Money Crashers: 3 Home Phone Landline Alternatives That Save You Money

Based on the stuff I read online, I had the impression that Brian and I were practically the only people left in America who still had a landline phone. Turns out, that's a bit of an exaggeration. According to the National Health Interview Survey, we're in the minority, but it's still a pretty good-sized minority: about 45 percent of adults and 35 percent of kids in the country have a landline phone at home. But that's still a big drop from the 85 percent of all households that had one as recently as 2007.

So are we behind the times? Is the day of the landline over? Or does this old-school technology still serve a useful purpose?

For us, we've concluded, the answer is yes. Unlike most of our friends, we still rely on our landline as our primary phone and use our cell phones only for emergencies. This enables us to get by with only the barest-bones of mobile plans: $10 a month for my still fairly new smartphone, and $3 a month for Brian's dumb phone. Add $36 a month for our landline, and we're paying a total of $49 a month for phone service. If we had to rely on our cell phones as our primary phones, we'd need to upgrade to unlimited talk-and-text plans, which would cost about $15 a month for him and $20 for me. So we'd save around $14 a month, which sounds good...but there are some big downsides. For one, we'd have to keep our cell phones switched on all the time and actually check them every time they ring (rather than ignoring them while we're at home, because everyone who actually knows us knows to try the landline first). We wouldn't be able to share a phone call by using two extensions. If my phone rang upstairs while I was downstairs, I'd have to run up and grab it instead of just picking up the downstairs extension. And worst of all, we'd have to give out our cell phone numbers to everyone who requested our number. Not only would this open us up to even more robocalls than we get now, it would expose all our accounts to the risk of SIM hacking—a scam in which hackers get hold of your cell number, switch it over to a new phone that they control, and instantly gain access to every account for which you've used a phone number for verification. So, yeah, we're willing to pay an extra $14 a month to avoid that nightmare.

Now, there are other alternatives that we've looked into from time to time. For instance, with a device like MagicJack or Ooma, or a cheap VOIP service like VoIPLy, we could reduce our bill to just a few bucks a month. But every time I've grown frustrated enough with our current provider to look into this, I end up backing down because of worries about voice quality and reliability. Since our landline is our main phone, I want to make sure calls we make on it will come through loud and clear.

However, just because keeping the landline is the right decision for us doesn't mean it is for you. If you're on the fence about dropping your landline, my new Money Crashers article can help. It goes into the three main alternatives to landlines—going mobile-only, VOIP, and ATA devices like the MagicJack—and weighs their pros and cons. This can help you figure out what will work best for you in terms of cost, call quality, and convenience.

3 Home Phone Landline Alternatives That Save You Money