AIBU to think £35 a month is a lot for a phone?

[KitKat1985]

So, DH needs a new phone as his old one has broken. The one he wants he tells me has a retail price of £650 new! My sodding laptop that I bought last year wasn't even that much. Basically he's been told that he can have the phone for £100 upfront if he agrees to a £35 a month contract for 2 years. I think this is excessive. He's already stretched on his monthly salary due to a car loan, and I've only got maternity pay coming in until I'm back to work in November, so things have been a bit tight money-wise at times.

We could just about afford it and obviously I don't want to tell him how to spend his money, but I have a perfectly usable phone for less than half that much per month (and cost nothing upfront), and I just think a fancy mobile is an excessive expense whilst our finances are stretched. I just don't get the appeal of flashy phones. Surely as long as you can do the essentials like get texts, e-mails, check the internet and make and receive phone calls then that's all you need? AIBU to ask him to look at cheaper options?

I only just got my first smartphone last November as I waited for a good deal to come along. Pay £12 / month for 24 months to BT for an iPhone 5s which includes the cost of the phone, unlimited texts, 500mB and 300 mins. We have BT broadband so it came with a £5 monthly discount, and I use it on wifi at home without using my data allowance. Also came with a £150 Amazon voucher which I had to send off for, and received a few weeks later, meaning that a new iPhone 5s plus package for 2 years actually cost me £(12x24)-150 = £138. Can't even buy the phone without a package at that price. DH is trying to get one too now but they haven't repeated the deal for a while.

When I was tied in to a 24 month contract I use to pay £10 a month for unlimited minutes and text messages and only 500mb of data and I had to pay £15 a month for my phone when I left the contact I went to sim only and pay £25 a month for unlimited minutes, text messages and 25gb of data and I bought a samsung galaxy S6 off Ebay for £198.

I pay £7.50 a month on giffgaff for sim-only.
There are loads of good second hand phones out there, from all those people who keep upgrading.
£35 is a lot, imo. I can't find words for £70 a month, that's insane.

Most I've paid is £27 a month. I usually get a high end phone, just last year's model.

Currently on a HTC 10, but this time I just bought the phone and got a £10 a month sim. Worked out more expensive than the cheapest deals I could find, but lots of them had catches - like no tethering, or the deal not actually existing.

I'm out of contract now and have gone to a SIM only deal, which costs very little (on maternity leave) but I was paying £35pm for my Samsung S6 Edge before that.

I like having a fast phone with a ton of storage and that I think looks good, if I'm being honest.

I wouldn't stretch the family finances for it though.

I imagine if you're paying off the cost of the phone in installments this wouldn't work, but I managed to negotiate with O2 to get a much lower monthly bill when my last contract ran out and I was thinking of switching. I bought the phone outright, and got them down to £18/month for unlimited texts & minutes and 10gb of data. Maybe your DH could try haggling? They were definitely open to negotiation to keep a customer!

I pay £35 a month for an EE Android phone with unlimited calls/texts and loads of data as well as free BT sports app.

As a social media addicted, football loving 27 year old the contract more than pays for itself and I can more than afford it (especially since I now don't have to have an expensive satellite package just to get the sports, I have a Now TV box with entertainment package and get the odd Sky sports pass if there's a big game on Sky instead of BT) ... also, because I have my Pay Monthly phone contract, I get other offers through EE which also offset it. I get my home phone & broadband package through EE as well and I only pay £15 for the package because I have a loyalty discount that takes off about £12 a month so I'm basically only paying for line rental.

I pay £9 a month for 2000 mins UL texts and 4gig tetherable data on bought phone. If money is tight he should be a bit more frugal

Tesco mobile has really good prices and unless you're using very demanding applications a good budget smartphone will give you all the functionality and performance you need. I use a Moto 3rd Gen and DW has a Moto G4. Both are excellent phones and cost a fraction of the price of any iPhone. For the careless among you, the G4 is splash proof and has gorilla glass.

For comparison, DW pays less than £15 a month. That includes loads of calls and texts plus an average amount of data. Extra data is only a few quid more each month but we use wi-fi as much as possible so don't need any more.

I pay less than £30pm for iPhone 5SE, with more hours, text and data than I could ever use. That includes insurance. It's through work and a brilliant deal, so I would expect more to be normal.

Thanks for all of the replies. Seems a mixed bag of responses. I am edging towards saying he can just have the bloomin' thing as to be fair to him he hasn't really bought himself anything nice for a while and being an IT bod he does really like and appreciate his technical gadgets. But then this little voice in my head can't help but point out that if he just got a £15 a month deal that would save us £240 a year, which would be a big chunk paid off our holiday for next year.....

He couldn't get a £15 a month deal that included a phone that he would like.

The £35 a month is approximately £15 a month for the calls/data/etc and £20 a month towards the cost of the phone. 2 years x £20 a month = £480.

The questions are:
a - whether he'd be getting £480 worth of phone for his money
b - whether he could buy a cheaper phone upfront and still be happy with it

As a household can you declare phones to be a luxury good that comes out of your personal spending budgets?
So he can choose to have the latest iPhone if he likes, but only if it comes within the budget of "both of you get £X per month to spend on yourselves".

lol I'm sorry but these people saying 'perfectly good smart phone' on less than £20 a month .. Phones are systematically made to go slower and respond less to updates as the model becomes older and the makers phase them out... also it's probably a rubbish phone now. And 300-600 minutes is literally nothing to most people x
Tip- if you go on New Year's Day you can get the best deals - iPhone 6s ( 2016) with unlimited, unlimited and 4GB was £29 last year x

The actual phone service doesn't cost much at all. You can get unlimited everything for about £10-15 pm unless you expect to spend your entire lifetime watching shit, which is a hobby not a basic household expense, so should come out of personal spends, not essential bills.

Similarly, if you are spending more than 10 hours a month on the phone, it is either a business expense, which should be charged to the appropriate business, or it is a personal indulgence and should be funded as such, as should latest and high end expensive phones. It is a choice to spend so much, and if the household budget doesn't have enough spare for everyone to all have the latest iphone, then it's a luxury that falls into 'you can have it if you can afford it out of your personal spends money' category.

In the OPs example it sounds like the extra money for the fancy phone would be best put towards the family holiday.

I agree, OP. Expensive phones are a luxury - nothing wrong with that if people can afford them, but no one needs a phone worth £600 or more at £35 a month.

I don't think it's a lot but if it's an unnecessary expense that stretches a salary then it is too much.

No gadget is worth stretching yourself financially to get.