Our electricity bill came the other day.

Yikes!

We’ve had a somewhat warmer summer here than last year. Not nearly as hot as the Summer of 2007….how I remember that well since I was pregnant with kiddo at the time!

Our kilowatt hour meter reading was off the charts for us this month: 880 kwh which is about double what it was in 2006. I remember because our bill would nearly always be about 450 kwh and it rarely varied from that except during the summer months. I’m not a huge fan of air conditioning, but since our son was born we try to adjust the temperature to suit him rather than what we really want. As a result, our bill has creeped up little by little every year.

We decided to try to trim our energy usage from other areas to help compensate for our air conditioning use. In fact, we’ve set on a challenge for this month: our next bill will not be for more than 750 kwh’s despite the fact we’re headed into August shortly. We’re making some changes!

Now, the bill we just received was still only about $100. We belong to a fabulous electricty co-op and our bill is actually quite low compared to other people we know. But we’re also trying to make some changes from an environmental standpoint as well. Do we NEED to have fans going in rooms we’re not using? Do I NEED to dry every load of laundry using the energy-hog dryer we have? Do we NEED to turn the air conditioner on at 9am even on a moderately warm day?

So our goal for our next bill is 750 kwh. To that end, I’m writing this post on battery power, in the dark without the television on! I figured I’d better put my money, or intention, where my mouth is at least while I’m writing about it!

 Bring on the New Year and a new resolution to keep up with the bookkeeping!

Here are two free printable worksheets for you: a monthly expense sheet and a monthly income sheet. No opt-in required…no hoops to jump through, just a free and easy download to get your New Year started off right!

Printable Monthly Expense Worksheet

Printable Monthly Income Worksheet

Now I know many of you prefer to do your bookkeeping for your business and home online or with software, and I promise to have some good tips for those methods as well, but sometimes I find having a sheet to write things down is just a bit more convenient, especially if I put it in a workbook (coming soon, by the way!) or a binder that I have right on the desk.

Plus, these sheets can be a great place to temporarily record your expenses and income until you can make it to the software or your spreadsheets or whatever you are using.

To save them to your computer, just right-click and select, “Save As”. They are in PDF format so you’ll need the Adobe Reader to open them (free and available here).

Enjoy!

Well, 2009 is coming to and end and you may be looking toward the next few months as you prepare your 2009 tax return. If you own a small business, you may also be looking for some last minute tax deductions. Have you considered pre-paying some of your business expenses in advance before the end of the year to get them on the books and listed as a 2009 business expense?

This might be a great time to:

1. Pre-pay professional membership fees.

2. Renew professional licenses which are set to expire soon.

3. Purchase postage and mailing supplies for the coming year.

4. Purchase ink, toner, paper and other supplies for your home office.

5. Purchase equipment such as a new printer, fax machine, phone system or computer.

6. Pre-pay for webhosting fees for 2010 and beyond….I recommend Dreamhost.

7. Renew some domains set to expire soon.

I’m not a tax professional, so of course you will want to run these ideas by someone and do your own due diligence, but some of these ideas might help lower your tax liability for 2009 and get you off to a great start with some pre-paid expenses for 2010!

p.s. Some of these ideas may save you more than just on taxes….consider that some advertising packages and webhosting companies may also extend you a discount for pre-paying your account in advance. The hosting company I use, Dreamhost, offers a substantial discount when paying one year and even two years in advance.  For more information, click here to visit my Dreamhost Promo Codes page with all of the details about this promotion.

Resource Links:
Amazon.Com Printers and Ink Deals (free shipping on most orders $25+)
Amazon.Com Office Supplies Deals (free shipping on most orders $25+)
Amazon.Com Tax Software Deals (free shipping on most orders $25+)

After nearly two years of discussing it, my husband and I finally made the switch to Vonage and so far….so good! We had wanted to make the switch to Vonage for quite some time but had some questions and concerns. Hopefully, my review of the service and experience switching will answer some of your questions as well.

This is one of the most extensive and detailed reviews of a product I have ever written, so if you are truly interested in how switching to Vonage can save you time and money, pull up a chair and a cold drink and get comfy!

Why we decided to look into Vonage

We had already made a partial leap toward VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) when we switched from our old-school landline to Comcast Digital Voice. With that experience safely under our belts (and burned on our psyches) we decided to make the switch to Vonage. A friend’s family had been using Vonage for a couple of years and I had noticed that when we spoke, there was very little difference, if any, from their old service. That was a good sign.

Here are some factors that played into our decision to switch:

1. Comcast Digital Voice was ok…nothing spectacular. The service was not always predicatable and I had trouble with calls suddenly dropping or breaking up into a “digitized” sound at the worst possible times. A technician visit to our house resulted in no change and numerous calls to their technicians resulted in no explanation for why it was happening.

2. The price for our phone line seemed to creep up a little every three to four months. While we did get a small discount for having our phone, Internet and cable on one bill, it wasn’t significant enough a discount to stay with service that was spotty.

3. We were paying extra to have long distance service in the United States and limited countries. In fact, I’m not entirely sure we could have even called Canada with our old service and not seen an additional charge.

4. We wanted stability. We wanted to know exactly what we would pay every month, regardless of the calls and where they were to. We also wanted to be reasonably sure that the price wouldn’t go up a little every month.

How we learned about Vonage

A friend of mine had been using Vonage for a couple of years and I never noticed a difference in the quality when I spoke to her so that was my first testimonial. A few checks of forums to see what other people thought also led me to believe that the service was reliable and CLEAR. A clear phone connection is super important to me as someone who works from home and must often make calls to businesses and co-workers.

Vonage: The signup process

I decided to take advantage of their referral program and reward my friend who told me about Vonage. At the time I signed up, Vonage was giving away two free months to new customers and two free months to the person who referred them. The referral process was easy and just required me to enter my friend’s phone number into the online form. I have not confirmed if she has received two months of credit to her bill yet, but I will update when I do find out.

The signup process was very fast and easy to understand. The best part was that I didn’t need to be the one to make the “break up” phone call to Comcast and tell them I just wasn’t into them anymore. Once I had established that I wanted to use the service and entered my contact and billing info, I was assigned a temporary phone number. Once my equipment would arrive, I would be on my way!

The equipment arrived a bit later than I expected because UPS left the package, in the rain, at the wrong house. A kind neighbor noticed it IN THE GRASS and brought it to my door. This is NOT the fault of Vonage, only UPS and I don’t hold the late delivery against Vonage in any way.

Inside the box were three pieces of equipment, a user manual and a quick start diagram. The three pieces of equipment were an adapter box (about the size of a DVD), a power cord and a network cord that connects the adapter to the back of your modem or router. The fold-out diagram is very easy to understand and the directions are thorough.

The directions are flow-chart style and indicate, “do this first, then this, then this”. Simple! I won’t go into the nitty gritty of what I plugged into where, because all of that is laid out in the instructions. Suffice to say, it was less than 5 minutes until I had a dial-tone.

I made a test call to my Mom and she said she didn’t notice any flaws in the call. She said it sounded different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She said, “I don’t know, maybe it sounds even clearer than your old service and that’s why it sounds different?” My husband called from work and was not able to detect any difference at all. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, but we decided to keep testing it for a few days and see how it went.

Because Vonage can transfer your phone number to their service, but not right away, we were assigned a temporary phone number. I decided to forward our calls from Comcast (using Comcast’s online service center) to the new number in the meantime so we wouldn’t miss any calls. It worked perfectly!

A few days later, we were convinced that the switch was a go! As I mentioned earlier, Vonage takes care of porting or transferring your old phone number via a button in the online control panel. They instructed us not to call our old phone company and simply cancel service because that would also cancel our phone number….not good. So I initiated the transfer with one click and got periodic updates via email about the progress. Within about five days the transfer was complete and so was our switch to Vonage!

Vonage and their 25 Standard Features

The Vonage World package ($24.99 a month) comes with the following features standard….. self-explanatory features include: Caller ID with name, Call Waiting, Call Waiting with Caller ID, 3-Way Calling, Called ID Block, Call Return, Do Not Disturb, Anonymous Call Block, and Repeat Dialing.

Additional standard features include but are not limited to….

 1. Voicemail Plus: Lets you check your email online, or on your phone and you can also get email and text message notification of new emails.

2. Call Transfer: lets you transfer your call to another phone number (cell phone, etc) mid-call! You don’t have to hang up, just transfer the call and keep talking from the new phone. This would be a great feature for a small at-home business when you need to run out to a client meeting or other errand. Keep on talking!

3. Vonage Online Account: Everything (and I mean, EVERYTHING) about your account is available online in an easy-to-use dashboard system.

4. Enhanced Call Forwarding: forward your calls to any phone number in the world!

…..and a bunch more! Check the Vonage website for more details on some of the other features. Since we have not used some of these,  don’t feel I should review them because I can’t give an accurate opinion.

Some things I really like about Vonage:

1. Their online dashboard system that lets me access every aspect of our Vonage account from setting up voicemail alerts, to listening to voicemail, to making changes to our service. To this day, I have never had to call Vonage or speak to anyone about anything related to our service. That’s the way I like it!

2. Voicemail is easy to use and flexible. You can opt to receive an email each time there is a new voicemail waiting for you, or for an additional small fee (25 cents per voicemail) you can have an attachment of the voice mail (in .wav format) emailed to you along with a transcription of the voice mail. I tested this service to see how accurate the transcription was, and it was perfect! You can even have these emails sent to up to five different email addresses and it’s still just 25 cents for each individual voicemail. Great for families or if you would like alerts at work, home, and on your smartphone. You also receive a basic SMS text message as well.

3. Long-distance service is free (from the United States) to about 60 countries (see the Vonage site for a complete list). Long distance service within the United States is also included.  Be sure to check to make sure that calls to cell phones in your desired country are included (too many to list here) because there are only some of the 60 countries that include free calls to cell phones in addition to landlines.

Some things I don’t like as much about Vonage

1. It really only works well with a true, high-speed Internet connection. This is not for someone who is working with a mediocre connection. How can you tell? Call your Internet service provider and ask if you have the medium/higher-end connection. This is particularly true if you are running multiple pieces of hardware (a desktop, laptop computer, wireless home network etc) on one connection all at the same time. My home is wired for everything (wired and wireless) so there is constantly something using my bandwidth but I haven’t had any trouble at all.

2. You may need to adjust the amount of bandwidth that Vonage uses for your connection. I put it in the “not like” category simply because it is one extra step for someone who has multiple things running. That said, adjusting the bandwidth in your dashboard is quite easy and fast.

3. I wish that Vonage would let you listen to voicemails as streaming in your dashboard rather than making it a .wav file that you either have to open with your default program for .wav files or download and open later. In my case, my default program for .wav files is iTunes, and if I don’t have it open at the time I want to listen to email, I need to wait for iTunes to boot up. If they made this one change, I would be thrilled and plan to bring it up with their development team.

What you should know about options and add-ons

Vonage offers a variety of options and add-ons in addition to their standard, Vonage World service (which we have) that gives us unlimited local and International calling to 60 countries for $24.99.

Annual Prepay Options: Vonage offers Vonage World (the regular plan with International calling to 60+ countries) for a yearly fee of $239.99 which brings your average monthly price down from $24.99 to $19.99. This is a yearly savings of about $60.

There is also a limited plan for people who use under 500 minutes a month. It’s called, appropriately, the Basic 500 Minutes Residential Plan and at the time of this review costs just $17.99 a month. There is also a “Pro” plan that costs $34.99 a month that also lets you use your computer to make calls instead of just your landline phone. Business plans are also available, but I have not used any of them in order to review.

What you need to know before switching to VOIP or Vonage in particular:

There are some considerations you need to be aware of before switching to Vonage or any VOIP provider. First, be sure that your Internet connection can handle the load. I don’t recommend that you try to use Vonage with a slow connection, so if you live in an area where high-speed Internet is notoriously not “high-speed” you may want to think twice about this.

Second, you need to live in an area or have a history of good and reliable sources of electricity. If you live in a rural area and your electricity is prone to outages or if you live in an area prone to natural disasters, you may want to stick with a landline. No electricity means no Internet which means no phone. No phone, means no access to 911 so be aware.

Third, I recommend that you only switch to a VOIP provider if you have a backup phone such as a cell phone. Any outage, whether electrical or Internet means you don’t have access to 911 in an emergency. This is especially important if you have children. DO NOT SWITCH TO VOIP WITHOUT A BACKUP PLAN.

Fourth, be sure that when you setup your Vonage account that you specifically check in your account for the recorded address for you in the 911 system and make sure it’s accurate since this is the information that will be given to emergency personnel when you call 911.

 My overall impression of Vonage

In summary, I highly recommend looking into Vonage if you have considered a switch to a VOIP provider and have seen your bill for regular landline service creep up in the past few years. We live in an area that has the infrastructure to support the switch (high-speed internet and reliable power) and feel it was a good move for us both in terms of having good reliable service and for the financial savings. We are saving about $15.00 a month ($180 per year) on average compared to our old service. To us, that is a significant savings and was worth the switch!

Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments! I’d be happy to share more details about our experience with Vonage!

P.S. If you join Vonage using this link, you will receive one month of service for free. In the interest of full disclosure, so will I. I’m an actual Vonage customer and other than free months I receive for referring new customers, I have not been paid or compensated in any way for this review. So there!

Technorati Tags: Vonage, VOIP, voice over Internet protocol, phone service, phone, landline

My friend Lynette Chandler gave me a piece of advice a few months back, and now I’d like to pass that advice on to you!

Lynette recently posted on her site, TechBasedMarketing.com, her tips for saving money on printing by using a laser printer instead of a traditional ink jet printer that most families and work at home parents have in their homes.

When she first mentioned it in the private forum for Mom Masterminds, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. In my experience, laser printers were expensive, the toner was expensive and they were best suited for multi-user, corporate environments. Could a laser printer really make sense for home use and for a very small home business?

But then she broke it down and showed that while the upfront cost for the toner cartridges and the printer itself might be a little higher, there are significant savings over ink jet costs as a result.

I checked out some laser printers online and was surprised that there were several highly-rated laser printers on the market for less than $200. Even that $200 threshold was a bit high for my budget, especially since I was used to the world of cheap inkjet printers. Even when I was able to find inexpensive ink jet ink online, I was still spending much more on ink than I would ever spend on a printer. It seemed worth a deeper look.

I stalled….and stalled….and in the meantime probably spent close to $200 in ink for my multi-function ink printer. Had I just made that decision earlier, I would have saved some money. But, finally about a month ago, I took the plunge and bought a wireless laser printer for my home and home office and I couldn’t be happier! I purchased a wireless printer so that I could plug it in anywhere in our home and print from any computer on our wireless home network! Guess where it’s plugged in? Behind the sofa in our family room! Why not put it where I tend to be most of the day, right?

Cost-wise, it breaks down like this: I purchased the Brother HL-2170W wireless laser printer at Staples for $109.99. Because I hoped that this would be a printer I would use a great deal and for a long time, I also purchased the 2-year service plan for $29.99 and the Brother TN360 toner cartridge for $67.99. Total cost: $222.01

The printer comes with a “starter” toner cartridge that I have been using for more than a month and it still has toner in it. I’ve printed over 500 pages already since getting the printer, and according to Brother, the starter cartridge will print an estimated 800 pages or so. A standard cartridge will print about 3000 pages. I opted for the TN360 “high-yield” toner cartridge so I could get a little more bang for my buck.

Considering that I was spending about $40 or more a month on ink for my multifunction inkjet printer, this is a tremendous savings! $40 a month equals about $480 a year in printing costs. Compared to my costs for the next 12 months (I doubt I will purchase anything else until next year at the rate I print normally) of $222.01 (and that includes the costs of the printer itself!) you can see how much money this saves.

Consider a laser printer for your home and home office! And thanks to Lynette for the great money-saving tip!

Resource Links:

Brother HL-2170W printer from Amazon.com: $109.99
Brother TN360 toner cartridge from Amazon.com: $46.99 (even better deal than I got!)
Wireless Laser Printers from Amazon.com

Well, it looks like my husband and I have been on the leading edge of a new trend for once in our lives!

 I was reading Yahoo News recently and came across and article titled, “Prepaid Wireless Takes Off“, which reinforced what I have said for years: prepaid wireless phone plans are cheap.

Not really news there. I mean, most people know that a prepaid plan can be cheaper especially if you are not an avid cell phone user. I use my phone for just a few minutes a week, so it never made sense for me to have a regular cell phone plan. I managed to convert my husband and now we both are enjoying nice phones, cheap service and no monthly bill. Apparently, other people are following suit in higher numbers as the economy suffers. Going prepaid is going mainstream.

The common complaints people seem to have had about prepaid wireless plans really don’t apply to this new generations of plans. The first complaint that I had to deal with from my husband was that he didn’t want to run out of minutes right when he needed them the most. We are using Tracfone, and they have two features which make it nearly impossible to run out of minutes. The first is the “rollover” feature. When we purchase blocks of minutes, they come with 90 days of service (when you buy 60 minutes at a time). At the end of that 90-day service term, the minutes don’t expire. Instead, they accumulate in the account and roll-over. Sure, every 90 days we need to make a purchase of at least 60 minutes, but at only $19.99 for 60 minutes, that averages out to only about $6.66 per month and we can bank those extra minutes and use them at times of higher usage (like when we were in Los Angeles this past December). The second feature is an automatic refill feature that fills your account with a predetermined number of minutes each month via a direct debit to your checking account or credit card. Easy!

The second most common complaint seems to be that the phones the prepaid companies offer are outdated. While this may have been true even just a few years ago, that really isn’t the case now. I personally have a really nice silver Motorola flip-style phone that I love. I’ve had it for about a year and my husband has an LG phone with a pretty decent camera. Are these “top of the line” phones? Probably not, but they look nice and work well which is what is most important to us. Incidentally, there were several other phone choices when we purchased our phones, but we got such a good deal that we bought without hesitation.

Some people also cringe at the thought that they have to remember to buy an airtime card at the gas station or they will run out of minutes. Not only can you buy individual bundles of minutes online anytime you want, but with Tracfone in particular, you can also buy airtime right from your phone or enroll in a monthly plan that adds minutes automatically every month or just when your balance is getting low. So simple!

Is it an iPhone? No, but to be honest, I’d just be addicted to the thing the way I am my laptop! But if you need a phone and you need to save money, I highly reccommend checking out prepaid cell phone plans. We’ve saved hundreds of dollars a year and haven’t missed our old traditional cell phone plan one bit. Plus, I love anything that makes life easier and cheaper!

We did it. We bought a standalone freezer. And yes, I”m psyched!

We got an AMAZING deal from our local grocery store, of all places, that really made the purchase worthwhile. The cost of the freezer was $159.99 but the freezer also came with coupons (and a gift card) that totalled $160 in value, so we essentially made our money back in free food and other goodies.

As if that wasn’t cool enough, our store also had a promotion where you could buy a $300 gift card and get a $30 bonus added to the card, which was essentially an instant 10% return on investment. Then, we used the gift card to buy the freezer and now we have plenty left on the card to shop for a few weeks.

We had gone back and forth about the expense of the freezer for months. We were also concerned that we wouldn’t have anywhere in our house to put it! Funny how you can make room when you have a looming deal deadline though.

That was two weeks ago, and we just plugged it in and started using it yesterday. It’s awesome! The cost to run the freezer (based on the Energy Guide statement that came with the freezer and the cost per KWH from our most recent electricity bill) will be about 50 cents per week!

So, I went out shopping yesterday and was finally able to take advantage of some fantastic deals since I knew I had a freezer to finally store things. When cheese is on sale for $1 for 8oz and you have a toddler, you RUN, not walk to the local store to stock up! What a great feeling to know that this freezer is more than paying for itself every day.

Spend a little to save a lot! This purchase was worth every penny!