Money Mistake Monday – I Waited Too Long To Get VOIP Syndrome.

VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, has been around for several years. But yet I just got it within the last year, costing me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. That was pretty dumb, if you ask me…why throw away perfectly good money just because you were wary of your phone conversations going over the internet instead of over the phone lines?

VOIP works like any other phone service – your regular old phone still rings in the house and you use it like you always have. The only difference is that your calls are routed over the internet through a little box that is hooked up to your high-speed internet. The calls are crystal clear and we rarely, if ever, have an outage. The only time we would not be able to use the phone would be if the power went out, but that is why we have cell phones. Besides, when was the last time the power went out and you decided that would be a good time to call grandma? Add in the fact that most people only have cordless phones, which means they would not be usable anyway!

Verizon is the phone company here in my city, and all-inclusive phone service was costing me about $70 per month including the taxes. That was for unlimited local and long distance, voice mail, call waiting, etc etc. I had this service for years and only recently switched over to VOIP technology. While there are a ton of providers, we have Vonage and pay $25 for the exact same service that we used to have. That is a savings of $45 per month, or $540 per year. Add that up, and over time you are talking about thousands of dollars.

If you are paying for high-speed internet but are still using regular phone service, you might want to think about getting VOIP service. You can use cable internet, of course, and some communities allow you to have “naked” DSL, which is DSL service without home phone service. Why not cut that bill in half or even in thirds and save yourself a lot of cash? I wish I had done it earlier!