Saturday, February 6, 2016

Teach Kids to Manage Their Mobile Data Budget

Today’s fantastic family finance article is:

Mobile Data Usage Tool

You: “You need to get your phone usage under control. You’re crushing our family plan.”

Your Kid: “Gee, I had no idea I was using THAT much data! Are you sure?! I'm only using Instagram a little bit. And maybe watching a few videos on YouTube. A show or two on Netflix. Oh, and I do Snapchat occasionally.”

Umm, yeah. that’ll do it.

Tired of playing data cop and paying extra for data overages?

Time to deputize your child as Data Cop Jr. Teach your kids how to monitor and control their own data usage.

On Android, show your kid how to navigate to settings and tap on Data Usage. You’ll see a graph of data usage over time followed by a “wall of data shame” listing the most voracious apps up top. Enlightening! Your child can set a limit for total data usage as well as an alert when a threshold is crossed along the way.

Android Mobile Data Usage Tool

iPhones have similar functionality under Cellular settings.

You’ll find more cool data (and money) saving tips in the article.

P.S. Let your kids know you’ll be billing them from now on for data overages. After all, you just destroyed the “but-I’m-clueless” defense.

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