Many people do not know that the base plans cell phone companies offer are just enough to cover their costs.  The multibillion dollar conglomerates such as Verizon and Sprint make their money by selling you the add-ons. Those extras each month can easily double your bill and over the course of a year cost you hundreds of dollars. That is why it makes sense to pay attention to this as a cost cutting exercise. Here are some cell phone bill charges that you can and should look at in order to see if you can cut and save money.

I. Cut Your Insurance Payments: This monthly fee may be less than $10 per month per phone, but keep in mind that over the course of a year, that is between $50 and $100 dollars. Keep your old cell phones if they were with the same carrier so that if you lose your phone or it is stolen or broken, you will have something to go to in order to keep from having to buy a phone until your contract is up and you can get a new phone by signing up for another two years of service.

II. Usage reports: Contact your carrier and have them run a complete account analysis of your usage to make sure that you are not overpaying because of two conditions. Either you have a plan that provides you with too many minutes and you are paying a high monthly charge for , or your plan does not allow enough minutes and you are paying a lot of overage fees. You want to find a plan that will put you in a ‘sweet spot’ so that you are not overpaying for either above scenarios. You will have to be in your current plan for several months before these reports will yield good information.

III. Plan for extra charges: If you are going to be using your cell phone for a business trip for several weeks or longer, contact your provider and change plans for a month or so. Then, change back when you arrive back home.

IV. Discounts for employees: Many carriers offer discounts for the employees who purchase a cell phone because they work at a company that is a customer. They might even offer special plans as well. You can save about 20% or so, on a given plan. Also involved are government discounts and volume based institutions, such as local universities.

V. Only buy what you use: If you text a lot, then purchase an unlimited text plan. The same goes for other services.

VI. Cut unnecessary services: This is the inverse of the above. Do not continue to pay for extra services that you do not need or want. In fact, if you are looking for ways to cut your budget on items that will have a big impact on your money expenses, this should be on the list. Your children might think that they need music and video downloads, but they probably can live without them.

Get a Pre-paid phone: Even though the per-minute charges are higher, the draw of a pre-paid cell phone is that it allows you to control your costs by only buying what you need. You also do not need a contract.

If you use these tips, you can easily save $1,000 per year on cell phone charges. And that rivals the best balance transfer credit card deals you might be able to find.