Young Professionals Frugal Living Guide - Part 13
The Frugal Living series will take a look at some of the steps that the Young Professionals use to save a little extra dough on the things that we buy.
Today's post on Frugal Living saved us a lot of dough a few years ago. It probably saved us between $40 and $70 a month on average. What could possibly save someone that much a month you ask? Switching from a regualr telephone service to a VOIP (Voice Over IP) service.
Let me start by saying that we live in New York and my wife's family lives in New Jersey. They talk quite a bit and every call is long distance. Our monthly telephone bill averaged around $90 with our old telephone company. What a rip-off that was.
That is why we decided to drop the landline and go with Broadvoice. Their service was only $19.95...can't beat that. They started out really well, but after about a year, they had some really big problems with their service for some reason. There were outages and poor quality during this time period. They sent notices that it was not a problem directly on their end but a dispute with another company that their data traveled through or something like that. These problems started occuring just about the time that we were moving, so we cancelled with them, though I would give them another chance if I was switching again.
In our new house, we have Cablevision as our cable provider and they have the Optimum Voice phone service. They offerred us the triple-play package that included cable, internet, and phone service for $30 a piece. We are currently using this at our new house. So far, the service is great, you would never know that you weren't on a landline quality-wise. It kind of stinks that it is $10 more a month than Broadvoice was, but it also gets us a discount on the other 2 services, so we will keep it for a while. That is, until our 1-year deal ends. Then we will be switching if they won't let us keep that price because I refuse to pay $40 - $50 for the service. I would rather just drop it all together and just use our cell phones.
I know that many will point out that 911 service could be an issue with VOIP, but I thought that they had that solved now. Also, we always have our cell phones that we could use as well (although there might be problems with them at times also).
Overall, our experience with VOIP service has been great and it has saved us quite a bit of money as well.
Today's post on Frugal Living saved us a lot of dough a few years ago. It probably saved us between $40 and $70 a month on average. What could possibly save someone that much a month you ask? Switching from a regualr telephone service to a VOIP (Voice Over IP) service.
Let me start by saying that we live in New York and my wife's family lives in New Jersey. They talk quite a bit and every call is long distance. Our monthly telephone bill averaged around $90 with our old telephone company. What a rip-off that was.
That is why we decided to drop the landline and go with Broadvoice. Their service was only $19.95...can't beat that. They started out really well, but after about a year, they had some really big problems with their service for some reason. There were outages and poor quality during this time period. They sent notices that it was not a problem directly on their end but a dispute with another company that their data traveled through or something like that. These problems started occuring just about the time that we were moving, so we cancelled with them, though I would give them another chance if I was switching again.
In our new house, we have Cablevision as our cable provider and they have the Optimum Voice phone service. They offerred us the triple-play package that included cable, internet, and phone service for $30 a piece. We are currently using this at our new house. So far, the service is great, you would never know that you weren't on a landline quality-wise. It kind of stinks that it is $10 more a month than Broadvoice was, but it also gets us a discount on the other 2 services, so we will keep it for a while. That is, until our 1-year deal ends. Then we will be switching if they won't let us keep that price because I refuse to pay $40 - $50 for the service. I would rather just drop it all together and just use our cell phones.
I know that many will point out that 911 service could be an issue with VOIP, but I thought that they had that solved now. Also, we always have our cell phones that we could use as well (although there might be problems with them at times also).
Overall, our experience with VOIP service has been great and it has saved us quite a bit of money as well.
posted by RS at 2:31 PM
3 Comments:
Hey RS thanks for the invite! Hey you have any suggestions on cheap places to live in Poughkeepise - I am still in sticker shock. I am thinking about trying to rent a room or 1br apt just to keep my costs down.
Vonage is pretty solid however I just opted to go with the Spring unlimited everything package and forgo a landline or voip this time.
Nice news and then some ok.
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