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Most people, at least until a few years ago, had a friend who could live without a mobile phone. Whether from some sort of ideological aversion, or simply the fact they were too thrifty to bother, there are people that can live without them. Some of us, however, are ideologically averse as well as thrifty, but still find living without a mobile a bit of a challenge. If you can’t do without, this is a guide to help keep those mobile phones down and avoiding mobile phone debt for you and your children!
Many adults don’t know how to manage their economic situation, so it’s hardly surprising that there are plenty of teens out there with similarly poor mobile phone-management skills. Contracts are becoming more common and easier to get, and this includes teenagers. If you have a teenage child, make sure they understand the dangers of getting into debt at a young age – it’s bad enough getting bad credit when you’re middle-aged, but getting a bad credit rating when you’re still young can leave you with problems for years to come. A lot of kids don’t realise how easy it is to slip into debt very quickly. In April of this year, an American teen managed to send 6,087 text messages in a single month – quite a feat. (Source: http://dialzero.blogspot.com/2007/05/teen-runs-up-huge-bill-4-txt-msgs.html). But, for the parents that were forced to pay over AU$1,500 that month, the funny side would have been quite hard to see.
The best way to avoid mobile debt, obviously, is to avoid mobile phones altogether. On the other hand, totally ostracizing your teenage son or daughter might not be the best option either, so pre-paid phone set ups are probably the best bet. Getting a contract might seem like it works out ‘cheaper’, but there’s always the temptation to use the phone more and more – and once you go over your set amount of minutes and texts that are often thrown in, it can once again work out to be quite costly per call. These days there are plenty of phone companies who provide a sim card on a prepaid scheme while throwing in far more minutes than they used to. For example, Optus’s ‘TurboCharge’ scheme means you can top up with a minimum of $30 and get calls ‘worth’ $120. new companies are on the scene to – the self-professed ‘Christian’ mobile company Trinity Telecom do a similar scheme where $10 credit gets you $40 worth of calls.
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