4 Ways to Save on Your Cellphone Plan During Retirement

As you budget for retirement, it’s important to take advantage of every deal you can find. Thankfully, the wireless world is full of deals that cater to the retirement-age community.

Here are some ways that you can cut costs on your cellphone bill and save more money for traveling and relaxation.

Get a 55+ cellphone plan discount

Most cellphone carriers offer a discount for folks age 55 and above. The best discount currently available comes from T-Mobile.

The Essentials Unlimited 55+ plan comes with unlimited data, unlimited talk and unlimited text for $40 a month. Usually, that same wireless plan would cost $60 a month, which means you save $20 a month that you can put elsewhere.

Along with the unlimited everything, you also get free calls from the U.S. to landlines in over 70 countries and mobile lines in over 30 countries. That will really come in handy if you have friends or family living abroad that you’d like to call or text.

If you don’t like T-Mobile or don’t get reliable service in your area, there are other 55+ cellphone plans worth checking out. In a vacuum, none of these deals are quite as good as what T-Mobile offers, but a different carrier may make up the difference in value for you.

Choose a carrier that focuses on senior plans

A few cellphone carriers cater specifically to retirement-age folks and offer features you won’t find anywhere else.

Lively (formerly GreatCall) is one such wireless carrier that offers affordable cellphone plans that can be bundled with health and safety products and services.

For example, you can get an unlimited talk, text and data plan that comes with 24/7 emergency support and a personal operator you can contact for help.

If you want a cellphone plan that’s designed to keep you healthy and in close contact with medical professionals, Lively offers some amazing features. Take a look at the unlimited Lively plan:

Join a family plan

As a general rule of thumb, you should always be on a wireless family plan. Essentially every wireless carrier offers discounts when you bundle plans together under a family plan umbrella.

If you can get at least three lines together, you can reduce your monthly payment significantly. Take a look at Verizon’s Start Unlimited Plan for example. If you were paying for this plan on your own, it would cost you $70 per month.

But if you were in a family plan with three other lines, your individual cost would drop to $45 per month. It’s the same story with any other wireless carrier that offers family plan discounts.

Take a look at the top five most popular family plans to get you an idea of what you could save:

Evaluate how much data you need

The bulk of what you pay in your cellphone plan depends on how much wireless data you get every month. Unlimited talk and text is pretty easy to come by, but unlimited data is usually where the big bucks come into play.

You can save money on your cellphone bill by reducing your data amount to the bare minimum you plan on using.

Remember, you can always connect your phone to a Wi-Fi connection to browse Facebook or Instagram or to shop online without spending any precious wireless data. If you can commit to using less wireless data, you can definitely get a much cheaper cellphone bill.

Here’s a look at the most popular low-data cellphone plans to give you an idea of what other folks are choosing: