About a year ago, I wrote about how we revamped our Internet, television and home phone plan. We’re still doing the same thing and have been very happy with the transition.
If you read that post then you know we downgraded our home phone plan to local-only and use our cell phones for long distance. We have a lot of family that live out of the area and my husband’s place of work is even a long distance call from home. Using our cell phones has worked out really well but recently we’ve come very close to the limit on our minutes. I must be talking more??
Anyway, my husband and I both have Google Voice. He’s used it for a while but I hadn’t at all until recently. Then last month when we came close to using all our cell phone minutes, David gently suggested that I try using Google Voice for my long distance calls. So I did. I was thinking it would be annoying or that I’d have to learn a bunch of things to use it – not so.
Here’s how it works (in case you didn’t know – it’s free):
- You choose a phone number that is local for you.
- You choose which phones to connect to that number. It DOES NOT replace your existing phone numbers, plans or accounts. I only have it connected to my home phone but David has our home, his cell and his work phone all connected.
- You log into Google Voice on your computer to make calls. You tell it which phone you want to call from and then who you want to call. Google Voice calls you and then connects you to the person you’re calling – no long distance charge.
There are some fun features that you can use too. I don’t use them yet but David does. This comes from Google Voice:
Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online and transcribes your voicemail to text. Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls. You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM.
We don’t have any experience with the international calling, so I can’t speak to that. David uses the voicemail transcription though. Every time he gets a voicemail, it’s transcribed and sent to him as a text message. It’s somewhat accurate. You can usually get the idea of what someone was trying to say but it’s not good enough to really rely on so you’ll still want to listen to the original message.
This has worked out really well for us with our current setup. If you’ve reduced your home phone plan down to local-only then I would definitely recommend giving Google Voice a try. It’s currently only available by invitation, but you can request one on the site. Have any questions? Post them in the comments and I’ll ask my husband to answer them 
Why I do what I do ~ We went shopping last weekend, catching the winter sales and stocking up on clothes for Chloe for next winter. It was one of the first times I asked her if she liked things and she suggested things. I learned a lot – mostly that our tastes differ greatly. My taste is more muted, understated. Hers is wild. I’ve already purposed not to argue with her about clothes as long as they are weather appropriate, clean and modest. I can see I’ll be biting my tongue a lot in the future.Have you liked Domestic Cents on Facebook yet?
If you enjoyed this post you may want to subscribe to free updates by RSS feed or Email.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I just set up google voice about a month ago – I love it! I now use it as my “Home” phone number instead of my cell number. This way all of those annoying calls go to google voice. The best part, it goes right to my gmail account with the audio, as well as an attempt at voice to text conversion. Unfortunately, that part leaves a lot to be desired, but you can still get the gist of what is being said. I can usually figure out the main point, which is usually something like my auto-filled prescription is ready, and I don’t have to waste time listening to the voicemail.
Mike´s last blog ..Make Free Phone Calls With Google Voice