When we lived in Arizona, my youngest son sent us a cellphone so that he could keep in touch with us. He had a 1 hour and 15 minute commute back and forth to work. He would call us on his commute every day and we would have a nice chat.
When we moved here he offered us a cellphone on his plan and we would be able to text him, call him and use the internet also. He only charged us $ 596. per year which we would pay in advance to him for a year. To be honest, the phone gets more texting use than anything. Hubby has been looking at cheaper plans the past couple of years. We looked at adding a cellphone via Spectrum but heard not so good reviews about their service. So we stayed on his plan.
The other problem was that he lives in a different area code than us so our phone number had that area code.
A couple of weeks ago we switched to Mint Mobile. They had a deal where if you purchased 3 months worth of service at $ 15.00 per month, they would give you 3 months free if you chose automatic renewal which we did. Their service seems to be as good as T Mobile was. So this year, our cellphone service will cost us $ 172.59 including taxes, surcharges, and fees. That is a huge savings of $ 423.41 for the year. Since we owned our own cellphone we did not have to buy one. And the bonus is that we have a cellphone number within our area code. So we have budgeted $200. for the year just in case of a rate increase or jump in taxes or fees.
Any small or large cut that you can make to your budget for the coming year will make a huge difference in how much money you can actually keep in your wallet to save or invest. If you don’t have an emergency fund use that extra savings to build one. The one thing I know for sure is there will always be an emergency when you least expect it. Be prepared!
I will be back posting a bit on our budget for 2024 next week when I get a chance. We have company coming today to exchange gifts and enjoy a charcuterie board that I am making for lunch. Tonight we will be watching the Buffalo Bills game. So I had better get moving!
4 replies on “2024 Budget Plan – Cellphone”
Hi Precious. Good idea to check cell phone cost. We are on a plan with our kids too. We don’t have a home phone anymore. I know hubby has a hot spot feature on his that he used for work, and I will ask him if that can be taken off after the first of the year when he retires. I am not sure what our rate is. Daughter does the bills a few times a year and we sort of have a slush type arrangement where we pay for things like her Costco stuff (since we have the membership) and she offsets the phone bill. So I am not exactly sure how much it is. We have done since we moved up here. Her hubby gets a discount on the plan b/c he works at UPS.
There are some other bills I need to have hubby negotiate after the first of the year like our newspaper and internet. He is the subscriber of record and both of these have gone up recently.
Hi Chris,
I hope you are feeling better so that you can enjoy Christmas Eve and Christmas day. That is a nice arrangement that you have with the phone. We have a house phone mainly for our alarm system.
Oh the newspaper is a thorn here. We pay way too much for digital online. I will be having a discussion with DH on that next week. Our internet the company won’t budge. I tried.
That’s an awesome savings!
Have a wonderful Christmas weekend. No plans here except dinner out with mother in law. Snowing hard so maybe she will change her mind..
Hi Patti,
It sure is! Thanks. I hope you enjoy your dinner with your mother in law.
You have a wonderful Christmas weekend too. We had a wonderful day here with family.