Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
keaton
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:24 pm

Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by keaton »

Get the kids these:
https://store.totalwireless.com/bpdirec ... d=53286371

great deal and after a set time period they can be ported out to any other carrier, although I dont know the time that you have to be with Total Wireless. Runs on the Verizon network

Same internal specs as the 6S..

Jack FFR1846 wrote:
keaton wrote: I spend more since there is an insane difference between the 4S and the 6S.
I'm honestly curious. What differences are there? Here's what I do with my phone:
make phone calls
text
do email (both personal and work)
browse the web
take occasional pictures
use the calculator function
use the compass
use the alarm and stopwatch
look at my calendar
check maps once in a while (usually use the garmin in my car)
check selected stock etfs and markets
use the flashlight

That's it. I do NOT use it for music and don't even know my itunes password. I don't use apps besides 1/3 of those that came with the phone. I don't social media ever (on phone or computer) or instachat or facetube or any of that because I've got things to do.
for just slightly more, the 5S, 6, SE or 6S do all those things SO much faster and more fluid with software that is actually up to date. The 4S is like a honda civic vs a ferrari, there not even close in relation in terms of usability. The iPhone SE is the best in terms of performance and price, why spend $100 on an extremely outdated 4S vs $160 for so much more? Try one side by side and you will never touch an iPhone 4S again... its a MASSIVE improvement to get as far away from the 4 platform as you can.
denovo
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Joined: Sun Oct 13, 2013 1:04 pm

Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by denovo »

keaton wrote:Yet another side note....

It's funny that boglehead members are all about low fee investing due to long term financial gains. Most everyone is so opposed to paying an adviser because they take a cut.

YET, when it comes to things like a cell phone, the philosophy of the boglehead goes right out the window! You go running to an "adviser" AKA the retail big box verizon, ATT, sprint and so forth store, just to get your hand held when buying a phone and service. See the correlation here? when you can "index" with low ER by working with a low cost MNVO service.

The amount of money you save long term between MNVO and the big box carriers adds up!
I don't agree with the analogy. There's a huge difference when using a MVNO in actual physical service you receive. I have used Verizon for ages, and haven't step foot in one of their stores or called them in like ten years.

https://bestmvno.com/phone-plans-compar ... zon-mvnos/
Verizon MVNO LTE speeds are limited to 5 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload
https://bestmvno.com/phone-plans-compared/att-mvnos/
If you are considering an ATT MVNO, something to be aware of is that AT&T appears to play favorites with it’s data pipeline favoring it’s direct customers over it’s MVNO subscribers as outlined here.
"Don't trust everything you read on the Internet"- Abraham Lincoln
Gronnie
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by Gronnie »

Verizon screws over the sales rep with 0 commission if the customer buys the phone outright. For this reason I let them do the monthly payments (there is 0 finance charge, mathematically it is actually better anyways).
frankr
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2013 1:06 pm

Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by frankr »

Gronnie wrote:Verizon screws over the sales rep with 0 commission if the customer buys the phone outright. For this reason I let them do the monthly payments (there is 0 finance charge, mathematically it is actually better anyways).
For me, the automatic 1 year extended warranty from American Express is valuable for phone purchases, which one does not get going on a carrier's payment plan.
arsenalfan
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by arsenalfan »

We buy phones on the 24 month payment plan. Work pays for everything.
Kid's phones we buy outright, and we add them to our work plans (ok with them) - $20 more per month, and they share data.
Waiting for the first overage...
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F150HD
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by F150HD »

Admiral wrote:Very soon I will need to be replacing/buying three new iPhones, total cost nearly $2k. Options are to buy outright or spread the payments over 24 months (with no finance charge.)
.
companies 'used to' have a 2-year contract where one could get a free or heavily discounted model for next to nothing (like Sprint). That worked well for me for years. Was ok not having the latest/greatest- who needs it?

Now that the 2-year contracts are gone everywhere the new flow is to 'rent' or 'lease' a phone which is ridiculous to me personally as they are all $500-1000 (talking Smartphones, not flip phones). Not cheap. Then one pays for phone service on top of it.

Feels like the cellular market has gotten less consumer friendly the past few years with all these increased costs.
Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
keaton
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:24 pm

Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by keaton »

F150HD wrote:
Admiral wrote:Very soon I will need to be replacing/buying three new iPhones, total cost nearly $2k. Options are to buy outright or spread the payments over 24 months (with no finance charge.)
.
companies 'used to' have a 2-year contract where one could get a free or heavily discounted model for next to nothing (like Sprint). That worked well for me for years. Was ok not having the latest/greatest- who needs it?

Now that the 2-year contracts are gone everywhere the new flow is to 'rent' or 'lease' a phone which is ridiculous to me personally as they are all $500-1000 (talking Smartphones, not flip phones). Not cheap. Then one pays for phone service on top of it.

Feels like the cellular market has gotten less consumer friendly the past few years with all these increased costs.
You were still paying for the phone, just "covered" by the overpriced monthly network. contracts were never a deal over so many other options, thus carriers having to change with the times.
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F150HD
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by F150HD »

keaton wrote: You were still paying for the phone, just "covered" by the overpriced monthly network. contracts were never a deal over so many other options, thus carriers having to change with the times.
Nope. plan was cheaper then, much cheaper.
Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
neilpilot
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Location: Memphis area

Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by neilpilot »

F150HD wrote:
keaton wrote: You were still paying for the phone, just "covered" by the overpriced monthly network. contracts were never a deal over so many other options, thus carriers having to change with the times.
Nope. plan was cheaper then, much cheaper.
Seriously doubt it was much cheaper with same terms. Typically the older contracts were not unlimited calls & texts, and extremely limited or no data.
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bigROI
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by bigROI »

new $150-$200 phone 1 or 2 gen behind is just fine these days. have a $30-$40 burner around in case you have issues and need warrany or need to shop for another. $700 for a phone with marginal improvements is laughable.
A penny saved is much more then a penny earned when you consider the tax/SS/medicare cut.
aristotelian
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by aristotelian »

I always buy my phone outright, and I go cheap because I have minimal needs. I mean, really cheap. My wife and I both have unlocked Blu R1 HD's that we got for $60 through Amazon Prime, and a $70/month phone plan thru Cricket. I do not want to be locked into an expensive contract, no matter how much they offer to subsidize the phone. I will admit, my $60 phone does not take great pictures, but I have a camera for that.
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flossy21
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by flossy21 »

My wife and I both use our personal phones quite a bit for work so we deduct the phone expenses from our taxes.

We also have my MIL on our plan as she is a light data user and really only uses phone on wifi or for text/calls. We do not deduct her portion of the bill.

We all 3 have come up for renewal in the last 6 months and all 3 upgraded to Iphone 7. The MIL got the big one. My wife and I got the normal sized with largest memory capacity.

We have Verizon 6Gig data family plan with a 15% discount due to wife's employer. Our bill last month was $134 all in. It will drop to ~$112 or so next month because $20/mo from Verizon was phone subsidy for 1 of the phones. The other 2 were off subsidy and had already dropped $20 each off of the bill months ago.

We each went to the Apple store and got the new Iphones for $36/mo. This includes apple care which covers damage, loss, etc. My understanding is every 1 year we can each upgrade to latest phone for no charge if we turn in our old phone or after 2 years, if we don't upgrade, we own the phones outright and make no more payments.
bloom2708
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by bloom2708 »

flossy21 wrote:My wife and I both use our personal phones quite a bit for work so we deduct the phone expenses from our taxes.

We also have my MIL on our plan as she is a light data user and really only uses phone on wifi or for text/calls. We do not deduct her portion of the bill.

We all 3 have come up for renewal in the last 6 months and all 3 upgraded to Iphone 7. The MIL got the big one. My wife and I got the normal sized with largest memory capacity.

We have Verizon 6Gig data family plan with a 15% discount due to wife's employer. Our bill last month was $134 all in. It will drop to ~$112 or so next month because $20/mo from Verizon was phone subsidy for 1 of the phones. The other 2 were off subsidy and had already dropped $20 each off of the bill months ago.

We each went to the Apple store and got the new Iphones for $36/mo. This includes apple care which covers damage, loss, etc. My understanding is every 1 year we can each upgrade to latest phone for no charge if we turn in our old phone or after 2 years, if we don't upgrade, we own the phones outright and make no more payments.
Doesn't this make your "monthly bill" $112 + $36 + $36 + $36 = $220

You are separating the phone cost from the Verizon bill. Understood. A 3 line "Family Plan" on Total Wireless is $85 including taxes. $27/month less. Phones still separate of course.

With work reimbursing, getting the lowest bill is likely not in your favor. I have several co-workers who get $75/month in their role for phone usage. In their case, they want the new phone cost rolled into the monthly bill to get over $75/month to get the full $75 reimbursement.

Many different things to think about.
dslomer64
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Re: Do you buy phone outright or pay it off monthly...

Post by dslomer64 »

"... Device Payment Plan ... Sometimes your discount came in the form of a monthly credit to offset the DPP so that you needed to leave the payment arrangement in place. Other times you could get the old DPP payed off if you boug new."

I finally figured out what DPP stands for.

Pet peeves of mine include using acronyms without defining them for those of us not in the know. E.g.:

Device Payment Plan (DPP). (There's no real need for boldface font.)

If this were not the first reference to DPP in the thread, I'd assume maybe I should know what it means.

(This does not apply to such as USA--unless it stands for "Universal Savings Account" or such.)

Just trying to help others, in this thread and future ones.
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