How I saved over $1400 on my phone bill

For the next week, I thought I’d do something a little different and share with you some of my favorite products and services that I’ve been using lately. I love getting and giving recommendations from my friends. Sometimes I actually get mad if a friend finds something totally awesome and doesn’t tell me about it right

I don’t want this to feel like an ad, so I’ll tell you that while some of the links will have referral bonuses (usually for both of us!), I’m not being paid to write any of these reviews, and their selection was purely based on my own criteria (stuff I think is awesome).

So…on to day one!!

Mint Mobile.

I have been using AT&T as my phone provider for the last…let’s say 15 years? I was paying $155/month for my iPhone and Cash’s iPad to share 6GB of data. If we went over that (which was occasionally), the bill would jump $15 for every additional GB. Let’s pretend I never went over. If you ran the numbers, that’s a cost of $1860 per year on our phone plans. Our service was fine but not great. The customer service was a nightmare. Seriously, I’m not here to trash a company, but just the thought of ever having to call their customer service line made me want to cry. Let’s just say I never once had even an okay experience.

A few months back I was reading a blog post by Frugalwoods, a site I’ve come to love for her great writing and amazing money tips, and she mentioned how she used an MVNO. We’ve all heard of them, though I’d never heard that term before. Basically, they are the companies that buy tower time from the big companies (TMobile, Sprint, AT&T), and resell it to the user. Because they buy it in bulk, they can resell it at a great price.

To be honest, I’d always assumed these companies were probably not a great deal. Prepaid plans, in my mind, targeted people who couldn’t afford to get a post paid phone plan. Based on my experience, anything aimed at people who have poor credit tends to have the “poor tax” attached to it, and costs twice as much. Don’t get me started on that whole subject. Anyways, I figured I had the best deal I could get with a big name phone company. I was thinking about it so backwards.

I did a little research and realized that I could sign up for two plans (8GB for me, 3GB for Cash), prepay for a year, and it would only cost us $420 for the entire year. That’s, at minimum, a savings of $1440 annually. I figured I needed to at least look into it.

Mint Mobile has introductory plans that allow you to get the “annual” pricing for your first three months. It’s a great way to test things out without paying for an entire year. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. AT&T would always take me back, if I wanted them to. I could keep my number. One problem I was a little worried about was if they supported tablets. I had researched a lot of MVNOs and liked Mint the best for myself, but they didn’t mention any tablet plans. I figured if I needed to, I could sign Cash up with one of the other companies, and keep my cell on Mint.

I reached out to their customer service department to see if they could give me any more information. They have an online chat, and I was connected with a person quickly. She told me that they did not guarantee that their plans worked with tablets, but then she gave me some awesome advice. She said that when I ordered the plan for my phone, they also sent out two sample SIM cards to share with friends. She recommended that I put one of those in the iPad and use the week long trial to test it out for free. I was happy with that solution. We did it, and it worked great in Cash’s iPad.

Another great thing is their referral program. Since I was signing up two lines, I wondered if I could “refer” myself. Yup. I got $30 off my next payment just for signing up a second line. I also got a $15 credit on Cash’s line. If you’re keeping track, that drops my annual cost down to $375. So. Awesome.

I’ve been using the service for a month and a half now, and I have had just as good or better signal than I had before. I’m more free with my data, because I have so much more. I’m also no longer worried about overages, because they won’t charge me for them. If you go over on your data, they simply throttle your speeds. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, because I’ve never gone over, but I’d way prefer that over getting auto charged $15. If the throttling speed is way too slow and I really need my phone internet, I can choose to pay to add on more data, but it’s completely up to me.

Downsides. I’m trying to think of any. I now have to manage two accounts instead of one.* That’s not a big deal to me, because I’m only paying a bill once a year. Also, they have an app that you can install to check your monthly data usage, so that’s pretty simple. They do have second priority on towers, so I’ve heard that if you are in a place where lots of people are all trying to use their cell phones at once, you might have trouble connecting. Think: leaving a big concert and everyone is trying to get an Uber ride. I’m not in this type of situation very often, and I’m always with friends when I am, so I wasn’t too worried about that. I was a little interested to see if I’d have worse service at Disney World because of the massive crowds, but they also have free wifi there, and I have not had any issues.

You do have to pay for your devices out of pocket. This is probably the biggest one for me. Technically, I paid full price (and then some) for our current devices through AT&T, but they allow you to put it on a payment plan. Since our devices were already paid off, I was able to unlock them and transfer them to Mint Mobile. Once these die, though, I’d better have a plan. I’ve decided to keep using our current devices as long as possible, and put back some money every month towards a new device. I can choose to buy one from Apple full price (and they do accept financing, I believe), or buy used off of ebay. There are options. Bottom line, it’s just like a car…always better to save up ahead of time and pay cash than to finance it anyways.

Their website is fun and quirky, and from my experience so far, their customer service is excellent. I’ve had a few questions here and there, most of them were answered in their FAQ section. A few times, I’ve had a more specific question and have used their online chat. They have the best “answer bot” I’ve ever seen. With the exception of that first time when I chatted with an actual representative, I’ve been able to get my questions answered even more quickly by their automated bot. It anticipated what I needed, and I had none of the frustration I usually have when talking to a computer system. We’re talking 2-3 minutes and I’m done.

I think that’s about it! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, I’d love to answer anything I can (I tend to over-research things).

If you’d like to use my referral link to sign up, I’d appreciate the support! You can click here and we’ll both get credits toward our bills.

Update (October 14, 2020): We’ve been using this service for over a year now, and I’d like to report that we have no complaints. Because of you all’s referrals (THANK YOU!!), Cash’s next year of service is completely free. I have updated my device once, from an iPhone 7 Plus to an iPhone XR. My boyfriend bought me the new phone last Christmas, and we used the iPhone trade in program through the Apple Store. They are great about credits, so if you are looking for an upgrade, I’d definitely recommend looking into that. Mint has also made quite a few upgrades including an unlimited plan option. During the pandemic, they offered free extra data for months if you needed it. I actually love my phone company (who would have thought??).

*They have since updated this, and you can now manage more than one line under the same account.