After a monthlong break, it's time for another Money Poll. The question of the week this time is: "How much do you spend on telecommunications each month?" When I ask this, I'm talking about your landline, cell phone, internet access, and cable/satellite TV before taxes. As usual, I'll go first:

Phone: $25.00
Cell Phone: $42.00 (Two phones after 30% in discounts from Sprint PCS)
DSL Connection: $32.95
Dish Network: $55.98 (even though the customer service sucks!)
Total: $155.93

A few comments... First of all, the above values total to more than $1,800 when viewed across a year. That's quite a bit of money, but we're okay with that, as we like what we get in return.

Cell phones are far from a necessity, but they're a convenience that we're willing to pay for. And while we could probably get away without a landline, that's not something we're comfortable dropping at this point -- and we'd end up with internet problems if we did, as we're not willing to drop our broadband connection, and we can't get cable at our house. Thus, a phone line is something of a necessary evil. As far as Dish Network goes, we could scale back a bit in terms of our service plan (or even cut out TV entirely), but we like the service (if not the customer service) that we're getting...

Like I said above, we could save a decent amount of money in this area if we wanted to, but it's not really worth it to us at this point. And with that, I'll turn it over to you... Please stop by, participate, and check out the results.

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