Today I received three phone calls from businesses offering me a "free" mobile phone as part of an offer that I didn't bother to listen to.

The callers were either well schooled to "play" dumb or may be they were sucked in by the sales talk that had been drummed into them. They didn't understand that phone companies go broke if they give away phones and don't receive additional payments via a secondary means.

Here's a few of my opinions of "free"

• There is nothing that is free. Every thing has its price that has to be paid. That price may not be money.

• Sometimes things that are free are free because the value they provide is close to nothing.

• If the free stuff really has great value then who is underwriting the actual cost of the free stuff, and why are they doing it?

The free offers I'm talking about here are those "free" offers that you know are not really "free".

I think you may get the point here but just in case I'll spell it out ... walk away from "free" it's not worth it.

If the offer is so compelling that you must just take it, then decide how you will contribute back to the source, in exchange for what you received.