Tame My Budget 6 : Attack your Mobile Phone

One of the things that we normally used almost everyday is our mobile phone. Nowadays, it seems that very hard for anyone to part from their mobile phone. We use it to call, sms, mms, video call, take picture, take video, playing games, listening to downloaded music and even as an alarm clock. The mobile phone seems to be a very friendly useful partner, until you are require to pay for its bill or credit.

For postpaid user, we smirk at prepaid user whenever we saw them finding ways to top up their credit. Seemingly unlimited connection, postpaid users keep on using their phone to call and sms to our heart content. When we got the statement on end of the month, just hope that our heart do not stop beating. Not only the apparent call or sms charges, the statement comes with monthly charges, access fees, other charges and even service tax.

We might be able to dodge ourselves from the charges by using prepaid. Of course it is a bit tedious of needing to top up like, all the time. But at least we can stop using the mobile phone if we do not have any money to top up, right? Yeah right! Are we part of those people who scour our wallet at the end of the month trying to buy ourselves a few dollars of credits?

Mobile phone has become a necessity in our life. It will not be easy to live our life unconnected by not having mobile phone. But is our current service provider already provides us with the best package? Is other option of service could be cheaper for us?

Knowing how much service provider like Celcom, Maxis and DiGi here in Malaysia, keep competing between each other to lower down their rate in order to get the most customers, we should be taking this advantage to find the best, cheaper and most value service that fits our usage style.

When I start to look at ways to lower down my mobile phones bills, I kept on changing service provider when I know that their package is better for me. 5 years ago, my monthly bill is $300, then I managed to lower it to $200, then $120, then $100 until today, my mobile phone bills rarely hit $80. The best of all, my style of using mobile phone never change compare to 5 years ago. Just by changing package, I can lower down my monthly bill.

I have setup an excel file that can help you to see if your current mobile service provider is already the best or there are better choice out there. The file is more to Malaysians whereby it includes all packages under Maxis/Hotlink, Celcom/Xpax/Blue and DiGi. If you are not from Malaysia, feel free to download and look at the file to see how I did the calculation and you could calculate yourself on the package provides within our country.

To use the file, all you need is the summary of your latest mobile phone statement. I focus on call, sms and mms charges only as a guide since these charges normally the most significant. I also focus on principal package, but if you plan on taking supplementary or family package, at least you get the idea of what you need to look for.

Please go Free Download on the left sidebar. Click on “Excel : Mobile Service Provider Plan”, download the file and start to look for your best service. With the current Mobile Number Portability here in Malaysia, where you can change service provider without changing your number, there should not be any hassle to change to your best plan.