Cellular
Back Door
Secrets & Short Cuts
Great
ideas
you won't get from your wireless carrier
THE
'GLOVE BOX' PHONE
Where
were you when you realized you left your phone on the kitchen counter?
Most likely you had driven about 5 miles in your car.
Do you really want to go back, tripling your distance?
The solution is a 'Glove Box phone'. This is your
cheapest phone with the cheapest plan. You get peace of mind
for very few bucks. There are several low-cost ways to outfit
your glove box:
- LOW-COST
PHONES:
In most cases you can activate your old phone with a prepaid plan.
There are also options with some prepaid carriers to include a Free or
low-cost phone just for signing up for service. However,
since we're looking at dirt-cheap plans, you may want to search for a
leftover phone from a friend.
- LOW-COST
PLANS:
Yes, you could use that phone for Free, check our Free wireless options,
but you'll have a bit more confidence with a small plan. Talk and
Text plans start as low as $5 per month. You might find a old
Pay-as-you-go plan for a little as $10 per year. If cost is
not important, you can add the Glove Box Phone as another member of
your 'family' plan, lowering the plan cost
per phone.
- WATCH
FOR
GOTCHA'S:
You need to
use a fairly recent phone. 3G, and non-LTE phones are being
phased out. You can use one for the short term, but what happens when
you need it the day after they deactivate the old network?
You need it
charged. After a few months of forgetting about it,
the day you need it the battery is dead. The easy way to
prevent this is to also throw in a cheap mobile charger
You need to
refill the plan. With the lowest-cost plans you'll need to
add some money to it and that may need to be done by a certain date.
Look for a plan that allows 'auto-refill', or plans with refills once or twice a year. Put the date in your
daytimer, or better yet, on your regular phone's calendar.
Feel free to renew your plan early when you think of it.
Refilling early ensures you keep your old minutes.
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