Get smart when it’s time to upgrade your phone

Mobile phones eat up a good chunk of people’s expenditure. They’re a necessity, and mighty nice to own as well. The trouble is that our phones can burn holes in our pockets.

Money can be saved with regard to purchase price and monthly charges by thinking before shopping.

The latest iPhone 15 launched on September 22, with the top-of-the-range oneterabyte iPhone Pro Max retailing for a cool $3299. That’s a lot of money — although most mere mortals are more likely to buy a more entry-level iPhone or Android brand.

When buying a phone, it’s always worth comparing prices on sites such as PriceMe and PriceSpy, waiting for sales and using price-matching.

Buying phones from carriers is still super-popular in New Zealand. But it’s expensive. Don’t be fooled by “interest-free”. It costs — although it may be the only way if you don’t have ready cash or a better way to borrow.

As an exercise, I checked the price of the flagship iPhone (at the time of writing) on the Spark website. For reasons of space, I’ll keep it short.

Over 12 to 36 months “interest-free”, the phone costs $1600, give or take a few cents, which is cheaper than the $2199 you’d pay upfront. Bargain? Not necessarily.

To get that price, you have to agree to be on the $65 monthly plan. The issue with this is twofold. Many providers, including Spark’s own subsidiary Skinny, offer comparable plans that are cheaper.

If you bought the phone upfront and took a $40 plan with Skinny, you’d pay $1560 for your plan over the 36 months, not the $2340 that the $65 compulsory Spark plan would cost. The extra paid on the $65 plan jacks the price of the phone up to $2380. That’s not an outrageous premium to pay for your “interest-free” phone. But it’s money.

If, however, you’re someone who could survive on a $17 four-weekly plan with 1.5 gigabytes of rollover data, then you’ve paid $3299, in effect, for that phone. Or if you can make do with a $9 combo on The Warehouse’s mobile plans with 300 megabytes of rollover data, then your “interest-free” phone has cost you $3589. Phone providers typically make even more profit if you do that human thing of forgetting to change to a cheaper plan at the end of the required period.

When choosing plans, you need to find out how much data/text/calls you actually use each month. Turning off background data/app refreshing and making calls on WhatsApp or other platforms can cut that cost if you have sufficient data, or can make calls on Wi-Fi.

Consider what’s important to you in a package. Do you need endless data, text and calls, hotspotting, discounted Spotify, lightning-fast speed, free overseas calls and texts, or something else?

If you’re travelling overseas, consider buying phones dutyfree.

I’ve noticed when perusing PBTech’s website of late that beneath the price, there is usually a link that says: “Cheaper option from $ . . .” That link goes through to an Auckland Airport duty-free site for overseas travellers. When I checked the price of the same iPhone mentioned above, it was $130 cheaper this way.

Finally, be a little wary of bundling mobile, broadband and power together. Such bundles are often not the good deal they appear to be because one aspect of the bill is inflated to cover discounts elsewhere.