What’s the best burner phone for the elderly?

by philg

I’m trying to set my mom (89 years young) with various modern services, including an Alexa video device via which relatives can “drop in” (Mom is not great about connecting to Zoom). It turns out that much of the modern electronic world is off limits to those who lack mobile phones. Everyone wants two-factor authentication and a lot of services, such as Google Voice, depend on the user having a traditional mobile phone number as well (we tried and failed to set up Google Voice with Mom’s landline).

What’s the cheapest way to get a mobile phone number that can accept a handful of text messages per month? It would be even better if this phone were virtual and could be manipulated via a web browser. Do those prepaid burner phones chew up monthly fees even when they’re not used? My mom wouldn’t have to be the actual user of the phone. I could have the physical phone or use the web site of a virtual phone.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

If my parents hadn’t worked, of course, the taxpayers would cover this…

Just remember that only a hater would call this an “Obamaphone”:

31 thoughts on “What’s the best burner phone for the elderly?”

  2. We tried the mobile phone thing with my mother when she was around your mother’s age. It did not work out and we abandoned the idea after buying a phone and some service. Though she was never able to use a PC either. She would pick the mouse up and try to connect with the PC that way & just could not comprehend that the mouse had to remain on the mousepad. This was before tablets though i don’t know that that would have made a difference since she did not seem able to make the connection between what her hands were doing and what was happening on the screen. I finally realized that it was probably a better idea to let her spend her remaining time the way she liked rather than the way I thought she should. But this was a good dozen years ago when the world was less digitized.

    • jdc: As noted in the original post, my mother is not going to be the user of a mobile phone. The mobile phone is a practical requirement for things that she will use, e.g., Alexa video calls. Very likely, the mobile phone (if we end up with a physical one) will not be located in my mom’s apartment and she may never see it, much less use it.

  3. Perhaps you could make something useful work with Twilio. Maybe by having a Twilio number which you use for the 2FA or whatever and have it forwarded somewhere – maybe your phone? I don’t know if this is possible, but I have a hunch it is.

    • Not sure what your objective is, but using Twilio, you can create a phone number which forwards texts to another phone or to email (https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223134287-Forwarding-SMS-messages-to-another-phone-number):

      “It’s easy to forward your Twilio SMS messages to another destination. Whether you’re an experienced developer, or have never written a line of code, we offer a number of versatile products to help you get up and running quickly. Read on for more details and instructions to get your Twilio phone number configured for this use case.

      Please note, it is also possible to forward incoming Twilio SMS messages to an email address. For more information, please see our article on Forwarding SMS Messages to your Email Inbox.”

    • “pre-paid” phones typically have substantial monthly fees. The cheapest VZ prepaid plan is $35/month. https://www.verizon.com/plans/prepaid/

      Every line that we add to our VZ account is at least $600/year, I think. A friend told me that it is cheaper to add an Apple Watch, though. But I don’t want an Apple Watch!

  5. Tracfone, buy a $10 (refurb) or $20 new Nokia flip phone. Plan that is cheapest seems to be $99.99 per year.

    • Look at callcentric.com. Officially a voip provider. But you can set up a number that forwards calls and add sms to a line for very little/month.

  6. My 85 y/o Dad, a long-retired mechanical design engineer, uses $10/mo. T-mobile plan w/unlim. talk & text + 1GB data. He often messes up the ringer, volume, and screen icons.

    • Re: icons
      My father got a low cost android phone.
      It came loaded with a hundred apps!
      I think it had 7 different messaging apps.
      I spent a half hour just deleting apps from his phone so he wouldn’t be confused.

    • Brian: We tried to sign her up for a Google Voice number. The system requires you to enter an existing phone number to which calls will be forwarded. The interface says that only mobile numbers will be accepted. We entered my mom’s landline number and it wasn’t successful.

    • Can you just get any mobile prepaid plan for, say $10, and then port the number to google voice? The prepaid will terminate because you ported the number.

  9. For my backup phone I use Xfinity Mobile, which for Xfinity internet customers is essentially free if you don’t use it. (They wave the line fee if you are Xfinity customer and data is paid per-use, i.e. free if not used).

    In the other vein, I’ve seem Google Meet setups which are connected 24/7, i.e. you just can walk up to it and talk. Kinda like a portal. Probably somebody needs to press some buttons if it disconnects though.

    But since voice line essentially is not required, why not to use Google Voice on your own number and just disable the actual call forwarding from Google Voice?

  11. Tello doesn’t promote this ~ $7/month plan, but I’ve used it for a couple of years with no problems. Every 90 days I buy a $20 credit (plus tax of about $2). Since I rarely use the phone, I don’t pay any more than that each month. Also, the credits accumulate over time.

    https://tello.com/buy/pay_as_you_go

  12. Re: Google Voice — land line
    Just an aside. I’m a long time Google Voice power user.
    It’s not you, it’s Google.
    I think the land line feature has been broken for a while.
    So no need to revisit that scenario.

  13. I would go ahead and set Grandma up with a Google account, and set her up with Google Voice using your own mobile number as the “backup” number. Once you give GV that “other” mobile number, it will never use it again. I think the only reason why they do that is to ensure that the user is based in the US. I actually solely use GV on my own mobile phone for all calls and texts – I don’t even know what phone number is tied to the SIM card on the phone since I never use it.

    I think GV is a pretty good deal. I actually set my wife up with a one-off Google account and GV number on an old mobile phone, during the “remote learning” phase of the pandemic (she’s a schoolteacher) to allow parents to reach out to her without knowing her personal cell number. There are some very crazy parents out there – we speak from experience on this 🙂

    This setup also allows you to use GV via computer, so you can help her out remotely if needed. If needed, you can also set up the account on your own PC, which can allow you to remote in to her computer (if she has one) using Google Remote Desktop. All free of course.

  14. I just added a DID for my parents to my voip.ms account, and then set it up so it rings their house phones, and added a software phone to it.

    Documented here: https://machinesplusminds.blogspot.com/2022/09/parents-phone.html

    I actually ported their landline, because they were paying nearly $100/month to their CLEC, and literally the same service costs me $3/month. My parents will never see a phone bill again.

  15. Get a Google number but associate your with your phone number. That would be free.

    (This presumes you don’t have a google or Google lets you associate multiple google numbers with one cell number.)

  16. I maintain a backup phone with a 20-year-old phone number with a $100/year AT&T pay-as-you-go plan. Usage costs $0.35/minute for phone calls and about the same for SMS messages. (Pay-as-you-go is not the same as prepaid.)

    You can preload various $amounts that expire in 30 days, but if you load $100, then the balance expires in one year unless you load another $100 before the expiration, in which case the previous balance carries over for another year.

    You can’t load more credit if your balance exceeds $400, so every year when it comes time to reload, I use that phone to call my other phone and let it sit on an idle call for a couple of hours just to burn down my balance so I can load another $100 and still carry over the $300 balance.

    All in, it costs roughly ~$8/month unless you use more than ~22 minutes and/or ~22 SMS messages per month. Because it’s a backup phone, I never do.

  17. Right. Every service assumes you have a mobile phone now for multi-factor authentication, etc. And they expect you can use it!

    I have used Tingmobile.com for cell service years and can recommend it. Get a cheap phone and pay $6 per month per line, plus garbage taxes, plus usage. Their plans have changed over the years so your mileage may vary.

  18. Update: I see the “flex” plan is now $10 per month per line. You have to dig to find it.

  19. > Do those prepaid burner phones chew up monthly fees even when they’re not used?

    Not per se, but you have to periodically add minutes to them or else it expires.

Comments are closed.