One of the current trends in the personal finance blogosphere is recommending the elimination of your landline telephone service to save money. It’s an excellent suggestion to those who have little real use for landline phones any more, but I’d like to take a look at the other side of the debate: why it may be more cost effective to keep one.
We eliminated our traditional landline service with AT&T several years ago and have never regretted it. Still we keep a couple of lines open with Vonage at a greatly reduced rate, and there are several benefits to doing this.
Business and fax lines
I work from home and have been for years, and wouldn’t even consider not having a landline for my business. This may cost a few extra dollars, but I consider it money well spent. Here’s the thing, I don’t want to be fielding calls from people I don’t know, and when ever you’re in business you will hear from solicitors—many of them. The landline serves as my “screener”, and since I have unlimited service I don’t have to worry about voice mails using up my cell phone minutes. My cell phone is free for the calls I want to make and accept, not all the others.
Though it isn’t such a big deal any more, I also like having a dedicated line for faxing. Not many businesses require or send faxes any more, but for the few who do, it’s nice to have a line to use for that purpose.
As a cell phone minutes reliever
We’re all cell phone junkies these days, and the cell phone companies love us for it. What we’ve found both in my business and in our family of four, is that having a landline is an excellent way to keep cell phone minutes under control.
Everyone knows how much time teenagers can spend on the phone and we have two of them. We’ve implemented a “five minute rule”—if you’re going to be on the phone more than five minutes, switch to the landline. This works REALLY well since my son’s girlfriend lives out of state. But it’s also true for my wife and I—if the call is expected to go over five minutes, we use the landline.
Texting has been another big money saver. We’ve been able to get unlimited texting for about $40 per month, and much of the communicating in our family is now being handled that way. Still, there are times—and not a few of them—where you just have to hear a live voice.
Online phone services to the rescue
One of the advantages of landlines is the online providers, they charge a fraction of the fees that traditional providers to, and typically offer unlimited minutes, as well as at least limited overseas coverage. We’re paying about $30/month each for our two lines with Vonage, but that still works out better than raising our cell phone minutes or opting for an unlimited plan.
There are cheaper services than Vonage, but we’ve heard some horror stories. The service depends on the strength of your internet line, and that can be up and down at different times. But remember, we’re using the lines for non-critical communication, such as friendly chatting. Emergency calls and business calls are what we mostly save the cell phones for.
It would be nice if cell phone plans could serve all our needs but…
If cell phones are to be the be-all/end-all of phone services, it sure hasn’t happened yet. Most of them function as something like a communications taxi cab—the longer we keep them running the higher the fare.
Balancing at least two services seems to be the best option at the moment—at least until the cell phone providers come up with reasonably priced unlimited service. Think it won’t happen? Not so many years ago, landlines didn’t offer unlimited service, but changes in technology and competition from various services forced it to happen.
It probably will for cell phones one day too. But until it does, we’ll keep our landlines.
Have you eliminated your landline service? If not, what keeps you from doing it? And what are you doing to cope with the limitations of cell phone plans?
One Unseen thing I found with not having a Landline is the free phone book listing..Sometimes when a landline is given up years later people sometimes have a had time finding you.I found thgis out by having the same name as my dad…I get about 2 calls a month with people looking for me…mostly wanting to hire me….I have a person study on the effects of the unseen on business and life….The things we say and do that give a ‘ripple” affect sometimes good and others Not so good..
I still have mine and although I wince each time I think about all the “wasted” money, I’m not getting rid of it. The main reason is that I HATE getting phone calls and speaking on the phone as well. Everywhere you turn right now, whether it be to sign up for a Rewards program or for a sweepstake or for a doctor’s appointment, everyone wants your phone number. Keeping my landline allows me to give those people my home phone number. I have an answering machine that picks up all calls and my phone ringer remains OFF. Then I can listen to whoever’s message on my own terms. It doesn’t matter that I’m on the Do Not Call List, I still get automated telemarketer calls and, especially in this election year, political messages (exempt from the Do not call restrictions). I have NO time to give to those people. Similarly, most messages are NEVER urgent. In this age of instant gratification, everyone expects you to drop everything you’re doing to answer their call right away. I don’t agree with that philosophy. People who would need to reach me in an emergency have my email address and my cell phone number. I also don’t have Long Distance service on the line, only local service. If I need to call anyone long distance, I’ll use my cell phone or I’ll email or text them. I have 400 minutes on my cell plan and 1000 texts a month and I never go over that. I have teens but they mostly text and have unlimited texting through their dad’s plan.
Another reason to keep it was to get a discount on our Homeowner’s Insurance because we had a monitored alarm system. But this is now moot since State Farm stopped giving us the discount.
The last reason is that I live in Florida and we get hurricanes. My landline is buried. Last time we had hurricanes and lost power and had trees blocking our driveway and street, the only way I could contact help was by using my landline since all the cell towers were “overloaded”.
So yes, I spend money on a landline in an unfrugal way, but for me it’s worth all the money in the world NOT to have to answer the phone 6 times at dinnertime 🙂 YMMV.
I switched to a combination of:
viatalk with VOIP phone ($10/mo + 911 service)
google voice with obi100 device and conventional phone