Do You Really Need That Home Phone?

by Lyn Lomasi; Owner of Intent-sive Nature & Brand Shamans Content Community

As technology advances, some people are finding they no longer use their home phone. Many ditch them all together once everyone in the household has a cell phone. Is this the right direction for your household to go in? Do you really need that home phone? We've been cutting back our budget in various areas to save for a move across country. The home phone is one area we all agreed on.

Who actually dials your home phone?

How many of your friends and family rely on your land line to get in touch with you? In our household, the answer was little to none. Everyone calls our cell phones first. Our home phone number was only known to a handful of people and few of those people ever even used it.

The majority of rings to our home phone were telemarketers, prank callers, or people dialing the wrong number. We spent an awful lot of time fielding calls we didn't want or that weren't even designated for us.

How often do you dial out using your home phone?

Answer this honestly. If you have a cell phone sitting next to you, are you really going to get up and use that land line? Admittedly, we were old-fashioned with it and had a corded land line. Even if you have a cordless phone, it can be inconvenient, especially if you forgot to charge it. Reception also tends to be clearer on a corded phone than a cordless one.

For those reasons, we had the wired phone. But that had its drawbacks too, like not being able to move around as much. Also, long-distance calls (to the US and Canada) are free with unlimited usage on our cell phone plan, while we had to pay extra for those on the land line. So we usually ended up just not using it.

Is your home phone easy to use?

Between static on the line and having to remember to actually put the phone back on the receiver occasionally, it can be a pain. Cell phones have come a long way and in our experience, often have much clearer reception than the land line. On some of those rare occasions we did use the land line, I can recall conversations where one of us had to call the other party back on a cell phone in order to hear them properly.

What about emergencies?

A land line can definitely be a great backup in the case of an emergency. But it isn't the only backup method available. We have multiple cell phones in our home, so there should always be one available. But since they were all on the same plan, we figured there should be another method.

We also have one of those phones that minutes are purchased for, which uses a completely different phone company. Emergency calls are always free on this phone, even if there are no minutes. The reception is also clear, even in places where we cannot use our main cell phones or a land line.

Is your home phone worth the cost?

Consider how much you pay each month to keep your land line. Is your usage of it worth this cost? Some may say yes, even if there is only one person they communicate with on a land line. There might be that one family member who won't remember a new number. Yet others would ditch it in an instant to save a little money. We fell somewhere in between.

For us, even though we didn't use the home phone, we somehow felt we should have it. But we decided that since we hardly ever use it, it wasn't as valuable as it may have seemed. Eliminating a land line will save us $350 - $480 per year. That isn't a large amount but it's a considerable amount to spend on something you don't use. Therefore, since it was a service we rarely used, we decided we didn't need to be paying for it every month.

Are you using a home phone, cell phone, or both? How's it working for you?

LAST UPDATED 2/24/2022