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FINANCES | If you're still using a CALLING CARD, holiday calls may cost too much.

LONG-DISTANCE rates are so cheap that you probably don't even consider the cost when you pick up your home phone. But that's a mistake when you're traveling because a 20-minute call on the road can cost anywhere from $1 to more than $20, depending on how you make it.

We're not just talking about sky-high rates from hotel phones. Consider a typical holiday scenario: You don't want to run up your parents' (or your kids') phone bill while you're visiting, so you dig an AT&T calling card out of your wallet and dial 1-800-CALL-ATT. That'll cost you. Unless you have enrolled in a special calling-card plan, AT&T charges 89 cents a minute, plus a $1.25 surcharge per call. That comes to $19.05 for a 20-minute call. (The surcharge may be even higher: $2.25 if you use a credit card instead of a calling card, and a whopping $4.99 if you use a calling card issued by your local phone company. Tack on another 30 cents if you make the call from a pay phone.)

A similar call using an MCI WorldCom calling card costs $16.25. With Sprint, it would cost you $12.79 to $14.79, depending on your long-distance plan. Meanwhile, if your host has a 5-cent-a-minute calling plan, the call would cost $1 dialed direct.

So perhaps it's time to ditch the old etiquette and encourage family members to dial direct when they're visiting. (You don't charge them for water and electricity, do you?) But if your family isn't that laissez-faire, there are other ways to keep long-distance costs within reason.

Use your cell phone. A simple solution, assuming you have a reasonable calling plan.

Use a prepaid phone card. Rates vary, but you can find prepaid cards with rates as low as 10 cents a minute with no per-call surcharge. (One example is GE's Prepaid Virtual Phone Card, available at www.geprepaid.com.)

Sign up for a calling-card plan. If you want to stick with the Big Three long-distance companies, you can get more reasonable (but not the cheapest) calling-card rates by signing up for a special calling-card plan. Under AT&T's One Rate Calling Card plan, you pay 25 cents a minute with no per-call surcharge--plus a $1-a-month service fee. Sprint's FonCard savings-plan rates are identical. MCI's Calling Card Savings Plan costs $2 a month, but you pay just 15 cents a minute.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:19 AM