Archive for the 'Home' Category

Saving Money On Your Home Phone Bill

There are becoming more and more ways to connect with each other.  This is making it more competitive in the phone market.  There are some opportunities to save money on phone and other phone-related costs because of this.  In some ways, saving money on your home phone bill is the easiest thing you can do.  In other ways, you have to give up some of that ‘land line’ mentality and go with newer technologies.  This is not a call to drop your land-line in favor of using a cell.  What we are talking about is moving more toward a internet-based home phone line.  There are several from which to choose.

The most popular way to save money on your phone costs is to get rid of extra phones or phone lines.  In some cases, you may have just had an extra line for a fax line in a home office or an extension for your teenage kids while they were at home.  In the mix and routine of it all, you might have just forgotten that you are paying for these services that you don’t even use.  An extra line was often used for an internet connection – yes, the dreaded dial up connection.  Get rid of these.  There you go, money saved.

Oh, you want some more ways?  Okay, how about those internet phone lines?  These are known as voice over internet protocol (VoIP) lines.  Some of these include those jacks that just plug into a special port that you get for your computer.  The Magic Jack “as seen on TV” is probably the best example of this. Other styles are lines of communication that require a computer and can interface with a webcam.  The brand Skype, best captures the essence of these types.  Then, there are also the types that have a separate box that you can connect your regular phone through.  These allow you to keep your same phone number, give you voicemail and other features you can find on your traditional home phone.  The name of this latter one is “Ooma”.  The prices for these vary from free to $250 or so for the Ooma variety.  However, these are one time fees.  Once you pay the initial set up fees or cost for the ‘box’, the rest costs you nothing.  Think about that, no more home phone bills.  Definitely something to think about if you want to save money on your phone service.

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Surge Protectors Save Money?

Yes, they do.  And, possibly in more ways than you might think.  There are many ways to save money around your home.  For the best bang for the buck, literally, saving money on energy use and costs is by far the best in our opinion.  Not only will you be putting more money back into your own pocket, but you will be contributing to doing your part in being a more environmentally conscious participant as well.  This is a greater part of our saving money philosophy here on this site.  In this regard, there are any number of steps you could take.  What works best in these approaches is to start with something small and specific.

For the sake of this article, we are going to be evaluating the benefit of a surge protector.  Now, you might be thinking that these are nothing more than ways to protect your appliances, like TVs and computers from damage in the case of energy spikes or drops.  While this is their intended function, they also have side benefits.  I guess in one regard, this is all part of the same discussion.  You can’t look at them separately, really.  While you are protecting surge protectoryour computer from damage, you are also extending its potential lifespan and this will result in less replacement costs.  If it is damaged, you will have to buy a new one.  You are also saving energy as it is possible to power down your appliances and then just press the ‘master switch’ on your surge protection device to make sure no power is ‘leaking’.

This is something that is just beginning to get some attention.  This phenomenon of having a slow energy trickle or leak as we are describing when appliances are turned ‘off’ can be using a lot of energy during the course of a year.  And, when combined with millions of other households, we are literally wasting energy and money all at once.  What we need to do is hook up all of the appliances that we can to a surge protector, then just turn that one switch off each night or when not in use.  This will save much in the way of energy draining away for no reason.

There are some obvious reasons, like electric clocks, timers, etc. that would simply stop being useful if they were constantly turned on and off.  Consider using surge protectors for all these vital reasons and we may just be able to affect our energy consumption on a global scale after all.  Saving money has never really been easier or a no-brainer than this.

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