Well, it finally happened. Mike and I officially pay all of our own bills as of today, sigh. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been paying our own bills for quite some time, except for our cell phones. Both of us were lucky enough to remain on our family’s cell plans after we graduated college.
Mike woke up yesterday and noticed that the screen on his cell phone was really, really dim. Since it just kept getting worse, we decided he definitely needed a new phone before the screen went totally dark, which meant that it was time for us to put on our big kid pants and get a family cell phone plan of our own.
When we called Helene to inform her (we needed her to accompany us to Verizon to get me off of her plan) you could hear the smile radiating through the phone (she hates how high her Verizon bill is). So after a trip to Mike’s parent’s house to pick up a copy of their cell phone bill (to reference how much minutes/data/texts he uses and to get all of the account information) we were on our way to Verizon.
I was bummed upon arrival to find out that I wasn’t eligible for a new phone until late August, but at least Mike was able to get one (the whole point of us going anyways). The rest of the process was pretty painless. After looking at our parent’s phone bills, we decided that we didn’t need unlimited everything – so that saved us a ton of money. And best yet, on June 28th, Verizon is making it so that you can combine data plans! Since Mike and I don’t even use the minimum data amount between the two of us, this is going to save us $30 a month when we merge our data plans on the 28th. Needless to say, we’re happy about that. We were also pleased to find out that the company I work for has a discount set up with Verizon that saves us 8% on our phone bill each month.
Even Helene made out well from our little trip. Not only did she get me off of her phone plan, but she found out that my Dad’s company is also eligible for the 8% discount. Additionally, having me off of the plan meant that she could decrease the amount of shared minutes (I’m pretty much the only one who regularly chats on the phone apparently), and she too found out about the merging data plans on the 28th. Helene left the Verizon store with her monthly bill almost $100 lighter.
While this means an extra $130/month out of our pockets – I suppose this is a pretty significant step for us as now we’re completely independent.
Those prices are crazy. Poppa and I have prepaid phones and they only cost $100 a year each for 1000 minutes, then after five years we went to renew them and we were only charge $10 a year for 1000 minutes as we had stayed with them so long. Every year we carry over at least 500 minutes!!!