Help me save money on my kids mobile phones please

[plainjaneonthetrain]

I’d like my teenagers to start looking after their own phone bills. I’m happy to help out but I’ve ended up with all their phone contracts in my name as they were at school when we started them
As well as my own phone plan which is 8GB on Vodafone for £24
I pay for
DC1 working Vodafone 8 GB plan £24 with Vodafone
DC2 working part time 5GB plan with O2
DC3 at Uni 20GB plan plus insurance £44. O2 - she is a heavy data user as she is always on the bus! I’m not sure if she could get a contract with no credit rating etc

I don’t know if the phone are locked to networks. All the phones are paid for now.We went with these networks as they had reasonable reception in our rural area.

This is a job I’ve been meaning to do for years but quite honest I don’t know what I’m doing and still love my landline,

Please help me but in basic terms .
Thank you,

Have a look at sky. I pay £17 a month for 2 lines

I pay about£10/ month with Tesco, unlimited call/text, 12gb data. There's no handset charges in that though. And I run cheap phones so no insurance either.

Check out Martin lewis and see whats best in your area. If you go for a rolling contract with someone like smarty or lebara I dont think you need good credit. Thats what I did with dc1 once they turned 18 to help build up a credit rating and plan to do with dt.next year. I actually continued to pay while they were in education but transfered the money to them so that they were paying and building a credit score.

Lebara SIM only for £7.95 a month 50GB data unlimited calls and texts. First 3 months was £3.18 on a deal.

Have a look at Money Saving Expert website for latest best SIM only deals if you've already paid for the devices.

Mine own their phones outright so on Sim only deals.

I would get your youngest to look at how much data she is actually using and what she is using it on. Voxi is Vodaphone.

£10 with Voxi gets unlimited social media, 20G rolling contract, cancel at any time.
£35 with Voxi gets unlimited data "So you can snap, post and stream as much as you like without ever running out of data." also rolling contract, cancel at any time.

We have upgraded whilst with them so they give you offers once signed up. We are currently all on £10 for 60GB unlimited social media.

https://www.voxi.co.uk/sim-only-plans

Definitely shift them all to SIM only deals if you’ve paid off the phone!

Then if you’re feeling very generous you could buy them a phone for Christmas every 4 or 5 years and they pay their £10 ish sim only contracts each month. If you can’t afford to buy them phones for Christmas, then working kids can pay for their own!

Currently with O2 paying £12.50 with 70GB data, unlimited calls and texts

Those contracts are all outrageously overpriced. You could get more data for far less money with Giffgaff, Tesco, Lebara etc.

Shop around!

I have 8GB from Vodafone for £9 per SIM (x2). I also have the same GB from O2 for a similar price. All are SIM only.

Are you also paying for phones? When are the phones yours?

I'd look at Lebara in your shoes as they use the Vodafone network and are really competitively priced. You also get free international roaming where you have to pay with Vodafone.

Giffgaff and Tesco both piggyback on the O2 network btw, if coverage is the reason you're sticking with O2.

I don’t know how to edit ….

We don’t pay for the phones on a contract ever. Buy refurbished excellent rated phones from Backmarket and then sim only deal for monthly payment. The phones generally last 4 or 5 years before they become too old to update or the battery gets unreliable etc. loads cheaper than new phones if you go for 2 or 3 models back in time.

I'm with Talkmobile, 20gb data, £5.95 a month on a rolling monthly contract, they use the Vodafone network, so would be a good choice for your kids.

We have a SIM only contract with 4 numbers. Mine has 120g data per month, the other 3 have 30g each. EU roaming free. Comes to £50/month with EE. I can also transfer data across all numbers as well.

Think how much money I’ve wasted through laziness and ignorance!

I have googled and I need PAC codes if the phones are unlocked
is this easy?

Have you had that a while, the cheapest I can see on their website is £15 for 50gb and that's only available for a few more days

Yes it’s really easy. I was too ignorant / lazy to change my contract with EE and I think
i was paying something ridiculous like £60 a month. I’m now paying less than £20 ( it might be less than £10 ) through Lebara on the SIM only. I have an iPhone 13 and I’ve just paid about £60 for a new battery to be fitted to keep it going a bit longer. DD14 is on a refurbished phone and also has SIM only and is quite a heavy data user. I think her phone costs me £15 a month. Husband is on about £5 a month but he does not use his much.

It wasn’t directly from O2, think I got it via Uswitch

If you look at Uswitch you can get O2 deals that you cant see on o2 website. I pay £8 for 25gb which is doubled to 50gb because we have Virgin tv.
I buy my phone direct from Samsung with a part exchange and 24 month interest payments. A lot cheaper than normal contracts

V easy to switch. Me and 3 DC on Lebara and pay less than £25 a month for all of us. There is a data limit but I’ve said if they want more they pay / they sort out their own. Look at MSE (money saving expert).

@curlymumof2
https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/simonlydeals/

Each phone needs to get it's own PAC code. Follow these instructions to get it:

https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/guides/porting-your-mobile-phone-number/

Asda mobile runs on the Vodafone network, so have a look at them too.

If you're out of contract for the phones themselves you need to check you're not still being charged for them, I had that with EE a few years ago and they were still charging me about £20 a month too much!

Go on compare the market or something and check out the offers for SIM only.

If ds is working can he pay his own contract? Same with DD at uni - assume she also is working PT, certainly needs to learn how to manage data usage if it's costing you over £500 a year for her to play films or music on her phone!

Def swap to sim only.

i dithered for years as scared to leave 02

now with lebara

pay £6 something for 35GB. Was paying nearly £30 for 25GB

code if you want to move to lebara

https://aklam.io/e29NP4Rr

and pac code is easy. Once you take out a new contact (rolling every 30days) so can cancel anytime if not happy

you text you provider and they text a code which you enter

I am the most intecho person ever and managed it

I pay £9 a month for 50gb with sky and then £6 for my daughter to have 10gb but i can transfer what i don't use to her so work out quite well.