Cash advice

In most households, there’s more than one person with a mobile phone. If this is the case in your home, it can work out considerably cheaper if you switch to a family – or shared – telephone plan…

1 TELL ME MORE… Family plans or ‘shared’ plans allow you to link anywhere between two and 20 different mobile contracts to one account. This means there’s just one bill to pay and one payment coming out of your bank account each month, which makes it far easier to manage. And the best bit? You could get a discount of anywhere between 10 per cent and 50 per cent on each new contract you add to the account.

3 LET’S TALK NUMBERS

A Family SIM from BT Mobile will save you at least £3.50 per month. This increases the more SIMs you add.

EE knocks 10 per cent off the cost of each additional contract, while Vodafone offers a 15 per cent discount.

02 gives you 10 per cent off for each additional line you add on to a family plan (although this is capped at 40 per cent), and Virgin Media offers a £2 discount every month for each extra contract you add (up to four lines).

4 WHAT ELSE CAN I GET?

02’s family plan comes with free access to Qustodio, the parental control software, which can be installed on up to five different devices. This lets parents block access to websites and apps, and can restrict the time your child can spend on them. Meanwhile, EE lets you share data allowance from one of the mobile contracts in the shared plan, and BT gives everyone on the Family SIM free access to thousands of wifi hotspots around the world. Virgin Media’s family plan gives you unlimited calls between the different family sims along with parental controls that let you block access to apps, set time limits and even locate your child’s device location.

2 WHAT’S THE DEAL?

While O2, Vodafone, Virgin Media and EE let you have different packages on one account, the BT Family SIM requires you all to have the same monthly allowance of minutes, data and texts.

5 WHERE CAN I GET ONE?

BT Mobile, EE, 02, Vodafone and Virgin Media all offer family or shared plans. They’re easy to set up – just call customer services and explain that you want to add another line to your account. Or, for BT customers, say you want to convert your existing SIM cards to a Family SIM.