Don’t let your teen talk you into poverty
Most of us have cell phones, many of us have teenagers: put the two together and you have a recipe for a never-ending hole in your bank account.
Being frugal is about making smart choices; being a teenager is about making the mistakes you learn from later. The two don’t go together. But teens and cell phones do go together, and if you make the wrong choices you’ll be the one paying for their mistakes.
I used to work for a cell phone company, and part of my job was resolving billing problems. I still remember the time a woman called up with a tiny little problem.
Her bill was several thousand dollars larger than normal.
It seems her son had been downloading pornography to his cell phone with predictable results. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything we could do for her, but there are a few things I can suggest that might prevent it from happening to you.
So follow me past the cut and we’ll talk about various ways to be frugal with your teen’s cell phone bill.
First things first:
Don’t get a family plan.
They sound great in the ads: add an extra line to your account for ten dollars a month and share the minutes. The catch is that the minutes are used on a first-come first-served basis and once they’re gone any call by anyone can rack up additional minute charges that are much more expensive than prepaid. It’s like putting more straws in the same glass of soda; whoever drinks the fastest gets the most and once it’s gone it’s gone for everyone.
Get your teenager their own account; preferably prepaid.
The big advantage of prepaid is that once the money’s gone it’s gone, and the phone stops working until the account’s refilled.
It teaches your teen to be responsible and manage their usage so they don’t run out..
It doesn’t let your teen put you in debt for thousands of dollars because they texted or talked more than you expected.
Most teens love to text – I know the two who live here do. The eighteen year-old once ran through over 5,000 text messages in about two and a half weeks. If we hadn’t put him on an unlimited text plan that could have cost us $800!
If you have a teen, give them the biggest text plan you can afford, you’ll be glad you did. This is particularly important because most cellular providers charge for INCOMING text messages, and don’t give users the chance to reject them.
That’s right, all your teen’s friends can run up your cell phone bill and there is nothing you can do to stop them unless you’re willing to block texts altogether.
What we ended up doing was going with Boost which offers unlimited voice, text and web for $50/month prepaid. The price is pretty reasonable, and the big advantage for us is that it’s a fixed cost that he’s not going to go over, which keeps us in control of that bill. The phone selection could be better, but that’s less important to us than keeping control of the bill.
That brings me to my bonus tip
Don’t buy cell phone accessories from your provider.
Cell phone providers make lots of money on accessories, they usually subsidize the phones, so one place they try to make it up is by charging extra for things like car chargers and bluetooth headsets. Don’t buy them from the provider, go on eBay instead. You can usually find brand new bluetooth headsets for a fraction of the cost – often with free shipping. They may not be the latest model, but the price makes up for that.
As usual, if you have questions or comments, please feel free to use the box at the bottom.
Related Posts
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.