Financial & Travel Musings

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One of the wonders of technology these days is that heated mattress pads have moved on from just being used on beds and now extend to all kinds of heated clothing that let you carry on various pastimes well into the coldest days of winter when you’d otherwise have to lay off ’til the spring.

As with the electric mattresses that you leave on overnight you need to be careful with the wiring of these though as the outdoor clothing obviously isn’t run from the mains you don’t get the issues of being electrocuted that you could potentially have with the indoor stuff. Even so, it makes sense to avoid treating these items roughly as you’re just going to wear them out otherwise.

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With the financial world seemingly falling to bits around the world one of the clear growth areas is that of debt collection agencies obviously.

Ordinarily, these have had fairly pedestrian growth but, of course, with the massive increase in people experiencing financial difficulties many financial outfits have outsourced their collection process to specialist debt collection agencies. They’re not necessarily “the bad guy” but it’s best to be aware of your rights ahead of their arrival (these vary considerably around the world) so that you know what they’re allowed to do and what isn’t on.

Typically for instance you’ll find that they’re not allowed to take the “tools of your trade” on the basis that they should leave you with some means of getting an income to repay the debt. The question, of course, is: what are the “tools of your trade”?

The problem of definition is endemic in this industry. Obviously, if they’re coming to take enough belongings off you to sell and thereby repay the debt, then clearly they will want to take the more saleable items yet in a lot of cases that will include computer equipment which a lot of us use to make our living.

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You might think that it’s obviously in a garage, but that’s not the case.

Yes, a garage will shelter your car but the problem is that it doesn’t let it dry off so well and therefore you can find that you end up with more rust on a car stored in a garage than one that sits outside. In fact the best option is usually to consider carports instead.

These give you the shelter but the free flow of air around the car makes for a dry car and therefore less rust.

And, of course, they’re a whole lot cheaper too!

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