crunchshirker

As someone who has had a pay-as-you-go mobile for years now, and nothing else, I stagger backwards in disbelief when I hear what some of my ‘poor’ friends pay on communication facilities. It strikes me as odd that, when you are struggling to meet daily expenses, you forget the massive amount of money direct-debiting out of your account each month for facilities you barely use.

To my mind, this is one area where people can really save money. Many of the contracts that people sign up to are far more than they ever need. For example, one of my pals is paying £25 per month for her mobile phone contract so she can get free minutes and texts. “But Lisa,” I say, “The texts and minutes are not actually free, they’re costing you £25 a month!”.

Nonetheless, most folks are convinced that their contracts are a bargain. Here’s my take…

1) Mobile Phone Contracts: this is the biggest scam since pyramid schemes. Get people to pay what seems like a nominal payment each month and persuade them that they are getting stuff free! Pay-as-you-go, despite the inconvenience of having to buy top up vouchers, is the way to go. Especially if you’re struggling financially. You find that you don’t need to make all those calls and send all those texts you did before, you only ‘needed’ to so you could get you’re money’s worth. At £25 per month, you are spending £450 over 18 months (the typical cost of a mobile contract). You could get a nice PAYG phone for about £30, plus say £10 per month on vouchers and that comes to £210 over the same period, less than half! And I imagine that £10 per month is probably more than you need, especially if you also pay for…

2) Landline… Why do people need a mobile and landline? Okay, I can see some benefit. For exmple, you can’t often get easy credit if you don’t have a landline number. Is this a bad thing? Well, that’s another post entirely. These days, you can get multiple packages (no plugs here mind), where you can get TV, Mobile, Bradband and Landline for under £50 per month (less if you don’t want the whole caboodle). To me, if you add up on the 18 mnth basis agains, let us say, £25pm mobile, £22pm Landline, £30pm Broadband, £10pm extra TV channels = £1566 over 18mnths. Do it my way and you’re looking at £900 maximum. This is a massive saving and a clear no brainer.

Personally, I have mobile broadband (£10pm) and a PAYG phone, which over 18mnths is £270. I don’t need a lot of credit (approx. £5 pm) as I communicate mainly by email. I realise that not everyone can live as simply as me. Freeview is fine as I don’t watch much TV, I don’t need credit so there’s no need to get a landline and my internet can go with me anywhere.

The point of this post is not to have a go at people for their extortionate Sky Sport habits or anything like that, it’s to show that you can have full communication with the outside world for a fraction of the advertised cost. This only works if you don’t of course, want the latest mobile phone for *free*.

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