A New Phone to Provide Peace of Mind
My sister and I have been talking about getting my mother a cell phone for over 6 months! We thought we could get on the Sprint Friends and Family plan which would give us a LOT of service for a very low price. However, my Friend at Sprint is currently looking for a new job and then we wouldn’t be able to get on the plan.
We decided our other option was to put my mother on our cell phone plan- for a small $9.99 charge (plus tax) we will have to share our 700 daytime minutes with her- BUT she gets unlimited texting. She has no idea how to text.
The downside of putting her on our plan and not on the Sprint network is that we are the only one on our network and she won’t get mobile to mobile minutes with anyone but us. (And we are slightly concerned because she likes to talk on the phone). Brian is going to have to get better at monitoring our families minutes. This is going to give us great practice for when we get our daughter a phone!
But for a $10 phone, $30 car charger (she lives 3 hours away and I’d rather be safe knowing she MIGHT have a fully charged phone at all times), AND the $10 monthly fee – we now have peace of mind we will be able to reach her whenever she isn’t at her house. We will know when it takes her 5 hours to drive to our house instead of 3 hours that we can make a call and find her. Or better yet, they said we could actually track her phone within a few hundred yards. AWESOME.
The downside about getting my mom a phone… Well, I was due for an upgrade. AND while Brian has been trying to talk me into an iPhone and I’ve continuously said ‘no’, we were at the store and they were so shiny. I made the switch! I really miss my iPod Touch at work, but after much consideration I had Brian sell it Tuesday. So the money I made by selling it actually went to pay for the iPhone (minus taxes). So it wasn’t a bad trade. At least I hope it wasn’t a bad trade.
Our relatively cheap trip to the store actually ended up more expensive than we had planned.
Peace of mind… it really is priceless, even if we hadn’t exactly budgeted for the purchase. We can definitely squeeze $10 (plus tax) into our monthly budget to know my mom isn’t stranded on the side of the road. Definitely Priceless!
