Save Money by Using Pre-paid Mobile Phone Services.

Lately my daughter has been asking about getting a mobile phone family plan. We have been using pre-paid mobile service for the past 6 years and before my two children became teens and started to show interest (and the need to an extent) on having their ownmobile phone, between my wife and I were spending up to $200.00 a year on pre-paid mobile phone service. As soon both my children started attending High School we purchased mobile phones for each of them, at that point our annual pre-paid mobile bill went up to about $600.00.

We normally purchase $25.00 cards every time someone is running out of minutes, this is great because it gives us a great deal of control on what we spend and on the amount of time we spend on thephone . I don't see the need to while driving; shifting gears with one hand, shoving a burger on my face with the other hand and with my other hand talk on thephone . All this does is to give our legislators more excuses to create more laws to protect us from ourselves when all we really need is common sense and control.

Going back to my daughter asking for a family plan I decided to investigate all the locally available plans and at the end the bottom line is that they are all pretty much the same; for a family of 4 the monthly fees are in between $90.00 and $120.00. Well I did the math and the annual expense would be between $1,080.00 and $1,440.00 and this does NOT include all the other fees and taxes tacked to the monthly bills, plus the cost associated with the required 2 year commitment. I was burned by these 2 years commitments deals when I moved from California and discovered that themobile provider I was using in California did not offer services in Idaho at the time and I had to cancel the contract at an out pocket expense of $300.00. They got me once; there won't be a second time.

All these plans want you to make a 2 year commitment and they lure into these commitments with fancy devices almost free and we all should know by now; there is no such thing as a free lunch, you are better off buying your own phones online. Also you are not limited by the selection of devices offered by the many carriers that provide pre-paid services, the service that I use is T-Mobile and any mobile phone that uses a SIM card and GSM network should work fine.

My kids both have learned to manage their texting and chatting time on the phone and they know that if they go over their minutes allowance they will have pay for the next cards themselves. Of course they still keep asking for afamily plan that includes more air time and texting.

Bottom line you can save a good deal of money by using pre-paid mobile services and still be connected. Besides saving money I see many other benefits such as becoming safer drivers; I don't need to spend every single minute of my life on thephone, I don't need to carry my phone every where I go and my teens don't need to spend hours time texting or chatting with their friends.
As far as I am concerned mobile phone are just another tool to simplify our lives and not objects of enslavement that take over our valuable time and drain our financial resources.
Antonio R. Tijerino writes about frugal living and money saving ideas and resources. Please visit: http://www.frugalineagle.com