Yes Andrew. You are correct.
Calling her French phone when she is outside of France is not a good idea.

Calling her AT & T phone will be cheaper. Exactly. It is a U.S. number.

Actually, I can just call from our home land line and it costs me nothing and her $1.29 a minute.

What am I saying...It ALL costs ME. She's not paying for any of it! :)

Bookmarking

Did I mention the Local Phone option in this thread? I guess not. I used this in Italy last year when I had an Italian cell phone.

http://www.localphone.com

Basically, Local Phone is a forwarding service. It lets you call a US phone number for free (or for whatever the cost to you you is of calling a US phone number - e.g. domestic long distance if that applies). You set up an account with Local Phone, and they charge a per-minute forwarding charge.

Say your US cell phone number is 212-555-1212 and you wish to call a French cell phone from your cell. You first register the French cell phone in your Local Phone account, then add 212-555-1212 as a number that can receive calls from that phone number. Then, Local Phone will give you some other US phone number to call. When you call that from 212-555-1212, it will detect you are calling from that number and automatically forward you to the French cell phone - and charge your Local Phone account a per-minute charge.

I think it cost me about 15 cents per minute for people to call me on my Italian cell phone (which had free incoming calls). I know, that's what you pay for Magic Jack (to call her French cell when she's in France), but that limits you to calling from your home right? If you use Local Phone, you could call her from a US cell phone as well - for about the same price (plus the cost of using minutes on your cell phone).

Just another option!