How We Cut Our Phone Bill in Half

One way that the Mr and I have saved money on our path to financial independence is by changing our phone plan. Side note: this is based on US phone company plans. 

Who here has a phone?

My guess is most of you just raised your hand. Ok, maybe not literally, but you get what I am saying.  According to a recent PEW article:

• 95% of americans have a cell phone


• and 77% of them have a smart phone

Isn't every phone a smart phone?

Not in the least! My father-in-law insists on never owning a smart phone. He happily uses an old phone from the technology stone ages.

Exhibit A

Now, there are a lot of phones out there, but I'm not talking about that today. Instead, I want to talk about phones plans and more specifically how you can save money on them.

How To Save Money On Phone Plans

• Use month-to-month phone plan providers


• Get discount for automatic bill pay


• Buy discounted pre-paid phone cards


• Receive increase in data for same price

For years, I was a happy user of the major phone companies, including T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and AT&T.  Using a quick comb through the internet, I found the following contract prices for average data users with unlimited talk and text ability.

[table id=1 /]

Does't seem all that bad, right? Except for the fact there are always unlisted or hidden fees all over the place. At some point Mr. Wow and I realized that our monthly bill included paying for a phone that had already been paid off.

That was totally not okay with us!

For the two of us, we were spending about $140/month: $60 per phone (x2) and $20 additional payment for my phone.  The phone company was weaseling an additional $20 a month for no good reason.  Good thing we caught that!!

Use Month-To-Month Phone Plan Providers

It was at that moment that we started looking deeper into the rabbit hole of phone plans and discovered the gem that is month-to-month. Since we were already on AT&T at this point, we opted for Cricket Wireless since it runs on AT&T's network.

Cricket Wireless's listed price was $40 for 2.5gb of data.

Get Discount For Automatic Bill Pay

They offered a discount for people who signed up for automatic bill pay, dropping the price to $35/month.  So we jumped on that.

Buy Discounted Phone Cards

Lucky for us, Cricket Wireless just had a 20% off sale on their pre-paid cards.  We stocked up on over $200 worth, spending about $180. Thank you to the nice person on Reddit who alerted us to the sale!  (And we used our Chase Freedom card for 5% cash back.. BOOYAH! - Mr. WoW)

Receive Increase In Data For Same Price

Surprisingly, just a couple of weeks ago, Cricket decided to up their data amount to 3gb still for only $35/month. Score! Although, you may not have control over this bullet point, it is still a win in my book.

[table id=2 /]

 Our monthly phone bill cut in half! 

You better run bill!

There are plenty of other month-to-month contract companies to use, i.e. Republic Wireless, Boost Mobile, Page Plus, etc. You'll definitely be able to find one that matches your needs and coverage area, all the while saving you money.

Isn't it a crappy service? Does your phone even work anymore?

These were questions our friends would ask every time we mentioned we weren't on the main providers anymore.  Nevertheless, the Wows have yet to discover a difference in service and phone-working-ability since switching to Cricket over two years ago. What we have discovered is how we were saving roughly $750/ year just just by making that switch.

Additional Benefit: Having an Unlocked Phone

An additional benefit to being on a month-to-month contract is that your phone must be unlocked in order to sign-up.  For those of you who travel, specifically outside of the United States, having an unlocked phone is huge.  That meant where ever we go, we buy a SIM card, pop it in and use data on the local providers.  Data tends to be much cheaper abroad than in the States.  (It was 5 EU for 10GB of data in Portugal!? - Mr. WoW)

If you are looking for a simple way to save money, look no further than your phone.  Its quick and easy and I promise you won't even notice the difference.  Besides if you do, its only month-to-month, so try another provider.