Home Phone Service – Is It Necessary?

Nowadays, most of us have a cell phone to keep us connected. But as we’ve grown more dependent on our cell phones, another question has come up:

Do we need a home land line phone anymore?

Well, depending on your personal situation, cutting out the home phone service can be an easy way to save money.

Depending on your service, cutting out a home line can save around $40/month or $480/month, plus any incidentals. While this is a decent savings each year, I’ve listed some things to consider when deciding on whether to keep your home phone service or not.

 

#1 – Family

If you’re single, having your cell phone as your only phone is reasonable. You have free local and long distance, which is really all you need. Additionally, even if you talk a lot, an unlimited plan will be cheaper than a home line and a cell phone package

If you have a family, you may not want to give up the land line. Having kids around the house may warrant the $40/month just to have the peace of mind that the service will not go out, batteries won’t die, etc. Additionally, more people in the household means more minutes used. So having unlimited local and long distance minutes is more useful.

 

#2 – Minutes

If you tend to go over your allotted cell phone minutes, it may actually be more cost-effective to have a land line as opposed to a plan with more minutes. For example, I currently have a 2000 minutes per month plan, but have gone over multiple times. And finally when I got a $350 cell phone bill, I knew I had to do something about it.

When I called the cell phone company, they said it was going to be an extra $45 just to add 1000 minutes a month. Then, if I ever wanted to change to fewer minutes, I’d have to sign another 2-year contract. Outrageous!! So I decided to go with a home phone plan for $25/month. This will hopefully end up saving me money in the long run.

 

#3 – Internet Based Phone Service

The emerging trend of internet based phone service such as Vonage, and Verizon’s/Comcast’s/AT&T’s equivalent of it, decrease the cost of home phone service. While the reliability of phone service over the internet has been questioned, if this service is in addition to your cell phone, you (hopefully) should be covered.

The plans using internet based phone service typically tend to be around $20 less than regular phone plans. As this type of service becomes more commonplace, it will also become more reliable. I would encourage you to research options in your area and look at the cost benefit.

 

#4 – Reliability

One benefit to having a land line phone is that is should not go dead compared to cell phones that need to be charged regularly. While this is (hopefully) a far-fetched scenario, in the case of a mass power outage, your home phone service should remain available. Even though cell phones are only getting better and better, a home line is always more reliable.

However, while reliability is important, if you are trying to cut costs, a cell phone will do. Additionally, cell phone reliability has gotten better and better each year. So if you only have a cell phone, you’ll be fine most of the time.

 

Whether or not to have a land line phone is certainly dependent on your situation. Now, people can easily get away with just a cell phone, but if you have a family or just want good peace of mind, a home phone may be beneficial. Also, if you are trying to cut costs, cutting out that home phone will chip away at your expenses.