Just Say No!!!!

What’s good my people!  It’s that time of the year again.  The time when we all release our inner stunna, baller, and hustler.  It’s the time of year where champagne flows, cars fly off the lot and brand new leather furniture gets delivered.  It’s income tax time y’all!  What I want to do before you spend $600 on that hair doo, $1,000 on timbs and J’s, or $5,500 down on that 2003 BMW 7 series, I want to talk about something that you probably will do with no thought.  Getting a new cell phone.

If you’re walking around with a phone you’ve had for a year or two, you’re probably going to look to upgrade to something better.  You may be on a Cricket, Boost or Virgin Mobile phone and feel it’s time to step up to one of the big boys: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile.  You want that shiny new iPhone 5, the Galaxy Note II or the ever popular Samsung Galaxy SIII.  All are very good phones, to be honest, all are great phones.  So you walk into one of the carrier stores, Radio Shack, Wal-Mart or my all time favorite, Bestbuy(Bestbuy does price matching of Amazonwireless.com)  You look at the phones, the sales rep extols the benefits of one phone over the other.  He/She has minimal knowledge of the phones or the plans or which carrier is best for you, that’ll be all on you.  In the end, you give up your license and social security number.  The carrier hits you with a $100+ deposit, $36 activation fee and depending on which phone you choose, you’ll pay about $200 for the phone…and this is they start the raping of your pockets process.

When a carrier gives you a phone at a discounted rate, it’s called subsidizing.  So when they say the iPhone 5 retails for $649.99 but you can have it at the low, low price of $199 (2 year activation required) the carrier has to recoup that money somehow.  How they get that bread back is on the 2 year plan that you just signed.  Verizon and AT&T have “Share Everything” plans.  What this means is you get unlimited minutes, texts and a bucket of data to share with any and everyone that is on your plan.  Sounds great right?  Wrong!  This whole process is a sham if you are on a plan by yourself and/or you only use a limited amount of data in the first place.  Facebook, Ruzzle, a couple of Youtube videos and email will leave you plenty of data left over if you have a 2gb plan.  Plus, wi-fi is EVERYWHERE.  Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pep Boys, Burger King, the library, your house, your girls house…wi-fi is pretty much all over the place.  All you have to do is check.  While on wi-fi, you aren’t using your data allowance.

Below is a chart of what you’ll get with Verizon, AT&T and Sprint on a 2 year plan.  I won’t include T-Mobile.  I’ll explain later.

Now let’s take what appears to be the cheapest of the plans…Sprint.  $109.99 x 24= $2,639.76.  Plus the $36 activation fee and finally the $299.99 for the Samsung Galaxy Note II.  We have a grand total of 2975.75…plus state, local and federal taxes.  If we use NYS all across the board we add 8% to the whole bill which comes to a grand total of $3213.81 over a two year span.

This is the chart of what you could do if you went prepaid.  Same exact phone…but you’re going to pay full price for it.

GSM Pre-Paid Carriers

CDMA Pre-Paid Carriers

GSM carriers are carriers that do everything through a sim card.  CDMA doesn’t use a sim(Exception is Verizon which uses it’s sim card for it’s 4G LTE coverage)  GSM phones can be “unlocked” to use on another carrier. CDMA phones have to be “flashed to be used on Cricket or Boost.  If you shop online, you’ll see a lot of GSM “unlocked” phones to choose from.  This gives you the freedom to change carriers when ever you choose.  This is especially handy when you travel to foreign countries.  You can just pop on of their sim cards into your phone and avoid the HUGE international texting and calling fees(ask my sister, she can tell you all about them)

T-Mobile pre-paid doesn’t throttle your data speeds where Straight Talk and Simple Mobile start tripping if you go over 3 gb’s of data use in a 30 day period.  If we use the same formula I used for Sprint and applied it to Straight Talk we come up with this: $45 x 24=$1,080.  Full price of the phone is $699.99 and the same 8% tax rate comes to $1,922.39.  A savings of $1,291.42.  That is almost $650 a year, a little over $53 a month.  In the words of the immortal S dot Carter…”niggas lie, bitches lie but numbers don’t lie”

People are used to getting the phone for cheap(although $300 ain’t really cheap) and then paying the bill every month.  And that first bill is always a bitch because there’s always some bullshit with it.  T-Mobile is actually leading a charge to end phone subsidies all together in order to continue offer cheaper plan rates which if you follow the math saves you money in the long run.

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t for everyone.  If you have a grandfathered unlimited plan from Verizon or AT&T, you pay full price for your phone just to keep your plan.  You scour Craigslist or Ebay looking for a phone at a decent price so you don’t lose that precious unlimited data.  Or if the only carrier that works where you work and live is one of the Big 3, you stick with it.  BUT…if you live in an area where all the service is respectable or it’s all crap, you owe it to yourself to take a look at going prepaid with your cell phone service.  I was on Sprint, then I went to Verizon.  I loved Verizon’s speeds but it cost more than I was willing to come out of my pocket with every month.  So I did some searching.  I bought a Galaxy SIII on Craigslist for $400 and popped a T-Mobile pre-paid sim in it.  I kept it for a couple of months then I sold it for $400.  I went to the Google Play Store and bought a brand new LG Nexus 4 for $350.  Popped my same pre-paid sim in and I’m good to go.  I get the same or faster data speeds than those on Sprint or AT&T(can’t beat Verizon on speed in my area)  I pay $75.60 TOTAL for my bill every month.  It doesn’t change, I’m never surprised by overages.  I just pay my $75.60 every 30 days.  This isn’t for everyone but you owe it to yourself to check it out!

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