Should I Use A Cell Phone Or A Landline?

By Jim on December 24th, 2003

I’m known as a relatively thrifty guy. I make it a point to save and invest as much of my money as I can. I try to live by the “live below your means” philosophy espoused by the folks at Motley Fool. As I recently discovered, however, one can sometimes take this concept a bit too far.

A while back, I was looking at my monthly bills and decided to start cutting out the fat. I went through each bill and analyzed what services I was really using versus what I was simply paying for. I managed to slice out about $75 per month worth of stuff that I really didn’t need. Then I came to my local phone bill. I started thinking about how often I used it versus how much I rely on my cell phone. Ditching it would save me about $50 per month. So, after some initial squeamishness, I decided to take the plunge. No more landline! Over the course of a year, this would save me about $600. Wow, not bad!

While I was initially ecstatic about saving money, it slowly dawned on me that perhaps this wasn’t such a hot idea after all. The first thing I noticed was that friends and family stopped calling me as frequently. In fact, the volume of calls I got dropped off significantly. Why, I wondered, would they blow me off so suddenly and so thoroughly?

Um…well, it apparently had something to do with getting cut off in mid-conversation and/or me fading in and out while we were talking. Don’t get me wrong, I tried like heck to avoid this. I tried to find “safe spots” in my house where I knew we wouldn’t get cut off or experience fade out, but none of them proved reliable. No matter what I did, people kept getting cut off.

I can’t place the blame for lack of contact solely on my friends and family though. As time went by, I found myself calling people less often as well. There’s a big difference between what we expect when calling people from home and what’s acceptable when we’re out on the road. When you’re traveling, you expect a few cell phone burps here and there. It comes with the territory. But when you’re relaxing on your couch while talking on the phone, you just don’t want the headaches of cell phone madness.

Read the rest at ExtremeTech