What have your utilities done for YOU lately?

Considering I live in an area where we have not yet had to turn off our A/C, we pay a good chunk of money to our power company. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that they were giving us $75 in free CFL light bulbs! Free!

While I’m always up for free things, I had put this offer off thinking that it would be complicated or time consuming. Then I got a reminder notice last week with a checklist for me to assess the type of lighting we have in our apartment. From that list, it recommended the appropriate type of light bulb. It had all sort of light bulbs- little ones that look like fake candles- to ones that look, well, like a regular light bulb. They even had flood lights and insect lights.

All I had to do to get my $75 worth of lights was to log on to my electricity account and denote how many of each blub I wanted. Shipping and handling was covered by my power company and they should arrive in six weeks!

How neat is that!?!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you are blessed today to be spending time with loved ones!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scams

Ahh.. ‘tis the season of more online shopping and more online scams! Here’s an example of one I got earlier this week and my comments are in (parentheses).

PayPal investigation of an unauthorized activity claim: #PP-587-442-704‏ (nice and scary-huh?)
From:
service@intl.paypal.com (who knew paypal had an international division- oh wait…they already are!)

You may not know this sender.Mark as safeMark as unsafe
Sent:
Mon 11/24/08 3:32 PM
To:
*******@hotmail.com
Dear *******@hotmail.com, (not using my name= big tip off!)

We recently noticed that a transaction may have been made without yourknowledge or consent. We are currently investigating the followingtransaction: -----------------------------------Details of Disputed Transaction -----------------------------------

Seller's name: Hagio-HostSeller's

email: yawvaar@gmail.comSeller's

transaction ID: 7YW39066PT6017814

Transaction date: Nov 25, 2008

Transaction amount: -$80.94 USD (80 bucks! Oh no!)

Your transaction ID: 30L88064FF065545B Case number: PP-587-442-704

To see the details of this case, log in to your PayPal account by following the link below and go to the Resolution Center. (yeah, I’ll click on it and get what type of virus?)https://www.paypal.com/login?......7YW39066PT6017814?=disputeTRANSACTION

The seller has been asked to provide information about this transaction.During this time the funds are not available in your account, but if theunauthorized activity claim is decided in your favor, we will fully refundyou for the amount of the transaction.Sincerely,Account Review Department

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and youwill not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal accountand click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.BC:PP-587-442-704:R1:USD80.94:11/25/2008:30L88064FF065545B (nice touch!)

Wow… well of course I logged into paypal the traditional way and low-and-behold no funny transactions! Althought, I can see why emails like this could trip up the elderly or the unfamiliar with technology.

Just one more thing to watch out for!

Gift Card Troubles

I still had almost $100 on a gift card to Macy’s leftover from wedding gifts, so back in October I bought a suitcase since my old one took one too many abuses from airline personnel and gave up the ghost. It wasn’t the cutest suitcase, but it was functional and with tax it came in just under the gift card amount. I was pleased and looked forward to getting it.

Then, two weeks later in early November, I got an email that they ran out of my suitcase.

Fabulous.

The problem was that when I made that purchase- I had cut up the gift card.

So, I called customer service and explained everything. After twenty minutes on the phone a representative said that they would send me a new card in the mail within two weeks.

Now, over two weeks later, I still don’t have the gift card.

So I called again. I got a new customer service person who said the last person didn’t properly put in the request for the new gift card. Another twenty minutes went by and she has assured me it will come in the next two weeks.

Anyone want to bet that I’ll actually get it in two weeks?

Marriage (and credit score) on the rocks?

This month’s Money magazine had an interesting article highlighting a lawsuit against credit companies that use information from certain vendors you’ve visited to determine if they can reduce or cancel your line of credit.

These vendors include:
Bars
Massage parlors
Billiard halls
Night clubs
Marriage counselors


Wow- basically this discriminates against young singles or those who are already in great emotional distress! I can see why a sudden increase in these vendors may precede a monetary crisis in one’s life, but I also see most of these vendors as the staples of young single people’s lives.

To discriminate against them using these criterions is just bad business practices. What do you think?

The (not so) free party

Last week Hubby’s work gave us free tickets to a ball!
I was so excited! Doesn’t that sound so grown-up?
“Sorry darling, I can’t chat- I’m getting ready for the ball tonight.”

I wore a dress I already owned, but to make it feel new again I bought all new accessories:
$25 shoes
$15 clutch
$12 for a necklace and earring set

It’s all stuff I’ll use again and all stuff I like, but it had me wondering: is it justifiable to spend $52 to go to a free event?

Splurging- without emptying your wallet

MSN shopping had an article posted today called: Wardrobe Economics: Save or Splurge. The idea was that with a tighter economy you’ll have to make some spending choices, and the article presented some guidelines for where to cut corners.

It had the following recommendations: Save on evening dresses (you’ll probably only wear them once), hosiery (all hosiery runs, why pay more?) and activewear (remember: you are going to go sweat in them).

However, it said to splurge on jeans. When I say splurge they recommend jeans in the $100-$200 range. Now I’ve spent $60 on jeans before and they’ve lasted me almost a decade. I’ve also had jeans that cost much less that have lasted 5+ years. I’ve also tried on those designer jeans and had little success with them fitting. So, I personally wouldn't spend that much for jeans.

It also suggests splurging on handbags- to the tune of over $200! With handbag trends changing every season, why would anyone (who is trying to save money) spend so much on a purse? There are good-enough quality bags at much lower prices points, and I don’t see why someone who is trying to save money in the short run would need to buy an investment-grade leather carryall.

I guess what I don’t like about articles like this is that they are really just mouthpieces for advertisers. I tend to buy good quality pieces that I can use through the years, but a $300 sweater and a $60 sweater will both fade and lose their shape after years of wearing. I also like buying trendy pieces, but only at trend store prices. Shoppers should splurge only if they are able to and only on an item that they know they personally will value. Also, a spurge doesn't have to mean that you spend more than three digits.

The moral of this article should really be: Any reasonably good shopper can find good quality at sensible price points. No matter what the item is.

Bittersweet Birthday

It’s true.
It’s official.
As of 7pm tonight, I enter the last year of my mid-twenties.

While many of my friends freaked out when they turned 25, it had been no big deal for me. However, that was last year. Last year I was recently graduated, employed and newly engaged. Everything was fabulous!

Now, unemployed and desperately awaiting my phone to ring for interviews- it makes me feel, well- uncertain.

This year, to me, 26 feels old. While I’m excited to be celebrating with friends and family, my emotions are mixed this year. This birthday, I don’t feel like I’m doing what I wanted to be doing at 26, and that’s hard.

However, I feel like my life is on a tipping point. I feel like this year, this year I’m going to be employed and full of joy. There is so much hope in this next year: jobs have just recently posted openings, I’m going to host our first big party at our apartment, and I’ve got two friends getting married! There is so much possibility this year, and I hope I can experience it all!

My birthday wishes:
1) A job.
2) A less volatile year. I’d like 26 to be fun and challenging, but a whole lot less stressful than 25 was.

Burned

This past weekend I was flying back home on Horizon. I was sleeping comfortably when the stewardesses wheeled the beverage cart right next to me. I lazily opened my eyes and saw that they were working on the rows in front of us, so I had more time to nap.

Then- all of a sudden- there was a burning hot sensation on my leg!

In one swift movement I was awake and unbuckled my seat belt to find that a stewardess had spilled hot coffee all over my lap! My husband said she had poured it out of the carafe and had set it on the cart. Then she hit it with her elbow.

She was most apologetic, and all the stewardesses rush me with paper towels, dry and wet. I was fine. It had been hot, but thankfully, not burning hot. I was fine and I told everyone so.

Then the guilty party said she’d be back to "comp. me". My ears perked up! Compensation? Cool! So... I’m thinking: how are they going to compensate me? The price of dry cleaning? A free flight? What?

Later in the flight she brings me over a form to get compensated. I scan it and it is clear that spilling a drink on a customer is the smallest infraction with piddlely compensation.

My choices:
1,000 air miles (but we don’t have the Horizon mileage plan, so that was out)
An e-certificate for $25 to Hornizon.com
A $5 giftcard to Starbucks
Or, get this-
A teddy bear

Maybe I had gotten my hopes too high, but I kinda thought these were pathetic options. I mean, “sorry we spilled hot coffee on you, would you like $5 to get a new one?” Pretty sad.

Of course, before she said anything, I hadn’t even thought of being compensated. I’ve been a waitress, and while I never spilled a drink on anyone, I know accidents happen. However, this level of compensation still seems a bit weak to me.
What do you think?

Vote 2008!

Really, nothing I could say could be more important than this:

Remember to vote!

So you need a costume tonight...

Here's a bunch of cheap DIY ideas if you've put off getting a Halloween costume until this very moment! Enjoy and have a safe night trick-or-treating!

it was an itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie yellow pokka dot...

Fun money quote of the day:

“a firm’s income statement may be likened to a bikini- what it reveals is
interesting, but what it conceals is vital”

~ in A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

feeling a bit better

Hey everyone! I’ve been knocked out by a nasty sinus infection, but I should be clear-headed by Monday. So, until then, have a nice weekend!

The Rewards of Charging $770B

Assuming that Paulson’s had to pull out the plastic instead of charging this financial rescue plan to taxpayers, what does $770 billion get you in rewards? Assuming Paulson has excellent credit, no annual fee, but wants some perks for giving them his business; here are some offers he could take:

Blue Cash AMEX
He has a whole year to party interest free before having to pony up (or to resign), but let’s say he wants some cold, hard, cash rewards. Since this is not an “everyday purchase” i.e. gas, supermarket, or the like, he will only get 1.5% cash back on his purchase. That is $11.55 billion in chump change to play around with. However, that reward is given as a credit on the AMEX bill; therefore Paulson owes only $758,450,000,000. At that point even if he paid $10 billion a month it would still take him over 10 years to pay it off.

Miles by Discover Card
Let’s say Paulson could care less about getting cash back. He doesn’t need a discount, heck- he needs a vacation after all this stress!

With this card he could get 1 mile for every dollar spent, and every 5,000 miles gets a $50 travel credit towards his travel purchases. Using Airtreks I made an amazing around the world trip (New York - San Francisco - Honolulu - Papeete (Tahiti) - Sydney - Bali (Denpasar) - Jakarta - Singapore - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Taipei - Hong Kong - Shanghai - Tokyo - Seoul - Beijing - Delhi - Bombay / Mumbai - Nairobi - Johannesburg - Cairo - Athens - Rome - Barcelona - Madrid - Paris - Budapest - Vienna - Frankfurt - London - Amsterdam - Paris - London - Reykjavik - New York - Montreal - Miami - Mexico City - San Jose - Caracas - Quito - Lima - Santiago - Buenos Aires - Sao Paulo - Rio de Janeiro - Lima - Los Angeles - Vancouver - Seattle - Chicago - New York) that costs about $17,542. Paulson and 438,946 of his closest friends could take this trip for free!

Or, if this isn’t exciting enough, he could mimic American space tourist Richard Garriott and dock with the International Space Station. For a cool $20 million he could only bring 384 friends along with his rewards bucks. However, he will have to start paying back the whole $770 billion after only six months and it would take him over 11 years to do so.

However, this is all assuming that $770 billion isn’t over his credit limit, if it is, he goes into the default rate- a whooping 30.99%. If he paid $20 billion a month it would take him almost 17 years to pay off.

Chase Free Cash Rewards Visa Card
Let’s say that Paulson’s a shopper. He could get 1 point for every eligible dollar purchase. If we assume these are eligible dollars, with this card he could get a $25 gift card to a leading national merchant for every $2,500 he spent. This sound like it could be enough gift cards to stuff every Christmas stocking in the US, but hold on there’s a catch! There’s a maximum point accumulation on net purchases which is 60,000 points per calendar year. That means he could only get $600 worth of gift cards per year.

So sad, but just what could he get? Why it’s a Compaq Presario CQ50-210US 15.4" Widescreen Notebook Computer With AMD Athlon™ X2 QL-62 Dual-Core Processor from Office Depot!

While the introductory offer period is a year, when it wears off Paulson will be hit with the standard 19.99% rate. Paying $13 billion a month it will take him over 21 years to make the balance hit $0.



While Paulson can’t really charge this debt, and the rewards of this financial rescue plan are different than those stated above; I have to wonder- will we as a nation have this debt paid off in 10, 11, 17, or 20 years?

Savvy or Foolhardy?

Poll outcomes:
I put a poll concerning the financial rescue plan up last week and here are the outcomes:

Are you happy that the House passed the financial bailout bill?
Yes- 50%
No- 25%
I don’t know yet- 25%

I have to wonder- if I reposted this poll in a year how will people feel about the financial rescue plan at that time? Will history books denote this as a savvy move or a foolhardy risk?

Planet Money

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who was panicked about her money situation. Basically, all the talking heads had scared the be-gee-zzers out of her and she was wondering how to open a mattress. She was completely befuddled by my belief that this larger financial mess would change.

She then asked me, “How did this all start?”

My mind crazily flashed sound bites: mortgage mess, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, US trade balance imbalances, greed, too much leverage, loose credit, etc, etc.

However, the best answer I could form was: “People made stupid decisions and this mess is the repercussions of those choices.” Which, needless to say, was not very informative nor comforting for my friend.

So I wanted to find some point reference where the tangles of decisions were once wrapped smartly together to form a solid financial system. A time where all we saw was this sturdy fiscal rope which we thought was tied to a immoveable anchor holding our economy in place.

So I turned to NPR. (I know, I know, this paints a real picture of who the person is that types this blog, but I wanted a source that would give me more than sound bites and had discrete information that builds on itself over time.)

Enter Planet Money, NPR’s aptly timed new radio show about this financial crisis. Only about a month old, it started at a time where most reporters spent 15 seconds on the failing bank of the day before moving onto their human interest piece. These radio shows, which I’ve been listening to as podcasts, were explaining not only which bank was failing- but why.

After listening to about half the shows, I’m not sure I could come up with a better answer for my friend. I think that my new knowledge points to many reasons for this financial crisis. We were all looking at that same rope- except it wasn’t tether to an anchor, or anything else really. The rope was just out of sight, obscured by the water trailing shreds of rope that was slowly uncoiling as our economic yacht sailed on.

Whether you’re muddled up by conflicting advice or just scared about this financial crisis, Planet Money is a good way of grounding your fears with objective knowledge about our current situation.

Bye, bye FICO?

I was watching On The Money a couple of weeks ago and they had a segment on the new credit rating system- Vantage. VantageScore is created by Experian, Equifax and TransUnion whereas FICO is put out by Fair Isaac Corporation. While it claims to work similarly to FICO it uses a mixed number/letter scale and is suppose to be better for people who have little credit history.

While I understand that the credit agencies would like to make some money, the whole thing sounds rather complicated and redundant. Has anyone gotten their VantageScore? Was it an easy process and easy to understand your score? Did you the additional benefit as compared to your FICO?

For more information on VantageScore check out: the BankRate article, the official website, SoundMoney blog, and a Liz Pulliam Weston article.

More Martha!

I had a lot of people read my blog about Blogging Rules that I saw on Martha. I wanted to update people who may not know that Martha Stewart has her own blog! I know, I know- it's not about personal finance. However, I like going there to get cheap craft activities and meal ideas. Reviewing these idea are a great way to have fun and save some money in tough economic times!

Nip, Tuck, and Free Money

As we say here in SoCal- I’ve had some work done.

No, no knife work needed- all the work done was on this blog. Just a little refreshing lift- nothing major. I think it still has the same feel as the old blog, just a little spiffier!

The most noticeable change would be that I’ve gone to a three column format. This has allowed me to feature some links to ING Direct! I've been a customer of ING Direct for years, and I love sharing a good banking experience with my friends. Now, after I've told the world about my bad banking experience, I want to tell them about my favorite bank- ING Direct!

If you’ve been looking for a high yield savings account from an FDIC backed bank- my preferred bank is ING Direct. They make it incredibly easy to open and manage your accounts. Check out GetRichSlowly’s blog on the same topic . They have a high yield savings account (currently at 3%) called an Orange Savings account.

ING Direct is an especially good option if you currently have more than the FDIC limits ($100K in a personal account) in your bank and you're looking for a place to move your money in order to keep it safe from bankruptcy and takeovers. If you would like to join, simply follow the links below to open your account and get a little freebie for doing so!

Here’s the deal: If you’re a new customer and you open an account with at least $250, ING will deposit a $25 bonus in your new account and a $10 thank-you-bonus in my Orange Savings Account. Just click a link below to get started! (These links are only valid through 10/21/2008.)

Orange Savings Accounts:

Link 1

Link 2


*If these links don’t work- someone else got to them before you did! Just email me (chellyuop@hotmail.com) and I’ll send you a fresh link.


A quick background on the ING Orange Savings accounts:
Great rate - no minimum balance required.
No fees - all your money goes to work for you.
No changing banks - the Orange Savings Account is linked to your checking account.
24-hour access to your account - you're always ready for opportunities.
FDIC-insured - your money is safe and secure.

Martha + technology = a good thing!

Normally I read books to find information that I post on my blog, however lately I’ve been finding blogging fodder in the most unexpected places. First the Today Show and now Martha!

Martha Stewart’s daily show, Martha, ran a whole hour devoted to blogs! While the whole show was phenomenal, the part that I think even non-domestic types will find interesting was the segment with Perez Hilton’s top three blogging tips:

1. Find a Niche
Basically there are many personal finance blogs out there. If you’re thinking of starting your own PF blog try and make it different than everything else that is out there. I choose to focus on my educational pursuits and my local. Other people may focus on a different layout, reducing their debts, or saving for a big ticket item. Whatever it is be passionate about it and you’ll get fulfillment from it.

2. Be Prepared To Put In Long Hours
Research, editing, and publishing these are the least amount of work you will do. Most top bloggers spend even more time making connections and working on ads. Your blog is only whatever you are disciplined enough to put into it.

3. Don't Be Afraid to Network
Ask people for help or exposure (Honestly, I’ve been way to afraid to try this!). Make sure that you’re accessible to your readers and that you stay up on what is going on in the PF blogosphere.

While I think I’ve earned maybe a whole dollar from my website, I know that there are some PF bloggers out there that have figured out these tips in order to make it somewhat profitable for them. Whether you’re like me and just want to document an educational journey, or you want to go big-time with your blog- it never hurts to review blogging fundamentals.