Is a cell phone contract debt?
I define debt very simply. Debt is an obligation I have, to pay something to someone.
Following that definition, I just went into debt again after getting out from under my cell phone contract. I say this because when I sign the contract, I’ve just made an obligation for myself to pay a certain amount of money to Verizon for a certain length of time. It’s a debt and there’s really no other way to look at it. Other than death or other dire disaster, I’m probably not going to be able to get out of paying out that contract.
So, this week, I re-upped my contract for my cell phone for another two years to get a new phone. I could afford to pay for a phone, but it wouldn’t have been a very nice phone, or I could have kept my other phone and been contract free. However, my husband’s phone was broken. He could still use it, but it is on it’s last leg and I doubt it would have lasted another month before the entire think broke the rest of the way in half. We talked seriously about going with a tracfone or other pay as you go phone. We could have. But I drive long distances to work and so does he and I want to be able to use my Bluetooth headset so I can talk to friends and family on my way home. It’s expensive to buy those kinds of phones outright.
Ultimately we decided to stick with Verizon and sign up for another two years. I got a really, really nice phone for $0 and my husband got a nice phone for $28.88 at Wal-mart. We did have to pay an upgrade fee we wouldn’t have paid through Verizon with an over-the-phone or online upgrade, but the price difference was staggering at a net of $51.10. (See my note at the bottom of this post for details of the price difference.)
I question whether it makes sense to think of debt this way and if that means I can never have a contract for a service if I want to live entirely debt free. What do you think? Should those of us who want to live a cash based life avoid all contracts that obligate us to pay future amounts for services, even if those services are pseudo-necessary?
What do I mean by pseudo-necessary? I mean things like cell phone service, where I could certainly live without it, but don’t want to. I’ve had break-downs before where I had to walk to a house and make a phone call. I got stuck on a college campus when a tropical storm was only hours away from hitting the area where I live (very, very rare, but it happened that night!), and I’ve had to catch a ride with a stranger when my car broke down too far from anyone’s home to walk there. I have kids these days, and I’m not nearly as comfortable with the idea of those kinds of incidents happening to me while they’re with me.
Does it make sense to balk at the contract when I’m getting the free phone that has all the perks, when I don’t plan to drop my service unless the direst of circumstances hit anyway? Am I going too far in my definition of debt, or not far enough? What are you thoughts about this?
(Despite what we were told by the online salespeople for Verizon, Wal-mart was by far the cheapest phone provider with our upgrade/contract renewal. The thing is, Verizon Online was going to charge us $69.99 + $49.00 = $119.98 after rebate for the phones. Wal-mart charged $28.88 + $20 upgrade fee + $0 + $20.00 upgrade fee = $68.88 for the exact same phones. Walmart.com doesn’t seem to have the same prices.)
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