Oops, What Happened to Our Cell Phone Bill

March 4, 2009 by Chelsea
Filed under Frugality

3328949395_f77e6eb6e9_m Oops, What Happened to Our Cell Phone Bill Tim and I each have a cell phone but not a land line. Tim’s is a prepaid phone that we put minutes on about every three months. Mine is a basic plan with 450 minutes and free nights/weekends and calls to members of the same provider. Whenever Tim needs to make some calls, we just switch phones. Since most of my family keeps in touch through the phone and has the same provider, and most of my calls are to family, we rarely go over our minutes. In fact, until this last month I don’t think we came close to within 100 minutes of our limit.

So imagine my surprise when I found our bill this month to be almost double what it normally is. We had made a few longer phone calls and never checked our balance. I didn’t catch the error until it was too late for the phone company to change our plan for one month and change it back, which could have saved a few bucks.

We will pay the penalty this month for assuming that we could never go over our minutes. Because of this slight hiccup we are making some minor adjustments in our budget this month. I have decided to go on a cash only budget for the bills we don’t pay online or by check. In addition I am making a few more items from scratch like bread and refried beans.

In order to prevent this from happening in the future, I am making it a priority to check our balance halfway through our usage period and if we are close to our limit than checking it every few days. For others who have trouble going over their balance there are tools your cell phone company might offer for a small fee to prevent you from going over your minutes. You may also be able to change your plan for one month and then change back.

Although this bill is an inconvenience for the month, I would rather learn my lesson by going less than $50 over than going over by several hundred. We are also at a point where we don’t need to go into debt or dip into savings to deal with this small situation, we just need to use a little creativity.