Get yourself a spam phone
Everyone’s eyeing the next iPad or looking forward to WWDC 2024, but you should do yourself a favor: go get yourself a cheap new-old phone instead.
Walk into a Best Buy or any carrier store, and you can probably find an Android phone for under $300 with a pay-as-you-use plan. This phone doesn’t need to be flashy or capable. It just needs to run the latest Android version. While at it, try to buy it in cash if you can. Don’t give away your credit card.
Then, at home, use your brand new number to register a new Google account, complete with a Google Voice number and a Gmail address.
You’re going to use it for all those pesty apps that you check once a month because you have to, not because you want to. Use it for dating apps, which are an increasing privacy nightmare, or as a remote control for YouTube and Netflix. Use it to add temporary contacts, like the laundry machine repair guy or that favorite restaurant you have to call because they mess up your order on Grubhub. Oh, and while at it, use it for Grubhub too.
Put this phone away in an accessible drawer and put it in a bulky and obnoxious case so you can find it in the dark and not get tempted to carry it with you. Only use it at home, and use it on a guest WiFi if you can set one up. Save up your minutes.
This phone is going to become your junk stuff phone. This is the phone you can turn off because besides calls in Mandarin about some Chase account you’ve never heard about and your laundry technician butt-calling you from another job, no one will ever call you there.
After a couple of months with this spam honeypot, you’d wonder how you lived without one before.