Wait… They’ll pay you to get a free iPhone 13?

Competition between cellular companies and their marketing strategies can actually let you profit by upgrading to a new phone.  Meanwhile because carrier commitments are a thing of the past you can then move fairly quickly to a discounted carrier. That means REAL profit.  So you don’t have to get stuck with a higher bill for 2 years while you pay off your very expensive “free” (not actually free)” phone over time.

1st, is this the right time to find a deal on your new iPhone? MacRumors Buying Guide will suggest if you should buy or wait.  So they help you time your purchase for the right time to buy. When the time is right then look for applicable deal’s on Slickdeals.net.  Here is an example deal  Deals change daily so monitor Slick Deals to find yours. For our purposes the Holy Grail of deals are the ones that combine a new phone with a gift card from VISA, Costco, Walmart etc. You will see why later.

Often Gift card deals require a phone trade in. Sometimes they don’t. Lets say you have Verizon and an old Samsung or iPhone that is paid off.  (Or you buy an old Samsung S9 on Ebay for $100 just so you can trade it in for a net gain).  You can combine these deals:  A Visa gift card might be $250-$600 per phone when you buy your new phone from a carrier like Verizon.  Keep or sell your gift card but don’t pay down your new phone yourself yet. (Of course your new bill is higher as Verizon needs to pay off that new phone).  After a brief required minimum time you can generally leave Verizon. Maybe that is after 90 days. Of course, Verizon wants to to be paid off for the phone when you leave.  Fortunately, T-mobile often offers to pay Verizon off for you when you switch to T-Mobile.  The max amount of the pay off varies over time so watch SlickDeals or T-mobile.com to find out the best time to switch. T-Mobile has no commitment so your phone is paid off plus you hopefully you got a few hundred on on the gift card.

Also worthy to consider are deals for adding a new line or deals where you buy one and get one free (bogo).  These deals will not make you a profit but there do offer significant savings. But, what if you don’t need a new number or if you need to keep your old number? To those ends consider these options: a. It might be good to just dump your old number if you were getting too many spam calls on it.  Or b. simply spend $20 to Port your old number to Google voice.  That way you can keep the old line so you don’t really miss calls to your old number.  c. If you already have a Google Voice number then consider porting that number to a new favorite cellular carrier.  You can add a second sim card or a “virtual sim card” and keep both lines on one phone for short or long while. Ok but lets say you think t-mobile is too expensive.  Next take your phone and number to a discount re seller like: Pure talk USA, Patriot mobile, Charity mobile or Infinity mobile.

In summary, over a few months you lowered your bill, got your phone paid off and moved to a discount carrier for a lower monthly price.

Does that sound like too much time phone stores? Not necessarily.  Do each step online.  Wait 2 days for your new sim card or use a virtual sim so it is all done without talking to anybody or leaving your basement.

So out of excuses? Click any link above that sounds relevant to you and get started.