15 minutes talk time per day Get enough minutes for everyone on your plan. If you have more than three people on same plan, you should avoid 300 and 500 minute plans. Assuming you have free nights and weekends, a 300 minute plan works out to 15 minutes of talk time per day. This is certainly not a good deal, even for two people. Unless you like to pay outrageous per minute fees, get as many minutes as you can afford.

Text Away Teenagers love text messaging. So do cell phone companies since it costs about 10 cents to send out a message and .2 cents to receive one. If you have teenagers, consider a plan that includes unlimited text messaging and internet access. If this is not available you can also get a cell phone that is not internet ready so they can’t go online even if they wanted to. The same applies to camera phones, enhanced phones and anything else that can end up costing you at end of month.

Volume The number one complaint against rude cell phone users is that ‘they are so loud.’ There was a time when a phone conversation was a private thing, but cell phones have made our private conversations public. If you find yourself in any public arena, find a quiet or private corner to carry on your cell phone conversation. Also, turn down that ringer. Some people turn it up so loud that they can hear phone ringing from another state. If you are so far out of range that you cannot hear your cell phone ring on medium, or lower, take it with you and you won’t miss your call.