Switching to this carrier could save me half of my already affordable cellular plan

The current state of the economy is no joke. The rise in living costs means it’s the best time to strap in and start saving money wherever we can. One easy way to save hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars a year is to ditch your expensive phone plan.

We’re not about to live without our phone plans, but you can definitely switch to something like Mint Mobile, which offers some of the best phone plans if you want to get top-quality service at a bargain.

Let’s get right to the subject at hand. After all, switching carriers is a bit of a process, and we want to make sure the savings are worth the hassle. How much extra money will you be able to keep in your bank account?

Well, this depends on your current setup. Let’s start by going over the new member plans Mint Mobile offers. These essentially help you test out the service for three months without spending much.

Note: All of these come with unlimited calling and texting. Also, these are essentially all unlimited data plans, too. The gigabyte allotments refer to high-speed data. After you use up your dedicated high-speed data, Mint Mobile may slow down your speeds, but you will always stay connected.

Mint Mobile new customer offers:

After this, you will need to renew your plan, and you can choose to do so in 3-, 6-, or 12-month increments.

As you can see, the savings improve the more months you prepay in advance. In fact, if you renew and pay for 12 months in advance, you can keep the same monthly equivalent as in the initial offers!

There are too many factors to consider to give you a comprehensive answer, but you will save a nice amount even if you opt for Mint Mobile’s most expensive option! This would be paying for the unlimited plan and option for 3-month renewals. If we don’t include the initial pricing in the equation (since it only applies in the first three months), that would cost you $480 for a full year.

We’ll use T-Mobile as a quick comparison, since the magenta carrier owns Mint Mobile, and it uses the same towers. T-Mobile’s cheapest unlimited plan is $50 a month with Auto Pay. That would be $600 for a full year. This means you would be saving $120 per year with Mint. If you prepay for a full year, the savings double to $240.

Remember that this is in comparison to T-Mobile’s cheapest plan. If you won’t need much high-speed data per month, you might be able to pick the 5GB plan, which costs $180 per year. That is $420 in savings compared to T-Mobile’s cheapest plan!

Also, T-Mobile is already among the best value alternatives. Savings with Mint can quickly increase if you come from a fancy Verizon or AT&T plan and/or have multiple lines.

Of course, these are just possible scenarios. You can take a look at your own bill and do the math to see how much you can save with Mint Mobile. You can also check how much data you’re using. Our only plan here is to show you that it’s worth at least taking some time to look into the price difference.

What is the catch?

It’s natural to think there are some downsides to paying less for anything. Paying less for cellular service will naturally make us wonder what the downsides are. The truth is that there are some differences, but most of them will likely be irrelevant to you.

For Mint Mobile, the main downside is that while you’ll save a bunch, upfront costs can be higher. This is especially true when it’s time to renew your plan after the initial promotional 3-month offer. I mean, prepaying for a full year of the unlimited plan costs $360 and must be paid in one go.

Also, standard plans from the Big 3 often come with perks. These may include free or discounted streaming subscriptions. For example, T-Mobile offers “Netflix on us” with many of its plans.

In this case, regular T-Mobile customers will also be prioritized during peak congestion times.

Furthermore, Mint Mobile encourages you to bring your own device. While it does sell its own, the selection isn’t as good as Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile’s. It also runs fewer promotions on them, and these deals aren’t usually as juicy.

That said, many of those “downsides” may be irrelevant to more casual users looking to save a bunch of cash. The network is still as good as T-Mobile’s, so you know you will get a reliable service you can depend on, even if it slows down a bit sometimes.

Those downsides don’t seem so bad once you start looking at your possible savings! How does Mint Mobile manage to do this? Well, there are the obvious cost cuts that MVNOs inherently have. There are no physical stores or networks to maintain, so they can pass along the savings to you.

Again, Mint Mobile requires you to pay at least three months in advance. Getting more money up front means they have more working capital, which is why they are willing to give you a discount if you prepay for more months. It’s essentially the same bulk purchasing theory that applies when you buy at places like Costco.

So, I pay $40 a month for my Spectrum Mobile unlimited plan. That is already considered affordable, and this service is only available for Spectrum internet customers. It’s kind of an added perk we get. I also got a whole year of service for $10/mo, so I saved a bunch there, but that is now over, and I can look at other alternatives.

After looking into my usage, I realized I use about 10GB a month, so Mint Mobile’s 15GB plan will be more than enough for my needs. That costs $240 for 12 months, or about $20 per month. That is half the price of my already affordable cellular plan!

The only tricky part is that I often go to Mexico. My Spectrum Mobile plan includes roaming there, but Mint Mobile’s plans do not. Instead, I would have to get Minternational passes, which cost $5 for a day, $10 for three days, or $20 for 10 days.

Depending on how often I go abroad each month, the price might end up the same or higher. Plus, it would add the friction of having to purchase a pass each time I go, instead of simply waltzing across the border and using my phone as I normally would. I suppose that is another factor to consider. Are you a frequent traveler? If not, disregard the roaming topic.

I will have to look into it further, but Mint Mobile is still looking like a mighty good option, and it is certainly on my radar. How about you? How much would you be saving if you switched to Mint Mobile?

This article contains paid promotion.