One of the most important parts of running any business is negotiating cost vs. value in your daily decisions, and the way you decide to deal with your home phone, cable plan, and internet is a huge part of that business expense priority list. If you are paying for something in any capacity that is not adding value to your business or quality of life in some sense, then it is a complete waste. Conversely, if it is adding value to your business, it is worth continuing to spend money on. This is obvious to any business owner, however, some of them continue to hold onto old, silly things like home phones, or paying for expensive cable and internet plans even though they never or rarely use them anymore.

“Using a 4G data plan may be the only replacement you need for internet. If you are not playing high framerate video games and downloading items en masse, you should be fine with just an unlimited data plan.”

Uses for the Home Phone in the Modern Era

Besides the fact that a rotary dial phone can be an excellently gorgeous antique for your home office, there are some real positives to keeping a home phone connected.

For many business owners, keeping work and life separate is a vital part of maintaining sanity. Making sure customers and clients can only access a business line can keep your work and play separate for sure. Maintaining a healthy home life, and making sure your business is not constantly intruding on that home life will not only keep your family happy, but it will make your business more successful.

It may be a small point, but if you do have clients or customers or coworkers visiting your home office on the regular, a home phone in the office keeps a professional and clean look. A cordless phone certainly helps with the clean look, but if you are going for a more classic or antique style, just keep the cord out of sight as much as possible. Cords have never been classy in any era.

Options to replace your Home Phone in your Home Office

For some business owners, always directing clients and customers to an answering machine is a recipe for disaster. If you miss a few calls here and there during odd hours, that is no issue. Leave a polite answering machine message and call them back. On the other hand, if most of your time is spent out in the field either advertising or working, then you most likely need your clients and customers to be calling your mobile phone. You need them to be able to reach you so you can provide the excellent and polite customer service you want to be known for.

If you are in the situation where you want to keep home and work separate, but you are never in your actual home office to answer calls, you may feel like there is no right answer. Getting a second mobile phone for business is the answer for some, but frankly, that is a luxury few can or should attempt to afford. It is also fairly ridiculous. On the other hand, consider adjusting your settings on your phone. You may have the coolest ringtone since the dawn of music, but if it is always ringing, you will likely hate it by the end of the week. When you need to be working and ready to help any potential client, keep your volume on loud. When it is time to stop working, put your phone on do not disturb mode. When you would rather not take calls, but you would consider it from someone important, vibrate works plenty well.

You can even turn on do not disturb mode to have exceptions, for example, if you only want to receive calls from your contacts or even just your close family. Phones will of course differ on how to use those modes, so look in the notifications or do not disturb settings on your phone for how to figure it out. Failing that, consult professor Google.

Does anyone watch TV anymore?

Of course, people do. There are those who have to keep updated on sports, those who want to see movies, those who just have to keep updated on their favorite shows as soon as they air. The grand majority of those people who use that argument fail to realize that all of those things can be accomplished without a cable plan nowadays.

If you missed the Joel Embiid commercial, Hulu has live sports. They seem to be pretty proud of it too. In fact, with ESPN+ and several other online sports-viewing services, it can start to feel like the sports-viewing capability of normal TV is rather lackluster unless you pay for extremely expensive plans like DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket and the like.

Everyone has heard of Netflix and all of their original and third party shows and movies of course, but most broadcasting companies with premiere shows have their own online viewing services as well. If you paid for HBO for the last 10 years just to watch Game of Thrones, you should be more upset about that than about the show’s finale. You could have been streaming the shows live without TV with a short term subscription, especially since you waited 2 years for a 6 episode terrible final season to come out.

Is it possible to live without an Internet Connection?

For me, I am afraid that is a hard no. However, there are people who do not get nearly as much usage out of their internet as the modern millennial. Even if you do use the internet quite often, do you need to use a computer for it? Is it possible for you to use your one smart phone for all of your entertainment and work needs? In the modern era, that is completely feasible. It will be a sad day when you get a crack in that screen though, so protect that phone with your life.

The thing is, most good wireless companies not named Verizon offer excellent unlimited data plans with great service for reasonable cost, especially if you can pair up with a larger family plan. I recently joined a good friend’s family plan and saved my wife and me a ton of money on our phone bill by switching to Tmobile. Maybe there is a better option in your area, and it is important to note than some areas of the country are just not served well by some mobile companies. If you live in a smaller area, consider consulting a map of mobile service analysis before switching mobile phone plans.

Using a 4G data plan may be the only replacement you need for internet. If you are not playing high framerate video games and downloading items en masse, you should be fine with just an unlimited data plan.

If you are on a limited data plan, you may be wondering about the value of switching to unlimited in order to cancel your internet. This may depend on several factors of course, such as how many lines are on your plan. For an example though, if your internet plan is $80, and your unlimited data is $30 per line for 2 lines, then drop that internet plan like a hot potato! These would be similar to my prices, but I need the stronger internet for my lifestyle, so of course do not get rid of internet if you need it for your daily work and home life.

Now, there is a world for some people who do not use the internet except for basic searching and map directions, and they may be even able to get by without an unlimited data plan and still not using internet, home phone, or cable. Now these are true money savers, and I am not sure I really know what they would do all day (this coming from a millennial who needs to look at his phone a lot less). If you are in that situation, go for it. Save that money.

If you are not sure if you need unlimited data, simply consult your mobile provider and ask how much data you are using monthly. If they recommend that you can get away with a less expensive data plan than you are paying for, why not go for it? When it comes to saving money for your business and your home life, every penny counts. So do not be shy about switching your life around just a tad to promote success in your house. It could be getting rid of one more subscription might save up for that vacation one summer sooner.