So you know that the cell phone carries some risks, but you're convinced that the cell phone can help your teen. What plan should you get? Service Plan Options Family Plans With individual plans generally costing upwards of $30 a month, getting each teen an individual plan is expensive. Fortunately, many carriers offer an alternative. Virtually all carriers offer family plans in which many phones have access to one account. Generally, the first two phones cost a certain amount, and every phone after that is an additional add-on fee every month. All phones have access to one plan and share the allotted minutes. Additionally, individual phones can have added services specific to that phone only, such as data and texting plans. With family plans and hefty overage fees, it might be prudent to establish ground rules before giving a phone to your teen. Tell them how many minutes and texts they get every month, and enforce consequences if they fail to manage them.
Prepaid or Pay-As-You-Go Plans These individual plans require no contract and no fees. If post-paid plans are like credit cards, prepaid plans are like debit cards. Instead of having minutes refill automatically every month, users must manually refill their account by either paying by credit card or buying reload cards and applying them on the account. Certain carriers require users to refill them before a certain time frame (one month to one year depending on the carrier and the minutes bought) or before they run out of minutes.
Phone Options /* In this section I had planned to detail some alternative plans made for teens that either limit options or have parental monitoring services. Due to the time constraints, I did not have time to research and report these plans in detail. Some of these are as follows:
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