When my husband and I got married 5 years ago, we got a 12gb, 2-smartphone plan on Verizon for $125 a month. We've been happy with the service and coverage, but have tossed around the idea of finding a way to lower the bill as it is one of the more costly expenses we have.
I've been weary of going with a second tier carrier or prepaid because I'm aware that these services tend to get lower priority/slower speeds/less coverage compared to normal contract customers, but when Verizon prepaid started running their "double the data" deal a month ago, we figured that we'd try it just for the heck of it.
The new prepaid data plan we went was 3gb (so really 6gb) of data for my husband's phone, and 8gb (so really 16gb) for my phone, for a total of ~$70/month (which includes the 2nd line discount, $10 discount for autopay, and taxes/fees). That alone is a $55 savings each month!
But...the real question was whether or not the savings is worth it for having a downgraded phone plan compared to our previous postpaid plan. I've always been one to max out on my data each month and we live in a semi urban, semi-rural part of South Dakota that sometimes has spotty coverage even with the superior Verizon plan. But so far, after a month of being on this prepaid plan, I can honestly say I haven't noticed all that much of a difference. For the negatives -- I sometimes find it takes longer to connect to a phone call, but once I'm on the call there is no difference compared to the superior plan. As for data, I really haven't noticed a difference in speed - Spotify loads all the same, Facebook and Instagram don't seem to take any longer time than when I had a normal plan, and my husband hasn't noticed a difference with Clash of Clans. (We aren't super serious phone users, but I am one to go through all of my GBs of data each month haha). Service is still a bit spotty when we venture out into the more rural areas, but no more spotty than when we were paying much more.
So ya. I know it is possible to be MUCH more frugal than we are even being in the cell phone department, but I wanted to share my experience as I think it's a very manageable improvement to save $600+ a year without a significant difference in cell service! Frugal on, folks!
June 15, 2019 at 09:49PM
