Living in the woods, I’ve found that I frequently forget to even lock our doors. It wasn’t until I started working that I had any experience with security systems and those still weren’t home security systems. Being so unfamiliar with them, I sat our school’s system off multiple times before I got the hang of it.  On more than one occasion I had the police come out to see who was at the school.  But now I’m realizing that maybe even those of us in small towns should not be quite so trusting. While I live in the country, my parents live in town part of our rural community and over the last year, someone has broken into their house multiple times.  It has seemed that the local police can’t do much about it (or choose not to, but that’s another story) so we (my brothers and I) were thinking that maybe buying them a security system for Christmas would be a good idea since they refulse to do so themselves.  Since none of really have any knowledge of them, I’ve been doing my research today.  When looking at ADT systems, I realized that there is lots to know before you make a final decision. First is the cost.  It’s not an upfront one time cost, and you have a security system.  There’s also a monthly fee. And then you’ll need to decide what all you want the system to monitor – are you just concerned with burglary (I thought we were)? ADT also offers Fire Safety Monitoring, Cellular Backup, Critical Condition, and SecurityLink. Interestingly, the monthly charge doesn’t vary much from the basic package and the premium package – the cost difference is in the initial purchase. From what I’ve seen ADT seems to offer some of the most affordable features (and the neatest – I’m really interested in the SafePass which is a key that you just wave in front of your alarm system instead of remembering a code).  I’d love to hear about your experiences before I make this move.  Please feel free to share your security system stories.