Save $600 or More A Year on Phone Service

One of the things that happens when going through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University program is the creation of a family budget. In the process, you see what your money is being spent on. Once you have it all down on the page, you can find opportunities to save money. In our case, we had a both high speed internet and a high cost phone bill. Something was going to go - and it wasn't going to be our internet connection.

I researched voice over internet protocol (VOIP) services like Vonage. It would take our phone bill from $72 a month down to $25 a month. That's about $560 a year less that what we were paying. But when I looked into it, there were two things that kept me from making the jump. We needed to keep our alarm system and DirecTV. I needed a VOIP solution that would let us keep a landline and substantially reduce the phone bill.

Digging a bit deeper I found out I could downgrade the landline to "alarm system" service. For about $13 a month my DirecTV and alarm system could continue to communicate with the outside world. Then I ran across what appeared to be a better deal than Vonage. I found ooma.

ooma is a hardware device you that you hook up to your high speed internet connection and your phone system. There's no monthly bill, ever! (unless you upgrade to Premiere service). It has voice mail you can retrieve by the touch of a button or on-line. The on-line service keeps track of all incoming and outgoing calls and you can maintain your own blocked caller list. Sounded pretty good to me.

So for about $200, I bought a system on eBay.

Cost Item	ATT/Sprint	Vonage	ooma
Landline	$72	$13	$13
CallerID	Included	$10	$10
Internet Phone	$0	$25	$0
Total Monthy Bill	$72	$48	$23
Yearly Cost	$864	$576	$276
Yearly Savings	$0	$288	$588

*ooma Savings for year one are really $388 after hardware purchase.

The box arrived a few days later. I opened it up, added a couple of longer internet cables to reach where I wanted it in my office, and fired it up. It works like a charm. In fact, I still can't believe how easy it was to put together. The one thing I can believe is that I will find a better use for the nearly $1600 I will save in phone bills over the next three years.

The ooma connects to your high speed internet and on to your phone system.

There are some other nice things that bear mentioning. We kept our old phone number. Incoming calls get picked up by the ooma and we can still make and receive calls on the landline in case of a power outage. Calls to any place in the USA are free, but you need to purchase international minutes - at a rate much lower than ATT or Sprint.

I'm not compensated in any way, but just want to help others like you find a way to save some money on phone bills. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself.