Land Line (Phone)

I would call around to a few places. I really dont think it should be that much. For about 40.00 we get internet, phone and cable. I think you can find a better deal, i wish you luck :)

I have comcast and I pay $40 a month for unlimited long distance. It does run on a cable modem though, so you would loose it if you lost power. However since you do have a cell phone I don't see the big deal.

Try calling ATT and tell them that although you like having the landline for safety purposes, you are in the process of cutting your budget and ask if they have any customer promotions you are eligible for. I'll bet they come up with something! It has always worked for me!

You seem to be trying real hard to justify to yourself paying for something you don't really need..?!?
Cell phones don't charge for long distance calls.
Your home alarm can be switched to a cell signal.

We got rid of our land line some time ago. We paid about $15 per month for it since we are on SSDI.

If we got it now I would go to the car lot at the end of the street and get the one that is only a few dollars per month. All you need is a basic line, you do not need all the other stuff. It is about $2.00 per month and has caller ID and call waiting, etc...I don't need more than that.

You have a cell phone don't you? If so then your cell phone is your caller id and the phone to make long distance calls on.

We use U S Cellular and pay less than $150 and have all that you have mentioned, all our incoming calls are free to us, and we have the internet plus phone replacement, the Believe program is wonderful. If your phone is broken you get to replace it at no charge. Even if the break was your fault.

Once every one has gotten used to calling your cell number instead of the land line you don't even need to answer your land line anymore.

I think investigating these cheap places is worth the time. Some of them have odd places for you to make the payment in my area but seriously, why pay that much if you can get the same stuff for $2.00 instead.

I think even Walmart has a phone service that is less than $20 per year.

I agree with keeping it. My cell phone went out and I had to wait 2 days for my new phone. It felt like eternity and I hated being home with 2 kids and not be able to communicate in case of an emergency.

We at one point had one through Sprint which is now another company and only paid $20/month. No long distance or caller ID...just for the safety of having it and we used our cell phones for LD. We now bundle ours with our Comcast which I think ended up only costing us about $20 more plus we were able to upgrade our cable package. I don't use it a ton but it is nice because it includes long distance and caller ID. And if you are watching TV, the caller ID pops up on the screen. I can also access it through my e-mail account.

We're in the same boat, almost exactly. Every relative is long distance. We use Verizon for our cell service (and I don't care for AT&T's customer service so I wouldn't want to switch even IF we DID get reliable coverage at home-which we do not thru them. Only with Verizon or Alltel).

Our bill is right around that same amount. Slightly more, actually, and we dropped the unlimited long distance a while back and went to a smaller amount of minutes. Like 200 min a month with charges for overages. We never go over, because we use our cell phones for most long distance. Being that we have Verizon, we have excellent coverage at home. :) But, our bill includes our high speed internet as well.

We have kids and want a landline at home for emergencies or power outages as well. And I don't want all their friends calling me on my cell phone. And we aren't prepared for them each to have their own cell phone at this point.

What is really annoying, however, is that when you actually look at the itemized bill, a staggering amount of it is surcharges and government fees and taxes. Probably $20 worth. I would LOVE to figure out a way to get those reduced.

Are you sure you won't consider internet based phone. We have had it for over 5 yrs & have never lost service. We had vonage for 5 yrs till about 3 months ago. Vonage was $35 a month. Now we have Voipo for $6 a month. It was about $165 total for 2 years. We have Verizon cell phones.

I understand your wanting to keep your landline, as I remember the day of 9-11 no cell phones worked. Since then I've felt I need to keep it in case of some national disaster or apocalypse. But I only par $20 extra in my bundle to satisfy my phobia.

I have cable, internet and phone service through the same company. The only downside is that if the internet goes out, I can't use the phone. In that case, we use my son's cell phone which has unlimited long distance. He's on his father's plan.

I gave up my land line a long time ago and it's worked out pretty well. I actually have a tracfone that costs about $19 for 3 months of service if I get in a pinch. It's WAY cheaper than my AT&T was going the way I did.
I had to pay for call waiting, I had to pay for a long distance package, (almost everyone I talk to is long distance). I have definitely saved a lot of money. Trust me, giving up my land line wasn't easy for me to do because I didn't trust the other option. I don't regret it.

Best wishes.

Hi! I pay 56 something a month for the phone at my mom's house. We get nothing for that, no minutes, no services, nothing. It goes like this when I am there... I call home, someone answers, I say "call me back" and hang up. They call me back from our home phone with unlimited long distance saving me from paying the per minute charges attached to the phone. Verizon is the only provider so they don't have to provide anything without making you pay through the nose and cell service is mostly non-existent although I have been told that sometimes if you go up to the last post on the driveway and have been a good girl or boy your cell phone may actually work.
We have Verizon here too, we pay about 117 for phone with unlimited everything and services, internet, and cable with two boxes and a million channels.
I hope someone has a good idea!

Look around. For example, if we didn't bundle our phone, we'd probably use Cavalier - I had them at a previous home and they were less expensive and gave us a lot of free features. You can also look at your cell plan and see if you can't use that or Skype for long distance and cut out the long distance calls on the landline.

I think back when we had a land line (5 years ago?) we paid $15 through vonage.

Geesh! 70 bucks pays for my Magic Jack for 5 years.

Can't you get a dedicated line for your ADT, use your cell phones for emergencies and use an internet provider for everyday use? They're trying to phase out landlines, unfortunately.

We had cable service and their phone line was free at first.. then went up to only $7.00 a month with unlimited everything and voice mail.. It eventually was $15.00 per month, at this point I realized we had not used it in 3 years because we all had cell phones so I dropped it.

If you have cable ask them.

we have adt and you dont need a land line.