PostPoints tip: Pare down landline phone service

There are respectable reasons to keep a landline phone number in service: too many family members call you there, you won't pay extra for time spent on hold at tech-support lines; you have an alarm system or fax machine. But that doesn't mean you need to keep paying for the same level of service that made sense in 2000. Think about getting rid of two common calling features, Call Waiting and Caller ID. The first should be easier to give up (when's the last time you had to hop from one caller to another on your home line?), and even the second is dispensable if you let calls go to your answering machine before night and during campaign seasons. Speaking of, for extra savings you can replace your phone service's voicemail with an answering machine. And if you make few outgoing calls, you can chisel down your costs further by dropping to "message rate" service that only includes a set number of outgoing calls or a still-cheaper "economy message" plan with a roughly 10-cent charge for each call you make.