magic jack

Ok ladies, I am all about great deals and sharing the love. I have been looking over our monthly bills and seeing where I can save since we are a one income family.

We have a bundled deal with Qwest where we are supposed to get our home phone with all the works including long distance, direct tv cable, and our internet for around $100. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it is. After taxes and all the little add ons our bill was closer to $200 a month. Considering the fact that we have cell phones and only use our home phone about once a day I set out on a mission to decrease our bills.

After doing a lot of research (web surfing) I came across Magic Jack. It's a phone service that works through your internet by plugging in this little usb jack from your computer to your phone line. It comes with voicemail, long distance to the US and Canada, and is well equipped with the extras like call waiting and caller id. And get this...it costs only $40 for the first year and $20 for every year after that. They offer a free trial (minus shipping, of course) so we decided to try it out.

Negatives: they don't have a lot of area codes to choose from, you can't keep your same number, the jack sticks right out of the computer and it's easy to knock out.

Positives: loud and clear phone conversations, haven't experienced any interruptions or not being able to call out, 911 address form, you get an e-mail letting you know when you have a voicemail, customized phone book on your computer, voicemail, caller id, and call waiting, but most importantly...it's $40 a year!!!

We love it and have been very happy with it. We also switched to our cable company for a faster internet at the same price. We now pay $60 for cable (includes a dvr and two rooms of service), $35 for internet, and under $4 for phone service for a total of $100 a month AFTER taxes.