Shop those cellphone prices

I admit it. My son and I had to trash our cellphones two years ago because the pricetag of $90.00/month was killing our household budget, especially as summer electricity bills kept rising.

Recently, we lost our home phone service for a whole week due to a bad thunderstorm that knocked out our landlines, and courtesy of the "new and improved extremely large mega-conglomerate phone company" passing the buck on the customer service front. I was not happy to say the least.

So being a good mom and not wanting to leave my child stranded at home without a phone line, I started shopping the internet for a temporary cellphone. The range of prices vary greatly, everything from those old family package plans to finally, a new and improved system of buying your cellphone and the number of minutes you want to go with it.

Here's what I did. I went to Walmart one morning and looked at the different phones. The sales clerk was very helpful, especially when I started asking questions about coverage areas and which satellite systems the phones ran from. Guess what? The cellphones are runnning off of the same towers your high-price major cellphone companies are using!

I'm not endorsing any one product here. However, I ended up choosing a remanufactured Nokia cellphone running off of the Net 10 system. The wonderful part? The cellphone purchase and two months of service are only costing me $40.00 total. When my 300 minutes expires after 60 days, I have the option of buying the number of minutes I need in quantities of 150, 300, 450, 600, etc. minutes - all at 10 cents a minute. If you're a low-end user, like myself, this plan is perfect. My potential $15.00 a month bill certainly beats the $90.00 + I used to pay.

Good luck in your cellphone search!