I still distinctly remember the first time I owned a cell phone. I was 20 years old and had moved to the US a year ago. It was a red chocolate bar Nokia phone with AT&T and I had a brief yet expensive relationship with that phone and with AT&T. Expensive because I needed a way to call my family in India without having to always use phone cards (how silly of me to think international calls would be cheaper on my cell phone).
I have come a long way since that first phone and have run the gamut from Motorola Razr to Palm Treo to the iPhone 4. At one point in my life I had my personal cell phone, a company phone and a pager. (yeah, remember those things that would beep a number and you would have to find a pay phone to call them back, hoping you don’t run out of quarters while you are on the phone?)
I mean, really, I don’t think my social or economical position in life really warranted having two phones and a pager. I still remember the days of not owning a phone and running to my neighbor’s house to talk to my dad on their phone when he would call us from Saudi Arabia, where he worked. It was a beige rotary phone at first and then they upgraded to the one with buttons that you could push. It was always amazing to me how all of my friends and I would find each other or end up at the same place and not one of us had a phone!
After years of having expensive cell phones and cell phone plans, I realized a very important fact: I really only spoke to THREE people frequently! My husband, my sister and my high school friend, who lives in California. Why on earth was I paying nearly $100 a month plus tax, for a cell phone to speak to three people??? Occasionally, I would get phone calls from other friends or make random phone calls to my friends whom I have not talked to in a while. (Those of you who don’t call me, don’t feel bad – I know life happens and I don’t always call you either 🙂 We can always pick up where we left off when we do call each other).
So, my husband and I decided that we needed to take a serious look at our phone bills to figure out how we could minimize our expenses. We realized that together, we had unlimited talk and text plans and his phone included a data plan. I, then added an iPhone 4 to the mix and now we both we so wired into the tech world that we both knew where we were every minute of every day and knew how to reach other too! This “accessibility” was costing us an arm and a leg to maintain and I only used a fraction of my data plan and less than the smallest minute plan that AT&T had to offer. So, we downsized. My husband lost his iPhone 3 and that made it easier to downsize 🙂
We kept my iPhone so we could have navigation and web browsers, etc. We got rid of his iPhone plan entirely. And the great thing is that through a turn of events, we ended up having a plan that is not on a contract, so we could end our iPhone plan any time, without termination fees! We needed a phone for me to use during emergencies, or to pick my husband up at the train station, etc. And this is what I use:
I have averaged about $7.00 a month on this the last two months. It is not glamorous, I have to triple tap to send a text message, and it is a prepaid phone. Since we needed to solve the problem of phone cards to call our families in India, we “switched to “Vonage” and now I have unlimited talk time to India and 60 other countries and it only costs me $24.99 a month. Although I really only call India 🙂
Both land line and cell phone plan – under $40!!! Another way to simplify my life this year.
What phone are you using?
