By Alice Sy

A prepaid cellular phone plan is similar to other kinds of phone plans available in the market. The main difference is the manner of paying the bills. In a post paid plan, you can use the phone service before you pay for your consumption. In a prepaid plan, on the other hand, you get to pay ahead and then use the phone service.

Many consumers on a tight budget go for a prepaid cellular phone plan. This is practically due to the fact that a prepaid cellular phone plan saves money and limits credit by setting a limit to how much a consumer can spend or use.

Another advantage of availing prepaid cellular phone plan is that you don't have to fall for a debt. In other cases, you don't even need a credit card to use its services. Virgin Mobile Phone, for example, offers prepaid phone cards in their Virgin Megastores. So, all you have to do is get if off the rack, give your cash to the cashier, and in minutes, enjoy making calls.

How to use a prepaid cellular phone plan? It's simple. All you have to do is buy a cell phone. Then, set your prepaid plan and the amount of service you wish to enjoy. For some plans, you pay for the number of minutes you want to use up - say between 30 to 1000 minutes.

A prepaid cellular phone plan doesn't let you fall into a debt. The consumer is forced to pay ahead before availing phone services. There are phone service companies which sell convenient prepaid cards to numerous outlets. These outlets can easily be reached by consumers, such as malls and convenient stores.

Prepaid cellular phone plan cards are available in the internet. You can purchase services at a carrier's website. You can also buy them at carrier stores. You can have them in monthly rates, also called autoplay. Here, your credit card is immediately charged a certain amount every month. Whenever you call, the per-minute charge is immediately deducted to the amount charged on your account until there will be no more service.

Though the no-hassle idea might entice you to switch to prepaid phone plans, in the long run, you'll realize that you'll have to pay more per-minute charge compared to the traditional plan. This is true especially if a person makes calls several times a day.

Although a prepaid cellular phone plan may sound very appealing, you should give it a long thought before choosing this over the post paid plan. In the long run, post paid plans give much bigger savings when you are the type who makes frequent calls. This is because the post paid plan has lower call rates than prepaid plans. Weigh matters first before choosing among the two.

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