Couple of weeks back I was looking at lowering expenses and one of the things I looked at was getting rid of our landline. Both my wife and I have cell phones and it seemed a little ridiculous to pay $50 a month for a land line. Well, we ultimately decided against getting rid of it all together because we have kids.

911 doesn’t work so well right now from a cell phone. If you pick up your home phone, dial 911 and collapse someone will show up at your door. I know one of my kids dialed 911 when we lived in Austin and the first time I knew about it was when a sheriff’s deputy showed up at the door. Also if you leave the kids with a baby sitter and take the cell phones with you they have no way of calling you or 911.

So we decided to keep the landline, but take all the extra stuff off. So we’d be losing voicemail and I decided to look on ebay to see if what a cheap answering machine would cost. I ended up winning an auction for a cordless phone with answering machine for like $30 with shipping. The seller was in Canada and I sent money via PayPal and he shipped the next day. But I haven’t received it yet, so I emailed the guy and got the tracking number. The package is still sitting in Mississauga, Ontario. Here’s the sellers explanation of why it is still there.

Got to love unions.