Three Things you Can Do to Cut your Monthly Bill

Part 2: Use your Phone's Hidden Paging Capability

See Also: • Test: What's Your Ideal Cell Phone? • See The Smallest Phones • 6 shopping questions

Tackle the power of SMS
You might not know about it but your phone may have paging capability. The "Short Message Service" (SMS), is almost unknown in Americas, but it is extremely popular in Europe and Asia. People prefer to use it partly because it costs less. Some service providers only charge 10 cents per message received while some others let you use that service free of charge! Find out more about SMS in my special SMS section and look for service plans that include messaging, paging or SMS capability in my guides to cellular service plans.

If you find out that your phone can receive numeric messages, email all your friends with a direct link to your provider's messaging page (most of them have one) where they will easily go each time they want to send you a brief message.

... or use the free numeric pager you did not suspect in your phone
Does your service provider offer free caller ID with each plan? If so, you have a numeric pager! And it's time to use it when people try to call you on your cell phone when you're actually home.

Simply get used to this reflex: each time that happens, just look at who's calling on your cell phone, don't answer the call and call back right away from your home phone. You can even tell your relatives in advance that they can expect you to call back whenever they call you and you don't answer. Call forwarding is fine too... but it usually incur per-minute charges!

So, what are your own tips?
Have some tips you can share with us? Express yourself and help others in the forums' Tips & Tricks Folder

Other Tips:

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#1 Manage your Minutes Smartly
#2 Use your Phone's Hidden Paging Capability
#3 Avoid Awful Roaming Pitfalls