Friday, March 27, 2009

Cell Phones - Finding The Right Cell Phone Minute Plan

By Aaron Siegel

You see the cell phone plan deals and minutes offered in advertisements. Whether it may be television, newspaper, magazines, or radio we all by now have seen the minutes offered with family plans and so forth.

Of the most popular plans, the 1,000 minute plan is the most consumed by Americans today. It may seem like a lot of minutes however the reality is these minutes can easily be drained and cost you more in the long run.

A very important part of the decision process should be based on how many people are going to be using the calling plan. More importantly, who is going to be using your calling minutes. Are the users teenagers? How many of your children will be using the plan? Do you or your spouse frequently make calls? How long is the duration of most of these cell phone calls?

A somewhat simple way to calculate how many minutes you are going to need or may be lacking is to basically make some rough estimates of all possible user's monthly usage by rounding off into hours. Yes, hours not minutes.

In an Example:

Bob (Husband) 4 Hours

Sally (Wife) 3 Hours

Chelsea (17 Years Old) 5 Hours

Issac (15 Years Old) 4 Hours

TOTAL FAMILY USAGE: 16 Hours

With your combined monthly usage somewhat figured out you then only need to convert those hours back into minutes to compare against current minute plans. To do this you simply only need to multiply your hours total by 60:

16 hours x 60 = 960 Cellular minutes

The end result will be the amount of minutes you expect to spend on your cell phone plan each month. So with this family using 16 hours a month we have come up with 960 minutes.

In this particular situation 1,000 minutes actually makes sense, if the estimation holds true to the actual calling patterns. Should the calling go over the minutes however, a family can expect to pay an upward of .50 cents per minute for any over time so it is important to not underestimate usage.

In all cases, the easiest way to pick a plan, especially for a single cell phone plan is to divide any plan minutes by 60. Dividing by 60 you are dividing the minutes giving you an answer that equals in hours which gives you a more realistic look at how much you usage you will be utilizing.

I have added some popular plans converted into hours for some easier deciphering. 3,000 Minutes/50 Hours 1,500 Minutes/25 Hours 1,000 Minutes/16.5 Hours 600 Minutes/10 Hours 300 Minutes/5 Hours

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