Can I find a cheap Cell Phone Plan?

Can I find a cheap Cell Phone Plan?

My wife and I live on Social Security and what she can make at a low pay job. She needs a cell phone for when she is in the car. Presently we use a pay-as-you-go plan and it comes to almost $30 a month. The phone is only needed for emergencies. But other people call her and drive up the minuets.

On the Internet there are sites that promise to help you find a cheap plan, but there is always something wrong. They will not show the real price until you make some commitment. What am I doing wrong?  Is there not a plan in northern California that will cost less that $1 per day?

Any help welcome.

[Moderator]

Try a BestBuy or WalMart...they have phones you reload with minutes...at pretty reasonable rates...

I use a Pay As You Go T-Mobile account.  If I buy 1,000 minutes for $100, that's 10 cents/min.  A 1,000 minutes may last me a year, so the average cost per month would be about $8.33. 

Thank you both.

Geek, Before you make a commitment (buy something) check out how the plan deals with carry forward issues. Our son decided that my wife and i needed to provide our family with more peace of mind and this past Christmas provided us with a "pay as you go" cellphone" . Personally i detest those things. It had an initial $20.00 worth of time on it. Upon investigation it was determined that if we did not add the minimum (in this case $10.00) by the 27th of the month we would lose any remaining amount from the previous month and if we did not do something by 6 months we would lose the service of the phone.truenoth

Geek, Before you make a commitment (buy something) check out how the plan deals with carry forward issues. Our son decided that my wife and i needed to provide our family with more peace of mind and this past Christmas provided us with a "pay as you go" cellphone" . Personally i detest those things. It had an initial $20.00 worth of time on it. Upon investigation it was determined that if we did not add the minimum (in this case $10.00) by the 27th of the month we would lose any remaining amount from the previous month and if we did not do something by 6 months we would lose the service of the phone.truenoth

T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go service is good.  If you run out of minutes, you don't lose the account, you simply can't make more calls until you pay for more minutes.  And, they allow long periods of time to use your purchased minutes and, if the time period has expired and you still have some unused minutes, they normally allow carryover of those unused minutes if you purchase more minutes within a short time frame.  That's been my experience; I usually purchase 460 or 1000 minutes at a time and, with those larger purchases, have up to a year to use the minutes.

Wow! I must say you folks in the US get a bad deal compared with us in the UK. I have a pay-as-you-go phone with Virgin Mobile - I pay 26 pence per minute to UK cell phones and landlines (about 40 US cents) and text messages cost 10 pence (about 15 cents). My minimum top-up is 5 pounds (about $7.77). Credit never expires as long as you make one chargeable call or send a message every 90 days. UK users do not pay for incoming calls or messages. Even with no credit you can still receive incoming calls. Since the cheapest cell phone costs about 5 pounds (you have to buy 10 pounds airtime with it) you see street people and beggars with them. I don't believe my deal is specially cheap but I can't be bothered to hunt around for a better one.

...
But other people call her and drive up the minuets.
...

I don't see anything yet mentioned that might address your real problem.
You need to know if any of these give you the option to block all incoming calls.

Perhaps someone will comment further.

soybean and ST, Oh to have plans like that. Here in Canada with very little competition i am not aware of anything available like what you have. What we have is Rogers but i think they are all the same. We do have a couple of pay as you go that we purchased when we were traveling in the U.S. a lot. However soon as you cross the border back into Canada they are NOT usable. truenorth
P.S. So we went the Magic-jack route and are satisfied with that but you must be within wi-fi range to make use of it.

[Malware Removal Specialist]

I'm pretty sure they have Cricket in your area. http://www.mycricket.com/

Flat monthly rates with no contract.

evil,If your suggestion was being made to me. Then="You can count on Cricket Wireless. We have a wide variety of cell phone plans to choose from with coverage available all over the U.S. on our affordable, all-digital network. Check individual plans and cell phone coverage maps for specific details and see why Cricket gives you the best cell phone service for the money." from their web page. truenorth

[Malware Removal Specialist]

Was talking to Geek-9pm.

K,truenorth

Cricket either has coverage here or "piggy-backs" on other companies towers. So I will look it over.They have a store here in town.

[Malware Removal Specialist]

I had Cricket twice when I was younger. Back when a monthly plan was $19.99 a month with no limit on calls. Never really had any issues with them and they have come a long way in coverage areas and phones since.