When I first hooked up my phone I was pretty excited.  It was the first time that I had a phone number that was in my own name and I would finally have my own name in the phone book.  Bear in mind that I was pretty young at the time, so small stuff like this did get me excited.

Since I was living in a town where my parents didn’t live, I needed long distance.  I asked the phone company what that would cost and they told me that I would have to pay a deposit as well as their highest rate for the calls.  This didn’t sit well with me, and since I didn’t have any history with them, there was nothing I could do about it.

So, instead of going with the phone company, I found some cheap calling cards that would allow me to call long distance at less than half the price of what the phone company wanted to charge me.

The added benefit was that I could use the calling cards anywhere – there is definitely some freedom in being able to call anyone, anywhere.