As the world has grown increasingly more interconnected and reliant on digital technology, smartphones have become indispensable parts of our daily lives. These handy mobile devices are no longer just useful for staying in touch with other people—they’ve become essential tools for reading the news, consuming entertainment media, online shopping and banking, and much more.
While smartphones are undoubtedly useful, setting yourself up with a mobile plan that’s appropriate for your needs, lifestyle, and budget can be confusing. Even when you narrow your choices down to the country’s major telco providers like Smart and Globe, you’ll still face a vast array of pre-paid and post-paid offers, billing schemes, places to buy load online, and other considerations. Luckily, we’ve prepared a helpful rundown of the most important considerations for choosing the right mobile plan.
Understand Your Needs
Before anything else, it helps to think about what you need and what benefits you’d like to get out of your plan. You’ll want to consider two major smartphone needs: texts and calls, which are usually bundled together, as well as mobile data.
Texting and Calling Offers
These days, most pre-paid and post-paid plans will offer unlimited texts to all networks and unlimited calls to your chosen provider. These provisions are pretty likely to meet the needs of most users. If, however, you need to call other people frequently, you should be aware of the mobile providers that those people use. You’ll generally want to be on the same network as most, if not all, of the people you intend to call for maximum savings.
Mobile Data Offers
Estimating your mobile data consumption comes down to two equally important factors: the amount of time you spend on your mobile internet network and the activities you do while online using that network.
It may help to ask yourself, for instance, how often you’ll need to be online but outside of a Wi-Fi network. Do you have a consistent Wi-Fi connection at home or at your workplace, for example, and only foresee needing mobile internet on the go? Or will you be depending on mobile internet to go online for pretty much the whole day? Needless to say, the longer you intend to be connected to your mobile network rather than a Wi-Fi connection, the more data you’ll need.
How much mobile data you require will also depend on what you intend to do online. As a general rule, text-based activities like instant messaging, emailing, and reading news and other websites consume relatively little data. Activities that require heavy use of photos, videos, and other visual media, such as scrolling through social media feeds, gaming, or streaming, will need a lot of mobile data and probably make up the bulk of your data usage.
If you’re unsure about how to calculate monthly mobile data consumption, there are many online calculators and other applications that can help you do so. Having a clear sense of how much data you see yourself using will be instrumental in choosing a plan that meets your needs.
Examine the Pros and Cons
Once you know what you’d like to get out of your mobile plan each month, you can then determine whether you’d prefer a pre-paid or a post-paid plan. While each of these plans comes with its own advantages, it’s equally important to consider the different risks or challenges they’re likely to pose when it comes to your monthly spending.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Pre-paid Plans
Pre-paid plans are generally more flexible, allowing you to buy only the services you need most, when you need them. If you foresee that you’ll only need mobile data or free calls on certain days, for example, you can pay for these services for just those days rather than the entire month. This flexibility will possibly save you money in the long run, since you won’t be paying for more features than you actually need each month.
However, the flexibility and range of options that a pre-paid plan offers can also make managing your monthly subscriptions confusing. If you find yourself paying for a large number of separate offers each month, it can be difficult to keep track of how much you’re actually spending.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Post-paid Plans
With a post-paid plan, meanwhile, you enjoy the convenience of making only one payment a month for all your mobile activities. You won’t have to resubscribe to your services or reload your account multiple times within the month, and it should be easier for you to keep track of your spending. Post-paid plans also offer different packages you can choose from according to your needs, featuring not only texts, calls, and mobile data but sometimes free access to particular apps as well.
On the other hand, you also run the risk of accruing hidden costs and extra payments with a post-paid plan. If you’re not careful about your mobile usage and exceed your plans limits, you may end up having to pay much more than you anticipated at the end of the month.
Ultimately, choosing the right mobile plan comes down to knowing your needs and having a solid strategy for managing your spending on a monthly basis. Once you have a clear grasp of your financial situation and consumption habits, you’ll be able to focus on getting only what you want or need for the best possible price.