When picking a cell phone plan it’s important to do a bit of homework and make sure you get the best cell phone plan for your needs. Compared to the price of the cell phone, which most people tend to spend too much time on when they should be comparing the best cell phone plans as that’s where the money is for the carriers and is the biggest drain on your pocketbook. With a bit of research you could save some serious money by either switching carriers or signing up for the best cell phone plan at the outset. Here’s my picks for the best cell phone plans for 2014:

Best Family Cell Phone Plans

Verizon

Verizon’s family plans are part of  their more everything plans where you pick your plan and how many handsets you want and how much data you want and then you share the data among all the handsets in your family. For an example, 3 smartphones on Verizon will cost $200.00 a month for unlimited talk and text, 3 smartphone lines at $40.00 per line and 6GB of shared data for another $80.00.

T-Mobile

To get the same 3 lines on T-mobile costs you considerably less at $150.00 a month for 3 smartphone lines with unlimited talk and  text and up to 5GB of data per line making the T-Mobile family plan a much better deal than the Verizon Plan.

AT&T

AT&T offers a 3 line plan with 10GB of data shared between the 3 phones for $145.00 and like the other plans includes unlimited talk and text

Sprint

Sprint charges $45.00 per smartphone line, and then also offers 3GB of data at ten dollars per line bringing the total for the 3 lines with 3GB of data per line totaling $165.00 for the 3 smartphones on sprint

Summary: AT&T has The Best Cell Phone Plan for Families

Based on the pricing above the best cell phone plans for Families is the AT&T plan followed by the T-Mobile plan at five dollars more and the Sprint and Verizon plans are the last 2 plans I would choose if I wanted to save as much money as possible on a cell phone plans

Best Individual Cell Phone Plans

Verizon

A smartphone line with unlimited talk and text with 2GB of data per month costs $90.00 total on the Verizon wireless network.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile offers individual plans starting at $50.00 for 1GB of data and unlimited talk and text

AT&T 

AT&T offers a $65.00 individual plan with unlimited talk and text with 2GB of data.

Sprint

Sprint is just $55.00 a month for unlimited talk and text with 1GB of data, or if you prefer to upgrade to 3GB of data it will only cost you another ten dollars bringing the total to $65.00 a month.

Summary: T-Mobile has the best cell phone plan for individuals

It’s kindof hard to beat  the $50.00 plan from T-Mobile. Granted, the data is a bit light at 1GB but if you want you can upgrade to 3GB of data for another ten dollars a month and it would still come out cheaper than the Verizon or AT7T offerings. You might also want to consider Sprint too as they are within $5.00 of the T-mobile plan too. Like the Family Plans, Verizon is the most expensive cell phone plan for individuals.