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For quite a long while, the basic home service price of the telephone was $20. The competition continued to drive the price further down to today’s rate of $10 a month. After you add taxes and whatnot, you’re likely to have a phone bill approximately $20 per month. This roughly translates into a total cost of $240 per YEAR.

New phone technology has many folks abandoning their old residential landlines in favor of picking up a cellular phone. These phones come with additional coolness factors by having text messaging, internet access, color LCD screens, games, and all the other bells and whistles that makes us coo.

Today’s norm is that each person needs their own individual phone as opposed to entire families sharing one residential landline. Cell phone pricing plans can vary greatly. There’s family plans, add a line, rollover minutes, internet access rates, etc. Today’s plans can range anywhere from $50 to over $150 a month depending on the options selected. A basic unlimited voice plan from AT&T is $70 a month (add taxes and fees and we’re closer to $80 per month). A voice only plan without data translates into almost $1000 per year. If you add data to your voice plan, you can easily exceed $1000 a year for a personal telephone. My significant other continues to pay $130 a month for her cell phone ($1560 per year).

Is it really worth paying $1000+ a year to be “connected”? Are we going to die if we don’t receive a text the instant that it is sent? I’m pretty sure that everyone has their own opinion on how much being “connected” is worth to them. I’m also pretty sure that the folks from 30+ years ago managed to survive without this technology. Maybe some day, prices may eventually drop once people realize they can live without needing to be “connected”. On the other hand, if the phone market trend continues, we may see our phone bills reach the $2000 a year mark.

-M