I used to be on the track to upgrade my iPhone every couple of years and after several years of stupidity I realize how silly that all is. Unless you are truly, truly a travel road warrior where you MUST be available right now then what we spend on these gadgets is really unnecessary and a luxury that burns money for sure. If your work requires you to be on every second, then the work plans usually pay for it. Now that we have come around - my wife and I and realized the error of our ways for many years, we have come to realize the following about phones in general:
No longer need a land line at all - have not had one since 2000 and have never missed it. As for cell phones, the actual usage we have had has declined over time as we came to realize there were very few instance when we truly needed to use them. My work provides a cell phone for work. They pay for all the service and the phone costs 200. That was five years ago, I cannot even remember which version I'm on and the phone is still like new. Never replaced the battery as I am always near an outlet at some point even when traveling and able to recharge. We have chargers in our car and care the lap top connectors so there is really little excuse other than habit of running out of juice.
We also singed up for Google Talk and it's FREE. You can call anywhere in the US for FREE. On another post I recommended getting the Skype headphones from microsoft on amazon and that makes the sound crystal clear. That said, we pay nothing for phone service - I mean 0 and have not missed it. When our kids come of age where they WANT a cell phone, we will have to determine how to manage that wherever we land, they will have to earn and pay for anything other than bare bones safety.
Tech gadgets are super fashionable when your young. When your my age, you wish you had invested all that money you wasted on being fashionable ;).