How I saved $1,000/year

October 5, 2017

I know many people have cut the cord and  given up their landlines completely. But our house is three floors and inevitably wherever I am my cell phone is not, which means I miss lots of calls. Also, my Olympia digital recorder plugs into my desktop console resulting in good quality sound files for podcast interviews I record periodically for savewithspp.com.

But when I reviewed our bills for my company’s year-end recently I was reminded once again that in addition to two cell phone bills of about $50/month each from Koodo Mobile, we were paying a total off over $100/month for two landlines (one business, one personal). So in spite of some trepidation about the sound quality of VOIP lines and potential safety issues if our Internet service is down for any reason, we decided to bite the bullet and say good-bye to “Ma Bell.”

Of course in order to save money, we first had to spend money. A VOIP modem cost $56.49. Also, because our house alarm was on line 2, we had to pay $284.76 to have a technician come and switch us over to an internet-based alarm monitoring system.

While we hated to spend the money, the advantage is that now we can self-monitor and control our alarm system from just about anywhere using a computer, phone, tablet or watch. Also, making this change was an opportunity to re-negotiate our contract and save 30% on alarm monitoring services.

We selected residential service from the provider VOIPMuch for our two landlines. We were easily able to transfer over our long-standing telephone numbers and I was really impressed with the customer service. A helpful, knowledgeable person answered after only a couple of rings every time!

There are no contracts and there is free Canadian and US calling. There are also over 30 free calling features including enhanced 9-1-1, also known as E9-1-1. It works similar to regular 9-1-1 with an added safety feature of automatically sending vital information such as the client’s, address and geographical location (even if he/she is unable to speak).

We started by switching our home line and once we were satisfied that there was absolutely no reduction in quality we switched over my business line. I will not be able to fax on a VOIP line but that is not a problem as using a mobile app I can easily scan and email or text documents instead.

The service costs $10.68/month for each line or about $250/year in total as opposed to around $1300/year for the Bell lines with very few basic add-ons. So once we amortize the startup costs we will save over $1,000/year. I know we did not pick the absolutely cheapest VOIP provider but we can always switch at a later date. Furthermore, if we choose to do so, dropping the second line at any time will be hassle free.

We will continue to review our household bills to see what other expenses we can reduce going forward. However, the silver lining to this year’s cool wet summer weather in central Canada has been that our hydro bills have been a fraction of last year when the air conditioning ran 24/7.

Written by Sheryl Smolkin
	Sheryl Smolkin LLB., LLM is a retired pension lawyer and President of Sheryl Smolkin & Associates Ltd. For over a decade, she has enjoyed a successful encore career as a freelance writer specializing in retirement, employee benefits and workplace issues. Sheryl and her husband Joel are empty-nesters, residing in Toronto with their cockapoo Rufus.