The mobile phone bill popped into my inbox this month for teenage daughter number 4, and it was $160 over the monthly $30 limit.

“I didn’t hardly make any calls this month,” is the first response.

Quickly followed by, “It’s a stupid plan.”

On closer inspection of the breakdown of the bill, the excess has come from $450 worth of texting.

“I did not do that much texting,” is the explanation.

Yes of course it is the phone company that has made the mistake.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the new boyfriend and the fact a text chimes nearly every 2 minutes and is instantly responded to.

(Do you get charged extra for texted pictures of love hearts?)

Regardless of romance, in our home the girls have their own phones and we go with a plan around the $30 mark. If they go over the $30, then they have to repay it.

One of the older girls has racked up some larger bills over the years, but had a well-paying part-time job and was able to reduce the debt fairly swiftly.

The youngest has her phone and plan linked to her father’s accounts. When she goes over, with no extra source of income to draw on to redress the balance, she has been seconded to car washing duties.

(The poor little thing has been washing a car every week for over 3 months)

In my time as a current affairs reporter I have done many a story on exorbitantly excessive teen mobile phone bills. In one case a young boy got a bill for about $5000, so the recent $160 blow out in my home isn’t too bad.

Of course not to the finanically-afflicted teen, who has now agreed to give me the $60 she earnt over the holidays handing out leaflets and taking a pocket-money pay cut of $10 a week for 10 weeks.

It’s a tough financial lesson for any-one to learn, but it’s been a solid one, as all the girls have had to repay something over the years and they are now pretty text-data-call conscious.

Our young romantic is still insisting the current mobile phone plan isn’t right for her and so has researched and found one with infinite text capabilities and is swapping, and that’s fine by me as long as it doesn’t exceed my $30 contribution.

Another good lesson.

Although I don’t know what the fine print is on data-usage and phone calls for this new and improved plan.

Let’s hope the boyfriend survives the swap and gets to see some love heart texts to see if it was all worthwhile.