Saving Money on Your Next Mobile Phone
Mobile phones have become a big business over the last few years, with everyone from your neighbors’ 10-year-old daughter to your grandparents owning one. If all you’re interested in is being able to send text messages and make calls then the chances are that you could pick up a handset that will meet your requirements for less than $50 brand new and everything will be rosy. However, it’s becoming increasingly more common for this to not be the case. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of devices since the iPhone launched in 2007 and has changed the face of the mobile industry forever in the process.
The simple truth is that most people have become dependent on the technology and cannot bare the thought of being “disconnected“ from the world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem lays in the expense that comes attached to these smartphones as they are essentially small, portable computers that have the added functionality of being able to make and receive phone calls. It has now got to the stage where mobile carriers, such as o2 and T-Mobile in the UK or AT&T and Verizon in the US, are looking to get you signed up to their services purely on the basis that they know you’re going to either exceed the small quota that comes with a cheap package or pays upfront for more than you’ll ever need. The likelihood of you finding a package that fits your needs (which are dynamic in themselves) is extremely small. Plus, as is the case with all smartphones, you need to consider what you are going to do in order to keep your data as safe and secure as possible, no matter where you are. If you’re not sure where to start with this, this article over on cellphonedeal.com is full of advice and suggestions that you might find useful to know.
The simple reason for this is that mobile phones on a contract don’t have limits, which is half of their attraction. So when you run over your minutes, SMS, or data limits, you’re sliding your carrier a nice chunk of cash. Rarely are there any warnings and even more seldom are prompts to actually slow your usage. This is how we hear stories of people running up phone bills that cost thousands of pounds on such a regular basis and that’s where the carriers make their money. So, can we save some cash and protect ourselves from falling into the carrier’s trap?
The simple answer is buying a used cheap smartphone. This will usually end up with you using a Pay As You Go style sim card, which doesn’t allow you to run up a huge phone bill. You set your monthly budget, add it to your phone, and away you go. You can’t run over and if you don’t use the credit then it will roll over pretty much indefinitely, which can be a massive money saver. Perhaps the biggest bonus though is the fact that if money is tight one month then you can cut back on how much you spend or even not spend anything at all if things are really bad. That’s a vast difference from the payment that you are legally required to make on a contract, where missing it could lead to a default and the sum being passed onto a third party for collection. Let’s not even get started on how much that could end up costing you.
