It seems that everybody has cell phone these days. It is not uncommon to see people driving down the road talking on one. When people go for a walk in the park, they carry their cell phone. There is nowhere you can go without seeing people with them.

There are so many cellular phone plans out there it tends to get confusing. You need to know what you are going to use the phone for before making a decision about what type plan you need. If you are only going to have the phone as a safety measure, you will not need to purchase a lot of minutes and you can easily keep your costs low. On the other hand, if you use your cell phone for working purposes, you might need to look at a plan with high minutes.

Another thing to keep in mind when shopping for a plan is to know what features the plan offers. Your current phone may not support all of the offered features so you would be wasting money on a service not available to you.

You need to choose a carrier who is well known in the area where you live. If you do not you might find that you don’t have service much of the time. Because of the number of carriers, cell phone bills have become more reasonable. Competition has forced them to offer plans which are desirable to everybody. Because of the reasonable costs, many people are now using their cell phone as their only phone.

Local Plans: These plans are good for people who generally stay close to home. They are inexpensive if you limit your calls to the local area. You will have to pay extra for calls made outside the area and in many cases you will have to pay roaming charges.

Regional Plans: These plans will cover a wider area than local plans and they are still fairly reasonable. Regional plans will usually cover a multi-state area so it is important to know what area is covered unless you want to pay additional for your calls.

National Plans: These plans will cost more money each month but you will be able to call anywhere inside the United States without calling long distance. These plans are good for people who have family in other areas of the country.

Family or Shared Plans: This type plan will allow two or more family members to have phones on the same plan. Each member will have a separate phone number but they will all share the minutes. When calling each other they are not charged for any minutes. The only drawback is you need to know about how many minutes each member has used in order to keep up with your monthly allotment.

Many plans now offer roll over minutes which means if you do not use all of your minutes in a month the unused portion will roll over to the next month. Most plans also allow you to call another person who carries the same company to talk to each other without using any of their monthly allotment of minutes.