I was but it looks like it is going to cost $20 a month before data - which is a lot more than the 7 dollar a month tracfone costs.

Ah, gotcha.

Republic is $15 a month unlimited talk and text. $20 a month with a gig of data. My wife and daughter have that. I have Tracfone since I have a ton of time and data saved up from rolling over. I recently upgraded my Moto E to a Moto G4 Play and, wow, that was a a huge upgrade even though the G4 Play is $150 unlocked. The G4 Play works just fine with Tracfone. According to Lenovo, the G4 and G4 play are both supposed to eventually get upgrades to Android 7.

According to my brief Googling, Virgin Mobile actually uses the Sprint network. On the sprint network, Tello seems like a much better choice; it allows you to build your own custom plan or go completely pay-as-you-go (which for your needs may work well): 3 cents/minute, 1 cent/text, 2 cents/MB data. The custom plans come out way cheaper than that if they fit your needs.

You could try T-mobile's pay-as-you-go plan, which is $3/month for 30 minutes OR 30 text messages, then 10 cents a minute/message per month after that. If you really don't use it very much, that could actually end up saving you money. You can pay $5 for a day of data (500 MB) or $10 for a week of data (1 GB) when you need it. No idea if T-mobile would be better than Virgin Mobile or AT&T for your needs, but it's possible - coverage is weird, and super-variable. I use T-mobile's network with success, but have heard mixed reviews from others. Another option on the T-mobile network is US Mobile, which seems to have a variety of plan options you could customize to your needs for little money as well. Speedtalk Mobile seems like another good option on the T-mobile network, very similar price points to US Mobile.

AT&T's GoPhone plan is $2/day that you use it. So if you don't use it most days at all (but potentially use a lot of it on the days you need it) that can be a good deal too. It might be better for your needs than Tracfone, or worse. No idea if coverage would be any different - probably not.

Verizon is generally considered to have the best coverage, but there are not many prepaid plans that use their network, and none that offer anything at your price point that I could find. The cheapest is Boom! Mobile's $20/month plan, which includes unlimited talk/text with 250MB/month data.

Ok I am kind of panicking about the Yahoo security breach. I just got the heads up that virus spam is going out with my email moniker on it; so even though Yahoo has not specifically notified me, or forced a password change, I have changed my password there. And now I want to access my security questions so I can track down evey other thing I have ever signed up for on the internet and make sure that all of my other security questions are different from whatever information has been hacked from Yahoo. Only I cannot figure out how to access my security questions on Yahoo.

Can anyone give me a clue how to do that?

Well, you could say you forgot your password and ask Yahoo to let you log on by answering your security questions.

Or, and this is what I've been recommending to everyone, you could start using LastPass and run its security challenges to reset all the security questions for all your sites. Provide randomized and salted answers to them this time, and don't reuse them. (For instance, "What is your mother's maiden name?" might be 123Orange! on one site and 95pikachu43 on another). Store the new credentials in LastPass.

run its security challenges to reset all the security questions for all your sites. Provide randomized and salted answers to them this time, and don't reuse them.

This is something I've been putting off way too long.

Why is that every time there is a problem with something I have signed up for, the solution involves signing up for something else? Or, more likely, three other things?

The think about the Yahoo breech is that it happened 3 years ago, and I've changed my password a few times since then.

Didn't Last Pass get breached too?