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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)