Have you ever had a bully on the playground or on the school bus ride home? You know the drill–you try not to make eye contact. You walk completely around the playground just to keep from being seen by them.
There was a guy in high school that liked to pick me up and give me an airplane spin in the hallway whenever he found me and was feeling particularly strong. I learned that if I just let him do it, it would be over faster. Deep down inside though, I rather he left me alone.
About six months ago I was hanging out in our kitchen with Kaley when I glanced over at one of the bullies in my life, the Phone “Bill”. “Bill”, as I will refer to him, was sitting on our counter staring me down. Bill had been kicking us around for years and it seemed there was nothing I could do. Every month he beat me up in front of my wife and boys.
This day was different.
I was tired of getting bullied so I grabbed Bill and picked him up, his feet dangling off the floor. He was trembling in my hands as I stared him down. I decided right then and there that I was going to make a call and have someone “take care of Bill”, if you know what I’m saying (cue the Mobsters and cement boot references).
By the time I was done with Bill he was quite literally HALF the man he used to be.
I made the call and walked through our current bill with our phone company. What I realized is that we were paying around $5.00/month for the “right” to only pay $.07/per minute when making long distance calls. Go back and read that again. Somehow that doesn’t sound like much of a ‘deal’ to me.
Our solution for long distance is OneSuite.com. We pay less than $.03 cents per minute with no monthly fee. Yes, less than 3 pennies per minute. OneSuite works similar to a calling card, but you can add the number into your speed dial to simplify things.
We estimate that we’ve saved ourselves approximately $20 a month since making that one phone call. If my math is correct, that’s $240 a year. Not bad for 10 minutes of my time.
How about you? Have you had success in cutting corners with your phone bill? Or are you still getting kicked around? What other ways have you learned to cut corners?
Bill still kicks us each month, but it only hurts half as much as it did before.
One of our favorite rites of passage each spring is our first trip to the ice cream store. We have a great mom and pop ice cream store up the road that promises heaping scoops of decadent flavors for lower prices than the national chain stores.
It’s always Money Saving Monday around here. But we thought we’d continue this feature in order to highlight some of our favorite deals we’ve seen this week. 