Comments on: Budget shopping tips: Cell phones

CNET Associate Editor Nicole Lee shares some general tips on shopping for a cell phone on a budget.

[k_stringer]

Thanks Nicole for the great advise. If you don?t mind, I?d like to offer a few more suggestions: 1) Research organizations you belong to find discounts on cellular service and phones ? including your work, school, credit unions or other clubs you may belong to, such as AAA or AARP. I work with a cellular provider called Consumer Cellular (www.consumercellular.com) and AARP and AAA members receive special member benefits with Consumer Cellular service. 2) Avoid contracts. For example, Consumer Cellular offers post-paid plans like the major carriers, but without contracts. So you can adjust your bill as needed if you happen to use fewer or more minutes that month with absolutely no penalty. This can save you from overpaying if you don?t use enough minutes, or from incurring overage charges for going over your plan?s total minutes.

[tallnproud]

At this point no one should ever need to pay for a 411 call. 1-800-GOOG-411 has been going strong for several years now. It's completely free, and I've found it work very well in the dozen or so times I've used it.

[jofssie]

Good article! Been racking my brains on how to trim down my cell spending even more. Funny enough, just yesterday I found a new Tracfone plan called StraightTalk. $30 gets you 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and small amount (I think 30mb) of data. That is an incredible 3c a minute without even taking the texts and data into account!

[livinat954]

I need to make a point on cellphones to see if anyone else thinks the way I do.....
I found a simple cellphone that doesn't have all the bells and whistles....Jitterbug....all I wanted was a phone that had voice mail, no camera, no text messaging, no internet, I found that these items were expensive and of no use to me in my everyday life. My wife and I bought the Family Plan, where any unused minutes are rolled over to the next month and anyone on the Jitterbug plan could phone one another and not get charged for the call. I am 66 years old, semi-retired and love the features that this phone offers, large lighted keypad, cushioned phone edge next to the ear and speaker phone. Is there anyone out there that would like to own one?