones for about $200. The rest of the real cost of $500 and $600 phone was added to the monthly bill with a two-year contract. Let’s take a look at some of the least expensive phones and plans that are available now.

VERIZON

LG Revere 3 smart phone $50

1GB data, unlimited talk and text $30/month 

AT&T

LG Xpression smart phone $140

This plan would be for people who actually use their phone “only for emergencies.”

Talk 25ȼ/minute

Text 20 ȼ/message

Data 1ȼ/5 kb (kilobyte)

T-MOBILE

Used LG 450 $30

Unlimited talk and text and 2 GB data $50/month

STRAIGHT TALK

Reconditioned Moto e $20

1500 minutes talk/month, 100 MB (megabyte) data $30/month

CONSUMER CELLULAR

Talk -   0          $10/month + 25 ȼ minute for actual talk time.

                        250 minutes                 $15/month

Data & text -               30 texts                       30MB data      $2.50/month

                                                1500 texts       150MB data    $5.00/month

There is no annual contract with Consumer Cellular, and you can change your monthly contract right up to the last day of the month. So if you are on the $15 a month talk plan and haven’t made any calls, you can change it to the $10 a month plan. If you make more calls the next month, you can change it again.

Another advantage with Consumer Cellular is that if you are a member of AARP, you get a 5 percent discount on all plans.

TRACFONE

This is the plan that Janet and I are on. For about $12 a month with two phones we can make all the calls we want, although some people would want to make a lot more calls.

Janet has a refurbished LG Optimus Dynamic phone, which cost $10. I have a Moto e phone, which cost $100 new. Tracfone has refurnished Moto e phones on sale for $60.

Tracfone service is secured through a Tracfone Service Card. The least expensive of these plans is $20. In the past for the $20 you would get 60 minutes of talk time, and it would be good for 90 days. If you hadn’t used your 60 minutes within the three months, it would roll over as long as you renewed it before the expiration date.

However, if you get a smart phone, including to $10 LG, the $20 card will get you triple minutes as long as you have the phone. That means for three months you have 180 minutes of talk time, 180 text messages, and 180 GB of data. If you go on the internet in a WiFi area, the data does not count against your 180 GB of data.

I said that our phone service costs $12 a month for two phones. How do I get that? If we have the service refilled automatically every 90 days, the service costs only $18, $6 a month times two phones.

I rarely send a text message, and I don’t make many calls on my phone, but I go on the internet every day, usually just to check the weather, the news, or my email. Sometimes if I am in a waiting room or have time on my hands, I will open a kindle book on the phone and read for a while. I still don’t use much of my data because much of the time I go on the internet on my phone in a WiFi area. Every three months I get 180 more GB. What I don’t use rolls over into the next month. At this point it will be over two months until my service card needs to be refilled, and I have 725 GB of data available in my account.

Tracfone did not pay me to write this, but if you want to write to Tracfone and suggest that they send me a few bucks, I won’t object.