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| Ooma Telo image via |
Phones. We're all addicted to them, to some degree, I think. Right? I know only a handful of people who go anywhere without a phone. And I'm not one of those people. I like staying connected. Chatting with friends and family. Knowing I can call for help when I need it.
And phones have gotten so
cool in the past few years. There is so much you can have right at your finger tips. But it comes at a cost. In fact, it comes at a really high cost. I'm no expert in the field of cell phones, but I know several of my friends and family members pay upwards of $100 each month for their fancy phones. And having a nice cell phone or even a decent land line means getting locked into a contract. So if you do find a better deal, you're stuck.
But why do we get ourselves there in the first place? Why do we get locked in?
I know, I know, it's the cool thing to do. It seems like everybody has iPhones and droids and they all do such cool things. But... do we really need all that?
No. We really don't. Expensive bills are for people who can afford to pay them. And most people can't.
Being capable of paying for something and being able to afford something is not the same thing. What I'm talking about here is living within your means. What can you pay without going into debt? What can you pay and still be able to save for a rainy day?
When our little family was getting ready to move this past summer, we started looking into a variety of phone plans. Our old apartment had come with a free land line (all we had to do was plug our phone into the wall) that made unlimited local calls. So we had just been using our land line for local calls and our prepaid cell phones for long distance calls or for necessary calls when we were out. But when we moved we wouldn't get a free land line anymore.
We thought this meant that it was finally time for us to go back to being on some kind of contract cell phone plan. That seemed to us to be the only way to be able to keep in touch with our family and friends. But the prices for even a basic family plan with the lowest minutes possible were still way more than what we had been paying and it really turned us off.
That's when we discovered Ooma.
My sister-in-law Anna knew we were looking into phone services and she told me about a gizmo she had come across called and Ooma Telo.
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| Ooma Telo image via |
It's basically a box
(see above photo) that you plug into your internet modem and the phone runs through your internet. Then you plug your phone (ours is just a regular cheap handset we bought when we got married--it's nothing special) into the Ooma Telo and--voila--you're ready to go. The sound quality is good and we haven't had any dropped calls. All around, it's a great phone service.
And the best part? Once you buy the Ooma Telo, it's only $3.00* a month.
*I just checked with Bryan and he said our bill is actually $3.47 each month. If I remember right, it may differ slightly depending on where you live because that monthly fee is to cover the tax for being able to call 911, which you can't do, for example, from a Google voice.
So, for the cost of the Ooma Telo and a whopping $3.00 per month, we get unlimited local and long distance calls.
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