I was a big holdout before I finally broke down and got myself a cellular phone. I didn’t really think it was that more convenient than using a land line, and I definitely didn’t want people to get a hold of me whenever they wanted to. I liked the little bit of anonymity I had and usually despised it when friends would get up from a nice dinner to answer their cell phones. It didn’t help the matter that most of my friends were spending between twenty and forty dollars every month to cover their cell phone bills; the only way I could afford to pay that much for a phone was if I decided to stop eating for a month or two.
You’ll note that all of the last paragraph was in past-tense since I did, in fact, buy a cell phone. It wasn’t the standard pay-through-the-nose plan though; I got a prepaid cellular phone and managed to get almost all of the perks of cell phone usage without the gigantic fees or multi-year commitments. I picked up a Virgin prepaid cellular phone from Target and, with a special sale, got the phone for free. Unlike most cellular phone plans which require multi-year commitments and huge fees for using too many minutes, prepaid cellular phones allow you to top up time in the same way that you add time to a phone card. Though the individual minutes are more expensive ($.25 for the first 10 minutes of every day and $.10 for every minute thereafter, no roaming and no time restrictions, text messages for $.10 apiece) if you’re not using your cell phone very often you can end up saving a lot of money. I usually end up paying only $10 or so every month for my service, which is a lot better than what most of my friends are paying.
Regardless of the service provider, prepaid cellular phones do have their drawbacks. One of the best perks my friends with standard cellular plans have is that they usually get free nights and weekends, which I don’t get with my prepaid phone. The phone isn’t quite as good as the phones which usually come either for free or at steep discounts with the standard plans, though my phone was free, has a full color screen, and has full internet access, so I can’t complain too much. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with my prepaid cellular phone, though I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone who plans on spending a lot of time talking on his or her cell phone.
