How’s your budget doing these days?  If it’s like ours here on Secondary Rd, it’s more than a little bit tight.  Fortunately, we’ve learned to be frugal — well, mostly frugal..

I used to drink a bottle or two a day of Pepsi.  That not only put a strain on the budget, it also strained my belt.  I tried cutting my Pepsi with carbonated water.  It was different, but okay.  Soon I was not using the Pepsi — just carbonated water.  Now, those sugary soft drinks are way to sweet for me.  Score one victory!

Late last year, Sylvia and I agreed that our phone plan was more expensive than it needed to be.  We had gone to an alternative long-distance service provider several years ago.  After that we found an alternative telephone service provider that gave us unlimited local and long-distance calling for a few dollars more than our local service from TTC (The Telephone Company, the name changes as the baby Bells are bought and sold every few years.)  That provider was bought by another (out-of-state) company and the prices have risen slowly.

We switched back to TTC for local service.  I ordered Magic Jack.  There was a glitch in the billing system and we’re still trying to get that cleared up.  I do not recommend their service.  The hardware works fine if you have a high-speed Internet connection.  Customer service is worse than poor and in this area code you can only get a number that is local in a town 50 miles from here.

I looked into cell providers.  Best coverage in this area is from Verizon.  So I started there.  The 65+ plus plan for seniors is a very good deal if you want a mobile phone.  We have never had a mobile phone, nor do we feel the need.  I kept looking.  Then, I found Verizon’s Home Phone Connect plan.  Perfect for us.

They connect you to the Verizon wireless network.  A small box provides the connection.  You plug in power from the power line and a telephone (we use a cordless base with one remote).  It’s that simple.  You don’t use the metallic wires at all.  It comes with lots of features like, caller ID, call forwarding, call waiting and more.  Best of all it’s about $20/month (plus the usual taxes and other fees) for unlimited calling anywhere in the USA.

There are a few limitation.  The adapter box only supports one telephone.  This is not a problem if you use one of the cordless systems with remote handsets.  This system does not support data services.  That means you can’t use your computer dial-up modem on it.  We have a propane tank monitor that uses the phone line to report the volume of propane in the tank to our provider.  That will be disconnected, because it no longer works.  Nor does the caller ID display on the TV screen.  Minor disappointments, and well worth the savings that we now enjoy.

You can check out this plan at the verizonwireless Website.  Be sure to do your research before making any changes of this type.

Our cost containment efforts have now turned to satellite TV service.  I’ll report on that later.