Managing Home Maintenance Costs

The cost of the traditional land line or home phone as it has come to be known is increasing. There are simply better alternatives out there with more features at lower prices. Lower your phone bills use Vonage to save money. The writer spoke to their local phone company who we had been with for over 30 years. We wanted to see what kind of deal they could provide that would be competitive with Vonage. Their answer was that they really could not do anything for us.

Other than giving us a $5 a month bonus if we took an additional service from them. We already have internet from a competitor. This was not sufficient to entice us to move our high-speed service over. They simply were not competitive in price or in features. Which although we like to be loyal customers, we had no option but to move to another carrier.

Lower your Phone Bills Use Vonage

We opted to move over to Vonage with their IP telephone service. The transfer was easy and straight forward. In fact, we did not have to do anything other than giving them the approval to go ahead. This is a VoIP service that runs over our high-speed internet service. The quality etc is fine and we are very happy with the phone service. They sent us a small module that we plugged into our high-speed modem and activated it. We then inserted the chord from our phone into this module on the day that the service was being transferred. Presto, it worked and we have been very happy with the service over the past year, both with the features as well as the price we are paying.

In addition with services such as voice mails that are sent to us as an email with a wave file attachment, simul ring on phones we designate such as our cell phones plus all of the standard services such as caller ID at less than half the price, we are very happy with the service! With the email of the voice mail that has been left, we do not need to call in to listen to our voice mails. It is easy as using a smartphone to listen to the wave file and then decide if we want to return the call or just delete it. This is especially helpful in long-distance situations out of the country. There is no long-distance call needed.

Second Guessing Decisions

We really did not want to leave our original service provider, the traditional telephone company. However, now that we have, we would not go back because the price is right and we like the features that Vonage offers much better. The telephone company needs to really step up their game and offer services that are competitive from a price/feature combination to retain their business. Vonage is also adding more features from time to time so we are looking forward to seeing what they have to offer! Lower your Phone Bills Use Vonage.

For more information about lowering your monthly bills, click here.

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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.

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