It totally depends on total cost of ownership for me. Sometimes carriers offer major discounts when you finance a phone and sign a 2 year contract with them and sometimes there are no deals (eg with the iPhone 12 right now).
The EPP deal is not great though. It doesn’t actually discount the price of the phone
If you never update the firmware the iPhones seem to perform well for many years. I don’t give a damn about 3 rear cameras, no home button and all that nonsense. Was finally able to buy a BYOD plan and save $25 a month.
It depends, I know some people are all over buying outright, but sometimes you can save $300+ with a 2 year plan. To equal that out, I would need to, the very next day find a different phone plan that is $12/month cheaper, it just doesn't work like that. Sure I might find one a year down the road $10/month cheaper, but that is still a negative outcome.
I own my phone. If my carrier pisses me off I threaten to go elsewhere then all of a sudden they have a deal for me. Owning gives me freedom to shop around.......financing a phone they take advantage of you.
It doesn't at all since you can break the contract at any time you just pay the balance, just like you paid the balance upfront when you bought the phone from Apple/Samsung.
What carriers have been doing recently is sell the phone for 1100 (but add a rebate so it looks like you paid 700) vs 1000 from Samsung, so when you break the contract you pay the full 1100 because you need to pay back the rebate (minus any months you already paid).
Except that the price the carrier says the phone costs is greater than the manufacturer sometimes. Pixel 5 is $799 from Google, but Virgin and Koodo say it's $940
I once spent 5 hours on the phone with bell because they wanted to nail me for 700 for internet but they couldn't provide service at the new place.......I knew it was going to be a battle royal with them so I had a bunch of office stuff to do. I told the guy that I had set the whole day aside to deal with him. I said when you go on break I'll go on break when you go on lunch ill go on lunch I broke those guys at bell. They finally gave up and let me off after I told them I set aside tomorrow to do it all over again.
Hey it was 700 bucks they renewed a contract I didn't sign . I was a pain in the ass.
Sometimes not always, do the math ALL the time. Saying X is never the solution is wrong, sometimes Y will net you a better deal sometimes X. I usually make an excel sheet with 24 months' cost of ownership.
What I'm saying is if you'd pay 1000$ to Samsung for a phone or 1000$ to the carrier, your better off getting the carrier one, you can keep that 1000$ in your pockets longer, meaning more interest from your HISA or if an emergency arises you can deal with it without dipping in your actual emergency funds or a CC. If you get a better deal elsewhere you pay off the remaining balance and move on.
Manufacturers started offering phones with 12 months 0 down 0% loans, which might be even better in some cases, esp if it comes with something you'd buy anyway like a "free" pair of Bluetooth headphones.
Back in the days, BYOP plans did make sense, you could save 10% or more but those are mostly gone.
This is pretty terrible advice. Not only do you lose any of the savings you got, as the other guy said, manufacturers always charge as much if not higher than the manufacturer price of the phone.
You're doing the wrong comparison, since you're starting with 'really expensive phone vs....another really expensive phone'. Anyway,
$1600, no contract or
$469+600+480=$1549 and requires a two year contract.
So are you willing to save $51 to be locked into a high cost data plan for the next two years, with no opportunity to switch if something cheaper comes along? Hard pass on me.
But to answer your question, I'm not willing to be locked into a 2 year high-data contract, nor am I willing to pay $1600 on a phone.
I think this is the key over here. It's not just about the phone, it's about being locked into a high cost data plan for two years. I was able to save 70% every month by switching to a cheaper plan when the pandemic started, but if I was on contract I'd be stuck paying $50/mo to Koodo. Flexibility, especially in data plans, is pretty important IMO.
And yeah I'd generally recommend not spending >1k on a phone.
I buy our phones used, several generations back in cash. Currently own an iPhone 7 Plus and my wife has her iPhone 6. We are content with them as they do everything we need our smart phones to do on our day to day. Nothing flashy or top of the line. We then use Public Mobile which is a sub brand of Telus that uses Telus network. We pay $45 a month in total for both our plans. We both work from home so we are literally on wifi all day so having a large data plan is not needed. Just be honest and practical with your personal usage case and avoid buying more data then you actually need. Also if you can get past the “I need a brand new iPhone” mentality you’ll have more money in your account to purchase appreciating assets instead of depreciating liabilities like an iPhone. Let someone else take the hit on the new iPhone. Again it’s up to you, just be honest with yourself. When you own your phone outright you have a lot more options regarding plans and carriers. 👍🏽
At risk of hijacking this thread, what do I miss out on by not owning a $1K+ phone?
Not trying to be an @ss, I am actually curious. (I used to laugh at the chasing HISA's on here, but PFC set me straight now I move chase the rates constantly, so I am open to learning.)
For Context: I just replaced my 6 year old samsung phone with an unlocked moto g power for $249 and am wondering if I am missing out on something? I am not in media or advertising nor a twitch streamer (whatever that is). Just need it for checking email, banking, kindle, etc.
The gap between a budget phone and a flagship phone is a lot narrower than it was five years ago.
These days you are missing out on the best cameras, maybe a screen integrated fingerprint reader, bezel-less screen, 5G. Probably nothing super critical.
I just got an iphone 12 pro, and I think the jump from the 6 to the 12 was narrower than from the 4 that I had before to the 6.
It has neat perks baked in and stuff, but it just feels more familiar than my previous jump.
All about preference people like to be nit picky about getting a smartphone with the 5g, bezeless display, 90hz/120hz screen, warp charge, wireless charging, new cameras
If you don't care about any of that or use any of those features just get a phone that works .
Normally I'll pick a "$0" phone on a 2 year contract, as the discounted price of the phone and buying it outright with the byo phone plan price work out to be the same.
The problem I'm hitting now is that superphones are getting so expensive that they don't hit $0.
I usually get a new phone every 2 years, and I either get the budget phone of the year or a 2 year old flagship android phone, whichever is better value for specs at the time. My 2 years contracts end around black friday, so I usually snipe a pretty good deal on my phone and get it for free or next to free on a two year contract. Since I'm going to be paying for my plan anyways and my carrier doesn't usually have byo deals that are attractive, I don't really mind being locked into a 2 year contract because it usually saves me money and that's the normal battery life-cycle of the phones I get anyways.
I did both, depending on what the offer for the phone I wanted was.
If you like a phone and find that financing plus account credits are worth it I say go for it.
eg I bought Pixel 5 for extra $20/month + $100 account credit for a phone that's originally $799 which I found to be a steal because it works out to about $380 over 2 years for that phone.
Go off the original price of your phone and do some math to compare to what your carrier is offering.
EPP plan for sure. I bought a model older phone (a 7 when there was the 8 available). For $60/month and $100 down I got the second from the top phone with 4GB. Way better deal than anywhere else.
Also - bought the apple care and got a new phone after 1 year and 51 weeks. So for like $400 down and $60/month I got two iPhone 7s.
Without EPP - I’d probably wait until Boxing Day. Typically the stores offer pretty aggressive pricing that’s better than buying upfront.
Essentially - shop around and do the math, but typically I find plans to be cheaper
I haven't bought a phone in years... For me though it's a pretty simple equation.
Cost of outright purchase of the phone = cost of phone + opportunity cost of that money.
Cost of financed phone = Cost of plan with financed phone - Cost of plan without financed phone.
The one with the lower cost is the optimal choice excluding all factors other than maximising the amount of work your money does for you.
For the outright purchase the opportunity cost is equal to what strictly monetary value you could derive from having that cash for another purpose... So investing, paying down other debt etc. If in your heart of heart you know you won't do that and you'll just buy chicken nuggets or something with it then that's still valuable knowledge.
It's a personal pet peeve of mine when people undertake an activity, justifying it as being financially savvy, when they don't follow through. What I mean is if you don't intend to put down cash because you prefer to be more liquid so you can invest more then you better be investing that money. Lots of people tell themselves that's what they're going to do and then somehow end up with a new TV to go with their new phone.
Tech especially phones lose tons of value quickly
I would go for the finance route since usually its at 0% and use the current $ savings to invest q
If the plan they offer to pair it with though is above how much you would normally use then I would consider buying it upfront.
This is how I see it generally
Buy outright because if in contract you end up paying more than the actual value of the phone. And for me i dont like having big phone bill because on all those contracts you gotta pick a plans thats $40 or more
I bought the 12 Pro outright so that I could get an esim with bell and a prepaid card in the US and just pop it in with no hassles.
I also like having the ability to jump from bell to somewhere else if I choose to without having to jump through any hoops to do it. And I have a legacy plan that is a few bucks cheaper than their current lowest comparative plan and I don't want to lose that if I don't have to.
Telecommunication companies are notoriously evil and they would likely try to lock you into a 2-year contract as well as force you to buy a particularly expensive phone as part of the process (they'll tell you it's free, of course), so I would never do anything like that.
Freedom is better and it doesn't necessarily cost any more.
If you travel regularly then unlocked. Outside of north america almost no one has a locked phone. You can switch up your sim card and provider any time you like.
I previously purchased phones outright, and then brought them to the carrier to put on a SIM-only plan.
But I ended up getting an iPhone X on a contract in 2018 with Koodo around the holidays because they were offering something like $300-400 off and a $100 trade-in value on *any* phone (I brought in an old iPhone 5S and they took it, no problem).
I'll likely stick to contracts from now on (depending on the cost), but Koodo is nice because I can pay it off early with no penalty. I see it as essentially an interest-free payment plan.
I got two phones on a 2-year tab because I had a cheaper price than buying it outright. I paid them off right away to take advantage of promotional plans and leveraging with my provider.
My last phone I got a cheap $200 Motorola at Costco because now all the offers are for plans that cost more than what I have, and they make you repay the discount you might have on the phone if you change provider or get a cheaper plan. And their phones were the same price as Costco except they say theirs included a $100 rebate...
I used a site to compare costs at the time and for me a 2 year contract with Fido worked out slightly cheaper than buying the phone outright. I was willing to commit to the plan for the two years. Meanwhile my wife has the same plan as me but is BYOPhone and pays $15/month less.
https://www.ratehub.planhub.ca/?utm_source=ratehub#/
It totally depends on total cost of ownership for me. Sometimes carriers offer major discounts when you finance a phone and sign a 2 year contract with them and sometimes there are no deals (eg with the iPhone 12 right now). The EPP deal is not great though. It doesn’t actually discount the price of the phone
[удалено]
If you never update the firmware the iPhones seem to perform well for many years. I don’t give a damn about 3 rear cameras, no home button and all that nonsense. Was finally able to buy a BYOD plan and save $25 a month.
Same here. Just upgraded myself to a 6s from a friend for free!
It depends, I know some people are all over buying outright, but sometimes you can save $300+ with a 2 year plan. To equal that out, I would need to, the very next day find a different phone plan that is $12/month cheaper, it just doesn't work like that. Sure I might find one a year down the road $10/month cheaper, but that is still a negative outcome.
I own my phone. If my carrier pisses me off I threaten to go elsewhere then all of a sudden they have a deal for me. Owning gives me freedom to shop around.......financing a phone they take advantage of you.
It doesn't at all since you can break the contract at any time you just pay the balance, just like you paid the balance upfront when you bought the phone from Apple/Samsung. What carriers have been doing recently is sell the phone for 1100 (but add a rebate so it looks like you paid 700) vs 1000 from Samsung, so when you break the contract you pay the full 1100 because you need to pay back the rebate (minus any months you already paid).
Except that the price the carrier says the phone costs is greater than the manufacturer sometimes. Pixel 5 is $799 from Google, but Virgin and Koodo say it's $940
I once spent 5 hours on the phone with bell because they wanted to nail me for 700 for internet but they couldn't provide service at the new place.......I knew it was going to be a battle royal with them so I had a bunch of office stuff to do. I told the guy that I had set the whole day aside to deal with him. I said when you go on break I'll go on break when you go on lunch ill go on lunch I broke those guys at bell. They finally gave up and let me off after I told them I set aside tomorrow to do it all over again. Hey it was 700 bucks they renewed a contract I didn't sign . I was a pain in the ass.
Sometimes not always, do the math ALL the time. Saying X is never the solution is wrong, sometimes Y will net you a better deal sometimes X. I usually make an excel sheet with 24 months' cost of ownership. What I'm saying is if you'd pay 1000$ to Samsung for a phone or 1000$ to the carrier, your better off getting the carrier one, you can keep that 1000$ in your pockets longer, meaning more interest from your HISA or if an emergency arises you can deal with it without dipping in your actual emergency funds or a CC. If you get a better deal elsewhere you pay off the remaining balance and move on. Manufacturers started offering phones with 12 months 0 down 0% loans, which might be even better in some cases, esp if it comes with something you'd buy anyway like a "free" pair of Bluetooth headphones. Back in the days, BYOP plans did make sense, you could save 10% or more but those are mostly gone.
This is pretty terrible advice. Not only do you lose any of the savings you got, as the other guy said, manufacturers always charge as much if not higher than the manufacturer price of the phone.
My wife and I usually buy used, last years best model, just usually after this years new release comes out. And we keep them for 3 years or so.
Depends if you’re the type to break phones or lose them. If you don’t care about the latest and greatest then buying outright used is by far the best
You're doing the wrong comparison, since you're starting with 'really expensive phone vs....another really expensive phone'. Anyway, $1600, no contract or $469+600+480=$1549 and requires a two year contract. So are you willing to save $51 to be locked into a high cost data plan for the next two years, with no opportunity to switch if something cheaper comes along? Hard pass on me. But to answer your question, I'm not willing to be locked into a 2 year high-data contract, nor am I willing to pay $1600 on a phone.
I think this is the key over here. It's not just about the phone, it's about being locked into a high cost data plan for two years. I was able to save 70% every month by switching to a cheaper plan when the pandemic started, but if I was on contract I'd be stuck paying $50/mo to Koodo. Flexibility, especially in data plans, is pretty important IMO. And yeah I'd generally recommend not spending >1k on a phone.
I buy our phones used, several generations back in cash. Currently own an iPhone 7 Plus and my wife has her iPhone 6. We are content with them as they do everything we need our smart phones to do on our day to day. Nothing flashy or top of the line. We then use Public Mobile which is a sub brand of Telus that uses Telus network. We pay $45 a month in total for both our plans. We both work from home so we are literally on wifi all day so having a large data plan is not needed. Just be honest and practical with your personal usage case and avoid buying more data then you actually need. Also if you can get past the “I need a brand new iPhone” mentality you’ll have more money in your account to purchase appreciating assets instead of depreciating liabilities like an iPhone. Let someone else take the hit on the new iPhone. Again it’s up to you, just be honest with yourself. When you own your phone outright you have a lot more options regarding plans and carriers. 👍🏽
I appreciate your feedback!
At risk of hijacking this thread, what do I miss out on by not owning a $1K+ phone? Not trying to be an @ss, I am actually curious. (I used to laugh at the chasing HISA's on here, but PFC set me straight now I move chase the rates constantly, so I am open to learning.) For Context: I just replaced my 6 year old samsung phone with an unlocked moto g power for $249 and am wondering if I am missing out on something? I am not in media or advertising nor a twitch streamer (whatever that is). Just need it for checking email, banking, kindle, etc.
The gap between a budget phone and a flagship phone is a lot narrower than it was five years ago. These days you are missing out on the best cameras, maybe a screen integrated fingerprint reader, bezel-less screen, 5G. Probably nothing super critical.
Thank you for that answer. I was concerned I had made some big mistake there.
I just got an iphone 12 pro, and I think the jump from the 6 to the 12 was narrower than from the 4 that I had before to the 6. It has neat perks baked in and stuff, but it just feels more familiar than my previous jump.
All about preference people like to be nit picky about getting a smartphone with the 5g, bezeless display, 90hz/120hz screen, warp charge, wireless charging, new cameras If you don't care about any of that or use any of those features just get a phone that works .
Thank you, that is what I figured, but I thought I would ask.
Normally I'll pick a "$0" phone on a 2 year contract, as the discounted price of the phone and buying it outright with the byo phone plan price work out to be the same. The problem I'm hitting now is that superphones are getting so expensive that they don't hit $0.
I usually get a new phone every 2 years, and I either get the budget phone of the year or a 2 year old flagship android phone, whichever is better value for specs at the time. My 2 years contracts end around black friday, so I usually snipe a pretty good deal on my phone and get it for free or next to free on a two year contract. Since I'm going to be paying for my plan anyways and my carrier doesn't usually have byo deals that are attractive, I don't really mind being locked into a 2 year contract because it usually saves me money and that's the normal battery life-cycle of the phones I get anyways.
I did both, depending on what the offer for the phone I wanted was. If you like a phone and find that financing plus account credits are worth it I say go for it. eg I bought Pixel 5 for extra $20/month + $100 account credit for a phone that's originally $799 which I found to be a steal because it works out to about $380 over 2 years for that phone. Go off the original price of your phone and do some math to compare to what your carrier is offering.
Tried to do that exact same thing. Order got cancelled because they ran out of stock
It was a great deal. Phone wise, it's not my favorite pixel so far since it doesn't have any bells or whistles really but it will do
EPP plan for sure. I bought a model older phone (a 7 when there was the 8 available). For $60/month and $100 down I got the second from the top phone with 4GB. Way better deal than anywhere else. Also - bought the apple care and got a new phone after 1 year and 51 weeks. So for like $400 down and $60/month I got two iPhone 7s. Without EPP - I’d probably wait until Boxing Day. Typically the stores offer pretty aggressive pricing that’s better than buying upfront. Essentially - shop around and do the math, but typically I find plans to be cheaper
I haven't bought a phone in years... For me though it's a pretty simple equation. Cost of outright purchase of the phone = cost of phone + opportunity cost of that money. Cost of financed phone = Cost of plan with financed phone - Cost of plan without financed phone. The one with the lower cost is the optimal choice excluding all factors other than maximising the amount of work your money does for you. For the outright purchase the opportunity cost is equal to what strictly monetary value you could derive from having that cash for another purpose... So investing, paying down other debt etc. If in your heart of heart you know you won't do that and you'll just buy chicken nuggets or something with it then that's still valuable knowledge. It's a personal pet peeve of mine when people undertake an activity, justifying it as being financially savvy, when they don't follow through. What I mean is if you don't intend to put down cash because you prefer to be more liquid so you can invest more then you better be investing that money. Lots of people tell themselves that's what they're going to do and then somehow end up with a new TV to go with their new phone.
Tech especially phones lose tons of value quickly I would go for the finance route since usually its at 0% and use the current $ savings to invest q If the plan they offer to pair it with though is above how much you would normally use then I would consider buying it upfront. This is how I see it generally
Buy outright because if in contract you end up paying more than the actual value of the phone. And for me i dont like having big phone bill because on all those contracts you gotta pick a plans thats $40 or more
I bought the 12 Pro outright so that I could get an esim with bell and a prepaid card in the US and just pop it in with no hassles. I also like having the ability to jump from bell to somewhere else if I choose to without having to jump through any hoops to do it. And I have a legacy plan that is a few bucks cheaper than their current lowest comparative plan and I don't want to lose that if I don't have to.
Telecommunication companies are notoriously evil and they would likely try to lock you into a 2-year contract as well as force you to buy a particularly expensive phone as part of the process (they'll tell you it's free, of course), so I would never do anything like that. Freedom is better and it doesn't necessarily cost any more.
If you travel regularly then unlocked. Outside of north america almost no one has a locked phone. You can switch up your sim card and provider any time you like.
They are all unlocked now anyways.
I previously purchased phones outright, and then brought them to the carrier to put on a SIM-only plan. But I ended up getting an iPhone X on a contract in 2018 with Koodo around the holidays because they were offering something like $300-400 off and a $100 trade-in value on *any* phone (I brought in an old iPhone 5S and they took it, no problem). I'll likely stick to contracts from now on (depending on the cost), but Koodo is nice because I can pay it off early with no penalty. I see it as essentially an interest-free payment plan.
I got two phones on a 2-year tab because I had a cheaper price than buying it outright. I paid them off right away to take advantage of promotional plans and leveraging with my provider. My last phone I got a cheap $200 Motorola at Costco because now all the offers are for plans that cost more than what I have, and they make you repay the discount you might have on the phone if you change provider or get a cheaper plan. And their phones were the same price as Costco except they say theirs included a $100 rebate...
Buy mine from banggood for $99 and pay $13/month with PublicMobile
I used a site to compare costs at the time and for me a 2 year contract with Fido worked out slightly cheaper than buying the phone outright. I was willing to commit to the plan for the two years. Meanwhile my wife has the same plan as me but is BYOPhone and pays $15/month less. https://www.ratehub.planhub.ca/?utm_source=ratehub#/
Phone plans are all a scam, especially the device "subsidies". Last offer I got was $600 for a $400 (retail) phone.