My daughters' phones are $10 (each) every four months on a VZW MVNO (PagePlus, winds up being 25min/mo with rollover) & I only recently upgraded my phone from $10/mo (Airvoice) to $20.93 (Lyca Mobile) so I could have unlimited voice/text/data
Yes, I am throttled to edge speed after 100MB LTE, but it is fast enough to listen to Pandora and use navigation at the same time (not fast enough for Netlix, but I have wifi everywhere but the car & I don't watch TV while driving :)).
Best part is these are not 'before we tax and fee you to death' prices, but what I actually pay each month. People spending too much are either not shopping around or think looking at the "popular" plans (read: popular for the phone companies so they are the plans that are pushed) of the big-4 is shopping around.