Tag Money

I’ll Drink to That

Michael Leave a comment

Remember the McDonald hot coffee lawsuit from back in the 90’s? Some batty old lady spilled coffee in her lap, got burned, went to the hospital, went to a lawyer, went to trial, went to jury, and won! The verdict was something like $160,000 for medical expenses and $2.7 million (!) in punitive damages. Punitive means punishment; McDonald’s was punished for serving hot coffee.

Yesterday, a California judge dismissed a case against Starbuck’s for misrepresenting the size of their iced drinks because they contain, in addition to the drink, ice. Apparently the legal system runs hot and cold when it comes to frivolous lawsuits.

But wait! Lawyers have long argued that the McDonald Coffee Case was far from frivolous. It was a wake up cup err, call to the damaging practice of big business putting profits over safety. And the public has the efforts of the tireless lawyer people to thank for seeing that those danger-mongers pay for their negligence. Yeah, right.

I’m sure lawyers serve some purpose. Unfortunately the very visible fruits of their labors have been left out to rot. Over the last several months I, and some hundreds of thousands others, have gotten e-mails about settlements reached that protected my rights and punished companies that have taken advantage of me. I got about $12 from Barnes and Noble because somebody claimed they overcharged for e-books or some such thing. I can get $5 from Angie’s List because they might have taken money for ads from service providers, and I got two free tickets for one or several concerts that have no available seats from Ticketmaster for them being Ticketmaster. My “damages” come to a whopping not quite twenty bucks.

I would thank the lawyers who worked so diligently to get me my double sawbuck. I worked hard for my money and I didn’t appreciate those big, bad companies taking advantage of me. Of course it’s only right that they get some of the windfall. As near as I’ve been able to figure, those lawyers who worked on just these three cases made about $281 million.

I don’t know about you but if I ever figure out how to use that Ticketmaster free ticket voucher and can actually score two free tickets to something, I’m bringing a lawyer!

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Change for the Better

Michael Leave a comment

Who said, “Oh please don’t change?” Change is good! The only constant is change. Change makes things happens. You know what I mean by change. Loose change. Pocket change. Coins.

Yes, coins. Every night I empty my pocket of change. I don’t specifically hoard change. During the day if I can spend change I use those coins. Sometimes I might even drop a few into the “Need A Penny Take A Penny” dish at the cash register at the farm market up the road. But at the end of the day I relieve myself of my metallic burden and each morning I start with empty pockets – some mornings more easily than others.

Does it ever amount to anything? Well, there is a new commercial on TV during the daytime that proposes that if you are between 50 and 85 you can come up with enough spare change to buy life insurance for a month. I don’t spend mine quite so impulsively.

About twice a year I sit down with my Mason jar wherein I toss my daily haul. Back when I was working and was spending more time on irresponsible buying I used a big old pickle jar like you’d see on a counter of an old-fashioned country general store. But I digress. Last weekend we had a couple rainy days so I spent my indoor time putting off rolling coins for a while. After sufficient procrastination I broke down and counted and stacked and rolled. And when I added it up I’ll head off to the bank in the next couple days with about $134.00.

It’s not much but enough that I refuse to spend it on food or shelter. I’ll find something to blow it on and sometime after New Year I’ll do it again and I’ll blow that wad.

Now let’s see. What can I get with this new found money? A field level seat at the ball game? A couple of tickets to a play? A round trip to one of a few destinations on a low-price budget airline with advance purchase? Sixty-five round trips to several destinations on Mega-Bus with advance purchase? A really, really cheap cruise? Half a TV? Quarter of a phone? More life insurance? Whatever It is I’ll probably write about it some time. Stay tuned. Change is exciting!

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Fasting than a speeding bullet…

Michael Leave a comment

I got no mail yesterday. Real mail. In the mailbox mail. Brought by the guy driving the funny looking jeep. Honestly, I don’t remember when I last got no mail. There’s always some mail from some body every day. So what if most of it is from people wanting me to compare auto insurance, get a hearing aid, or use their coupon for 20% off my entire purchase. It’s still mail.

It’s still mail and it’s still a bargain. And it’s a bigger bargain than it was the last time I wrote about the US Postal Service. (See Second Class, All The Way (Nov. 10, 2014) and Neither Snow, nor rain, nor Congress, nor a Polar Vortex, etc., etc. (Jan. 9, 2014).) Since then it’s actually gone down 2 cents for first class postage. I know. I’ve actually used it quite a bit lately. On outgoing mail even. I’ve sent 10 or 12 pieces of real mail to real people so far this month. At $0.47 per, I spend a bit less than $5.00 a month on postage.

Now you’re going to say, “But e-mail is free.” Well… really? Unless you’re sponging off your parents’, children’s, or neighbor’s Wi-Fi, that e-mail is costing you something. Admittedly I’m not a big e-mailer. Over the last couple of weeks I sent about 2 dozen e-mails, let’s say 40 pieces a month. My Internet service costs me about $59/month. Or about $2 a day. A bargain in its own right but if you look at the tangible evidence of that service, my outgoing e-mails, that service costs me about $1.50 per day or $45 a month.

“But what about that service? “You ask. “Snail mail is a slow as … oh, you know while e-mail is instantaneous” So real mail it isn’t a fast as the proverbial projectile fired from a deadly weapon. Most of my correspondence gets to its recipient the next day, and almost always in 2 days. Is there anything I have to say that can’t wait a day or two?

I don’t know. I’m thinking that’s sort of a pretty cool superpower. Cheap, efficient, warm-fuzzy inducing. I think I should send more letters.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Different Potpourri du Different Jour

Michael Leave a comment

Yesterday completed the year-long fundraising effort by Penn State’s Pan-Hellenic Council to benefit the Four Diamonds Fund at Hershey Medical Center children’s cancer unit – or more lovingly known by the PSU crowd as “Thon.” The pinnacle event is the weekend long dance marathon with the fundraising reveal wrapping up the festivities. This year Thon raised over $9.77 million dollars for the charity, still the world’s largest student run philanthropy. Thon typically runs on about a 4% administrative cost. That means that 96 cents of each one of those dollars goes to the charity. Compare this to the American Cancer Society, no slouch in fund-raising themselves, who manage to work on about 84% costs netting their charity efforts 16 cents for each dollar raised. It would do us well to remember that the student can sometimes be the teacher.

I was standing in the super market line and saw this blurb on one of the magazines that festoon the check-out lines. “Lose weight and gain height with new diet!” It went on to claim one could lose 5 pounds in weight and gain 2 inches in height in the first week. It could just be me but I’m suspecting some monkey business with those figures. I think it is quite possible to lose 5 pounds in a week but I can’t figure out any diet that adds heights, unless it’s to eat anything but eat it while being stretched on a rack.

Speaking of diets, a different cover screamed at me that I could lose weight just by cutting out sugar. I’ll remember that while I’m gorging on french fries and cole slaw while scarfing up double bacon cheeseburgers and washing it all down with several bottles of beer. If figure if I do that 4 or 5 times a week I can positively disappear by the end of next month.

Speaking of french fries, shouldn’t it really be frenched fries referring to manner in which they are cut. What became of the “ed?” I wonder if that was what the potato lost when it eliminated sugar from its diet.

And speaking of nothing that we’ve already spoken of, Spring is really around the corner. It was a balmy(!) 55 degrees this afternoon and I spotted my first non-fat guy wearing shorts. There is no surer sign that spring is here.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

They’re At It Again

Michael Leave a comment

About a year ago I posted a post where I posited that we all could make a nice piece of change by buying car insurance (see “Buy, Save, Repeat,” Jan, 15, 2015). There’s another opportunity out there just waiting to be taken advantage of – cell phone service.

Yesterday’s haul of junk mail included six (6!) offers of fabulous savings just waiting to be doled out in exchange for trading in my current cell service. Offers included a flat rate offer of $20/month and another of $30/month, one with a free phone and one with two free phones, one with a new phone, one with savings of up to 60% off, and one for half of whatever I might be paying now.

I did a little figuring and if I trade in my phone for the new service with 2 new phones then switch to the $20/month plan for each of those then take 60% off and finally move on to the half of what I would then currently be paying I could get service for $6/month and end up with an extra phone that I could sell.

Makes you wonder how these guys stay in business.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Thinking Zebras -or- The Great Annual Christmas Catalog Shopping Guide 2015 Edition

Michael Leave a comment

Here it is, what you’ve been waiting for, the annual, official, one of a kind, nothing else like it, here for this year, the great, the yearly, the Christmas catalog shopping guide for 2015. Whew!

I’m going to have to consider changing the name of the Guide. Catalogs, although still a favorite reader for keeping on the coffee table for use during hockey intermissions, are going the way of corded telephones and VCRs. They are being usurped by their e-mail brethren and show up not once or twice a season but once or twice a day. Yet the over-riding intent is the same, to tempt you into buying the stuff that you have absolutely no idea they even made.

You don’t need me to guide you to radio controlled fishing boats, inflatable radio controlled minions, or sound activated dancing water portable speakers. No, the guide this year returns to the land of excess.

What can be more excessive than a replica Stanley Cup popcorn maker for a mere $99.99 (the popcorn maker is real, it’s the Stanley Cup that is the replica)? How about a motorized, rideable drinks cooler for a mere-er $999.95. You say you want something more sophisticated than hockey and beer? There is always the world’s largest Scrabble game. At over 7 feet by 8 feet this game will keep you on your toes – while reaching to spell a word. It can be under your tree for only $12,000, shipping extra.

The 2011 Guide featured what was then the most expensive item to appear in a catalog that appeared in my mailbox. That was the Optimal Resonance Audiophile Four-Way Three-Dimensional Soundstage Quality Speakers at an amazingly unrealistic $60,000.  Why I would get a catalog with items priced at more than I paid for my last 3 cars combined I don’t know. For some reason, I continue to get mail from that company. This year, we top that by better than half. The new official most expensive item in a holiday gift guide that was sent to me (still, why?) is at $185,000 a game. They call it a simulator but it’s an arcade game for your home, a race simulator mimicking 12 different types of race cars on a variety of track and conditions. Plan on having a 6 x 8 foot space cleared out in the family room for this gem.  You should know this “car” has manual transmission. You might want to buy a beater at the local used car lot to practice your shifting if you haven’t been in a stick lately.

About the title. If spending 30-some years working in the medical field taught me anything it was never discount the obvious. We, and probably many other professions, had a saying. When you hear hooves, think horses not zebras. One of the first holiday mailings I received this year proudly displayed this year’s hottest gift for your most precocious toddler. You know, the one for whom an ordinary rocking horse just won’t do. For that little tyke, the gift (that would be THE gift) is the hand carved rocking zebra. A steal at $9,000.

It’s Christmas. Discount the obvious.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Want to see past Christmas Catalog Gift Guides?
2014 – The Great Annual Christmas Catalog Shopping Guide
2012 – And If You Order Now
2011 – Buy the Way

 

The names change…

Michael Leave a comment

You all know that I am not fond of Black Friday. I don’t mind the crowds or the sales or the bustling hustle. I really don’t even care that stores open on Thanksgiving. For many families that is their together time. What I don’t like is that the marketers have turned the whole thing into a, a, a thing!

There is no Black Friday. It’s Black November. Those sales started 3 weeks ago. And they aren’t all that great anyway. And now we get to start Cyber Monday, which many stores are calling Cyber Week including a couple of stores that don’t have any on-line presence. Which is fine because all of the ones that do, including those who are exclusively on-line had Black Friday for all of last week and/or this month.

Last Saturday among the many e-mails that graced my in-box were more than one proclaiming that they were entering the “last days” of their Black Friday sales so be sure to order now, soon, and often because at 11:59 on Sunday night those deals will disappear. Then on Sunday I got the “sneak preview” e-mails of the Cyber Monday deals starting at 6pm that very Sunday and available only for the next five days. From the same retailers. For the same products. The same ad with a different header. I should have ordered something between 6pm and midnight to see if I would have gotten a double discount.

See, that’s why I don’t like Black Friday. It’s insulting. But I did get a good deal on some silk poinsettias.

Happy Thanksgetting.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Out to Pasture

Michael Leave a comment

2015 is an historic year in the world of horse racing. If you owned a television or a computer or a newspaper subscription you couldn’t have missed the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. That’s not historic. It happened before. It was 37 years ago but still it had happened. No history was made.  History was made when American Pharoah (yes, that really is spelled wrong but that’s part of his charm) won horse racing’s Grand Slam – the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, the Belmont Stakes, and The Breeders’ Cup Classic. He is the first horse to win all four races. Ever. That’s history.

It is also a fitting end to his active racing career. It is now time to for this stud to, ah, retire and go stand stud. The breeding company who handles American Pharoah’s breeding business has set a price of $200,000 per, umm, coupling. If he stands for 160 mares a year, a not unrealistic number, he stands to make $32 million a year. A thoroughbred’s average lifespan is 25 to 30 years, he is 3 years old, so he has 22 to 27 years to, uh, horse around. Just to make math a little easier, in twenty years he gets to make about $640 million with a couple years left over to relax, travel, maybe visit the grandkids, and have a bronze statue of him cast for posterity.

I too retired this year. Figuring the lifespan of my immediate predecessors I also could have about 22 to 27 years to go. I figure my retirement plan is worth about $32,000 a year and I further figure I will probably stand in the grocery store checkout lane about 160 times a year. In twenty years I’ll have made the princely sum of $640,000 and will still have a couple of years to sit around on my posterior.

I wonder if in my next life I can come back as a racehorse.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Prior Performance

Michael Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been sitting closer to the television so I’ve been reading the small print on television ads. Just another of the benefits of getting older.

Small print is hard enough to read. On television it’s monumentally hard to read. It’s usually in white and on a light or nearly white background, small enough to qualify as fine print in a print ad, and verbose enough to be a politician while remaining on the screen for a bit less than the heartbeat of an out of shape stair climber.

If your efforts with the on-line speed reading course were successful, you actually may get the opportunity to read televised fine print. And if you do, you will find it’s not at all very informative.

Extensive research (and not at all scientific let me tell you) says that the third most popular phrase in that fine print is “past performance does not guarantee future results” or similar. (The second most common phrase is “Limited time offer, expires [sometime 8 months from now].” The most common phrase is “dramatization” and/or “actor portrayal” so you can separate fact from fiction without straining your brain while separating them.)

Past performance does not guarantee future results? Excuse me, isn’t that what you are advertising, your past performance? This is especially popular among lawyers, bankers, stock brokers, trade school placement offices, and purveyors of commemorative plates. It’s the advertising fine print equivalent of saying “not responsible for lost or stolen luggage.” Feel free to substitute “your hard earned money” for “luggage.”

Imagine what those lawyers and bankers and others would say if other advertisers blithely asked for you to buy from them while at the same time reminding you that what they are selling may or may not actually do what you are buying. For examples:

….. Orange Juice: Translation = You know us as the brand that uses nothing but fresh oranges to make our juice but your next bottle might have some juiced brussel sprouts.

…..Tires: Translation = Our tires have long been known for their ability to grip the road, resist punctures, and last thousands and thousands of miles. Unfortunately the ones we just shipped to the stores are really old retreads and bald ones at that.

…..Dishwashing liquid: Translation = You may need to use most of the bottle if you expect clean dishes.

….. Luxury SUV: Translation = Can you say Family Truckster?

….. Toilet paper: Let’s not even go there.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. You never hear airlines say that when they are talking about on-time performance. Hmmm.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

It’s Increditable

Michael Leave a comment

Recently I came into some money and did what I’ve wanted to do for years – pay off everything. You see, even though I’ve posted here any number of semi-rants about credit card companies and how we’ve come to pretty much ignore common sense and are willing to charge just about everything including a trip to McDonald’s, for years I had been guilty of just such stupidity. Over the past 5 or 6 years I hadn’t used a credit card but I was still paying for my imprudent spending for 30 years before then. Fortunately I have lived long enough to pay off all of those card and other loan balances.

Let me tell you now though, if you ever plan to do the same, prepare yourself for some pretty annoying communications between you and your soon to be former creditors. I knew enough to know that interest charged is charged daily. That means the balance you see on your statement isn’t your balance any more by the time you get your statement. I called every credit card company or bank (and there were a lot of them) to request payoff amounts. Out of ten lenders, only 3 representatives knew what I was asking. To the others, the thought of paying off everything owed was as foreign as using antennae to get TV reception.  They would parrot the auto-attendant’s parroting of the “last statement balance” and didn’t know that wasn’t the total balance. Fortunately I was able to get the information I needed from a call center supervisor. Perhaps that was unfortunate.

Even with a current balance in hand, a human on the phone, and an ability to pay the stated amount immediately, four of the accounts sent statements the following amount with new interest accrued and due. After making several more calls I was able to ascertain that the reason there were still balances was because although the amount paid equaled the amount due on the day of the call, the amount paid was not credited for 3 to 5 business days resulting in 3 to 5 days of accrued interest. So once again I had to request new payoff amounts and submit new payments. I was not amused.

One account I had actually overpaid. When given a figure it was for interest charged through the end of the billing cycle so when my payment was credited in 3 to 5 business days it was still a few days before the cycle ended and I ended up with a credit for that card. Since I was simultaneously closing accounts as I was paying them off, I had no account for the credit to be credited against. Yet, it was still listed as a credit on a following statement with no mention of how I was going to get my money back. Not wanting to, I called anyway. I was told certainly they could send me a refund check. I don’t know why but I had to ask, why they didn’t just send a check instead of a statement showing a credit for an account that didn’t exist. Their answer was that it was policy to report a balance on an inactive account for three billing cycles before issuing a refund. I thanked them for their information and informed them that if I ever decided to re-open a card with them I would consider the three month rule before I decide to issue them a check. They weren’t amused.

Who were these people anyway? The three cards’ telephone reps who hadn’t a clue about how to determine a payoff amount were all serviced by Citicards, the fourth was issued by RBS Citizens Financial.  The company who wanted to hang on to my money for three months unless I asked for it earlier was Discover. Capital One, USAA, and HSBC were the only creditors who actually were helpful in paying off their accounts.

Certainly it was my fault for getting into more credit than I had a right to. When I finally had the means to get out of debt instead of getting out of Dodge I did so. Apparently those I owed would have preferred I continued to owe them. That’s ok. It took a few months and lots of phone calls but now instead of a bunch of cards I carry around a bunch of money. Boy does that confuse the people at McDonald’s.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?