Comment by Aaronontheweb
Comment by Aaronontheweb 2 days ago
I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it
Comment by Aaronontheweb 2 days ago
I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it
> 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 like $45-$50 for an 'unlimited' plan that is only capped if you are on a busy tower.
A decent percentage more, not a lot of dollars more.
This is akin to him saying that average American needs X money for the car to participate in society, and you suggest that his numbers don't math because one could:
1. Walk around everywhere (Idaho, Iowa) 2. move to New York (with ok public transportation)
Mobile phone and unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society.
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.
[1] https://prepaidcompare.net/