I did a ton of research at Christmastime last year when I was looking for a pay-as-you-go cell phone for my 19 year old son. I wanted him to be 100% responsible for his own bill, and he is. For him, I went with a TracFone model that adds 3x the minutes. For instance, every time he pays for 100 minutes, his account is loaded with 300 minutes. Text messages are priced at 3 texts = 1 minute. This way he's in control of how much he spends every month on his phone. If he runs out of minutes, there are no penalties or fees when he does add more minutes.
For me, I'm getting ready to dump my Verizon phone for a Republic Wireless phone. I have a dumb phone, talk and text only, and I'm paying almost $60 a month, which is absolutely ridiculous. Republic Wireless has a smart phone for $300, no contract, $19 a month unlimited talk, text, and web. It runs on wifi where available, and the Sprint network otherwise. My friend freaked out when she heard I was going to pay $300 for a phone, but when I showed her the math, she freaked out about how much SHE was paying every month, lol.
Reminds me of the conversation I had with my mom after she and dad bought an electric car. She was going on and on about this new car, and how saving $70 bucks a month on gas was such a relief. I asked her how much her new car payment was saving her on her old car payment, knowing full well what the answer was. She thought for a second, then got a stunned look on her face. Their old car had been paid off, so while the new car was saving them $70 a month in gas, it was costing them $300 a month in car payments. Doh!