For many people, individual smartphone plans are the way to go, but if you’ve got multiple people under your roof, a family cell plan probably offers more bang for your buck. There are many reasons you might want to consider switching to a family plan with your carrier.
Family Cell Plans Help Save You Money
A single individual phone plan is definitely cheaper than a family plan. But two? Three? Four or more? Not so much. If you are responsible for paying the phone bills of multiple people, it’ll definitely be cheaper to put everyone on a shared family plan instead of paying for each one individually.
For example, a carrier may charge $40 for an individual phone plan. But they may only charge $40, plus $15 a month for every line added on a family plan. Paying for two people individually would cost you $80, but through a family plan, it would only cost you $55. This example may be made up, but it holds true for most carriers: they want your whole family to get lines through them, and offering group discounts helps sweeten the proposition.
If you have to pay for three lines at some point, it’s practically guaranteed to be cheaper through a family plan than individually.
Family Plans Give You Parental Control
If you have kids, and those kids have cell phones, you probably worry about what they are doing on their devices. The internet is a dangerous place without supervision, and you can’t hover over your kids’ shoulders all the time. But with a family plan, you don’t have to. Many of them offer parental controls.
Through these plans, you’ll be able to manage your kids’ phone usage in various ways. The options could include setting time limits for phone usage, content filtering on the web, restricting access to certain apps, location tracking, and much more. Theoretically, you could access features like this without a family plan, but you’d have to jump through a lot more hoops to make it happen.
A family plan will give you this control from one easy place and let you modify them remotely. For parental peace of mind, it’s a pretty strong selling point, though your phone provider won’t take responsibility for any unhappy children!
Family Plans Offer Convenient Billing and Support
The more bills you have to pay, the more of a hassle it is to keep up with them all, especially since they’ll usually be coming through different channels. If you’re responsible for paying multiple phone bills for individual plans, that’s a lot of unneeded headache: that’s multiple bills, multiple receipts to keep, multiple charges for your card, and so on.
With a family plan, you can consolidate all of that into one bill, which is just more convenient overall. This might not seem like a big deal, but every bit of convenience helps in today’s busy world. It’s not the main reason to switch to a family plan, but it doesn’t hurt either.
This convenience also stretches out to customer support in most cases. If there’s an issue with any line for any of your family members, you go to the same place for support. This is especially helpful if there’s an issue affecting multiple family members, since you’ll have one point of contact for fixing the issue for everyone.
Of course, how easy it is to get good customer support still depends on who your provider is, regardless of the cell plan.
Family Plans Offer Affordable Communication Between Members
When you are paying for individual phone plans, you often have to pay extra for unlimited talk and text, regardless of who you are talking to or texting. But with a family plan, you can at least cut the cost of communication between family members down. Most family plans offer unlimited or at least discounted talk and text between members of the plan.
It’s a great way to maintain affordable communication between your family members, who are, in many cases, the people you are going to be communicating with the most anyway. Not only will the plan as a whole cost less than several individual plans, but the cost of your texting and talking minutes can be cut down too, so it’s a double-whammy for your savings.
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Of course, every family plan is different. I can’t guarantee you that every single family plan offers such a bonus, but a lot of them do. Be sure always to read the fine print and understand what a family plan from your carrier offers instead of assuming any feature is a given. Even features that seem basic may not be included in some plans out there.
This is definitely something to look out for in the case of plans with shared minutes and data. If you aren’t getting an unlimited plan, your entire family will be sharing those resources, meaning one member could run up the data charges when no one is looking if you aren’t careful. Make sure you know what you’re getting into, though even with a family, unlimited data is not always needed.
Family Plans May Offer Additional Bonuses
Additional bonuses are not unique to family plans, but they do often come with them regardless. Like I said before, carriers want you to put your whole family in their care instead of losing them to other competitors. They often offer incentives to make a family plan more appealing, so the best plans will offer you a little extra, though individual plans can make such offerings, too.
For example, a popular incentive is a package deal with a streaming service. Getting a family plan with your provider may come with discounted or even free streaming, albeit with conditions in most cases. Some other bonus incentives that may be included with a family plan include priority customer support, discounted device upgrade options, and exclusive promotions.
But as before, there’s no guarantee that every family plan on the market will offer bonus incentives like this. It’s just something that many carriers do offer. Be sure to shop around and compare your options. If a family plan from another carrier is good enough, it might even be worth switching over.
Ultimately, family plans are just more efficient than multiple individual phone plans. Even if you’re consolidating as few as two individual plans, it can often work out cheaper. Even if it is a little more expensive, the benefits you get are often well worth it. That said, each phone plan is different, and different providers will offer different value.
My best advice is to shop around. Though there are some benefits to sticking with your current provider, many carriers would be more than willing to make a switch worth your while, so don’t sleep on them if you’re in the market for a family plan.
