The First Month With Tello Cost $10.80

My old Mint Mobile renewal was $203.49 for a year of 5GB data and unlimited talk and text. I was using about 1GB a month, mostly on Wi-Fi.

The first month with Tello cost $10.80: a $6 plan with 100 minutes, unlimited text, 1GB of data, and a $3 eSIM charge. The number port took about 15–30 minutes. After that, the plan was easy to change whenever my usage changed.

The important part was not finding the absolute cheapest phone plan. It was noticing that I was paying for a much larger bucket than I used. A year later, the useful feature is still the ability to adjust the plan instead of prepaying for data that stays untouched.