This post is written for our Canadian Readers.

As a part of my initiative to cut cost, I wanted to save money on my mobile bill. My wife and I were paying $80 dollars per month on mobile charges. Since I do not heavily use my cell phone and did not want to get myself locked into a contract, I wanted a prepaid phone.

But to my disappointment most of the prepaid services in Canada were charging ridiculously high rates per minute. But, as I kept looking for a deal, I came across the Virgin Mobile $10 prepaid option that provides 100 minutes of talk time. That is 10 cents per minute any time of the week. This deal was pretty sweet for me since I only use the phone for important calls and my usage is low. Like my other prepaid services it has the Caller ID feature free of charge. Which is great!

Virgin Mobile prepaid packs can be bought in electronics chains such as BestBuy or FutureShop. I bought my Virgin Mobile Samsung m300 phone at Heartland Future Shop in Mississauga. Since the same phone was available for a lower price at BestBuy, FutureShop was able to price match, and I got the phone for $44.

The activation process was very simple. After filling in my details and answering a couple of questions at the Virgin website, I was ready to use my phone. Virgin also gave me a $40 credit for activating the phone via their website. In addition to activating my phone I also subscribed to the Monthly Prepaid Option that will automatically put $10 every month on my anniversary date. For monthly payments, you need to setup a credit card or preauthorized debit.

One disadvantage with the Virgin $10 plan is that you can not carry your prepaid credit to the next month. This works out for me because on average I use up all of the credit before it expires. Another issue is that Virgin mobile phones do not use a SIM card. This means you will not be able to use this phone with any other carrier by unlocking the phone.

If you have any questions regarding the $10 prepaid option, please feel free to ask in the comments section.

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Proto Credit: Virgin Mobile

Tips to make sure your mobile phone battery last longer in between charges.

1. Turn off vibrating alert. The motor that is used for vibrating alert takes a lot of battery power.

2. Reduce ring tone volume.

3. Get rid of fancy wall papers and screen savers. Wall papers and animated screen savers may look cool. But they consume more power.

4. Dim your cell phone back light. Many mobile phones provide a setting that will allow you to specify a time period to automatically turn off the back light. Keep this period as short as possible.

5. Turn off your cell phone when it is not used.

6. If you are not using a blue tooth handset, turn off blue tooth connectivity on your cell phone.

7. If your phone is constantly looking for network signal it can drain your battery very quickly. So stop searching for signal, keep your phone turned off where there is poor reception.

8. Turn off WiFi and GPS features when they are not used.

9. If your phone has a digital camera, try to reduce the use of flash photography.

10. Keep your calls short. You save money and battery power.