"Pre-paid" phone plans and the like

just from personal experience, my phone bill tripled because i thought i'd save money on a monthly contract. you want to have steel discipline and a lawyer's mentality to save money on those gigs.

i can tell you i was on a $45/month plan with a major telecommunications company that was costing me between $150-$300/month. I bought my way out of the contract and switched to virgin mobile prepaid and ended up spending $15-$20 a month for the same usage.

I'm on a pay-as-you-go right now. I barely use my phone at all, though. It ends up costing me something like 30 cents a minute (or per text, globally, i've learned!), and I only buy $10-20 in cards per month. the sim card was given free by a buddy leaving the country, and i had a phone lying around that happened to be unlocked to the same network. if you don't have the latter two things, well, it'll cost a bit more to get going, but i may give this phone to my ladypal once i get a proper plan.

mostly use the pc (emails, messenger), only about £10-15 per month pay as you go for texts. have a crappy 30 quid nokia, not into all this flashy phone shit.

this isn't really about pre-paid phones, but, for someone who spends very little on phonecalls and texts, can someone tell me a good pay-as-you-go thing to get? i've already got a phone. i'd kind of like one where i can bowl into a shop, buy a simcard and top up on the phone without too much hassle. in usa, too. x