Savvy Shopper: Phone customers who want to avoid monthly charges

A few years ago, I wrote an article about selecting a cellphone plan for the infrequent user. This group's main goal is to get a bare-bones plan for occasional use and at a minimal cost.

In addition, this type of customer wants to avoid the monthly charges that providers seem determined to impose. If you number yourself among these people, I thought I would share an updated approach based on my experience with cellphones. While I am not saying it is the best answer, you can pay $8.33/month and get minutes and texts included.

In addition, I have a way to stretch your available minutes. Let's get started:

¦Basics- While Consumer Cellular and TracFone havetheir merits, Consumer Cellular's higher base costs and my firsthand knowledge of a TracPhone customer's experience caused me to limit this article to AT&T Go Phone. Given that, let's start with a Go Phone 25 cent/minute plan.

In my opinion, this foundation has flexibility and can be adjusted to suit many people's needs. To fund and check this account, consistently available internet access is needed (In theory, you don't need it, but I wouldn't do it that way).

As far as the phone itself, a ZTE Z223 phone is an inexpensive, simple, capable and well-rated option. Although you can buy your phones and plans at the AT&T website, I have found its webpage to be inconvenient and it tends to offer phones that don't match my needs.

By contrast, it is extremely easy to go to Wal-Mart, buy the right phone and get started. For more information about the ZTE phone, go to https://goo.gl/Ef3mH5. When you buy, make sure the phone is an AT&T Go Phone or it won't work with this service. In case you are wondering, I have no financial stake in AT&T or Wal-Mart.

¦Payments- Go Phone is structured on a pay-as-you-go basis. In other words, you only pay for services as you use them. To pay for what you use, you have to add funds to your account.

As you make calls, charges are deducted from the account. When the balance gets low, the account holder must add more funds. As simple as it is in theory, refills can get complicated.

To make matters easy, you can (and MUST) use Go Phone's "Auto-Fill" feature to add money on a scheduled basis. By doing this, you will bypass the rigmarole that I am about to describe in the nextsection.

¦Why use "Auto-Fill"?- In a Go Phone account, any funds you deposit expire if they go unused for too long. For example, refills from $10 to $24 expire in 30 days. Similarly, $25 to $99 expires in 90 days and $100 expires in 365 days. Fortunately, if you add money before the account balance expires, the remaining balance's expiration is reset according to the refill amount (Translation: If you have $10 in your account nearing expiration and add $25, the entire $35 balance becomes good for 90 days).

Are you dizzy yet? All is not lost!

Since you can set Auto-Fill to automatically make a deposit right before expiration, most of the complication can be avoided. To make matters easy, minimize outlay and keep unused funds from expiring, use Go Phone's "Auto-Fill" feature to automatically add $25 to your account every 90 days.

¦Services- Ultimately, adding $25 every 90 days amounts to having $8.33 per month to spend on cellphone service. If you only want to talk, $8.33 affords 33 calling minutes on the 25 cent/minute plan. If you text at least occasionally, I recommend deducting $5 from your account to buy a 200-text package (AKA "feature package") every month. With individual texts running at 20 cents, it only takes 25 for this package to pay for itself. In addition, the $3.33 left over leaves 13 minutes for talk.

¦Automatic feature package renewal - If you purchase texts, you aren't out of the woods yet. An additional complication associated with Go Phones is that texts expire 30 days after you buy them. However, similar to fund refills, buying additional texts before expiration assures that the remaining texts are good for an additional 30 days.

If I have completely confused you, simply specifying "Automatic Feature Package Renewal" to automatically buy more texts every 30 days will enable you to keep any unused texts.

¦Stretching minutes- Google offers a service I love called "Google Voice" (www.google.com/voice). This innovation offers the ability to use your computer as a phone with calls and texts being free in the United States.

To minimize minutes on the cellphone, you can link your cell number to your Google Voice number. By giving your friends the Google Voice phone number, your computer will receive the call first. If the computer is off or you are away from it, the call will forward to your cellphone. In other words, many conversations that would ordinarily cost money can be done for free on your computer.

I only recommend Google Voice if you have a high-speed internet connection.

¦Last point- A last fly in the ointment is if your usage exceeds $8.33/month. I have not figured out a way to set Auto-Fill to refill an account when it runs out of funds. Consequently, there is a danger that your account may occasionally run out of money and interrupt your service. This can be handled by adjusting your funding amounts or periodically checking your account status. Consider yourself informed.

In the above recommendations, I thought I would propose a basic scenario that will work for an occasional user. If you are interested in but unclear about what I have described, I encourage you to go to this website to find out more: http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/prepaidphones.html.

If you want more capability than I detailed, AT&T Go Phone offers many additional features beyond what I have described and I encourage you to find out about them. Of course, you will need to work out the specifics, but it is generally possible to figure out an approach to minimize costs and headaches.

If you have great ideas for lowering cellphone expenses, please visit and "Like" our Facebook site (Click https://www.facebook.com/LubbockSavvyShopper or log on to Facebook and enter "Lubbock Savvy Shopper" in the search tool) or write us at SavvyShopperLubbock@gmail.com and let us know your thoughts.

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SEAN FIELDS is the A-J's Savvy Shopper. Read his columns Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at SavvyShopperLubbock@gmail.com, like his Facebook page at Facebook.com/LubbockSavvyShopper, or see previous columns and deals at lubbockonline.com/savvy-shopper.