When you first got your cell phone, you thought 250 Safelink minutes a month are going to be enough. But, what if you get put on hold when you’re calling the doctor? What if you call social services with a question and get switched from person to person before you can get an answer? What if there’s an emergency and you have to spend the day making a series of calls. Fact is, any number of things could eat up your minutes.

Safelink Wireless phones come with up to 250 minutes of airtime a month, depending upon which of the three free Safelink plans you use. That should be enough for most people who are truly using the phone as a lifeline. But sometimes running out of minutes is just plain unavoidable.

Luckily, there is a way to get more minutes as soon as you need them. It’s not free, but it is affordable. Here’s how easy it is:

Add Tracfone Minutes to Your Safelink Phone

The phones that Safelink provides come from their parent company, Tracfone, one of the three major prepaid cell phone companies in the country. As the owner of a Tracfone mobile phone, you can get additional minutes the same way any Tracfone customer would.

The first thing you need to do is buy a Tracfone Airtime Card. You can get one online by going to Tracfone.com, by calling Tracfone at 1-800-378-1684, or in person by visiting any of 80,000 retail locations such as Walmart, Target, Kmart, Radio Shack, Family Dollar, Dollar General, CVS, Rite Aid and others.

The Safelink website allows you to buy minutes in three different packages of Airtime Cards with a different number of minuetes in each package. But take our advice: Don’t buy from here because you can find many more packages and some great deals over at the Tracfone site. So save yourself some money and just go there directly to Trackfone.com.

Tracfone.com’s Airtime Card page will show you many different options. Each option will show you the number of minutes you will receive, the number of days you have to use them before they expire, and perhaps a special deal. For example, you might buy a card that gives you 30 minutes to be used in 30 days. Or you might buy a card that gives you 800 minutes to be used in 365 days, with the added bonus of double the minutes on all future airtime for the life of the phone (not transferable if phone is lost or broken).

Once you choose the Airtime Card that’s right for you, you’ll need to enter either your cell phone number or your phone’s serial number. If you are unable to make and receive calls, enter your serial number.

Once you have already purchased an Airtime Card and want to buy more minutes, you can do it directly on your phone, or you can do it online. If you are doing it online, just follow all the prompts to get to Rapid Refill and fill in the form. If you want to do it on your phone, here’s how:

1. Make sure your phone is turned on by pressing the PWR/END key.
2. Go to the Prepaid Menu from the Main Screen.
3. Select the Redeem Airtime or Add Airtime option.
4. Enter your Airtime PIN Number.

Here are specific Rapid Refill instructions for each Tracfone model.

Save more money with Tracfone promo codes

Here’s good news! You can get additional airtime and other benefits if you can locate a good Tracfone promo code and use it for your Airtime Card purchase. Ahhh, but where do you find these secret codes?

Sometimes you can find them on Tracfone’s site, but there are other independent sites that often list them. If you find the codes on an independent site, make sure it’s expiration date hasn’t expired. Our advice: Find several promotion codes and try several of them on the Tracfone order page until you find one that works.

For example, FreeGovernmentCellPhones.net has a page of Tracfone promotion codes you can try. We constantly update that page, but there are so many promotions and so many codes that you may well find that some of them have already expired. Keep trying because the savings can be substantial.

The bottom line: There’s no perfect solution to the problem of running out of minutes before you run out of month. But with some careful planning and a little work, there are very affordable ways to add minutes and make your Safelink phone even more valuable.

Important notes

The following information has been taken directly from the Tracfone website and it’s important that you read it. If you are unsure of which plan option you are on, see our page, Safelink Plans.

Customers Please Note: If you are a SafeLink Customer on Plan Option 1 or 2, TracFone Airtime minutes added to your SAFELINK WIRELESS phone do not expire with active service and Usage (as defined in the SafeLink Terms and Conditions) during a consecutive sixty (60) day period. If you are a SafeLink customer enrolled in plan option 3, all of your unused minutes expire at the end of each month upon your receipt of your free 250 monthly minutes unless you have purchased and added a TracFone airtime card to your phone. You may carry over unused airtime minutes on the SafeLink 250 Minute Plan for up to 3 consecutive months if you purchase and add airtime from a TracFone Airtime Card before the 25th day of the month. By purchasing and adding a TracFone airtime card before the 25th of the month, your unused airtime minutes (including your free monthly allotment and any additional TracFone Airtime cards) will carry over for 3 consecutive months from the date of your last TracFone Airtime Card redemption. If you purchase and redeem a TracFone Airtime Card on or after the 26th day of any month, your airtime balance will be reset and not be carried over to the next month. The minutes you purchased will be carried over together with your next three allotments of free monthly minutes. Adding more than one Airtime Card at the same time will NOT extend your airtime carry over for more than the 3 consecutive months. The 3 month carry over is effective from the date of redemption of the last airtime card redeemed to your phone.