Literally thousands of consumers have dumped their land line in favor of just having a cell phone to reduce their costs and to have much more flexibility. We thought we would talk about this approach on this post. Because it is another way to reduce your overall costs of communications cost and save you money. We still have a land line simply because my wife does not want to give it up. She also has a cell phone as do I and we are paying for both of these services.
Fortunately I have reduced the cost of the land line as much as possible by avoiding any services such as voice mail and calling line ID etc. It still costs us $55 a month including taxes for this land line. Which is over $650 a year in total costs. This also includes long distance all over North American which is the one redeeming feature of keeping this service.
I also have set up this line so that if a call comes in and we do not answer it, the call is forwarded to my cell phone. The only time I use this home phone land line is if I am at home and sitting beside the phone. Otherwise I always answer the call on my cell phone. We feel we have the best of a bad situation. The family could save $650 a year in telephone costs if we cancelled this service. But we would then have to pay extra for long distance. We could talk a long time on long distance for $650!
Land lines vs. Mobility Cell phone rates – Long Distance
As far as long distance services are concerned, we would obviously spend more money on long distance on our cell phones, however with Skype, with face time and messaging on the cell phones, our long distance charges could be kept to a minimum. What I really need is a solution to how I can convince my wife to let us disconnect the home phone line and use cell phones only? In addition to the $650 I pay every year for this phone, the telephone company has informed us that they are raising the charges by another $3.00 a month plus tax. They are really pushing us towards getting rid of this line.
It is getting more expensive to keep a land line and we think the telephone company is trying to push us off their service. So if you have ideas about how to persuade my wife to give up the land line, let me know and it will help save me $700 a year with the latest increase. For those of you who have this situation, consider dropping your land line and using your cell phone exclusively to reduce the cost of your monthly expenses.
Privacy Issues
If you do not want to answer your phone all of the time, e.g. when you are out with friends or trying to sleep, just turn it off or silence the ringer. You can actually have more privacy this way than you can with a regular land line. When we are out with friends, I usually keep our cell phone on vibrate so that I can make a decision t answer the phone or not. It can be very impolite to answer a phone when you are in the middle of conversation with someone or have it ringing while you are chatting with your friends.
Another reason I want to get rid of this land line is that we also go away for 4 months of the year. Now I am paying for a phone that I cannot use because I am not at home. This seems really silly to me to spend about $220 for something that I do not use at all while I am away. We just do not need this phone. My wife wants us to keep the phone because she prefers to talk on it vs the cell phone. She feels more comfortable with a regular phone cradled on her shoulder than she does holding a small cell phone. She also finds the cell phone too complicated to use as well. I think I am fighting an uphill battle here, so would really like some suggestions on this problem.