Cell Phones - Discover What Cell Phone Minutes You Really Need

Everyday we are bombarded with cell phone plans and their offers. You see it on television, hear it on the radio, and see it online. Calling plans are everywhere you look these days.

A very popular plan among the American population is the 1,000 minute plan. While it may seem like a lot of minutes, you can run out long before the next month. This can end up costing you more in the long run.

A very important part of the decision process should be based on how many people are going to be using the calling plan. More importantly, who is going to be using your calling minutes. Are the users teenagers? How many of your children will be using the plan? Do you or your spouse frequently make calls? How long is the duration of most of these cell phone calls?

A somewhat simple way to calculate how many minutes you are going to need or may be lacking is to basically make some rough estimates of all possible user's monthly usage by rounding off into hours. Yes, hours not minutes.

In an Example:

Stan (Husband) 4 hours

Sally (Wife) 3 Hours

Sue (17 years old) 5 Hours

Joe (15 years old) 4 Hours

TOTAL FAMILY USAGE: 16 Hours

With your combined monthly usage somewhat figured out you then only need to convert those hours back into minutes to compare against current minute plans. To do this you simply only need to multiply your hours total by 60:

16 x 60 = 960 Minutes

As you can see, we came up with a total of minutes by using the times by 60 method. The family usage for this month ended up being a total of 960 minutes.

In this scenario the family is just right for a 1,000 minute plan and that is lucky being you can expect to pay as much as .30 cents per minute after you go over your amount. In any case you should always use some math and fair estimates of how much cellular calling you really will be making.

In all cases, the easiest way to pick a plan, especially for a single cell phone plan is to divide any plan minutes by 60. Dividing by 60 you are dividing the minutes giving you an answer that equals in hours which gives you a more realistic look at how much you usage you will be utilizing.