Pay less to talk more | Savings with Sarah #17
Your mobile phone could be hiding some secret savings.
If you've been on the same mobile phone plan for at least a year, there's a good chance you're paying over the odds.
Finder's utilities expert Mariam Gabaji confirms that the big telcos Optus, Vodafone and Telstra tend to update their plans annually, meaning prices creep up and you may be paying more than you need to.
Case in point: a few weeks ago, Vodafone's hiked their post-paid plans – they'll now cost you an extra $4 a month or $48 a year.
Vodafone customers will actually get a little more data included in each plan. But considering the average Australian only uses 12.8GB a month, and Voda's lightest plan comes with 40GB, most people won't need more than their cheapest plan of $45 a month.
I'm a Vodafone customer, so I jumped into the app over the weekend and realised I was on an old $70 plan giving me 500GB of data per month, but could easily make do with 40GB. My plan dropped to $45 (no lock in contract!) – an instant saving of $25.
This is how much each Vodafone plan now costs:
| Previous price and data | New price and data |
|---|---|
| $45 for 40GB | $49 for 50GB |
| $55 for 150GB | $59 for 180GB |
| $65 for 300GB | $69 for 360GB |
But you may be able to do better than this. We have plans on our panel as low as $20 a month for 30GB of data (dropping to 15GB after 3 months)!
The moral of the story is, if you haven't compared your mobile phone plan in a while, you're probably leaving money on the table.
You can start by calculating how much data you need before comparing mobile plans, to find one best suited to your budget and usage.