To be fair you are the burden on your family here. This isn’t living without - it’s sticking everyone else with your problem.
Eh, I assure you the burden of buying a brand new 500~1000$ phone and then paying a monthly bill to provide it with service would be a far far greater burden then allowing me to use their phone to make important calls once a week if not less, and letting me use it to sign up to a site/video game maybe a couple times a year.
Absolutely, it’s definitely a bigger burden for you to shell out $1000 for a top of the line phone, and then pay hundreds of dollars a month for service…dude, An android phone from Dollar General is $30 and pay as you go. You’re just putting the burden off to others because you don’t want to be inconvenienced.
Well, to be honest I had no idea that cheap phones like that existed.
Besides costs though the main reason I dont decide to get a phone is just due to all the data collection they do, plus nearly every service and government/housing/job related thing connected to me uses the family phone #, switching them over would take hours if not days of calling, settings editing or paperwork to do.
I already pay for my family’s house, food and utilities so I don’t really see why its an issue to borrow the family’s # every now and then.
If you still have good computer access, you could make a Google phone number. Pretty much what it sounds like, gives you a free phone number, you can check messages / calls all on desktop