
Does Your Mom Pay Your Phone Bill? - AndrewWarner
http://priceonomics.com/does-your-mom-pay-your-phone-bill/
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jonemo
Only skimmed through this, but it seems to miss one important point: In
Germany (1st spot for self-sufficient teenagers in this study) it is perfectly
possible to pay for the normal phone/text/data coverage as a teenager by using
cash or maybe a bank account. In the US, however, you need a social security
number, good credit, proof of address (i.e. unrelated items teenagers often do
not or can not get) to purchase your average cellphone plan.

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ajasmin
Do you have to provide all that info just to get a prepaid plan?

Can a tourist get a SIM card in the US?

~~~
cbhl
It's a PITA to get a SIM card when visiting the US -- for example, I had to
order online from T-mo's website, and they limited the number of SIMs to some
arbitrary limit per calendar year (so good luck if you are in shared housing
and the previous set of interns/tourists has exhausted the limit for the
year).

Getting a SIM card in store seemed to require signing a multi-year contract,
so I ran as far as possible before I could figure out whether they wanted my
SSN or not.

~~~
nocontext
The SIM cards for T-Mobile & AT&T prepaid come packaged with cheap (~$20)
feature phones and are available in almost every national chain drugstore,
supermarket, and general retail store in the US.

~~~
cbhl
It seems wasteful to buy a feature phone if I know I have a phone that works
on their networks, though.

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z2
I'm 24, US, and I'm paying for my parents' and sibling's plans. I must be
doing something wrong.

For the US though, perhaps the reason is that many teens start off on family
plans and simply never move off because it's slightly more reasonably-priced
on the whole?

~~~
sliverstorm
Family plans are actually significantly more reasonably-priced, if you have
several phones. Incremental cost for additional lines is very cheap.

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superuser2
I pay the additional cost ($10 line + $30 data) for my phone on our family
plan.

This is _drastically_ different from "paying my own phone bill" which would be
$100/mo for equivalent service.

Lots of people now are taking advantage of family plans to get reasonable
pricing. Even my personal finance teacher (fourtysomething) is on a family
plan with his extended family - it's allowed and it's cheaper.

~~~
breser
I've got news for you. You're getting ripped off by AT&T. Unless you are a
heavy user $40 is more expensive than what you'd pay on a prepaid provider.
There are a number of options such T-Mobiles $30 prepaid plan (that's somewhat
hidden and includes 5GB of 4G data, unlimited texting and 100 minutes of
voice), Ting (which can be very cheap if you are only a moderate user and as
low as just $15 with up to 100 minutes, 100 texts, and under 100 MBs of data),
and a bunch of other cheaper options.

I'd encourage you to look at your actual usage and reconsider these all you
can eat plans. They really are not that great of a deal unless you're a high
usage user, which a lot of people are not.

Another point I'll make is be careful about looking at your reported usage.
I'm not sure about AT&T since I haven't had an account there in a while, but
Verizon can be very missleading (often showing your usage rounded up to the
next nearest whole GB e.g. 100MB shows as 1GB on the usage part of your bill).
In the case of Verizon I had to retrieve a CSV file and add my own usage up to
realize I wasn't using as much as I thought I was.

~~~
superuser2
I live in the suburbs of a second-string city. In (and more importantly
between) the suburbs and exurbs, prepaid and MVNO coverage is Swiss cheese at
best.

My primary use case for cellular data is navigation, which is most important
precisely where MVNOs and T-Mobile Prepaid are entirely dark. My first phone
was T-Mobile prepaid and while their customer service was friendly, their
network was not within an order of magnitude of useful if you got any further
from downtown than my house.

This might be a good strategy for someone who never leaves a major
metropolitan area though.

EDIT: Also I have Verizon, which is rock solid in this market. Since I ditched
prepaid, I've never been without cell coverage except inside of very dense
buildings.

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adregan
You know, I pay my own phone bill, but I don't really care if someone's mother
paid their phone bill.

I can't understand articles like this one that want anything and everything to
appear as a scathing indictment of millennials (or perhaps only millennials in
the US).

Even if it were, so what? Parents don't live forever and if some are too
dependent, they won't always have the luxury.

~~~
icebraining
Nothing in the post indicts millennials, and in the post linked by this one,
they even say that millennials find themselves "screwed by financial storms
caused by another generation".

~~~
adregan
I am reading the title and the notion that "it's somewhat reasonable for your
parents to pay your phone bill when you're a teenager. How about when you're a
young adult" as slightly negative. As well as reading "Perhaps this is further
evidence that in the US, millennials are pretty much screwed without the
parental safety net?" as negative. While it's not an indictment per se, often
these sentiments are indicative of an underlying "anti-millennial" thread.
Perhaps I'm only projecting a subtext.

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jack-r-abbit
I am always skeptical of studies that make "teenager" a combined demographic
with regards to their expected responsibility (as opposed to likes/dislikes,
etc). Being 19 is worlds apart from being 15. At 15 I still lived at home,
worked on some farm for ~nothing and my dad provided me with everything a
parent should. This is pretty much what was expected at the time. (It was a
while ago so a cell phone was not even really an option). But at 19 I had
already moved out and was 100% supporting myself. This is also pretty much
what is expected, at least by parents. :) So to lump them into the same group
in a situation like this strikes me as odd.

~~~
johnchristopher
Well, times are chanching and the adulthood is coming later than in the
70/80/90's nowadays. We have that whole adulescent[0] hing lasting well into
the early 20's.

[0] Adulescent is a french word that is the contraction of the "adulte" and
"adolescent" words. Basically: extended teenagehood into the 20's.

~~~
MichaelGG
That seems like a good thing. I never understood why classmates seemed to
anxious to get their own car, start paying their own rents, and so on.

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JoshGlazebrook
I think the main thing is that on most of the major national carriers here in
the US, it's cheaper to either pay your parents (or someone else) your portion
of the line on the family plan (usually $9.99 + data plan), or in the case of
the new share plans, $30-$40 for a smartphone. Compared to setting up your own
individual plan which would cost even more.

Now, from experience, my sister (36) only just got off my parent's family plan
this June. I myself (22) do not plan on getting off my parent's Verizon plan
anytime soon because I want to retain unlimited data as long as it's
available.

If it does get to the point of where they want be off their plan, I will have
to go with T-Mobile or another pre-paid carrier because there is no way in
hell I will pay $100/month with Verizon just to have a single smart phone.

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vault_
It'd be interesting to look at how much of the 20-24 demographic is college
students. In the US at least it's pretty normal for parents to pay for their
children's phone bills while their in college[1]. Since about half of the
20-24 demographic is likely in college (in the US at least), I'm not too
surprised to see that about half of the people in the US have their phone bill
payed by their parent.

I'd be interested to see the demographic breakdown as high school, college, or
not in school. I think it would offer more insight into a trend.

[1] This is anecdotal. I'm in college currently and most of the people I know
are on family plans.

~~~
Hansi
I don't get why that should be normal even if in college? I'd guess that
95-100% of my university class mates paid their own bills when I was in that
age group in Iceland.

Personally I've been paying my own bill since I got my first mobile at 14 in
1999...

But I do wonder if this does actually include PayAndGo correctly?

~~~
Crito
In the US, family plans are often more economical so teenagers keep them when
they go to college. I believe many people work out deals with their parents so
that they pay for part of the bill.

If it were cheaper to get their own plan, most probably would.

~~~
Hansi
I guess you might be right. I may be too used to the Icelandic mentality where
if they'd notice something like that they'd think "Let's just allow for a sub-
subscriber plan and charge them an extra 10% for a 'related plan' but with the
same rates but different billing. They get there separation of concerns and we
get a 10% extra."

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squeed
From my experience, phone plans in the US today are kind of like rent-
controlled apartments: The prices for new entrants keep going up, so you have
a very strong disincentive to switch plans.

I have a 4-or-so year old plan with a major carrier. I looked in to switching
during the most recent round of phone upgrades, and found that my
grandfathered plan was at least 15% cheaper than anything on the market that
matched my usage.

I suspect this is also a major disincentive to leave your parents' plan. Even
if you pay the whole bill!

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yoloswaggins
This looks like another one of those shallow statistics that people use to say
"Ha, look at these kids, they're lost without us!"

I feel like a lot of people think like that because they don't realize that
working with computers IS a job, even if you aren't working 9-5 every day
unclogging sinks.

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dfrey
So if I don't pay my own phone bill then my Mom is paying it? There are other
possibilities. Maybe my employer pays my phone bill. Maybe _your_ mom pays my
phone bill.

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cliftonk
Mobile carriers in the US offer substantial price cuts for bundled phone
services and very high average subscription prices. There's not enough
information here to be useful.

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designium
In Brazil, it's a luxury to pay for phone/text/data, teenagers and young
adults have to pay for themselves because their parents can't pay the bills
anyway.

~~~
slig
Where's that?

I spend ~$5 (R$ 10) a month on my prepaid data plan. I have to put ~$17 (R$
35) in credits every 90 days or so.

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gcb0
to be honest... here in the US i know unrelated people that are in each other
'family plan' just because of price.

price here is awful, so, the more the merrier.

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ahussain
Phone service is also much more expensive in the USA. In the UK, I pay £25 per
month, in the US it's $70.

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stevoski
That article comes to grand conclusions from a little bit of data.

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beautybasics
Note that Indian phone market is primarily pre paid.

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jrockway
Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies.

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elf25
wtf, I pay my mom's phone bill.

