I have the Tello unlimited talk & text 1 GB plan for $9/month. Mine only comes up to $9.16/month in Ohio after taxes. A cheaper alternative to Mint Mobile if you do not need a lot of data. Also, you just pay for one month at a time. If you know you will need more data in a month, if you change plans and renew one day before the auto-renewal you will keep any existing data. This also works (the day earlier renewal) if you then downgrade back to your current data plan.
Tello used to let you use 2G data if you ran out towards the end of the month but they no longer do that. Now you have to either renew early or buy 1 GB of data for $5 or 3 GB of data for $10 (which still expires at the end of your current monthly billing cycle). Not that great of a deal.
I brought my own phone - I currently use a Moto G Stylus (2020) that I bought in June 2021 for $115.