At some point, your kid will ask you the question ‘When can I get a cell phone?’ saying that all their friends have one and that they feel left out from the rest of their classmates.
Getting your kids their first cell phone doesn’t always mean having to spend a fortune on the latest phone with the most expensive cell plan.
Here are three tips for choosing and buying your kids their first cell phone.
Find a good cell plan
Before you consider what phone to buy for your kids, you need to remind them that calls, messages, and data cost extra money. You need to find the best deal that will mean that you’re not out of pocket too much each month.
Prepaid Bill is a place where you can easily add minutes and data to your child’s cell phone in seconds. It helps you to keep an eye on how much is being spent as well as allowing limited additional usage for when they’ve used too much of their service. After all– you need your kids to be able to contact you if they need you!
Avoid buying them the latest model
Peer pressure will tell your child that they need the best phone possible to keep up with the rest of the kids. The chances are that only maybe one or two kids in their class have the latest phone, but the issue here is that it only stays ‘the latest phone’ for a couple of months before a new model comes in.
Your child will mainly use their phone for texting and calling friends, and maybe watching videos online–but that’s really it. They don’t need to have the latest phone to be able to stay in contact. Everything they want to do can be done on a phone that is at least half of the price of the latest Apple or Samsung phone. You can also rest assured that they’ll be safe with their phone should they choose to use it in public.
Teach them financial responsibility
So you may not win the argument regarding getting the latest phone versus a cheaper version. However, nobody said that the parent has to pay for it. If your child still continually insists that they need that phone, it’s probably time to teach them the value of a dollar.
Start encouraging your child to save any money they get to go towards the phone that they really want. Them having a sense of how much things cost will encourage them to develop better spending habits as they grow up and how to prioritize their spending and to realize that they can’t always get what they want instantly.
Alternatively, you could choose to pay for the cell phone and have your kid pay you back the money in installments over time to help to teach them about loans and credit.
There will always come a time when your kid asks for their first cell phone. Teach them to be sensible and you can be assured that they will take good care of it and you won’t have to replace it too often!
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