"Four bars," Tyler said from the end of the carport on Tuesday night, holding his phone up over his head. He sounded almost disappointed. He'd been sure the new plan would be worse.
We switched both our phones to prepaid this week. Our bill went from $128 a month for two lines to $70. That's $58 a month, or $696 a year, for the same two phones in our hands.
What we were paying for
The old plan was a regular monthly family plan with unlimited everything. It started out cheaper, but after a couple of price bumps plus taxes and fees, it was $128. Our phones were paid off last fall, so that $128 was just service.
When I put together our first real budget in February, that line bugged me. So in May I pulled up our data use for the last three months. I used between 3.8 and 5 gigabytes a month, because I'm on Wi-Fi at home and at the pharmacy. Tyler used between 7.9 and 9.2. He's on his phone at lunch at the plant and in the truck, but nowhere near "unlimited." We were paying for the buffet and eating a sandwich.
What we switched to
The new plan is from a prepaid carrier that runs on one of the big networks. That was the part that mattered most. Before we did anything, I found out which network it uses, and it's the same one our old plan was on. Same towers means the same signal around Macon, so we weren't trading savings for dropped calls.
It's $35 a line with taxes included, paid a month ahead on autopay. Each of us gets 15 gigabytes of fast data, then it slows down. Calls and texts are unlimited, Wi-Fi calling works, and we kept our numbers.
The switch took about a week from start to finish. We ordered the SIM cards online and they came in the mail three days later. Tyler's phone had to be unlocked by the old company first, which took one phone call and a day of waiting. Then on Monday night we followed the instructions and moved our numbers over.
What we gave up, and what we didn't
Here's what we lost:
- A store. Before, if something went wrong, there was a counter in Moberly with a person behind it. Now it's an online chat or a phone line.
- Priority. When a lot of people are on the same tower, like a Saturday at the county fair, prepaid data can get slowed down first. We haven't run into it yet.
- Extras we never used, like international texting and a bigger hotspot allowance. Ours is 5 gigabytes now, which is plenty for us.
- Paying after. Prepaid means we pay before the month starts, so this first month we paid the old bill and the new one.
What we didn't lose: signal at home, at the pharmacy, at the plant, out at my parents' place in the county, at Debbie's in Kirksville and at Long Branch Lake, which we tested on purpose with a drive out Wednesday after supper. Same phones, same numbers, same bars.
The one thing that annoyed Tyler
Moving his number didn't go as smoothly as mine. My phone switched over in about ten minutes on Monday night. His got stuck, and on Tuesday it showed no service from the time he left for work until almost 1 in the afternoon.
At the plant, his supervisor texts him when a machine goes down, so for four hours somebody had to walk across the building to find him. And his mom, Debbie, called him at lunch like she does most Tuesdays, got nothing, and then called me twice to make sure he was okay. He was. He just wasn't happy about it.
When I asked him that night if the switch was worth it, he said, "Let me think on it," which from Tyler usually means no. Then I showed him $696 a year on the sheet, and he said, "Fine. It's fine."
The $58 goes into the house fund every month now, right along with the old car payment. I'm not going to tell anybody which carrier to pick. What worked for us was checking how much data we really use, and finding out whose towers a cheaper plan runs on before signing up for anything.
