January 22, 2007
Gosh, I was alternately amused, taken aback, and immensely proud of a friend who mentioned to me [knowing nothing about this blog, or the depth of my deep dark love for all things financial] that she wanted to learn about investing and planning for her future because she’s got a real job and her papa is making her do her own taxes this year. ~ I preface by saying that I love my friends dearly. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how very different we are! I still love them, despite any blood pressure spikes on certain topics. ~
She’s the youngest of our group and has always worked to some extent, in fact she and I worked together at a temp job in high school, but her papa is a doctah and her parents have always been well able to support her through school and afterwards. All in all, her primary relationship with money has been to set it free. You know, REALLY free. When she wasn’t working, she ran up debt, and her parents would pay it off. And that’s always been a point of concern to me because I worried that she’d suffer a major shock when it was time for her to truly be financially independent. I have every confidence that she’s capable of learning how to manage money, I just didn’t know what would motivate her to do so.
It turns out that she’s reading Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad and this has sparked an interest in learning how to invest. I guess as a gateway drug it’s alright, but I hope she understood the concepts more than jumped to the conclusion that she should throw her money at a risky investment and expect huge returns.
Ironically, she failed to remember that I was the one who had initially wanted to start financial discussion gatherings among our friends to help each other learn how to do investment research and generally support one another. Even more ironically, their complete disinterest was what led me to blogging instead and now I find myself in the awkward position of wanting to show her all sorts of blogging resources but not wanting to be “outed” because I obviously comment on a lot of my favorite blogs. As Wanda had contemplated, I wonder who and if this blog would be safe to share with since it can be much more personal and revealing than I am in real life, and this conversation with her nearly prompted me to reveal it. Luckily, I caught myself in time, I’m not ready to be outta the closet just yet!
In any case, this odd mix of worry and pride must be how mama ducks feel when their ducklings start venturing into the world?
January 21, 2007
Cost: $27
I woke up last week in the middle of the night thinking it was Thursday when it was really Tuesday, and royally screwed up. Like a idjit, I rolled over and paid a bill that I thought was due. Paying the bill wasn’t the problem. The problem was *disclaimer* I don’t know what possessed me *end disclaimer* instead of paying from the account I’d specifically deposited that money into for this purpose, I used the other checking account. Without the money.
This is what I usually do:
Step One: Transfer necessary funds from Citi savings to Citi checking. [within Citi, this is an instant transfer.]
Step Two: Transfer funds from Citi checking to credit card. [again, instant transfer.]
Five days later, I was completely confused as to why on earth Wamu would charge me a non-sufficient funds fee. “What the heck were they talking about??” I wondered. I had the biggest cash cushion in there, so it couldn’t be a random check that I somehow forgot about. [This happens when someone doesn’t cash a check for SIX MONTHS. Only a little annoying.]
Instead I had:
Step One: Check.
Step Two: **digression from norm** Left the Citibank site. Proceeded to the Citicards site. Set up a payment.
Step Three: Failed to notice that the checking account number in the dropdown box was for the Wamu account. Processed payment.
Step Four: Fell back asleep.
A phone call to Wamu cleared it up for me. Well, the call cleared up the technical details, I still don’t know why on earth I thought it was a good idea to pay a bill mostly asleep, in the dark, at 3 am. Be that as it may … I found that lo and behold, I was paying off my BT card to the tune of >$5000 and paid it from the WRONG checking account.
Good job, Ms. Mini. I can’t even argue that fee. I have no grounds for argument. Tschahhh! Oh well, live and learn.
January 20, 2007
I usually respect a good portion of Ben Stein’s advice, though perhaps not necessarily his expounding of annuities, but this particular article felt just a leetle too doomsday for my taste. He does have a point, though, as a rule, society doesn’t really trend towards higher quality AND expansion.
what am I doing with all this mess? Eh, I got fussy and wanted to have something with a bit of my personality. BoyDucky was nice enough to put up with HOURS of my laboring over the code trying to learn color codes and html to customize this so that it wasn’t too dark to read and my incessant “ok, NOW what do you think? wait wait wait, it’s publishing. ok, now go!” That can get old, fast, but he stuck it out! What a trooper.
January 18, 2007
Seen on the back of a bus yesterday:
Si no puedes pagar, no lo debes comprar!
Ahhh …. truth in any language … !! 🙂
January 15, 2007
Ok, I’m a little happier with this template, even though it’s one of Blogger’s very own standard ones. Yes? No?
It’s the beginning of the year and time to start or reinforce good financial habits. Remember to save all your receipts from the doctor’s, pharmacist’s, dentist’s, orthodontist’s, or drugstore with any qualifying purchases to claim your FSA money! Most drugstores like Walgreen’s, Longs, Sav-on, etc. will have a handy dandy marker symbol next to the product that most likely qualifies as an FSA purchase, so pay attention to your receipts!
And those receipts will do you no good if you never send them in or use them to track your claims if you use an FSA debit card, so either submit your claims on a regular basis (I try to do them right away so that I don’t forget, and then file them until I have a receipt for the credited amount), or keep an organized file for your reference.