Cutting the Landline
Over the next four Mondays, I am going to present various ways to save money on your telephone service. This week, I am going to examine your mobile phone service.
One way people have tried to save money over the past several years is eliminating their home phone service. The two major factors in deciding whether going mobile only will save you money is coverage and usage. If you don’t get good coverage at your house, switching to mobile only is almost always a bad idea. If nothing else, you want a phone available at your home in case of an emergency. There are ways to boost your coverage within your home, but these add at least $10 to your monthly bill.
Usage is also important. If having landline service allows you to stay in a lower rate plan, then most likely you are best keeping service besides just your mobile phone. In three weeks, I will present a plan for unlimited domestic service for only $6 a month! Your mobile rate increase would most likely be more.
Finally, if you use a wireless phone at all, you should check to make sure you are getting the best deal available. For low usage customers, a prepaid service, such as NET10, may make the most sense. In the case of NET10, if you stay under 150 minutes a month, the cost is only $15 per month! If you use less than the full 150, the minutes even carry over to the next month. High volume users may benefit from an unlimited plan, but the total cost of one of these plans will easily exceed $2500 over the course of a two year contract, so make sure you really need all those minutes.
Next Monday, using VoIP service to save.