When you find that you have no surplus at the end of the year, and yet have a good income, I advise you to take a few sheets of paper and form them into a book and mark down every item of expenditure. Post it every day or week in two columns, one headed “necessaries” or even “comforts”, and the other headed “luxuries,” and you will find that the latter column will be double, treble, and frequently ten times greater than the former.

The real comforts of life cost but a small portion of what most of us can earn. It is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself l should not care for fine clothes or furniture.” In America many persons like to repeat “we are all free and equal,” but it is a great mistake in more senses than one.
That we are born “free and equal” is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be.

One may say; “there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while I have but one thousand dollars; I knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, I cannot do that, but I will go and hire one and ride this afternoon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that I am as good as he is.”

My friend, you need not take that trouble; you can easily prove that you are “as good as he is;” you have only to behave as well as he does; but you cannot make anybody believe that you are rich as he is. Besides, if you put on these “airs,” add waste your time and spend your money, your poor wife will be obliged to scrub her fingers off at home, and buy her tea two ounces at a time, and everything else in proportion, in order that you may keep up “appearances,” and, after all, deceive nobody. On the other hand, Mrs. Smith may say that her next-door neighbor married Johnson for his money, and “everybody says so.” She has a nice one-thousand dollar camel’s hair shawl, and she will make Smith get her an imitation one, and she will sit in a pew right next to her neighbor in church, in order to prove that she is her equal.

Telephone bills both line and mobile can add up to you budget’s expenses and can sometimes be really onerous. Though communications are essential on today’s global world, cutting on the costs of communication doesn’t necessarily imply cutting on actual communication (though it may be a good idea to avoid unnecessary calls). Following are some tips on how to save money on telephone bills:

1) Review Local Calls: Local calls may not be expensive but are the most common calls you probably make. And for that reason there are probably many unnecessary calls. It is a good idea to analyze your bills at least once a year to see how much you spend on local calls and the feasibility of reducing that amount.

2) Review Long Distance and International calls: These types of calls are usually not as common as local calls but significantly more expensive. Therefore, it is a good idea also to review the number of calls and the costs in order to reduce the spending on each period. But even if you can’t do so, you can analyze the frequency, hours and specific destinations and write down all this information that will be useful later on.

3) Compare Different Long Distance and International Calls Plans: There are probably many companies offering long distance and international calls in your area. With the information you collected from the previous reviews, you can compare your communication needs with the different plans offered by the companies in order to find the ones that best adjust to your necessities and provide the cheapest telephone communications solution for you.

4) Unnecessary Items: Some phone companies offer you other services like caller id, line maintenance, automatic answering services, etc. These services may not seem too costly but altogether and pondered yearly will certainly add up to your overall communication costs. They can be easily avoided: replacing cables and plugs within your house is very simple and seldom needed and you can always purchase an answering machine to avoid purchasing the service from the phone company.

5) VoIP Is a Cheap Solution: Consider Voice over IP services that provide you with communications over internet. These services provide low cost communications by establishing local calls and connecting the two parties through the internet even if there is a great distance between them. These services have revolutionized the industry and as more and more people hire VoIP services the prices will keep dropping. The only drawback is that you need a computer and the quality may not be the same (though it keeps improving).