According to J.D. Power, the average Americans’ cell phone bill was $73 per month in 2014, which comes out to roughly $850 per year. If you were to invest that $850 per year and allow it to compound over 10 years you’re looking at an opportunity cost of over $12,000 which is a ridiculous amount of money.
If you are paying the average amount, or really anything over $20 per month for your cell phone, chances are you could be missing out on some juicy savings.
I recently changed to a new service provider, Tello, which uses Sprint’s network and offers a plan with unlimited texting, unlimited minutes and 200MB of LTE data and unlimited 2G data after that for $12.30 a month after all taxes and fees. Again, that’s an essentially unlimited plan for $12 per month.
You may be thinking, “I don’t know if I could make it in this crazy world with only 200MB of fast data and unlimited slow data!” Consider that you would save $720 per year compared to the average American, be about $10,000 wealthier every 10 years of your life, might be more conscious of the time you spend staring at a glowing screen, and you can always download all of the entertainment you would like on WiFi (which you most likely have access to 90% of the time anyways).
When I personally made the switch from multiple gigs of data to 200MB, the only major change I made was downloading podcasts while on WiFi instead of streaming music while traveling. I also made some updates to my phone settings (most of which are outlined in this helpful article on reducing your data usage). After all, data is the most expensive part of any cell phone bill so it makes sense to optimize your usage no matter what service provider you use.
And if you really can’t make it with more data, Tello has more plans with higher data such as one with 1GB for $14 per month. If you want to check out the plans they offer, feel free to use the link below which will give you a $10 credit if you try it out (and will give me $10 too, so thank you!)
#MoneyGoals
(Pictured: Me using my 200MB of data in Deep Ellum, TX. July 4, 2018)