by Dawn Hawkins

Created on: March 24, 2010

Cell phones are an essential part of today's lifestyle. The busier people get, the more they rely on their cell phones to keep in contact with the people in their lives. Some people aren't able to get a regular cell phone contract or simply don't want to bother with a contract. That is where a prepaid cell phone comes into play.

A prepaid cell phone is a cell phone that can be purchased by anyone and everyone. There are no credit checks and no contracts to sign. These are rather expensive to use though. You can purchase the prepaid phone at nearly any store that has an electronics department including Wal-Mart. After you purchase the phone, it can be activated after you purchase minutes. The minutes are usually very expensive and it comes with a catch.

You will have to pay a per call price as well. Some companies, such as Verizon only charge a daily use fee but that can severely cut into the money that you put on the phone. After you have paid that fee, which comes off the card that you purchased, you can talk to any Verizon customer for as long as you want with no other charges. Minutes will only apply to calls made outside of the network.

There are some very good points of owning a prepaid cell phone, but there is always a price to pay. Your phone will be cheaper and it will be yours. You don't have to worry about whether your contract is up in order to get a new phone. You also don't have to worry about not having enough money to pay the bill if you don't have enough money. The downfall is that you pay a huge amount of money to use the phone for calls and texts. You also don't have as many options of different types of cell phones as you do when you sign a contract.

Prepaid phones are great for people who don't really use the phone that often. They are also good for those who can't get a contract through a cell phone company or for parents who want to limit the amount of time their children can spend talking on the cell phone each month. A prepaid cell phone means that the minutes are already paid for when you use the phone. You get the amount of minutes that you can afford for that month and nothing more. Once it is paid for, you can use the phone as much as you want until the minutes run out. Once they run out, you can either choose to purchase more or be without the use of the phone. No further commitment is required.

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