Smartphones for the Broke

This post is a reprint from a few years ago on my other blog. The only update I have is that I use a Tracfone for my solo law practice because I need clear voice quality to contact clients. But I still have a FreedomPop smartphone for everyday non-work use.
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Cell phone plans are quite expensive. An average smartphone plan can cost $50-$150 per month. My monthly smartphone bill? $0. And yes, I do have a smartphone.

What’s my secret? Two acronyms – MVNO and VoIP.

MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator. A MVNO is a company that purchases wholesale bandwidth from a larger carrier (usually from Sprint, though some MVNOs buy from Verizon) and resells it to consumers at a discount. Most of the phones from MVNOs are Android, but some of them also offer the iPhone. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, and it's basically using the internet to make phone calls.

There are several MVNOs out there. The ones I have experience with are FreedomPop, Ting, Republic Wireless, and Virgin Mobile. All of them are no-contract plans. That means that devices are full price instead of the free or cheap prices on the contract plans, but you can cancel at any time with no penalty. You pay more upfront but save over time.

FreedomPop
Currently, I use FreedomPop, and I’m pretty satisfied. It’s a freemium service, which means that the basic plan is free. They make their money with add-ons, hoping that people will purchase those. But if you’re careful and a light user, you can get your phone service for free. The free plan is 200 minutes, 500 texts, and 500 MB of data.

I use Google Voice for my texting, so that doesn’t count against my texting allotment. I’m a light user on actual phone calls, so I rarely even come close to my minute cap, but if you’re a talker, there are two other options. There’s a $9.99 per month unlimited minutes plan, or you can take advantage of VoIP and get your virtually unlimited minutes for free. There’s an app called Groove IP Lite that allows anyone with a Google Voice number and a wifi connection to make and receive phone calls over wifi. By using this app, it doesn’t count against your minutes. (I don’t recommend the paid version of the app because it also works when you’re on mobile data, and VoIP eats data for breakfast. You’re better off using your minutes than your data at that point.)

I do sometimes run close to the data limit. The free plan is supposedly 500 MB, but it’s actually 400 if you want to keep it completely free because if you don’t enable the “auto top-up” feature (where they automatically charge $10 to keep in your account for overages when you get close to the limit), they suspend your account when you get to only 100 MB left for the month. However, getting extra data for free is pretty easy if you know how to work the system. First, there’s a social aspect to the endeavor, where you can connect with other users as “freedom friends”. For each friend you have, you get an extra 50 MB per month. Plus, you can give or receive data from your friends. If you have multiple devices, you can even be friends with yourself. (I have a mobile broadband modem from FreedomPop, too, so I get to share my data between the two accounts.) When you sign up, be sure to read all the fine print so you don’t get added to any paid service that you don’t want.

However, with a free service, there are also drawbacks. The biggest is that customer service is a bit lacking. They try to avoid ever opening helpdesk tickets, and if you are able to open one, they’re not always that responsive. Unless you tweet about it. Once you take to Twitter, they resolve the problem right away. So if you’re ever stuck, and the forums can’t help you, tweet your problem to @freedompophelp.

Sometimes call quality can be lacking if you’re on 3G (instead of 4G) or a slow wifi network, but otherwise, the quality is pretty good.

As far as the hardware goes, I have the HTC Evo 4G. When I joined, the service was still in beta, and it was the only phone available. I’m satisfied with the phone. I paid $99 for it, refurbished. Now, they’ve opened it up to several other Android phones, and they’re launching the iPhone soon. You can even bring your own Sprint phone from a list of select models, so if you have an old one lying around, you can save even more.

Ting
Ting is a great cell phone company, and if I hadn’t gotten the free deal with FreedomPop, I would still be with Ting. There are no monthly plans with Ting. You pay $6 per month as a flat rate, and then your usage is billed into tiers. There’s a separate tier for data, text, and voice. My average bill was about $15 per month, though it went as high as $20 some months when I used more. I eliminated the texting cost by using Google Voice.

Customer service was very responsive. My hardware was good – they allow users to bring their own Sprint device, so I bought a purple LG Optimus S off of eBay for $20. The only drawback was that I wasn’t able to root the device due to some proprietary firmware. That ended up really bugging me, and I probably would have switched devices to something rootable if I had stayed with Ting.

Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile was the first smartphone company I used. At the time, I was on a plan that was $25 for 300 minutes and unlimited texting and data. (They have since raised the price on that plan to $35, but existing plans are grandfathered in. I bought a grandfathered plan off of eBay from someone who wanted to cancel.) There are plans with more minutes as well. There isn’t a monthly bill – you pay only for the months you use. So if you pay for a month on June 10th, your month will last until July 10th. Then, if you decide you don’t need service for 10 days, you can wait until July 20th to pay, and your next month will run until August 20th. However, don’t let it lapse for more than 60 days, or they’ll cancel your account. They don’t make it obvious, and my friend found that out the hard way.

My phone was the LG Optimus V, and I bought it on sale for $60. It was a good starter smartphone. They offer other models as well, including the iPhone.

Republic Wireless
I used Republic Wireless for about a year. Their deal is an unlimited everything plan for $19 per month. The catch is that the phone is programmed to use wifi whenever possible. It’s a good idea in theory, but at the time I was using the plan, it worked very poorly in practice. (It was still in beta at the time, so things may have improved.) Call quality was terrible. The hardware was awful. Because of the proprietary software, I had to buy the phone from them, and they only sold them new. It was a Motorola Defy XT, and I spent $150.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Republic. Ting and FreedomPop are better options for light users, and Virgin Mobile is a better option for heavy users. Republic has a cool technical model, but ends up being the worst of all worlds.

Health Insurance Update

I posted last week about my plan to avoid the "too poor to buy insurance" fine by joining a health care sharing ministry to get a waiver of the fine. I put the paperwork off because paperwork is boring and I'm busy.

Procrastination sometimes pays off. Now that Donald Trump has been presumably* elected President, I'm going to sit tight for a bit and see how it plays out. He's made some noises about repealing portions of the ACA, including the individual mandate, and it looks like Congress is on board with it. Of course, he's changed his position on things before, and I don't find him particularly trustworthy, so things may stay business as usual.

Once the dust settles and I know whether or not there's still a povery fine in my future, I'll come back with an update.

*I say presumably because technically until the Electoral College meets on December 19, nobody has been elected President. At this point, it's generally a rubber stamp, but everything about this election has been weird, so who knows anymore.

Broke Urban Lawyer Talks Health Insurance

Ah, health insurance - who ever thought that something so mundane could be so controversial?

What's a broke person to do?

A few things before we start:
Health care - Medical or wellness services to treat or prevent injury or illness.
Health insurance - A program that will indemnify an individual for part of the cost of one's health care in exchange for payment of a monthly premium.

Note - Health insurance and health care are not the same thing. That's a huge pet peeve of mine when people say "health care" when they mean "health insurance". For example, I don't have health insurance. But I see the doctor multiple times per year and see the chiropractor weekly - I just pay for it myself. No health insurance, excellent health care.

Prior to the passage of the ACA, I had no health insurance because I decided that my limited money could be better used for other things, and nobody objected to my rational choice. After the passage of the ACA, I still had no health insurance because I decided that my limited money could be better used for other things (like doctor's visits - I could afford health insurance or health care but not both, so I skipped insurance, preferring to pay for care), and suddenly the government thinks my poverty is worthy of a fine. Only a massive bureaucracy could come up with something so perverse as a fine for being poor.

I saw three options:
1. Pay the fine - lining the pockets of the IRS.
2. Buy insurance - lining the pockets of the insurance companies.
3. Think like Captain Kirk and come up with a way to win the no-win scenario.