I'm always looking for a discount on my cell phone service. It's a big part of my life, and represents a pretty large chunk of my monthly pie. So when I heard about a couple of opportunities for taking some cash back from T-Mo, I figured I should write something up. This is not an exhaustive list of methods for saving money on your phone bill, but I will send you in the right direction for figuring out what works best for you. If contests and rate comparisons are too much trouble, at least check out the student discount.

Before we get to T-Mobile's own process for saving you cash, let's take a look at what might already be right under your nose. If you are in college, you need to find out if your school already has a student savings agreement with T-Mo. Mine does, but until reading this article over at Forbes.com and making a call, I hadn't a clue.

I don't want to give away too much about my finances or personal life, but If I were aware of this discount program when I applied for college, I would have saved over $800 dollars by now. You can get 8 - 15% off of your monthly bill if your school participates. So now you know that I've either been in school forever or spend a ridiculous amount of cash on mobile communications.

Call T-Mobile's migration department at 1-877-453-8824. I'm not 100% on why they need to "migrate" your account in order to accomplish the discount, but I'll tell you what they told me. In order to be eligible, and have the savings applied to *all* of the lines and services on your account, you must reaffirm the terms of the contract you agreed to at the beginning of the deal.

This does not mean to extend your plan another two years. You're not even promising you won't escape your contract sans termination fee, thanks to the hike in overage charges. You're simply reaffirming that you entered into an agreement with them some time ago. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but that's what I was told. I guess they're just trying to avoid confusion. I think a better way to do that would be by ditching the whole account migration process altogether, but it's not my computer system so I can't complain.

The next opportunity requires a little more work, but could lead to some savings if you're ready to switch plans or carriers. Check out T-Mo's Mobile Makeover. They'll want to know your name, date of birth, address, age, college, and email. I know, it seems like a lot, but that's how they customize the experience. You'll be sent over to a specific Billshrink page, chosen based on the demographic you fall under. If you go through their process and get a result, go back to the T-Mo page and enter the details Billshrink gave you.

This will enter you into a sweepstakes for a chance at $500 - given away weekly, or the grand prize of a $25,000 "life makeover." I'm a sucker for that kind of thing (along with the lottery, poker, and amassing fake cash in iMobsters), so I entered. No increase in spam yet, but if it does happen, I think it will be worth setting up another mail filter in exchange for more sweepstakes fantasies.