Geek and Cheap - Guide to Money, Investing & Technology

Several months ago, I posted about a new VOIP technology called magicjack. At the time my local area code was not available and so I decided to hold off on testing it. A few days ago I noticed that my area code had become available and I decided to take advantage of the 30 day free trial. I received my “jack” on Tuesday and plugged it in as instructed. The instructions tell you to essentially plug it in to a USB port, plug in a phone and you should hear a dial tone. Unfortunately, this did not happen for me.

I could not get a dial tone at all. I used different phones and tried all sorts of things with no success. I was able to call out using the phone application but not directly with a phone. So, I thought let’s try tech support. Well, magicjack does not offer phone support, they only offer support via live chat. I spent the next SEVEN hours chatting with 4 different supposed techies. I became incredibly frustrated and never found a solution to my problem. Finally it was determined that I had a defective magicjack and they said that they would send me a new one.

I also emailed the CEO of Magicjack, Dan and one of his assistants promptly emailed me back and said that they would indeed send me a replacement and would refund my original shipping charge since I needed to send the original defective jack back to them.

We will see how the second try goes. I will keep you posted, but am a little discouraged. I was so excited about the new technology and thought it would be a better solution than Skype, but that remains to be seen.

Have any of you had any experience with Magicjack? What are your thoughts?

http://www.magicjack.com

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I have been a big fan of the popular web site Priceline.com for several years. If you are not familiar with the web site, it allows you to “name your own price” for hotels, flights, rental cars, etc.. I have used their site to book hotels many times and have had moderate success. I’m sure many of you have booked a hotel room on Priceline to then find out that it was a dump. If you have experienced this I have the solution for you!

It is a website/forum called BetterBidding.com. This web site is a great idea, because it allows you to search for a destination and a rating before you name your price on Priceline. Other users post successful bids and the prices that they paid so that you can get a sense of what you should try to pay and which hotel you will be awarded after bidding. The thing that Priceline does not want you to know is that they only have 3-4 hotels for each star rating in each city. With BetterBidding.com, you can see what the hotels will be in each major city and therefore know how nice of a hotel you will probably be staying in.

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I are going to a wedding in Baltimore in April and the hotels that the bride and groom suggested ranged from 189-149 per night. With BetterBidding.com and Priceline we were able to get a great historic hotel in the Inner Harbour area of Baltimore for only $73/night. I think that is great and I hope you can use these tactics to save yourself a bundle of money.

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It’s Almost Halloween!

Something that can be as scary as Halloween’s ghosts and goblins is the
thought of recovering from a disaster for which you were unprepared. If
you have not already, now is the time to learn what steps you can take
to prepare yourself. Financial Planning - A Guide to Disaster
Preparedness .

If you are recovering from an unexpected crisis, the information in this
guide can help you through the steps you need to take to recover,
Disaster Recovery: A Guide to Financial Issues .

The guides above were developed by the AICPA, Red Cross,
and the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE).

Visit www.FeedthePig.org
<http://www.feedthepig.org> for more money-saving tips.

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I have been a Blackberry user for the last 2 years and for the most part have nothing but good things to say about it. The only downside to the service is the huge extra monthly fee to use the Blackberry service. With my cell phone provider it cost me $40 extra per month for a sufficient data plan to send and receive email as well as surf the web. That is a LOT of money. So, after my contract expired I have been looking around for a cell phone and plan that would still allow me to receive email and surf the web.

I think I have found the answer. It is Palm’s newest treo-like device, the Centro.

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First off, do you have any kind of emergency fund that you are contributing to in case something happens and you need some cash fast? If not, I hope that you pay special attention to this post and open up an savings account. DO NOT open up a savings account at a normal brick and mortar bank. The interest rates and fees on these accounts are terrible. Often times the fees that you are charged are more than any sort of interest that you might make in any given month. Instead, go online and open up a savings account through one of the growing number of online banks. Do not be afraid, these banks are FDIC insured just like your local bank so you do not have anything to worry about. Some of the more popular online banks are listed below with the rate that their savings accounts are currently paying:

• FNBO Direct (First National Bank of Omaha)- 5.05% - No fees, No minimums
• EmigrantDirect - 4.75% - No fees, No minimums
• ING Direct - 4.30% - No fees, No minimums

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For fun, I recently went to a “seminar” for a company which advertised that they will help you pay off your mortgage in a significantly reduced amount of time. There are several companies which are touting this “revolutionary” idea. The general gist of this product is that you open up a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) with your bank and you then use it as a checking account to pay down all your bills. These companies then offer a software program that tells you when you need to transfer money between accounts to utilize your money for the longest amount of time possible. They threw around the term “discretionary” income and showed that if an extra $800/month were paid toward the principle, your mortgage would be paid off in no time. What they failed to mention is the fact that you are still paying extra towards your mortgage no matter if you have a HELOC or not. I don’t think the people in the “seminar” realized that if they just set aside some extra money they could effectively do this exact same thing, and not have to pay the upfront cost to this “company” of $3500!!! Yep, that’s right. That is a lot of money, and money that I could use to pay down my mortgage! They say that this money comes directly out of the HELOC so it is like you are not really paying it. But guess what, you are and it is money taken out against your house. What happened if you weren’t able to pay those bills through the HELOC – you would lose your home plain and simple. You are turning unsecured debts such as credit cards into secured debts by rolling them into a HELOC.

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I am not sure if you are like me, but I am tired of the large credit card companies making millions and millions of dollars of interest off of their customers. So, I decided I would only use credit cards for what I could afford and I would pay them off every month. If you are disciplined enough to do this, you should definitely look into some sort of reward card. There are hundreds out there, and a website called Cardweb has a list of some of the most popular.

Two of my personal favorites are the PenFed VISA, and the Costco Trueearnings American Express card. The PenFed VISA gives you 5% cash back on gas purchases and 1.25% cash back on everything else. There are no special restrictions for this card and the cash rewards are awarded to your statement every month which is great. The Penfed Visa also doesn’t have any sort of annual fee. The Costco American Express card is a little different. It gives you 3% cash back on dining out, 2% on travel and 1% on everything else. This card also doubles as your Costco card which is nice so that you can trim that wallet down a bit. You have to be a Costco member to apply for this card, and your membership actually renews on the card each year but there is no other annual fee. The rewards accumulate throughout the year and are awarded once a year in February.

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Over the past few months I have been keeping my eyes out for cheap alternatives to a land line at home. I currently just have a cell phone, but wanted something to use in the early evenings to minimize my cell phone bills. I have been looking at two different VOIP options that are a great deal cheaper than services like Vonage which cost at least $20+/month.

The first is MagicJack which is a nifty device that plugs into your USB port and acts as a phone jack. The device is similar to a USB flash drive but allows you to plug in any type of phone to have telephone service. This device is incredibly inexpensive at $40 which includes the device and an entire year of service. The only reason as to why I haven’t signed up for this yet is because the service does not offer a phone number in my area code as of yet. Apparently they are adding more area codes each week, but I am still waiting on a North Carolina area code.

The second option is a long time player in the industry—Skype. Skype has been around for several years and offers fairly clear phone calls over their network. You can use your computer to make Skype-to-Skype calls or to call other people who are not on Skype. I signed up for Skype and have been using it for several months. So far, I have spent around $30 for 3 months of service which includes voice mail and a local North Carolina number. The only thing that I really do not like about Skype is the fact that when you call someone your number shows as Unavailable on a Caller ID enabled phone. This can easily cause people to not answer the phone, because they think that you are a salesperson. Skype’s technology is fairly reliable and I have not had any calls dropped or much interference at all. If they can fix this Caller ID issue I would be happy to stick with them. Apparently, this feature is available internationally, but not in the US.

I really think that both MagicJack and Skype have an incredible opportunity to change the face of the telephone industry. I know that the typical mega-phone company is shaking in their boots as they see small companies offering incredible deals on services that have been relatively expensive for years. If you don’t get anything out of this post, at least investigate whether you can save money on some sort of VOIP provider as opposed to a monopoly phone or cable company.

http://www.magicjack.com

http://www.skype.com

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Hello, everyone! My name is Blair and this is my first attempt at any sort of blog. I am a 26 year old geek who is fascinated with all sorts of investing, computing and saving money. I hope that I can share a few tips that I have picked up and that others can share some insight on emerging technologies, saving money and building wealth.

I’ll give you a little background to help explain how I became interested in this sort of thing. I have been around computers since I was a young kid, and started programming in middle school. In the mid 90’s, I began designing web sites for Duke University and learned a great deal about HTML and graphic design. I then started a landscaping company in 1997 and actually sold it in early 2007. I still do a fair amount of web design work when the opportunity arises. I have always had that entrepreneurial spirit and hope to continue to feed it as I grow older. I am now working with a Real Estate Investment company and trying to begin to invest in some Real Estate of my own. That is a little background of how I came to be and I hope to add to this soon. But for now, have fun and I hope I can give you some helpful tips and I hope to learn from all of you.

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