Do you want to "call with me" ? www.llamaconmigo.com

I have started two income streams related to phone calls. I hope the ball starts rolling.

First of all, I have started a calling service to any country in the world. Actually it is targeted to calls to Honduras since the prices are so low. They are even lower than calls within Honduras!

For example calls to Honduran cellphones cost about $0.13/min. That's lower that the normal $0.20/min rate from a Honduran cellphone to another Honduran cellphone! The next rate available is $0.17/min, still under 20 cents !! There are two rates because I can cater each account to use more than one international carier to complete the call if one or the other is too busy.

I have trouble with getting payment because both paypal and Google checkout don't allow Non-US accounts to accept payments. That's my only weak spot with this service. Any advice or help with this I would appreciate a lot.

I started this business by selling calls to my ex-brother-in-law's stores. They have three stores and cater mostly to Hondurans. Regular calling cards to Honduras have such high rates and connection fees that even adding a 50% markup on the my service's call rates still makes it interesting to customers. The stores pay me by wiring money with one of the companies that charges a fixed fee (about $10), they usually put about $500 every week. That gives me about $60 per recharge.

I have had it running now for 2 months and I know things work very well. They mostly sell calls to Honduras, but even Mexicans and Guatemalans like the way the service is provided because they pay only for the minutes they use. There are no connect fees, administration fees, call completion fees, etc. Many people talk for over an hour and enjoy it because with calling cards they are limited to 20 to 30 minutes at times.

The way the stores sell calls is using calling booths very much like cybercafes here in Honduras. Calls are routed via the internet to the international carriers, which allows to get this low rates. The store managers go to a web page to check the call records and see how much each call costs and from that they calculate how much to charge the customer.

This also helps them attract people to their stores to offer them other services or products. People go in the store to call but also end up buying groceries or food or sending money with them as well. The store managers are smart and sometimes use the calling service to compete with other nearby stores in the remittance service. For example they offer Mexicans free calls if they send money with them instead of the Mexican store. It only a few pennies per call but it drives a lot of business to them because the person can send the money AND call their relative to let them know the money has been wired.

The website is www.llamaconmigo.com (it means "call with me" in Spanish).

Right now the website it's very simple and I try to keep it simple , but with more content, so that many types of browsers can read it with no problem.

I bought the domain with godaddy.com and it only cost me $15 for one year. There was a special sale and I took advantage of it. They are even hosting my website for me for "free".

You can go there to check rates for calls to any country in the world. Just add 12% to the rates you get and that's what the call will really cost. The 12% is my profit margin. I'm not trying to set a high profit because I want to earn on volume. I deduct the 12% from the amount credited to the user's account.

If you know someone, specially a Honduran individual or a Honduran store in the US or anywhere in the world that would like to try it out, tell them about my website and have them write to the email there with their phone number so we can talk some more about how to get them set up. You would really help me a lot if you spread the word. I'm sure Honduran (or Latino) stores could use the extra people traffic.

There are many ways the service can be used. If it's used in the US there is a phone number that can be called to access the system. There is an web phone application right on my website to make calls from the computer. And the most convenient way is to buy an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA for short) like the ones used with Vonage or other voip service providers. It's a little box that plugs to the internet on one side and to a regular phone on the other side, allowing you to make calls the way you are used to make them.

I would really appreciate your help. I understand that I'm not the only one in need of money so I'm open to partnerships or paying a "finder's fee" if you help me get someone to use my service.

Please visit the page, let me know what you think. Help me spread the word if you think it's a worthy service.

The website is once again www.llamaconmigo.com

I will tell you about the other income stream soon. I'm just starting with it and want to have more experiences to tell you about. To some of you it may shock you, and to others it may seem pretty reasonable. As I've told you before, I open to do anything to get some more income to pay my debts. I'm very motivated to get out of debt. I have been so busy with several projects trying to hedge my bets that at least one should work well.

Well at least this blog is free. More importantly, your advice and words of encouragement are free to you and priceless to me.

May I interest you in some VOIP (Voice over IP)?

I'm sorry if this post went blank the first time around. It slipped out of my hands before I had even typed it. In one night of enlightment I came up with 5 topics to talk about and just did the sketches of each so I wouldn't forget them and this one got the send button instead of the save button.

Well, on with the show.

I've recently read several blogs about my debt situation. I'm glad to see that for the most part I'm doing what they advice to do. I'm failing in making a budget and with the extra income trouble I've had problem working on paying the smallest debt with all the money I could (because I don't have it in my hands yet).

One thing I read was about getting other income sources. Using my background on networking and Voice over Ip I've hooked up a few friends that have relatives in the US with VERY cheap voice over ip services in their homes.

Voice over ip is basically talking over the internet. The cool part is being able to use regular phones and be able to receive or make calls to and from regular phones or cellphones in the US.

Most of Hondurans living in the US don't have access to a computer, but most do carry a cellphone, the prepaid kind. Calls within the US are very cheap compared to calls to Honduras.

So I've acquired US numbers in bulk and re-selling them to friends. They way this works is that the person in Honduras has a little box called ATA (analog telephone adapter) that connects a regular phone (cord or cordless) to the internet. Obviously the user must have internet service in their house with at least 128kbps of bandwidth so that the voice works fine.For $60 for the box and a $10 monthly fee they get a US number in the Washington state area. This means that if someone in the US calls one of those numbers it will ring on the phone attached to the ATA, wherever it is located in the world.

This is different to the illegal practice in Honduras of "grey calls" in which a local US call is converted to an international call to Honduras because no Honduran telephone infrastructure is used. The phone in Honduras is connected "directly" to the internet. Cyber cafes in Honduras all work this way, except they sell outgoing calls, while I sell incoming calls.

The logic behind my sale strategy is that calling the US is so cheap for us from regular landlines or cellphones while calling to Honduras from abroad is so expensive that it merits spending a fixed amount of money to have a US phone number that only receives calls if you can expect a lot of calls from people in the US. So far my first 3 sales have gone very well because the people in the US have seen the savings. Great savings.

Calling cards to call Honduras usually charge $1 just to connect the call and about 20 to 40 US cents per minute. So a $3 dollar call is only good for $2 once the call is connected. Not to mention the troubles if the call gets cut off in the middle of it. Dialing again means another $1 just for connecting the call.

$10/mo for unlimited incoming calls is a lot better than paying $30/mo to companies like Vonage. Sure they let you have unlimited calls to the US, but again in this case you can just call the person in the US and say "call me back" and it's the same thing. Why is it the same thing?

a) There's a ton of studies that say that most people in the US now have a cellphone and use it instead of a landline.

b) incoming and outgoing calls to cellphone are billed to the cellphone user. So for the user it costs the same to make a call than to receive a call.

Even so, I had one friend that wanted to be able to make some business calls to the US. I was able to get him a service that for another $10/mo he could have 5 hours a week of calls to the US. That's comes to about 2 cents per minute. If he goes over the 5 hours per week, each minute extra is 2 cents per minute and comes out of his $10 pre-payment. In his case I set up the ATA's second port with another phone and so one phone is for incoming calls and the other is for outgoing calls. So he can receive a call one one phone and make a call on the other phone. Alternatively he could use a two-line phone and manage both from one device but that's up to him.

I also got a hold of a great virtual PBX . So if one business has offices in distant locations, and each location has internet access, I can set them up with dedicated virtual phone lines between the two offices. This can work anywhere in the world and it's simple to set up (if you know what I know) and the number of calls between offices is unlimited...really.

This is also allowed by Honduran telecom law because it's only calls within the same organization. Banks that have branches in several cities already do this. They do it thru their private data network. My proposal is much cheaper since it uses internet and doesn't require costly hardware to interconnect it all. We have one private telephone network here at my office and it was mildly expensive to say the least. I learned a lot from it and know it can be done for a lot less money.

I've tested this by putting virtual extensions in my office, my house, my parent's house and my friend's house in Missouri. They can all call each other by dialing their extension number and talk forever.

I've searched the net for a company that could something like what i'm proposing and found only one that was a little close to my price range for the same funcionality. They are www.vocalocitypbx.com

They are comparable to what I can do but I can give personalized service and I already have better prices and can improve on them depending on how much business is involved. Even if users eventually don't like my service they can take the same equipment and get service with them. I'm all for making the customer happy, even if it means happy with someone else. I checked that they use VOIP industry standards and they do, just like I do.

SO, if you know anyone that wants to reduce their international phone bill or someone with a business with two or more locations that wants to lower it's intra-offices phone bill, please let me know and I promise I can help them with that. I'll help myself in the process and you would've helped me to get out of debt. If you give me your contact info I will also help you with a "finder's fee" and we are all happy :-)

Oh well, at least this blog is free.

supplier troubles, hopes and introspection

Well the problems with our supplier continue.

Remember that some of my extra income comes from sending Honduran stuff to the US for my ex-brother-in-law to sell in his stores. Well our main supplier has shipping problems and we've gone a whole month with sending very little over. That affects me much because even though I get paid monthly just to make sure that all related bills get paid, if there are none then I don't get any money.

Every time I call them they say they will get things straightned out very real soon now. Then I call the next day and someone else says some other story. A couple of days later they answer a question I am not asking and state that they thought I was complaining about that.

So i've had it with them. I found a new supplier and if things go well, not only will get a monthly payment from my ex-brother-in-law but since this new supplier will give the same items at about the same prices as the other one, BUT will refund me 10% of everything we purchase to him if we reach a certain amount. It's his way of saying thank you to me for buying from him.

With prices comparable, and some cheaper, than the other guy, a wider selection and with much better infrastructure and logistics I think I do deserve that 10% if I can get my ex-BIL the stuff he needs at a good price and with better quality.

Honestly, a few years ago I would've passed that 10% on to him, but knowing that i'm getting him good prices from the start and that he sells them at 100% markup, it seems like a no-harm way of getting some extra cash. I'm not totally comfortable with it, but I didn't ask for it, it was offered to me by the new supplier. As long as he does better than the other guy I will feel ok. Not great but at least ok.

Have you ever been in this situation ? Purchasing something that was the best of two options and it included some personal "gift" for you ? did you or would you take it ?

I will use this extra money to pay off the high interest credit card with the highest balance. The other extra incomes will be for other payments and to kill the smaller debt.

Breathing again and some concerns

Well,

We are back to sending goods to my ex-brother-in-law. Thank God!

They have told me that while we had a break in the supply they realized they need more volume shipped to them as the demand has increased. I hope I can get our supplier to meed our demands and so they can sell more and I can earn more.

My best friend came over from MO a few weeks ago. I went out with him a lot to do errands and talk about the old times. Eventually I got the courage to ask him for a loan. At first he was ok and asked how much. I told him I needed $8,000 (to pay my main credit card and cancel it).

He said he didn't have that money but that he could get me to use one of his cash lines. Unfortunately another friend of his back in MO had already used his $20,000 cash line, and is not paying him back. So I worried that he wouldn't want to put himself in the position of having to pay for someone else, again.

As he was leaving he told me he just couldn't come up with the money. However he knew there was a programming gig that was almost finished (it was a proyect from this other friend that wasn't paying him back). He would check if I could finish it. If it was finished the company expecting the software would pay $15,000. He talked with the other guy and he agreed to give me $8,000 to finish it and he would keep the other $7000 since he would handle everything else and it was after all his business.

Right now i'm in the process of getting set up and hoping I can finish that software in a couple of months. My friend said one month, the guy said two weeks. So i'm thinking it will take a bit more.

LG expressed her concern that it seems like I only pay debt with my additional income. Unfortunately that is mostly true. I have a loan with the company coop that is automatically deducted from my paycheck and it's at 12%/year for 3 years (refinanceable once I reach 18 months of payments).

A big chunk of my paycheck goes towards groceries. Food, clothing, and other house supplies. Plus money for my wife to keep her car running and her spenditures. Also cellphones and landlines, water, electricity, etc.

The other big chunk has been my taxes, which seem to increase more and more every time I get a payraise.

This past couple of months have been abnormal. I've had to pay the yearly registration for one of my cars, I had totally forgotten about that and it was a big chunk. I've had to pay money up front for some house repairs for which the landlord has given me credit towards the rent pay.

In general as i'm writing this I think I haven't done an important part of controlling my debt. I haven't made a budget and so I don't know exactly where my money goes. I should do that very soon, NOW!

Well, at least this blog is free

Another paycheck!

I worked my butt off this week and got calls for support for this company I did some software for them. They always want some changes and improvements and I welcome all that. Plus in a downsizing move they fired their IT guy and so they call me now to fix simple stuff like corrupted files or installing upgrades.

So I got a check for 10,560 lempiras (it was 12,000 minus tax since i'm and independent consultant). I promptly paid 8020 to the credit card that I have a payment arrangement with. I haven't put it the figure in the right column because ever since I got a payment arrangement with them they stopped sending me a monthly statement. I have to call them to figure out how much I still owe them them.

I am going to make a payment arrangement with my main credit card. They offered me to use my extrafinancing to allow me to keep the credit card since I have a good record. However since I have about 6000 lempiras of minimum payment this month they say they needed some payment to get this started. Otherwise I would have to get a payment arrangement and they would cancel the credit card. The extrafinancing would give me a longer term and a lower interest rate than the payment arrangement. So I set aside 1000 lempiras from the last paycheck to have something to give these guys and see if I can get this card on a payment schedule using my extrafinancing (alert to self...DO NOT USE THIS CARD AGAIN JUST BECAUSE ITS BALANCE WILL BE ZERO).

The other 1000 I gave them to my wife to have her pay some of her small debts with friends. The other 560 went into my emergency fund.

I was worried for a while that I wouldn't get this 8020 lempira payment done in time. Now I have to make a payment of 4200 next week. I hope my business with my ex-brother-in-law picks up. This last two weeks it was down due to problems with our provide. That meant $180 NOT comming into my pocket.

Please pray that my provider can supply us with our goods to ship to the US. I need that money bad.

Next week I have to register my girls in school, fortunately I have that money almost all of it ready. It's a lot of money but a bilingual education is my investment in their better future as adults in Honduras. I hope to have enough money left for school supplies.

Well, at least this blog is free.

Where did the oxygen go?

I was able to spend about $800 of the $1000 on debt payments. I sent $75 to my emergency fund, that I partially used for the medical emergencies in the previous post. I used $50 to pay for some really urgent car repairs to avoid having to pay much more money later.

I used the final $75 to invest in a tiny business that my oldest daughter can manage while she is at home. She will be selling electronic recharges to prepaid cellphones from home and getting 7% profit of every lempira she sells.

I hope this helps her learn about managing money, budgeting, etc. So far she needed a few reminders but she is doing well.

I'm really glad I spend most of the money paying debt and the other part paying urgent things and almost nothing on "desires".

Well at least this blog is free

Getting Paid!

Today I got some good news.

I'm doing some DBA (database administrator) work for a company in the US. It had been a mystery to me how they would actually send me the money and how would they react to my bill for the work done.

My work consisted on improving the performance of their system. You know when you press the OK button and it takes a while for the computer to display new stuff, my job was to make that go faster.

So I spent many nights reading online documents and forums and logging into their system and tweaking things. After every tweak I would email my contact at the company and ask "can you hear me now?"...actually I would ask "how does it feel now?".

Last weekend I did some big changes in their system and expected to see some really big improvements. Unfortunately monday I got a call from them saying that the system was broken. I quickly undid all my work and still it was broken. I found out more stuff that I had done and undid that and the system was back to work again. BIG SCARE. If there's one thing I hate to do is mess up other people's work. It's an system administrator thing. I want my mark in my job life to be that people don't think of me because the systems are always running ok.

So after that scare they decided some things would be on hold while they looked over my proposed changes and how that affected their system.

By then It had been about a month already and I was wondering if I was going to get paid and the end of the gig or this month , or what. With the Monday mess I was ashamed to come up and ask them when was I going to expect payment (I had already ask before but gotten no answer).

So today, out of the blue my contact at the company tells me they have done a wire transfer for me for the money THEY owe ME :-) for all my work in June and July. It's not much, it's about $1000 but it certainly would give me some much needed financial oxygen.

The transfer should take a couple of days and being Friday I don't expect it until Tuesday at least.

I'm already thinking of what to pay. I have some stuff already paid for the month. I have to put money for my girls school supplies but that was considered to come out of somewhere else. I have some minor repairs that I should do to my cars. The house needs some improvements that I would be refunded for but I have to get them done first. Wife wants some plants, I would love a new external hard drive. So all that is dancing in my head.

However, I really think this is a test. I'm being tested on my determination to get out of debt. While the emotional side of me would like to put some of the money I'm about to receive into debt and some of the money into buying "stuff", my newly anti-debt side is saying that I should put some money into debt and put the rest into my "emergency fund", keeping a tight fist around that hard earned money rather than spending part of it.

What do you think ? Should I just put all towards debt and emergency fund or should I set some of it for spending ? what percent would you spend , save and pay debt ?

Well at least this blog is free

Staying the course

Payday came and went, and the money came in and was out the door.

Not only do I have to pay the rent on my house, but this month is specially hard because I have to pay the taxes on my car. It's 3,600 lempiras or about $190. $190 that I could've used to pay some debt. Anyway taxes ARE debt owed to the government so I will pay that tomorrow (last day for that car).

Some updates are that I'm staying the course in paying $300 monthly on the first credit card I told you about. I'm less than $90 to go to pay it this month. This money should come from some more work i'm doing for my ex brother-in-law.

About each week I get around $180 from his company as a commission for goods purchased here and shipped to the US....hmmm I haven't told you about that. That's on top of the $200 he pays me monthly. That's pretty much all going to paying debts and stuff I owe. Unfortunately not all of it goes to debt because there's always something unexpected and my emergency fund is usually depleted.

Also the cellphone card i'm going right now to pay all the charges that have been applied to it this month. I got the bank statement with the minimum payment set at 2,300 lps so i'm setting that card to a $130 monthly payment AFTER paying whatever charges are applied to it from my cellphone company. So after paying today I have to come up with $130 for that card to stay the course to pay it. I'm set on paying this debt or as fast as I can because it's the lowest. Then I would just try to pay the cellphones BEFORE they are charged to the card.

I still have to come up with money to pay my personal loan and my main credit card. Plus I have to come up with about $600 to pay the 2 credit cards with which I already have a payment schedule arranged.

I hope to finish up some work for this lady that I told you in an earlier post. I have to put in hours of work to get to 10,000 lps $525 so I can bill her for that as soon as possible. I'm trying to get that work done but it's been difficult due to family stuff. I'm supposed to have mornings off but I keep running errands and them i'm racing off to work in the afternoon. I guess I'll work late tonight.

Well i'm off to the bank before they close. I'll write about my saving angels next time...if it wasn't for them I don't know how much worst I would be.

Some Financial Oxygen

If I had a huge source of income, having all this debt wouldn't be a problem. It's not having all that income that causes problems for me. Thus I'm always looking for other sources of income.

Today I got somewhat good news.

I have been doing some freelance work for a company. This year I have been billing them almost monthly. When I presented my bill in May they gave a big run around saying that the general manager needed to talk to me.

July came and still no money. I finally got to talk with the general manager and she said that the board of directors was concern over how much money they were paying me and that they wanted to work something out with me to lower my billing to them.

I explained to her that I was willing to switch to a montly billing instead of a per hour billing. I would lower my equivalent per hour fee by about 33%. She would have a way to lower her bill and budget my cost and I would get a scheduled income as opposed to a every-now-and-then check.

She said she would take it into consideration and paid me that last bill. I quickly paid some of the monthly bills I had back then and did some purchases and bought some medications. I know I spent most of it on debt payments so I feel good about that. My wife wanted much more that what I ended up giving her. She still doesn't grasps how much I really do owe, or doesn't want to face it.

Today, the general manager calls to tell me that she hasn't made up her mind yet but that she needs me to do some work for the company and that I can bill her by the hour but if I could please lower my rate. I told her I would lower a bit it but not to the level I would if she payed on a monthly basis. She agreed and quickly sent me some work I had to do for next week.

So I hope I can do this work and be able to bill her soon enough to pay some of my debt specially my mom and the cellphone card so I can finish off those debts and focus on the other ones.

I also hope that she will eventually agree to pay me monthly instead of hourly. She and I go way back. I've been doing work for her for more than 10 years, but only since about 2003 have I been working as close and with such an importance to her company's daily operations.

She can't really hire me since she couldn't afford my full salary, but she is ok with the arrangement we have. My offer to her was to be even more close in contact with her company and onsite on her 3 locations (Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and La Ceiba). She said it was an interesting proposition since she was downsizing her company and need more part-time asistance rather than a full time person there.

What do you think about this ? Right now as I'm writing this my computer is churning up some of the work she asked me for next week. I will keep working this weekend. At the same time I'm monitoring another task i'm doing for a US company (more on that later). Well, the computer is done. Time for me to get back to work.

Well, at least this blog is free.