I don’t know about anyone else but I’m a little behind in the bills. It happens. (And it’s the worst economy since the Great Depression, right?) Anyways, I’m not the only one who’s aware of my lag. My 6 or 7 or 20 creditors know it too… and they constantly blow up my phone to remind me. I had turned off my ringer in order to avoid them but doing that meant I missed calls from people I WANTED to talk to.

Well today, I figured out a way to avoid the calls. It’s all about creating a “silent” custom ringtone, setting that as your default, and then assigning your friends the ringtone you want. Now when random 800-numbers call me the phone “rings silent.”

Wanna do it yourself? Here’s how:

  • Use the new “Voice Memos” app that is now standard on your iPhone and create a 30-second recording that is completely silent.
  • When finished, find the voice memo in the list and then hit “Share.”
  • Email it to yourself.
  • Download/drag the attachment to your desktop.
  • Launch iTunes and drag the file into your library.
  • Find the file in your music then control+click (or right click) and select “Show in Finder.”
  • Rename the file to whatever (I picked “silence_is_golden”) and then append the file extension (which is currently .m4a).
  • Append the file to .m4r. (When you get the warning message asking if you really want to do that, select yes or “Use .m4r”)
  • Now if you go back to iTunes and select the “Ringtones” selection on the left menu (under Library) it will show up.
  • Connect your iPhone.
  • Go to the “Ringtones” tab in your iPhone settings and select “Sync Ringtones.”
  • It’s either going to be in there with your others or if you don’t use Ringtones typically (like me) it will show up in the list below. Select “Sync” and then “Only Selected Ringtones” and make sure the “silence_is_golden” one is selected.
  • Now Sync your iPhone.
  • Once it’s done, pick up your phone and go to Settings, then Sounds, and then Ringtones. You’ll see it in the list.
  • Select it as your Default.
  • Now go to your Recent Calls and/or Favorites and assign all those you want to talk to the ring tone that you want.
  • When they call, it will ring! When anyone else calls, it will ring silent!

Take that Bank of America!