As someone who has gone through several different providers over the years, (Sprint, Verizon, Nextel, T-Mobile...) I have to say that in general, Tracfone products have given me the best call quality and range of any cell phone on the market today. Yep, Tracfone. I usually buy 800 minutes at a time, and since I signed up for the double minutes for life program, that doubles to 1600 minutes automatically with a full year of service. (These refill cards are usually about $125 if you pay retail, meaning that the above scenario of 1600 minutes for the price of 800 has you paying about 8 cents/minute for talk time when all is said and done. This translates into a little under 3 cents for each text message sent or received, and about 4 cents a minute for mobile web time.)
However, since I'm allergic to paying retail, I usually buy my minute refills via Callingmart.com. Callingmart automatically knocks about 3% off all Tracfone refills, making the price for 1600 minutes $121.25. You're not done saving money at this stage yet, though! Once you are ready to buy your extra minutes, head over to RetailMeNot.com for some extra savings. Search RetailMeNot for Callingmart.com coupons, which usually yields you another 3% off your refills, bringing your total for 1600 minutes down to $117.61. I usually end up buying two of these refills a year, meaning my total annual cell phone costs are under $230, or less than $20/month. As an additional tip, I should note that Tracfone now offers the LG 500G and LG 800G smartphones on their site, which offer almost all of the great features that other smartphones sport today without having to spend a bloody fortune for the privilege. (Yes, they even have apps!)
Now, that's how the numbers work for someone like me, whose phone is more of a great little convenience than a constant part of my life. (My computer is another story, however. I'll get to that in a later post.) However, if you burn up the airways with talk time and love your mobile web connection, there are other great money-saving options for you that don't necessarily need to involve expensive data plans and buying vast packages of cell phone minutes that you may or may not use. For the rest of you in the 21st century, there are the Straight Talk plans, which also offer amazing national call quality and coverage on the Tracfone network. For a flat $30/mo rate, you can get a phone that offers 1000 minutes of talk time, 1000 texts, and 30MB of web usage per month. However, if you need even more than that on your phone, a totally unlimited plan for talk, text, and web is available via Straight Talk for only $45/mo. As with the regular Tracfone site, Straight Talk phones are available in everything from the most basic models to full-featured smartphones, so you need not sacrifice convenience for price!
Oh, and these plans are contract free, with no hidden fees/surprises. This means that your $45/mo plan won't morph into a $60 bill once various "additions" are stuck on your invoice at the end of the month. If you're spending a fortune on cell phone bills, sit down and decide how many minutes you usually use in a busy month and how much you pay for them. Even if you need to pay $300 to break your cell phone contract, chances are that you can save that sum easily when you switch to one of the lower-priced options above. Again, it's just another painless way to have the best for less!
