first cell phone -- prepaid minimum package

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking of getting my tween her first cell phone.

http://www.tracfone-orders.com/bpdirect/tracfone/PhoneDetails.do?action=view&productVariantExtensionId=14957476

Looking at Tracfone's which you buy minutes for. 1 minute of talk takes 1 minute. 1 text message takes 0.3 minutes. Minutes are gone, you need to buy more.

Main need for phone is to call for rides, when on metro and delays, etc.

I want to avoid having the constantly texting through dinner teenager (that my nephews have become)

[Anonymous]

She needs web access on her phone? I like Samsung devices in general, but that seems like a lot of phone for "call for rides" purposes.

[Anonymous]

Our 12 yo used tracfone. When you buy the phone, you can one that doubles the minutes for life. Ours gets 2 hours of time per month. Anything above that he buys with his own money. He's only done that once.

[Anonymous]

we did this for awhile but truthfully i found it a big pain to worry about renewing minutes. On our verizon plan he got a lg phone with qwerty keyboard, unlimited texting and sharing 800 minutes with me.

It costs us $30/month. He uses very few of the minutes for calls. pretty much all texts including me.

[Anonymous]

Once the texting enters for more than just communicating with you, it gets a little hard. I'd go with the simplest thing, and perhaps have her pay for texting over a certain amount (what you would think is reasonable, plus a small cushion) for the uses you foresee.

I appreciate you are trying to think about this in a responsible way.

[Anonymous]

Check out kajeet. No contract, great parental controls! Have had for 2 years for my tween, can't believe more parents don't know about it

[Anonymous]

We are also trying to decide what phone and features for out tween. Let us know what you decide.

[Anonymous]

For the past 8-9 years I have had a TracFone pre-paid plan as my adult phone. I have never sent a text, so I don't know how that works. I get about 400 minutes (units) plus a phone for $120/year. So that's about $10/mon. I signed up for the "double minutes for life" plan, so it actually gives me 800 units per year and I can roll them over at the end of the year if I sign up for another year. I cannot see why you would want to spend $360-600/year on a cell phone for a kid (or yourself) if you truly are using it as a "necessary communication" device. With 800 minutes there is still plenty of time to make personal calls in addition to the calls for rides/delays/emergencies.

[Anonymous]

We added another line to our Verizon plan. No smartphone though, only basic. Unlimited texting and calling, but no Internet. My son sends a gazillion texts a month, mostly stupid, like what r u doin. I don't have the time for prepaid.

[Anonymous]

We did something similar to PP. We added a phone to our account. We were stingy tho. No text plan. It's a family plan and not a smart phone. Just for emergencies. DD is 15 and fine. Bday is coming up and for 16 we plan to get a texting phone. By now she isn't a texting kid and we HOPE this will help. We can set up alerts for billing and if she gets close to target $ we can turn off texting. We will set up a dollar amount she can use each month and if she goes over, she will pay the diff and the second month, she will pay the diff and lose texting.

[Anonymous]

I am not sure why folks even bother trying to get a limited text plan anymore for a teenager. To me, trying to monitor it is more trouble than it is worth and if the kid screws up one month and goes over, the bill is ridiculous. We have 3 teens - all have basic (no web) phones with QWERTY keyboards. They each have unlimited text through Verizon and they share phone minutes with me - they rarely use the phone. Don't know your carrier but unlimited text plans are pretty cheap nowadays.

[Anonymous]

We bought a cheap phone from Best Buy and put it on our plan. It was about $20 per month with texting.