Saving Money on Phone Service

It’s amazing to me how some people will spend $200 a month for a fancy cell phone, when there are so many inexpensive options available. Here are a few I use or suggest.

Free	Google Voice	You can forward any incoming phone calls to your Google Voice phone number. Google Voice will record the call, transcribe it and send it to you email address.You can then send an SMS text message (FREE) to the number which called you. What I like about this is that I don’t have to talk to marketers and people who I’d rather forget.You can look at the email and just delete it. Note – some companies may charge you for call forwarding – mine (T-Mobile) does not. You can also enable “Do Not Disturb” on Google Voice so that the message is instantly recorded and transcribed. Google Talk is like Skype, just computer to computer, but I’m hoping that in the future I can use that feature to integrate it with Google Voice and be able place calls to a phone via my computer.
2 cents/minute – Call England	Google Voice	I use Google Voice to call my England number. It then calls my cell phone and connects me to England phone number.
2 cents/minute – call any phone in the Continental US	Skype	I use my USB VOIP phone  by Vondoo – $20
$2.95/mo	Skype	Call anywhere in the continental U.S. and Canada. Use a USB phone or headset. I don’t use this now, but the price is certainly cheap enough.
$10/mo	T-Mobile@Home	This uses a router and seems great except you have to already have a cell phone package with them and sign a 2 year contract.
$50/month	T-Mobile	Cell phone – Two Lines – 1000 minutes/mo.(This is my main phone.) Note – they don’t offer this anymore.
$25/month	Vonage	Internet Phone – I used to have this but had problems. I still need a cell-phone, and this is certainly higher than TMoible @Home
$45/month	Straight Talk	Unlimited minutes and Text in U.S. (I don’t have this – I need two lines.)
Overseas	Article	Buy a cheap phone in the country you are visiting and a new SIM card with 1000 minutes. When you go to a new country, buy a different SIM card for that country. (I haven’t tried this, but will on some upcoming trips.)
What’s Your Plan and How Do You Save $$$ ?

Google Voice – Saved Me $100 Today.

I just signed up and got a new phone number with Google Voice today. I’m still not sure exactly how I’m going to use this new feature of Google, but I’ve figured out how it will  immediately save me $100.

First let me explain that you need a Gmail account and they need to send you an invitation. When you get your invite, you just follow the prompts and you’ll end up with a brand new phone number (you choose the number from numerous listed). The idea is that you can just use this one phone number and it will forward to any number of phones.  It can forward to mobile phones, home phones, work phones etc. One phone number for everything. For people with lots of phones, this feature might be great.

How I’m using it to save money is that you can also make International phone calls to the U.K. for just 2 cents a minute. Currently I spend $5/month phone charge and 6 cents a minute for these types of calls. I’ estimating that I’ll save at least $100 this year.

Google Voice integrates very well with your existing Gmail account. Each of your contacts now has a “Call” button. I did have trouble calling people from my notes page, but you can call from the Call area in the upper left hand corner.

Let me know if you’re using this service and how it’s helping you.

The $2.95/month Phone Plan

As my wife’s retirement edges closer to reality, I’ m realizing that my 1000 minutes per month Family plan from T-Mobile is not going to hack it any more.

The question is, how can I get more minutes without having to pay through the nose? One answer is the Skype subscription plan. For $2.95/month I can make unlimited calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada.

The bad news is that if you search the Skype user forums, there are lots of  people upset with the poor customer service Skype provides. They have no phone number you can call and make it very hard to ask a simple question as I found out.  Buyer Beware.

Monitor Your Minutes

I ended up last month with an extra $100 on my phone bill because I used more than my 1000 minutes.

One tip I learned is that just by calling the phone company, they reduced the overage by 40%. I didn’t even ask.

I also learned the lesson of monitoring my minutes as I get close to the end of my billing cycle. One of the tabs on my DAILY tabs that I look at in Firefox is a tab for my cell phone. I do have to login, but it’s worth it to save that overage charge.