Chasing My Own Tale
Cats: Fed and watered. Clothes and bed linen: washed. Dishes: rinsed. Cat box: cleared. Dresser drawer: fixed. Garbage: To the dumpster. Journal: Moved to new host. Recycling: taken out. Groceries: Put away (mostly). Comforter: In car trunk to drop off at dry cleaner’s. Bed: gone to.
The simple addition of the directive “Cite your sources!” to a political discussion (whether in person, in a townhall, or in any other medium) would have a profound impact on the quality of the discussion.
That is all.
All I’m asking is that if you’re going to vote, don’t vote based on the amount of melanin a candidate has. That’s not a very good method of predicting leadership ability.
Please Vote. Please Vote based on issues.
Getting Smart Slowly: I’ve been following Get Rich Slowly by a guy who lives in the local Portland area, so I can relate to some of the places he goes and people he names. I’ve been enjoying reading his articles, and it’s made me more conscientious about the way I deal with money, plus I’ve been watching for ways to keep the money we have.
As part of that effort, we paid off one of our credit cards last year (Card A) and have kept it at or near a zero balance for a while now. So the Card A people sent us, on a monthly basis, these blank checks to use “for whatever you want” with minimal interest rates. Wow, how nice of them.
The Offers: The checks come in two flavors: 1) 0% interest for 12 months (after which it reverts to an unacceptable percentage rate over 20%) or 2) 3.99% for the duration of the balance. One of the fine print items was a 3% transaction fee that capped off at $200 I had to keep in mind.
I mostly ignored them for about a year, but they were certainly tempting. We had a nice credit limit and the idea of jetting us off on some spur of the moment getaway certainly crossed my mind… but I knew it was just putting off (and increasing!) the cost. I’ve looked at the offers each month. I just needed to find the right time to use them: a time when they would save us money rather than cost us.
The Summer Situation: This year had me flying solo to Montana for a death in the family ($700) and over the Fourth of July Amy and I went on a follow-up road trip to the same town with a side trip for a day in Salt Lake City. (Amy went to a small private liberal arts college there.) The vacation travel costs themselves were fine (lodging $300, gas $250) but we also made some major car repairs in preparation (exhaust system, tires $2,180) so the total came to about $3,400, which we had put on Card B.
In terms of using credit wisely, I think we did okay in this instance. We had very little warning about my flight so there was no time to save for it. We needed to get the car repairs done, but we had been holding off. The family reunion trip forced the issue since we had to get there on the Fourth of July with the rest of the family. We tapped into our embryonic emergency fund to pay for some of the car repairs and cover some of the travel costs, but the $3400 remained on Card B. We traded money for time.
Cunning Calculations: Now with things settled down a bit on the home front, I have had time to re-assess our accounts and look at how we could take advantage of those checks from Card A. I looked at a few of our debts: credit union car loan, credit union personal loan that we used for some debt consolidation last year, and Card B.
The first thing I did was use a generic loan calculator to figure out that with our normal monthly payment, the debt on Card B would have cost about $2,000 in interest and taken over 4.4 years to pay off.
Next I calculated the same monthly payment against the 3.99% rate plus the 3% transaction fee. The transferred debt would cost about $1,000 and take 3.3 years to pay off.
(Paying off the personal loan with the 3.99% checks + 3% transaction fee would have saved us $20. Paying off the consolidation loan would have saved a whopping $2. Neither of these seemed worth the effort.)
Amy and I are both distrustful of large banks and corporations, so I tried to be as cautious as possible. In the end we decided to go for it. All told, we’ll save $1,000 by using these checks.
Warning: Avalanche Zone: Obviously, if we could pay more on a monthly basis, we could knock down both the cost and the length for repayment. We’ve been using a combination of techniques to work down our debts and by next March both the car and consolidation loans will be retired at which point we’ll be able to pile on a bunch of money to wipe out the debt. I think we’ll be done with it by next summer. The Debt Snowball plus automatic withdrawals from paychecks have been a big help in making sure we get these all taken care of. (See the Debt Snowball article at GRS or read the wikipedia article. Amy actually thought up and started practicing the debt snowball style before she or I ever read about it. She’s the smart one in this house.)
…With a Cherry on Top: For those of paying close attention, you may be asking: But what about those 0% checks? Wouldn’t they be an even better deal? You’re right but that’s also a gamble. If for any reason we don’t get that debt paid off in 12 months, the interest rate sky rockets. This is flat out gambling that we won’t have any major financial hits in the next year. I’m not a total pessimist however.
We used the 0% checks to pay off $500 of the debt and paid the balance with the 3.99% offer. I’m willing to gamble that we will pay off $500 in the next 12 months, even if something major comes up. It saves us about $100 in interest, which is a nice bonus.
Other families have much larger amounts of debt to deal with. These 4 figure debts are peanuts compared to what others are facing. But Amy and I are getting our money house in order. These exercises with smaller amounts make me more confident about the larger amounts that we might see in the future. (House? new car?) If I’m not getting rich slowly, I hope I’m at least getting smarter.
From Jock:
Lemur-Labs – Who Are You?:
It is quite possible that half of the reason that people watch the various editions of CSI can be attributed to the brilliant choice to play The Who during the opening. The selection of Who Are You? is especially brilliant. It speaks directly to the core of any criminal investigation: establishing identity.
It’s cool to listen in while the wizard makes up his latest spell… Even cooler when you get mentioned. : )
This is a House Bill 2702 that was approved by the State of Oregon:
Relating to written documents produced by agencies of state government.
(2) Every agency of state government shall ensure that written documents produced by the agency for purposes of communicating with the public, whether presented on paper or through electronic media, conform to plain language standards.
It seems almost… revolutionary! Good on Oregon. Washington’s governor did something similar, (by fiat) last year. However, the Oregon was bill was approved by the House, Senate, and the Governor. I can’t help but think that this might be the way to start making everything more accessible to the layman. At the very least it’s a start.
Although I don’t agree with everything here, it’s interesting to see an exploration of the geek/nerd psychology. Rands In Repose: The Nerd Handbook
I just set up an iCal event to remind me to request a free annual credit report every 4 months from each of the three Credit Reporting companies: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion.
AnnualCreditReport.com : the official site to help consumers to obtain their free credit report.
I set the event to repeat annually 20 times, with an e-mail alert, and included the above URL in the mail so as to not get confused as to which is the real Credit Report request site. I wish they would have registered it as a .gov site. Those are a lot harder to spoof.
How many alternative motorized vehicles can you find in this Portland street scene? Image from Google Street View (Answer below.)
Been working hard: day job, teaching and diagnosing a faulty USB port on the Tivo. That’s what I get for cleaning up the entertainment center’s wiring.
But, I’m happy to report that the Tivo is now happily gathering broadband content and the Mac Mini and the Tivo are now sharing a cozy little hub. I guess I can get the PlayStation 2 connected to that too, but I rarely fire the old PS2 nowadays. Perhaps a Wii might make a nice addition.
Speaking of nice additions, the iPhone is looking more and more like a a modern jackalope. Everyone wants one, but it’s going to tough to get a hold of. I’ve got my eye on a couple of prime spots that may carry it. I’m guessing that only two types of stores will have it: Apple Stores and Cingular/AT&T stores. It’s the latter that will be the best bet, I’m sure. I’m hoping that perhaps some of the third party reseller cellphone stores might have it, but on reflection, that seems unlikely.
Recent purchases at Powell’s Books include the latest issues of Home Power magazine and 2600. Both of these are the equivalent to to purchasing Architectural Digest or the Robb Report: Discussion of things that are out of reach entirely or just fun to think about.
Other items put on the Done section of the To Do list? Haircut, flexible medical account reimbursement form and scanned receipts, updated registration for the Ghia, Oil change and check up for the 170,000k Prius, some trash and boxes expelled from the my desk, repaired the toilet handle (Note: just buy the metal version. The plastic handle barely lasted a year.) Now to reformat the Mini’s new external hard drive and I’m off to bed.
Boy a vacation sure sounds good…
Latest From James Fav’d Tweets Del.icio.us Links