Phone/Internet -- Help me figure out how to save

[Herausgeber]

I've been analyzing our budget, trying to figure out when we can afford to have another child. One thing that jumps out at me is how much we are spending on phones and the Internet. I offer this breakdown in the hopes that some of you wise, frugal mamas can help me cut back here. I feel very strongly that this catagory is currently eating up a much greater percentage of our budget than it deserves.

Landline/DSL: ~$100 per month.

Includes unlimited long-distance, though we rarely take advantage of that. Most of the calls coming in on this line are telemarketers. Pros to keeping a landline: safety, in case cells don't work (not theoretical to me, since I lived in D.C. during 9/11 and most of my family lives in hurricane country); we have a copy machine that also serves as a fax (convenient, though not strictly necessary); and I'm not sure how my au pair would call home in an emergency if we dropped it. Right now, her dad has a deal in which he is able to call her cell for super cheap.

We absolutely must have high-speed Internet at home, so I can work from home. If I dropped it, I would have to wake up at 4 a.m. and commute by cab or my car into my D.C. office each morning to start work at 6 a.m. Right now I can roll out of bed and telecommute for that part of my job. If that changed, we'd have to get a second car and I'd pay $12 a day to park it OR I'd have a $25 daily cab ride. Oh, and I wouldn't be able to work at home most of the time when the second baby came. In other words, no savings there, even before accounting for the huge hassle factor.

I'm open to dropping the phone line and I've investigating unbundling this, but it seems there is no price savings for DSL only. Maybe I am missing something. Would cable or some other option be cheaper?

Cell phones for me and the au pair
$150 a month, through Verizon, AFTER taking into account the 19 percent discount I get through my former employer. Not sure when that will disappear. We don't need as many shared minutes as we are paying for now (1400 a month). I looked into cutting down to 700 (which is enough based on current usage, barely), but it looks like that only saves me $10 a month. \I hesitate to drop either of them completely, for safety reasons.

DH's cell phone
$70 a month, through T-Mobile. It's a BlackBerry. There's no way he will consider dropping it. We looked into pulling him into the family plan, but TMobile seems to have a better BlackBerry plan than Verizon.

So we're looking at $320 total each money, which just feels like too much to me.

[Purple*Lotus]

From what you said about where you live and your job, etc, I don't see how you can go without the landline/DSL. Maybe you could drop any extras that add up, like call waiting, forwarding, etc. Is anyone actually using the landline for LD or do you just use cell phones for that? If so, consider dropping the long distance option too.

DH and I have only a pre paid cell phone, which saves a ton of money, but it is not always doable for everyone. I truly never use it, as I have yet to have an emergency that warrented it. If your au pair needs hers to communicate with family you should keep it. That is one person you want to be happy and not homesick. And if your DH refuses to part with his, then you are sort of stuck there, too.

Gosh, I have been no help at all : Sorry But I don't see that you have many options here unless you are making people unhappy

[Tradd]

Get a basic landline with DSL and voice mail (I'm assuming you need voice mail). This ran me $50 a month in my last apartment. For long distance, get a "virtual" calling card from www.onesuite.com - LD runs about $.03/minute and $10 (minimum) lasts for a long time.

When I priced it recently for cable internet only (I'm TV free), it was more expensive to have cable internet only through the cable company.

How are you with local calls? If you make a decent number of them on the landline, you can get some kind of a package for local calls, even a minimal one.

How high speed internet do you need? Because depending on the speed you get, you can often a very basic high speed internet that's NOT blazing fast, but still good for about $20 a month.

[SeekingJoy]

How much would it be to completely switch to T-mobile for a bundled cell package for everyone?

Also, you should be able to get a no-frills landline for much less. Or, you could check out Skype as a landline alternative.

Re: high-speed internet. We pay about $25+taxes a month for high-speed internet through our cable company. We don't have cable.

[xmysticprincessx]

We have Roadrunner through TIme Warner for $30 a month. We've had the promotional price for almost 5 years. Every time it goes back up to the regular rate of $45, I call to cancel my RR and tell them that I'm getting cheaper DSL. A friend who used to work for TW said that they will always offer you the promotional rate to keep you as a customer.

FOr our phone, we use Vonage. You need high speed internet for it, so if there was a power outage, you wouldn't have a phone. (We have cells too, so I'm not worried about it.) We were paying $31 with taxes and fees for unlimited long distance, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, voicemail (its cool- it emails me when I have a voicemail and I log into their site to hear it), and a few other features. They have plans with various countries for international long distance. I downgraded to the 500 minutes a month plan b/c its $15 a month plus taxes and fees (so probably about $21 a month, havent gotten the 1st bill yet).

When did you last look into Verizon's Blackberry plan? Maybe its gotten better recently.

[Merilin]

What about getting the very basic landline for call emergencies, but using skype for long distance calls for yourselve and your aupair. You mentioned you need the high speed internet anyways. We pay $35 a month for cable, we do not have any TV in the bundle, use skype which either is 2c per minute for most countries, or we signed up for skype world and pay $10 + $3 a month for a phone number.

We do not need cellphones (we just never ever used the minimum minutes), but we are still debating about getting an emergency cell for under $10 a month. We used to pay $60 for 2 cellphones in a familyplan

[shinky]

Originally Posted by xmysticprincessx

FOr our phone, we use Vonage. You need high speed internet for it, so if there was a power outage, you wouldn't have a phone. (We have cells too, so I'm not worried about it.) We were paying $31 with taxes and fees for unlimited long distance, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, voicemail (its cool- it emails me when I have a voicemail and I log into their site to hear it), and a few other features. They have plans with various countries for international long distance. I downgraded to the 500 minutes a month plan b/c its $15 a month plus taxes and fees (so probably about $21 a month, havent gotten the 1st bill yet).

We use Vonage, as well. We started out with the unlimited plan. Didn't use it enough to justify the extra money. I switched to the 500 minute plan. Again, we weren't using it. I called this week to cancel and learned about another option. You can place your line "on hold" for $4.99 a month (plus tax). It leaves the line open so you can receive calls. Incoming calls are unlimited!!! You can not use it for outgoing calls, but we both have cells for that. There are only a handful of people who call us anyway, so it's perfect for our situation.

And, BTW, our bill with the 500 plan was $21.99 (tax included).

[annethcz]

Our landline/DSL is priced about the same as yours, and we need it for the exact same reasons as you do, so I understand that expense and I think it's reasonable.

The only thing I can offer is that it sounds like your cell phone plan is really expensive. DH and I have a shared plan through Sprint for $69.99/month with 700 (???) shared minutes. With DH's 10% discount, it comes to less than $70/month including taxes and fees. So my suggestion would be to shop around for a cheaper cell phone plan.

[kkfum]

we have our cell plan through verizon. it's dh's plan (reimbursed by work), with me added as a family plan for an extra $10, with 700 shared minutes. so, in total, it's a $90/month bill (including taxes, etc.). he just upped it to a blackberry for him at an additional $25/month, which i think he got through a deal from the company. i'd check into verizon again, especially if your company gives you a discount. having used other services, i really love verizon for it's reliability...never had a dropped call once, which is important for dh's work as well as us having to drive through some rural areas sometimes.

[Virginia884]

We NEVER used our landline. Ever. Only telemarketers were calling us. We used our cell phones for all of our calls, and most incoming calls. So I called the phone company and got the most restricted plan they offer- 30 calls (total) for $9 a month. This way we still get calls if we need to, and we still can call 911 from the house.

[Herausgeber]

OK, I just dropped the long-distance/voicemail/etc from the landline, for a savings of $29 a month!.

Next, on to the cell phones.

As for all of us switching to Tmobile, I kinda don't want to. Verizon has much better service, I'm finding. It even works in the subway stations here!

Edited to add: I also just cut down our cell phone plans. I dropped it to just 700 minutes, which actually took us to about $100 a month (including the taxes, etc). To get there, I also dropped this navigator service that I have been using. But really, I should just save the $10 a month and Google map things before I leave the house. If I ever get fantastically lost, I can download it for one-time use for a couple of bucks. I'm going to keep that service on the au pair's phone, though, since she is more likely to get lost.

So I've shaved off $80 a month. Wowee. Thanks you y'alls help!

[mamabain]

wow, i am obviously crazy here, but when did cell phones become a necessity?

i can't imagine forking over that kind of money for 'convenience sake'. if it were just emergency/safety sake, you could do with a prepaid for MUCH less.

we pay $45/month for basic phone and DSL. Our long distance comes on top of that for about $10/month.

we just got a prepaid cell phone for emergencies (my dh has had a heart attack before and where he works there are NO phones in his part of the building) that is costing us $20/3months.

OP, that is a LOT of money. just sayin',

rachael

[Herausgeber]

Cell phones are pretty much a necessity for work for us, though we are not reimbursed for the cost by employers. (I should have said that in the original post.) We both spend a lot of time either telecommuting or meeting with people around the region. There has to be a consistent way for us to stay in touch with the home offices, each other and the au pair. We could decline to provide one to the au pair, I suppose, but that would just lead to a lot more anxiety and hassle for all three of us, and we accounted for the cost of providing her with a phone in our analysis of child-care options. An au pair with a cell phone we pay for is still cheaper than taking DD to a nearby accredited center, assuming we could ever get in -- which we still haven't.)

Anyway, I have accepted it as a requirement for functioning well in my current profession (journalism) where we live. If I were unemployed (or lived in a place that still had pay phones!), the calculation would obviously be different.

I should also reiterate that this is a cost-cutting measure to help us prepare to have another little one before I am even pregnant, not a "drastic measures are needed" exercise. With this mindset, there are things that I had no hesitation about giving up (Netflix) and things where I am still pausing a little (my daily newspaper). Giving up our cell phones would be such a PITA that it isn't on the table. Cutting back was, though, and I'm quite pleased at the savings I've found there.