Saving money and time is a big part of frugal living. These free phone services will save both time and money. Regular 411 calls are now $1.00 to $2.00 a pop. And calling a friend to find a phone number can be a pain. Take some time and program these numbers into your phone. These services will help you with directory assistance, information retrieval (stock quotes, directions, game score, etc), help you find your phone, bid on auctions on ebay, write to-do lists, give yourself a reminder in the future, and much more.

1-800-GOOG-411 – Voice Activated 411 Service
If you never got into texting this is a fast way to get the answers you need. Not only will this service look up the name and phone number for free it will also automatically call the person. This is is increadibly easy to use. Watch a video on how it works here.
*Note: This works on every kind of phone, not just cell phones.

Text GOOGLE – Text Information Retrieval
GOOGLE SMS (Text: 466453) – This text service will give you a wide array of information. Directions, weather, stock quotes, show times, and everything in between. Because it is tied to Google’s database of knowledge there is almost nothing you can’t ask.

1-800-2CHACHA – Voice Activated 411 Service
This is much like GOOG411 but it only works on cell phones. The service is nice but it’s hard to beat Google’s service.

Text CHA CHA – Text Information Retrieval
Cha Cha (Text: 242 242) – This service is much like GOOGLE. If you’re feeling a little crazy and want something different give these guys a try.

Voice to Text Organizer Service
Jott – Write down reminders, appointments, or make a list using Jott. This free service converts the things you’re saying into text for later reference. Simply call Jott and it will do all the work for you. This is very handy for the A.D.D. people out there who think about things that need to be done while they’re running around.

Lost Cellphone
WheresMyCellPhone.com – For those times you need to find your phone but don’t have another phone handy. Enter your phone number in and this free service will call your phone. Hopefully you can find it. This will also work for portable phones at your house. Any number will work.

Emergency Service
112 – Out of range, keypad locked, or traveling internationally won’t stop you from getting emergency medical assistance. Just dial 112 and you’ll be connected to the nearest emergency service provider.

Bid on eBay Auctions
UnwiredBuyer.com – Bid on ‘watched items’ in your eBay account from your cell phone. They offer additional auction updates and allow you to practice bidding. That way you won’t freeze up when the real deal comes your way.

Unlimited incoming minutes with T-Mobile
Grandcentral.com – Sign up for Grandcentral.com and a T-Mobile 5 Fav plan. When you give out your number use the Grandcentral number. Make the incoming Grandcentral number one of your Favs with T Mobile and you get free incoming minutes.

Rock Bottom Monthly Cost: $29.07
Month-to-month cost = $29.07
Total sign up cost and 1st payment: $41.88 (they include a free month but charge a $29.99 setup fee, $9.95 for S&H, plus $2.56 for taxes).

Pros

• The market leader. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
• WiFi phones available. Make calls anywhere you can connect to a wireless (WiFi) access point.
• You have a say in which number you get. You can pick a number with your cities prefix and you can choose from a list of four numbers after you’ve narrowed down your search.

Cons

• Most expensive
• No yearly plan available.
• Some of your money will go towards the creation of even more ads.

Summary
Vonage is slightly more expensive than the others but they provide a high level of service. For the extra few dollars a month they’re probably worth the cost.

Visit Vonage

Rock Bottom Monthly Cost = $26.19

Month to Month Cost: $27.54 (After taxes and fees)
Total sign up cost and 1st payment: – $50.49

Yearly – $209.36 ($17.29/Month) – (After taxes and fees) + $29.95(activation) + $14.95 (S&H)

Total 1st Year Cost:– $254.26 ($21.19/Month) + Monthy taxes and fees (They don’t mention this until after you’ve signed up but you’ll pay an extra $4-$6 in fees even if you do the yearly sign up.

Pros

• Selected as Best VoIP Service by Wired Magazine
• Owned by Primus Telecommunications Group, a leading global telecommunications company with approximately $1 billion in annual revenue.

Cons

• You don’t have any say in what number you ultimately get. After you’ve submitted your order it assigns you a number. Unlike Vonage which gives you a choice of a few options.
• Generic prefixes instead of city specific prefixes on your phone.

Summary
If you don’t mind having a number assigned to you Lingo provides a good balance of value and service. They won’t go out of business anytime soon and they offer a yearly subscription plan.

Visit Lingo

Rock Bottom Monthly Cost = $14.08
Month-to-month cost: $23.39 (After taxes and fees)

Total sign up cost and 1st payment – $38.34
Yearly Cost – $238.31 (19.86 Month)

Yearly Total Cost – $253.46
Activation/Setup Fee – Free (activation) $14.95 (S&H)

Pros

• 6 months free with Year signup. Your first 18 months could be $14.08/Month!
• $15 Activation Fee waived for online orders.
• Transfer Phone Number

Cons

• They are small enough that they might go out of business (like SunRocket did).

Summary
PhonePower offers a very attractive rate for their service. The real only issue is if they can stay in business for an extended period of time. If you’re a gambling type give them a try.

Visit PhonePower

Rock Bottom Monthly Cost = $3.34 (for 1st year $1.67 thereafter).

Setup + First Year = $39.99 and $19.99/year thereafter

MagicJack offers an unbelievable rate for phone service. Unlimited local and long distance calling for $20 a year! As a customer of MagicJack I would only suggest using them as a temporary or secondary phone. We used MagicJack as my primary home phone number for a few months but there were too many issues to make it work. Hopefully those issues will be fixed and I’ll give them another try. I wrote a post about my experience with them here.

Pros

• Cheapest option hands down. No one is even close.
• Emergency service is available

Cons

• You must have your computer up at all times to have it work. It doesn’t connect straight to your router.
• Customer Service is limited and only does chat.
• Dependability as a primary phone line is spotty

Visit MagicJack

Rock Bottom Monthly Cost = $7.95 ($5.45/month the first year)

Yearly Skype Outbound service to U.S.A. & Canada – $35.40 plus $30 for an inbound number = $65.40 Year

Pros

• Skype calls between Skype users is free any where in the world.
• SKype has a wide selections of Skype Phones on Amazon
• Skype is both computer and wi-fi enabled
• Skype has no extra fees or extra monthy costs.

Cons

• Skype is not set up for emergency service and should not replace your primary phone line.

Visit Skype

In the past I touted not having to pay any phone bills. A big part of the strategy was using a VoIP service called the MagicJack. The MagicJack is a USB to phone jack converter that uses your Internet connection to make phone calls. After five months of service we’re switching to a different VoIP service.

MagicJack was a disappointment because:

• 10% of the time it worked as advertised, with clear signal. The other 90% of the time we had terrible sound quality, it wouldn’t accept incoming calls, or it would send people to voicemail automatically.
• We had to restart our computer each morning to have it work. Screensavers or extended downtime of the computer would regularly interrupt service.
• Our friends and family thought we were avoiding them.
• When I accidentally formatted the MagicJack I was forced to work with their customer service. The first hour we tried an array of troubleshooting techniques to get it working. Once we tried everything the service rep told me to restart my computer, router, and modem. After working with a few of these customer service people I found this was their way of telling you they didn’t want to work with you any more.
• When I’d work with new people they would start over at the top of the trouble shooting list. I would ask them to read my past chat sessions but they were persistent on having me repeating all the steps I’d already taken. There are only so many times I can unplug and re-plug my MagicJack in my computer.
• Customer service would wait 5 to 10 minutes between responses in a chat session. Talk about annoying.
• After 3 1/2 hours working with their customer service they couldn’t fix the problem. Worse yet, they wouldn’t work with me on getting a replacement MagicJack. Instead, they wanted me to sign up for another year of service plus buy the hardware again. No credits for a free year or the ability to use my remaining contract time.

Summary
The idea of getting phone service all year for $20.00 is awesome. But using MagicJack for regular use isn’t a good idea. For occasional phone calls or international travel it could be a great solution. Part of me hopes MagicJacks sticks around because the idea is brilliant. When they get all their issues fixed maybe I’ll give them another try.

These are the steps I took to save over $1500 a year by cutting out my monthly phone bill.

Step 1- Buy and Test the MagicJack

If you haven’t read my previous article on MagicJack here’s a summary. MagicJack runs off your computer’s internet connection. It’s a USB to phone jack converter. You get a local number. Every call within the United States is free. It costs $39.99 the first year and is only $19.99 a year from then on. There are no taxes, fees, or other extra costs.

We thought it best to test the MagicJack before we made big changes in our phone setup. To our delight it works very well. We decided to take the leap.

Note – Part of testing the MagicJack involved buying a portable phone system with multiple handsets. Those type of phones require a single phone jack connection and we place the extra headsets around the house.

Step 2 – Cancel the regular phone line

We’re finishing our basement and I rewired all the phone lines. The old lines were broken or poorly wired so I upgraded the wiring. Before we finished the Sheetrock I wanted to make sure the future owners of the house would have a working phone line. For a few months we had a regular phone line. Their cheapest service was $11.00. That’s not bad. But when the bill came it was $28.00/month; almost three times more because of taxes and service fees! We’d gone without a land line for years without any problems so this wasn’t a hard decision.

Step 3 – Switch to prepaid cell phones

The contract on my cell phone was set to expire within a month of testing the MagicJack. Because I have a young family I thought depending completely on the MagicJack would be a bad idea — for safety reasons. After shopping around for some prepaid plans I found that Cingular had the best option for a prepaid phones. If you buy $100 of prepaid minutes they don’t expire for a whole year. Other prepaid phones have minutes that expire. Cingular also has the option of unlimited mobile-to-mobile within the Cingular network. This plan works great for my situation and I get to keep my old number.

I will still carry my cell phone. Without any cost I can see who’s calling me and call them back from a land line. The added safety and convenience of having a cell phone will come in handy from time to time. By turning off my cell phone I’ll save an extra $90 a month.

Summary

I will save $130 a month with this new setup.

Besides saving money the other added benefits are:

• I don’t drive and talk on my cell phone anymore. This happened infrequently but was still dangerous
• It encourages me to plan ahead and make lists
• I don’t have to wait for the weekend or 9:00 PM to talk with unlimited minutes

The total cost of everything is Magic Jack — $40, Prepaid minutes for my phone — $100, Portable phone system — $50. Next year I’ll only pay $20 for the MagicJack and $100 for the prepaid minutes.

This year I’ll save close to $1500. Next year it will be slightly more. If you have any questions or comments please leave a note below.

MagicJack.com

Their slogan is “never pay another phone bill again” and with their service it’s true. The total cost for MagicJack the first year is $39.95. That price includes your USB phone jack and the first year of service. Every year after that is $19.95. You get an incoming phone number and unlimited local and long distance calling in the US and Canada. MagicJack also has the ability to use 911 so you can replace your home phone entirely.

Ideas on using the MagicJack:

1. Use it as your home phone. Using a portable phone with multiple handsets will be ideal. Plug the main phone into the MagicJack on your desktop computer and place the other handsets throughout your house.
   
   Something like this will work. See more phones on Amazon

2. Use the MagicJack on the road during international business trips. The only issue will be packing an extra phone. The slimmer phones here should work fine: Slimeline Phones on Amazon

Tip – One thing you should check is if MagicJack offers an inbound phone number in your local area. Visit the FAQ page then click on Phone Numbers> What area codes are available> look for an area that will work. If they don’t have a local area code for you don’t worry. Read further about GrandCentral and it may give you another option to get a local number.

GrandCentral

This is an incredibly useful service to manage all of your phone calls. It’s free and simple to setup. The service allows you to pick a number and use that number as your ONE number. When someone calls you have the option to send that person to your home, business, or cell phone. Because calls are routed through GrandCentral you have the choice to ban callers, assign custom voicemails, and all voicemail is recorded and sent to your email as an mp3. That only scratches the surface on all the features.

How to use GrandCentral to your advantage:

1. If you have T-Mobile or other provider that allows free calls from outside numbers you’ll be able to get unlimited inbound calls. Simply add your GrandCentral number to your “Five Fave” list and anyone who calls your GrandCentral number won’t be costing you minutes.
2. If you live away from your home state and you still have a lot of friends and family back home set up a GrandCentral number that’s local for them. For example, if your family still lives in Las Vegas and you’ve moved to New York set up a Las Vegas GrandCentral number. All your friends and family can still call your local Las Vegas number and it will ring your New York phone.
3. Use GrandCentral and the MagicJack together for ultimate flexibility. It’s like putting your phone service on steroids. You get all the features of GrandCentral plus the low cost of MagicJack.

Tip – As of this writing GrandCentral is still requiring invitations to sign up. I’ve got some extra invites if you want to email me at matt [AT] moneytipcentral.com I’d be happy to give you an invite. As I run out of invites and someone else would like to share let me know and I’ll help people find each other.

Skype


This is a lifesaver for international calling. Calls between all Skype users are always free. Talking to your friends in China, Germany, and the North Pole won’t cost you anything as long as you both have Skype installed on your computer. If you don’t get the Skype portable phone you will have to talk to people while your sitting at your computer. You can buy a Skype phone here: Skype Phones on Amazon

Skype has an option to get an incoming phone number for $60/year. For unlimited long distance nationwide you’d need to pay for an outbound line costing $29.95. For a total of $89.95 a year you could have unlimited calling across the United States and really low cost calling internationally. It should be noted that Skype does not have 911 setup so it can’t replace your home phone completely.

How to use Skype to full advantage:

1. If you have a family member or loved one living internationally purchase two Skype phones and call each other and talk for free across the globe.
2. Skype has excellent quality audio recordings. Use it to record conversations.

Wrapping up
Between these three options you should be able to beat the system and replace your current phone setup and save a lot. If you have any more ideas on saving on phone service please leave a comment.