Although mobile phones have become the norm for communications, the costs of airtime, texting, and data can quickly add up. In order to avoid these expenses, some people decide to utilise pay as you go phones as an alternative to traditional contracted plans, but is a plan like this the right fit for your lifestyle? To help you make the decision, here are three signs that you should consider pay as you go phones.

1. You Aren’t Using Your Minutes

As texting continues to become the preferred mode of communications, many individuals find themselves spending less time chatting on the phone or avoiding voice calls altogether. If this sounds familiar, you should inspect your bills for the past several months and determine how many of your allocated minutes you are actually using. If you are continuously using up less airtime than you are paying for (especially if you are already paying for the smallest plan), pay as you go phones may be the right solution for you. No-contract providers often allow users to only pay for what they need at a fraction of the cost of a typical contracted plan. The biggest advantage is that users are not committed to their original plans. If you expect to use more airtime during the winter holidays, for example, you are free to purchase more minutes for the month of December, and then easily return to your lowered rate for the remainder of the year.

2. You Like To Change Things Up

It has become very chic for people to trade in their mobile phones for newer devices on a frequent basis. If you find that you often grow tired of your current device and long for a shiny new one, pay as you go phones can help. In a traditional mobile phone contract, a user must use their phone for a specified period of time before they are entitled to upgrade to a new phone for free or with a significant discount. In this system, if you are unhappy with your device, you’re stuck with it until the time expires, or you pay a large sum of money for a newer model. With pay as you go phones, you can make the decision to upgrade whenever you like. Most no-contract providers offer a wide selection of phones, ranging from simplistic devices to smartphones with touchscreen capabilities, cameras, internet access, and more at very reasonable rates.

3. You Only Want To Pay For Basic Needs

If you have the occasional need to text, but do so very rarely, it can seem ludicrous to pay for a texting plan that is more expensive than your actual monthly usage. Furthermore, simply because you need to access the internet for directions or other information from time to time shouldn’t mean that you are required to buy excessive data plans that exceed your needs. Pay as you go phones allow you to customise your own package and pay for specifically what you need. Whether you need unlimited texts or a flat cost-per-text rate, you’ll find what you need. Data offers similar options. In this way, you will only be required to pay for the services that you actually use, thus saving you money on your monthly bills.

Pay as you go phones can be a very practical and economical choice for those who are currently paying for services that they don’t need, want, or use on a regular basis. By doing a bit of investigative work, and picking a company like Virgin Mobile, you can customise a no-contract plan that is the perfect fit for both you and your wallet.

Written by: Nathan Morgan has been a technology professional for 16 years and has diverse hands-on experience starting off with a couple of years of mobile phone SMT repair. That was followed by three years as a freelance Visual Basic developer and then a decade dedicated to Linux server security, ecommerce site management and coding in a variety of languages including PHP, SQL and Java.