Economics and Mobile phone Budgeting

I was hard pressed to write an article for my college magazine and for the life of me, I couldn't think of anything. I was scrolling through my gallery mindlessly and as I was staring at the display, a sudden inspiration hit me. Economics is everywhere and all around us. It's in the cup of coffee we drink early morning, the car that we drive around, food that we eat and the clothes that we wear.. the list just goes on.. That got me thinking about mobile phones and economics.. And I did a little online research on it.. So here goes.. 

      It's a well-known fact that mobile phones are viewed as a bittersweet technology. But one thing people fail to notice is that there is economics involved in the usage of mobile phones. To a keen eye, this may not be of great surprise. In fact, it’s a little more complex than family budget.

Keeping track of the number of calls, minutes, texts, and data is a good way to learn budgeting. According to recent statistics, about 75% of children and teens use mobiles. Teens send enormous quantities of text messages. Half of the teens send 50 or more text messages per day, or roughly 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on texting, averaging to 100 messages a day for the entire cohort.

With the nation-wide limit on the maximum number of texts per day, the attention has turned towards Instant Messaging via data network.

Children and teens should try and master mobile phone economics as it's an easy way to learn how to handle their resources.

The first step is to choose the right kind of plan. There are three general plans - individual post-paid plan, family plan and pre-paid plan.

With any of these plans, it’s important to know some basic information, including:

How long do we talk over the phone?

How much it costs per month, including taxes and other fees?

Potential penalties if you go over your minutes, texts or data?

It’s important to take a closer look at monthly statements. Keeping track of the data usage, texts and calls can help shape behavior. Most companies has provisions for customizing plans to match usage. At times, we lose track of the number of times we recharge our phones, and end up spending more than we intend to do. Mobile economics has tangible and intangible lessons to teach. The tangible lesson being that people start planning the money spent on mobiles. They choose the best plan for them and learn to cut down on expenditure. The intangible lesson being that they learn to prioritize. Since the resources are scarce, they cut back on unnecessary calls and text messages. Thus children learn the basic concept of economics i.e. scarcity and wants. 

May be mobile phones aren’t that bad at all.. Parents, school and college authorities, y'all listening? :D