Your Teen and Cell Phones

We often picture the typical teenager on the phone to his or her friends all the time. This mental image is conjured up by countless TV shows and movies. Often it is not far from the truth. My resident teen has more phone calls coming in to the house than both my husband and I combined. There was no question of should she have her own cell phone but when would she be old enough for one. When she turned 12 she was being invited over her friends' homes more frequently for sleepovers and day trips to local fairs and events. We decided at that point it would be best if she had her own cell phone should we need to contact each other rather than rely on the parent of the other child to be the "messenger". The phone would be only used to contact us and not for general conversation with her friends.

We already had 2 cell phones with Verizon and they had the deal for adding another phone for only $9.99 a month so we added her to our cell phone plan. Our monthly cell phone bill went from $59.99 to $74.99 which was much more than just $9.99 as the promotion stated it would be. I then looked more closely at the monthly Verizon bill and discovered all the regulatory fees that were associated with the extra phone. We kept Verizon for about a year longer and then decided to shop around for a cheaper alternative.

We live in a mountainous region so cell phone service can be sporadic if you don't go with the right provider for the area. What I did was ask friends that lived close to us what cell phone company they used. I then went into the nearest town and asked several of the people working behind the counters that offered several different cell phone companies what they thought was the best coverage for the area.

After doing much research on prices and area coverage I narrowed the search down to 3 pre-paid "pay-as-you-go" cell phones. The 3 providers were Net10, Tracfone and Virgin Mobile. All 3 of those companies do not charge a per day access fee to use their phones. All of the other cell phone companies that do offer pay-as-you-go plans charge around $1.00 a day to use the phone. If she used her cell phone everyday then she would be paying $30.00 a month which is more than the original Verizon plan. I decided to go with the pay-as-you go option because then my teenager could then be responsible for her own phone and pay for minutes as she needed them. It would be her first "real world" bill that she and she alone was responsible for.

I took my daughter to the local Walmart to pick out which phone and plan she would go with. The deal was, I would pay up to $15.00 towards the cost of her phone and that she would pay out of her own pocket any extra cost should she want a more expensive phone rather than just the bare bones basic ones. She opted for a camera phone being offered by Virgin Mobile which cost $49.00. Since we were not really sure of the area coverage of her phone plan I went with Tracfone at the same time and later my husband went with Net10 so we could all compare phone reception among the 3 companies.

Here is a breakdown of what we pay for each plan:
For my daughter's Virgin Mobile she pays $20 every 3 months. The $20 = 200 minutes and includes 3 months of service. The minutes roll over when she purchases another $20 worth of minutes and it also adds 3 months more of service. The Tracfone plan is almost identical except that $20 will only buy 60 minutes but I find promotion codes all over the internet that I can use to double the minutes to 120 or more. The Net10 plan is $30 for 300 minutes but they only last for 2 months.

I have found that we save over $51 a month by just switching to the pay-as-you-go plans versus our old Verizon plan which had a 2 year contract term. The big plus for us is the fact that when a new phone or company comes out with a better offer, we are not tied to any contracts.

Since my daughter is responsible for her own phone and its payment for the minutes she has been very careful about monitoring her cell phone usage. She also plans ahead by saving her money to pay for her minutes. Her phone also has the advantage of having internet access so if she is away for the week at a relatives' house, like she was this past summer, she can check her email or surf the internet as she pleases, all for just the price of minutes.