Some of my readers were very appreciative of my post last week on how I can replace my home broadband plan with a 4G or 5G cellular mobile plan if our needs are not too complicated.

You can read I Replaced My Singpore Home Broadband with a 4G Mobile Data WIFI Solution and Slash my Cost by 75% if you missed the post.

I have gotten good feedback from readers.

Some explained to me that I missed out on great MVNO operators from my list, such as Simba and Eight Telecom, with gigantic data plans at the same low cost.

You might want to check them out.

Some asked if my Android phone was charging and if it is permanently plugged into the router itself. My phone is charging but at a very low rate. By right, the phone should cut off the charging if the phone is so fully charged. I guess we are afraid that constantly charging the phone might wear out the battery causing us to replace the battery.

I have already replaced the battery on this particular phone twice. The battery life wasn’t exactly great after the battery replacement, but since I am using the phone more as a modem, I am less worried about the battery life. I bought the battery replacement from AliExpress for $14.

You can Balance Your Data Usage Between Your Personal Mobile Plan and a Dedicated Home Mobile Plan

I had to emphasize that this mobile solution to replacement the broadband is more suitable if you are not a gamer, who requires low latency to keep their ping rate low or if you download a lot of stuff consistently on the internet.

You are basically a heavy data user, and a broadband plan fits your needs better.

If your family’s needs are higher, you can go with a 5G plan with more significant data.

What about the situations where even that home mobile data plan is insufficient?

Firstly, you have to size up your needs to see if it fits well in the 100GB to 500GB range. If it is much more monthly, you may be better off with a broadband plan.

However, I think you can use the personal mobile plan that you subscribe to for moving around Singapore as a backup data plan should it not be enough.

Your mobile phones have a feature to share your connection like a WIFI access point call Mobile hotspot.

The mobile hotspots should be in your quick dropdown menu. You can configure the name of your hotspot to make it discoverable. Set a good password so that only you or your love ones can access to it.

I would like to think that given our attention spans, there is only this much we can spend our time doing. If we are surfing on the phone, we may not be fully on the computer. And if we are fully on the computer, we will only check our phones for messages.

If so, we can consider our personal mobile data needs together with our home needs.

I find it easy just to toggle the mobile hotspot and for my laptop or desktop with WIFI capabilities to connect to them.

I am currently on a 200 GB mobile plan on Giga personally (but one of my reader urged me to re-contract my plan for the SAME price for 300GB and 4GB free auto-roam around a few countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and India) but my average monthly usage is only 7-10 GB!

So I have an additional 190 GB to work with.

If I am very dedicated and doing deep blogging, Havend and research work, I will be at the computer for an extended time. This will be a good period to use the data plan on my personal phone since I won’t be using the phone much.

You Can Get an Internet Connection Via Wire to Your Computer

If you want higher internet connection reliability instead of WIFI, you can connect to the internet on your phone via USB Tethering.

Here is a screenshot of how I tether my phone to my HM90 Minisforum Mini PC:

I connected my phone with a USB-C to USB-A data cable to the PC. You can use a USB-C to USB-C cable if you only have USB-C ports. However, you got to make sure your cable can send data because not all cables can. Those cables that comes with your phone typically should be a data cable.

This one from Toocki on AliExpress is pretty ok for about $2.50. I think since it is so cheap, you could always buy an extra and bring it around in your bag if you need it.

Once you plug in your phone with a proper data cable, your phone should be able to recognize the connection and will ask you how you want to connect to the other device (your computer in this case):

You can see that I selected USB tethering on my phone.

If you are successful, you should see this Wired Computer Icon at your system bar like the one I show above.

You can test your internet connection and should be good to go.

Conclusion

Sometimes, I feel like this is very common sense information that most of you would know.

However, I learn over time that we have many things to bother with in our busy lives that we might not be aware that we could do something like tether an internet connection via USB if I don’t tell you explicitly.

So hope you find this useful in some ways.

I realize I am affected by this problem of not having enough headspace to process things as well. Now i wonder if I need to teach you such an elaborate phone to router setup especially when many tell me they are seldom on their laptop nowadays.

If so they could just take this data USB cable and connect to their computer when they need!

This is a easier and fuss free setup and achieve the same purpose.

In any case, I like my current setup of having a personal mobile data plan of 300GB at $15 on a Starhub network and 100GB at $10 on a Singtel network at home. I think it is sustainable for a single person.

Your mileage may vary.

If you like this stuff and wanna tap into my money brain, do join my Telegram channel.

I share what I come across in:

• individual stock investing
• wealth-building strategies
• portfolio management
• personal finance, financial independence.

I would also share some of the thoughts of wealth advisory, financial planning and the industry that I don’t wanna put out on the blog.

Would probably share some life planning case studies based on the things I hear or came across as well.

If you want to trade these stocks I mentioned, you can open an account with Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers is the leading low-cost and efficient broker I use and trust to invest & trade my holdings in Singapore, the United States, London Stock Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. They allow you to trade stocks, ETFs, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds worldwide from a single integrated account.

You can read more about my thoughts about Interactive Brokers in this Interactive Brokers Deep Dive Series, starting with how to create & fund your Interactive Brokers account easily.

The post Share Your Personal Mobile Data Plan with Your Computer through USB Tethering appeared first on Investment Moats.