How to Set Up the Tracfone Family Value Plan

The Tracfone Family Value Plan is A Great Deal

The Tracfone Family Value Plan (and the Individual Value Plan) is a monthly automatic plan that provides a certain number of minutes and 30 service days at a great price. With the Individual Value Plan you can choose 50, 125 or 200 minute amounts at $10, $20 and $30 respectively. With the Family Value Plan the first line gets 50 minutes for $10, then each additional line gets 40 minutes for $6 each month.

These plans, once set up, will automatically credit your phone with minutes and service days, and charge you to a credit or debit card. It is a very convenient way to keep minutes and service days on your traction device.

But how do you set it up, and how much does it really cost, and do you get double or triple minutes added as well? All these questions and more answered below!

How To Set Up the Tracfone Family Value Plan

To begin, if you don't already have an account on the Tracfone Website, then set that up for your phone. It is easy to do and just requires a few bits of information like phone number and email.

Next, add the other phones you want to put on the family value plan onto your online account on the Tracfone Website (if you don't have any other phones you want to add, then skip this). If you don't have all the details on these phones, you can call up Tracfone and have them do it as long as you have the phone number for these phones.

Cell Phones By  Dru Bloomfield

Now that all the phones you want on the value plan show up on your account with Tracfone you can begin purchasing the family value plan.

The first phone added to the plan (located under Buy Minutes Online> Plans> Family Value Plan) will cost $9.99 and get 30 days of service and 50 minutes. All others added to the plan will get 30 days of service and 40 minutes for $5.99.

If your phone as double or triple minutes for life, you will get 100 or 150 respectively. Others on the plan will get 80 or 120 minutes, depending if the have double or triple minutes.

To choose which phone will get the 50 minutes per month, and cost 9.99, simply add it first and purchase the Family Value Plan. Proceed to checkout and complete your order.

Then do this process over again, but when you select the Family Value Plan, the website should recognize it is for 40 minutes at $5.99. Checkout and repeat this for each additional phone you wish to add.

If you run into any problems, you can call Tracfone support to help complete the process.

 How Much Does it Really Cost?

You might be wondering, how much does this value plan really cost, it can't be this cheap for a prepaid cell phone plan can it?

Well, it really does only cost $10 for the first phone, and $6 for each additional phone. Of course, there are some taxes etc. which add a dollar to the final cost, but in the end you could have a family of four each with cell phone service for about $30 a month. If that isn't incredible, I don't know what is.

$30 a month is half what most consumers pay for a single cell phone service plan.

So, how much could you save?

Read our Cell Phone Reviews to start looking at phones with Triple Minutes for Life!

Let's take a closer look at the cost per minute for these monthly plans. We will assume you have Triple Minutes for Life.

For the Family Value Plan, you get 50 minutes (tripled to 150) for $10 = $0.067 per minute

Each additional phone added to the plan gets 40 minutes (120) for $6 = $0.05 per minute

The Individual Plan for 125 minutes (tripled to 375) for $20 = $0.053 per minute

And the 200 minute Individual Plan (600 minutes) for $30 = $0.05 per minute

As you can see, the Value plans actually do provide great value. For comparison, a 60 minute card comes out to over 10 cents a minute (but you do get 90 days of service). ($20/180 minutes = 0.11)

Are There Any Drawbacks or Other Information?

The first drawback is that if you have people in your family (such as teenagers) who use their phone a lot, they may run out of minutes. But you can always purchase more minutes while on the Value Plan.

Perhaps this would be a good way to help younger people manage their resources, by giving them 40 minutes and 30 days of service each month, but anything over is up to them to pay.

For the Family Value Plan there are no hidden fees, no cancellation fees, and the payment is automatically charged to your account each month on the day you enrolled in the plan.

Cancellation is pretty easy, all you need to do is call the Tracfone customer service, or you can even change which phones are on the plan on the Tracfone website, in your account area.

The Family and Individual Value Plans work on Tracfone's new Android Phones, which all have Triple Minutes, and even work for the BYOP program.

The bottom line is that the monthly minutes plans from Tracfone can be a great way to save money, and avoid worrying about tracking your minutes and buying new cards. And there are promo codes for new Value Plan registration!

Got any further questions about the Value Plan? Ask them in the comments section below and we will try to get back to you!

This was originally posted on 1/16/2013, and updated on 8/11/2014.