When you say

> I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it

and your article says

> Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school.

It sounds like you're trying to communicate that you pay at least $200/month per smartphone for your family? Or you don't value precision in communication.

I know you've got a lot going on with a small business, and a new kid... but if money is important to you, maybe spend the time to switch to prepaid phone plans. There's lots of options [1], whatever network you need, you can do direct operator plans, MVNO owned by the operator, or like actual MVNO. If you're short on time and T-Mobile's network works for you, MintMobile has a promo going right now where $180 pays for 12 months of "unlimited" which is $15/month if you divide it out.

> I also pay $1250 per month to TriNet for the privilege of being able to buy their health insurance in the first place - sure, I get some other benefits too, but I’m the only US-based employee currently so this overhead is really 100% me.

Do you live in a state with a reasonable healthcare exchange? You might want to shop and see if an off the shelf plan from the exchange is better than paying TriNet to get access to their insurance; it may well be, but you should check. If you only have one US employee, and it's you, there's a lot of expense for not a lot of value IMHO. It's not really Apples to Apples though --- I think a lot of the TriNet plans have out of state coverage where a lot of exchange plans don't.

[1] https://prepaidcompare.net/

Mint or US Mobile are ~$15-20 a month. You're massively overpaying

How many phones do you get for that?

My family has two phone lines for $50/mo, plus we buy two ~2 year old iPhones every 3-4 years, which adds maybe another $20/mo average to the cost.

Consider changing your plan?

I pay $70/mo for 2 phone lines. Unlimited everything (well, OK, 5 GB data cap before slowing down).