Saving $ on telephone costs with VoIP

In 2004, Comcast was my telephone, high-speed Internet, and cable service provider. Because these three services were bundled we saved money over BellSouth, but the telephone bill was still ~ $45 + an average of $15 in long distance charges. For years I'd tried unconvincingly to persuade my wife to ditch our landline telephone and just use our cell phones to save money, but safety (being able to dial 911 & have them know our address) and inconsistent cellular coverage were always barriers.

I've used the Yahoo instant messenger voice feature since 1999, so I was aware of and tried to keep up with advances in voice over IP (VoIP) technology. One company I kept an eye on was Vonage, which launched in 2002. By 2004, Vonage had several hundred thousand customers and was reported to have good call quality along with the "best of the worst" in customer service and was the only VoIP provider able to handle 911 calls. Like most VoIP providers, Vonage also offered unlimited local and free long distance (for North America) calling. The one caveat to being able to use a VoIP provider is that you must have a high-speed Internet connection.

I ran the numbers and thought we could shave half off our telephone charges by switching to Vonage. I shared the information with my wife, and to my surprise, she agreed to switch as long as it had no impact on her when she picked up the telephone to make a call. Fortunately I'd installed a 66-block in the house earlier that year (using Phone-man's website as a guide), which was going to make it really easy for me to connect the VoIP router to my home telephone wiring.

On June 17, 2004 I submitted the paperwork to Vonage for transferring my telephone number from Comcast, and by July 1 the process was complete. My telephone charges fell from over $60 per month to just $27.24. And I never had a problem with Vonage.

Over the summer of last year, I was reading in one of the FatWallet forums about SunRocket having a $99 per year special. While I was happy with Vonage, my loyalty is in saving $, so I again ran the numbers. The $99 SunRocket special was for the first year only + a $39.95 equipment charge = $138.95 per year or $11.58 per month, a savings of over 50% vs. Vonage. It was a no-brainer--I switched and have been happy with SunRocket.

I bring all of this up because I read that via:talk is running a buy 1 year get 1 year free special for $199 with no equipment fee. From what I've heard, via:talk seems to have a good quality product, and telephone service for $8.29 per month is pretty hard to beat.

Midnight temptations

NO--not those kind of temptations! I wanted to follow up on my post 1 year ago today where I discussed Woot and a few other reasons I'm up after midnight. In the last year, much has changed.

Two of the 5 sites I previously mentioned, 1deal1day and SnapGone are no longer operating. Though both sites lead you to believe they'll be back soon, their landing pages haven't changed in 6+ months.

Fortunately Woot, MidnightBox, and steepANDcheap are very much alive & well, and in the last year there have been two new additions: StrongIdea and Tanga.

If you're looking to save your way to the poor house, these sites offer some swinging deals. Woot has gotten the lionshare of my $, though I've also made purchases from MidnightBox and StrongIdea. My sweet deals last year were a chest belt heart rate monitor and watch for $30, a Toshiba DVD player with HD upconversion and HDMI output for $40, and a pair of binoculars with built-in digital camera for $25.

If you're looking for an evening distraction and living in the Eastern Time zone, check out Tanga starting at 10:00pm followed by MidnightBox at midnight, and then Woot posts their new item at 1:00am. steepANDcheap lists a new item as soon as their previous one sells out, and sorry--I have no idea when StrongIdea lists new items.

2007: The year to de-clutter

My wife and I have decided that 2007 is the year to de-clutter and de-crappify our lives, and that starts in our basement & drive-under garage. Since picking up our first rental house in the fall of 2001, we haven't been able to park a car in the garage.

We have a lot more tools than we ever did before, so I'm content with only having one of the garage bays open, but the days of keeping stuff "just in case we'll need it someday" are gone.

I've already thrown away two large rolling trash bins of stuff, and I'm only half finished. In addition to better organizing the things I want to keep, I've also made three piles of things for: 1) Goodwill, 2) eBay/Craigslist, and 3) yardsale. The largest things I have to get out of the garage are a dining room table (going on Craigslist) and several large upright arcade games (eBay).

I've been buying & selling things on eBay for several years, and I'm often amazed at the value people place on things. I understand that I sold at the perfect time, but just before Christmas I unloaded a vibrating football game from my youth for $143 + shipping!

Here are my 10 eBay tips for those looking to de-clutter or just unload those Christmas presents which didn't come with gift receipts:

1. List items Thursday night and pay the extra 40 cents for a 10-day auction, giving you two full weekends of eyeballs.
2. Start with a low minimum and avoid setting a reserve amount.
3. To speed up the transaction time, only accept PayPal as a form of payment and require payment within 24 hours of auction close.
   
4. If you have a lot of small things to sell, invest in a postal scale to avoid trips to the post office.
   
5. Use PayPal for creating shipping labels with postage, again avoiding trips to the post office.
6. ALWAYS use delivery confirmation when shipping.
7. Use LOTS of pictures to avoid any questions, and host the pictures free through Auctiva, Flickr, or anywhere other than eBay, which charges you after the first picture.
8. Consider offering free shipping to encourage people to bid.
9. As a seller, only leave feedback for the buyer once you know they are happy and have left positive feedback for you.
10. If an item doesn't sell, don't relist it--donate it and take the tax deduction.

Is there anything I'm missing?

To convert or not to convert?

For the last several years I've considered rolling my traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, but laziness, indifference, and an abundance of more important things to do than spending time calculating the tax implications of such a move always pushed this activity to the bottom of my list.

This year I have no excuse. And if I did, Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog has again reminded me.

With consideration to the other excuses, time is the main thing that has kept me from acting. It's a pretty cumbersome task to manually calculate whether this is a smart move given the multitude of variables. Well, thank God for the Internet! I Googled "to convert to a Roth IRA or not?" and found this terrific calculator.

I will have to pay ordinary federal income tax on the value of the IRA to be converted, but with some pretty conservative estimates (of my future investment return + a wild-ass guess at what my retirement tax rate will be), it clearly makes sense to convert. Tomorrow is the deadline, so I'll be stopping by Scottrade tomorrow.

Welcome to the club, brother!

For the first time in my life I had absolute and perfect clarity. When my first daughter, Fiona, was born, I remember the awareness so vividly. Before kids, I didn't know what I didn't know. As soon as I held her, I remember thinking, "Now I get it." I understood why I was placed on this earth: to love and care for my daughter. I'm doubly sure of that purpose now that I have two girls.

And so 34 years later, and after 39 weeks of waiting, my brother and his wife have joined the club as well. Welcome to life, Timothy; we'll see you this weekend!

Outlaws on Delta Flight # 749

Working in the dot com travel world, I'm on the road (or planes) a lot, though surprisingly I don't see many famous faces when I travel. My closest brush with fame was about 12 years ago when I not only got to see but actually sat next to the 2-time Super Bowl MVP and 3-time Super Bowl winning quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys: Troy Aikman. It was during the offseason, and he was flying back from D.C. to Dallas. He was quiet, reserved, and very gracious to the dozens of autograph seekers... including me.

I thought that my recent sighting of Hulk Hogan getting searched by security at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport was an abberation, but perhaps it may have been the start to something.

I'm thinking that I may be on a roll because today I was on a flight next to Monte Yoho from the 70's band The Outlaws. I'd never heard of them before, but they play southern rock-n-roll, and I liked the mp3s on their site. In fact, I liked them so much I bought their Best of The Outlaws: Green Grass and High Tides album on iTunes. Monte was a really nice guy--genuine, unpretentious, and a real artist!

Men's Restrooms are Disgusting

Since reporting several months ago that my oldest daughter is potty training, things have gotten better. To combat the issue of being woken up at 3:00am, Fiona is wearing an overnight diaper, so everyone is getting a good night's sleep.

With my project house complete, I've been able to spend a lot more time on the weekends with the family. And since my wife and I share responsibilities, I've recently had more opportunities to take Fiona to go potty in public restrooms. Through these public potty outings, I've become consciously aware of something that I've known all of my life but never cared about: men's restrooms are disgusting. For women fortunate enough to have never ventured into one, let me paint the picture:

Men have bad aim. I have never gone into a men's restroom and seen a floor devoid of urine. At best there is just a puddle around the toilets, and at worst there is a 1/4 inch of urine covering the floor. Yes, it's disgusting.

Men have bad aim + men are inherently lazy. If a urinal isn't available and they're forced to use a commode, few men take the effort to raise the toilet seat before taking a whiz. And just as men pee all over the bathroom floor, they also pee on toilet seats as well.

Men have bad aim + men are inherently lazy + men use bathrooms to purge waste. Men not only use bathrooms for going pee and poo, but men also use bathrooms to blow their nose... and few use a kleenex or handkerchief so the snot ends up on the wall or floor. Disgusting, I know, but wait--there's more!

From my unscientific sampling, 50% of the toilet seats in men's restrooms are broken or otherwise defective. Of this 50%, most have a hinge broken or are poorly installed, resulting in a very unstable seat... especially for a 3 year-old. From this same unscientific sampling, 15% of bathroom stalls in men's restrooms lack a suitable product with which to wipe. Most are simply out of toilet paper; others have toilet paper stained by a previous occupant's errant pee stream; and some have a broken holder which dispenses single squares... if you're lucky.

And upon using a road-side gas station bathroom, if a man suddenly finds himself randy on his way out the door, there is usually an assortment of condoms and novelties available for purchase from a bathroom wall dispenser like this one in a Mississippi gas station.

My picture is painted. As a result of the general disgusting condition of men's restrooms, I have a simple rule for my daughter when I take her to go potty: sit still and don't touch a thing!

Michael Vick's Legacy

Michael Vick is many things to many people--for one thing, he's a great rusher. After Sunday's loss to the Saints, Vick is ranked #11 in the NFL for rushing yards this season, racking up 870... and ranked #12 is Warrick Dunn, Atlanta's running back, with 865 yards. And therein lies the problem.

For all of the positives, the biggest negative about Vick is that he's not a quarterback. His QB rating of 72.1 is in the bottom third of quarterbacks in the NFL.

With all of the pre-season hype about the Atlanta Falcons making it into playoffs this year, a four game losing streak (which included losses to two of the perennially worst teams in football--the Lions and Browns) is quite a surprise to us fans.

Vick's contract pays him $130 million over 10 years, which comes to around $800,000 per regular-season game. As the quarterback, and thus the team leader, Vick is not earning his pay this year.

And with all of that context, Vick and the Falcons were justifiably "booed" as they exited the field on Sunday after getting spanked 31-13 by the New Orleans Saints. So how does the team leader... the face of this franchise respond to the deserved criticism? It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case it is.