Shawna & the cell phone

Shawna's friend got one of those Fire Fly kiddie cell phones for her birthday a while back. It's an actual working phone...the phone itself is $80 and the minutes are 25 cents a minute and they expire in 90 days. Plus...you have 30 days to add minutes, when the old ones expire, or they cancel your account.

Like we used to say in Brooklyn...if you think that's a good deal, I got a bridge I'd like to sell you. LOL

A few weeks ago, Shawna told me she was going to save her money and buy one. She gets $25 a month from us and had about $50 saved at that point. I reminded her about the minutes...which she had forgotten about. I explained that if she doesn't continually buy minutes, the phone would, in essence become a very expensive play cell phone.

Shawna doesn't really have a need for a cell phone. She's not at the point yet where she gets together with her friends away from the house...it's either at our house, someone else's house or she's at an activity with them. She just wants one because they're fun...and cool. Which, in my mind, is a perfectly good reason to want something. :-)

Billy said she would price regular cell phones/prepaid minutes and also see how much it would cost to add her on our plan.

I thought about it for a couple of days...determined to figure out a solution that would be easy on Shawna's wallet and not end up being our financial responsibility.

Before Billy had a chance to do that, I came up with an idea. Being Billy is basically the only one that calls me on my cell phone and he's home with me on the weekends, my phone rarely gets used on Saturday & Sunday....and we have free weekend minutes. I asked Shawna is she would like my phone on the weekends. She could keep it with her from Friday night until she went to bed Sunday and I would show her how to add her friends to the phone book. I explained that it wouldn't cost her anything...which she loved. LOL

So now, every weekend you can find Shawna with the phone attached to her ear (although each week the novelty wears off more and more) talking to her friends but guess who she calls the most?

My mother...who lives next door. :-)