Rose Cottage Ltd

Every once and awhile I have a conversation with someone who is spending literally hundreds of dollars per month, every month for…a cell phone.

Okay, maybe it’s for more than one cell phone if they have a spouse and kids.

But hundreds of dollars a month? I spend hundreds of dollars a month on food, and a car payment, and a mortgage. But not on a phone. In fact my total combined “phone related” costs – landline and cell, are less than $60 per month – and have been so for the last 7 years.

I had a more expensive service when I first moved to back to a rural area. I also then experienced intermittent service with static, “no service” messages, and dropped calls. I guess I can say my move to the country forced me to find a better way – and I’ve been saving ever since.

My “secret” is no secret – it’s a Tracfone.

The phone I selected cost me $19.99. About once a year – sometimes twice a year, I buy a card with minutes. In fact my phone was purchased with a “double your minutes for life” feature. So, each time I buy a card – which is easily done online, if I pay for 200 minutes I get 200 extra minutes. If I send a text it costs me 1/2 a minute – send an image to my Mom, it costs me a minute. Since I don’t live on the phone this works perfectly for me. It may not for you.

Here’s one with a TRIPLE your minutes feature – just for selecting this particular phone:

Did I mention these are No-contract cell phones ?

I have no contract with a lot of icky-tricky fine print. The last (other) cell service I had, that didn’t work consistently in my area of the country, wanted to make ME pay to get out of their contract. It was going to cost me over $200 to get out of service that didn’t serve. I managed to get around it, but “once bitten, twice shy” as someone said. Never again.

I’ve been using nothing but my Tracfone since 2004. I do still have my landline. No, I don’t live on the phone, so I don’t need to pay for 1,000s of minutes several times a year, but even if I did – I’d still be saving money and would not be held prisoner by a cell contract. So far, there have been maybe 2 instances where I went to use my Tracfone and had to wait a bit to get service. Two times – in 7 years – that’s it – compared to the nearly useless and high-dollar system I was in before – this is less than nothing.

No matter your level of cell usage, Tracfone is worth a look. Cell phones are all but an addiction for some people. In many ways, a TracFone may be a really good way to gain a little added control over the process.