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Brad
Brad
11 years ago

Hey Jack, how about replaying the Steve Harris interviews some time this month. The back up power ones.

Matt
Matt
11 years ago

Jack mentions getting a disposable prepaid cell phone for just in case situations. Since he recorded this years ago things may have changed. All the prepaids I can find have expiring minutes AND want to link you personally to the account (huh? it’s prepaid). I don’t think re-loading minutes in an emergency situation is a good thing, and continually loading minutes every couple months to keep the phone ready is impractical. I also don’t care to have my emergency phone linked to me and a CC. Am I looking in the wrong places?
Is there a decent prepaid that I can have minutes on that don’t expire? Does it require a link to me and/or a credit card?

Matt
Matt
11 years ago

Jack,

I would love to see how you have the pages made up. Is it something fancy and easy to follow? Part of me is envisioning a power point masterpiece, and the other part of me is thinking it’s just quick print outs of Google maps with pins stuck to them and highlighter with a word doc or too. If possible could you link a copy to a generic set up that would give folks ideas on how to organize all the information.

Christopher de Vidal
Christopher de Vidal
11 years ago

EXCELLENT show. Two comments on backup cell phones:
1.) There’s no way to load up a prepaid phone with minutes and lock it in a glove box, then expect those minutes to be available a year later.
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1796613-Any-cheapo-phone-with-minutes-that-don-t-expire

The best bang for the buck is the T-Mobile pay-as-you-go gold plan. Most carriers require renewing at least every 90 days but with T-Mobile if you buy $100 worth of airtime up front, you get gold status. Gold status lets you keep your minutes for a year. Then you just renew again for $10 and get 30 more minutes. That’s 83 cents per month. You do have to remind yourself to keep paying every year; they have an auto-refill but it is monthly and the minimum is $10. So just add a reminder to your calendar to refill a few days early.

(This was as of February 2012 so it might have changed.)

2.) You mentioned having a phone on another network (such as AT&T and T-Mobile), but I believe as long as the technology is the same they often share towers. Instead, consider having a backup phone on an entirely different technology. There are two main technologies in use in the United States: GSM and CDMA. If your phone has a SIM card, it’s GSM. If not, it’s CDMA. Look for a backup phone that has the opposite of what you have, and you’ll have more redundancy.