{"id":193,"date":"2023-03-01T11:56:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T11:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aimingforfire.com\/?p=193"},"modified":"2024-03-10T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T17:46:07","slug":"reducing-mobile-phone-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aimingforfire.com\/reducing-mobile-phone-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing Mobile Phone Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
As part of my ongoing mission to trim the fat off my monthly outgoings, I shopped around for the best options to reduce my mobile phone costs and decided not to go with the cheapest option here’s why and what I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought I’d start with this one as whilst it doesn’t apply to us I know a lot of people do things this way. If you are paying for a plan that bundles your phone with your SIM then this is nearly always the most expensive way of doing things. It is significantly cheaper to buy your phone outright and then take out a SIM-only plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Never buy the latest newest model, always go for a previous-generation version. This will save you a decent chunk of money. Mobile phones have got to the point now technology-wise that advances are minimal year on year. Our phones (iPhone XR) are now over 4 years old and still going strong and when I look at the latest iPhones the only real-world advantage to me is that the camera has got a lot better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MAFF & I are both very light users. We are almost always on wi-fi and don’t make many calls\/texts (everyone uses WhatsApp or some other service these days).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need, at most, 3GB of data per month each and it’s usually a lot less than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the above out of the way let’s turn to what SIM deal I actually went with and why I didn’t go with the cheapest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is MAFFs SIM deal I’m trying to sort out. She currently pays \u00a39 p\/m to Tesco and I know we can get that a bit cheaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off I used the MoneySavingExpert Comparison tool<\/a> to look at the cheapest deals available. That turned out to be one from Lebara where it’s \u00a30.99 per month for 1st six months and then \u00a34.90 p\/m thereafter. That was for 3GB of data and unlimited calls\/texts. I don’t want to change providers every 6 months, so I’m looking at this as \u00a34.90 p\/m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of the other cheapest deals came in close to the \u00a36 p\/m mark for between 5-12GB of monthly data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n