Money-Saving Tech Solutions

Becky Worley tells you ways to save on travel and more.

Gadgets may offer a brief reprieve to consumers' recession-wary wallets. "Good Morning America" technology contributor Becky Worley has five tech items that could save your family's greenbacks. Get information on decreasing your landline's cost and learn how your old cell phone could reap bucks for you.

Saving on Your Phone Plan

T-Mobile @Home lets you keep your old home landline number, but ditch the $40-a-month phone bill you currently pay to your phone company. Using your DSL or cable Internet access, you plug a router in and then plug any touch tone phone into the router. You get unlimited local and long distance calling, and caller ID, in addition to keeping your old home phone number.

The router costs $49, and factoring in the $10 a month you pay for the service, the savings in one year would be $350.

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For another $10 a month, you can hook your whole family's cell phones into T-Mobile's Hotspot Internet calling. It allows your connection to go over the Internet calling service when you are in the middle of a call as you walk into your home. Here's where you save money because you won't be using your cell phone minutes when you're on Internet calling.

For example, say you drop 1,000 minutes a month off your family plan. With this home hotspot calling, the grand total in savings comes to $600 per year with T-Mobile @Home plus hotspot calling.

Money for Your Used Cell Phone

Flipswap.com allows you to send in your old cell phone or used electronic gadget at no cost to you. In return, the service sends you money back, depending on the quality and the demand of the phone you sent.

The service often refurbishes your used gadget and sells your old cell phones to South America or other under-developed areas. What can't be re-used Flipswap salvages for scrap and for the parts of precious metals that are inside the device that are often valuable.

The average payout from the site is $30.