Likely, you want more spending money - getting a raise is probably beyond your control, switching jobs may not be a viable option, and cutting money out of other areas of your budget has proved difficult at best. Why not save some money on your long distance plan?

There's hundreds, if not thousands of options for long distance calling plan. Most people take the easy route and just pick a plan seemingly at random, without doing any extra research - by putting in a few minutes of research, and knowing what to look for you could switch long distance plans and save huge money.

Statistics are important to determining your long distance calling plan - track your calls for a week or two, how many are international? How long are they, on average? What time do you do the majority of your calling? If you don't want to handle tracking yourself, use an old phone bill.

Once you have this information, look in to your long distance providers plans, make up a 'sample month' (or, use last month) and calculate how much you would've paid in long distance. In this step, it's recommended you call your provider's customer service number and ask them if you are on their lowest priced plan - most providers will go out of their way to save you money in order to keep a customer happy.

Now you know how much your current provider will cost you, however, what if you switch to another provider? Sites such as SaveOnPhone.com rank the cheapest long distance providers with a set of details, and can help you determine if the best plan is to use an external long distance provider.

Once you've got to this point, you've likely picked a provider, be careful however, there's some hidden "features" of many of these plans. Check out their minimum billing increments, unfortunately, the majority of these providers bill in one minute increments, meaning a 1 second call would still cost you a full 1 minute rate - if you can find a 30-second, 6-second or per-second billing provider you should take in to account how they could save you money.

Many providers have a set-minimum fee which you will be charged on your first X calls, to ensure the company makes enough money off you. Watch out for these deals, as they can end up looking very cheap, but ending up costing a lot more money than you expected.

If you really want to save the most money in your long distance calling, or any calling at all, remember that these plans change up to every 3 months - if you regularly review the available plans you can ensure you're always on the lowest cost plan.