If amateur radio is your thing, they're usable for ham once you have that license.
You can listen to anything and everything they'll pick up, it's just transmitting that's a no-no. So they make decent low buck scanners, either for public safety (if your area is still unencrypted like mine is), or for frs/gmrs. For gmrs, you could use those baofengs for monitoring to conserve battery on the other radios, and then jump on the approved radio to respond if you feel the need.
