Managing Home Maintenance Costs

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.

Save

Consumers are getting rid of their traditional phones and moving to new technology that provides more services as well as flexibility. There are many solutions available. We felt that it was time to review some of them on this blog as a means of saving some money. While embracing all of these new technologies.

In our own home we have tried to keep our communications cost down to a minimum. But as hard as we try they have crept up over the years. Now it is time to try to do something about it. For example 15 years ago we did not have internet. We now pay $50 a month for high speed internet. We did not have cell phones. Now we pay another $50 for two phones with local air time, long distance and text messaging without data capability.

If we added data for our smart phones this would cost another $30 or $40 or even more. In addition we still have a land line which we have kept to a minimum in terms of features. It costs us about $45. All told we are paying about $150 for communications which is a lot more than what we used to pay for just the phone.

Home Phone Bill – Use Cell Phone Only

Many family s now just use their cell phones for communications plus high speed internet. Right away they save $45 a month on that. If you have not already got rid of a land line and have a cell phone, then I suggest that you do that. Cell phones are so much more flexible and have all of the features that you could ever want. Smart phones can handle data over the network or WiFi which in turn can get you onto the internet to do email etc.

Use WiFi whenever you can to minimize your data requirements. The phone companies have realized that this is huge money for them and are charging a great deal for this service. Using Wifi is one way of keeping this cost to a minimum since it is free and most coffee shops and bars now have WiFi available at no cost.

Should you get rid of your land line? Most of us will eventually so why not now? Our cell phones companies charge a lot for long distance, however there are ways around this as well which can save money. Using services such as Skype or Google’s G Phone is virtually free for most calls. Calls between skype users is free and calls to regular phones are so inexpensive, pennies a minute that it they might as well be free. These systems can be used for outgoing calls and anyone can reach you on your cell phone.

IP Phones

IP phone calls can also be made using a regular phone by installing VoIP as well. This service can be purchased from the regular phone companies as well as startup companies and the cable companies as well who offer IP service. We are not sure why you would do this since it ends up being the same thing as a regular phone service at a lower cost. Just use your cell phone for all calls including local and long distance calls.

Before making any decisions regarding these services, you must really take into account the type of calling that you do. If there is a lot of long distance calls, to another country, and your land line is inexpensive for this service, then you may want to keep your land line and only use your cell phone for local calls for example. This is unfortunately the situation we are in.

My cell phone carrier charges a great deal for calls to the US and other countries. My land line calls are free up to 500 minutes, anywhere in Canada and the US. Since we make a lot of calls to the US, we will keep the landline. Our daughters call us all of the time using a call me card which reverses the long distance charges to us when they call. These calls are also included in the 500 minutes as well so they save money as well. Based on all of this, I guess we will keep the land line and the cell phones for a while longer.

This was a big cost reduction that we just came across and it personally saved us $20 a month on our mobile cell phone costs. That is $240 a year that we saved just by making a call to our service provider!  This site is about saving the average consumer money and this is an easy one to follow up on.

Here is how we reduced our cell phone charges.

My cell phone was pretty old and about to die due to a failing battery. It was time to renew my old cell phone and as always for me at least this is a complicated task. What phone do I get, how much will I pay, how much talk time is there, how much standby time and what features should I get. Do I want a smart phone or just a regular phone? You can see were this is going, I try to avoid making this decision.

New Cell Phone Plans, New Smart Phone Features

Also when you do call  the mobile company , they always want to review your plan to see if they can sell you more features or a more expensive phone.  I dread this because really what I want to do is to decrease my costs nor increase them.

This time was different. I started by telling them that I was thinking of moving to another carrier which immediately got their attention. They send you to the RETENTION desk at this point and this is really who you want to talk to. They can make decisions and offer discounts to help you make a decision to renew your service contract with them.
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