Free disposable telephone number

My parents had a Hot Springs hot tub that stopped working after years of repairs. Rather than fix it (again) or try and sell it, they decided to list it for free in their local newspaper, and in doing so provided their home telephone number for some lucky individual to arrange pickup. The day it was listed, an early-bird called at some God-awful hour of the morning asking to stop by. The problem was that the phone calls kept coming. The ad only ran once, but weeks later they still received calls asking if the hot tub was still available. What they needed was a disposable telephone number.

And that is exactly what Craigsnumber offers--a free disposable telephone number! If you live in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., the telephone number is from a local area code. You can configure this telephone number to expire in one hour, one day, one week, or one month depending on your need.

If you're looking for a similar service for email, try KasMail which gives you up to 25 disposable email addresses at a time.

Travel with the best

It's already been established that I'm cheap, but I believe there are some items that are differentiated in such a way that they deserve a price premium. This differentiation can be something such as the Dyson I previously wrote about, which never loses suction, unlike any other vacuum cleaner I've ever used, and is both elegant as well as rugged.

I've been traveling on business for at least 15 years and am Gold medallion on Delta, so I spend too much time in the air. Packing for tomorrow's trip to the City by the Bay reminded me of how many suitcases I've gone through in my life. I started off with an American Tourister set that quickly wore out. Then I went with a set from Samsonite, but even it didn't hold up well. Eventually I started buying "disposable" luggage from the Samsonite outlet store, figuring that if the bags weren't going to hold up, then I didn't want to spend a lot of money on them.

Three years ago I stumbled upon Briggs & Riley. Their motto is, "Guaranteed for life. Simple as that." A coworker purchased a bag of their & just raved about it, so I looked into buying a set but couldn't see spending $250 on just a single bag. On my next trip, the expandable handle on my garment bag broke.

So upon my return I began investigating exactly which garment bag I wanted to purchase as a replacement for my broken one. On a whim I decided to search eBay and see if they had any garment bags listed. It was my lucky day. There was a Briggs & Riley large wheeled rolling garment bag with a current bid of $35 that had several zippers broken... but who cares? They have a lifetime guarantee!

I entered my high bid amount of $60 and ended up winning two days later at a cost of $50 along with $15 shipping. After receiving the bag, I took it into my local Briggs & Riley certified repair center, and two weeks later the bag was as good as new. Since then, I've added one of their U-75 Garment Bag on Wheels to my set. I've had my eye out for one of their rolling computer bags, but I'm holding out for an eBay deal.

While their vacuums suck, Dyson rocks

Needing to replace our vacuum cleaner and tired of buying vacuum bags, three years ago I picked up a "demo" Dyson DC07 via eBay for $145 + $20 shipping. I wanted to see if the Dyson stood up to the hype. It does. To date it is one of my best eBay purchases.

Over the last three years, my DC07 has been abused. Aside from use as our family vacuum cleaner, I've cleaned out the fireplace with it, used it to clean my work truck, and often treated it as a shop vac. With the abuse, a few things have given out--the hose cracked (repaired with duct tape), the elbow on the handheld floor cleaner broke, and the hinge on the canister bottom cracked. The vacuum was completely usable despite these problems, but I like to keep my tools in good condition so I decided to price out replacement parts.

I found a place in the UK that sold the parts for around $90 shipped. On a whim, I decided to contact Dyson to see whether they sold replacement parts directly to consumers. They did, but I was confused--the customer rep was more interested in knowing what items broke and where they broke rather than taking my order. A customer rep who cares is a novelty, so I walked him through the problems I had with the three items. The Dyson rep explained that the hose cracking was a known product defect and would be replaced free of charge. The same applied to the handheld floor cleaner. While they didn't have any feedback on cracked hinges, he said that Dyson stands by its product. He was apologetic in explaining that they don't have just the bottom to the canister but that a new canister of course has a new bottom, and I would receive a new one for reporting this problem. So despite my DC07 being out of warranty, Dyson shipped me all of the replacement parts free. And no, they didn't even charge shipping. I was floored (no pun intended). There's a service lesson in this story somewhere. I'm a Dyson customer for life.

Best financial advice

Monday night in Community Group we were asked to share advice we'd give to a newly engaged and a newlywed couple. One piece of advice I'd offer is fortunately one I learned early in my marriage.

I've since figured out that people who teach real estate investment classes and sell tapes, CDs, and books about real estate investing normally make more money teaching about real estate investing than they actually do investing in real estate. Years ago my wife and I attended a real estate investment class from John Adams here in Atlanta where we learned very little about the topic at hand but took away some completely unexpected wisdom. Mr. Adams offered the following advice that we apply to this day: finance things that appreciate and pay cash for things that depreciate.

In practice, this means financing your home since it is an appreciating asset. For most Americans, that's not a problem--I don't know of anyone sitting on a big pile of cash who is considering using this cash to buy a home. The second part of Mr. Adams' sage advice, however, means saving enough money to purchase a new or used vehicle rather than financing it. I had done this most of my life, but then again, I drove a crappy 1988 Volkswagen Fox station wagon when I met my wife. I remember the time my wife and I purchased our first vehicle together. We decided to apply this principle, so we saved. I never thought I'd be able to pay cash for a nice car, but we started with an older vehicle and bought a used Ford Explorer with cash. Through the years we've continued to upgrade to newer and newer vehicles as we've saved more and more until last year when we were finally able to buy a new car (minivan, actually).

Why does this principle make so much sense? The answer has to do with the "cost" of money. If you're financing a $30,000 vehicle over 5 years at 5% which depreciates 20% a year, your real cost of the vehicle is actually $7,500 for the first year. Here is the calculation: $1,500 interest ($30k cost x 5% simple interest) + $6,000 in depreciation ($30,000 cost x 20% depreciation per year) on the vehicle. In paying cash for the vehicle, your real cost is only the $6,000 depreciation on the vehicle, which is 21% less than the cost had you financed it.

But Dorkydad, I want a brand new BMW 650i convertible! Tough--so do I, but at $78,800, the only way I'm going to get one is by starting to save now. If you want to do this (pay cash for things that depreciate), make some sacrifices with your first vehicle. Maybe it's not the newest, maybe it has a standard transmission, maybe it has 100,000 miles, and maybe it's not the color you had in mind, but trust me--the peace of mind in not having a car payment as well as the extra cash you'll have each month will more than make up for any buyer's remorse.

I've also discovered that this advice marries up well with some biblical wisdom. Proverbs 22:7
establishes that borrowers become slaves/servants to a lender, so I see Paul's statement, "You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men" found in 1 Corinthians 7:23 as encouraging us to stay out of debt.