Money Saving Idea #3: Telephone Savings

It seems these days that everybody is always talking to somebody, either on a cell phone, or at home on the phone. Let's take a look at ways to save money on our telephones.

First off, let's take a look at cell phones. Cell phones are truly handy to have in an emergency, but do we really NEED them? Everyone has a different answer for this one. For me, it's a no. After having one for years, I decided I didn't really NEED one and let it go. This saved me $100 per month right away! I did get a prepaid Net10 phone when I was clearing our land for our new house to ease my wife's mind(and mine) just in case I cut my arm off or something. Now, I don't even spend the $30 every 2 months on that. There is still more to be saved on phones, but how do you ask?

Our HOME phones! Yes, there is quite a bit of money to be saved on our home phones. There are many good options out there now for VOIP's, or voice over internet protocols. It all started with Vonage and their Woo! Hoo! song, but it's gone so much farther. I had Vonage for a couple of years and I really did like the service, but I wanted to go even less than the $24.95 per month that they charge. Enter Skype ! Skype is a free Pc to Pc voip that let's you talk to other Skype users on their computer from your computer. It works great and it's crystal clear, BUT... you have to pay extra for a phone number if you want land lines to be able to call you. You can also call landlines, but you have to pay extra for that. By the time you're done, you might as well have a landline. I found something that fixes these problems and is even CHEAPER! It's called MagicJack, and what a little miracle this box is. You plug MagicJack into your computer and plug your phone into it, and for $19.95/year...not month, YEAR, you can call anywhere in the USA for free. Buy 5 years at a time and it's even cheaper. I have 5 years of phone service prepaid with MagicJack for only $69.95. I have fired my phone company! The only thing I don't care for with MagicJack is that it won't let my computer go into sleep mode, but in the long run I think it saves me more than my computer going to sleep would save in electricity usage.

So, my communications bills have gone from $130/mo.($100 cell and about $30 landline/mo.) to about $14/ year with MagicJack. That's a savings of over $125/ mo!!