(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and this week I went way down the rabbit hole on cell phone plans. I probably spent dozens of hours doing research to try to pull together all the information I could, primarily so that we could pick the best plan for ourselves and really feel confident in that decision and save as much money as possible.

So I'm gonna share all the research I went into, all the tips, all the tricks, all the way to get your price down, your features up and get the best deal possible. So let's just jump right into it right after this. Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to chef David Chang about leveling up your cooking at home?

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/anyday for 15% off. All right, I have so much to cover here. First off, big shout out to Francis who kicked this whole thing off sending a question in saying would love an episode or a section in a Q&A about cellphones. Cellphone plans are so confusing. Companies are not comparable.

Feel like each one says they have the best service. Nothing's apples to apples and you just feel lost. And then how do you think about insurance and family plans, adding lines, and the deals you get for upgrading to a new phone? It's crazy. So thank you. That sent me down this rabbit hole which is gonna end up saving me a lot of money.

So I really appreciate that message. It's so confusing and things are changing so much that I actually had to rerecord this entire episode because the first time I recorded it, the iPhone 15 had not come out and then plans had changed and now plans have changed again. So I can't promise how long all of this information will be relevant.

But while I will go into the specific dollar amounts, I think it's really important to think about the tiers, the categories, the quality of the carriers, and the features more than the exact dollars because as much as when I record this right now, there might be some carriers that are a few dollars more that could change the next week.

So I'm gonna try to put things in groups and not focus as much on the exact dollars, though I will share them so you have some context. It reminds me a lot of an article we wrote at Wealthfront when I was there about rate chasing and how as much as you might want the best possible rate on cash, the amount of time you spend moving your cash between banks chasing the best rate and not earning interest on those days in transit mean that you're actually probably better off just picking someone that's consistently paying a good interest rate and staying there instead of always moving around and rate chasing.

So I think the same thing's true here with cell phone plans. Find a solid carrier that has good deals, that has good pricing, and don't focus too much on whether one's a dollar or more or less here or there. So some background on my journey here. I had been on Verizon for 10 years, primarily because when Amy and I met in college, we started dating and her family lived in the mountains of Colorado, and they didn't have great service if you weren't on Verizon and so I just wanted service reliably when we were traveling around Colorado, driving at her family's house, et cetera.

So that was something that was really important and we've just stuck there ever since. You know, I'm really glad I did this episode because I think I always knew that we were probably paying a bit much and I'll get to some of the savings you get from cell phone purchasing, which actually makes me feel a little better.

But at the end of the day, Verizon was so expensive that even while I was doing this episode the first time, we immediately tried to switch our au pair off of Verizon because she didn't have a device that was getting paid off just to stop some of the financial bleeding that came from that relationship.

And so we opened her up a line on Mint Mobile a few months back. She's had a great experience. She actually said the data has been faster and more reliable than it was on Verizon. Cut the cost in half. She's happy, I'm happy. We actually reached out to Mint Mobile and tried to partner with them and they became a sponsor of the show.

So you've probably heard me talk about Mint Mobile already. This episode though, just to be clear, is not sponsored by Mint. It is not something that they've told me to do. I'm doing this all on my own. It's all my own research. They're not getting any special treatment in these reviews, but if you do wanna check them out, obviously I'd appreciate it if you do it through our link, allthehacks.com/mintmobile.

We are customers of Mint Mobile and we are fans of the product. And then finally, we actually did switch off Verizon for all of our lines. We were waiting for the final payment on our iPhone 13 so that we could get all that money back. And I'm gonna save where we went for the end of this as I go through everything.

So first off, what went into this? Way too much research than was probably necessary for the amount I personally saved. But I will say I love going down these rabbit holes. I did it for insurance. I did it for vacation homes and then spent dozens of hours on it.

I put together a spreadsheet with 50 plus cell phone plans. I've been to almost every cell phone carrier website, read countless articles. I spent over an hour on the phone with a guy named Stetson who runs a website called bestphoneplans.net and has an amazing YouTube channel. He is a wealth of information.

I'll put a link to both his site and his channel in the show notes. Definitely a fantastic resource, especially to go compare plans and dig into some of the features. And then I built my own table. That spreadsheet had 48 plans, had 27 different columns of features and requirements and pricing.

Started out with 13 carriers. I'm sure someone listening is gonna point out that I missed a few carriers or there's a carrier there on that I didn't include. There were just only so many things that I could get to fill this out. But after I pulled out a few, Consumer, Cellular, Ting, Xfinity, which just from a pricing standpoint, weren't competitive compared to the rest.

And then if you factor in, is Boost Mobile and Boost Infinite the same company, is it two? I think I know the answer, but it leaves eight carriers. And that's Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, the ones everyone knows about. And then Google Fi, US Mobile, Boost Mobile, Boost Infinite, Visible, Mint Mobile, and a new carrier called Mobile X.

I think that's eight. Before we jump into any of what I learned, I just wanna make sure I clarify a distinction here because there's kind of two classes of carriers in the US. And that's because there's what's called an MVNO, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator. And so when you look at the carriers in the US, it's really AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile that own the towers.

I don't actually know how their arrangements work, but they run the towers, they run the service. And then all the other carriers I mentioned previously are all built on and partnered with one of those three main carriers. And so, yes, you might have Mint Mobile, but you're actually being powered by T-Mobile.

And so there's some real nuance into how this exactly works. And I'm actually gonna go into it 'cause I kinda nerded out about it and it was super interesting. But I just wanna be clear that in the broadest sense, with a couple exceptions, a lot of these MVNOs are kind of second-class citizens to the main carrier, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon.

In some cases, that's not always the case, and I'll cover that. But the biggest difference, and the reason they're able to charge so much less, is that they don't have the infrastructure of stores. They often have a lot more limited support. They don't have a lot of the marquee features, cell phone discount subsidies, international roaming, a lot of that stuff.

So in many of the cases, you're not getting the full comprehensive product, business plans, all that kind of stuff, but you are getting a much better deal. I'm gonna go through it, but it's really, really incredible how much money you could be saving with a lot of these carriers that I wasn't completely aware of beforehand, and I'm kinda disappointed in myself that I didn't know earlier.

One of the things I learned in understanding how these MVNOs work is this thing called quality of service class identifiers. And I'm gonna get a little nerdy, but I think it's really interesting, and kind of explains why you might not have data sometimes when you see that you have service, and a lot more.

So what happens is each carrier has one of these different quality of service class identifiers, or QCIs. They're numbered, usually, from one to nine, and they're used for different things, and they are how the towers, and how the system prioritizes what happens on the network. So for example, QCI one through five are not really data related.

They are, but they're not the data you get when you browse the web on your phone. And so the number one priority, the thing that all carriers prioritize over everything else, is conversational voice. So if you've ever noticed that it's strange that maybe you have no data, nothing's working, maybe you're at a crowded event, maybe you're in the middle of a city, but you can make a phone call and it works just fine, that's because the carriers are prioritizing that above everything else.

So when they look at where the bandwidth goes, they give an extremely higher priority to conversational voice, and that does include, depending on the carrier, in the stack rank, but certainly over data on everything, voice over LTE, voice over IP, different voice protocols that aren't necessarily the original carrier talk, but if you've ever enabled voice over LTE on your phone, that also gets that priority.

Then the next step, QCI two, is conversational video. So if you're making a FaceTime call, you're doing a Google Meet, you're doing a Zoom meeting, that actually takes a tremendous amount of priority over most other things. After that is a category I don't totally understand, and I did a lot of Googling, and there's two things in it.

One is called V2X, which makes sense, it's your vehicle communication, if your car is communicating with the internet, and the other is real-time gaming, and I'm not quite sure, other than for latency reasons, why real-time gaming needs such a priority. I assume that it's not like the heavy graphics-intensive stuff, but it seems strange that that would be such a high priority.

The next category is usually for non-conversational video, or buffered streaming, thinking Netflix, YouTube, that kind of stuff. After that's a category called IMS signaling. Depending on the carrier, sometimes these next three switch around, maybe IMS signaling is above buffered video or something, but best I can understand, that's kind of pairing up the phone with the network, and usually also things like iMessage, or multimedia messages, or WhatsApps, and that kind of stuff.

All of those things take priority over all other kinds of data on all carriers. And then within the rest of the carriers, and I could get as nerdy as tell you all of them, right? So in AT&T, there's four categories after that, six, seven, eight, nine. And I'll just run through them, 'cause I just think it's fascinating.

So in AT&T, QCI6, highest priority. And when I say priority, I mean, if the network is congested, if there are too many devices, what gets through? QCI6 is for their FirstNet network, which is for first responders. So first responders are getting all the data before anyone else. And then there's one tier of business plan in there, their business elite plan that seems to go up in QCI6.

After that, QCI7 is all their business plans and their ultimate plans, the really premium plans. And then QCI8 is for their consumer plans. I think it's the unlimited extra. And then QCI9 is for their starter plans, their prepaid plans, and all their MVNOs. And I think it also includes all of their tethering, tablets, and everything.

So a lot of stuff on QCI9. Some of the other carriers are a little different. On T-Mobile, they put everything T-Mobile on QCI6. So all their prepaid, postpaid, everything is on QCI6 and Google Fi. So something interesting about Google Fi is most of the time, the MVNOs are a lower tier of priority, except Google has some special deal with T-Mobile.

So they're up at the top. After QCI6, QCI7 is all their essential plans, the basic starter plans, and all the MVNOs. QCI8 is hotspot. So actually all your tethering data, both for T-Mobile and Verizon, is gonna be super low priority. So if tethering's not working, that doesn't mean that you couldn't maybe do something on your phone, stream a video, make a FaceTime call, which I think was something I never really understood until now.

And then last, with T-Mobile, the bottom line, QCI9, is just reserved for if you have a plan that only includes 50 gigs or something of premium data and you go over it, you're bumped everything after that all the way down to QCI9. And then last on Verizon, kind of same thing, except their categories are bunched into three, just QCI7, 8, 9.

And then QCI7 is for first responders, enterprise. That's their priority thing. I think they call it frontline. And then QCI8 is huge. It's all their standard plans and some of the premium MVNO plans. And then QCI9 is high use, prepaid MVNO. People are over their standard data and QCI8 get bumped to QCI9.

And then some of their starter and welcome plans. I know that's a lot, and it's probably not that relevant to a lot of people, but I thought it was really interesting to understand how this is actually working in the background. So they're prioritizing everything according to these things. One thing that's interesting, as I go through all these plans, is thinking about this concept of premium data, prioritization, capping, throttling, what does all that really mean?

So there's two things I realized. A lot of the times you get this premium data and then after you use the premium data, you get dropped to a lower QCI or in some carriers you get throttled. So it might be 50 gigs of data and then after 50 gigs, it's a lot slower or it's just deprioritized.

And I think it's important because if you're not in a crowded area, doesn't really matter. And when I talked to Stetson, he pointed out, if you're not at a game, a music festival, you know, very dense place, prioritization might never matter. But if it's capped and you're throttled after that, well, that definitely matters 'cause your speeds are gonna be slower.

The 50 gigs of fast data that you might get on a plan, if it's not throttled after 50 gigs, really kicks in and matters if you are spending a lot of time in crowded places. I'm not, so I don't really care about prioritization, but at the end of the day, it is nice to have it.

So back from the nerdiness of quality of service class identifiers, one other thing that's happened in the last five or six years is that phones are all adding support for eSIMs. So if you haven't used this before and you're used to the fact that you have a little SIM card you put in your phone and that stores your number and your connection with your carrier, now you can do all of that electronically and you can have more than one on a phone as long as that phone's unlocked.

And so I actually transferred my Verizon SIM to an eSIM a few years back and that freed up my SIM card slot so that if I were overseas, it would be really easy to buy a SIM card and be able to plug that SIM card in and use that internationally for a much lower cost.

And now, in fact, there are a lot of marketplaces online. I've used one called AirALO, and then there's another one, getnomad.app, but there are really easy places to go buy eSIMs for different countries and regions and get data much, much cheaper than you would normally get from your carrier.

And so assuming your phone's unlocked, that's a really great option. But even if you're just looking at domestic carriers, if you wanted to switch to a new carrier, even try one of them out, you could do that without ever having to go in the store, without having to wait for something to be mailed to you, especially with some of these prepaid carriers, you could sign up, get an eSIM, activate it on your phone with a QR code and be ready to go in a couple minutes.

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You must go to allthehacks.com/element, that's L-M-N-T. Let's just talk high level what this looks like. So top three carriers, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T. I went and read a lot about how to even think about them because at the end of the day, there's two ways to pick here. One is picking which network you're on, and then the other is maybe which plan or price.

And so one of those things might be more important to you or not. It looks like these days coverage is pretty similar. So Verizon was winning best coverage. AT&T just took that over, at least according to Wirecutter. T-Mobile has the fastest data. AT&T supposedly has the worst 5G network, but I think they're all pretty comparable.

Stetson shared a site called coveragemap.com where people have crowdsourced coverage all over the country so you can get a sense of how coverage is in different places for different carriers. But at the end of the day, I would say the best carrier for you is gonna be whatever works where you go most often.

When we switched, I didn't really think about anything other than who works in our neighborhood. And then I assume there will be spots for any carrier that don't work other places. We didn't prioritize which carrier was the network when we were making a decision. But if you live in a rural area or a place where there's no service in your neighborhood, you might definitely care a lot.

And in a little bit, I'll talk about how some of the carriers have trials. Before you consider switching, you can actually try them out. So we'll get to that. So how did I break all this down? I'm gonna pull this spreadsheet up as I talk through it. And I broke things down into a few tiers.

So the first tier is the basic tier, which is $5 to $10 on average. These are very low priced lines that you're probably not gonna use for anything, heavy data, heavy calling, but good for emergencies, backup lines, kids' lines, maybe parents, that kind of thing. The next tier was not unlimited, but more data.

So think five to 15 or 20 gigs. These plans were typically $18 to $25 a month. And honestly, if you're not a heavy data user, probably just fine. After that, next tier was unlimited, which kind of ranges in dollars from $25 to $70, but I would say solid, solid options in the $25 to $35 range.

Anything in that $35 to $70 is probably not worth considering. And this is an area where I actually fortunately was able to narrow the list down a little by talking to all the Hacks members and getting their feedback 'cause they've used a lot of these carriers. The short version is people had great things to say about Visible, Mint, US Mobile, T-Mobile, and less than great things to say about Verizon and AT&T.

And then there were two tiers past that. Unlimited plans that also had native international roaming, meaning the plan you were on could roam anywhere in the world. And then unlimited plans with free native international roaming. So the former being Verizon plan can go anywhere in the world, but you have to pay $10 a day for a travel pass.

And the latter plan being don't have to pay for international travel. There are a handful of plans on almost all the major carriers that will let you roam internationally for free. Okay, so that's a bit of the overview of them. Let's run through them. So let's do the first tier, which was the basic plans.

Within this, there are really only two carriers that stood out, US Mobile and MobileX. And if you haven't heard of MobileX, I hadn't either. They're a new carrier. They're doing a lot of interesting stuff when it comes to letting you build exactly the plan you want. They are built on top of Verizon's network.

But for me, I felt like the pricing was not substantially cheaper relative to some carriers that I've just had more experience or have heard others have more experience with. So right now, unless you're one of those people that really wants to go be an early adopter, or by all means, go to their website, check them out.

But if you're in the basic camp, I think US Mobile takes the lead here. And to be clear, this is a camp of I don't need a lot of data, phone calls, or anything. There's three plans that range from five to $10. Their light plan for $5 gives you 500 minutes and 500 texts and 500 megs of data.

It's not a lot, but taxes included, five bucks a month. Great option for a backup plan. Maybe it's a plan for emergencies. Maybe it's a plan for kids that don't need to use the phone much. The next plan is their kosher plan, which includes unlimited talk and text, but no data at all.

And then they have a shareable two gig plan, which is two gigs shared with however many lines you have on it that started at $10 a month. That's another option. So all those plans, I think this camp is probably not one we need to spend much time on other than few use cases that I've heard people bring up are using a basic line like this for all your two-factor authentication so that your primary line isn't the one doing that.

So you don't have to risk that there's anything going on there. In fact, I heard a really cool tip that someone gave me of not just setting up a line on US Mobile for this, but then actually disabling that line so that even if someone got ahold of your phone and wanted to check your two-factor authentication, they wouldn't even know that the messages were coming through because the cellular line's off.

And then if you need to get one of those codes, you can turn it on, get the code, turn it off again. And just to be clear, I'm a huge advocate of using app-based two-factor authentication over text messaging, removes any risk of a lot of issues. So I will just set that aside and say, obviously I would prefer that, but there are still some financial institutions and sites that don't support that.

And so when you need text message, two-factor auth, if you wanna get a separate line for it on a separate number, I think the US Mobile plans are probably the best option because they're five to 10 bucks, taxes included, and probably cover enough texts that you can take care of this easily.

In this next tier of plans, I'm looking at things that have some data, but not unlimited. And just as an anecdote, we all love unlimited. We all wanna make sure we never run out of data, but I looked over three or four months of data from our family. We have a family plan and only my sister's au pair ever went over 10 gigs of data in a month.

And some months she hit 32 gigs, so make sure you can prepare for what you need. But if you go into your current carrier and look back over the last year at how much data you were using each month and you're never going over, and keep in mind, if you haven't traveled, but you have travel coming, that might change.

But this band of plans is something worth looking into because if you don't need unlimited data and you're not gonna use it, why pay for it? And so within this bucket, Mint Mobile, Boost Mobile X, US Mobile kind of all had options. And I guess Google Fi also had an option where you could have a plan and you pay by the gigabyte, but it actually was never the best deal compared to all these plans.

So I'm gonna leave that Google Fi flexible plan off. I'll probably also leave the Mobile X plan off, the basic unlimited five, because I just think it's a little early. And then that leaves Mint, US and Boost. And here's the thing about Boost. I am sure someone will message me to tell me they're very happy, but Boost Mobile was one of the most confusing carriers for me to actually understand what was included.

So I put some emphasis and value for me personally, when I'm on a website of a cell phone company of whether I can understand how the plan works, what's included, what's not. And there were plans that I just still to this day have questions about on Boost. And then Boost, I guess, got spun out of the T-Mobile Sprint merger and moved over to be owned by Dish.

And then instead of launching a new version of Boost, they launched a separate one called Boost Infinite. And I think Boost Infinite is the post-paid one, meaning you're paying at the end of the month and they're doing a credit check versus the prepaid one, which is Boost Mobile. But honestly, Boost was never such a better deal that to me, it made sense to ever consider a carrier that was that confusing.

In some cases, it was the same price, but it was never cheaper. And so for me, I ruled that out. So if you're someone who doesn't need unlimited data, but wants something in the five to 15 gig data range, I think the two plans out there were Mint Mobile and US Mobile.

And they both came in about the exact same price at about $18 a month. A few subtle differences between them, 'cause they are very, very similar. Mint Mobile's built on top of T-Mobile, US Mobile's built on top of Verizon or T-Mobile. You actually get to pick which SIM card you want in the signup process and you can change, but I think you even have to port your number over to the Verizon SIM card, which is a little bit of a process.

But those two plans, $18 a month, about the same price as you scale with more lines. A few of the subtle differences between Mint and US Mobile. And I speak from experience with Mint because we've had a really great experience and others I know have had a good experience with US Mobile.

One of the nice things about our Mint Mobile plan, and maybe this is unique to our use case, but because we have an au pair joining us for a year, we can just buy a SIM card for a year. We don't have to worry about paying again and again.

We can prepay the entire year all upfront, plans done. I think for a five gig plan, the price is probably under $200. Even for their unlimited everything plan, it's under $400 for the whole year. And for anyone who just wants to prepay for something and eliminate their monthly bills, you could do that with Mint Mobile.

You could prepay the whole thing. In fact, to get their best deal without a family plan, you do need to prepay for the year. Fortunately, it's so inexpensive that it actually doesn't feel as burdensome to prepay. I think about what it would cost to prepay our Verizon plan for the year, and it'd be thousands of dollars.

Though, it's kind of refreshing to imagine you could prepay your phone plan for the year for a few hundred dollars. Other subtle differences, referral programs. If you're someone that likes to refer other people, Mint Mobile, for every referral you get to the unlimited plan, you get $90 of credit, which means you could pay for your entire phone plan for the year with two to four referrals, depending on what plan you're on.

US Mobile has a referral plan also, but it's only $25 a line. But if you do call internationally, US Mobile includes free calling internationally on most of their plans. So double check which plan you're looking at, but I think on this plan, it does include that. Also, one thing that I think is worth mentioning is that if you look at Mint Mobile, you'll see that they have unlimited plans for $15 a month.

And that's because when you buy the first three months of your unlimited plan, it's only $15. So instead of talking about it as $15 in perpetuity, I've amortized that price over the course of the year. So it effectively covers all of your taxes and fees for the year. Yes, the plan is $30 plus taxes and fees, but because you get it for $15 a month for three months, you end up saving $45, which I actually think more than covers the taxes and fees for the year and brings the plan closer to about $29.

But I just wanna clarify that for anyone who's comparing the pricing I'm talking about to the website. And then last, none of the plans in this bucket include any international coverage, except the Mint Mobile plan does allow you to roam internationally. I will say that for most countries, it's cost prohibitive to do it, but you can at least do it.

And so the one area where it seemed to make sense is if you're in Mexico, you can make phone calls for 6 cents a minute, which is actually not that high. So you could just add on $5 of international coverage and that would cover your ability to make 6 cent a minute calls.

Data's much more expensive, I'd probably skip on that. But at least you have the option to make a phone call in Mexico, whereas on a lot of these other plans in this bucket, you wouldn't. So U.S. Mobile or Mint Mobile are the two standouts in that bucket of, I don't need unlimited data, five gigs is enough.

There's a couple of plans that are in the 15 to 20 gig range, but honestly, they're all in the 23, $25 range when you factor in taxes, such that I think you're better just going up to the unlimited plans that start at $25. And taxes is actually an important thing to mention here.

Some of these carriers, U.S. Mobile, Visible, and T-Mobile, a lot of their plans include taxes in the prices they show, and almost every other carrier doesn't. So to try to keep things fair, I went and tacked on $3.20 of taxes and fees per line for all these plans, which I think is a reasonable amount, but I think our fees were a little higher on Verizon, but they were a little lower on Mint Mobile.

So there's not a perfect number, but I'm trying to give you ideas of prices that are fully included of fees. So when I mentioned earlier, U.S. Mobile and Mint Mobile were great five and six gig plans, U.S. Mobile was 18 fees included, Mint Mobile was 15 plus the $3 I added.

So they came out about the same price. Okay, I think the next two tiers of plans are where we all wanna spend our time. So let's talk about this, unlimited data. I'll give some caveats 'cause unlimited doesn't always mean unlimited. And by the way, one of the features that's included on almost all of these plans is Wi-Fi calling.

So yes, you might be overseas and not have roaming, but if you're on Wi-Fi, you can still make phone calls through your Wi-Fi. Though one really important thing to keep in mind, I learned this lesson the hard way on Verizon, is that if you're on the Wi-Fi and you're on Wi-Fi calling and you call the country you're in, even if you're in the middle of a roaming session that includes free calling within the country, that doesn't include free calling from Wi-Fi calling.

So if you were like we were in London, trying to make a local call within the UK, make sure your Wi-Fi is off if you are on a carrier where you're supposed to be getting free calling. If you're on a carrier like U.S. Mobile and you have free calling internationally, you actually definitely want Wi-Fi calling on for sure.

Okay, so let's talk about this unlimited bucket. These are unlimited plans that do not have any coverage overseas with a few small exceptions. So let's run through them. And in general, the bulk of the ones that I'd say are worth considering are in the 25 to $30 range. So the ones that really stand out to me here are Visible, U.S.

Mobile and Mint Mobile. Visible didn't have a cheaper plan, which is why I haven't talked about them before. They are owned by Verizon. I should have mentioned U.S. Mobile is an independent company. Mint Mobile is in the middle of being acquired, hasn't closed yet by T-Mobile. You might've seen their ads.

Ryan Reynolds is one of their biggest shareholders, so you've probably seen him talk about it. And so within this plan for 25 to $30, you can get unlimited data. Now, what does unlimited mean? It really means that you're gonna get unlimited data up until a cap at which you will either be throttled or deprioritized.

So deprioritized doesn't mean you're getting slow data necessarily. It just means that if congested, you are not going to get data as fast as others around you. The cap for all of these plans is anywhere from 30 to 40 gigabytes in that 25 to $30 range. One other consideration is how much data you get for hotspot.

So if you want to use your phone to tether, how does that work? On the Visible plan, you actually get unlimited tethering, but it's capped at five megabits per second, which for me seems way too much of a cap. If you're trying to jump on your computer and sync something before you get on a plane, it's just too slow.

So if hotspot tethering is important to you, the Visible plans cap out at five megabits per second. But if you don't care about tethering or you don't need it to be too fast and you do want to be piggybacking on the Verizon network, I think Visible is interesting. It's actually one of the only truly unlimited plans.

Yes, the data might get deprioritized, but there's no throttling. On the US Mobile and the Mint Mobile plans, you get 30 and 40 gigabytes respectively. But after those caps, you get throttled down to one or less megabytes per second. So if you care about hotspot, Visible's out. If you don't, Visible, US Mobile, and Mint are really great options here, all in the $25 to $30 range.

The subtle differences are you get a little bit more premium data on the Mint Mobile plan. You get a little bit more tethering on the Mint Mobile plan. And then obviously all the other considerations I said earlier about referral programs, prepaying, and all that. You could look at Boost Mobile and MobileX again in this bucket, but it's all for the same price.

I personally didn't think they were a good fit. Funny enough, Boost Mobile does include Mexico roaming, but they cap that roaming best I could tell at two or three G speeds, which is just not really worth using to me. So I believe you could use it for SMS and calls in Mexico.

So if that's really important, maybe the Boost Mobile plan. But like I said earlier, carriers where I can't understand exactly how it's working aren't a great fit for me. And at the high end of this, you've got T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, their starter welcome essentials plans. And they're all in the $60 to $70 range for really the same thing.

It's a plan without all the premium features with some cap on data, some cap on hotspot, some no hotspot. The Verizon welcome plan is $68, includes no hotspot coverage at all, includes no international coverage at all, and costs more than twice all those plans I mentioned earlier are. So for me, it's absolute no-brainer.

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So before I go forward, I wanna talk a little bit about international roaming 'cause that's the next line is where I think you get a big feature unlock there. I think unimportant part of that is considering the value of being able to get data internationally versus to be able to have your phone work without any changes.

So for all these plans, if your phone's unlocked, you can get an eSIM. So when you're traveling internationally, you can just add an eSIM for as low as sometimes $10 a week and get unlimited data. So if you're gonna travel once a year and you don't mind that your phone number's not gonna ring because you're actually gonna turn your cell phone line off and just activate a data-only SIM on another carrier, then you could save a lot of money and then get on one of these $25 to $30 a month unlimited plans, rely on eSIMs when traveling internationally.

You could even turn on your Wi-Fi and do Wi-Fi calling to use your number. And honestly, I think it might be the best option if you're willing to pay a little bit more just to not have to deal with that. There are some really great options that are still way more affordable than we were once paying on Verizon.

But I just wanna flag that it's a lot easier now with all these marketplaces for eSIMs than it was in years past. And then one more thing I forgot to mention about a lot of the carriers, especially the MVNOs, is that there are features that you might come to expect a carrier to have if you're on Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, that you might find out don't work on some of the MVNOs.

For example, I was talking to someone with US Mobile and I don't believe they support call forwarding. Now, if you've never used call forwarding to automatically forward your calls, it doesn't matter. But if that's a feature you use a lot, you might wanna look into whether that's supported. If you have an Apple Watch and you wanna use it with cellular data, I believe the only one of these MVNOs that bubbled to the top of my list was Visible.

So that's something you might need to look into if that's important. And then one other thing is around auto pay. So this is not usually a requirement for a lot of the MVNOs, but it is for the major carriers. Nowadays with T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, if you want their best rate, you have to set up auto pay and you have to pay with a bank account or with a debit card.

For T-Mobile, they'll add $5 a month if you pay with a credit card. And for AT&T and Verizon, they're gonna charge an extra $10 a month if you pay on a credit card. So I'll come back to why that matters at the end when we talk about cell phone insurance and coverage, but just something to keep in mind that if you're thinking, "Ooh, I wanna earn some points," all the major carriers are gonna be more expensive and I don't think it's gonna pay off unless you're factoring in cell phone coverage, which I'll get to.

So let's talk about these major plans that have all the bells and whistles, all the features, a lot more premium data and everything. This first tier, I'm actually not a fan of anything in this first tier, to be honest. This is the T-Mobile Magenta Go 5G, the AT&T Extra, the Verizon Plus.

They're not the number one plan. They're the lower premium plan. And the reason I'm not a fan of them is because I don't think they have enough bells and whistles to make it worth it over an MVNO. And you can get better plans on some of these carriers for cheaper in the top tier.

So there's not a case I could make for a single one of these plans. And that's the T-Mobile Magenta Go 5G, AT&T Premium, AT&T Extra, Verizon Plus, AT&T Starter. So I'm actually just gonna skip over them and point out why, but there are two things worth calling out. One, AT&T has three plans.

They have Starter, Extra, and Premium. And the Starter, I don't think makes any sense because it's almost $70 and it doesn't seem to include much more than the $25 plans you can get on a lot of other carriers. So skip. And then on T-Mobile, for just $10 more a month, you get AT&T Premium.

But AT&T Premium is eligible for a $10 a month discount if you have an employer that has a partnership with AT&T or you have AARP, which anyone can sign up for. Yes, you have to pay for it, but I'm guaranteed $10 a month will make up for it. So no one should be on the AT&T Extra plan because it's the same price as the AT&T Premium plan if you have AARP membership, which you should be able to get very inexpensively.

Also, you probably haven't heard me talk much about family plans yet. And the reason for that is that most of the MV&O plans, which are really all the plans we've been talking about, don't really offer a bulk rate for more lines. The exception being U.S. Mobile does offer a discount when you go to three lines or more.

And Mint Mobile, you don't get a lower rate, but when you're on a family plan with multiple lines, you get the annual pricing at quarterly payment intervals. So you don't have to prepay the whole year if you don't want to, but you can still get that annual pricing. So I'm gonna skip over this tier of can-go international if you pay for it and jump straight into the can-go international and it's included.

The one caveat to that is that AT&T Premium plan, because if you want to be on AT&T, they do not have a plan, at least as a time of recording, that includes international travel to the world. They do let you travel to Latin America and Canada, which I think all in means you can go to about 20 countries free, but that is much smaller of a number than the other plans, which are anywhere from 102 to 200 plus countries.

Now, that AT&T plan will let you go to those countries for $10 a day, but I just want to caveat that even though it is priced with that discount $80 a month, which is a lot, you don't get that international travel. So huge knock. There aren't a lot of other bonuses and perks that you get.

So not actually a fan of the AT&T plan at all. Within the international is included, there are T-Mobiles, Magenta Max, Go 5G Plus, and this new plan they launched called Go 5G Next, which is really designed for people who want to trade in their phone every 12 months, but still get subsidized discounts.

So if that's you, take a look at it. Otherwise, I think it's too expensive. That includes Verizon's Ultimate plan, Google Fi's Plus plan, and US Mobile's Premium plan. So I know that's a lot of stuff. So let me talk a little bit about takeaways here. From a pricing standpoint, the Verizon Ultimate plan never makes sense.

At $93 a month, going down to as little as $55 a month on a family plan with five lines, it's just significantly more expensive than every other line. It does include 10 gigs of high-speed data when you're traveling, but it doesn't include a lot of other perks. In fact, I used to be on this Verizon plan, which I believe was their middle-tier plan, and one of the perks it included was you got one free day of international roaming, but you could bank those days up to 12 total and then use them all at once.

And if you didn't want that, you could be on another one that included Disney Plus, but the Ultimate plan, everything except international roaming, I think is a la carte. So if you want Disney Plus, if you want Walmart Plus, you pay all these different packages that you can add on for $10 a month.

So at the minimum with tax, $93 a month for one line is just a lot. And I should mention, like I said, these are all one line prices. So 55 is as low as you'd pay. So I think that's off the table. So if Verizon's out, let's go to the other end of the spectrum and see who's in.

So you've got Google Fi with their Plus plan, which is really interesting because like I said, they're fully prioritized on the same QCI as T-Mobile. The best feature of the Google Fi plan, aside from its pricing, is that you get unlimited 5G international data. There's no five gigs a month, 10 gigs a month, it's everything.

You've got a couple of perks. They'll give you one year of YouTube premium, a hundred gigabytes of Google One data storage, and it's really reasonable. So unlike when I was saying Verizon is 93 a month for one line, AT&T 78, with no international roaming other than Latin America, Google Fi gives you all that for 68.

And again, this is me estimating taxes. And if you scale that up, it goes from 68 all the way down to $43 a line, which makes it, in my opinion, the most compelling plan if you want true international coverage. Now, US Mobile has a premium plan that is also really interesting.

And just to be clear, if you choose it on the GSM T-Mobile network, it will work internationally. If you do not, then I don't think it's a compelling option in this bucket, but that plan includes a hundred gigs of fast data and will let you roam to 102 countries for free at 10 gigabytes a month.

So that's awesome. I'll get to the list of countries. It is missing a few, and depending on what kind of travel you're doing, it might not be the best fit because it's not all the countries, but it is pretty compelling. That's at $50 a month. The price per line does go down from 50 to 45 to 40 as you scale up the numbers of lines, but where I think the US Mobile premium plan is exciting is in that one to two line range.

So I was talking about Google Fi, saying that's my favorite, and I haven't mentioned T-Mobile yet. And here's why. Google Fi, I think, is a really great option. It's built on T-Mobile, same priority, and you're getting it for anywhere from $43 to $68 a month, depending on how many lines you have.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, is somewhere between $44 to $85 a month. In fact, the Go 5G Plus plan is $90 a month, which makes it not too far off from Verizon, except there is one incredible deal that I don't hear spoken about often, but I have found in all of my research and taken advantage of, and that is T-Mobile's insider pricing.

Best I understand this, the reps that work at T-Mobile stores have the ability to give insider pricing, which ends up being 20% off their premium plans for life, to customers who move over from other carriers. You can get this by finding someone online. You can get this by just walking into the T-Mobile store and asking, and usually having luck.

Or if you're an AllTheHacks member, I'll share the contact information of the people I worked with in the membership portal so that you can get access to that as well. I don't wanna overwhelm them, or I would just share it with everyone, but they asked me to keep it limited, so you'll have to go find your own.

There are some threads on Reddit that I use to find a couple people. I'll send you there if you want to. Or, obviously, you can go to allthehacks.com/join and join us on the membership. So with that discount, if you add that 20% and taxes being included, that brings the price down for T-Mobile's plan to anywhere from $37 to $68 a month, which is actually the same or cheaper than Google Fi, except you get all the extra perks that T-Mobile includes.

That means you're getting free Netflix, free Apple TV+, a year free of AAA, and free Wi-Fi on American, United, Delta, and Alaska. So throwing in all those perks, the only trade-off that you're giving up over Google Fi, of course, is that your international data is capped at five gigs per month at high speed, and then unlimited at like a 3G speed, which is usable, but not great.

And so for me, I thought that was definitely worth the trade-off, and the plain Wi-Fi easily saves $10 every time. And if you want the hack here, I believe that T-Mobile Wi-Fi is only supposed to be for mobile devices. It is not supposed to be for a computer, but if you switch your computer to browsing in mobile view using the inspector on developer tools, which I will find an article on the internet that shows you how to do it, and you refresh the page on all those websites, you will now see the option to activate your T-Mobile account and use that free unlimited data.

And if you have a family member who's not traveling with you, but on your plan, you could use their number to activate your Wi-Fi on your computer, and your number to activate it on your phone, and get two devices. So pretty awesome perk. That insider discount not only applies to the consumer lines, but it applies to business lines.

It stacks on top of the third line free. So if you look at the pricing for three lines with that insider discount, you're getting T-Mobile's Go 5G Plus, international data, Netflix, Wi-Fi, Apple TV Plus for $40 a month. So 10 to $15 more than the unlimited, no international, no perks plans, which depending on your situation may seem like a great deal or may seem totally unnecessary.

So spoiler is we switched over to that T-Mobile plan and have had a fantastic experience. We were able to do all the swapping remotely. We didn't need to go into any stores and everything's been really easy. So I guess the takeaway, if I try to summarize all this, because I'm sure some people are completely overwhelmed from everything I threw out at you.

If I'm going through these tiers, it's at basic, if you want a spare line or someone doesn't need a lot, you can spend five to 10 bucks a month on U.S. Mobile. If you don't use that much data and you need a five gig plan, I think U.S. Mobile or Mint Mobile are great options.

We happen to have picked Mint Mobile. We're very happy. We're not planning on switching off of it. They're all in that same ballpark of around $18 a month. If you want unlimited data and you don't need any extra features or you're willing to just use an eSIM when you travel, for 25 to 30 bucks a month, I think you can go on U.S.

Mobile, Mint Mobile, or Visible. Visible is not a great option if you need to tether to your phone ever. It is a great option if you want an Apple Watch because it's the only option. And then Mint Mobile and U.S. Mobile are also great with Mint Mobile offering a little bit more hotspot and a little bit more fast data coverage.

And then on the roaming side, if you do want a fully baked premium plan with all the features, all the roaming functionality, if you can go to a T-Mobile store and you can get the insider discount or find someone on Reddit, I think that's the way to go. You're gonna get a price as low as $35 a month if you have five lines, which is incredible.

But if for some reason you can't get that insider discount, your options are Google Fi, which I think is great. Or if you're one or two lines, I think U.S. Mobile's premium is another contender, as long as you don't need to go to all those other countries, which I'll get to in a second.

So the one area where I probably didn't give enough coverage to is if you don't care about the international travel, you don't wanna go all around the world, you do want unlimited data, but you do want something that covers Canada and Mexico, 'cause let's say you go there a bit.

There are a few options that I think are worth considering. However, I'll just flag that they're not that much less expensive than the plans that cover you internationally. So for example, if you're one line, that U.S. Mobile premium plan is gonna cover you in 102 countries. And yes, you could save money by getting the Visible Plus plan, and it's only $45 a month.

It includes Mexico and Canada, but for five more dollars, you could get a lot more coverage. It really depends on what matters to you. You can also get, I believe, $10 off for your first six months. That brings the average cost for the year on that Visible plan down to $40.

But all the other plans that include Canada and Mexico for one line are at 53, 60. So it just doesn't make sense. Now, if you jump down to how low could you get a plan that includes Canada and Mexico, if you had five lines, there's at least a couple options worth looking at here.

The Google Fi Simply plan and the T-Mobile Essentials plan, both include Canada and Mexico. At five lines, they're down to 23, $24 a month. So those might be good options for you. But I will just caveat that at one or two lines, they're about the same price as the premium plans on either U.S.

Mobile, Google Fi, T-Mobile with the insider discount. So there are a couple options there, but honestly, they might not make as much sense as one of those premium plans. Once you factor in things like limited speed on hotspot. So like I mentioned, I wanna share a little bit about countries because I thought it was really interesting to go through all of the countries that these different plans cover.

So they all say 200 plus countries. It was very difficult to find that list. When I tried to sum them all up, AT&T came with 223, Verizon and T-Mobile with 211 and U.S. Mobile with 105. And just one anecdote that was very interesting going through this list was that many of these plans, in fact, I think at least every plan had multiple countries listed twice in some way, shape or form.

So they would say we include the Northern Mariana Islands and then they would individually list out all three islands or they would include Great Britain, the UK and England. One included the British Virgin Islands twice, one included Tanzania and Zanzibar, one included Tahiti and French Polynesia. So I wouldn't put a lot of emphasis into the actual count of countries because if one has five more countries, it might just be that they've listed the same country twice, five times.

But I will flag a few of the notable countries that are missing from some of these plans. And I'll start with the U.S. Mobile plan 'cause I mentioned that the U.S. Mobile plan only includes about 105 countries. So there are definitely a handful of countries missing. Many of them might not be countries you go to that often.

So I'm not gonna read the entire list of 100. I am gonna focus on a few of the notable exceptions. So a lot of the honeymoon destinations were missing, Fiji, the Maldives, French Polynesia, the Seychelles. A couple of countries that I was just surprised, Monaco, Morocco, Jordan, Botswana, Bermuda and Belize were all missing.

So that's just a few. Obviously, you need to go look at the list, think about where you're traveling to determine whether 105 countries from U.S. Mobile is enough or 200 plus is better. When it comes to comparing Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, there were really only a couple things that differed when I looked through the list.

Only T-Mobile includes coverage in the Maldives, if that matters to you. And then T-Mobile is missing Ethiopia, Namibia and Zimbabwe. So AT&T and Verizon cover those, but T-Mobile does not. Given how infrequently you'll probably go to those countries, at least the average person, if you need an eSIM for that one trip in your lifetime, I think it's probably okay.

But in general, I think T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T's kind of 200 plus country list covers just about everything. So there are a few other things we didn't mention that I said I would cover at the end, which actually could have a big impact on some of this pricing. It's mostly gonna be around the deals and discounts and credits you get when you switch.

So the one thing I didn't mention, which I think is really necessary, is some of the deals you'll get from many of the large carriers and some of the small carriers for coming over, because when you look at those deals, they can really have a big impact. So for example, if you look at coming over to T-Mobile, there are deals to pay off your old phone on your previous plan or give you $200 credit that I can't assume will be relevant to everyone, but they were offering a $200 credit to port your line over, which if you spread that out over a few months, could really be a big deal.

I would be totally remissed if I didn't talk about some of the discounts you get as a veteran, a first responder, or being 55 plus. When I was looking at T-Mobile, all those camps basically got the insider pricing effectively without needing the insider discount. So if any of those apply to you or someone on your family plan, I believe you get those perks as well.

So definitely worth considering those if you also want a discount that's even easier to get than needing to find someone with the insider deal. But the big discounts, and especially with the launch of the latest iPhone that I think everyone needs to be considering is what kind of deals do you get for getting a new phone?

Because they can really change the dynamics here. So there's really a few different options. Most of the MVNOs don't have the big subsidized pricing on iPhones and contracts and all that stuff, but they do offer deals. So for example, if you bring a new iPhone over to Mint Mobile, they'll give you six months free over the course of your first year, which is worth up to $180.

So you get $180 off an iPhone. But another way that you can save a ton of money is around when new phones come out. And usually this focuses all around new iPhones. The MVNO carriers don't usually have deals in this space. And frankly, Google Fi, while they do support the iPhone, definitely doesn't have any iPhone deals.

In fact, is the only premium plan I would put in that bucket. And also, by the way, doesn't support an Apple Watch either. But Mint and US Mobile do have deals. US Mobile will give you $200 off spread out over a year if you bring a new iPhone to them.

And Mint Mobile will give you 50% off their unlimited plan for the year if you buy an iPhone from them, which you can do upfront or finance through them. So those are two options. But the really big deals are from T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, where you're gonna get 800 to $1,000 off your new iPhone, usually with a trade-in, over two to three years, which ends up being, minus the value of your trade-in, $22 to $33 a month.

Verizon, I believe, has this crazy promotion going on where you can trade in any iPhone, literally any iPhone. You know, you can trade in your old 3G iPhone. I don't know who's tested it at what tier, but you can get some real value there depending on how much your trade-in is worth.

So keep in mind, if your iPhone's only a year old and you could sell it for $600 and they're gonna give you $800, well, it's not that different from a $200 plan. If you can trade in a phone that's worth $100 and get $1,000 off an iPhone, then it's really worth $900.

And if you can average that $900 off over two or three years, that's 25 to 30 bucks a month. And what's crazy is if you look at the plan we looked at, the T-Mobile plan, at $35 a month for five lines, if you can get $800 towards your iPhone spread out over two years, that's $33 off a month.

And I say this because this is the deal we got, which I'm still in shock about. So we opened up a line with T-Mobile. We actually did it on a business plan. So I can't promise that the deals are exactly the same as a consumer plan, but we got an $800 credit to buy a new iPhone.

We didn't even have to trade in an iPhone. The consumer deal was get a $1,000 credit, but you have to trade in an iPhone, but you also got a $200 credit to port in. So it was actually pretty similar. But when we amortize the cost of that $800 over two years, it's $33 and our plan is somewhere around $35 a month.

And so as crazy as this sounds to say out loud, if you want a new iPhone and you're willing to pay for it, and you're gonna pay for it whether or not you get a new carrier, if you do it through T-Mobile, you can potentially get the net cost of your plan down to under $5 a month for two years.

And that's what we did. So yes, we bought new phones. You don't have to pay them off over time. You can pay them off right away. You do have to buy them with a financing plan. But as soon as the financing plan set up, you can pay them off.

I think our phone bill right now looks like it's 35 a line plus 45 for the phone, minus 33 for the credit. We ended up getting phones that were more than the $800 credit they would give us. Though if we didn't, you know, then we wouldn't have any Delta there.

But if we just pay the phone off, then our plan will look like 35 a month, minus 33 in credit, it'd be $2 a line. So obviously those credits are not gonna be given to you right away. They're gonna be given to you over two or even three years in the case of Verizon, maybe even AT&T.

So you are going to be locked into those carriers if you want those device credits. Obviously you can leave at any time. You don't have to pay termination fees like you used to, but those device credits are not gonna continue to come to you. If you don't wanna mess with any of that, you can still do US Mobile, Mint Mobile, Visible, Google Fi, T-Mobile, any of those plans and not buy the devices.

But I do think that some of the crazy promotions they're offering for iPhones make it such that some of these premium carriers can get discounted to the point that they're actually competitive if you're comfortable kind of being locked in for two or three years to get that credit, which means that it'll hurt your upgrade cycle.

I guess I'll end on the one plan I didn't mention, which was that Go 5G Next plan, which is that it'll let you enter into another one of these deals with T-Mobile without having to wait two years to get all those credits. Haven't looked into the nuance of it because I just didn't think it made sense.

I usually don't upgrade my phone every cycle. It's usually every other cycle, so it doesn't matter. So that's what I learned there. A few last things. For free trials, T-Mobile, Google 5, Visible, and Mint all offer various forms of free trials. You can activate them with an eSIM. You don't need to port your numbers over, and you can get some amount of text, data, and voice to use on their network without having to transfer your line for free.

So definitely recommend if you're interested in checking out whether you have good service from those carriers, don't worry about trying to switch everything right away. Add them as an eSIM. You can turn the data network to be using that eSIM, and you can see how it works before you switch.

The last thing that I wanna touch on is around cell phone insurance. Because of the changes with the autopay, it's made a lot of the benefits of getting free cell phone insurance on your credit card negated by the extra cost you have to pay. So for example, AppleCare+ is $9.99 a month.

If you have to pay $10 a month to be able to pay with a credit card, it might not actually be worth it over just getting the insurance policy from Apple where it's a lot less hassle and usually a lower deductible to get things fixed. But for some of these carriers where you don't need to worry about paying extra for autopay, there are a bunch of great options.

The FreedomFlex, the Platinum and Business Platinum from Amex, the VentureX from Capital One, and the Inc. Business Preferred all have solid credit card insurance. I think the built card as well. You're all gonna get about 800 to $1,000 per claim. You're gonna get two to three claims per year or per 12 month window.

And they're probably gonna cover somewhere around one to $3,000 in total. Usually the more premium cards have more premium coverage with deductibles somewhere between 50 to $100. And so the Inc. Business Preferred actually also gives you three points per dollar on cell phone plans, which is cool. So I definitely think that's the better deal if you don't have to pay to put your plan on your card.

If not, then I think AppleCare+ is a decent option. You could do it for 9.99 a month for a new iPhone or 13.50 a month if you include theft and loss coverage, which means if someone steals your phone, you lose your phone, that's great. But a really great tip from Nat who wrote in to say, just a reminder to everyone, AppleCare theft and loss coverage will not be honored if you remove your phone from your Apple ID because then it's removed from being linked to you.

So if someone steals your phone or you lose it, go ahead and mark it lost, lock it down, request a remote wipe, but don't remove it from your Apple ID. Otherwise it's unlikely that you will be able to get them to cover your phone. So something important there. Also Lars wrote in just to say that had a phone broke and he'd been paying his cards on his credit card and was able to get it reimbursed easily.

I've taken advantage of that three or four times and it totally makes sense in my opinion. The cost to get a new iPhone screen with no coverage is over $300, with insurance it's 50 to $100, with AppleCare it's $30. The only last thing I'll say, we actually, when I said I got a business plan on T-Mobile, they have a business plan that includes AppleCare Plus, ends up being about $39 a line for five lines for all the full features plus AppleCare Plus.

So if you have a business that could be an option, if not, just do the math about whether it makes sense to pay a fee to put it on your credit card or to get coverage somewhere else, or to self-insure and just roll the dice. If you've never really broken an iPhone screen and you use a really heavy case, maybe it doesn't matter.

I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions or feedback, please send an email to podcast@allthehacks.com. For the last two years, I've tried my best to respond to all of them. I will do my best to try to respond when I can, but I wanna set an expectation going forward that I won't be able to reply to every single email.

I do have a separate inbox for member emails. So if you are a member of All The Hacks, please keep those emails coming. I will make sure to respond. If you're not and wanna join, you can go to allthehacks.com/join, but I will still continue to take the questions from listeners and bring them up in mailbag episodes.

So even if I can't get you a quick reply and you're not a member, I will consider the questions that make sense to be content for future shows. So keep an ear out and listen for those. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope people listening save a ton of money on cell phones.

I would love it if you end up saving a lot to let me know how much. I'm gonna do a quick share in a future episode of how many people we've helped get off really, really expensive, big wireless plans. If one of the plans from Mint Mobile makes sense, just like it did for us and for our au pair, I'd really appreciate it if you use the link at allthehacks.com/mintmobile to help thank them and support them as a partner of the show.

We've had a great experience with them and we've really enjoyed working with them and we'll continue to have their coverage probably for a long, long time. That's it, I will see you next week. (upbeat music) (birds chirping)