Narrowly Avoided “Lack of Organization” Stupid Tax
On Saturday morning, I sat down to update my December budget with the carryover in each of my irregular categories before I had to go to a mandatory taekwondo meeting. I only had a few minutes, and I only expected it to take a few minutes, for all I had to do was add the amount I had written down as carryover from 6 categories to the budgeted monthly amount. As I scrolled through my irregular categories, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and my heart started racing. Cell phones. Cell phones was a category. Our cell phone prepaid plans expired November 30th. Today was December 1st. Oh no.
We use prepaid cell phone plans because we barely use our cell phones. This has saved us a whole lot of money over the past three years - before that, we were paying about $60/month for two cell phones on a traditional plan (the cheapest we were able to find in our area) and now we pay $40 (combined) every 3 months to keep our service active. We originally used Tracfone and then when we bought our house switched to Virgin Mobile because the Tracfone service in our new neighborhood was nonexistent.
Well, with Tracfone, when you added your new card to extend your service, it automatically added the time extension to the end of your current time. So if I added a 90 minute card on November 10th, but my service was still active until November 30th, it would extend my service for 90 days from November 30th. Virgin Mobile works differently. When you add a new card to extend your service, it resets the clock. So say you added a card on November 10th - the 90 day clock starts November 10th for when you have to add another $20 card.
So, I had bought two “Top Up” cards, as they are called, on November 24th, but I was waiting until November 30th to add them. But then I forgot to.
Once your service expires with Virgin Mobile, you do (thank goodness) keep your phone number, but your phone stops working. That wasn’t the part that made me feel like I was going to throw up. You also lose any accrued money balance you have. Usually the money you haven’t spent rolls over from Top Up card to Top Up card. My spouse’s phone had a $27 balance on it, and my phone had a $17 balance. We might not need to use that money (obviously we hadn’t been using all of our previous balances and it was continuing to grow) but still - what if we needed extra money on our phones at some point? I’d just thrown a ton of extra minutes down the drain.
I hurriedly grabbed my Top Up cards and my spouse’s phone and logged in to add the new card to his phone, and it was surprisingly still showing his $27 balance. I added the minutes, and as soon as it confirmed they were added, it started warning me that the phone needed to be topped up. I logged into his account online and thankfully, it now showed a $47 balance. Apparently I had completed the Top Up just in time. (The phone did figure it out soon afterwards.)
I logged into my account online and topped up my phone with no further incident, also retaining my previous balance. Later that day I got automated emails from both accounts warning me I would lose my balance if I did not Top Up immediately (apparently the automated system was slow) but I had topped up and both phones retained their previous balances, and all is well.
I need to institute a notification system for topping up the phones to maximize the time I get for the $20 Top Up card but also not running the risk of losing my accrued cash balance. But whew on this time. And I managed to make it to my taekwondo meeting just a fraction of a minute late. Thank goodness I am always ten minutes early for everything or I would have been very late. 
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December 3rd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Whew! I use Google calendar for reminding me of my phone bill. Maybe every time you reset yours you could make a Google calendar note to e-mail you?
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I would suggest Google calendar too.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Ack! That’s really frustrating. Don’t worry about those lost minutes–just think about how much $$ you’re saving by having those pre-paid phones.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Wow, that’s perfect timing (well you know what I mean), glad you saved those credits!
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I knew Lynnae would chime in with Google calendar after I read her post this morning (I actually wrote this post last night lol)
Hee hee. I will have to check it out. I am a slow adapter of technology.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:27 am
For future reference, this may help:
With the T-Mobile prepaid cell phone plan, if you put a LOT of minutes on the phone up front, the minutes do not expire for ONE YEAR.
We got our teen daughter a phone for $42.00 and put $100.00 worth of minutes on it. She’s now “good to go” until next November. That works out to be about $12.00 per month including the phone.
Plus, we told her that if she could make those minutes last the full twelve months, as in incentive, we would pay for her refill rather than requiring her to pay for it. We’re in our second year on this program and she’s been very good about using her minutes appropriately.
I hope this tid-bit might be helpful to you.
Sally
December 4th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Sally - Virgin Mobile has the same type of thing. $100 for a year (or something like that).
But buying a $20 card every three months is only $80 for the year so cheaper overall, for us at least.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Are you sure the minutes expire? We have used Virgin mobile for years, and there have been times our phone stopped working because we didn’t top up, but the balance never went to zero. Maybe this is a new thing? Do you know about automatic top up? Not only does it save you the hassle of remembering to do this, but it is cheaper. You can top up just $15 every three months and have the amount taken from a debit or credit card. We rarely use our phone, so this is plenty for us.
Also, Virgin mobile has a new thing called Sugar Momma, or something like that, where you can go to their web site and get free minutes for watching commercials. If you are planning a trip or have some other time coming up where you expect to use more minutes, it’s a fun free way to get cell phone minutes.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:20 am
@ Catherine - I’m not sure they expire, because they didn’t, but the stuff on the website claims they do. So it might just be a scare tactic, but one I believed.
I do know about the automatic topup but I don’t want to give them my debit card. I’m superstitious like that. i should get over it and do it.
Thanks!
December 5th, 2007 at 6:29 am
I love the term-stupid tax. Now I know what to call it when I do something “stupid” and it costs me money.