You might be able to get a discount on your personal cell phone bill simply by using your school or work email address. Nearly all cellular providers have deals with businesses that extend discounts to their employees and their families, according to MyMoneyBlog.

Here's how it works: You (or your spouse or kid) work for XYZ Inc. XYZ has a business account with Cingular. Your family has a shared cellular plan. Cingular and XYZ might have a deal that extends discounts to employees' families. You punch in your (or your spouse's or your kid's) work issued email address to see if you qualify. You'll get a response detailing the discounts for which you qualified. The cellular bill every month thereafter is 25% off. (Maybe. Discounts vary by provider and even among individual accounts.)

If you have a university email address, you should give that a try as well. Many students are also employees of the school.

Just to clear up any confusion, we're talking about your personal cellular account! Yes, your personal account that you signed up for outside of your company. That's the beauty of the discount.

We're not cheating the system here, these discounts have always been available, but not a lot of people know about them. Bad marketing on their part means when you tell your friends this trick, you can feel all smart and savvy.

It just takes a few seconds, and with a potential 25% off discount, there's no reason not to go do it now!

For Cingular, Verizon and Sprint/Nextel, you just need to enter your work email address into a one field form. That's it. They'll let you know by email if you qualify. For T-Mobile, you need to login to your online account -- it's easy, just punch in your phone number.

Each carrier has slightly different policies, so be sure to read the fine print or talk to customer service if you have questions about your specific account.

I didn't qualify for a discount because I'm using a different provider than my employer. But 25% off... it might be worth switching when my contract is up.

Has anyone had first-hand experience getting this employee discount?

Thanks to MyMoneyBlog.