Baby Mustachian is asking about cell phones plans....

[Masik]

Hi there,
that is my first post here so be gentle please!
We need 5 cell phones. 4 for personal use and 1 for business. Right now we have 3 smartphones and 2 not so smart phones and pay $167 a month to AT&T. 2 phones are at least 2 years old each, other 3 are 4 years old.

I'm looking to save $$$ here, so my question is... which provider/plans to pick?
It'll be easy if we need only 2, but we need 5, 4 of them should be smarts.
Have any other Mustachians had to do that? Seems like with Ting, if you add phones and plans (around $119+tax, etc for our needs) it'll be long while until the "profit" outweighs the expense.
WWYD?
Thank you in advance!

[GizmoTX]

What AT&T plan are you currently on?

[seattlecyclone]

What are your usage numbers? Ting's homepage says you'll pay $105/month for five phones if you get into the "XL" bucket for everything, so you must be estimating even more usage than this. To really save money you should rethink how you use your cell phones. Under no circumstances should you stream music or video over the cell network. If you stop doing that, you should easily be able to fit a family of four (five?) into less than 2 GB of mobile data per month.

[StangStache]

You might do well with Cricket, as a family of 5 seems to be critical mass for their plans at a cool $100.  AT&T owns Cricket, so you get native AT&T coverage (sans roaming, which most people don't need).

PM me if you want more info about them, or a referral to get your $25 credit.  I have been very happy with them and know a bit about them. 

[tracylayton]

My 13 year old has had his Republic Wireless Moto E for 1 month and loves it! He is on the $10/month plan. My phones ATT contract runs out in January, and then I will make the switch, also.

[Masik]

What AT&T plan are you currently on?

Mobile Share Value Plan 10GB
We use about 4GB now, with only 3 smarts. If we add another smart phone it'll be more :(

[Masik]

What are your usage numbers? Ting's homepage says you'll pay $105/month for five phones if you get into the "XL" bucket for everything, so you must be estimating even more usage than this. To really save money you should rethink how you use your cell phones. Under no circumstances should you stream music or video over the cell network. If you stop doing that, you should easily be able to fit a family of four (five?) into less than 2 GB of mobile data per month.

We use around 4GB on average, so I added 4GB to their XL plan, that gave me that number. We do not stream music/videos on a go. Beats me why the number is so high :( We also need to add a fourth smartphone, which won't help to bring that number down.

[Masik]

You might do well with Cricket, as a family of 5 seems to be critical mass for their plans at a cool $100.  AT&T owns Cricket, so you get native AT&T coverage (sans roaming, which most people don't need).

PM me if you want more info about them, or a referral to get your $25 credit.  I have been very happy with them and know a bit about them.

Let me check, as I've never heard about that! Thank you!

[Masik]

My 13 year old has had his Republic Wireless Moto E for 1 month and loves it! He is on the $10/month plan. My phones ATT contract runs out in January, and then I will make the switch, also.

Seems they do not offer any multi-phone discounts, so phones/plans can be bought separately, right?

[bigalsmith101]

Would you care to elaborate why you NEED 5 phones? I'm assuming there are 2 adults and 2 children in your family, along with the business phone. That's understandable.

Is it simply a preference that the business phone be separate from the personal line? I can understand this too. Mixing business with personal life is a often unpleasant compromise.

I will assume that the person holding the business phone is going to also be the one holding a smart phone, thus the business phone should be the bare minimum phone with only call/text capacities (i.e., not a smart phone), as the personal phone will be able to access business information like emails, files etc. Or Vice Versa, it doesn't matter.

I'll also assume that the second parent/adult is going to hold a smart phone as well. That's 2 smart phones and 1 dumb phone thus far.

Now, for the second two personal phones (for the kids right?) the choice is quite obvious. DUMB PHONE/Plan. Are these kids college students? They don't need data plans. Give me a break. FACE PUNCH for you. 

So, you've got 2 smart phones and 3 dumb phones. You currently pay $167/month for your phone plan.

Have you considered Republic Wireless? You can check out there cell phones here https://republicwireless.com/info/phones/
and rates here: https://republicwireless.com/info/plans/

You've got to have a Republic Wireless phone, so you'll have to buy them:
For your two children and the business phone, opt for the cheaper phones. $300 at $100/each for the Moto E
For you and the spouse, opt for the middle of the line. $300 at $150/each for the Moto G

You'll have an out of pocket expense of $600 up front. But the phone plan will suggest the following.

You'll be able to purchase three of "The Republic Plan" for a total of $30
You'll be able to purchase two of the "Republic + 3G" for $50.
Add in the prerequisite taxes for the cell plans at of roughly $20, and you have a total of $100/mo for all 5 phones, for a net savings of $67, equal to reducing your costs by 40%

You're upfront cost of $600 will pay for itself in the first 9 months, and you'll be saving $67/month from there on out. You've already stated that 2 phones are two years old, and the other 3 are four years old. This suggests that you could easily hold the same phones across the family for at LEAST two years.

Unless you are a whiney pants suffering from excusitis, there is no way that you can refute the facts. For $600 up front, you are getting a return on your investment of 11.16%. That's easy money MASIK!

If you bought 5 of the low tier phones, it would be $500/up front, and you'd realize a return of 13.4%
If you bought 5 of the mid tier phones, it would be $750/up front, and you'd realize a return of 8.93%

And after the phones are paid off, you'll save $800/year.

Someting to think about.

[NewStachian]

T-Mobile was running a special - 4 phones for $100/month. I'm not sure they're still doing that, though. One of the nice things about them (and many others like Republic) is that they throttle you when you hit your cap, not charge you more.

[Masik]

Would you care to elaborate why you NEED 5 phones? I'm assuming there are 2 adults and 2 children in your family, along with the business phone. That's understandable.

Is it simply a preference that the business phone be separate from the personal line? I can understand this too. Mixing business with personal life is a often unpleasant compromise.

I will assume that the person holding the business phone is going to also be the one holding a smart phone, thus the business phone should be the bare minimum phone with only call/text capacities (i.e., not a smart phone), as the personal phone will be able to access business information like emails, files etc. Or Vice Versa, it doesn't matter.

I'll also assume that the second parent/adult is going to hold a smart phone as well. That's 2 smart phones and 1 dumb phone thus far.

Now, for the second two personal phones (for the kids right?) the choice is quite obvious. DUMB PHONE/Plan. Are these kids college students? They don't need data plans. Give me a break. FACE PUNCH for you. 

So, you've got 2 smart phones and 3 dumb phones. You currently pay $167/month for your phone plan.

Have you considered Republic Wireless? You can check out there cell phones here https://republicwireless.com/info/phones/
and rates here: https://republicwireless.com/info/plans/

You've got to have a Republic Wireless phone, so you'll have to buy them:
For your two children and the business phone, opt for the cheaper phones. $300 at $100/each for the Moto E
For you and the spouse, opt for the middle of the line. $300 at $150/each for the Moto G

You'll have an out of pocket expense of $600 up front. But the phone plan will suggest the following.

You'll be able to purchase three of "The Republic Plan" for a total of $30
You'll be able to purchase two of the "Republic + 3G" for $50.
Add in the prerequisite taxes for the cell plans at of roughly $20, and you have a total of $100/mo for all 5 phones, for a net savings of $67, equal to reducing your costs by 40%

You're upfront cost of $600 will pay for itself in the first 9 months, and you'll be saving $67/month from there on out. You've already stated that 2 phones are two years old, and the other 3 are four years old. This suggests that you could easily hold the same phones across the family for at LEAST two years.

Unless you are a whiney pants suffering from excusitis, there is no way that you can refute the facts. For $600 up front, you are getting a return on your investment of 11.16%. That's easy money MASIK!

If you bought 5 of the low tier phones, it would be $500/up front, and you'd realize a return of 13.4%
If you bought 5 of the mid tier phones, it would be $750/up front, and you'd realize a return of 8.93%

And after the phones are paid off, you'll save $800/year.

Someting to think about.

Thank you, I needed that math :)
Two kids are actually in their 20s and both work, but we shared a plan b/c it was cheaper to share. They pay their shares back.
Business phone is a basic phone worth $10 at a good market day, we need no more, I do not want to buy another even for a low price of $99.
Kids use data as they are constantly on a go, it'll be up to them which phone/plan to use, they will pay for it.

I'm actually checking out Cricket as I can keep my phone, so can one of the kiddos. Hubs and kiddo2 need something more efficient, and business phone will stay dumb and dirt cheap. I need to figure it out how much will be paying for 5 phones with them, but it seems impossible to do online, they won't let you buy more than 1 phone/plan at a time.