Anyone start their child out on virgin mobile

[luvmy3]

My 13 and 14 yo sons both have virgin mobile and the 300 minutes has worked out fine--curious though, how does your 11 yo get money to pay even 12.50 a month?

An allowance?

THe reply I got was NOT polite.

I think it was polite especially considering what you posted.


OP, I started my dd out on VM, she now has Verizon. I pay $15 a month for her, that includes $10 towards unlimited texts to other Verizon customers, and 250 non Verizon customers. That leaves $5 for talk minutes, which equals less than 25 minutes a month. She has never gone over that, I'm not even sure she knows how to talk on her cell I think 300 minutes will be just fine for your dd.

 

[mum4jenn]

OP, I started my dd out on VM, she now has Verizon. I pay $15 a month for her, that includes $10 towards unlimited texts to other Verizon customers, and 250 non Verizon customers. That leaves $5 for talk minutes, which equals less than 25 minutes a month. She has never gone over that, I'm not even sure she knows how to talk on her cell I think 300 minutes will be just fine for your dd.

That is the same thing I have for my Dd. Works out fine but of course we are a family that still believes in talking face to face to family and friends!!


Has nothing to do with enjoying technology or not.

 

[Tinkerbelle99]

When our Tmobile contract expired, we went over to Virgin - as we heard the service was great and affordable. Happy to say we found both to be true. Here virgin uses the same towers are sprint, which has strong service in our area.

I use my phone the most (talking, texting, etc.), hubby just talks and that is barely. I went with the Optimus, he got the extremely cheap paylo phone. He gets the $30monthly plan (1500mins/500txt). The first month I went with the $25 (300min, unlimited everything else). The minutes totally didnt last for me, but it was a lean month for us and we made it work. I have since bumped up to the $60month plan, unlimited everything. we dont have a home phone, so its perfect for us.

Our DD11 so wants a phone, we have yet to decide if its the right time for her. but if/when we do, we would get her virgin mobile, probably the $25 plan. 300minutes would be more than enough....as most of said kids today almost only text vs. chatting.

 

[ShelsGoingToDisney]

Dh, my 11 yr old DS, and myself all have VM phones with the 300 minute/unlimited texting plan (ours is $25 though, it must have gone up!) We got it last July and it has been great for all of us. The only one who has even come remotely close to the 300 minutes is DH because he uses it for business a bit. My DS uses very little talking minutes, it's all texting for him and all his friends.

I can't comment on the model phone you have but the phones we got a year ago are great. We bought them directly from the VM website.

Also just to comment on the other stuff our DS also does chores etc to help fund his phone.

 

[luvdisney00]

We have verizon contract phones, but the only people my 2 teenage DDs ever talk to are me and DH. Teen do not "talk" on their phones. They just text, text ,text. I would think 300 minutes would be more than enough.

OP I'm very impressed with the way that you are teaching your kids money managing and saving. My 16 year old DD has a blackberry and we made it clear from the start that she had to pay the $30/mo data charge and she does, but between that and clothes and shoes, she spends all of her money and doesn't save. I think I should have started earlier with her like you did!

 

[nala1128]

Even though this is not what my thread is about, I'll answer it anyways. And let the big debate begin....

My dh and I give our kids 10.00 a week for allowance, plus they can each earn 5.00 more each week doing extra stuff around the house ( pick up dog poop, cleaning the cat box, cleaning the toilet,ect.) Sometimes she works for the extra 5.00, sometimes not. We leave those jobs up to them. In an effort to teach them to save for the things they want and keep the junk buying down to a minimum, we taught them to pick something they really want (high dollar amount) and save. Once or twice a year depending on the item dh and I will offer to pay for half of the purchase price (with in reason). This keeps them on track and not let them get discourage from saving for said item.

My son just saved up for an xbox 360 with kinect. Yup that's right he saved up the whole amount 300.00 and he's only 8 years old! Between his birthday money, vacation allowance, and his regular allowance he had enough. We even offered to pay half like we are doing for his sister but he wanted to pay for it himself. He was really excited when he found out that best buy was giving him back a 100.00 with his purchase. He actually asked if that meant he paid only 200.00. I told him yes and he also bought a 100.00 bb gift card too.

To my sons credit he is a better saver than my daughter but she's not bad at all. What gets her the most is clothes!! LOL

So that is how my dd can afford 12.50 a month for her phone bill.

Good for you!!! I think that is great!!! Also, just to address something that I think was in your OP, my 11 y.o. DD barely uses her talk minutes, she texts like crazy though. We have AT&T, most of her minutes are in network to me or my DH. Also, there is an additional option for $4.99 am month called Smart limits. It allows you to control the amount of minutes that can be used per month, select certain allowed or not allowed numbers and also set time frames during which the phone can be used. So say you wished to not have her be allowed to send/receive texts during school hours, you can set that. You can also set exceptions to that.. for example allow calls/texts to from your number even during those "locked down" times!!!

 

[pigletto]

DD's Iphone was a Christmas gift. The plan we put her under was a special they had at the time with unlimited text, 1gb of data and 10 free numbers that never use her minutes. As far as minutes go she has 300 as well and free calling after 6 and free weekends.
She texts more than anything else, and barely ever scratches the surface for her minutes. I don't think she's EVER gone into her 300 minutes because she only uses the phone evenings and weekends and everyone she knows is in her 10 free numbers.
However she hits the data limit every month and uses the texting quite a bit.

I don't know about where you are, but here, I can change her plan on a monthly basis if I wanted to. So for instance if you put her on your plan at 30 dollars a month and find out she's barely using it.. or needs something with less.. then you can hop online and change it.

The month to month plans here are more expensive for what you get.. obviously they want to lock you into a contract. And Canada officially has the highest cell phone rates going.. so it's hard to compare.

ETA) I hope that helped a little. All that wordiness to say from my experience, the minutes get used a lot less than the texting does.

 

[carone0318]

Just another person chiming in that 300 minutes on VM with unlimited texting is plenty enough talk time for my 14, almost 15 yr old dd. I use it too and I have never gone over the 300 minutes. Unlimited texting is what is necessary.

 

[HM]

We all have VM non-contract plans at our house. DD15 has a blackberry and we pay $35 a month, DS17 has a droid and pays $25 a month (both are unlimited text and web with about 150 minutes phone). I use their pay-as-you go plan for just phone and text and use about $20 a month in minutes.

We started the kids with Kajeet.com phones with pay as you go first, though (when they were in middle school) . Easier to keep track of how they were using their phones and the basic non-plan was less expensive since they only used the phones as phones.

 

[torinsmom]

DS has a VM plan--the $25 month for 300 minutes and unlimited talk and text. He mostly texts, and has never gone over 100 minutes used. The service has been great around here. VM uses Sprint's towers, so you might want to check with people around you who have Sprint and see how they say their coverage is. You could also get a cheap VM phone first(you can get $10 phones at Best Buy) and have her use that to make sure coverage will be good enough to risk buying the more expensive phone.

Oh, and if she happens to use up her 300 minutes, you can go in and change plans or start the next month early if you feel she needs more talk minutes that month. Otherwise, she can still text.

I am on VM too, with their $40/1200 minute plan. We went from paying $120 with AT &T to paying $73 total for both our VM plans. We did not have text or data with AT&T either.