Be Brave Not Safe

Still paying for a landline telephone (for the home), even though each family member has a cell?

We cut that cord many years ago, for 2 reasons:

1. 99% of the time the landline phone rang it was a telemarketer. It was hardly ever for me, or at least someone that I wanted to talk to. If someone wants to talk to me, they call my cell! The same applied for the rest of my family.
2. It was a perfect example of a negative draw on my net worth, with no value in return. I HATE that 🙂

Common objections and things we had to work through prior to killing the landline included:

• “What if my babysitter needs to call me, or someone else in an emergency, while I’m away?” New criteria for selecting a babysitter: They must have a cell phone (although, our family is WAY beyond the need for a babysitter at this point).
• “I don’t want to have to carry my cell phone around with me while at home.” Question: Do we carry our landline phone around with us at home? And, if we were to miss a call because we couldn’t get to the phone quickly enough, doesn’t it roll to voice-mail or an answering machine. The same can happen with a cell phone.
• “What about my doctor, bank and other important people that need to reach me?” Give them our cell number!
• “I don’t want to make my cell number too available as I’ll then get calls at times and places when I don’t want to be interrupted.” We can choose when to answer our cell, just like any other phone. For example: I don’t answer my cell when the number isn’t in my contact list. My kids will say “Dad, what if someone is calling you in an emergency?” My response: “If it is an emergency they should be dialing 911. Why would they be calling me? And, if someone REALLY needs to talk to me (when I don’t pick up, because their number isn’t in my contact list or I’m not available) they can leave a voice message and I will call them right back.“
• “What about having a phone available for my young child, who doesn’t yet need or can’t afford their own cell phone?” Good question! An option to consider would be an Internet-based phone service that can accomplish everything a landline phone can, for less.
• And, finally, the worst of all: “It is only $30 per month.“

Let’s run this through our monthly cost times 12 (months) times 10 (years) formula to determine the true cost of having this archaic thing, called a landline phone, still collecting dust in our homes. The answer: $3,600!

My wife and I recently returned from The Bahamas celebrating our 25th anniversary. The trip was less than it would have cost to maintain a landline phone over the past 10 years. I’m glad we cut the cord as you could say this (more than) funded our trip 🙂

Suggestion: Take a few moments to tally up the “small” / individual savings opportunities shared in this blog, to see what they amount to. 3 words come to mind: “A Small Fortune!” The tally will be shared in a future post once it is made more painfully obvious why it is so important to kill or reduce expenses that provide NO long term value and serve to delay the timeframe for achieving financial independence.

More to come 🙂