How much time do you spend talking over the phone? If you have a large circle of friends, then your phone bill might be rather high. If you travel a lot, and you like keeping in touch with people close to you, then the chances are you pay a premium for your phone bill. Thanks to the Internet, you can drastically lower your mobile phone bill and still continue to keep in touch with practically everyone. There are a lot of online services that offer VoIP (Voice over IP) for free, and you might even be using some of them without taking advantage of the voice part.

• Google Talk

Since it was launched, Google Talk has quickly become a popular instant messaging platform. Over the years, the big G has improved a lot of things including voice and video chat. As long as the person is in your contact list – i.e., he is also using Google Talk – you can initiate calls wherever you are in the world for free. You can use the Google Talk client or the in-browser version. Google even has promos that offer free calls to phones in the US and Canada, so you might want to check into that. Imagine all the savings you can make!

• Skype

Skype is another instant messenger that has been around for a long time. While it does offer text chat, I think that it is used more for voice and video calls. You simply need to download the app to your computer – or smart phone – and you can do Skype calls with anyone in the world who also has the app installed.

• Yahoo Messenger

Who hasn’t used Yahoo Messenger at some point in his life? Truth be told, my ancient account is still active and used regularly. If you are old school, and you do not want to install new programs and create new accounts, Yahoo Messenger will do the trick for you. Sometimes the voice and video quality becomes tricky, but it does the job for the most part. Again, to save money, the other party also has to have the program installed.

• Facebook

Isn’t Facebook for “likes” and comments only? Nope! Facebook chat has already developed up to the point that you can have multi-person chats and voice/video chats as well. Since everyone is on Facebook these days, this platform might just be your best bet in keeping in touch without having to press those number buttons – virtual or otherwise – on your phone. And be honest, you spend so much time on Facebook anyway. You might as well use it for your calls! If you’re serious about lowering your phone bill, simply check out at least one of these services. It doesn’t take much effort to install them if necessary, and the savings that you will make will be more than worth it.