Motorola Moto G — Text Messages-Cellular Data

Hello all...

New to "smart"phone and have a Motorolla MOTO G 3rd generation. I'm at the point now where I find ut that despite my phone saying I've only used some 286 MB of data, Consumer Cellular showed an overage (I think my shared plan is 2 GIGS...go ahead and laugh) but at any rate, the other user doesn't even use data. Through HOURS of searching my question I can't seem to get a straight answer:

WHY is it when I turn OFF cellular data, some text messages don't come through until I turn it back on??? Just this morning, I had a text message with it turned off....that message was the 2nd part of a long message...the first part of it didn't come through until I turned ON the cellular data.

Some forums say to always leave cellular data ON and then do something with the APN. It would be simple if I could just use the talk part of my plan for these texts. If I leave the Cellular Data on, it appears there are several invisible data vampires sucking away at my data limit.

To address those laughing and scoffing at me, I don't even like these things. I got it as a gift. The only reason I like it is that I can actually have a keyboard to type text messages with, yet once I got it, almost every time I try to text, I get an error telling me that cellular data has to be ON. That is a crock since I've always had old flip phones without a data plan and I could even send pictures from the phone over the talk/text plan.

Does anybody have one of these horrifying things that knows how to send/receive ALL text messages without having to have that cellular data on? Even when I am on my home Wi-Fi network, I can't send or receive some texts without turning on the cellular data. Am I the ONLY one that thinks that is completely absurd?