Call Smart, Save Money

I got a call yesterday from a guy with a $14,000 per year cell phone bill. Granted he runs a business and absolutely must have all 10 cell phones -- but still, that's nuts.

I got a call today from that same guy thanking me to no end for the solution I suggested. In all, it's going to save him $12,000 per year. That's like, what, an 86% savings... something like that.

What was that miracle $12,000 discounted solution? It's so simple, I can hear him kicking himself from 6 states away.

Skype.

You see, for $12 per year you can have unlimited U.S. and Canada calls. Well, it's technically limited to 10,000 minutes per month, but I don't think there's even 10,000 waking minutes in a month anyways.

Hmm, let's see here. 16 daily hours times 60 minutes times 31 days... ok, so I'm a bit off. There's roughly 29,760 waking minutes in a long month.

Now, on top of that, you can get a real phone number -- in any area code you want so it's local for your favorite buddies – for $30 per year per number. Then you can set up Skype to forward those calls to any number you want, or any 30 numbers you want, doesn't matter.

Here's the best part – you can also set up your cell phone to call through Skype, so you're not using your “anytime” minutes.

That is what enabled my friend to drop his huge expensive bells and whistles plan and go with the bare minimum monthly shared minutes, saving him a ton of money.

Lesson learned? Don't just go with the widely accepted mainstream solution. Think creatively, and see if you can't save some cash for the really important stuff – you know, like big screen TVs.