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| DollarWise | A cell phone for your kid?
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Your child has been after you for weeks (maybe months) to get a cell phone. And youre thinking, 'How much?' Fact is, the costs can be reasonable, but you have to dip into the details to make it work.
By Jennifer Mulrean
Maybe it was the incessant pleading -- the 20th but Mom!!! (or Dad) in as many minutes. Or perhaps you think its a safety issue: Even without the added concerns of school shootings and terrorism warnings, who doesnt feel good about easily being able to reach their child? Whatever the reason, youre suddenly in the market for a cell phone for your kid.
To Juniors utter disappointment, the best options have little to do with the coolest faceplates, the Charlies Angels ring tone or the ability to take pictures. Instead, youre probably looking for something with one of these features:- Ease of use (especially for younger children)
- An ability to limit the number of calls
- Cost effectiveness
A few choices -- family plans, disposable phones and prepaid phones -- fit the bill to varying degrees. Heres how they compare:
Family plans
Youve seen the ads: busy mothers, fathers and siblings happily calling each other while a voiceover enthuses about the free minutes they share. Of course, you do pay for the minutes somehow. Like most individual cell-phone plans, family plans require one- or two-year contracts with stiff early cancellation fees -- $175 per line in Verizons Americas Choice Family SharePlan. Activation will cost you $35 per "line for one-year plans or nothing if you sign up for a two-year plan.
Deal of the week
Two-Buck Chuck. Thats the nickname for Charles Shaw wine you can buy for $2-$4, depending on where you live. When it first appeared on store shelves in February 2002, it spurred a number of rumors about why it was so cheap. The real story is about supply and demand -- a California grape glut combined with a lower-than-expected increase in wine consumption allows Bronco Wine Co. to buy bulk wine for cheap, bottle it with the revamped Charles Shaw label and pass on the savings exclusively through Trader Joes markets. Reviewers at WineLoversPage.com compare it to bottles that go for 5 times the price. Having sampled a bottle of Merlot, Id agree its a decent $10 bottle -- at a 70% savings in Seattle-area Trader Joes. Message-board posters note theres a good deal of variety in the quality, so you may want to buy one bottle and return for more if it proves worthy. Alas, Trader Joes is only in 18 states. You can find out if yours is one by clicking on the link at left.
Family plans from carriers such as Nextel, Cingular and AT&T work similarly, though fees vary. You can easily compare the different plans side by side at LetsTalk.com.
With Verizons entry-level family plan, youll pay $40 per month for the primary line and $20 per month for each additional phone for 300 shared minutes and 100 bonus anytime minutes. (Right now, theres also a promotional offer of 1,000 anytime, mobile-to-mobile minutes and unlimited night and weekend minutes in some parts of the United States.)
So, for a family of four, youd be paying roughly $100 per month if you dont go over your monthly minute allotment (not to mention $140 in activation fees if you dont want the two-year plan). Additional minutes will cost you 45 cents each, and roaming is 69 cents per minute.
If the bulk of your calls are to your other plan members, the more you call each other, the better the deal becomes on a per-minute basis. But because theres really no way to limit your childs calls to the other plan members, you could easily wind up with a hefty bill despite your best heart-to-hearts (click here for a list of tips to help you with this). Furthermore, your child likely wont be the only offender: Sharing a phone plan among family members can make it difficult to track how many minutes youve used collectively. To check your minutes with Verizon's family plan, you'd have to either sign into its Web site or punch a code into each separate handset and then do the math yourself -- neither of which will help much when you're away from home and not with all the other plan members.
Prepaid phones
With prepaid phones, you buy a phone and then buy minutes as you need them -- often in the form of a calling card. These phones get around the whole issue of long-term contracts and any early termination fees, though the expiration of unused minutes can be a significant drawback. Most plans include long-distance and roaming.
The TracFone, available online at retailers like Wal-Mart, regularly costs $65 in my area, and includes 10 minutes of talk time. Cards can be bought in 30-, 60-, 150- and 300-minute denominations for $17, $24, $39 and $74, respectively. The minutes expire in 60 days unless you keep the account active by buying additional minutes. Otherwise, you can buy a one-year card for $94, which only includes 150 minutes.
Obviously, the more minutes you buy at a time, the better the per-minute rate. Compare 57 cents a minute when you buy 30 minutes to a per-minute rate of 26 cents when you buy 150 minutes, or 25 cents when you buy 300 minutes. If youre simply looking for an emergency option, buying the one-year, 150-minute card works out to $7.83 a month. Even buying the minimum 30-minute card every 60 days works out to about $8.50 per month -- well beating the $20 per month service charge youd pay for the family plan.
A Verizon Prepay package currently includes a Motorola phone and 30-minute set-up card for $130. Weekday minutes cost more than weekend minutes -- 30 cents vs. 15 cents each -- and refill minutes expire at a quicker rate the fewer you buy (if you spend $15-to-$29.99, your minutes expire in 30 days, compared to 120 days when you buy $150 or more.)
Because prepay plans require no credit checks and have no monthly bills, they can be a great way for a teen to be completely responsible for his or her own phone expenses -- without even giving up the fancy ring tone.
Disposable phones
The Hop-On phone seems to be the frontrunner here, albeit of a pack that has been fairly slow to market. Today, Southern California is the only area of the country where you can walk into a store and buy a Hop-On phone (at Walgreens), making them an option for a relatively small group of people at this point. (A company spokesman says a recent deal with Fluent Wireless will put the product in 300 stores throughout Tennessee, Iowa and Wisconsin by the end of the second quarter.) When you can finally get your hands on them, they'll offer a number of conveniences, including:- The ability to throw them out or recycle them: No worries about your child losing a fancy, expensive phone. When you run out of the 60 minutes it comes with, you can toss the phone in the garbage or recycle it with Hop-On for a $5 rebate.
- No activation fees, roaming charges or long distance fees.
- No long service contracts: no credit checks, no long-term commitment.
- Ease of use: This is about as stripped down as you get, with no voice mail or call waiting to learn how to use. For emergencies, theres a one-touch button that calls 911.
- Rechargeable -- with or without a credit card: Should your child run out of minutes, hell be able to buy a scratch-off, lottery-type card with a PIN to recharge his phone. You can also recharge the phone for him by calling a toll-free number and putting the additional minutes on your credit card.
Early models were designed to make outgoing calls only, but the current Hop-On phone also receives incoming calls. Company spokesman Dave Pasquale describes them as fully functional phones minus the LCD. The phone is roughly the size of a deck of cards and costs $40 for the phone, headset, rechargeable battery and charger, plus 60 minutes of talk time. The minutes expire after six months unless you add additional time (available for 25 cents per minute).
These phones share the other prepaid plans ability to limit costs -- your kid wont be able to rack up a large bill for you to deal with at months end. But they are expensive on a per-minute basis, compared to the family plans.
Regular plans
You wont find regular individual plans that beat the pre-paid options for the minimum cash outlay required on a monthly basis, but there are some individual plans that cost only $20 a month, like the family plans. For that price, T-Mobile Basic includes 60 anytime minutes, and 500 weekend minutes. There are no savings on the minutes used to call other family members, but it eliminates some of the hassles of tracking the shared minutes. And of course, the more you're willing to commit to paying each month, the better the per-minute cost generally is.
Here are some tips for working with your child to keep their phone bill in check, courtesy of parenting columnist Edie Boatman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:- Have them share the financial responsibility with their allowance or money from a job.
- Exchange minutes for chores.
- Set up a list of numbers youll pay for. If the numbers not on the list, its their responsibility.
- Set up cell-free zones -- possibly anywhere they have access to a traditional phone.
Because you have to be 18 to have a service contract, you hold the trump card should they fail to meet their end of the bargain.
| The pros and cons of the plans | | Type of plan | Ease of use | Ability to limit calls? | Cost | | Family plans | No activations, PINs or calling cards for your child to deal with. | No | Youll save on calls among family members, but not enough to make up for a chatty child who discovers he can call anyone. Even if your child is responsible, theres usually a $20 monthly service fee. | | Prepaid phones | Your child will need to know how to activate a phone card. | Yes | On a per-month basis, you can keep costs to less than $10 a month. | | Disposable phones | Once your child uses the first 60 minutes, hell need to be able to use a PIN to recharge the phone (or you can call and charge additional time to a credit card). | Yes | On a per-minute basis, the first 60 ring in at 66 cents a pop for the Hop-On phone, but this includes the phone and accessories. Additional minutes are 25 cents each. All minutes expire after 6 months unless you buy additional talk time. |
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