In these trying business times, we all are looking for ways to save money.

Let me ask you. . .how much are you paying, per minute for your cell phone use?

Usually there are a couple of answers for this question.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I pay $X amount per month for X amount of minutes.”

“I have unlimited minutes.”

So…..how much do you pay per minute?

Let’s see if we can figure it out.

First, take your latest statement from your cell phone company.

Somewhere you will find how many minutes you used.

You might have to do some adding here. What you want is your total minutes use.

This would include, on-plan, off plan, free, daytime, weekend, night and etc.

“Hey, wait a minute you say, I have Nights and Weekends free, and so many Free minutes too, so I don’t need to count those.”

No, we want to count everything, so as to find out how much those “Free” minutes are costing you.

So. . .

After looking at your statement you find the following:

(it would be good to do this for at least 6 months)

125 minutes – Daytime or Plan or Anytime minutes. (Or whatever they call them.)

30 minutes – Nighttime minutes. (Supposedly Free minutes or ones that are not deducted from your Anytime or Plan minutes.)

90 minutes – Weekend minutes. (Again Supposedly Free.)

Ok, now we have a total of 245 minutes.

Now look at how much you paid the cell phone company on that Statement.

Let’s say you have Verizon’s basic plan: $39.95 which includes 450 Anytime minutes, with Free nights and weekends.

$39.95 divided by the 255 minutes means that for every minute that you use the cell phone you paid about 16 cents.

(Actually the cost is a little more when you consider that you will not pay $39.95 but many dollars more when they add the surcharges and taxes, so be sure to use the TOTAL monies sent.)

Now, let’s say you pay for the top plan, $100.00 for unlimited use. (Now I understand that if you are paying that much, you no doubt would use A LOT more minutes than 255, but let’s say you were sick with the flu, or your friends all left you…..etc etc.)

Now take that $99.99 and divide the 245 minutes. . you are now paying about 41 cents for each minute.

It does not matter if they are called Anytime or Free or Unlimited, just take the amount you spend and divide by the minutes used.

Some have found that in some months they were paying $1.00 to $3.00 a minute for cell phone use!

Yes, mobile phones can be handy, maybe essential no matter what the cost, but it is well worth the time to investigate.

There is another advantage of looking at your statements and adding up your minutes.

Even if you find that you cost per minute is low, at $100 a month that means you are paying $1200 a year for the privilege of having a handy phone. That could be one month’s mortgage payment!

If you know how many minutes you are using, Anytime, night and weekends you might find that a cheaper plan would meet your needs.

Keep in mind too, that there are many “Pay as you go” plans too. Most are a flat 10 cents a minute.

Compare this to what it is costing you!

Tags: cell phone, minutes, save money