move to europe, get any phone you want, and pay 10-20 euros a month for unlimited text/call/data (but slow anyways and throttled after 200mb). In all seriousness though, you will likely need a specialized plan, like boost mobile, or a family plan if you qualify. I think the minimum minutes package for at&t is roughly $40 a month, then you have texting and or data on top of that. It used to be the case that data/texting was much cheaper on non-smartphones, but I am not sure if this is still the case. I would stay away from touch screen phones at that price point tho, I found resistive touch screens/shitty capacitive ones to be infuriating to use. If I were in your situation, I would look at who had the best service in areas I frequent (a legit issue in VT), then of those look at the cheapest bundle plans, and then look for some type of basic phone with a full keyboard. I wish I could be more helpful, but I have been using iphones since I was a senior in highschool, and I really haven't paid much attention to it since