I can't remember ever not spending a fortune on my cell phone. I got my first cell around 1998 and I can't remember a bill less than a hundred dollars. And we didn't even have mobile data! I didn't start texting till after 2007, when I had a fancy slide out keyboard. I still miss that thing, I hate the smart phone text keyboards. I got my first smartphone in 2012. Now that I have experienced the smart phone convenience, can I ever go back to not having it? I personally think so since I am rarely anywhere that doesn't have WiFi. And I can always get a dedicated GPS for my car should I need it, but I don't think so since I can just print maps from my home PC.
Right now I have a balance of about $366 on my phone. I pay Sprint $23/month towards my phone. At $23/month paying for my actual phone, it would take me 15.91 months to pay it off (lets round to 16). I looked up how much I could sell it for, and it's less than what I owe (I could probably sell it for $150). So I need to try to convince my husband about selling it at a loss and then going to buy another phone (a cheaper one) on Republic Wireless, who offers phone plans from $5-40/month (with smart phones ranging from $99-399) in order to save money in the long run. Let's break it down.
I would get the $99 phone (one time fee) and the $10/month plan (unlimited text talk and data over wifi; no 3G). If I sold my current phone for $150 (losing $216), and spent $99 on a new phone on Republic wireless, if I only pay $10/month, it would only take a few months to come out ahead, and then I'd be saving money every month.
Right now, with Sprint, my phone is an add-on to the plan ($70 plus a $15 fee for each phone on the plan, mine and my husband's). Plus my iphone payments of $23/month. Remember from above, it would take me about 16 months to pay it off. So during that time in non-phone fees, I'll pay $15/month towards my service. 16 months of paying for only phone service (so not counting my $23 monthly payment for my current iphone) would cost $240. With the phone payment, I'll spend $606. But with Republic Wireless (counting the phone) over 16 months I'd pay only $259. That's a savings of $347. Minus the iphone money difference loss by selling the phone at a loss (of $216), I'd still save $131 over the course of 16 months.
Let's pretend the iphone's paid for. Phone service for a year for my phone only would cost 180/year. By switching to Republic, I'd pay only 120. Is paying $40 less per year for a phone worth it for me, considering I would lose my 3G data on the go? I'm not sure.
But, if I could get my husband to switch his phone at the end of his lease contract in a year and a half (he pays the per phone fee like I do, plus he pays $30/month to lease his phone, and the two kids' tablets are also $25/month combined, and don't forget the actual plan, in case you're wondering, which is 8 G of data for $70/month plus a $15 per phone fee), and just had the kids's tablets only work on WiFi, we could save a considerable amount of money, even if he went with the higher Republic plan with 3G (which is $25/month instead of $10). Yearly bill for two people would be only $420 (not counting actual phone cost, so add another $200-$400 depending on which phone he chooses...he probably wouldn't pick the $99 model) and we still would come out way on top.
I'll keep you updated as to whether/when any changes will be made on this front! I have a husband's complexity to consider.
Update: 3/3/15 Things are way worse than I thought. After I found out that just dropping my service from our sprint bill would only save us at the most $38/month (after I finish paying $366 for my iphone and I'd have a useless phone I'd have to sell), I started to look into what would have to happen for us to drop Sprint entirely. I found out that my husband could get out of his lease but that he'd owe the balance of his iphone, which is $334. So that's $700 of a breakup fee which is pretty high. But wait, there's more. Sprint at one time offered us, out of the generosity of their black little hearts, a free tablet (samsung galaxy Tab 3.0) for each of our kids if we purchased the monthly service for a couple years (of 25/month for both tablets). Great, we said, Sign us UP! So the nice lady tells me we'd also have to finish paying (wait, I thought they were free?!) $343.71 for each tablet, bringing our Sprint Breakup Fees to a whopping $1,387.42. We'd still be able to keep and use the tablets on Wifi but that's a hefty price considering we could have gone and bought them ourselves for considerably less than what Sprint is charging us for them!! I MIGHT be able to earn back $400 by selling the iphones so even if we take that off the bottom, we still lose $987.42. How long would it take to earn that back by switching (we'd save $145/month by switching) to Republic Wireless? 6.81 months. Now, should we pull the plug or not?
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