Ifound out something interesting recently. About a year or two ago, any change to my cell phone plan would require a new contract. Even something as simple as going from 100 text messages to 250 or adding the capability of sending picture texts would require another year added to my contract. Even though I rarely jump from one provider to another, the idea of being locked in for another 12 months just makes me squirm.

Because of this, I avoided talking to customer service to lower the family plan that Jonathan and I share. We rarely get close to our plan’s 1400 minutes, but there are some months of the year (November-December, for example) when we do make lots of calls and need the larger plan. I’ve been burned by this in the past – selecting a small plan and then paying $20-$50 extra on a busy month.

I can’t vouch for all carriers, but I did finally call Verizon about this and found out that their policy has changed. No more one-year contract extensions, whether you’re increasing your minutes or decreasing them. So if you know ahead of time that you will need more minutes, bump up your plan. If you don’t think you’ll need as many, drop it down.

Another thing I was advised was that you can make these changes online, but the transition happens immediately and it can get messy. First, your old and new plans become pro-rated, and it triggers a pre-purchase of minutes for your next billing cycle. That means more money upfront, then a credit (if applicable) and then a stable monthly bill after that. Second, you may cause an overage if you lower your minutes at a point in your billing cycle where you’ve already used them. I guess if you need to increase your plan immediately, this could save you money overall, but it does get complicated.

To avoid this, I was told to call customer service directly. They have the ability to future-date the transition to the moment that your billing cycle turns over. With a future-dated transition, you seamlessly jump from the old plan to the new plan with no pro-rating or pre-purchasing headaches. We dropped our plan to 700 minutes, and our bill dropped by about $20 a month. Since then, I’ve been checking our usage periodically and making sure that we stay within our allowance.

There are more frugal options out there, of course, such as pay-as-you-go phones or local-only service, but I’m leery of their restrictions. I need to have service when I travel and I need to make many out-of-state calls. I’ve also experienced the lack of customer service at one of the discount providers, and I’ll just say that there’s a reason they have a security guard in the room at all times. We also have the benefit of a corporate discount from my job, which saves us more than $15 per month.