I'm on US sim card three with three visits. I find its getting a lot harder to buy one in store. First time I got the 30$ t-mobile card online using a friend's US credit card for payment. By the time I returned the next year it wasn't active anymore. Second year I got a similar t-mobile offer instore CVS I think. Again too much time to my next visit sim card invalid. The last time I had so much trouble finding a place to physically sell me a prepaid sim. The ones at the same store than the year before wouldn't ring through as they were so old they were already invalid, other stores sent me to bigger locations. The AT&T card I bought in Walmart was already invalid due to age and couldn't be activated. Next day an AT&T store simply threw it away and gave me a new sim as a replacement. I planned to not let this one expire but to top it up with the minimum credit to keep the card alive without the data plan being active and costing me money.
I'm a bit chaotic and mixed up pin numbers so I couldn't log into my AT&T account online to top it off and couldn't find another way to top it off without the sim being active. I couldn't request a new pin as they send those via text and the card doesn't work in Europe.
So again I'm left with an inactive sim and the question what to get the next time I'm in the US. Is there a card that doesn't expire for a minimum of 12 months? One with am easy way to keep it active from abroad?
Which plan is currently the best prepaid possibility and how do I get physical hold of a new sim card? I'll be in the US for three weeks, I need a good amount of data between my banks real time credit card charge notifications, uber or lift bookings, Google map use, WhatsApp and I messenger back home, mobile boarding passes and so on. I need texting though 100-200 would do. I would like some call time but I have exceeded ten minutes only once while stuck in an airport on the way back during a delay.
I would like a cheap way to keep the card active for the next visit.
So far I'll probably go back to either AT&T or t-mobile. T-mobile is a tiny bit cheaper but AT&T had the customer service.

Do either of them have a vendor for sim cards in either atl or jax airport?