We were paying about 160 a month for two phones with at&t. From time to time our bill would fluctuate and it would approach the 200 dollar mark for no reason I could tell. I would call them, complain, and it would go back down. I really, really grew to dislike them.

Now we both have project FI phones. We are paying for the phones too, but it's about 130 for the two Fi accounts--total. We tend to use more data than we should, and that includes the monthly of about 50/month for the two phones. (Zero interest payment--purchase, not lease.)

That was one thing when I looked at all the carriers--they are moving away from having you purchase their phones at all--now they want them just to be leased. But the lease payments are about the same as the old buying the phone payments. I suspect the market in used cell phones must be huge.

We pay $85/month for 3 smartphones with 5 gigs of data each through Republic Wireless. Their phones run off wifi by default so you only have to dip into your data when you're out of range of wifi. My husband and I both stay under 1 gig a month with this method. My step daughter usually gets up to 2 gigs or so but I think she's not as diligent about making sure she's connecting to free wifi when she can.

This is their old plan that we were grandfathered in under ($25/month for 5 gigs per line). Their new plan gives you only 1 gig of data for the same price but they pay you back for the data you don't use. So once my step daughter is off our plan, we'll switch to that and pay probably about $35/month for our two phones.

Google took notice of what RW was doing and now has their Google Fi plan out that mirrors RW's. It's the cheapest way to use a smartphone if you're not a data hog.