How to keep mobile cost down when daughter lives away from home?

My parents are doing a similar thing with my sister. I think they have cingular. What they’ve told her is that she gets only one hundred minutes a month, so she has to make all of her calls after 9 p.m. She doesn’t answer her cell during the day, but since she’s in college, most of her friends are available to talk late at night anyway.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it works for them.

prepaid cards.
a fixed, predetermined amount of money to spend per month, once it is depleted, no more calls.

Or get a flat rate.

I don’t know AT&T’s policies, but perhaps it’s time for your daughter to get her own phone? She can pay for all of it (does she have a job?) or you can pay X amount, and anything over x is her responsibility. She’s in college now, time to learn responsibility.

Make her responsible for paying her portion of the bill.

I have a family plan with my son who’s away at school. We have 750 shared minutes and the first month he used almost all of the shared minutes—500+ to my 100 or so. I told him he needed to watch his usage. The 2nd month he went over on minutes and it cost me an extra $60. I told him if he went over again, I’d cancel his phone—even with the cancellation fee—because he had to be responsible for his usage. From then on he’s been better about tracking his minutes and has not gone over again. I like the family plan because all of the calls between us are mobile-to-mobile and don’t count in our minutes. Plus, we have nights/weekends that start at 7 p.m., which is nice. You should be able to ask your carrier if there’s a discount for your type of business (my husband works for the city). We get at 15% discount right off the top every month. Usually discounts run between 5% and 15%.

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