Everybody Loves Your Money

Yet another example where it’s clear that banks are out to make as much money off of you as possible. I will never use a commercial bank again. I’d much rather use a credit union, who’s sole point of existence is to provide products and services to it’s members without making a profit. If you have a choice, why choose an institution that needs to make a profit? Credit Unions offer all the same services as commercial banks……..

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29879567

It feels good to be home after having spent a few days in Las Vegas. While the weather wasn’t outstanding, it was warm enough to lay out by the pool and get a little bit of a sunburn. I was hoping to get a nice tan while I was down there but I ended up only tanning my liver. Lot’s of delicious drinks and way too much gambling. Needless to say, I really did help out the local economy while we were there.

I’d say the highlight of the trip was dinner on Monday night. My wife, sister, brother in law and his sister and brother in law all went down to Vegas together and we went out to dinner on Monday night in the New York, New York casino. We went to a nice asian restaurant that was off to the side of the casino. The food was delicious (although I’m convinced food always tastes a little better after you’ve been drinking). As we were eating, I decided that I’d cover the entire drink tab during dinner and we encouraged everyone to order whatever they wanted over the course of a couple hours. As we sat there eating and drinking, my brother in law said, “What have you done with my brother in law?” His point was that it was very out of character for me to spend so freely and I have to agree that it was slightly out of character for me. Do I have any regret from that evening? Absolutely not. I think that it’s through the many frugal actions I’ve taken over the years that has given me the ability to spend a couple hundred dollars on drinks for my family without having regret, or concern about how I would pay for it. Life is definitely about moderation and this was one of those extreme moments for me that is tempered by many of the other more conservative actions I’ve taken with our finances.

So, I’m back and the wallet is definitely a little lighter. We spent time playing the slots more than anything and statistically, I think they are basically just reverse ATM machines that benefit the casinos. I also played a bit of Blackjack but my luck didn’t change there either.

Interestingly enough, one of my best experiences while we were there in the casinos was watching a man playing craps with his girlfriend. This man was there with his girlfriend and was on an incredible winning streak. When I walked up he had roughly $20,000 in chips sitting along the edge of the table and was betting about $5000 at a time. A man that had been there much longer than I had been leaned over to tell me that this guy had walked up with $100 and had built that up to over $20K. The atmosphere at the table was very tense and the casino had two supervisors, the Director of Security, and 4 workers running the table. I think this may have had something to do with the amount of money this guy was betting, but it was even more likely that it was due to his mannerisms and overall demeanor. This guy was African American, thin, and dressed in a white shirt, dark pants and very large white leather shoes. The shoes looked like your classic leather dress shoe but they were white and I would bet he had a good 4 inches of open space between the ends of his toes and the front of his shoes. Anyway, his girlfriend was a thin, short haired blonde woman and was visibly nervous about how things were going. While the girlfriend was very quiet, the man was anything but quiet. He was yelling at his girlfriend, the guys working the Craps table, and anyone else that was within 100 feet. The man had decided that his girlfriend was bringing him the most luck so he had her stand at the end of the craps table and toss the dice each time. Things were exciting and loud as he had a pretty long winning streak and was very vocal. After I had been standing there for about 10 minutes the man’s luck started to change. He started getting upset as he was losing $3000 to $4000 each time his girlfriend rolled a 7. I could sense things going down hill and decided to drift back a little further as the man started scolding his girlfriend because she wasn’t using the exact motions that he had previously instructed her to use. He kept telling her to shake her hand back and forth X amount of times and then be sure that the dice were thrown directly up the middle of the table. I felt sorry for her as I could see her hands were trembling due to her being so scared that she wouldn’t throw the dice just right.

Finally, as things continued to go south, the man decided that what he needed to do was exchange all his $100 chips for $500 chips. He yelled at the guys working the table to change all his chips. They counted up all the black chips, had the supervisor review the counts and then counted out about $20,000 in white $500 chips. Amazingly, as he started playing again, he started to win. When I walked away he was probably back up to about $25,000. Anyway, it was very interesting to watch and the best part was that it was free entertainment.

How could I not post about this article? I found myself feeling less than sympathetic for Ken Karpman. If ever there was a poster child for why you need to have emergency savings and a fall back plan, Ken Karpman is it. Ken was making $750,000 a year when times were good. He has now been reduced to delivering pizzas and his marriage is stumbling. I’m sure Ken realizes now that consumerism doesn’t make the man. Through their confidence in his ability to make that level of income, they failed to plan for the time that Ken couldn’t make that kind of income. It sounds like Ken is far from bottom but I guess you have to give him credit for at least trying to provide for his family.

My recommendation to Ken would be to sell off some of the many personal possessions his family accumulated during the “good” times. It sounds like there are some jet skis, and designer clothes that might cover a house payment or two.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7111098&page=1

The Boston Globe has an outstanding feature called “The Big Picture”. I subscribe to the RSS feed for it and am continually impressed with the amazing images that they show there.

Today’s feature is called, “Scenes From the Recession” and shows various images from around the world that are related to the current economic downturn. Take a look, I think you’ll really enjoy it:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/scenes_from_the_recession.html

Okay. I’ve had it with the bailouts. My new personal position is that we scrap the bailouts and let things fail. Once enough has failed and the losers leave the market, we can begin to rebuild without the trillions in national debt. The latest news is that AIG has paid out over $170 million in bonuses and it was also revealed who some of the recipients of the AIG bailout money are.

Some of the top recipients:

Barclays of the UK
Deutsche Bank
BNP Paribas of France
Goldman Sachs
Bank of America

So, not only do we get to bail out very large institutions who took ridiculous risks, we also get to send a lot of that money to other countries. I wonder if they would do the same?

Bottom line is that I’ve had it. I haven’t really supported the bailouts up to this point but I’ve just gone along with the “smart” people’s advice. No more.

I think we’d be better off if we simply let all the players fail and then move on. I think you’d find that the stock market would respond once they understood what the score is. There are hundreds and hundreds of financial institutions out there that made good business decisions. It’s time that they got to reap the rewards of managing their business in a responsible way by getting many new customers as the losers crash.

This idea that we can just throw trillions of our money at these institutions is just crazy!

If you’ve been reading all the personal finance sites on the Internet you know that it’s important to sweat the small stuff when it comes to keeping your spending in check but it’s REALLY critical to sweat the big stuff.

We’ve been doing a great job of keeping our expenses low (saving 52% of our income now) by watching what we spend our money on and “reality checking” each other when we do think we should spend some money on a “want”. If I had a nickel for every time I have just about talked myself in to a new laptop or some other expensive electronics gadget, I’d be able to offer my own stimulus package to the U.S.. Well, just when I thought I had everything under control, today I found myself looking at cars. Yes, I was surfing Craigslist for 2006 or 2007 Honda Accords. Let me explain my thought process:

Pros:
Our current Honda is a 2000 Accord with almost 100K miles on it
We are taking a road trip this summer and a nice newer reliable car would be great
We are starting to see more issues with our current Honda (check engine light has come on in the past, etc)
We have officially broken our record by having this car for over 8 years
I love the smell of a new car
Good used cars are relatively inexpensive as compared to “pre-economic crisis” prices
We can pay cash

Cons:
We just put a timing belt and water pump on the Honda
It’s starting and stopping like it’s supposed to
It would be nice to keep the cash in the bank to a) yield a little interest and b) have a larger emergency fund
We are putting a new roof on our house shortly
In the big scheme of things, money in the bank is probably better than equity in a car

So, how close did I come? I had scheduled an appointment with a woman to see her 2007 Honda Accord with only 8000 miles on it. After sitting at home waiting for my wife to arrive from work, I thought long and hard about whether we should go look at it. I know myself and if I had gone, I would have probably reinforced that I was doing the right thing, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or not. Once you get the new car smell in your nostrils, it’s pretty much game over.

I’m happy to report that I came to my senses. I called the woman back and told her that we had changed our mind and would not be coming to see the car. As I was sitting here feeling like I’d just talked myself off a ledge, my wife came home and said, “Oh honey, I forgot to tell you. The check engine light came on in the car again.” Be strong. Be strong………

If you are still employed you may find yourself quite comfortable eating whatever happens to suit your fancy each day. Maybe it’s steak, or maybe you’re just fine with Top Ramen or mac and cheese. The good news is that you have a choice on what you eat every day.

Unfortunately more and more people don’t have that choice. They open their cupboards and there is nothing in them. Many of them probably aren’t used to being in this situation and so the feelings of dread and hunger might be almost unbearable.

If you are still employed and able to pay all of your bills each month, maybe you can help out your neighbors. My wife and I have decided to contribute money each month to our local food bank while we can afford to. How did I go about doing this? It was really quite easy.

You can Google “hometown food bank” where hometown is your local city or county. In most cases that should give you the right result for your area. I did that and was able to find a food bank near me that needed volunteers and more importantly needed cash donations. Some food banks are pretty progressive and have Paypal buttons right on their site. Many others just have an address to mail checks to.

After finding the food bank that I wanted to donate to, I actually looked them up on my company’s employee giving site. If you work for a large company you may also have that option. I ended up using my company giving site to automatically take money out of each paycheck for the food bank. They take care of mailing the donation to the food bank so it’s literally trouble free for us.

Anyway, if you have the means to help, this might be one of the most important times in your life to give to others.

Jamba Juice has decided to get in to the breakfast food game and is offering $1 bowls of oatmeal in March.  All you need to do is print out this coupon!

http://www.oatmealforabuck.com/