Cutting Your Phone Bill Like You Cut The Cord.

At the end of 2019 I didn’t want to start the year with another new year’s resolution and set unrealistic expectations like; buy a house or pay off my debt, get rich. Or even worse things that will have no impact on my life whatsoever like plant flowers or vague things like be happy. 
Sure I want to one day buy a house and pay off the mounting debt that I have and of course I want to be happy. However instead of setting resolutions I made plans. These plans were geared towards what I needed to accomplish. Eventually I will do something around all the steps I took to accomplish those goals but I just started, it’s currently March, three months into the new year and I feel like I’m on the right track to getting to the goals. 

One plan I made and will point out here, is obviously reducing expenses. The questions I had to answer was; what things do I pay for that I don’t need? These things might be a luxury and things we’re just used to having and I went through a list of things. This brings me to the title of this blog, cutting your phone bill. 
I do not have a house phone, and I know most of those bills are bundled with your internet anyway so it might not benefit you to cut that. The phone bill I’m referring  to here is your cell phone bill. 
Over the years I’ve had ATT, Verizon and T-mobile and though their plans might change from time to time, when I had these services I honestly hated them. I disliked these companies for different reasons related to customer service, or just being billed in strange ways, or just having a $300 bill due to extra charges, it wasn’t upfront or transparent, even after I did my best to find out these information.

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So let me explain. Starting with the most recent phone company I had to cancel; T-mobile. I didn’t have a lot of problems with T-mobile for the most part, I didn’t have crazy bills except when I called out of the country or when I went out of the country; by this time I was a pro at traveling to Jamaica and ensuring that I don’t pay too much extra for being out of the country and T-mobile had some good plans for that. I had some issues with them when I switched from ATT to T-mobile and they did some very sketchy stuff, but I can go into that another time. However it was mostly good until I started looking into ways to save money on my phone bill, this is actually where the problems started. I decided that cutting my phone bill was one of the areas I needed to focus on because I don’t call anyone nor do I answer my phone when people call me; sorry. I mostly text and honestly I barely do that too. The only thing I was somewhat concerned about was my data, because for the people who calls me, they actually call me using WhatsApp, mostly my mother and sister and some friends who are in Jamaica or from Jamaica, for some reason Jamaica’s really love WhatsApp. My point is I barely needed having a phone if not just for emergencies just incase I need help one late night and have to call someone, hasn’t happened yet but it’s better to be safe. 

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I contacted T-mobile asking if they had cheaper plans and they did not, the $70 plan was the only one I qualified for. So I looked at it from a different perspective; I work for a company that sometimes partners with other companies to get you discounts on different things. I was able to find one such accommodation for T-mobile and was able to sign up for it, after about two months of waiting and no discounts, I contacted T-mobile and was told it was already applied, of course it wasn’t. I contacted them again and found out that my employer no longer partnered with them and the accommodation was not valid, even though the site still allowed me to go through the sign up process, verified my employer and employment status and then confirming through my work email I qualified and would get a discount, making me link my account to the site etc. So now I had to look for another option which was when I decided to go and find a different phone company that offered cheaper plans for the phone I hardly used. 
I started looking into other phone companies and eventually stumbled on some prepaid plans which caught my attention. For some reason I feel like there is some stigma attached to having prepaid plans, but we’re not getting into that right now. I did some research, I looked at reviews and after weighing the pros and cons I finally decided on going with a prepaid plan and I decided to go with Mint Mobile. 
There might have been other plans that were slightly cheaper, that maybe have some benefit or the other, however based on my needs and my goal I decided that Mint was the better one for me. Also apparently most companies now offer unlimited talk and text, Mint included so you need not worry if you make a lot of calls.

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Currently speaking I’ve been using Mint for 3 months and it’s actually really good. I have no problems with it so far. I did a three month plan to try it out because that’s a good enough time to get a fair assessment of the company. I have now decided to renew my plan for 12 months which is their cheapest plan of all. Since it worked for me I don’t foresee having a problem, maybe when I travel outside of the country but I considered that internet and wifi could help with that.

Now I should mention that Mint is not paying me to say this and I’m not partnered with them or being sponsored by them or anything like that; they do not know who I am. I’m merely just sharing my experiences. I might make a separate blog on all the ways it benefited me and my pros and cons list, but in a nutshell, I saved a whole lot of money and it didn’t affect my calling experience at all.

My T-mobile bill was $70 for the month or $840 for the year and the Mint plan I’m going with in April is $15 for the month or $180 for the year. That is a savings of a $660 for the year, this is not a crap load of extra cash but still it’s something, and that combined with all the other areas you might be saving money, your savings will add up and probably to a significant amount. 
One thing that I did learn during this process is that sometimes we allow uncertainty and our insecurities to hold us back, sometimes you just have to go out there and try something. Try to make a make a change and if you fail you fail, if it doesn’t work, now you know and then you can move on and re-evaluate.

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I say this because my one concern as I mentioned before and the only thing that could have probably stopped me from switching at all, was the fact I felt like I needed unlimited data, which Mint does not offer. I made a guess for the first 3 months and did 8gbs and to be honest I was worried. And the results are for the 3 months I didn’t use the 8gbs, not even for one month, and now I know I was being silly because I don’t go anywhere and I barely do anything, I’m either at work or I’m at home, both places with Wifi. Even if you go out most places have free wifi so I’m not sure why I was so worried and stressing myself out. When I renew my plan I’ll be switching to the 3gbs plan.
To conclude consider getting a prepaid plan to save money on your cell phone bill or just think about different ways you can save on that and do some research. Sometimes if you have a family plan those post paid phone companies are fine because they offer discounts but if you are on a plan by yourself you can benefit from a prepaid phone plan. 
I did do some research on different post paid and prepaid plans so I’ll consider sharing some of that, it might be helpful and save you time. If you do decide to try Mint consider using my referral link, apparently I’ll get credits towards my plan, which I would appreciate. Unlit next time, thanks for reading.

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Picture above- A few days before the end of the month

My referral Code