ADHD Experiment Living without a Cell Phone Bill

WARNING this post has nothing to do with guitar but I thought it was an interesting experiment and thought I would share.

I don't have a cell phone bill, but let me explain. I work for a company that gives me an iPhone for work use and I am aloud to use that for personal use as long as it doesn't interfere with work. The company can ask for the phone back at anytime and can monitor anything on that phone. This makes me have hesitation of having any kind of social media or banking apps on that phone.

Several months back we bought my wife a new Samsung phone and a couple of months later I took her old LG G5 and turned it into a Wifi only phone. That means it must have Wifi if I'm going to use it for anything other than some native apps. I downloaded the Google Hangouts, Voice and Dialer apps and set up a phone number though them.

There are of course certain drawbacks. I either have to carry both phones when I go out or know that I won't have access to certain things. Honestly I grew up in a time when cell phones didn't exist or when they did only very few people had them. So I know I'll survive if I can't immediately look something up.

Here are the things I've learned since doing this.

1) At first it was weird not to be able to look at social media anytime I want. But after a couple of weeks I didn't really miss it. It kind of breaks that habit.

2) Wifi is pretty much anywhere, my home internet provider has hotspots all over the place. Lots of restaurants, stores and shopping malls do too. Just don't log into your banking apps when on these.

3) It's kind of tricky to setup Google Voice if the phone isn't active. I was able to find a work around but if your thinking of doing this I recommend setting it up before you turn your phone off with your service provider.

4) It makes a great back up. My companies service provider went down one afternoon and I was able to find some WiFi nearby where I was working and still communicate.

If you've ever been in a position where you needed to save money and wondered about cutting off your cell phone, you should set this up immediately as it's a great backup. Also this google number will stay with you forever. You will always have it unless for some reason Google decides to shut down program which I highly doubt will happen. I wasn't crazy that I couldn't get a local phone number but so many people don't have local numbers anymore so I don't know if that matters.

Anyway now I have more money for gear. haha