Cell Phone Ridiculousness
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?
Thanks for the replies. The above is my blog post. I wasn't trying to force page hits on my blog, I don't get a high on page views, but I see your point.
My husband basically thinks we should just wait our contracts out, and then our monthly charge would be 'only' $126. That still seems high to me and I spoke to Sprint today and they are going to 'research to see if they can give us a better deal' and call me back Sunday. I will point this out to them and beg them to bring my basic plan costs down to something reasonable. Just the sprint surcharges and federal taxes come to $25, where Republic Wireless's would be less than five bucks.
Any help from y'all on what you'd do if you woke up in my shoes on this situation is greatly appreciated, thanks!