Why?
Since I left home at the age of 18, I have owned a land line for two years of out the ten years that I have been on my own. The first time I paid for it, I had gotten rid of my cell phone a year before, so my roommate and I split a land line so I could make phone calls when needed. The second year that I paid for a land line was my first year of marriage with my wife. I traveled here and there for work, and the apartment we rented required a land line to activate the security alarm. We hardly ever used it to call people, and the only people that called us on the land line were our mothers.
How Much Would You Save?
Every provider has different prices, but I will base my calculations based on the quotes from Bell South, which is now owned by AT&T. For a local land line with all calling features, the cost is $26, and if you want unlimited long distance throughout the United States, its $40 per month. So, even if you only had a local land line with the bells and whistles, you would save $312 a year by getting rid of the line. If you were paying for unlimited long distance, that’s a savings of $480 a year.
Some Misconceptions About Land Lines
- They are good for safety reasons. This isn’t true, because I have sat through many Hurricanes in Florida, and when the cell towers go down, the land lines become way too jammed to make a call out, anyway.
- You need them for security alarms. This isn’t true either. Technology for security alarms has come a long way, and they can be hooked up to your high-speed internet connection to notify monitoring companies.
- They are more reliable. Yes, they don’t rely on having a cell signal, but I remember several times when my land line just stopped working, because the lines were being worked on or something went wrong with the wiring in my house. And by the way, many phone companies will charge you to come out and fix the problem if the problem exists within your walls and not out by the telephone poles.
Saving Money By Eliminating Fixed Costs
This is a movement that many personal finance bloggers like me and Ramit Sethi from I Will Tech You To Be Rich are trying to place in the brains of people who have been subscribing to the “Latte Factor” for saving money. I believe that you should focus more on cutting your fixed costs like utilities, auto insurance, phone bill, cable bill, unsecured debt payments, gym memberships, and cell phone bills. You pay for this stuff on a monthly basis, every single month, so why not focus on reducing these bills? It’s instant YEARLY savinigs.
