Phone Bill? Who Needs It!

January 13, 2009 · Filed Under , · 7 Comments 

I am considering the option of dropping our land line phone and giving the axe to our phone company. The other day, I was listening to one of my favorite Radio shows, The Clark Howard Show and he was talking about some great options on how to get rid of the home phone and save some serious cash. We pay on average $40 a month which comes out to an annual savings of $480. No small potatoes. Here are some great ideas he had:

  • Magic Jack - This product has a 30-day free trial. Basically it works by plugging the MagicJack into your computer via a USB port, then you just plug your land line phone jack right into the MagicJack and start making calls. Sounds to good to be true, but Clark is always talking about it. If you like it, after your trial expires, you can buy the MagicJack for $39.99 and then pay only $20 per year for the service. Anybody ever used it?

  • Skype.com - Allows you to use your computer to make and receive phone calls. Totally free if the person you are calling is also on Skype! Really cheap otherwise, like 2 cents a minute. This is great for me as my sister lives in Australia and we can talk to each other for free, even with video if we both have our web cams hooked up. Very cool!

  • Your Cell Phone – If you already have a cell phone and you have coverage at your home, just use it as your main phone line. This wouldn’t work for us because our cell phone coverage is real spotty in our home since we live out in the country.

Have any of you used these services or got rid of your land line to save some money? I’d love to hear your story!

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Comments

7 Responses to “Phone Bill? Who Needs It!”

  1. DJFuzzyK on January 13th, 2009 3:55 pm

    Hi Kyle,

    I ditched the land line for making calls years ago. Since I do require a line for DSL, I have a basic line that costs around 5 dollars a month and no phone attached to it. I use my cell phone for all my calls and believe it’s not only saved money, but made communication more convenient as well since I always have the cell handy when I’m out. For long-distance, Skype is a great option, though my family hasn’t even figured out e-mail yet, so I’m not sure that will ever be an option for speaking with them :)

  2. Courtney on January 17th, 2009 2:22 pm

    Hi Kyle,

    We use pre-paid cell phone service exclusively for the last three to four years. Have internet with Clearwire. They offer a phone service with Voip (voice over internet) option, but we tried that and found we never used it… so we have a set pre-paid unlimited phone service with text, voicemail, whatever we need for aprox $40 per month. I am very interested in hearing more about the magic Jack though! Thanks for the tips!

  3. Pokeberry Mary on January 20th, 2009 1:40 pm

    Well.. Hubby and I do have cells–his company pays most of that and we generally use them to call each other free. For our home phone we have used Vonage for several years. It is one fee per month. I believe its fairly low–he does this bill so I’m not 100% sure of the cost anymore–but I think its around $25 per month. We get all our long distance free and there are no charges for any of the services like call waiting, caller ID, and local calls etc.

    It works fine. When we were living in Fargo it would occassionally cut out–but hardly ever and was still more reliable than a cell.

    Haven’t used the phone company at all in gee, I think almost 5 years–don’t miss them.

  4. Kyle on January 21st, 2009 12:04 pm

    Great points everybody. Giving my phone company the ax!

  5. Shari on January 26th, 2009 5:59 am

    I live in Israel and my family in Canada – so we use skype alot but we also use Jajah.com – great service – I put in $ 15 4 months ago and we are still talking – it works phone to phone! (but the best is when both sides are registered – then it makesthe call free.
    I also use skype – for work we hold weekly conference calls. Our team at The Friendship Stone is scattered geographically 2 in NYC 1 in MA and 2 in Israel. Skype really lets us get down to work and save on expenses!
    great tips on your site…..
    In Friendship
    Shari

  6. Jan T on February 9th, 2009 12:09 pm

    While researching ways of cutting phone costs I looked into Magic Jack and came across a lot of poor user reviews just by googling the name + reviews. It seemed too good to be true. Guess it is.

    I still haven’t come up with a good, workable, money-saving combination to cut my communications bill (landline, internet & two cellphones). Until reading the above posts, I hadn’t known that you could ditch the landline phone and keep DSL.

    My husband and I hardly use our cellphones except in emergencies and vacations. I bought a very basic plan several years ago for emergencies only, then AT&T forced me to buy a new phone and plan because they no longer supported the equipment I had. Needless to say, the cost just keeps creeping up.

  7. Andrea on February 10th, 2009 7:41 am

    Great post! In an effort to cut monthly expenses, last year we turned off our home phone and only have our cell phones now. It saved us $85/month, and to be honest, I like the peace and quiet. With two teenagers, I like that their friends can call their cell phones instead of the home phone ringing off the hook :)

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