Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Joshua Sheets. I don't remember what episode today is so we'll just wing that and if you care too much about what episode it is, go to the blog and figure out what number is at the top of this. Today I am excited to do our first interview that's going to be going up on the podcast.

I'm going to be interviewing somebody who is one of my favorite online forum participants. I first found him over in the Mr. Money Mustache forums. He goes under the screen name IPDaily, real name Will McClendon, and reached out to Will to interview him regarding how to save money on your cell phone bill.

Interestingly, I think one of the things that I think about in our current culture, one of the expenses that we have, most people, that's different than 10 years ago, one of the few expenses that's higher than 10 years ago is the amount of money that we spend on our mobile devices.

It's absolutely huge. If we could figure out how to get all of the same usage and convenience and features but do it for a lot cheaper, that would be a really good place to start. With that, Mr. IPDaily/Will, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. Great to be here, Joshua.

Hello, greater endocrines. You are the author of the world famous super guide to all things cell phone, VoIP, and communications guide over on the Mr. Money Mustache. Why did you ever start writing that thing? I wound up coming out of several years worth of research and experience on the subject.

After seeing Dahlink's article or thread that they'd posted, I realized there's so much information out there that really needs to be condensed down and presented in a concise format. That's what brought about the super guide and ultimately the online resource, their technical meshugganah. I forgot to mention, yes, you blog over at techmeshugganah.com.

Correct. Any other online presence that you want to tell us about? Not here. Fair enough. Good call. Let's get people's attention, hopefully, because our goal today, if we succeed in this interview, our goal today is to provide, I don't know, maybe this will be an hour's audio that at the end of it is going to help people save tons and tons of money on their cell phone bills and on their communications bills.

Let's get a little teaser here. Why don't you go first? Walk us through what you spend every month, what you used to spend every month, and just a quick overview of the features and things that you have now and the price that you're paying. Then I'll go after you do.

Right now, we're spending on average about $70 a month for two cell phones, home phone, business line, internet connection, and entertainment. Nice. The average cost in America is probably ... About $250 for the same thing. That would probably sound about right. This is going to be good. I'll tell you my story too.

I used to spend, even just with AT&T back in the day, my wife and I used to spend $230 a month for unlimited everything plans, talk, text, data, two iPhones and an iPad. Then plus all the rest of it, we've gotten it down in our household. We've gotten it down to $10 a month for my iPhone, $10 a month for her iPhone, $15 a month for Comcast internet, and that is it.

We do the TV stuff over there. I think I've got you beat, but I'm about to add a VoIP phone, so that's going to go up probably a couple bucks a month. I'm edging up, but that's all right. I got the room. Under $40 a month for the two of us.

Considering the fact that you got lucky and only have to pay $15 a month with Comcast, it's just absolutely phenomenal. I'd like to know how you pulled that off, honestly. I'll tell you. It's actually a story. We moved into the house that we lived in about seven months ago.

At that point in time, I was shopping for internet. I started going around and trying to see. I actually jumped off of your super guide over to the ... I think you recommended in there Broadband Reports, right? I jumped over to Broadband Reports, and I was trying to find what I could find.

I didn't find any useful data for my area, which is Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, West Palm Beach, Florida, off of Broadband Reports or anything there. I tried following all the links, didn't find anything. I just said, "Well, let's see who's here," and it's Comcast and it's AT&T, U-verse. What a duopoly to choose from.

Yeah, wonderful. Here was the deal. As I went online, the best deal was just right listed on the front of Comcast's website. They were offering me something for $14.99. I was shopping around, and the best deal at that time that I could find was U-verse was offering something for $22 or $23.99.

I called Comcast. I said, "Hey, I want this deal." The rep said, "Oh, that deal's not available in your area." I said, "I just saw it on the website." What do you mean? I put in my address and everything. He said, "No, it's not available." I said, "Well, fine.

I got to go back and shop at all." I called back five minutes later, speak to a different rep, and I say, "Hey, I'd like this $14.99 deal." They said, "Okay, no problem." They gave it to me right over the phone. Five minutes later, the deal that wasn't available five minutes previously was now magically available with a different rep at $14.99 a month for Comcast.

Is that a fixed thing or just for a year? I'm not sure. If it's a year, that's fine. I'm fine with it. I'll shop again. I actually just got a letter in the mail, a flyer last week from U-verse offering it to me for $15, same price basically. They must be trying to match Comcast.

I asked the rep. I said, "Does this expire after a year? Is this an intro contract?" They assured me on the phone that no, this was a long-term rate. Wow. Score. I don't really believe it because I think in another six months, I'm probably going to jump up and I'll have to call and we'll play that whole game.

But for now, it's working well. Thanks to you, that was a really cheap rate on the three, I think it had three megabits per second. Based on your guide, I decided, "Well, that's enough," is the three megabits per second. But they were trying to push me up to the faster connection.

Of course they were. I was not. You saved me lots of money already. So thank you. Excellent. I got to admit, yes, I'm spending about 70 bucks a month. You technically got me beat right now, but we're not under any contracts. This is the regular rate that we're paying.

I'm one of those people. I'm not a big fan of doing the monkey dance, trying to fight for an hour or two, get the bill back down a lot. Just the fact that what we're spending today is less than what we used to just spend with AT&T alone for our cell phone service, that's plenty enough for me.

Why do I need to really push that much further down? Yes, absolutely. I'm with you. So let's see. Let's start with what is going on in the world of cell phones and build the foundation for us. So if we're going to provide a useful guide to people, what are the basic building blocks that each person needs to look at to figure out what would be right for their situation?

If we're going to talk about recent news in the cell phone industry, we should probably hit on some of the recent news here lately coming out of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. This whole jump program where they're trying to get people to pay more money to be able to continue to upgrade their devices every few months.

Really? I haven't heard of that. This is actually just like the past week or so that this has really started to come up. It was on the heel of T-Mobile's supposed announcement of doing away with contracts and early termination fees, which let's be honest here. You're spending $70 a month with T-Mobile before they do away with their contracts.

When you were paying that $70 a month, you had a two-year contract where you had to pay for the phone and they wouldn't carry or unlock the phone for you until you finished that two-year contract. You couldn't go anywhere else or reduce your plan any. Now they offer you, say, a $60 a month plan where you're spending another $10 a month on a cell phone that you cannot carry or unlock for two years until it's paid off and you can't take your business elsewhere until you pay off the rest of the phone.

Is it just me or does that sound like the exact same deal? Exactly. On the heels of this announcement, well, if you want to call a few months heels, they wound up introducing the new Jump program to introduce another layer of contract to bleed customers for another $10 a month.

The reason why they are doing this is the reality of the American cell phone market is we're at market saturation. We have 110% market penetration in this country with cell phone usage. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. And it's still growing. And it's partly because of this. It's the tablet movement. You have no idea how many people wind up owning two devices.

It's insane. It really is. And they're getting desperate. And they're trying to find ways to continue to bleed the customer for as much money as possible. And this has been the latest fad. Instead of actually giving people reasonable rates and allowing them the freedom to choose not because they've become an indentured slave to the cell phone carrier, but because the cell phone carrier is actually providing a good enough service to keep them.

Okay. Go ahead. It's the complete opposite of what you'd expect in a free market capitalist society, let's be honest. I hear you, but I'm going to disagree with you a little bit because here's why. Wouldn't you say that it's just my impression is that the big four are going that direction, but there are lots and lots and lots and lots more choices coming out, especially if you're willing to switch over to the prepaid world.

And so now that's our job basically is to get the information out there, right? Yeah. But the thing is, ultimately we're still primarily dealing with the same big four carriers even though we're going through a third party that's buying in bulk. And this is not what you would consider straight up free market capitalism because if that were the case, we'd be operating not based on contracts and trying to get as much money out of the customer as possible, but actually offering an affordable service upfront to begin with and such a good service that you're willing to stay without a contract.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree. All right. So let's start with, we're working off an outline here. Let's start with some myths that we've got listed here. Myth number one, prepaid versus postpaid. Well, that kind of goes into the insanity here within this country with cell phone usage. So many people here are conditioned to think that we need to be postpaid with our cell phone service because prepaid is for poor people and for criminals.

Who need the throwaway phone that Jason Bourne buys in the train station in England. Yeah. But the reality is that the United States and Canada is an aberration in the cell phone market. Europe and Asia alone are about 70% prepaid customers. Are you going to tell me that 70% of European cell phone buyers are poor and criminals?

And I mean, India and Africa are over 95% prepaid. I want to say the global average of the roughly 6 billion cell phones working and operational in the world. I want to put it somewhere like 85, 90% are prepaid. So clearly prepaid in this country has just gotten a bum rap from the burner phones that you get down at Walmart.

You know, your track phones, your net 10 and the like. So, but the reality is that most of the world pays for what they get and not get billed for what they use. $3,000 for traveling to Europe with your phone that you left the data on. Exactly. They're not going into contracts.

They're not subsidizing their cell phone purchases. They're paying for the phones upfront for their actual value and they are paying for what they use, plain and simple. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. And I'm with you. I think prepaid seems like it was back when cell phones were coming out of the bricks on your hip or the car phone type of era.

It seemed like prepaid was an option. But it seems to me as a young guy that they seemed to only ever work for the, like you said, the burner phone at Walmart. And so when you say, I want a nice device, I want a fun device, I want something that does more for me, you don't usually traditionally think of prepaid.

Exactly. But with my $10 a month, that's a prepaid plan and I love it. So next myth, unlimited anything. Well, let's face it. Nobody needs unlimited anything. I've lost track of how many people I've talked to who say they need like unlimited text. And then I ask them, well, how many text messages are you sending a month?

And they're, oh, 500, 600. And it's like, you're kidding me, right? On most prepaid plans, some of the cheapest text rates out there are like two cents a text message. That 500 messages is 10 bucks. And you're telling me that you need to, you're not calling anyone, you're not using any data, but you need to send like five, 600 messages a month.

So that's why you're justifying spending something like 55, $60 a month on your cell phone service. Exactly. And that applies to minutes, minutes, data, messages, anything. I mean, you don't need unlimited anything. And everything is finite. We're not talking about, you know, we're not talking about infinite minutes here.

There's only so many hours a day that you can be awake and using this stuff. So be aware of what you're actually using. And odds are you're not using near as much as you think you are. Daily. Here's one important point though, is you are right for adults. But from what I read about 13 year old girls, the number of texts they can use, they might actually need unlimited texting, right?

Don't get me started on teenage girls and texting that will just derail the entire thing. All right, next data. Well, data, basically you don't really need as much data as you think. If you're using your phone as an actual honest to goodness, portable emergency communications device, that means you're going to be using email, SMS text alternatives, maybe a little bit of GPS data or something like that.

And very, very light web browsing to look up resources or whatnot. That's nowhere near as much data as you think it is. I mean, you could easily, you know, with the right phone and cutting out any streaming anything like streaming media or heavy, heavy GPS usage, you really don't need much data.

I mean, we're talking about with some SMS text replacement applications like Kik and XMS, we're talking close to like a thousand SMS sized equivalent text messages and one megabyte of data. Wow. Well, the data thing is interesting and it ties in with what you just said, unlimited anything. Because the thing that frustrated me, what finally got me, and here this AT&T if you're listening, what finally got me, I think I was an AT&T customer for at least a decade, probably more than a decade.

What finally got me was for years I paid for an unlimited data plan. And because it was, you know, the original data plan, I was grandfathered in and I couldn't get it. And I enjoyed using data. There would be all the data from the applications that, you know, just the normal apps that I would use.

But then I also would, I love streaming. You know, the reason I do a podcast is because I love streaming audio. I would, you know, stream hours of video off of YouTube. So I was a heavy data user. I think my record was something like five or six gigs one month.

But anytime I would get, you know, any heavy data usage, even with my unlimited plan, AT&T would send me this little pop-up thing on my phone that would say, well, you know, you're near your cap. So we got to cut you down. So unlimited data didn't exist. And all I did was just change my usage a little bit and quit streaming media over it and just download the, you know, download podcasts before and then watch videos when I'm on Wi-Fi.

And it's worked well for me. It's amazing how much a little bit of preparation can do to pretty much gut your data usage. Yeah, exactly. And even if people are, because here would be one difference, is that even if people do have a lot of applications that they like to use a lot of times, most of them, at least my experience is they don't actually use that much data.

I would never, what is the average usage? Just one gig, right, in this country? Yeah, something like that. Even that seems embarrassingly high, honestly. It is. And if I didn't stream anything just from applications, it wouldn't be that much. It's not that much data from the applications. Next you've got, we've got on our outline here, hours.

Hours, well, hours are, you know... You're talking about this like 7 to 7 thing where you've got to... Yeah, well... And hours in the day. All that stuff just has always seemed goofy to me. It's like all these little things of, okay, you get, you know, free cell...the thing I hear is this, I've got a family plan, so I get my six friends that I always talk to and I put them on my family plan and, you know, so we get free usage between, you know, after 7 o'clock PM and like you said, how often do you really, you know, do you really spend four hours on the phone?

If you have a girlfriend or something, that's your one person that you talk to, I get it, but it seems... It ties back into the unlimited anything. You don't need unlimited data, you don't need unlimited hours. You, again, you only have a finite amount of time and trying to game for, you know, prime times or anything like that, that's wasting your own time.

You should have the freedom to be able to just talk whenever you need to and when you're trying to utilize their off-peak hours or whatnot to be able to get that unlimited time, to game the system, to try and keep your costs down lower. You're just...it speaks to a need for situational awareness, honestly.

Yes. And honestly, if you're waiting until after 8 PM to make a call anyway, you're probably already home and you might as well, you know, take advantage of much cheaper data and phone services at home than, you know, using your mobile service. Yeah. All right, here's my favorite. "Daley, I'm going to save so much money if I bundle my internet and my cable TV and my cell phone and my car payment all in the same payment." Really, what's known to the insiders in the industry is the triple play, being able to get the phone, the internet, and like cable TV all together in one package.

You know why they love selling you bundled packages? Because they can inflate the bills that they want to charge you just that much more. Yeah. I'll tell a little personal story. Years ago, I used to work for a market research company and one of the things that we worked a lot with fast food restaurants and we worked with a famous fast food restaurant brand and I got to see some of the data that they used and it's very interesting.

This particular brand at one point was offering these huge burgers with multiple, multiple patties. So, you know, you can have the one patty burger, the two patty burger, the three patty burger, and the four patty burger. And you look at the four patty burger and the thing is the size of your head.

And you say, "What person would ever eat the hamburger that looks like that?" Well, what the research showed very consistently is that the biggest burger that was on the menu was a three patty burger. The restaurant might serve a total of five of them and they would sell in one day five of them, but they would sell lots and lots of two patty burgers.

But if they put a four patty burger on the menu, they would sell maybe like four or five of the four patty burgers, but they would sell dozens and dozens and dozens of the three patty burgers. So everyone would go from the two patty up to the three patty.

And to me, that's like bundling. Is that, "Wow, listen, I probably don't need this 483 channel package on my cable TV and I don't need necessarily 50 gigs of speed on my, I don't even know what the speed ones are, 50 megabytes of speed on my internet. But if I bundle it all together, it's only $342 a month." Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, the thing is, is if I had actually gone for the triple play with Cox to where I'm paying for even just basic cable TV, basically getting the exact same stations I get over the air with the rabbit ears for free and bundled our home phone with them and the internet, I would probably be spending somewhere in the neighborhood of about $130, $140 a month instead of 70.

So it just goes to show as long as you can keep control of who you get your services provided from, you are always going to be able to get a deal cheaper than trying to bundle everything into one bill with someone else. It may be slightly more convenient for billing purposes, only paying one company, but how much of your money is worth that convenience?

Yeah. And seriously, put it on an automatic payment off your credit card and it's just as convenient. Yeah. All right, business use versus home use. Well, the whole business use versus home use, if you're using your phone for business use, then your employer should be paying for it. So if you're using the whole excuse of, "I have to use my cell phone X number of minutes because it's for business," to get a deal for business, then yeah, you can justify maybe a postpaid contract or something with one of the major carriers.

But honestly, under those situations, your employer should be paying for it, not you. And I mean, home use, again, if you're using it at home... Why are you on your cell phone? Why are you on your cell phone? It is specifically designed to be a mobile device. And you've got to think about this stuff.

If you know what you're getting into and what you're using it for, you can figure out how to better save on it. And the thing with mobile services is it's expensive to be mobile. So why are you using mobile services when you're staying near stationary? Yeah. And on that point, I think there's...

This is one of the reasons why stuff changes so much is because it used to be that using the cell phone was expensive. So people would have the cell phone as being expensive and then they would use the home line. Well, then what happened is cell phone prices seemed to come down so much, people said, "Well, I use the cell phone.

I prefer that, not as dump the home line." And so my wife and I don't have any kind of wired line. And that's where we get into VoIP, voice over IP. And that... If you don't have a voice over IP solution, then not using the cell phone thing doesn't make any sense.

So you've got to get the voice over IP solution into play. But once it does, like you said, there's plenty of time. It's all... I mean, you can get unlimited services for a couple bucks a month versus the big... The much... Relatively much larger cost on the mobile device.

And then on the business use thing, I agree with you. If you've got to use your phone for work, you should consider that your boss needs to pay for it. And then the other thing is that do you really want all your work on your phone? I'm an entrepreneur.

I do... I keep my phone with me and I do business on my phone, but I often think very hard about it. Am I really that important? That I have to be available all that time? And you read any productivity book, you read any productivity blog, you read any lifestyle blog, and one of the first things that people should consider is, am I that important that I need to be answering my email constantly or can I do it during normal hours?

So I'm with you. So let's start at the beginning. So I would say step one, calculate what you actually need and talk us through how to do that. But here's my thing. One of my big pet peeves is when people assume that every situation is equal. So I may not be on the road much and I may not use my phone that much, but then again, I may be a contractor who's on the road constantly.

So I would say count what you actually need, but count it. Because I used to be on the road a lot and when I actually sat down and even though I was on the phone a ton on the road, when I actually sat down and counted it, it was nowhere near what I thought it was.

So walk us through your thoughts. Well, basically you need to start by inspecting your bills. You got to count the usage on minutes and we're not just talking the minutes they bill you for, but your off peak minutes, your in network minutes, count all your minutes every month for like the past three, four months, average them out, get some solid statistical analysis going on how many minutes you're using.

Then do it again for your texting and for your data. Find out what the baseline is on actual usage for your phones. They're not just giving you those bills to collect money. They are basically giving you a tool that you could potentially use to educate yourself to what your needs actually are without you having to sit down and keep track of all of it yourself.

Yeah. And most of the big ones, especially if you're with a big carrier, they've got a nice thing online where you can pull it up online and you can chart it out. And if you don't have that, if you don't have the paper bills, if you don't have the online bills, you can use the counter on the phone, right?

And it'll tell you your total talk time. It'll tell you when it was last reset and then reset it once a month and see how it goes for a couple of months. Absolutely. And from that point, once you know what you're using and when, figure out where you're actually using it.

Is it mostly at home? Is it mostly at work? Is it on the road? If you know how much you're using and you know how much of it you're using in these stationary locations where you already have network access or something like that, then don't use your cell phone to communicate with.

Use a VoIP service. Bring back the home phone. I can see a YouTube video of you. You've got your beard and saying, "Bring back the home phone, please, people." We should create that. Indeed. We'll use your avatar off of Mr. Money Mustache and stick that on there and say, "Bring back the home phone." Even with SMS replacements and the like, if you're at home, use your home data and use VoIP services and use your home connection for Internet access.

I've lost track of how many people who I've talked to who pay Netflix like eight bucks a month to stream video to their iPhone, and then I find out they usually watch the videos at home. But are they even connected to their home network? No. They're streaming the video over the 3G or LTE service, spending just that much more money.

It's absurd. Why spend the money on data service if you're not going to actually use it at home? And if you have a cheaper source of data at home, why would you not use that instead of the data service that they're going to gouge you for over the air?

You got to take advantage of what you have available, and you ultimately need to realize that landline anything is typically going to be cheaper, plain and simple. And so there's basically just a couple of things. Number one, if you can move data usage to your home Internet, it's pretty easy to do.

So switch out one app that you always stream audio through and switch it to an app that you download the audio first. Number two is get a voice over IP phone and switch your talking to that. And then number three is consider some kind of easy SMS replacement. The one that works well for me is the main person that I would text would always be my wife.

And I would imagine that I'm not the only one. It's not uncommon for couples or spouses to send lots and lots of text messages. Probably like 70, 80% of anyone's text usage is between the same two or three people. Yeah. So we just switched to Skype. She's on a computer, I'm on a computer, my phone can do Skype on Wi-Fi.

So we just switched to Skype on the phone or on the computer. And there went hundreds of text messages, and that was an easy thing to do. And if she needs me, she can still text me. But for the most part, most of those other times, we just use Skype instead.

So next on our outline here, the wonderful world of early termination fees. Let's do the math. Okay. Well, once you know what you're actually using and you start pricing prepaid alternatives, you can sit down and you can actually do the math to see if a breaking contract makes sense financially.

And you'd be surprised. More often than not, it does make sense financially. If you're in for $100 a month, and in reality you could get away with only spending like $20, $25 a month on service, and you've still got like a year left on your contract, think about how much money you can potentially save just going from $100 to $25 a month.

You've got a $200 ETF. I mean, let's see, you'd basically break even in four months and start saving money shortly thereafter. Once you know what the price is on your head and how much longer you have left on the contract and how much money you can save, you can figure out if it makes financial sense to just pay the money and get out or not.

And so many people think that they need to wait out their contract, when in reality, they shouldn't because doing so is just going to be flushing that much more money down the crapper. Excuse my language. And what's more important, actually saving money or trying to take the easy way?

Well, plus, I'll add to that because I think you're exactly right. I paid the early termination fees when I switched out of AT&T because I calculated that in two months I'd make back that whole early termination fee. I don't know any really good formula for figuring out if it's worth it or not.

I mean, it's hard to say, "Okay, at three months it's worth it, but at four months it's not." It's kind of a gut call. You could apply some kind of capitalization rate as far as what you're making on your investment and say, "Okay, well, if it's in excess of 10%, it'd be worth it." But to me, it's usually pretty simple.

But go ahead. Well, Ed, that's one of the reasons why there's an ETF calculator on the website. I was just going to say that. Good. So, plug for your protectmeshugana.com and I'll put a link in the show notes. You build a nice, pretty-looking, fancy little calculator where you put in your current cost, you put in the early termination fee, and then you put it there and it'll tell you when you break even and if it's worth it or not.

Yep. And sometimes it'll make sense to wait out the contract. One of those instances is like some of T-Mobile's old contracts where it doesn't decrease over time, where they basically have flat rates on the ETF fee at the 6-month, 12-month, and 24-month periods. But now that they've kind of gotten away from that, it doesn't matter as much.

But I'm sure there are still some people out there under contract with T-Mobile that, you know, there will be situations where it'll cost less to wait out the contract versus paying off in advance. But typically, no, especially if there's a lot of time left on your contract. And there's a whole other like aspect to it as well, and that's the fact that the reason that you're paying an early termination fee is because you're under a contract.

And the reason you're under a contract is because you got a subsidized phone. Yep. So, the way that the contracts work is, let's say Apple charges AT&T $600 for, I don't know, an iPhone 5. Well, AT&T will sell it to you for $200 and to your contract. So, if you leave before the two-year contract, then they pay the early termination fee, and that's where AT&T makes their money on the device.

So, your choice is, do you want the device, and you may or may not, depending on who you're switching to. So, if you're switching from a device that's only compatible with one option, and you want to switch to something else, you may sell the device. And/or you may just decide that there's a cheaper device that can do your job for you.

So, maybe you've had iPhones. I'll pick on iPhones because I have one, and that's what I use. Let's say you've had iPhones, and I know you hate them too, which is fine. I'll make sure to put a link to your iPhone article about why you despise them in the show notes.

But the point is that let's say you've had iPhones for a couple years, and you say, "You know what? I'm done with this." Terminate the contract, pay the fee, sell the device on eBay or another site, and you probably are going to make more than the early termination fee, and you might make enough if you've got an in-demand device.

You might make enough to turn around and buy your whole new device. Well, the thing is, basically, the reason for the contracts to begin with is because they're preying on the fact that people stink at math, especially when they're out shopping. They don't actually sit down and run the actual numbers.

They just get presented with these reasonable sounding amounts of money in little chunks, and it overrides common sense. So, basically, because we as consumers suck at math, they're exploiting that for their own financial gain. But if you actually sit down and look at the cost of breaking contract, you think from the surface, looking at it, "Oh, it'll be more financially beneficial for me to stay put until the end of the contract instead of buying my way out." But in reality, they're using that emotional bias against you.

So, always do the math. Amen. Do you know any off the top of your head, do you know any web, any of, I need to research some. My brother used one. Any of the ones that make it easy to sell your device, to resell your device that aren't eBay?

Well, there are a couple of outfits. I can't remember their names off the top of my head. I'll look them up and put them in the show notes. I'll figure out what that is and I'll put them in the show notes. I don't remember what they are off the top of my head, but I'll find out.

All right. All right. Devices. Smartphones. Well, do we really need them? Good question. Here's my answer to that. When I watched the Steve Jobs presentation years ago at the Apple Developers Conference, I actually watched it live. I used to be a bit of a nerd. I'm still a nerd, but I was into that stuff years ago.

When I watched him give his presentation, I still remember the slides flashing. Communication device, web browser, music storage thing. I said, "I need this iPhone. Look how cool it is. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it." But I tell you, at this stage, I'm kind of over it.

It's not really as exciting as it used to be. Well, that's the thing. When you start slapping several functions into a singular device, you wind up having to compromise on its design, and you wind up having a device that stinks at everything. Let's be honest here. When was the last time you used a smartphone that was actually good at making telephone calls and typing out messages?

And didn't mute half of my calls, or the person saying, "Hello, hello," because my cheek bumped the mute thing. Yeah. And iPhones, Android phones, BlackBerrys, these things, I don't doubt that some of the features are very useful for some professionals. If you actually have a need and purpose for a lot of this stuff, then yeah, spend the money because you are investing in a tool.

But so many people don't realize how many feature phones today... Were you aware that a $100 Nokia Asha is capable of doing GPS navigation? No. Exactly. You'd be surprised at what feature phones are actually capable of doing from a technological standpoint now, even on the J2ME platform. It's just...

You don't need a smartphone to get some of this functionality. What do you classify as a feature phone? Because that's... You're talking about the thing with the nine-digit keypad, or... Feature phone is basically any phone that isn't an actual full-blown smartphone. But the thing is that the line has been kind of blurred between the two.

With the proliferation of cheap technology, ultimately what defines a smartphone is software and the availability of apps. But the industry basically puts the divider between smartphone and feature phone as iPhones and Android devices, and like Blackberry, those are smartphones. And J2ME-based devices and simple phones with just keypads on them or something like that, those are more regarded as feature phones.

And kind of in the nebulous in between, you've got Nokia's old Symbian devices and a few other little platforms. It kind of depends. I think what really defines a smartphone is exactly how much ridiculous amounts of hardware you have to throw into the device to make it functional. Just jacking the price up that much further.

Got it. Well, I see both sides of the smartphone thing. I have friends who are actually app developers, and apps are fun. They really are. They're fun to use. I have some language apps that I enjoy using. Apps are fun. But the reality is that if I'm actually honest, I'm not a bit more productive because I've got a fancy checklist.

I'm no more productive because I've got a fancy checklist on my phone than I did if I had a three by five card with a list on it. And I'm not any more fit because I still don't go running. Just because I can track my run with the GPS doesn't mean I actually go running.

And the reality is that the stupid iPhone bouncing on my arm with the armband is not nearly as comfortable as my tiny little iPod Nano. It's basically the more features you have on there, the more likely it is to distract you from doing things. And that distraction has gotten out of hand.

Let's be honest. It's gotten out of hand. People walking down the street no longer are even civil to one another because they're staring into these tiny little glowing rectangles instead of interacting with one another. We've become a society afraid of being bored. And it damages the fabric of our society.

Do we really want to contribute to that damage and decline? If you do, keep using your smartphone every waking minute of the day. It'll chew up your time. It'll make you feel like you're being productive without actually doing so. You'll never have to think about anything ever again. And tra la, tra la.

And next thing you know, you'll look outside and the apocalypse is on the horizon. And you'll see giant flicking flames at the sky and someone rolling past taking a picture of it and posting it to Twitter and then keeping on. This is not the future we want. Well, tell me how you really feel.

I'm a little confused as to your actual feelings on the subject. Cell phones are destroying America, people. Wake up. There we go. I like it. Well, the good news is this. So we'll give people options if they want to keep their smartphones. And we'll give people options if they don't.

And it's up to them what they want to do. My message is, use it as a tool, not as an entertainment device. As long as you're using it as a tool, you're going to be able to save money on the device. You're going to be able to be more productive.

And you're going to be able to actually get more things done. And that's what technology is supposed to do for us, make our lives genuinely easier. And that's what this is about. I want to help people actually reclaim that freedom and that advantage to using the technology. And you can't do it as long as you're a slave to your data plan and your device and it's just eating up every waking hour of your day.

To be clear, you're not a Luddite. No. You're not against technology. You have a highly technical -- we kind of skipped over any kind of background, but I know from speaking with you that you have a technical background. You're not a Luddite. You just want it to work well and to be in the right place.

Yeah. I've spent a decade and a half in IT. I'm a freelance systems administrator. I work in Unix, BSD, and Linux servers for a living. This is what I do. I love technology. I just -- it terrifies me to see people becoming enslaved to the technology instead of using it for what it's supposed to be, a tool.

Yeah. I'm with you. Okay. Let's give people some tools, first of all, to keep usage low. So walk us through some tools to keep our usage low so that we can get by with some of the cheaper plans without feeling totally deprived. Well, for one, I've noticed a lot of people wind up using a lot of data from GPS.

Yeah. That one's a big deal for me. So I'm interested in anything that you've got on that one. Well, the nice thing is you don't actually need data services for GPS. Like on the Android platform, this is actually a more recent development, but Google Maps has an offline mode.

You plan ahead and you can load your map onto the phone in advance, and then you don't need to use data while you're out in the field. On the iPhone, there's map software called -- I can't remember the name of it. It's from Sygic. It is a completely offline GPS service.

And of course, people have forgotten about the old GPS units that they used to sell that didn't need any sort of online data access either. And what about paper maps? You're right. But moving on from GPS, streaming audio and video. You don't need to stream your entertainment. Read a book.

If you really want to listen to audio or watch something, download it and preload it to your phone before you leave. Basically, you know, anything that is bandwidth intensive and takes advantage of your need and desire to exploit your impulse control, you probably don't -- you either don't need it at all, or there are much simpler solutions that you've forgotten about.

And the biggest money pits in data usage is GPS and entertainment. You plan ahead, you eliminate that cost. It's as simple as that. Do you know of any solutions for iPad/iPhone to have offline GPS usage? Yeah, that was the -- Side joke. Okay, I'll look that up and figure out -- I'll look that up and include it in the notes.

Because this one actually has hurt me because I'm using -- well, it's two things. Number one is using the iPad internationally where I didn't have any data. It was useless, which was a pain because I didn't realize that one time before I did it. And I was driving across Haiti in a car and trying to use my iPad to navigate with and I had zero data.

That's a story for another day. But that was one experience. And then currently I'm using Air Voice and I'm not using the data. So from time to time -- I have an old-fashioned GPS that just -- you know, an old Garmin. But I'll be interested to look up that.

It's called SIGIC GPS navigation. S-I-J-I-C-K? No, S-Y-G-I-C. Okay. All right. I'll look that up, too. All right. That's useful. SMS replacement? Well, there's stuff like XMS, Kik, Nimbus, Takanot, Google Voice. You mentioned Skype earlier. Basically, if you've got a basic smartphone or even a higher-end feature phone, a lot of this stuff, you don't need to actually use SMS.

I mean, yeah, you can keep using SMS, but I mean, XMS and Kik, like I mentioned earlier, you can pass nearly 1,000 messages for one megabyte worth of data. What's cheaper? 1,000 messages like on PlatinumTel for 20 bucks or 1,000 messages in one megadata for, you know, 10 cents.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Do any of those -- do all of those -- how do those work, though, as far as your number? Like, are those apps where you have to -- the other person has to have that same app to do it? Yes. A lot of these, you need the same app to do it.

It's basically just -- it's basically nothing more than an IM client, like on your desktop computer, except a lot of these are specifically targeted for the phones themselves. It's one of the things I like about Takanot personally, because it's not so much a dedicated SMS replacement utility type of thing, so much as an application that allows you to use a Jabber server for communicating.

So you can use, like, Google Talk or any of the other Jabber XMPP services out there, and you don't have to actually, you know, use custom applications that are only available for phones. So with Takanot, I log into that. If my wife's at home on her computer, kind of like you with Skype, we're able to bridge the cell phone/computer divide and be able to continue to message just for the cost of text -- or for data.

So I'm going to switch it on you. What if -- with all these apps, what's your opinion on switching from a phone with voice and minutes and data? What about -- what do you think about switching to a tablet, maybe a small tablet, like an iPad Mini with a data connection, where you're just paying a flat fee for data, and then using apps like I use on my iPad?

I've used Talkatone to do mobile talking and mobile texting off the data connection. What do you think about that approach? Well, I'm not a big fan of paying any extra for the data connection to begin with, because -- What if that -- what if that replaced the phone, though?

Well, the problem there is going to a peer VoIP solution. You -- we'll get to that a little later, I think. There was an encounter that I had a few weeks back during the May 31st tornado out in El Reno, and relying on all of your mobile emergency communications is just a bad idea.

And we'll kind of cover that more when we get to, like, some of the carriers. Okay. All right. Deal. The other question I have is, what do you think about some of these apps that compress data? Like, so I saw recently an article on -- I don't know how to say it.

Is it Onavo? Yeah. I think so, innit? Yeah, I believe it's Onavo. They can cut down on some data usage, but the thing is, is that -- like, with Onavo on the Android platform, most of Google's traffic's already compressed anyway, and you introduce a third-party proxy, they're basically, you know -- you're pushing all of your information through their servers.

So they're basically able to, you know, sniff all your packets and see what you're doing. And there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you're getting a free service here, you need to ask yourself why. But it can cut down a little bit on data usage, potentially, but if you're already using a phone that's lean on data to begin with and is already, you know, compressing most all of the text-based traffic between the origin servers and your phone, and you're mostly sticking to text-based communications anyway, you don't really need that much compression.

Makes sense. Makes sense. And then the other one I saw -- and I don't know if you know anything about it. I haven't used it. Opera Mini? I saw an article on that. Do you know anything about that one? Opera Mini, they basically -- they're doing the proxy compression thing again with all of your usage.

Same thing? Basically, yeah, it's the same thing. You're pushing all of your web data through their servers to have it optimized and compressed to cut down on data usage. That's fine if you want someone else rifling through your online business. But if you're seriously looking at Opera Mini to compress and optimize the data usage that you're using on your smartphone anyway, especially your Android device, maybe you should consider going with Dolphin instead where you can just turn off image loading because that's going to be about 90% of your bandwidth traffic right there.

Okay, that's a browser. Dolphin is a browser? Yeah. Okay, I'll look that one up because that one's new to me too. Interesting. Okay, so those are -- yeah, I think it's going to get faster. It's going to be less and less data. And so it's interesting to kind of hear, understand.

I'm not a technical -- I'm not a techie, so it's interesting to kind of hear what's going on behind the scenes with some of these things that I read articles about. So, good. All right, let's get on to the actual here's where you should go and can go as far as provider selection.

So, first thing on our list, MNO versus MVNO. What does that mean? Well, we'll start with MVNO. MVNO is Mobile Virtual Network Operator. They basically piggyback off of the MNO or the Mobile Network Operator and resell the services. The MNOs, those are your AT&Ts, your Sprints, your T-Mobiles, and your Verizons.

MVNO is your Air Voice Wireless, your PlatinumTel, your GoSmart Mobile. Well, actually not GoSmart so much, but your TANG, the smaller carriers. They're basically reselling the service from the big guys on their network. When they do that, I've talked with...so, I'm using an MVNO, Air Voice Wireless, and I've also in the past used the Straight Talk service from Walmart, which we'll get to in just a minute.

But the two things that I've heard, one is I was talking with somebody who was a salesperson for one of the big four, and they said that by using an MVNO, I would come second in line to all of the big fours, even though I'm using the same towers as AT&T, because I'm not an AT&T customer.

If there was an overload on the system, I would come second. Do you know if that's true? I'm not sure if that's necessarily true or not. I guess theoretically, the primary operators would wind up getting preferential treatment and primary access to the towers. But if we're treating our mobile devices as an emergency communicator anyway, you don't really need to worry about that, because when you dial 911, it doesn't matter if you have access to the closest tower or not.

If you're with Air Voice and you're not near an AT&T tower, but you are near a T-Mobile tower, you're still going to be able to complete that 911 call, and you are going to get priority over everyone else. Let's face it, if we're minimizing our communications to their bare necessities when we're out and about, the stuff that we're going to communicate is either going to be life-threateningly important, in which when we dial that emergency number, we are going to get priority, or it's going to be something that, you know what, doesn't really matter if we're getting the best possible call connection on that call, as long as the information gets relayed.

That should be what matters. And I've never had that problem of my carrier not being able to complete that call, even on an MVNO. So there may be truth to it, but in reality, when you actually see it in action, you certainly aren't going to notice the difference. Yeah, that makes sense.

What about data speed? Do you think that...because one thing I...and I'm not...I've never been techie enough to kind of run like the speed tests and stuff, but I had a...I always thought that when I switched from AT&T to Straight Talk, that even though at that time I was running still on the AT&T towers, I felt like my data speed was slower.

Would that be normal, or is that probably not true? Yeah, that actually is true. Most MVNOs, you're not going to have near as fast a network connection as directly through, because, you know, you're basically adding on a third-party layer with that, using a smaller carrier servers. But it's not really a restriction so much on the network itself as the MVNO you're dealing with.

Like in the case of PagePlus, they're operating all their own servers, and even though the Verizon network can provide a much faster connection speed off of their 3G service, you're ultimately going to get capped at something like 350 kilobytes a second, absolute maximum. So yeah, you're going to get a...you're going to take a little bit of a hit on data speeds, but if you're only using text-based communications and you're eliminating streaming video and audio and the like, odds are you're not going to notice the difference.

Yeah, the only place that I noticed it at that time, and the reason I'm kind of harping on it and asking these questions, because I want people, like with the information that we're providing, I think a lot of people are going to be able to go in the direction that you advocate as far as, "Hey, just cut your usage down, change your usage patterns." But there's a lot of people my age that are going to still say, "Listen, I like...you like using iHeartRadio, I like using this app that sends data off, I like posting on Twitter," things like that.

Well, at that point, you need to basically justify how much that convenience is going to ultimately be worth to you, because being able to keep that convenience is going to drastically impact the bottom line on how much you can potentially save with your communications budget. Correct, but there are some options that we're going to get to with some of these carriers, sorry, some of these MVNOs, and where just by at least by switching to a prepaid plan, you can have everything except like 4G YouTube videos.

So that was where for a while I was on Straight Talk. I still cut $30 a month off my plan by switching from AT&T to Straight Talk, and I could still have...I had unlimited data. Well, that's different now, which we'll get to in a minute, but I had unlimited talk, unlimited text, and yet it saved me a good bit of money, and I could still use all those apps.

So those options are there. They're just still going to be in the, what, $40 to $50 a month range instead of the $10 to $20. Yeah, potentially, and even then, you're still...there's no such thing as unlimited anything. You read the contracts, and there's going to be caps in place.

Well, so let's go there. What do we look for? How do we choose between people? If I'm...because we're going to, on the show notes, we're going to give people a list of providers to consider and see what's appropriate for them. What do we look for? Well, first thing you need to look for is a provider that's going to be able to provide you all the features that you actually need.

Not all MVNOs provide things like call forwarding, for example. So if call forwarding is important to you, you need to look for a provider that gives you call forwarding. If cheaper data services is more important to you than cost per minute, then you need to find a provider that gives you cheaper per megabyte costs on the prepaid end than per minute.

And the best way to find out what you're actually going to get out of your service is to actually sit down and read the contract. Nobody does that, Will. Come on. Seriously. Everybody needs to. I know. It's been...I've read some of your posts on the Superguide, and it's pretty...I never used to read those things.

And kind of reading through some of your posts when I saw some of the stuff that was in there, I mean, you're exactly right. It's foolish. I've started reading all those things when you get an application, because there's...especially with all the privacy stuff with Snowden, it's a good wake-up call for people to say, "Okay, I know that...I always knew that everything was public, but let me actually read these terms of service.

What does this actually say? What am I literally signing? Yes, I'm fine with this." Yeah. Let's take Street Talk and Net10 and their unlimited bring-your-own-device services. Have you actually sat down and read the terms of service from them? No, I read your...I haven't. I read your analysis on the Superguide.

Well, basically, right there in black and white, they basically state that they can terminate you for using streaming media or any other bandwidth-intensive data usage that falls outside of email, purchasing songs online, and very basic web surfing and instant messenger communication. What good is unlimited data service if they have you so thoroughly tied on what you can and cannot do that you'd never be able to even break two gig worth of traffic a month?

Yeah. And that...they've...man, I tell you, Street Talk got a lot...if you go online and you start looking in the forums, they've cut so many people off of their data and just, boom, the whole thing just stops working. And you lose your number, you lose any remaining credit you paid.

I feel really sorry for the folks with, like, Street Talk who, "Ooh, if I pay for a year in advance, I can get it down from that $45 a month down to, what is it, like, $40?" And then two weeks in, they're streaming something off of YouTube, and they wind up losing their service because they're in...

You've got to call Mexico to get to speak to the customers. Yeah, and they're not going to do anything for you anyway except, you know what, you kiss your money goodbye because you breached the terms of service contract, and they get to keep your money, they get to keep your phone number if you liked it, and, I mean, that's the way it is.

So it's important to read the contract to see what is provided, what's not provided, and what can get you ultimately booted. And that's one of the things that makes the claim of unlimited so dangerous with a lot of these providers. And it is something, even with the good providers, that you need to be aware of.

There are clauses wherever unlimited is bandied about that they can arbitrarily define what constitutes network abuse and terminate you. And if you truly need the ability to have, like, 5,000, 6,000 minutes a month, you need to either pay for those... You need a provider where you can actually pay for those minutes, or you need a provider who's going to tolerate that level of usage.

And that's not going to be from an end to you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there still is a place for the big four. You know, we're pretty hard on them, but it's all about, just like with anything, and I know my show is brand new, but I'll tell you just kind of who I am.

The thing that drives me nuts is anybody saying that this is the way it is, especially talking heads on, you know, and things. People always say, "Well, this is how it is." Well, I think that the reality is that each person is going to know their usage patterns, and we can challenge them like we're doing to say, "Do you really need this?

Is it not worth doing something?" But at the end of the day, there are going to be people who are going to need 6,000 minutes a month, and they're going to be out in the boonies, and so Verizon is the only tower that's going to work there, and they need a smartphone because, you know, that's their only connection to the grid.

You know, that's a good spot for an iPhone on Verizon, right? Yeah, if you need it, if you have the justification to do it, then do so. It's all about using it as a tool, though, and prioritizing what's more important. When you're questioning whether it's worth spending even like $70 a month on a cell phone, then you are clearly paying too much.

If you can't see the value to it, then you're already there. You need to make the cut. Going back around a little bit, I have to point out how absurd it is in this country that in order to actually be able to save money on our cell phone bills, that we have to actually abandon the major four carriers and go to third-party resellers of those services who have their own overhead and their own technical support and sales support people just to be able to save money.

It's mind-blowing, but it is what it is, and as long as the only way to get affordable service is to do the song and dance, then let's help people do the song and dance. It's not as hard as, say, trying to talk your cable provider into shaving $10 a month off of your internet connection again for like six months.

You just pay for it and you go. >> Yeah. Yeah. Let's give some people, on the comment you just made, one quick comment, my hope, and I think it's really possible, I bet you, whatever you want to bet, a cold Coke or whatever, I bet you that in two years, my hope is that all this information that we're giving is hopelessly out of date because the major carriers are losing so much, the contract players are losing so much business that they have to wise up and say, "You know what?

We've got to change something." >> Well, technically speaking, last year was the first year that they've actually had negative growth in the cell phone industry, and it's been because Americans have finally started going over to more and more prepaid plans through MV&Os. >> Well, good. Maybe we'll continue to contribute to that, and they'll wake up when they get to that.

>> Yep. >> So let's go to some providers. Before we do, though, I want to show why this is such a big deal because my fear is that people maybe have heard this, and we've talked, I think, pretty straightforwardly about the advantages and disadvantages, but I just want to talk about the impact of saving money.

So I'm going to run it quick. I've got my trusty financial calculator here, and here is one of the things that I did. So I said I was previously paying about $220 a month with AT&T for the two phones and the iPad line, unlimited everything, and I've switched that to, like I said, to $35 with Internet at Home.

Instead of using unlimited data on the phones, I switched to Internet at Home, and then we're using Air Voice. So that's $185 a month of savings. So let me run a quick calculation here. Let's say $185 a month into an investment account. Let's just for round numbers say that we use 10%.

And let's see, our target, I don't know, let's say that we're doing this at 30 years old and over the course of 30 years of savings, right? So let me use a 30-year period of time, starting with nothing. If I took that money and invested that, my trusty financial calculator here at a 10% rate of return, which is a historical average of the stock market, $421,675.18.

Oh, shucks. I was figuring you'd at least be a millionaire by that point. Here, I'll go to 40 years. I'll go to 40 years. So we'll call this 25 to 65, and we'll go to 40 years here, and we'll have $1,179,704.35. There we go. And suddenly I'm reminded of that old Joy of Tech comic where the kid goes to his financial advisor asking about if he should invest in an iPhone, and the financial advisor goes, "Well, if you invested that money instead, you'd be a millionaire by the time you retired." And the last panelist, "iPhone 3G!

Woo-hoo!" That's exactly true, and that's why it's such a big deal, because a lot of times we forget that, yes, I like convenience. I like apps and things like that, but the opportunity cost is that now I'm likely to have, based upon the changes that I've done, and just by being willing to download podcasts when I'm on Wi-Fi instead of on the road, and by being willing to use my GPS in the car that doesn't need data, just a few very small, minor things, it's likely to result in an extra half million to a million dollars of net worth in my lifetime, just that one little change.

So it's a big deal. My encouragement for folks listening is that run your own calculation. Maybe 40 years is a long time. It always feels a little silly when you go that far out, because it's hard to imagine 40 years. Maybe figure it on a year. $185 a month is, in a year's time, that comes out to $2,220.

That's a really nice trip to a foreign country. What is it that Pete there, Mr. Money Mustache, what is it he always says? $10 saved every month is like $100 invested permanently or something such as that? He uses a really useful rule of thumb. He uses 173. He says take your monthly number, multiply it times 173, and that will give you a 10-year return.

I think he used, I can't remember, it's an 8% return. So let's say, in my example, using his formula, $185 times 173, quick and easy over a 10-year period of time. If you take that money and invest it instead, that's $32,000. So big money. Yep, it really is. Big money.

All right, providers. So first one on our list is Airvoice. I'll go first because this one's the one that I'm using. I know your favorite one is the second one on our list. So I'll comment on Airvoice since I've done some research on that one, and then you can fill in any gaps I missed.

Okay. So first of all, Airvoice is an MVNO that resells space on the AT&T towers. I've switched to them four months ago. They've been great. They really have been great. Even just signing it up, I don't know all the technical stuff, but the people answer the phone in English.

They know what they're doing, and I can tell that they're probably in the US. If not, they've got really good accent. Well, they are located out of the Great Lakes area. I think Airvoice is actually up in Chicago, if I recall correctly. Okay. Well, they're doing a really good job.

They have a plan that's a $10 a month plan. So you have $10 a month, and you can split that out into any combination of voice minutes, text or data. And voice is billed at four cents a minute. Texts are billed at two cents a text message, and data is billed at 33 cents a megabyte, right?

And so that comes out to your $10. If you do that, $10 comes out to 250 minutes, 500 text messages, or I don't figure out the data thing. The data price seems really high to me, so I just don't use the data. Yeah. It's something like a 30 megabyte of data or something such as that.

Some insulting amount of data, which I mean, honestly, if... We're talking reduced data rates, but the way AT&T charges their MVNOs for data, you'd think the stuff was made out of the finest gold and jewel-encrusted bits of data that were somehow magically entrusted upon you through the network. It's just...

It's absurd. But it's neither here nor there. So what did I miss on Airvoice? Did I miss anything? A couple things. Airvoice does offer auto-renew plans, which is actually pretty rare in the MVNO market. They do have rollover with that plan, so anything you don't use out of that $10 every month is going to continue to carry over, so you're not just losing what you don't use at the end.

It'll keep going, and that's one of the nice things about averaging out your usages. If you do wind up having a couple of lighter usage months followed by a really heavy usage month, given that rollover is there, it's going to be able to absorb the shock of using more than what you normally buy, and that can be incredibly useful to know.

Let's see, Airvoice also does call forwarding on their per-minute plans. Not their unlimited, but on their per-minute plans, so that's something to keep in mind for those of you who are using like Femto cells in your homes to try and get coverage in your house where you're not actually getting like AT&T reception.

You can set up your cell phone to forward to your handy new voice number if you like, and then you don't have to worry about missing any calls. That's cool. I saw in the notes here about the call forwarding, but I didn't think about why that's important, so that makes sense to me.

Of course, you're still going to get billed per minute, and you'll want to be real careful about not staying too long on calls where you know it's been forwarded through, but it is something to consider and something that can be potentially useful, and beyond that, they're basically a bring-your-own-device company, so as long as you have a carrier-unlocked GSM cell phone, you're set to go.

And also, on the $10 a month thing, I want to emphasize, because I actually was talking with some friends last night about it. If I run out of texts per minute, I just buy another $10, and, "Oh, I spent $20 this month. Big deal." "Oh, I've doubled my expenses!" I mean, if you actually run it, even at those rates, let's say that I do $30 of minutes divided by $0.04, that's 750 minutes.

That's a lot of talking, and yet I'm still cheaper than I was. For me, the reason I love it so much is because I can still have all the fun of my iPhone. I have my Kindle on there, so if I'm waiting in line, I can read a Kindle book.

I've still got all of the usefulness of all of my applications, but I just am using it kind of like an iPod Touch or a tablet that doesn't have a data connection, but yet I can still get the few phone calls and texts that I want to get. So it's been super, super – we love it.

We're super pleased with it. >> By that same token, though, if you're consistently having to spend $25, $30 a month on per-minute costs, then you might want to reevaluate whether you want to stick with per-minute or potentially jump up to one of their "unlimited plans" on the talk and text.

>> Yeah, I've only had one – you're exactly right. I've only had one month where I wound up doing $20 instead of $10 because I was on the road. Actually, the reason it was, I had a car accident. >> That'd do it. >> Yeah, so I'm on the side of the road and I needed to turn data on to get on the Internet and get some phone numbers and stuff while I'm sitting on the side of the road.

So I burned through $6 of data on the side of the road, but hey, whatever. That's what it's there for. So it was fine. Next on the list, your favorite, PlatinumTel. >> Yeah, PlatinumTel – technically, PlatinumTel has a sister company called GiveMobile as well. We'll get to them in a minute.

They're on the T-Mobile network. They've got U.S.-based customer support just like AirVoice does. Same region of the country as well. Kind, wonderful folks up in the Great Lakes region. We as a country do not give those people near the credit they really deserve. They're just salt of the earth, man.

But their voice prices per minute are a penny higher than AirVoice's $10 plan, so you're spending five cents a minute. But their text rates are the same, and more importantly, their per megabyte charge is basically nearly a third of what AirVoice is charging. Yeah, 10 cents a megabyte. So you can actually – that's a fair chunk of data.

I mean, 10 bucks will get you 100 megabytes, so that's not too bad. We're talking in an era where we're talking about 100 megabytes of data for $10 isn't bad. This is embarrassing. Welcome to the future, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, data caps. But you got cheap data prices.

They don't have any auto-renew, but they have really long airtime with their pay as you go. 10 bucks gets you 60 days of service, 20 gets you 90, and it just keeps going up until I think 100 bucks gets you a year. And that takes care of things sufficiently to where you don't have to sweat things too much on, "Oh, I got to stay on top of it every month to renew stuff." If you just buy a giant wad of – you figure out how much you need in the way of minutes and say if you figure you're going to wind up using about 10 bucks airtime a month, go ahead and get like the $100 of airtime, and then you don't really have to worry about it until a year from now.

You'll get the little message, "Hi, you need to pay before this such and such a date or else your service is going to get cut off and you'll lose any rollover." But even if you wind up missing that time, if you read their terms of service, which is actually one of the shortest in the industry, you've got something like 30 or 60 days after that point to reactivate the account and keep your phone number, which is a drastic shift in what a lot of people are used to with like Straight Talk, Net10, and TrackPhone, where basically you let your account lapse, you lose your number within 24 hours.

It emphasizes again that you need to read the terms of service. But I mean, they're forgiving. And I mean, PlatinumTel really shines as a per-minute pay-as-you-go provider. They're a little more expensive than T-Mobile's own GoSmart for the "unlimited packages," but by the same token, PlatinumTel's customer service is just that much better than anything T-Mobile's ever going to provide you, especially on their prepaid services.

And to that regard, too, with GiveMobile, their sister company, it's a service that just launched a few months back. For the same price as those unlimited packages on the PlatinumTel end, on the Give end, they donate 8% of your bill to three charities of your choice from like a list of 45 that they support.

So you get better -- you may wind up paying a little bit more than GoSmart for the same amount of data and unlimited talk and text, but you get better customer service and you have the option of doing good in the world. >> I wonder if they send you a receipt so that you can deduct your 8% of yourself.

>> I doubt it. That's not something I'd consider outright charity on your behalf because you got the middle man there. But I mean, it's still -- >> It feels good and it helps. >> Yeah, it helps. And more people need to be charitable, doggone it. We need to do more good with our money.

And if you can potentially do that by switching to a provider that does that, hey, just like Credo Wireless over on Sprint, if the billing works for you and the organizations that they support float your boat, go for it, man. It's better than just flushing the money directly down the chute and can potentially help other people.

>> And they have international options, right? >> Yeah, PlatinumTel, that's one of the things where you wind up getting that price differential. The reason why they seem a little more expensive than like GoSmart for basically the exact same service or very close to it, it's because they've already got international services rolled into it.

So in actuality, if you need like international texting or whatnot, then PlatinumTel and Give are going to cost the same amount of money per month as GoSmart is with that international bundle added on. So you might as well just go the one route versus the other anyway. >> Got it.

GoSmart then, you're just mentioning them. What's the deal with GoSmart? >> GoSmart's actually a new brand owned by T-Mobile. They've been making a big push into the MVNO marketplace themselves the past few months. And they don't have any pay-as-you-go stuff. But if you're in that category of $30 plus a month on your cell phone service and you just can't rope your usage in, but you want to go with a T-Mobile provider that has cheap data, GoSmart's going to be the one you want to go to.

>> So that would be good for my young friends who are iPhone app developers that say, "There's no chance that I'm going to... Joshua, you're being a dumb-dumb here thinking that I'm going to give up all my data usage." But I go, "Okay, listen, consider GoSmart, right?" >> Yeah.

For $45 a month, you can get that unlimited talk text and 5 gig of unmetered, unthrottled data. And then after that 5 gig, you'll get throttled down to edge speeds. But I mean, anyone who's able to use 5 gig of data a month on a cell phone really is using so much data that they need to be on a desktop anyway.

>> Yeah. That's a monster. And you would say even though straight talk offers similar, although theirs is capped at what, 3 or 4, I think... >> Well, that's the thing. They don't actually disclose what their caps are. >> Okay. Yeah. You're right. You're right. But at least you would say GoSmart better than straight talk, right?

>> Yeah, absolutely. And fact of the matter is, is I think straight talk, America Mobile actually switched over to T-Mobile as their primary SIM card provider now. So honestly, for the money, you're getting no better. The only thing is, is you're getting an even longer contract with an even longer terms of service with even more dubious points of contention where they can just terminate your service without any warning or question.

So if you're going to wind up on a T-Mobile network anyway for your data service, go with someone where they're actually upfront and honest about how much data you're actually going to use. >> I got--I just--I thought I had heard something and I just went and Googled it while you were talking.

I heard--I was listening to Clark Howard the other day and he had really recommended straight talk but all of his listeners were so frustrated with not knowing the cap. So they hammered on straight talk and they finally got straight talk to give the number. >> Really? >> Yeah, 2.5 gigs.

I'll send you the--I'll send you the-- >> 2.5 gig. >> Yeah. So I'll send you the link and I'll put it in the show notes on his blog. So 2.5 gigs of high speed data. After 2.5, you're throttled to--you're throttled down and there's a hard cap at 4 gigs.

So their unsubmitted data is 2.5 gigs. >> It was a hard cap at 4 gig. And even more interestingly is that may be, you know, 2.5 gig in a month but if I recall correctly, their data throttling practices are actually on a daily basis. So if you exceed something like--I want to say that others had kind of figured out that the daily cap was like somewhere around 70, 80 megabyte and you exceeded that and they'd already start to throttle you for the rest of the day.

So, yeah. Let me tell you, the best place for resources on finding out the more unsavory side of any particular MVNO carrier, even the good ones here, and it's important with research. You really need to know who you're dealing with and you should look at both good and bad with any of them.

But I mean, Howard Forums is just an absolute fantastic resource for that because you're going to get full spectrum. You're going to have the people who absolutely love the service. You're going to have the people who absolutely hate it. And there is value in negative feedback because you can tell by that negative feedback where the problems and the shortcomings are in the service.

>> So you said Howard Forums? >> Yes, Howard Forums. >> Okay. I'll look that up and put it in the show. Moving on, Ting. My brother uses Ting and he--they got this thing where like you change your plan every month based upon your usage, right? >> Yeah. It's basically kind of this hybrid prepaid, postpaid, paid monster, kind of the best of both worlds in a lot of regards.

And they have some really nice tools that allow you to restrict and cap usage and really good provider if you need several--if you're doing like the family plan type of thing where you just want one bill for everyone and they'll basically, you know, you pool everyone's usage together and bill you only for what you're actually used.

There's no unlimited anything there. They're a newer company. I typically try and skew towards older established MVNOs simply because the marketplace is just so cutthroat and brutal. So like Airvoice and PlatinumTel, they're really the granddaddies of the MVNO marketplace. They've been--they've both been around for over a decade just like Virgin Mobile has, though technically Virgin was bought out by Sprint.

So that's kind of cheating a little bit on that particular number. But you want to go with providers who've proven themselves in the marketplace. But I do make exceptions on rare occasion. Ting is one of them. They've only been around for like a year and a half, but they're backed by 2Cows.

You remember the company back in the late '90s where you used to go for like freeware and shareware on the internet? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's them. They're actually a pretty large internet services provider and back bone bandwidth, the whole nine. And they recently got into MVNO usage.

And one of the other nice things is Sprint's network is, I believe, the smallest network footprint on the nation. With Ting, they actually allow for voice roaming with Verizon as well. So that kind of fills in a lot of gaps and shortcomings for a lot of Sprint MVNO users.

So if you're seriously thinking about going Sprint, you need to go with the Sprint MVNO, you should probably consider using Ting. And it doesn't hurt that they actually let you bring your own Sprint device as well. >> Cool. Cool. Virgin Mobile, is that still owned by Richard Branson or did he sell that off?

>> No, he sold it off a couple of years after establishing it here. And Virgin Mobile in this country is actually owned by Sprint. Just like... >> My sister's on their network and she's had a good deal with just with the dumb phone for a long time. But she's really liked their service.

>> Yeah. Their prices and services aren't too bad for both packages that skew more towards voice usage and other plans that skew more towards data usage. They're decent enough. And if you just absolutely positively have to have a CDMA-based iPhone, go Virgin Mobile. >> So CDMA, you mean if you were on Verizon?

>> If you were...well, if you've got good Sprint coverage, clearly, because you're really not going to be able to bring any sort of iPhone over to a Verizon MVNO. But if you just absolutely positively have to have CDMA coverage and you have to have an iPhone, then you... >> What I'm asking is the CDMA, I thought it was Verizon that used CDMA.

Is Sprint... >> Both Sprint and...yeah, both Sprint and Verizon. >> Okay. Do you think that...is there any deals to be had there if somebody buys a CDMA iPhone off eBay or something? Is that something to be... >> No. You have to buy the iPhone straight from Virgin. It's got to be a Virgin-branded device.

They don't really...they kind of have a bring your own Sprint device policy unofficially, but it's kind of difficult to do. It's just easier to buy an actual Virgin-branded device. It cuts down on portability, but...and you're already getting clipped hard on the whole portability and taking your handset wherever you go with a CDMA provider anyway, so...

>> Okay. Let's see, PagePlus. >> Yes, PagePlus. They're currently a...they're a Verizon-based MVNO. They've got a reasonably decent history and track record of good...they've got good packages at good price points, but I am getting a little hesitant on the idea of recommending them anymore because...you know how I keep kind of not saying the kindest things about the realities of services from, you know, like Straight Talk, Net10, TrackPhone, any of the other America Mobile-branded services?

America Mobile put in a bid to buy out PagePlus's parent company, and pretty much every MVNO that America Mobile has bought out has ultimately gone over to the worse, I'm sorry to say. I just...the support is terrible. The prices for what you're getting are not that competitive. I find it hilarious that people think they're getting, like, this fantastic deal on TrackPhone with, you know, triple minutes for life on the goofy little proprietary phone that they sell you, and you do the math and the triple minutes for life, you're still paying, you know, you're still paying, let's see, $20 for 90 minutes, so you're getting, like, oh geez, 270 minutes for 20 bucks.

Well, even the PlatinumTel 200 minutes is, you know, 10. You're way overpaying. But we'll kind of get more...I've jumped off of PagePlus and gone straight to...I've gone straight to the America Mobile properties, but back to PagePlus. For the moment, they've still got some good plans, and they've kind of been the default go-to for Verizon refugees who just wanted to get out.

And unless you need to bring an LP device or a BlackBerry or an iPhone, you can usually just bring your Verizon device over with you as well without any problems. But given the whole America Mobile thing, you know, we do need to...what happens if we lose PagePlus? Well, there is an outfit called Talk for Good.

They're kind of new. I am a little skittish about their long-term survivability, but odds are if the deal goes through for PagePlus, they've pretty much got it locked and made as long as they, you know, don't extend themselves too thin. So same benefits right there. So consider them potentially as well, but do keep in mind that they haven't been on the scene for that long.

So caveat dumped or, you know. - Got it. Straight Talk, Net10, TrackPhone, you pretty much covered, not a huge fan. And we've talked a few times about Straight Talk. Is there anything that they do well? Like, is there any reason to go for them? - Well, if you're... - That was kind of a leading question.

I didn't mean to sound quite that bad, but I mean... - Well, as a perfectly cromulent, horrible response to that question, if you're a masochist, why not? But, you know, there are limited situations where they may be of use. Like if you are up in the $40 to $50 a month range where you're wanting to bring your own device and you need the ability...where you're on a GSM carrier and you need the ability to roam off network from your primary provider.

Like if your T-Mobile coverage or your AT&T coverage isn't sufficient for every place you go, but is mostly sufficient, but you still need that critical reception that's more than just 911 service access, and you can justify, you know, the usage and the money, then yeah, you could find a case for usage on that in certain situations, but not often.

So... When you get down to it, it's all about doing the math. Do the math for what they're actually charging for those services, and you're going to find that there are going to be better providers out there offering the exact same service for cheaper. And you don't have to use their crummy phones.

- And I guess you figured, who's the guy that owns those... - Carlos Slim. - The richest man in the world. So he's doing okay. He'll be all right. He's out here, I guess. - He's on his bottom line, not giving them any business. - Yeah. Of course, Carlos, if you need anything, call me.

I'm happy to help. You know, we can help you work out your customer service problems here. Republic Wireless. - Okay. We were talking earlier about the dangers of potentially, you know, getting all of your service through data, and this is Republic Wireless and Freedom Pops actually introducing a new phone service here through their data as well.

And like I said, I was out in the thick of the May 31st tornado here in Oklahoma, the one that ripped through El Reno, and I noticed that the first thing that went was data. Second thing to go was voice, and the third to go was SMS. And as much as I would love to like Republic Wireless and Freedom Pop for, you know, providing these "incredibly cheap, unlimited services," I can't because all it is is VoIP service wrapped up in a proprietary mobile phone.

And that means you're getting the worst of both mobile service and VoIP. And you're restricted to the Sprint network, which, you know, doesn't exactly have some of the fastest data speeds anyway, especially on the MVNO end. And if you wind up being in an emergency situation with an emergency phone, and the first thing to go is your data service, you've basically lost all forms of communication with that device.

So that needs to be something that you are aware of. And if you really want an emergency communications device, you need to be able to go through multiple channels of communication, and you can't do that with those providers. You think you can, but you can't. >> That makes sense.

So it would -- so those -- because I, you know, I like the Republic Wireless idea. I mean, basically their deal is $19. Their drum they beat is $19 a month, no caps on anything. And the reason we can give it to you really cheap is because we're going to run you through Wi-Fi when we're on Wi-Fi, and then we're going to trust you to be part of the family and not go too high on your usage when you're not on Wi-Fi.

>> But in reality, if you use too much data, you're going to wind up losing your service anyway. And let's be honest, if you're going to be saddled at home using a VoIP provider anyway, why do it through the worst possible way to do it? Why not just properly get a cheaper VoIP provider like VoIPo or some such and just go that path?

>> Yeah. It's -- you're right. I was -- I recommended recently Republic Wireless to my sister because she's on a dumb phone with Virgin Mobile, and she's, you know, years later she's like, "I think I'm finally ready to go ahead and get a smartphone." So I said, "Well, you know, you've got this great cheap plan.

If you really want a smartphone, you don't use that much. You're at the house where you've got Wi-Fi all day. Why don't you, you know, consider this Android that Republic Wireless has. It's probably good enough for you to get the experience of the smartphone without going too high." But, you know, your point about the risks of everything being on the data connection is exactly, you know, it's well received.

What would you -- so what would you recommend to her, you know, to get the smartphone experience? You know, because I didn't want her to -- my conundrum was I didn't want her to be worrying about not using data on the road. So I figured, well, the easiest thing if she wants the smartphone experience would be Republic Wireless.

>> Well, you're not really going to get much of a smartphone experience with Republic Wireless anyway. But probably one of the T-Mobile providers, if that is that much of a concern with the whole, you know, smartphone experience, then, you know, go with the carrier that has the cheapest data services available, you know.

>> Yeah. Makes sense. Let's see. Anything else on this list here? I guess next thing up on our list is that there are other features and talk us through Google Voice and other providers. >> Well, Google Voice, it's a great -- a lot of people use it to augment their service with and -- but because it's basically VoIP.

So it makes things, you know, cheaper as long as, you know, you're not having to pay too awful much for your data. But the thing that a lot of people don't realize is a lot of Google Voice's features are not exclusive to Google Voice. Things like global call hunt, SMS support, you know, voicemail to email, that sort of thing, cheap international rates, those can be had with services like VoIPO, VoIP MS, and call centric.

So why get involved with Google's data mining? Because, I mean, let's face it, there's no such thing as a free lunch. So why bother? >> Yeah, Mr. Plummer needs to listen to my calls. It's okay. >> But I mean -- but it does highlight the necessity for using VoIP as a way to augment and cut down on prices.

You want VoIP for your home. So, you know, Google Voice plus Talkatone or an OB device at home, if you really want to go the Google Voice route, that can work. >> What is OB? >> The OB, the OB high devices like the OB 110, they're basically little ATAs that you can actually tie into Google Voice, just like Talkatone can on a smartphone.

So -- >> Got it. >> Yeah, that basically allows you to tie like an old analog telephone to your Google Voice account. But you get what you pay for and Google Voice is not that great of a service. I take it from someone who's had them since the Grand Central days.

The only reason why I'm still with them is purely the momentum and the fact that I don't want to give Google a credit card number. >> Here's one thing also that I like about Google Voice, and maybe there are others as well, but one thing I like about Google Voice is that I can have one phone number that I don't have to pay for as far as money out of pocket that I can always use.

So even if I go out of the country for a month or a couple months or things like that, I can just shut off, especially with prepaid. It's so wonderful. I can just turn off my prepaid phones and no one has those numbers. I can disconnect any kind of like those services and save that money and Google Voice will email me my voicemails and I can call people on the road.

>> And like I said, that's not a service exclusive to Google Voice anymore. Most really good VoIP providers already have that option as well. >> Do they have it for free, like without a monthly fee? >> Well, not without a monthly fee. If you're paying for VoIP service, but you do get it as part of the base package.

You're not spending extra for it. So if you're already going to be spending money for VoIP service at home, why drag Google Voice into the mix when you can replicate those features for... >> That makes sense. >> Yeah. >> I'm with you. All right. Anybody else on that list?

Anything special about phone power and NetTalk? >> Well, Talkatone, or sorry, not Talkatone, VoIPO, VoIPMS, Callcentric, Future9, Phone Power and NetTalk, those are kind of the core providers that offer some of the cheapest things. The thing with NetTalk is I'm not crazy about them because they're basically selling a proprietary device and you're locked into it.

But if you're just absolutely positively looking for the absolute cheapest VoIP service at home possible, go NetTalk. It's going to be cheaper than the MagicJack. The service is going to be better and you're not going to have the restrictions with it. But all of these providers, it's just like the MVNOs.

You need to look to see what's going to give you the best options that you need because not all of them have things like SMS support. Not all of them have visual voicemail. Not all of them do global call hunt. And some of them have the option of a free second number.

You just got to look at the services, what they offer, what their prices are and kind of determine where to go from there. But that said, of all of them, per month, if you're willing to pay for a couple of years up front, VoIP is going to be your cheapest, most feature-rich for the money.

We may have to do another show just on VoIP because we're going long. I'd love to provide a resource just on VoIP and talk people through their options because you mentioned MagicJack, you mentioned these here. We haven't talked about Ooma. We don't need to go into it right now.

I'm not a fan of Ooma. Don't get me started on Ooma. All right. Understood. We're going to have to have an extra one because it's interesting because Consumer Reports says Ooma is the best one for the last few years. Someone's not doing any math on that. I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

And obviously, here's the other thing is that people need to understand where they're at as far as the technological side of it. So sometimes, if you just want a plug-and-play solution, you might need to choose one. It may not be the cheapest, but if you can bring together a situation, there's always little things that you can exploit if you know what you're doing.

Absolutely. And the last thing is, I think we said it before, but there's always the option of maybe you don't quite need a cell phone. Yeah. Maybe you don't actually need a cell phone. But by the same token, I can understand the concern for those people where, I mean, we've become a society without any payphones because of cell phones.

So you want that emergency lifeline. Well, good news. You don't have to pay money for that emergency lifeline. If you're just looking for a phone that can dial 911 access, any decommissioned phone will work. Absolutely. And any phone is going to dial 911, no matter what it's going to dial.

And here are my other things. If you need that emergency phone, that's thing one. Thing two is you can use either some sort of mobile device or tablet that has Wi-Fi. You can use an iPod Touch, a cheap iPod Touch off of eBay, and you can use that for all of the email stuff.

And there's Wi-Fi everywhere. And/or you can always go and find an old Kindle 3G that will have limited email on the phone, and all that stuff is free. So for those who are pretty hardcore, there are lots of free solutions that you can accomplish. Absolutely. All right. I'm going to throw at you a couple of scenarios.

And because we've talked about a lot, and obviously, this has been really great. I've enjoyed it. I'm going to give you a couple of scenarios. And first, I want to give people carrier guidance. Because a lot of times you get into CDMA and GSM and all this, what phones work with what phones?

So if I have an AT&T phone, of the list of MVNO providers that we're suggesting people look at, which of those providers will take my AT&T phone? Well, providers, without being carrier unlocked, you're pretty much stuck with AT&T MVNOs like Air Voice, H2O Wireless, a few others I'm at a loss for at the moment.

But I mean... So that's two. So if my phone is not unlocked, I can take it to Air Voice or you said H2O Wireless? H2O. H2O Wireless. And conversely, if you're someone under an AT&T contract and you want a new phone, technically speaking, you can just buy one of those Go phones off the shelf, one of the AT&T's prepaid phones.

They'll work just as well. Just drop a SIM card in and you're done. Got it. And now if my phone is unlocked but it's an AT&T phone, then I can go to Air Voice, PlatinumTel, who else? Pretty much any GSM provider. Which ones are the GSM providers? Well, Air Voice, GoSmart, PlatinumTel, GiveMobile.

There's... Oh, geez. There's someone else I want to mention but I'm drawn a blank at the moment. They weren't that important. I primarily stick with just recommending those guys anyway simply because of the price and the service and the longevity. But basically, if any provider... Oh, Consumer Cellular. That's who I was talking about.

They're kind of the GSM equivalent of Ting, only you have to manually juggle between tiers of service and they have really steep overages. And well, it's basically what you'd expect from the Ting experience if it was filtered through the AT&T distortion field. Got it. Consumer Cellular is actually not too terrible, but it's considerably more expensive as is pretty much nearly any AT&T MVNO.

But any MVNO that provides a SIM card, you're going to be able to use in your unlocked AT&T or unlocked T-Mobile phone. So T-Mobile phones would be the same list that you just gave me for AT&T? Yeah. You are going to run into some issues if you're wanting high-speed data with like a T-Mobile MVNO.

There are some changes being made, but if high-speed data really matters to you, you're probably going to want to get a Pentaband T-Mobile cell phone that's carrier unlocked to be able to take advantage of high-speed access from a T-Mobile network provider. But beyond that, basically whatever applied for AT&T, you can switch it around for the T-Mobile MVNOs and vice versa.

So basically just reverse what I said before. Got it. Now, if I've got Verizon, I can go directly to which of these characters without any trouble? Page Plus or Talk4Good. Okay. So if I've got Verizon, Page Plus and Talk4Good is where I go. And then Sprint? Your options pretty much are going to be like Ting, Virgin Mobile, and EcoMobile.

Okay. Got it. All right. Any closing thoughts or anything we missed? Well, all I can really say is the same thing that I always say, research, research, research. Do the research, work out what you actually need to be well-informed as a customer. Do the math and sit down with your bills.

I mean, know that very few people in this world need anything near approaching Unlimited. And remember that Unlimited doesn't actually mean infinite. So do the math and read the contracts that you're getting into. Understand them. If you see a contract that's way too long, that's not a good sign.

So as long as you know what you need, you've researched, you've done the math, you know what you need out of your provider, and you have a contract that you understand, you're golden. Beyond that, I always advise try and stay away from any sort of vendor walk-in with handsets and devices.

If you buy a phone that is proprietary only to that provider and you literally cannot take it anywhere else, well, kind of like Virgin Mobile's handsets or Cricket or any of the phones from Straight Talk Net 10 and TrackPhone, you're walked into those providers. You're not going to be able to take it anywhere else.

So walk-in can be a nasty thing. And as long as you're walked in, you don't have the freedom to be able to go elsewhere. And ultimately, you need to be willing to compromise. >> Yeah. It's been -- you know, I think I've got a good understanding of what I think -- how a lot of people think about it.

I used to be very scarred about going over and having -- being shocked by a huge bill. And so I said, "Well, I'll just go with unlimited, and that way I don't have to think about it." And it's an easy thing to think about. But as my little math example proves, that if you need unlimited, like if you need, like you said, thousands and thousands of minutes, great.

Go for it. But most people don't. And it's worth it. It's worth the time. You know, saving an extra 50 bucks a month just by making a couple of switches is substantial over time, saved and invested. So it's been fun. >> Yes, it is. >> It's been fun. Well, I've enjoyed having you on.

And -- >> Thank you for having me. >> As far as where people should go, so you've got your site. I'll put links -- I'm going to put extensive show notes for this episode. And again, this episode, when checked, is going to be episode four. So to get to the show notes, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/episode4.

Just type that into the browser. It'll go right there. I'll put extensive show notes directing people to techmashugana.com, also to the Super Guide on the Money Mustache Forums. Let's see, would you prefer people ask you -- if people want to ask you questions, would you prefer they do it on the Super Guide or on your website?

Or do you have a preference there? >> If you want to ask questions there on Radical Personal Finance or drop me a line directly off of my feedback form on my website, that'd be fantastic. I mean, I do frequent the forums as well. I'll answer questions wherever, but don't be afraid to ask.

>> Yes, so people can leave questions right in the notes on this podcast. And we'll try to make sure that Will sees them. And then if there's something we can do -- and I got an idea that if you're Will and we might be doing this in a year and it'd be totally different.

>> Yes, the markets change. >> They change quite quick. And then we'll see about kind of the schedule. If this is well received, maybe we'll do another one on VoIP because I know that's something you've got expertise in. It's totally new to me. I just bought a MagicJack and -- >> Oh, you poor thing.

>> Well, that's what I'm saying. I just decided it was on sale and I said, "Well, let's try it out." But I probably could return it. So maybe we should do it sooner than later, but we'll see. >> Very. >> I'll play with it. Thank you, Will. And with that, this has been Episode 4 of the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

As always, leave some comments on the show. Let us know how we can help you. My goal is to provide world-class information, content, and advice that doesn't have a specific agenda to beat you over the head to say this is what you should do, but rather to -- with the assumption that you're an intelligent consumer.

If you know the information, you'll make the decisions that are right for you. So have a great day, everybody.