One Year of Mobile Phone Service for ~$120, with New Phone!

Yes, I’m frugal. Not so much when I’m giving a gift to someone else, but otherwise I really like getting only what I need for what I want to pay or less. So I grew disenchanted with standard monthly mobile phone service some years ago, as I was paying a lot but needed little. I discovered the world of pre-paid cell phone service, and specifically that provided by Tracfone, and never looked back.

Getting married a short time ago, my wife and I have been slowly moving to align our similar services and subscriptions. I have been wearing a very low tech but extremely reliable Nokia 2600 “candy bar” style phone since 2007 which has had GSM phone service via Tracfone. I was spending $29 every three months for service and got signal just about everywhere I’ve gone, as it would roam on the AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. networks (all within plan). She had a LG clamshell phone on a shared Verizon plan that cost about that much per month for just her portion and was happy with their network coverage (no roaming). Her phone had recently started to fail mechanically and that was the kicker to finally get this particular part of our merger completed.

So off I went in search of a solution which included:

  1. New phones for the two of us (hopefully something fairly full featured and even capable of browsing the web on the few instances we’d have to do so “on the go”)
  2. Minimal monthly cost (ideally no more than what I was paying)
  3. Keeping our existing phone numbers
  4. Neither of us are big talkers or texters, so low usage constraints might be OK

Long story short I ended up going for a deal from the Home Shopping Network, of all places. We got two LG 500g GSM phones, each with a little over one year of Tracfone service, including 1320 minutes, for $120 per, shipped. Both included a phone case, car and home chargers and a future “Triple Minutes for Life” bonus – when we add airtime purchases in the future, the minute values will be tripled automatically. I had my prior service balance ported over to the new phone (for even more time and service minutes) and was able to transfer my phone number very simply as it was all within Tracfone’s systems.

For my wife, the phone number situation was a bit more tricky – she actually gives out her cell number fairly frequently, so keeping her number was very important. Because we were moving her from Verizon to Tracfone and might want to move to another carrier in the future (and have heard you can’t port out from Tracfone), I wanted to ensure we’d have the most flexibility. As a result, instead of a straight port, we activated her new phone with a new number altogether. Her old phone number will now be ported over to Google Voice (for a one-time fee of $20). By going with Google Voice, people dialing her old number can be forwarded automatically to her new phone just like they’d expect – but that number can also ring our home phone or any other number she may be at so we don’t need to use mobile minutes in those instances. And she’ll also get automatic transcriptions of voice mails and other bonus features. If keeping her old number didn’t matter, then GV and their features would be free – I can get the same with a new number from them.

So bottom line, we ended up with way better phones, great coverage and more features for significantly less money in aggregate — roughly $260 total for a year+ of service for the two of us. Nice!

By the way, we can both help each other if you decide to go with Tracfone! I can send you an invitation through their Refer-A-Friend program which will give you a $5 discount on your phone order and earn me a referral bonus. Just add a comment below on this post requesting the referral and I’ll send one to you as quickly as possible.

LG 500g

An example of our new cell phone

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2 Responses to One Year of Mobile Phone Service for ~$120, with New Phone!

  1. Joe Shapiro says:

    My wife and have been lamenting the very same. Monthly cell ranges from $235 to $116/month. Is that 1320 minutes/month?

    • Don says:

      Nope, it is 1320 for a year (in simple terms). Really, it is a year of service (the ability to have your phone number, receive and place calls) and 1320 minutes of call time to use while the service is active (which can be extended without purchasing more minutes). We will very likely carry over some of those minutes into another service period because we don’t use our phones all that much.

      If you are a heavy phone user then Tracfone probably isn’t your best solution. You may want to check out their other offerings under the Net10 or StraightTalk brands. ST in particular is unlimited talk/text/data for a much lower monthly charge than you mention ($45 with your own phone).

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