I know with the new verizon plans overages aren't as costly as they used to be. They basically charge you a fee for XX gb of data instead of the insane amounts they used to charge.
That said, have you looked into www.exede.com? They offer 10 gb per month for $50. Plus they have hibernation options that only cost $10/month if you won't be using it. And they don't charge data usage from 12 am to 5 am.
It is satellite though, so your limited to being able to see the sky with their dish. And I am unsure if they have issue with making their dish essentially "mobile" if your moving place to place all the time. I'm sure you could figure that out if you call them though.
Just thinking it might be an option if you cut your verizon plan down and take the money saved from that to use towards the exede stuff.
They claim like 12 mbps download speed or something like that. Can't honestly say if that would be "slow as hell" in comparison to your phone hotspot or not.