Have you ever wondered if there was a way to drastically reduce your cell phone bill?
My wife and I both have Droid smart phones with Verizon. Our total bill every month used to be $197.11. That means each of our phones was costing roughly $100 per month. I don’t auto-pay my phone bill because I want be sure I’m not paying extra for any unusual charges. Manually paying $197.11 every month made me want to research how to reduce my bill.
Audit Your Plan Usage to Find Savings Opportunities
While auditing our plan usage, I found that I used many of our minutes for outgoing business calls. Also, I noticed we weren’t using very many text messages. After much research and testing of softphones/sip phones and Android apps I realized the quality and reliability of these solutions was unacceptable.
How I Lowered my Minute Usage Drastically
Since I work on a computer during the work day, I decided to get a Skype online number and an unlimited minutes monthly plan.
When I signed up last month, you could get 50% off your online number ($30 discount) by purchasing an unlimited monthly plan first then choosing and buying an online number. The discount basically meant my unlimited plan was close to free for the first year. If you pay month-to-month it costs $2.99 for an unlimited plan but you get a 15% discount if you pay for 12 months in advance.
So now I give my business contacts my new Skype phone number which looks like an ordinary cell/landline phone number and tell them it is my business phone. Whenever I am near my computer, I make outgoing calls with Skype, the quality is excellent and it is much quicker to just click and call.
Where to Find Real Savings
By changing my plan from the 1400 Min/Unlimited txt plan to the 700 Min/250 txt plan, I saved $75.77 a month.
I saved $30 on the voice plan and $20 on text messaging. I also saved on taxes and fees because you are taxed a percentage of your bill.
Unlimited text plans cost $30 a month (worth it only if your total number of texts per month are over 1500). Otherwise opt for the appropriate text plan according to your usage. I chose the 250 messages for $5 plan – that’s only 2 cents per text! There is also a 500 msgs for $10 and a 5000 msgs for $20 – you still only pay .02 per text.
Previous plan:
1400 Minutes Talk & Text Family SharePlan:
Minutes: 1400
Text: Unlimited
Friends & Family: 10 Friends
Data Plan: Unlimited
Price: $119.99 + $29.99 x 2 (data plan for both phones)
Total Including Taxes and Fees: $197.11
New Plan:
700 Minutes Talk SharePlan
Price: $69.99 + $29.99 x 2 (data plans) + $5.00 x 2 for the 250 text messages plan.
Total Including Taxes and Fees: $121.34
Conclusion
You can save a considerable amount on your phone bill regardless of your carrier. Be sure to check the prices on all the features of your plan especially the unlimited features. If you find an area you can save on, make sure to call and verify with a representative when during your billing cycle would be the best time to implement the change.
Now go and audit your bill and plan usage and see if you are leaving money on the table.
If you manage to slice your bill, don’t forget to increase your monthly transfer to your high yield savings account by the same amount.
