Do you ever pick up your car phone to perpetrate like you are talking?
This is my grandma’s house. We go to visit her (pre-covid) and to get a signal for a split second for texts to arrive, you have to walk to the end of her driveway, hold your phone out, and tilt your head just right so that the signal bounces correctly 
Are you crazy? You can get a ticket for that foolishness.
I was just today googling prices on 84 monte carlos.
I bet she’d let you use her land line when you are there.
(When my wifi is working, I get texts via wifi. When it’s down, I can get texts by holding the phone out the window. But an actual voice call just isn’t happening on a cell connection here.)
Payment plans, like it’s rolled into your monthly phone payment rather than just paying for phone service. It’s less expensive in the long run to just buy the phone. Although if you’re already planning to switch services it might be cheaper to take advantage of promos of that sort.
RN
Why is that? The monthly payments for the purchase of the phone are interest free.
Anyone who denies interest free loans are the dumb.
Unless you live paycheck to paycheck and are terrible with money management
Yeah, I always finance my phones because interest free. Paying $720 today costs me more than paying $30 a month for two years, so why not?
My daughter’s phone was $600 to buy or $20.00/month for 30 months.
Same price.
If we could do that and get the phone we want, we probably would, but we generally are looking at phones not sold by our carrier. I just checked, and they have the pixel 4a 5g, but not the pixel 5 as an option. I’m not planning to upgrade my phone for another year and a half, but the lack of options through our carrier will likely have me paying for it upfront through Amazon or Google (because paying for it interest free over 6 months (Amazon) isn’t usually worth the hassle of setting up Amazon store CC payments when I can just pay for it on my regular CC autopay).
Guess I was talking out of my butt (not sure whether swearing is censored here). I’ve always bought used phones.
In Canada, the monthly payments require two things:
- a minimum two year commitment.
- subscribing to an expensive data plan for those two years. The cheaper data plans require you bring your own phone.
I suppose it’s fine if you value the cost of those two things at $0 but number 2 is a deal breaker for me (even though I’m on a more expensive plan anyway). I think it’s irrational to suggest the cost of those two things is $0. I also think it’s probably irrational to suggest there’s a cost to #2 when I’m already on a more expensive plan and likely to continue to be.
So on reflection, the only reason I buy outright is apparently a misdirected sense of frugality because I’m running a $250 phone that suits me fine.
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Interest is pretty close to 0% anyway on a risk-adjusted basis.
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The deals I have seen require higher payments than the cost of the phone. Like you’re locked into paying $50 a month for two years for a $1,000 phone.
50 * 24 > 1000 -
Even after the two years is up and you’re allowed to upgrade, you might choose not to do so. The $50 payments often continue indefinitely, although I have seen this go both ways. You certainly have to ask though, and read the fine print.
If it really and truly is the exact same price and she will not have to pay the $20 in months 31 and beyond, then sure, go ahead.
The phones I’ve bought are usually not that way. That said, it’s been a while. I got an iPhone XS the first week they came out. (Random coincidence… I don’t pay attention to those things… just needed a new phone and that’s what had all the specials.) I still have that phone.
What kind of scam cell service are you looking at? Every single phone on Verizon’s website costs the same whether it’s financed or paid for outright. And from experience, once you pay the 24 payments, it’s paid off, there are no payments in perpetuity. I’ve paid off tablets before without upgrading (I usually upgrade my phone after 2 years) and the only cost after the 24 months is the cell service access (which I’ve also canceled and continued to own the tablet outright).
I think twig is describing the way it used to work. If I remember correctly, laws were passed in the last 5 years or so that required that the installment plan set up to pay off the phone had to be separate from the monthly cost of your plan, so people no longer have the potential to overpay for their phone. Since she buys her phones outright, she may not have realized that it changed at some point.
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Yeah, I was attempting to come across as lighthearted-snarky, but as usual, in text form I just sound snarky.
I remember things weren’t always this way, although it’s been a very long time since I bought a phone and it wasn’t 24 installments of 1/24 of the price of the phone.