Here in St. Louis I use a Verizon Pay-As-You-Go Plan. It’s $100 for 1150 minutes that last for a year. Texts are 10 cents.
It depends. Great answer, eh?
Some recharge methods keep the minutes, some don’t. The one we use (mentioned upthread) that adds 1 1/4 year for cheap, keeps them.
Check each of the options at their web site.
Yes, tracfone is a reasonably good service. The coverage seems to be good and it is cheap – maybe $100.00/year if you only use it for “hey, I’m at the restaurant, where are you?” type phone calls. Downsides are that they spend a bit too much time trying to get you to buy more minutes (this just amounts to the occasional email or phone call), and I find that I usually have to wait a minute or two when I turn on the phone before it’s ready to make a call.