Talk is cheap, especially with prepaid wireless phones

In response to the many inquiries, yes, I am on vacation. Okay, so no one asked why I haven't posted on a while.

Be that as it may, here's a tip that may save you lots of money if you're a light cell phone user, but still find it necessary to pay for a cell phone. Using the right plan you can pay just $2.50 a month for the privilege of carrying around a (working) cell phone. Yup, you can carry around a cell phone for cheaper but only if you can't use it to make or receive calls.

Here's the tip. Run, don't walk, to Page Plus Cellular. They buy cellular airtime from Verizon Wireless in bulk at a huge discount, then resell them to people like you. You have to pay up front at about 14 cents a minute, but that works out to be a lot cheaper than the regular cellular pay-by-the-month plans if you don't make a lot of calls.

Here's more on how this works. If you don't already have a Verizon phone lying around you'll need to by one from Page Plus or from one of the resellers that are a part of their reseller network. (My favorite is Babblebug. Great name, eh?) I think this can be $40 or cheaper. It won't be the latest phone with the latest bling but you're not a fashion plate now, either, are you? If you by a phone from Page Plus or a reseller you'll also get about $10 worth of minutes, or about 71 minutes. Now, if you don't use up all the minutes, the next time you'll have to lay down money is in four months. That's how ofter you must buy minutes. You'll have to buy a minimum of $10, but you can buy more, too, at a little better rate than 14 cents a minute. A bonus is that unused minutes just roll over.

There are other prepaid plans but Page Plus seems to be the best. Don't take my word for it. There's a guy in the northeast who has researched and used many of the plans. If you want to get all geeky and engineer-like about the analysis check out the CellGuru.

Yes, I eat the dog food. All four of us are on prepaid plans. Yeah, the kids suffer because they don't have RAZRs like their friends. They say they have the oldest phones of any of their friends. I tell them fine, suffer. I had to borrow cars from my folks, and that orange Datsun 1200 was no chick magnet! It's a character builder, that's what it is.

As always, no charge for this money saving tip.