To not buy more phone credit

[RoseMartha]

Dd age 13 wants more credit.

She uses wifi at home.

In two days used up all her data. Mainly making tictoks and using sm to message friends photos and videos when out.

Now she wants more data.
I have told her she needs to learn how to budget her data over the month. I am on fairly tight budget.

She still has unlimited texts and 500 mins of calls left.

I know if I pay for more it will be used up just as quickly. AIBU to say no?

Do you see the money tree in the garden? No, neither do I.

If she has any money of her own, she can use that of course but otherwise no.

Perfectly reasonable not to top her up.

Can she earn credit in any way? If she does jobs for for could you add to it?

If she wants it she has to pay for it. DD learnt this back in the day when she went over the “free” texts.

YANBU but how much data does she have in her plan? I know plans are coming out all the time with more data for the same price - in the longer term would it be worth looking into that?

Nope! Just nope!

How much credit is it costing monthly.
Could it be cheaper to get a contract with limited monthly data.
Phone credit is expensive.
Yanbu.

I wouldn’t get a teen a contract phone.

Try giffgaff. I get 10g of data for a tenner and DS gets some huge amount for £25. So maybe she could add to it?

How much data does she get nd how much does it cost?

We all use GiffGaff which is great as you can change the amount monthly if you want to - I used to increase the data for a month if the children were going away from WiFi or, in the case of DS2, his Uni wifi went down for a few days.

Absolutely not if she has wifi at home for all this. She'll have to take more care with using data while she's out. You're not made of money, to use a tired old saying.

YANBU, of course, to not top up again this month but how much data does she have? There's quite a difference in using up 500mb in 2 days and 30GB. Perhaps it would be worth changing plans if you can. Voxi have endless social media data as well as pretty decent data allowances for a good monthly cost.

I had credit until I was 14 and got my first proper phone, if I ran out of data I ran out of data, I didn’t die of it and neither will she

No way. She has wifi.

Unless she has an unrealistically low data allowance

I think we need more details on what you pay and what you get, maybe there's a better deal out there for her

You seem to be confusing credit and data. If she has unlimited texts and calls (which teenagers don’t really use anymore anyway), she doesn’t need credit.

It sounds like she’s running out of data. How much does she have?

This is exactly what I did with my dd, she whinged and wined and cried to her gps they thought I was being mean until I pointed out how much data and texts she had used in 24 hours, suddenly they were on my side. It took a couple of months but she learned.
Now she's at uni and has thanked me for teaching her to budget etc and even apologised for being so horrible to me

Credit and data are two different things. Teens don't call or text. What plan is she on?

YANBU. It will help her budget and realise the true cost of a phone!

Thanks for replies.

I am on giffgaff. To be fair to her a fairly low amount. 2gb a month.

But at the same time I know if I give in and increase it she will expect me to do this every time. (I will get but you did it last time and then a meltdown as has asd). So if I increase it to the £10 bag and she uses it all in a week for example, she will expect the £12 the following month and so on. And create a right old fracas when does not get it. She is never content with anything. As soon as she gets something she wants she is onto the next thing and cant enjoy what she does have. I feel I need to keep to it to make point.

However the idea where she can increase it if she uses some pocket money might be worth a try.

(Not keen on helping around the home to earn credit and thinks I should wait on her. Was extremely shocked after dinner that I asked her to wash up after she wiped up at lunch. I am still waiting for her to start it. As many of you might have experienced already, it is far more important to a teen to stare at themselves in the mirror for hours than actually do something constructive).

Hmmm... 2gb is tiny. I'm not surprised she uses it all up (although it's what I have and I don't use it all!).

That sound expensive. I pay £10 a month for 8GB on Virgin.

With 02 i get 100gb, unlimited texts and calls for £20

From what you say, I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all. I also think you are right to stick to your guns, given what you’ve added in subsequent posts.

2gb is absolutely nothing; you need to properly look into some good deals getting her a decent amount of data.

If she gets pocket money I’d give her the choice about whether she wants to use some of it to upgrade her bag to get extra data.

2gb a month? That’s nothing. How much are you paying?