Want to pay just $30 dollars a month, with no contract obligations?

There are a few caveats:

  • Do you have good reception for T-Mobile?
  • Do you use your phone more for web/texting? Would you be happy with 100 mins of talk time?
  • Do you care about swallowing the initial cost of a smartphone

Galaxy Nexus

If you answered yes to all, read on.

You are probably paying at least 69.99 if you are on Sprint, AT&T, or Verizon, at least, for one line. Additional lines I won’t cover because this way will be much cheaper even with family plans. This plan is just 30 bucks per line and that’s already more than half of the plan you are on.

Interested?

So here’s what you need to do.

  1. Go to t-mobile.com and look for a cheap phone, cheapest. If you don’t see anything less than 30 bucks, go to walmart.com, do a search at the home page for “t-mobile”. (I’ve linked to appropriate places above — as of this writing, they work).
  2. Buy the phone.
  3. When you get your phone, call this number to activate it: 1-800-385-1977. This is an automated number, make sure you switch to talk to a rep.
  4. When the rep gets on the line, tell him/her that you want to activate a new phone. When asked what plan, tell them you want T-Mobile Monthly4G $30 Unlimited Web & Text with 100 min of talk.
  5. Don’t bother with the above. Go to T-mobile. Buy the sim kit. When you get the sim kit, go here and activate it. The Sim Kit will have all the instructions as well. It’s just SO much easier and cheaper now.
  6. After you activate the phone, on the cell phone, dial *233. This is where you will feed the $30 in to your account. You will also have an option to set up auto-fill every month. You can do that either via the same call or you can go to my.tmobile.com register your new number and set up whatever you need, including auto-fill.
  7. Go to ebay or whatever you feel safe in buying your new smartphone and get whatever your heart desires. Just make sure it works on GSM network and you want it unlocked. My suggestion right now is Galaxy Nexus. The best Android phone out there. This will change over time but as of this writing, that’s your best bet.

This is not for everyone, of course, and I think I’ve covered all the disclaimers. For someone who uses less than 10mins a month on cell phones, one that loves to save money mostly because of principle, this works out really well for me.

If you have any questions, please leave in comments. Do to spam, it won’t appear right away but it will be seen by me and I will answer to the best of my knowledge.

UPDATE: Just wanted to add that this will work on a GSM unlocked iPhone as well.

UPDATE2: Androidandme lists the above as #7 reasons to shred your wireless contract and switch to pre-paid.