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[Link of the Day] - Get Rid of Your Landline

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By: Alai , January 15 2009

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"Save a buck: cellphone savings" by Michelle Diament
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/saveabuck/articles/cellphone_savings.html

After reading this article on money saving tips on phone bills, I began to wonder the % of households still have landlines. Landlines are no longer a necessity for me since I can never finish using my monthly talk time and roll over minutes anyway. I'm so used to texting and IMing to stay in touch with my friends that I no longer notice the existence of something called "landlines".

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COMMENTS (7)
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While I have to confess to still having a landline at home, we don't have a phone connected to it - my wife has to have a fax machine for her office. We made a point to have the same carrier as the rest of the family so we rarely go over in minutes.
by  pkp_rc  on  January 15, 2009 at 10:07PM EST
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I'm a bit young so I haven't really had a landline for myself ever. But the costs of your former landline are being eaten by cell phone/texting bills which is pretty expensive in its own right. I've started using Skype as my landline phone to call out from my apartment to save minutes on my cell phone.
by  hpatel  on  January 16, 2009 at 01:21PM EST
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We have had a landline forever, and have no intention of giving it up. When the electricity goes out in the winter (and it often does) this is a guaranteed lifeline, especially with elderly relatives in residence. We live in a pretty rural area despite being close to a city. The area elevation is exceptionally montainous and winter weather can get nasty in a hurry. Actually, as I type this note I am looking out my window at a lovely new snowfall...But I digress, in our area the repeater signals often get lost or unreliable for the weather (don't let Verizon fool ya, theirs is no better here either). So for a base rate of $25/month with unlimited local calls and a direct link into the 911 system (they know our address from our phone number) our landline is great safety insurance. Mother often calls her best buddy and can talk as long as they care to, as often as they care to, and sometimes remind me of when I was a teenager...lots of chatter, nothing of substance...

We do also have a cel phone due mainly to the hospital call time my husband puts in. This gives us the freedom to leave the house if he is on call; but we are not texters, IMers, and generally don't walk around WalMart or anywhere else, with a phone to our ears saying "what aisle are you in, I am over here..." We did, however, evaluate the plan for range and coverage area. For our $25/month fee on the cel phone we can call all over the country (including one ship-to-shore call we made to my brother in WV while on vacation ferrying across the islets from Cape Hattaras to Okracoke); and have 145 minutes per month which we hardly use up anyway so it doesn't matter if they roll over. We use the cel to call my brother's family and never pay long distance charges because they are in our coverage area. If we do run over (like the past two months when our neice was so desperately ill) additional minutes cost 10 cents to connect and 5 cents a minute, so I could talk to any family for 20 minutes for about a buck. All-in-all, for about $55 a month in total we have the security of the landline and also the traveling security of the cel, and that seems to be a bargain to me.

I suppose the costs/savings depend on the plan you are able to negotiate at the time of purchase. The cel phone salesmen don't care for it, but if you ask/insist you can get a really good deal. When our last cel died and we needed a new one, they tried to tell us that the plan we had been on did not exist anymore, and that changing over to a new phone would require us to sign a new contract at the higher rate...we pointed out that should we not need a new phone, we would still be using the existing plan without change...and oh, by-the-way retailer X next door already told us we could simply change over the phone in use without any contract at all... We had been a customer for over 10 years on a monthly bill basis, our obliged contract having run its course 8 years ago, so they were more than willing to keep a long-standing, always-paid-on-time customer and we got what we wanted. In fact our old plan only provided 60 minutes and the upgrade at the same price went to 145 minutes and a larger coverage area.
by  Barefoot1  on  January 27, 2009 at 10:48AM EST
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Well, I too still have a land line. But, if I were single I wouldn't. (It's my husband who insists on having it.) We both have cell phones, and all the logic in the world won't change his mind. I guess it's like a security blanket. But, hey, we all have our quirks. :) But, I was able to change our land line service to reflect the very basic level service we could possibly get. We pay $10 a month and have to pay 10 cents for every call made. So for $10 a month or $120 per year, we keep our marriage happy. :)

There is, however, one benefit I can see to having a land line. You can give out the land line number to all businesses you deal with. That way, all sales calls will go to your land line and not your cell phone. There's a silver lining in everything.
by   Patricia Reese  on  January 31, 2009 at 03:17PM EST
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That's true about the advantage of having a landline. I never liked giving out my cell phone numbers because of fear for unsolicited marketing calls.

I used to keep a landline for my all-in-one copy machine until I realized how little I actually use the fax function. Not having a fax machine at home was inconvenient at first, but realizing how much I can save each month made the decision much easier to make. Of course, a landline is very much of a necessarily for people who work from home.
by  Alai  on  February 03, 2009 at 08:55AM EST
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I would like to add a caveat to my comment above. For my particular situation, I don't believe I need a landline. But, as I talked to my friends and family, I learned that there are plenty of good reasons to have a land line. Some that come to mind are if you're a business and you want a separate line for your calls. Another reason could be that you have a FAX machine hooked up (like pkp_rc above) and need a land line. And yet another reason to have a land line would be that it may provide more coverage in the event of cell towers being out of service, like in a disaster situation. I guess it just depends...

So, depending on a person's situation, keeping a land line could be a good decision.
by   Patricia Reese  on  February 14, 2009 at 12:20PM EST
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I have dial up service for my ISP so a landline is necessary but beyond that, I do not have a cel phone and don't see the need to be constantly connected/reachable. Sometimes solitude is a great and wonderful thing. Perhaps I am seen as 'old fashioned' in my notion that while my job has provided lots of tech-savy, in fact, I am often oversaturated with the benefits and (when they are not working) foibles of high-tech machines at work, so on a personal level there are lots of gadgets I can (and do) live without. I love my job and I do it well, but it is nice to leave the demands at the office and simplify at home. Financially, it's great! My basic landline service is only about $26/month (I can't remember the last long distance call I made that wasn't to an 800 number) and my dial up ISP is 13.95 with free 24/7 tech support talking to a REAL PERSON. Sometimes I miss the zip-zig of the downloads from programs I use at work, but basically at home I am not on the net much and when I am on there is not much I do that requires all that speed (or the expense associated with obtaining it). My main home activities are off line and my souped up RAM is just great for all the stuff I do off line. I guess landline-no landline is a personal choice depending on circumstances. For me it works fine.
by  CatherineA  on  February 16, 2009 at 09:15AM EST
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