Wondering what others have done when a child leaves the nest, is launched with a job, apartment, etc. We are on a family plan with Verizon and to split her off, we would save a little ($20 per month savings…our costs would go up $5 per line but drop one line) and her costs would be a lot ($70 per month…whereas she is $40 per month on our family plan). So it doesn’t make sense financially, but she (and we as her parents) wants to be independent financially.
I seem to remember way back when family plans were first invented that people could have their own billing; I assume that is gone now, Verizon rep didn’t mention it. And BTW, I don’t think D feels tied to Verizon like we do (DH does not want to change carriers).
Our sons ages 25 and 27 are still on our Family Cell phone plan. Cheaper for them in the long run so they just transfer their share via Venmo each month. They are financially independent but know a good deal when they see one.
Everybody I know with grown up kids who have left the nest are still in a family cell phone plan. The cost savings are just too much to switch. Work out a way for her to pay her share each month to you.
We have 6 on our plan: H and I, S and DIL, our 2 daughters. They all except the grad student who we still pay for Venmo us their share each month or every other month. If they get a new phone they change their payment amount. No issues.
We still have older S (23) on our cell phone plan. I told him we would switch when he gets married. It’s too much of a pain, or I’m too lazy. At this point, I haven’t made him pay me anything, mostly out of laziness.
But then I realized that it could be making up for the fact that I made him pay me $65/month from ages 12-16ish when he wanted a smartphone and I didn’t want to pay for it. And then I only made his brother pay me for one month before I dropped that requirement for everyone.
(When we added younger S, my bill actually dropped. When we added older S, my bill went up $65/month.)
Our son was on our plan through grad school and a year on the job. We then switched to the TMobile 55+ plan. It only allows two lines. He pays more, but it was the last financial tie and he was happy to cut it.
DD is still on the family plan. Her employer reimbursement for cellphone is still less then her monthly payment to Verizon if she has standalone line ( cost of her new iPhone is added to the bill over 24 month). Also we get corporate discount through my husband’s employer and by paying with Verizon Visa card.
Same with our 23 year old DD. She can afford it on her own but I just leave it alone. She didn’t require much financial assistance in college so it’s okay.
Same here. Our 23-year-old daughter is on our plan. She pays her share each month. I probably wouldn’t have asked her to contribute except for the fact that we had to get unlimited data because she uses so much! If it were just DH and me, we would go with a more limited plan.
All my thirty something kids are on my family plan and all have an auto transfer to my bank account every month. We began that back when using too many minutes was an issue and just continue it to this day. I’d rather give my kid money for something than pay for everyone’s mobile phones
My son who graduated May 2021 and has a good job Venmos me $40/month to stay on our plan. Saves him money vs getting his own plan. We have an unlimited talk, text, data plan with 5 lines total. He also pays us $200/month to use one of our vehicles - he pays gas and repairs but we still pay the insurance.
When he was just home for Christmas and hanging out with some of his friend group from high school he said the prime discussion topic one night was “what do your parents charge you for now?” Cell phone plan was the main one.
Thanks all! Sounds pretty common to just leave the young adults on for now. And yes, if/when she gets married and sets up a plan with a spouse or wants to buy a new phone through a carrier, she’s on her own. I do think we will charge her for her share, easy enough through Venmo.
@one_two that’s exactly our situation, 5 lines, she is the oldest, so we have a ways to go before we downsize the entire plan. We bought out her car lease for her college graduation and she is now transitioning to her own auto insurance.
D3 is on our plan with T-Mobile. It worked out that if we added her to our plan that it was essentially the same price as for 2 lines. So why not. Also, we use her Netflix account, so it works out.
LOL on the Netflix account. I have one just out of college and two in college. At Christmas we took an inventory of who had what and what was the password - one has Disney+, one has Sling and PBS, we have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple+TV. No one had Hulu so we were trying to convince the one who’s sponging off the rest of us to sign up for that!
I just cut the cord with the cell phone plan. Older son and his wife decided they wanted to be on a plan together a while ago. I was on a family plan with my daughter, my sister and her kids.
My husband retired and needed a phone as he had been using his work phone as his personal cell. We checked out all of the plans and decided to go with T-Mobile. It was cheaper by $100 over staying on the family plan that we had. Daughter was free to join us but decided she wanted to stay with her aunt and Verizon. When we were in the family plan, I divided up the costs and sent a Venmo request. Now daughter is the owner of the plan and she will Venmo her aunt as her aunt didn’t want to be responsible for that.
We also shared an ez pass. But daughter moved and was using it everyday, it got too hard for me to add up her costs and I told her she needed to get her own if she was to question me on the charges. She did and now at 32, we are completely broken up Daughter did not go on a plan with her boyfriend because she suspects that he pays nothing for his phone or ez pass and he didn’t want to fess up that his parents pay lol!
I was apprehensive about switching to T-Mobile but it’s been great. No problems with coverage at all. Very pleased and like I said for us it was quite a bit cheaper.
All 5 adult kids are on our unlimited data plan. However, they have student loans, so they will stay on until they are paid off (my 25 year old pays at least $1000 a month and I think will be done in a couple of years, my 23 year old pays at least that plus throws bonus money at them).
My son, daughter and son-in-law are all on our plan. It only costs me $10 each per month for them to have unlimited everything. I don’t even collect it from them. It makes me happy to give them cell service. They do buy their own phones.
Well - haven’t kicked her off, yet. But, since I refuse to pay an extra dime for ANY unlimited data plan, I have the feeling she’ll be jumping ship on her own as soon as she has a steady income.
With WiFi everywhere, our 8 GB plan has served us just fine for years (wife and I use about 10% of THAT). But “a certain someone” occasionally forgets to set up WiFi…
Daughter did not go on a plan with her boyfriend because she suspects that he pays nothing for his phone or ez pass and he didn’t want to fess up that his parents pay lol!