From ten year olds to 70 year olds, everyone has a cell phone now. And everyone is looking for ways to cut back on their cell phone bill. Email, retweet, facebook, and share this with everyone you know to help them save money on their monthly cell phone bill.
Being able to stay in contact with your professional and social network is vital to success. Be it contacting a classmate in regards to a homework question, making plans with your friend to see a movie on Saturday night, calling home to talk to your parents, or returning a call for an interview for your dream job, having a cell phone is absolutely essential. But when you are trying to save money and you must have a cell phone, how can you cut costs on your monthly bill?
Here are my top five tips for saving money each month on your cell phone bill.
Do Your Homework: Before you sign up for a cell phone plan, make sure you have researched EVERY cell phone company and plan on the market so you get the best plan for you. If you know you text more than you talk, make sure your plan reflects that. If the majority of the people you talk to are in your network and you talk to very few people outside your network, don’t get an unlimited talk plan. Compare your options and find out what is the cheapest option for you. Sites like billshrink.com and myrateplan.com can help you do your homework.
Know Your Plan: Completely understand your cell phone plan. If you don’t know what your overage charges are, if you don’t know how many texts you get each month, if you don’t know when your free nights and weekends start, you will have overages and pay more money on your cell phone bill.
Instant Messaging Services: There is NO excuse for texting when you are sitting in front of your computer especially when you have Internet access. Texting costs money. Instant messaging does not. The majority of people you text have one or multiple instant messenger services, be it Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger), etc. Get the cheapest text messaging package you can on your cell phone and download these instant message for free. Save your money, limit your texts.
Skype: Skype is a free online messaging service that is not only like normal instant messaging services but can be a substitute for your cell phone. You can make calls to other Skype users and have real time voice conversations with them. All you need is a built in or attachable microphone on your computer. If you have a webcam or the person you are “skyping” with has a webcam, you can see each other while you talk. The cost for this service? FREE.
Email: For conversations that aren’t urgent or don’t need to be done in real time, use email. Almost everyone has an email address nowadays. All college students get a free email address from their school and most employers will give employees a company email address. You can sign up for a free email address from Yahoo, Hotmail (from MSN), and AOL if you don’t have a college email address or your employer doesn’t give you a company email address. Don’t waste your valuable cell phone minutes on conversations that aren’t urgent. Save your minutes, use your email.
There is no reason to spend an arm and a leg on your cell phone bill when there are many other options out there for communicating with friends, family, classmates, colleagues, etc. Utilize these options and watch your monthly savings add up fast.
