One of the easiest money saving tips my family has implemented this year was cutting our home phone bill from around $50/month to a FREE phone service. I wish we would have made this change years ago! The phone service is completely free and we just pay around $5 a month for taxes. Saving $45/month is HUGE and it didn’t require us to change our lifestyle at all. We kept our same phone number, still have voice mail, caller ID, etc. And it’s seriously only $5 per month…total….just some annoying taxes is all you pay. Here’s how to do it.
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The way we’re getting FREE home phone is through a company called http://ooma.com/Ooma. They’ve created a small device that connects to your internet and uses your internet to make calls. Don’t worry though, there is no delay or choppy connection. I’m honestly recommending this because we’ve been using it for 6 months with no problems at all. I haven’t been able to tell a difference from when we had Century Link for our phone provider versus having Ooma.
Pros of Ooma
- Option to keep your same phone number
- Supports 9-1-1 calls
- FREE – no monthly phone bill other than applicable taxes (about $5/month for me)
- Easy to install
- Works with any typical phone
- Inexpensive business options
- You just need high-speed internet (computer doesn’t have to be on)
- Did I mention there’s NO monthly charge?!!
- Features such as caller ID, call waiting, number blocking, etc.
- Free long distance in the US
Cons of Ooma
- Not everyone uses a home phone – I personally like having a home phone for emergencies, kids to use, babysitters, and to not always give out my cell number. $5 per month for this service is definitely worth it to me!
- One time charge to buy the Ooma Telo box
- One time fee to keep your same number (no fee if you get a new number)
Those are really the only cons I can think of. We’ve been extremely happy with the quality of our calls, the help desk got us set up to keep our same phone number, and we were able to cancel our expensive Century Link $50/month bill!
How to Get Started
If you have a home phone and are paying more than $5/month, then you should definitely check Ooma out! Take a look at their website to answer any of your questions or call and speak to a representative. The representative we talked to was very helpful and made the phone number transfer easy.
The only cost associated with this setup is buying the Ooma Telo that you hook your home phone up to. Currently, it’s cheaper to buy on Amazon, but be sure to check Ooma’s website as well as Amazon to get the best price (sometimes they have deals). There’s also other features and products you can add on as well, but we just have the basic Telo and it’s worked great for us!
**Awesome Bonus – if you use my referral link, found here, to sign up for Ooma, you’ll get a $20 Amazon gift card!**
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This is a great money saving tip. I personally don’t have a landline anymore, but I have a lot of friends who would be interested in this. http://carapalmer.com/
Such a good idea! This seems totally worth it to be able to give out another phone number besides my cell phone! Thanks for sharing!
This will be perfect for the elderly as well. I’m paying 29.99 a month for my bill, would luv to cut that to $5 a month. Can you make long distance call to Canada and how much is the rate do you know?
How about cutting the cable bill do you have any tips on that as well?
thanks a lot for sharing this
Out of country calls do have a small fee, it looks like Canada is $0.014 per minute. So an hour conversation would cost $0.84. They also have another option for a monthly fee for unlimited international calling. You can read the details here
http://www.ooma.com/telo-international/
[…] and more! Find out all the details of how I do it with Ooma by reading my detailed article, “How to Get FREE Home Phone Service“. Or if you want to head straight to Ooma’s site, click […]