How I Saved Over $4000 by switching Cell Phone Carriers
One of the most challenging things when it comes to personal finance is finding and plugging money leaks. If you’ve seen my previous article on the topic you will find that it is quite easy to spend money without realizing. Money leaks are those small expenses that you forget about soon after spending the money. They can wreak havoc on your budget.
I did a complete financial overhaul about a year ago and discovered over $6000 of wasted money. A big chunk of that was in cell phones bills!
At the time, I was with one of the major cell phone providers carrying three lines of service. That is, three cell phones that weren’t fully paid for and three lines with unlimited talk, text and data. All this came at a cost of roughly $280/month. My fiancé had a similar situation where he was with another major cell phone provider carrying two lines of service. His monthly payments were around $240/month. Combined we were paying approximately $6240 in cell phone bills alone per year!
Nowadays, most cellphone plans don’t lock you into a contract. Gone are the days where you’re stuck with the same cellphone carrier for two years, unless you’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars in early termination fees. These days it’s easy to switch, and in many cases you can save yourself a lot of money by doing so.
We did some research and by switching providers we are currently saving roughly $4000/year! We combined my 3 lines with my fiancés 2 lines and went with a single carrier and currently pay $139/month for all 5 lines. That is roughly $1668 per year. This is saving us a whopping $4572 per year just on cell phone bills! Our services continued with the same great quality as before. I must mention however that in switching carriers, we had to purchase 3 new cell phones carrying an upfront cost of roughly $1600.
This was a simple adjustment which revealed an area that isn’t necessarily thought about when attempting to reduce expenses. If you are attempting to plug money leaks, definitely do not ignore this category as you might also find an opportunity for huge savings.
Also, If you’re hesitant to switch carriers because you get great coverage with your current carrier, there’s something you need to know. Smaller carriers such as Metro, Boost Mobile and Cricket, all run off of one of the major networks — AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint or Verizon. So, if you’re with AT&T but sick of paying $120 per month for your plan, switch to Cricket Wireless and pay just $55 per month for unlimited data all on the same network. You’ll still get the same great coverage even though you’re no longer on an AT&T plan. You can find a list of carriers here.
*This is not a sponsored post, I do not get paid for the above views.
