Cell Phones That Let You Pay As You Go

My Mother called me today because she needed something right away. Is this an unusual occurrence? No, she calls me a lot to help her out—she is 88 and afraid of falling so she calls me to do the heavy stuff. The interesting thing is that she called me when I was in my car on my way to the bank. Yep, she called my cell phone from her cell phone. For some people cell phones are like an appendage for my mother they are a mystery and for her to actually call mine was a giant step forward in her tech training.

I researched phones of every kind with every payment program until I was dizzy. She wanted simple—no bells and whistles and certainly no big monthly bill. After days of searching I finally found it—pay as you go. Beautiful in its simplicity and brilliant in its service—you can make calls if you have paid for the time. You can buy very little time or thousands of minutes and most of the purchases can be made on online. The phones are generally very simple and therefore do not cost an arm and a leg. The amount of minutes you buy are your choice and there are no extra doodads you don’t want. Simple, simple, simple!!

Many service providers for full service plans have ‘go phone’ or pay as you go plans—the one I chose is done by T-mobile. I was so impressed with their service and plan that I also got one for myself to use when my ‘bells and whistles’ phone is out of power or has no service. The beauty of these phones is there is not a great financial investment to make you feel bad if you find that you hate the phone or just decide you are not a cell phone kind of person. Don’t feel bad if you decide that cells phones aren’t for you—it happens!

At that point you can just store the phone away and if your minutes expire (look into the deals for minutes that last a year) and you decide you want to try again all you have to do is contact the provider again and buy more minutes. There is absolutely no reason for you not to be able to try a cell phone and see if it is for you. New territory can be scary but there are very few unknowns with these plans and that should be a comfort.