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I am amazed at how many people who have a cell phone for just emergency use and pay $35 a month.
Just a note to such people who does not know. You can get a prepaid Tracfone for as low as $8.33 a month. I have used one for a few years and the service is great. I only use about 1000 minuets a year so it is the bee's knees for me. I also don't have to think about a bill each month. (I buy the year card for $100)
It's worth that price to have a phone as you work in the wood shop.

Just thought I would pass this info along.

cincinnati wrote:I am amazed at how many people who have a cell phone for just emergency use and pay $35 a month.
Just a note to such people who does not know. You can get a prepaid Tracfone for as low as $8.33 a month. I have used one for a few years and the service is great. I only use about 1000 minuets a year so it is the bee's knees for me. I also don't have to think about a bill each month. (I buy the year card for $100)
It's worth that price to have a phone as you work in the wood shop.

Just thought I would pass this info along.

I sterted carrying a cell phone years ago because I worked alone farming sometimes 10 miles from home and sometimes in the middle of the night and it is very easy to end up bloody (in some cases even stumpy) while farming. Some of those early services were really crappy.
We do not "visit" on our cell phones like all of those folks I see with one glued to their heads while they, well, all of the time...
I spent years working with a phone in my hand back in the 1970's and a herd of phone time during the years we owned businesses. Today I am almost phone phobic. I don't give my cell phone # to people because if I did I would then have to kill them. I do not want someone calling me every few minutes. We screen all of our calls on the land line phones with an answering machine and caller ID. We are on the no call list but still get a lot of crap calls. Diana does have my # and our grown children have it but with the caveat that if the kids call my cell, somebody had better be bleeding...
Actually Diana and I call each other a lot both out on the farm and in the house (it's a very large spread out house) but most of those calls are a minute or less.
Visiting with family is done on land lines or Skype (or better yet in person).
Several years ago we tried Tracfone and have been using it ever since. Diana and I each carry Motorola camera phones and as Cincinnati said it runs us about $8 per month per phone. That phone is currently available as refurbished phones for just under $20 and like the new ones we bought they come with doubled minutes for the life of the phone. Since I use so few minutes I sometimes let Diana use mine for visiting just to use up some minutes since they just keep rolling over and accumulating.
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Disclaimer - This is not a commercial, I am just satisfied for my purposes. If you use a cell phone a lot it is probably not what you want.
We are also talking about chopping our land line and just using the cells and Skype. Our son and his wife have already chopped theirs and bought one of the Tracfones for $20 to replace it just so there will be a phone available if needed by someone without a cell was there. Only their youngest does not carry a cell.
My son's company supplies him full time with a fairly expensive Nextel service with unlimited minutes but he gets aggravated with it a lot because the silly cheap Tracfones often have better coverage.
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On another angle, if you only want to be able to call 911 a cell phone does not have to be affiliated with a paid service. Pick one up at a yard sale for a buck and charge it up and stick it in your pocket.
Do not throw an unwanted cell phone in the trash. There are programs to place them in the hands of battered women for 911 use.

One of the happiest days of my life was when my cell phone was accidently run over by my Dodge Ram. Young women seem to love these things. Manys the time I have been passed on I75 by some gal driving 80+, jabbering on the phone and jesturing with her hands. Now they try to drive and text at the same time! What was it they used to say on the TV program NYPD Blue......"be careful out there!"

That said, I am reluctantly considering a trac phone for emergency communication while on the road.

cincinnati wrote:I am amazed at how many people who have a cell phone for just emergency use and pay $35 a month.
Just a note to such people who does not know. You can get a prepaid Tracfone for as low as $8.33 a month. I have used one for a few years and the service is great. I only use about 1000 minuets a year so it is the bee's knees for me. I also don't have to think about a bill each month. (I buy the year card for $100)
It's worth that price to have a phone as you work in the wood shop.

Just thought I would pass this info along.

It's the only cell phone I have! Can't see the sense of having anything else.
BPR

My son bought one of those 1,000 minute phones 16 months ago and is still using it. Then again he generally has no idea where his cell phone is and likely hasn't seen his home phone in weeks. I'll find out on Wednesday when I try to call him for his birthday.

The other side of the cell phone discussion has me wishing I could lower my monthly business cell phone bill below 130 per month for two lines.

I purchased a tracfone at Radio Shack this afternoon. I have 260 minutes thru 4/10/10. The cost is $60, which is less than $12/mo - unless I have to buy more time before then.

Can you used your previous cell phone number with the type of phone??

mickyd wrote:Can you used your previous cell phone number with the type of phone??

Yes you can with TracFone

Effective November 24th, 2003 you can switch your wireless or home telephone number to TRACFONE. With TRACFONE you control your wireless costs and now you can control your phone number.

There are other pay as you go phones but I only had Tracfone and been very happy with it. For as low as 28 cents a day why would you not have one.

The Tracfone sounds really great. I had Verision Pay as you go that cost $15 a month for years until I couldn't get antennas or batteries that would last more than a couple of days for it anymore. I broke down and got one of the new plans so my wife and I could both have a phone. Did you know they make phone without antennas these days?

8iowa wrote:I purchased a tracfone at Radio Shack this afternoon. I have 260 minutes thru 4/10/10. The cost is $60, which is less than $12/mo - unless I have to buy more time before then.

Do you only pay for the minutes you actually use with the tracphone?
I have a cell phone I pay for just carrying it even when I am not talking..