I am cutting out the home phone!!!

**FrugalMomof3** · 06-05-2008, 06:48 PM

DH and I talked about it today and we are cutting out the home phone entirely since we have cell phones and everybody usually calls us on them BUT we invested in the 30 day trial of the MagicJack.... I didnt need to spend the money but DH and I are excited about trying it out plus we will be saving $35 a month or $420 a year!

I will be calling the phone company in about 2 weeks to turn it off, I want to do it now but DH says to wait till we pay the next bill since we pay a month in advance, it means we will have a credit to be used for our internet service.... thus meaning next month no internet bill YAY!

**Buckeye5** · 06-05-2008, 06:53 PM

We are unable to get cell service where I live (in the country) but I think that is a great savings, wishin I could do it. Great Job.

**BeachBaby** · 06-05-2008, 07:00 PM

great job!

**Lady_V** · 06-05-2008, 07:23 PM

Be sure to tell us how that MagicJack works

**Russ** · 06-05-2008, 07:36 PM

good job Tracy! I'm soon to follow!

**Darlene** · 06-05-2008, 08:03 PM

Don't know about Magic Jack (Do know about my Jack,lol) but I do know about getting rid of the land line and using cell. We love it! Verizon works well around here.

**Ali Lee** · 06-05-2008, 08:03 PM

what is Magic Jack?

**freyadog** · 06-05-2008, 08:04 PM

Originally Posted by Buckeye5

We are unable to get cell service where I live (in the country) but I think that is a great savings, wishin I could do it. Great Job.

yep...same problem here. no country cell service.

**FrugalMomof3** · 06-05-2008, 08:26 PM

You can read about MagicJack at http://www.magicjack.com

**Greebo** · 06-05-2008, 08:34 PM

Congrats!

We didn't eliminate the home phone completely, but we moved to Vonage about a year and a half ago, I guess. Our phone bill dropped from ~$75 a month to $25, with all of the bells and whistles.

**frugalfriend** · 06-05-2008, 09:15 PM

Good idea, Tracy! I would suggest keeping a close watch on your cell minutes though, so you don't go way over. That is, unless you have an unlimited number.

Greebo ~ how do you like Vonage? Works well? I've been considering switching for awhile now. TIA!

**Starlight9803** · 06-05-2008, 09:27 PM

we have debated about dropping our land line as well, but since we use dial up internet, we would end up paying more for cable or satelite internet than landline and dial up combined.

**baxjul** · 06-05-2008, 09:28 PM

I have my phone in with the cable. It was the best option for us, not to have to pay long distance fees.

**Greebo** · 06-05-2008, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by frugalfriend

Greebo ~ how do you like Vonage? Works well? I've been considering switching for awhile now. TIA!

Works very well, and we've been pretty satisfied. Of course, if power goes out or if your internet goes out, you have no phone, but then the cell phones are the backup.

We thought there was a sound quality problem for a while, but then we found out it wasn't Vonage, but the cheap V*Tech phones we had purchased. We finally splurged on a higher end model cordless set of phones (panasonic, IIRC) and the sound quality has been great. You get what you pay for in electronics.

**Nishu** · 06-05-2008, 10:53 PM

We didn't have a home phone for the longest time, but when we got here we decided that our cell service was so bad that we needed to have a backup. It's cheap for us though... we get unlimited long distance and by bundling it costs less than $20 a month. I ended up cutting our cell phone service down to almost nothing just because we so rarely use them.

Btw, you guys probably already do this, but I'd take a good hard look at your cell phone bill. I found out we were paying 5 a month for a voice dial service that we never asked for, so we got that shut off. My brother in law used to work for cingular and told us that the customer service guys get paid for each little service they sell you, so sometimes they'd just tack on one or two services without even asking you.

We also got rid of a 10 a month messaging fee... I sent maybe 10 messages a month so it wasn't worth it.