Kids’ cellphone requirements can be expensive but there are ways to slash the costs

Canadians pay some of the highest wireless rates in the world for their cellphones. It’s already expensive paying for your own phone – add in a couple of kids with data plans who are financing new devices and your family of four could be stuck with a monthly bill running into several hundreds of dollars.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Kids’ cellphone requirements are actually quite basic and you can easily slash their monthly costs by 75 per cent.

Let’s start with the hardware: Your kid might want a brand new phone, but do they need one? The answer is most probably no. The good news is that used phones are plentiful and your child could easily get by with your old one. If you are not in the market for a new device, chances are that someone you know is upgrading and would sell you their old phone for a good price.

Another option is to buy a refurbished phone. You can get a previously owned iPhone 13 on Amazon and Best Buy for around $550. Save even more by buying an older phone – the iPhone 11 is more like $350. Compare this to the cost of a new iPhone 15, which is roughly $1,300, including tax. Going used saves you big bucks - between $750 to $950.

Your teen won’t love the idea of having a dated phone but not only will you save money, it’ll be far less stressful because, let’s face it, kids can be sloppy with their phones. And dropping, cracking or losing a used phone is a lot less painful than dropping, cracking or losing a pricey new one.

Then there’s the data plan. Consider that your child might not even need one. Data allows them to use the internet while not on WiFi. But kids are experts in hooking up to any free WiFi network in existence. They can travel around hopping from network to network.

There’s WiFi at school, at Tim Hortons and Starbucks, at the mall, and pretty much every other establishment. There might be gaps in their WiFi connections but this gives them the 1980s experience of looking out the bus window instead of down at their phones.

Of course, some parents feel it’s important to be in contact with their kids no matter where they are – especially if they are out and about at night, as teenagers tend to want to be. But you don’t need data for this — a $25-a-month talk and text plan will do. A talk-and-text plan allows you to be in contact with your child any time and also to get help if they are in an emergency situation.

If you want to track your child’s location continuously, that will require a data plan, it’s true. But if they are on WiFi, you can also see where they are, and that may be good enough for some parents. And having data doesn’t guarantee you can always see where they are - if they turn off their phone, you’ll be in the dark anyway.

If you do feel your child needs data, there are options. You could go with a standard plan from one of the big providers – Rogers, Bell or Telus – which will cost around $65 a month for 50 gigabytes (GB) of data. There are cheaper plans specifically for kids under 18, in the range of $45 to $55 a month.

Many parents go with discount providers. You can get a much cheaper plan with companies like Fido, Freedom Mobile and Public Mobile, among others. There you could get a plan for 50GB of data for just $34 a month.

If you really want to save some money, look at plans with a small amount of data. For example, you can get a plan with 4GB of data for $24 a month. Your child will probably balk at 4GB of data, but the reality is that 4GB is enough if they are using it only on an as-needed basis and saving the data-heavy activities like watching videos for when they are on WiFi. The data usage on my own phone averages about 3GB a month.

Be sure to have overage protection though – if your kid uses more than the amount in the plan, the overage charges can be onerous. Overage protection means you’ll be notified if they are running out of data and will give you the option of buying extra data to get them through to the end of the cycle.

Starting small with a used phone and limited data will not only save you money, it could keep your kid off their phone for more hours of the day. That sounds like a double win.

Anita Bruinsma is a Toronto-based financial coach and a parent of two teenage boys. You can find her at Clarity Personal Finance.