Money saving tips for students: MOBILES AND LANDLINES

by Amanda Prouten

Mobiles

Student money saving tips: Calling all students! Work your mobile phone contracts and box clever with your phone to get the best mobile deal for your money.

If you have a mobile phone contract, make sure its one that's right for you. It's no good having 200 free off peak landline minutes and no free texts, if you only use your phone for texting and phoning other mobiles.

Haggle for the deal you want when your contract is about to expire. Make out you've been offered a better deal by another company and threaten to leave if they don't match it.

You can use www.call1899.co.uk to make cheaper calls from mobiles as well, but the prefix is longer and more complicated that the standard 1899 used for BT landlines.

Make sure you always get a free upgrade when you're entitled to one. Flog the old phone on www.ebay.com or, if it's not working too well, many mobile phone companies will give you cash-back for your old phone.

Never, ever use your mobile to text or make a call when you can use your work phone and email!

Try to avoid using you mobile abroad. It's much cheaper to buy a local payphone card or, if you visit the country frequently, buy a local sim card and get your phone unlocked (if you're on a contract).

Compare different mobile phone deals at www.switchwithwhich.co.uk.

Landlines

Never use your home phone when your work phone will do the job without threatening your employment prospects!

If you're with BT (www.bt.com), sign up for their Option 1 - The Hour Plan and just pay for the line rental (£10.50 a month) and make use of their free answerphone service. Calls will cost you 5.5p for any off-peak national and local calls for up to 60mins. But if you then register online with www.call1899.co.uk, and dial the prefix 1899 before any phone number, your calls will be much cheaper than any BT charges. For example, www.call1899.co.uk offers free UK fixed line calls for any length of call for just a connection fee of 3p. They also offer very competitive rates dialling to international and mobile phone calls as well as dialling from mobiles and non BT landlines.

If you're allowed free off peak calls for up to 60 minutes a call on a phone packager deal, make sure it is off-peak and that you don't ramble on after 60 minutes. Put the phone down every 60 minutes then call back and you could be speaking to the same person for hours without paying anything. Likewise, don't make long calls at peak time.

Don't call mobiles from your landline if you have free minutes on an anytime, any network mobile phone contract.

Check out better phone deals with www.uswitch.com.

Make use of any cheap cable phone/broadband and digital TV packages available in your area such as www.ntl.co.uk, www.telewest.co.uk and www.homechoice.co.uk.

If you have broadband and have loads of similarly techy mates, you needn't pay for phone calls at all with Skype. With a bit of extra software (free to download from the Skype website) and a headset, you can talk over the internet to others with broadband and Skype anywhere in the world for no extra charge other than the price of your monthly broadband tariff. You can also call landlines abroad for the price of a local call. This is suitable for PC and Mac users. For more details look at www.skype.com.

More Health, Hairstyles, Makeup Tips & How-Tos on Mookychick