Everybody Loves Your Money

I’ve been reading about Circuit City in the news the last couple days.  Apparently they have a new strategy to lay off about 3400 store workers that they believe they are paying over “market” wages to.  So, these people, who have undoubtedly been good performers for them (which is how they got pay raises) are just tossed out on their ears.  That hardly seems like a good business decision.  Why would a company throw out many of their higher performers to hire new employees that have to be trained.  I think Costco has shown that paying a reasonable wage and benefits has very positively impacted their business.  I don’t need to shop in a store with a bunch of ignorant employees that make the same wages as a fast food worker.  I expect expertise and knowledge about the products they offer.

So, good luck Circuit City.  I hope that your plan fails miserably.  I can tell you that you’ve lost some revenue from me.

Jeffrey Strain over at TheStreet has a great article titled: 10 Reasons You Aren’t Rich.  Here are the 10 reasons but you need to go over to the article to see the detail behind each one.  Great post and it’s so simple.  This really is the secret in a nutshell.

1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think

2. You Aren’t Patient

3. You Have Bad Habits

4. You Have No Goals

5. You Haven’t Prepared

6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck

7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money

8. You Invest in Things You Don’t Understand

9. You’re Financially Afraid

10. You Ignore Your Finances

AMEN

I am so pissed, I can hardly see straight.  I have been using a Dell 962 printer for the last couple years.  I’ve intentionally been conservative about printing color printouts so that I can preserve my color cartridge and make it last longer.  Well, apparently Dell doesn’t like you to do that.  I’m getting an error that says, “Right cartridge incorrect”.  I had this happen once before while the printer was under warranty.  I spent an hour on the phone with Dell at that time and they shipped a new cartridge.  Like magic, that fixed it.   As I’ve read online as I’m trying to fix this problem again (printer is out of warranty so Dell says I can pay $99 to get their help), apparently many of the printer companies set expirations on their printer cartridges to force you to buy another one.

The kicker is that it won’t print AT ALL.  When I try to print in black and white, or make a copy etc, it just comes out blank.  And of course the printer is blinking feverishly telling me that the cartridge is incorrect.  Talk about a crappy error message.  How can a printer cartridge that’s been in my printer for at least 9 months all of a sudden be “incorrect”.  It should say, “Hey sucker.  Go to dell.com and buy another cartridge to replace your 75% full one.  We’ve decided we need to increase our revenues so we are going to hold your printer hostage until you send us $29.99.”  ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

Did I mention I’m pissed?  I’m trying to make copies of my mother’s documents before I send them in to the insurance company for her fire claim.  Now I’m going to have to drive somewhere, find a copy machine and then pay for copies while my USELESS Dell printer sits here sucking up electricity.

Have you ever seen “Office Space”?  You know that scene where they finally take the fax machine out to the field and show it some justice?  I’m so close to getting a sledge hammer, taking this piece of crap outside and playing a little hillbilly baseball with it!

As I sit here reading stories about the fact that there are 2.9 million millionaires in the US and that a million doesn’t buy as much as it used to, I have to stop and reflect.  I need to decide whether to type this story on my laptop, or my desktop PC or whether I should stop and warm up dinner in my microwave and then come back to typing or whether I should take my new truck out to a restaurant to spend the equivalent of a third world worker’s wages for a week on a quick dinner, or whether I should just go sit and watch my 32″ tv while munching on a few snacks.  The choices are infinite.

I won’t sit here tonight worrying about whether rebels will come break down my door, take my child and kill my wife.  I won’t worry about whether it’s going to rain and come through my roof on this 35 degree night.  I won’t wonder if my daughter will die of malaria or starvation.  I don’t have to worry about whether we have enough food in the fridge.  If I lose my job tomorrow I don’t have to worry about which street corner I’ll sleep on.  As I sit here typing I’m not worried about planes flying overhead dropping bombs in my vicinity because a suspected terrorist is living nearby.  No, my neighborhood won’t be flattened.

Okay, so my personal needs are being met.  The safety of my family is covered.  So what the hell am I going to worry about?

One day in the media:

I’m afraid of dog food

I’m afraid of politics

I’m afraid of nuclear bombs

I’m afraid of antibiotics

Who are you? I’m afraid of alzheimers

Geez it’s hot in here. I’m afraid of global warming

I’m afraid of Iraq

I’m afraid of Terrorists

I’m afraid of drugs

I’m afraid of debt pushers

You get the point.  Is it human nature to have to worry about something?  I’m guilty of fretting about damn near anything.  I’m going to try to stop.  My reality is 100000% better than over 90% of the rest of the world’s reality.  I think it’s high time that we should stop worrying so damn much about everything in our day to day lives and focus more on what we are grateful for.  And it wouldn’t hurt to spread a little of our good fortune around for others.  So, either go out and help someone, or at the very least, go click on the hungersite and give a bowl of food to someone you lazy bastard!

http://www.hungersite.com

There is a great post over at Scottburns.com about Home Depot.  I remember reading Scott’s column regarding his experience at Home Depot and I just shook my head.  I have had my share of frustrating experiences there.  Most of the time it’s related to the length of time it takes to get through the checkout lines.  I’ve literally sat there for 25-30 minutes to get to a cashier.  The employees don’t seem to care that I’ve just given up 30 minutes of my life waiting to give them my money either.

So, it was very interesting to me to see that the CEO of Home Depot (Frank Blake) sent Scott a note (which he posted on his site) talking about all that Home Depot is doing to win back their customers.  For now, I’m going to Lowe’s.  Since I’m in the middle of building our lake house, I’m spending a lot of time in the home improvement stores and HD certainly has lost their share of my business.  Before my bad experiences, I just went to Home Depot, loaded up what I needed, and moved on.  I never really paid attention to price (which is rare for me) because I knew I needed it and had an expectation that they were giving me the best price due to their volume.  Apparently I’ve spent too much time in Costco and have started to have the false assumption that other stores are treating me as well as Costco does.  Now that I’ve been going to Lowe’s, I’ve been surprised that more than a few of their items are cheaper than HD.

Anyway, go check out the article on Scott Burns Assetbuilder site.  It’s worth the read, just like many of his other articles are.

Ken Lay’s children inherit 4000 pensions:

• http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56645

America Online To Build Three Million Home Pages For The Homeless:

• http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29147

Geico To Save 15% Or More By Discontinuing Advertising:

• http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33027

Illegal Immigrants Returning To Mexico For American Jobs:

• http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47978

And a visit to the Onion is never complete without some Knowledge from Hebert Kornfeld, the baddest azz Accountz Receivable Playa in the world:  (If bad words offend you, please visit Disney)

• http://www.theonion.com/content/node/25830

You gotta read this article:

http://www.stuffed.co.nz/index.php?option=com_cont… 

Apparently Glen has never been all that good at math.  He set up a promotion at the grand opening of a California Porsche store where if you bought one new Porsche, you got the second one free.  Why doesn’t this stuff ever happen to me?  I could have gone for an extra $120,000.  I especially like Glen’s financing plan for low income buyers.  Kudos to Jane Cameron for doing the whole deal with no money down!

Update: See this post for more information about this story

As you can tell from reading the title, I confess to being 3 years late opening a college savings account (529) for my daughter.  I guess I found myself a little confused about exactly how to go about it and never spent the time to figure out what the best plan of attack would be.  Well, I finally did some analysis and jumped on board.

The state that I live in (Washington st) only has one college savings plan called GET (Guaranteed Education Tuition).  I have never been too hot on it.  Basically it lets you buy tuition at today’s prices (although it seems like the price is a bit inflated right now) and then guarantees that your tuition is covered at any Washington state school later.  (Actually, it may even let you attend out of state colleges but I’m not sure).  Anyway, like I said, I’m not real hot on that plan.

So, I went to savingforcollege.com and started reviewing various state’s plans.  You can enroll in any state’s plan even if you don’t live in that state.  In some states you may find that there is an additional advantage for being a resident in that state, but that usually equates to a state income tax break on any contributions.  I don’t have an income tax in my state and that really wasn’t a consideration.

I opened an account online at collegeadvantage.com.  This is the Ohio program and was rated as having some of the lowest fees of any state plan and also had some good investment choices.  Index funds were an important consideration for me and they have a decent selection of Vanguard funds.  I have set up the account to contribute $150 per month and also put some money in there to begin with.  We’ll probably increase our contributions and make some “one time” contributions as time goes on.  We will also make sure that all her grandparents and extended family members know about it in case they’d like to help contribute to her future college costs.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with a 529 plan, it’s basically a way to invest after tax money in to an account and face no tax consequences at all when money is withdrawn to pay for the beneficiary’s education costs.  You can choose any family member as a beneficiary and can change that beneficiary if plans change later.  If you ever want to withdraw the money, you can withdraw all contributions without tax consequences but will pay regular taxes on all gains, plus a 10% penalty.  Obviously you should consult a tax advisor for the full details.  (and assuming this post lives on for a long time it’s also good to contact a tax advisor for current information)

Okay, this has nothing to do with personal finance but I couldn’t help putting it up.  This woman is bat sheet CRAZY!$#%.  She is being charged with a hate crime for throwing boric acid on her neighbors during a dispute.  This reminds me of so many incidents from my days as a police officer.  Anyway, you’ve got to watch it all the way through.  I wonder if it works well as a hair conditioner.  Maybe I’ll call her later and ask her if she saw any improvement in her hair.

Love it or hate it, I still enjoyed reading it:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11… 

I think I found the most interesting sentences to be:

“In Brentwood, where the houses start at $3 million, the housewives complain about what a terrible country America is. In Clinton, South Carolina, where the textile mill closed fifteen years ago and there is real hardship, the young men still believe in America and their fiancees at Presbyterian College wait for them while they fight in Iraq.”

Click here to read the article