Comment by toast0 2 days ago
Claiming $200/month for a phone makes one wonder which numbers are valid. I'm not saying everyone needs to make a $100 phone last 5 years and use a $15/month plan, but I'm not even sure how I would get to $200/month in phone bill, even including financing an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
With $85/month service (AT&T unlimited premium with only a single line) and financing a $2,000 phone (The smaller storage version of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 at MSRP) over 18 months, you’d hit almost exactly that; you could so the same with a cheaper service and/or phone with some add-ons (e.g., while Apple Care is billed directly by Apple and so wouldn't be on a phone bill, insurance for non-Apple phones is often billed by carriers on phone bills.)
$200 doesn't seem that crazy if they are buying several phone lines. I assume he pays at the least his wife as well, so that's two. If they have home internet bundled in as well, that would easily explain that figure. All to say, AT&T. He may also have a home phone line for a fax machine. It is perhaps a bit disingenuous to bundle it all together, but it also isn't the main point of the article.
What he said was:
> Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school.
That makes it sound like this is the minimum that you have to pay to get a smartphone and service to get by in modern life.
$200/mo is definitely high for that. An iPhone 17 Pro Max with maxed out storage (2 TB) is under $85/mo for 24 months.
A Visible+ Pro prepaid plan is $45/mo ($37.5/mo if you pay for 12 months at once) if you don't use one of their frequent promo codes to get a discount.
That includes unlimited premium data on Verizon's 5 G UWB, 5 G, and 4 G LTE networks, support for a cellular smartwatch, 4K UHD video, and unlimited mobile hotspot. By "premium" data they mean no deprioritization. Visible users get the same priority as user's of Verizon's own postpaid plans.
The hotspot is only 15 Mbps, so you probably wouldn't want to rely on it if you have frequent or long internet outages, but I've found for the occasional short outage it was fine for email, HN/Reddit/etc, and YouTube videos.
This will be massively more than enough to cover the smartphone hardware and service needs for everything probably 99% of the US population needs to get by, at $130/mo.
Note that includes getting a new top of the line iPhone every 2 years. With a more modest phone and keeping it for 5 years we are looking at more like $60/mo.
I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it
When you say
> I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it
and your article says
> Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school.
It sounds like you're trying to communicate that you pay at least $200/month per smartphone for your family? Or you don't value precision in communication.
I know you've got a lot going on with a small business, and a new kid... but if money is important to you, maybe spend the time to switch to prepaid phone plans. There's lots of options [1], whatever network you need, you can do direct operator plans, MVNO owned by the operator, or like actual MVNO. If you're short on time and T-Mobile's network works for you, MintMobile has a promo going right now where $180 pays for 12 months of "unlimited" which is $15/month if you divide it out.
> I also pay $1250 per month to TriNet for the privilege of being able to buy their health insurance in the first place - sure, I get some other benefits too, but I’m the only US-based employee currently so this overhead is really 100% me.
Do you live in a state with a reasonable healthcare exchange? You might want to shop and see if an off the shelf plan from the exchange is better than paying TriNet to get access to their insurance; it may well be, but you should check. If you only have one US employee, and it's you, there's a lot of expense for not a lot of value IMHO. It's not really Apples to Apples though --- I think a lot of the TriNet plans have out of state coverage where a lot of exchange plans don't.
> It sounds like you're trying to communicate that you pay at least $200/month per smartphone for your family? Or you don't value precision in communication.
You're moving the goal posts here. You have to have service, realistically, in order to use it like a real person.
And what if the CEO needs international numbers across all continents?
What if the CEO needs to supply an entire 1,332 person company with business phones?
What about an assistant to answer them! What if we're sleeping!
Oh god!
But just to put my comment in context, here is what he said:
> Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school.
Okay, so on the non-budget side, I pay ~$64/mo for T-mobile's "unlimited[1]" plan and a Google Pixel phone. ($57/mo for the service, and I've amortized the phone price to ~$7/mo based on my lifetime average phone lifetime. Even if you amortize the phone over only its ridiculously short warranted lifetime, that's $42/mo for the phone, or $99/mo, but that implies purchasing a new phone yearly, which most people do not do (the average phone lifespan is just under 3y).)
[1]: (n.b., the plan is not truly unlimited.)
Consider changing your plan?
I pay $70/mo for 2 phone lines. Unlimited everything (well, OK, 5 GB data cap before slowing down).
5GB data cap is ridiculously low. Might as well only count the slow speed.
In over a decade, the only time I hit that cap was because I let my kid watch too many videos on it.
5 GB is pretty reasonable for the bulk of the country. The only common things that can make it go over are games and streaming - both of which really are luxuries if you simply can't wait till you have Wifi access. So yeah - of course you should pay a lot more if you insist on doing those things.
It’s also what critical thinkers do when evaluating “what percentage full of shit do I think this author is?”
If a glaring innumeracy or terrible estimate is in the article, why did the author include that? What was their angle? Does that make me trust the rest of the article more or less?
I included screenshots of my actual health insurance premium terms, including the plan number, which is what is at issue in the article.
$200 seems valid - it comes from the linked article [0] and it includes home internet (I pay $110 / month Comcast just for home internet in Bellevue. In Seattle I paid $130 / month). Maybe Aaron could have phrased it better. (I also recommend to read the linked article as it is a phenomenally well done financial analysis.)
[0] https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie