Eliminating the PHONE BILL

We were paying $80 a month for phone and internet. Depending on the long distance calls that we made, it was sometimes as low as $78 or as high as $82. This included web hosting at $19.95 per month. It took some time and research, but we were able to reduce this a great deal.

Starting with the web hosting. We needed our website to stay active throughout whatever changes we were going to make. We found FREE webhosting through MSN. This allows us to maintain a website, have a web presence, use their templates, etc. and there is no charge. They offer additional services for an assortment of fees, but the basic service (which is all that we need) is free.
This actually saves us more than $19.95 because when items are added to your phone bill, you have to pay a percentage of taxes on the amount. So, we also saved the 6% state tax and the federal tax that would have been added to the bill.
Now, this was not a simple process, neither of us is adept at web design or even understanding all the elements of the design process. We had to do a lot of work, and invest a lot of time to create a new website and to get all the parts in order. This is still a work in progress, but we are no longer paying a fee for it.

The second item that had to be addressed was the actual internet service. It was also $19.95, plus taxes and fees. The main problem here was that it was directly connected to our phone line. Through AT&T, we could cancel the internet, turn off the phone and then order internet only for about the same rate, however, in order to do this, we would have to be offline for over a week while everything got set up. This is not an option for us, as again, we feel it is very important to have our website up and available and we want our readers to be able to reach us if needed. No email for a week would have made this difficult. We also have a lot of items listed on Ebay, and needed to know when they sold and be able to ship them promptly. We found cable internet service for the same price, coming to a total of $22 per month, and not attached to our phone, so that we could cancel the phone service at anytime without affecting our website or internet connection. This is still a cost, but other than taking a laptop to the library all day (which would negate the whole point of us all being home together), there do not seem to be any options for FREE internet service. There are however, many businesses that offer free wifi, and if you do not need to be online every day or for long periods, these can be used to make your internet service a "0" line item for your budget.

The third item to deal with on the phone bill was the remaining $40 that was just for basic phone service. We contacted the phone company and our service plan was $12.99 per month, the rest of the charges all came from taxes and government fees. There was not a cheaper phone plan, and there was not anyway around the taxes and fees. We discovered a service called SKYPE. This is an online phone service and it is not perfect, but it works for us.
You must be online to use the service.
All calls to other SKYPE users are always free.
You can call ANY landline or cell phone from your computer, the fee for this service is $7.99 per month, total! There are no additional taxes or fees for this.
You can sign up for a month at a time or sign up for several months; the longer you sign on for, the cheaper the monthly rates get.
If you would like to have a local phone number so that people can still call you, there is an additional fee for this. It is 2.99 per month; again if you sign up for longer, the rate is reduced.

While we have not managed to reduced our phone bill to zero, we have managed some significant savings. From $80 per month down to $33. This is more than 50% off.

I have to admit that these services are not necessities and if we had to cut back more, they might eventually have to go, however they are essential to the primary sources of income that we have as a family.

Need a local phone number: We own a rental property that requires that tenants can reach us in case of needed repairs, also that prospective renters can reach us when the units are empty and we have an ad in the paper.
Need a website: We publish a series of travel guides for families and most of our orders come through the website. We also speak at conferences, and present our stories in churches, but the bulk of our sales come through the website.
Need an internet service and a functional phone number: When customers contact us about purchasing books or churches contact us about performing for them, we need to be reachable and appear as professional as possible.
Need unlimited internet service: We are online frequently for research (homeschooling lessons and information for book series), as well as selling items on Ebay as a source of income.

If you would like to know more about our book series, presentations or our business, we invite you to www.vacationeducationbooks.net to learn more about our family and our ministry.