How to Estimate a Cell Phone Bill

Estimating your cell phone bill is fairly easy to do.

If you have been making a lot of phone calls or getting a lot of text messages lately, you may be wondering how big your next cell phone bill might be when it comes in the mail. If this happens to you, it is a good idea to estimate your cell phone bill. This estimate is useful to ease your worries and possibly help you decide whether to make changes to your cell phone plan to prevent excess overcharges. Estimating your cell phone bill, which is fairly easy to do, is also a good idea if you are trying to stick to a budget.

Things You'll Need

• Recent cell phone bill
• Calculator

Instructions

1. Use your cell phone to check your current number of minutes used for the month. To determine your used minutes, you can enter a numerical code on your cell phone, such as: Verizon, enter #646; T-Mobile, enter #646#; AT&T, enter *646#; or Sprint, enter *4 and follow along with the voice prompts. Depending on your carrier, you will get either your minutes used for the month or the remaining minutes for the month.

2. Determine if you are still within your allotted minute allowance for your cell phone plan. You can look at a recent cell phone bill if you are not sure how many minutes are on your plan.

3. Do some simple math to estimate if you will go over your plan's minutes. For example, if you have used 200 minutes for the month and you are only half way through your billing cycle, you can just double the amount of minutes you have used to get an estimate of what you might use that billing cycle.

4. Look at one of your recent cell phone bills or go to your cell phone carrier's website to see the basic cost of your plan. Also, check to see the cost for texts, going over the allotted minutes in your plan and any other charges you might be expecting on your next cell phone bill. Add up the amounts you find to get an estimated subtotal.

5. Add your state sales tax (if applicable) and any other fees you are normally charged, which you can also find on your recent cell phone bill, and you will get a more accurate total estimate of your upcoming cell phone bill.

References

• UCAN: How To Check Your Cell Phone Minutes and Account Balance

Resources

• PhoneDog: List of Cell Phone Providers