Hermit
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Ever since I caught the FIRE bug, I have been looking for ways to save $$ and accelerate my retirement date.
One big monthly expense that seemed untouchable was our cellular service. We were spending appx $260/month for 5 lines of service with data.
3 of the lines were for our now grown-up kids and they started contributed a share once they moved out on their own. But, we still paid the lion's share which came to about $150/month.
In addition to reading a lot about savings and retirement, I've also been reading about "minimalism". So, after a recent chat with the Princess (i.e., daughter) who is very much into a simple lifestyle, the wife and I decided to get rid of our smartphones.
We notified the other kids and told them they would need to find their own plans. Then, we started looking for a simple plan of our own.
The best deal I found was Cricket Wireless. I had read a lot of good things about Consumer Cellular, but that would require us to buy new phones. While my wife's iPhone is 3 years old, mine is less than 2 years old and I didn't like the idea of having to buy 2 new phones when we still have 2 perfectly good iPhones.
With Cricket Wireless I was able to get a plain talk and text (no data) plan using our iPhones. Out of pocket cost for the 2 lines: $50/mo.
So, I'm pretty happy to have found a way to save an add'l $100/mo.
Thanks to this lengthy thread and some links from it, I have been able to do just the opposite. I just ordered a plan and sim card from Boom Mobile. So am going from a flip phone that I pay just under $30/mo with Verizon to a smart phone plan on the Verizon network that I pay just under $30/mo with 2 Gb of data/mo. The cheapest I could get on Verizon's network with my smart phone was $80/mo. Their off shore affiliate was $50/mo. I hope this new MVNO works out OK. So far, everything seems quite easy and they have their support staff here in the US.