Have you ever stopped to consider how much money you’re paying to keep in touch? I’m betting that a good percentage of you haven’t.

Not yet anyway!

If you actually take the time to add up the amount of money you dish out every month to pay for the Holy Trinity of telecom cash cows — home telephone, high speed internet and cell phone — the total sum might surprise you.

It may even prompt you to make a few changes to your telecom services.

Just for fun, let’s take a look at what many households (like my parents) still dish out every month just to say wassup once a week and do the regular rounds with their other friends, relatives, etc. 

1. Landline. A tradition landline from an old school provider like Verizon or a VoIP phone from Vonage will cost you anywhere from $25 to $100 per month depending on your monthly plan, bundles, and long distance plan.
2. Cell Phone. Whether you have a bare bones cell phone plan or a smart phone with unlimited minutes, data, and texts, you can expect to pay anywhere from $40 to $110 per month.
3. High Speed Internet Connection. The pricing of DSL internet compared to Cable internet doesn’t vary by much, but you’ll likely pay $35 to $50 per month to access to the world wide web. (This is a mandatory expense if you want a VoIP internet phone.)

Using these price estimates, you can pay anywhere from a $100 per month with several bare bones plans, or if you’re of the more spoiled and chatty variety, you’re looking at somewhere around $260 per month.

While you might say that $100 to $260 per month isn’t that big of a deal, try scaling up the numbers to what you’ll be paying annually.

Not to be overly antisocial, but do you really think all of your conversations are worth anywhere from $1200 to $3100 a year? Couldn’t this money be better put to work in other places?

When you think about it, the annual total in telecom costs you could be paying may be equivalent to one week, or maybe even several weeks, of your annual bring home pay. That’s a lot of hours at the grindstone just to say “Can You Hear Me Now?” or make a late night bootie call.

Cutting the Telecom Fat

Unless you’re running a small business, you probably don’t need all three of these services. They’re expensive, they’re redundant, and you probably use one or two much more than the remaining third.

So if you’re trying to cut costs, here are a few options:

1. Kill the landline. Even the CEO of Verizon has publicly stated that landlines are a dying industry. If you have a cell phone, chances are your home phone is nothing but a backup.
2. Switch to VoIP telephone services. I don’t mean switch to high priced services like Vonage or those offered by your cable provider, but a more cost effective option like Magic Jack or relying solely on free user-to-user calls using Skype. I made the switch to MagicJack in December 2009, and I’ll be saving $243 in the first year (81%) and $280 (93%) per year every year after.
3. Go completely wireless. Up your wireless minutes or get an unlimited talk, text and data plan to cover all of your telecom needs. If you need to use a landline, you can always use your work telephone during your lunch break if you’re in a pinch.

Bottom line, a cell phone and a high speed internet connection is more than enough communication options for the average household. Considering the transportability of a mobile phone, and the Internet’s huge disintermediation effect, these two choices are the most cost effective means of keeping in touch.

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