Weight Watchers and Finances

Now THIS is an exercise I could get behind.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I started attending Weight Watchers meetings. I did this because, awesome though it may be, my long-term goals in life do not include washing myself with a rag on a stick.

To those of you who would suggest that I just eat less on my own and save the fees incurred to be a part of Weight Watchers, I would agree heartily, and then point you to how well that scenario has worked out for me in every diet I've been on since high school. This includes my own brief flirtation with the Paleo Diet a few months ago.

Also, to those of you who say that Weight Watchers is for women, I bring up the case of celebrity spokesman Sir Charles Barkley who recently lost a good deal of weight through the program. I take his involvement to mean that I will soon be pulled over for speeding and offer a ridiculous alibi. Oh wait, scratch that last bit; I forgot that he's not a role model.

And that's everything I know about Charles Barkley. Go USA 1992.

Anycrap, since its foundations in the 1960s (as seen this season on Mad Men), Weight Watchers has gone through various iterations, but the basic two ideas that it has always espoused are taking in a little bit less food than you need on a daily basis and going to regular meetings. The first pillar is pretty much standard on every diet, but the second apparently helps a lot of people to succeed (as I'm cheerfully told every meeting).

I thought about these two things, and I realized that both of them are also very helpful ways to help you succeed with money.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably not too worried about where your next meal will come from or how you're going to make rent this month. As such, you probably have an excess of money when you compare what all your monthly costs are to live and how much income you bring in. What you could do (and what a lot of people do do*) is to spend all of the money you bring in every month with no thoughts of saving money. Heck, you could take this a step further by not only spending all that you've made, but also putting extra purchases on credit.

This isn't meant to judge. Your humble narrator has ridden the credit card train to glory ruin more than once in his short life. Nevertheless, just as eating too many chicken-fried chalupas** will make your body unhealthy, spending more than you have on things that you don't need will make your financial life unhealthy. Conversely, saving on calories and saving money will make your body and wallet healthier, respectively.

On the topic of the meetings, the basic idea is to go to a public place with other people who face the same struggles that you do. From this, so the idea goes, you develop a camaraderie, and you start to hope that other people will succeed, and they start to hope that you succeed. When you combine that with the stickers they hand out for meeting your weight goals (I'm a sucker for arbitrary prizes), you find yourself positively re-affirmed when you make good choices with food.

How does this tie into your use of money? Well, in my case, this site is a public platform where I can discuss my thoughts on money, saving, and investing. While I'm not as transparent in my finances as some other bloggers (I'm uncomfortable putting that information online), just the fact that I have this website frequently makes me rethink what I want to spend my money on. For example, I've daydreamed about buying an 80-inch plasma flat screen at Costco, but, given how much money I have and the fact that I'm headed to grad school in the fall, there are so many other ways that I could better spend/save that money.

If I did make a big purchase like that, I'd probably want to share about it here. However, that purchase would be at odds with a lot of what I've written about on this site. As such, having this site keeps me accountable to person that I want to be when it comes to finances, just as Weight Watchers meetings keep me accountable to the slimmer person I hope to become.

What do you think? Has anybody else noticed the similarities between struggling with weight and struggling with money? Let me know in the comments.

*Hahaha...do do.
**I don't think this is a thing, but it sounds, alternately, awful and delicious. Awfully delicious? You be the judge.

Photo by Rennett Stowe.

Some Ethics of Spending

So minutes, hours, days, month, and years,

Passed over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah, what a life were this! How sweet, how lovely!

-- Henry VI, Part 3, II.v. 38-41.

I was watching the ... documentary? filmed series of mostly one-way conversations? I'm not sure what to call it ... Examined Life on Netflix the other evening (because I am a pretentious jerkwad)*, and one of the speakers in the film, Peter Singer, said something obvious in a way I hadn't considered before. He posed the following hypothetical situation, and he then asked people how they would handle it.

Here's the scenario:

A screen that offers time to reflect.

Suppose you're walking in a park on a bright, sunny day, and you walk past a pool that's only a foot deep. You notice that a young child has waded into the pool, and the child is obviously having some difficulty. After watching for a moment, you realize that the child is about to drown, and you know that if you act right now, you can save the child's life. This action will involve walking into the pool (which poses no danger to you as an able-bodied adult) and retrieving the child. The only reason that gives you pause is the fact that the shoes you're wearing are expensive, and by walking into the water, you will necessarily ruin them. You know that there's no time to hesitate if you choose to rescue the child; another few seconds, and the kid will drown. What do you do?

I'm fairly certain that approaching 100% of the people reading this would decide to save the child's life because, on a very basic level, most people agree that the direct saving of a life is more important than shoes, expense be damned.

However, Singer, as philosophers are prone to do, doesn't let the question stop there; he goes on to ask, basically, if you would allow your money to be lost by ruining your shoes to save a child's life, why not, in the first place, instead of spending the money on the expensive shoes, spend that money by donating to one of the various, valid charitable organizations that use your money to feed starving children?

I know some of you reading this will immediately claim that Singer's question poses an absurd reduction. After all, why go the movies when you could help at a soup kitchen? Why read a blog post when you could be learning first aid? Why do ANYTHING immediately gratifying and enjoyable when you could be helping others?**

But to react in this way is to miss an opportunity for reflection. There is truth in what he says. After all, economics studies how people spend their finite resources, and it follows (by definition of finite) that spending money on one item necessarily means that that money is unavailable for other expenditures (credit cards work to make people feel like they're circumventing this, but as anybody who has read a personal finance blog knows, the reckless use of credit cards frequently ends in disastrous results).

It is important to realize that each dollar we spend is a dollar we can't spend another way, and I think it's worthwhile to remember this on a weekly, daily, or even a transaction by transaction basis.

What do you think? Do you consider where each dollar you spend could have gone, and/or what help it could have provided? Let me know in the comments.

*Though, to be fair, you could probably add that clause to the end of nearly any sentence I've written on this site, and it would remain accurate. "Should I Drop Chase Bank?" because I am a pretentious jerkwad? Here's my Lending Club update because I am a pretentious jerkwad. Here are 6 things you don't know about me because I am a pretentious jerkwad. You get the idea. Apt, no?
**I would argue that helping others can be both gratifying and enjoyable; I find that little in life is truly an either/or situation.

Photo by psd.

**This post was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance #364.**

Investing: P2P Lending vs. Bank CDs

I'm going to start this post by stating something that is stupidly obvious: there are a huge number of different ways to invest your money.  From stocks and bonds, to investing in new companies, to burying your cash in the backyard, if you can imagine it, you can probably invest in it (dream a little dream, you dreamers!).  For the purposes of this article though, I'm only going to focus on two that I think have a good deal in common: peer to peer (P2P) lending and certificates of deposit (CDs).

How P2P Lending and CDs Are Similar

The key similarity both investments share is that both require you to tie up your money for a certain, specified amount of time.  As such, both are essentially illiquid investments.*  However, this length of time is fairly short-term, particularly when compared to 30 year bonds, for instance. 

For CDs, your money can be tied up anywhere between three months and five years, depending on how long you choose to invest.  For P2P, (which I'm basing on my experience with Lending Club, as I am unfamiliar with Prosper and others), your money is invested for either three years or five years.**

With the above similarity stated, let's look at the pros and cons of each investment.

AT&T Can Suck It! (And Also, Thanks AT&T for Being Reasonable)

When in Rome, make sure not to get charged for roaming.
(Wordplay!  Zing!)

A few weeks ago, I encouraged you to double-check your invoices, particularly while travelling via cruise.  My reasoning behind this advice was that Norwegian Cruise Lines double-charged me, my wife, and my brother for an excursion that we took.  However, it turns out that there were even more accounting irregularities due to our vacation.

When I was up at my family's house for Thanksgiving, my grandma complained about how high their cell phone bill with AT&T was the previous month.  Being the personal finance blogger extraordinaire that I am, I asked to take a look at their bill.  The culprit, it turns out, was my brother.  He had single-handedly made their bill go up by nearly $90.

Now, right away, I know what you're thinking, and no, my brother did NOT download Aqua's Barbie Girl 90 times through iTunes.

How did he make their bill go up so much you ask?  Well, he made and received some phone calls while he was on the east coast prior to our cruise.  And he was charged 79 cents a minute in roaming charges for the privilege of being a part of those phone calls.

Let that sink in for a moment.  Somebody, in 2011, was charged for roaming.  ROAMING!  That's like building a fire in your fire place, and then receiving a bill in the mail a few weeks later for using smoke signals.

To AT&T's credit, it was actually pretty easy to get this cleared up.  I called them up, expressed my incredulity that anybody could get charged for roaming (it's not even a thing anymore!), and they credited my grandparents' invoice the amount that had been charged.  It turned out that my grandparents had just kept renewing a very old cell phone plan (that I think they originally signed up for in 1999) under which roaming charges still applied.  With their permission (and at the firm suggestion of the AT&T customer service representative, who claimed that he would only issue a credit for roaming charges one time), I updated their service plan online to a newer, comparable plan.

But the kicker is that neither my grandparents or my brother were going to call AT&T about it!  If I hadn't been there, they would have just paid the extra cash and gone on their merry way.  Somewhat fortunately, neither my grandparents or my brother are really pressed for cash, but I can't help wondering how many people see extra charges on their bills, figure that those charges are fair, and pay them.

How much money do big companies receive just because people don't call them on it?

How about you?  Do any of you still get charged for roaming?  Do you realize that we are no longer in the year 1999?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo by tejvanphotos.

Five Ways the 2011 San Diego Chargers Are Like Debt



These guys are true fans.

I received some positive feedback on my post a few months back about how this year's Colts compare to finances.  As I basically write on this site for love and affection, I thought I'd take another shot at that style of article.  Please feel free to love and affect me in the comments.

Let me start by saying that my favorite football team is the San Diego Chargers, and so it is with fear and trepidation that I liken my team to the pernicious "d" word of the personal finance community.  That "d" word, of course, is debt.

But how, you ask, can a real, actual team be compared to an abstract idea?  Gather around, my children, and I'll tell you a tale.

1)  Both may be fun, for a while - The Chargers started this season with a record of 4-1.  "Four wins and only one loss?", we fans asserted incredulously.  "Can life get better?  I submit that it cannot!"  Following several seasons of 2-3 starts, we finally had a team that gained momentum early, and it was difficult not to be optimistic.  That was a good time to be Chargers fan. 

In a similar way, when a person is getting into debt (especially credit card debt), it's probably a pretty good time.  "What's that?  I can buy the 70" television AND the Playstation 3 right now and only worry about paying it off in the future?  Sign me the crap up!"  Let's be real: it feels amazing to be able to gratify yourself instantly.*  It's only when the bills start to come that our purchases feel a little less like smart choices.

A Thanksgiving Update and a Financial Bucket List



Turkey knows your thoughts
and judges you.
Be afraid.



Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow to all my readers in the lower 48 (I'm pretty sure there aren't any turkeys in Alaska and Hawaii, so how can they celebrate the day? :-) ).

Today, I am thankful that, after a month, Norwegian Cruise Line has finally refunded my money from when they double-charged me for an excursion I took on my cruise that ended over a month ago.  FINALLY!  That's $178 that I have again.  Take that, suckas!

Secondly, I am trying to win the $500 Give Me Back My Five Bucks Competition, sponsored by Life Insurance Finder, the life insurance experts.  To get some extra entries, I need to list some items on my financial bucket list.  Here goes nothing!

1)  Get my money back from Norwegian Cruise Lines.  Check, check, and double-check.  I know that this was a very small goal, but it was super annoying to try to connect with the right department at NCL and I've also been checking my bank statement nearly every day to make sure that the money got credited back. I am glad to put this behind me!

2)  Max out my Roth IRA contribution every year until I can't anymore.  My wife and I are close to bumping up against the maximum income level a married couple can have and still be eligible to contribute to a Roth, so I need to contribute now while I am still able.

3)  Take full advantage of my very generous company 401(k) match.  My company matches 100% of my contributions, up to the specified limit of $16,500.  I am ineligible to contribute until January, however; they want the employee to work at the company for six months before starting to match.  Come January, look out!

4)  Save more money for traveling.  I really want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with my dad and two brothers.  My dad's getting older (aren't we all?), so I want to be able to go while he's still able.

5)  Produce and direct a play.  I haven't done this yet, but I'd like to mount a small-scale production with paid actors while shelling out approximately $5,000.  I just need to do it!

What items are on your financial bucket list?  Let me know in the comments, or, better yet, leave a comment over at Give Me Back My Five Bucks and enter the contest yourself!  (You'll just have to give me a kickback if you win. :) )

Photo by techvt

Two Thoughts on Timeshares

Little Miss Moneybags has a great post on things to consider when or if you are considering buying a timeshare, and I wanted to add two additional points that come from my own personal experiences.

1)  Timeshare Salesmen Are People Too - If you've been to a timeshare presentation, you probably have made a note to yourself to never go to another timeshare presentation again.  Why is this?  Timeshare salesmen have a reputation for being pushy (and I suspect many of you have much a much less diplomatic word than "pushy" when it comes to describing timeshare salesmen).  While I deplore how many salesmen conduct themselves (see below), I do my best to see it from their perspective.  They are trying to make a living by selling something that almost nobody wants to people who are probably just there to jerk them around by seeming just interested enough for long enough that they can collect their "free" prizes.  I'd be pretty pushy too.

2)  Timeshare Salesmen Need to Learn to Back It Up, or the Guy from Pinch That Penny Is Going to Cut a Fool - Having said the above, I've never felt more lied to, or misled, in my life than I have when I've talked with timeshare salesmen and/or reps from timeshare companies.  For instance, on a Vegas trip a couple of years ago*, my wife and I were talked into going to a supposedly hour presentation under the guise of free show tickets for our time (for what it's worth, I believe it was to some timeshare that was being built by Planet Hollywood in Vegas; I'd put out a call to boycott Planet Hollywood in response, but I mean, let's be real -- Bruce Willis needs money for toupees).  By the time we finally sat down with a salesperson, that salesperson refused to even go through the presentation with us because we told her that we had been told that the presentation would only take an hour.  She insisted that she needed at least an hour and a half to two hours.

So, all we got out of it was close to two hours lost from our vacation.  They didn't apologize for jerking us around, and they didn't give us our show tickets.

Having said all that, I'm not entirely averse to the idea of timeshares.  My in-laws bought a timeshare many years ago, and they are vigilant about using their weeks of vacation (the live in North Dakota, so, particularly in the winter, it's nice to have a week at a resort somewhere that's sunny).  I think if you buy a timeshare, the key thing to consider is whether you'll end up using your weeks of vacation that you've purchased.  If that's not realistically a very easy "yes," then you probably shouldn't buy one.

How about you all?  Do you have any experience with timeshares?  Let me know in the comments.

*I know it seems like I go to Vegas a lot, but it's a decent vacation destination when you live in Southern California like I do.

Photo by marbla123.

Is Price Synonymous with Value?

In a recent article over at Slate.com, a story is told about Ernest Gallo (whom you may remember from his and his brother Julio's wine commercials in the 80s).  In the story, Ernest conducted an experiment in which he would pour two glasses of wine for his customers.  He would say that one glass was worth five cents, and the other glass was worth ten cents.  He found that every single person he did this to claimed that he or she enjoyed the ten cent wine more than the five cent wine.

The kicker?  Both glasses contained wine poured from the same bottle.  His customers had been fooled by the price, and not by the actual quality of the wine itself.

This got me to thinking about other items whose apparent value had a comparable price point.  When I think about the first generation iPods, for example, they had high price tags because they didn't have much in the way of cometition.  However, even when other companies got on the portable digital music player bandwagon, iPod prices remained high even while Zune and other comparable devices sold for much cheaper.

You might argue that the consistently high price for iPods was a product of the infrastructure that Apple had built in the form of iTunes when compared with the sparser resources for purchasing music on the other devices, but at the end of the day, an iPod and a Zune are basically just the same thing: a very portable hard drive.  The only real difference is the branding.

I guess my basic question for us is (and I'll use Apple as my example), is it the intrinsic value of an iPod what drives up the price?  Or, is it the high prices of Apple products in general that make us think that they're more valuable?  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Picture by kevin dooley

A Mental Spending Trick: Spreading the Money Out

She's a ticket and I'm drowning slowly

A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of a long trek as I was driving back home to San Diego with my wife after spending a long weekend visiting my family.  The trip (approximately 300 miles)  takes about 5 hours, on average, especially when you add in meal breaks.  It's not a bad drive, but if I can speed it up in a reasonably safe way, I'm going to do so.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I was speeding.

You see, there's a shortcut that will take about 20 miles off of the trip, but it entails driving along a mountainous (read: hill...ous?) path that is primarily two lanes (one in each direction).  There are occasional passing lanes, though, but they end pretty quickly.  As such, I find that if I'm going to pass somebody while on this road, I'd better step on the gas to get around them so that I don't end up flying into oncoming traffic.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, that that was how I caught speeding.  I, at 29 years old, received my first speeding ticket.

The speed limit at that point was 55 miles per hour (though I was stuck behind a couple of cars driving slower than that -- hence, the desire to pass), and the officer of the law clocked me as doing 70.*  I'm not sure if that was the actual speed I was driving, or if the officer was doing me a solid by saying that's what he clocked me at (after doing some research after receiving the ticket, I read that in California, speeding tickets become significantly more expensive if you are clocked at speeding by 16 or more miles per hour over the speed limit).  Either way, I'm stuck with a fairly expensive reminder of my mistake.

Now, I admit, I shouldn't have been speeding.  Even so, I wasn't really furious about receiving a ticket.  In the first place, I am fortunate to be in a stable financial place where I have the money to pay for speeding ticket without being too inconvenienced.

But in the second place, I just kind of figured I was due.  You see, I, like I'm assuming most people do, speed a little bit pretty consistently, but my speeding is moderate.  When on the freeway, I find myself generally driving about 5-9 miles per hour over the speed limit (10 MPH seems like you're really pushing it to me :-) ).**

However, even though I speed, I mentally acquiesce to the idea that laws should be obeyed, so a part of me feels some guilt when I speed (I chalk this guilt up to years of Christian private schooling)  With this in mind, I kind of feel like my ticket, in a sense, could be distributed equally across each of the instances in my 13 years of driving that I've gone over the speed limit.  My speeding just finally caught up with me, and I received my (very overdue) punishment.

See, I'm not mad because I got to speed all those times for free up until now, and now, I'm just paying my dues (which probably work out to mere pennies per each time I've driven too fast).

This seems more than fair to me.

As another example of this sort of thinking, in the last weeks of my last semester, I bought a class ring to commemorate my grad school education.***  I paid about $400 for it, and I literally thought the first time I wore it, "If I never wear this again, this one time wearing of this ring cost me 400 bucks."  Each time I wear it, I take comfort in that fact that, from a days of use perspective, I'm bring the cost of the item way down.

Does anybody else play mental tricks on themselves like this to spread out some cost so that it seems less intense?  Let me know in the comments.

*Perhaps it will come off as unrepentant, but I never thought I'd get a speeding ticket for doing 70 on a highway.
**If I'm overestimating the speeding mentality in my readers, I apologize.  All I can say is that most traffic in the city where I live while on the interstate flows at about the speed I drive at.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm the worst person for speeding, and I deserve your judgment.
***I know, school rings are profoundly silly, particularly for a grad program.  Still, I was proud of my accomplishment, and I guess I wanted/was suckered into buying something tangible to commemorate it.

What Is an Emergency Fund?, or Analogies to Fairy Tales, Part the First

She's a brick ... house.

In a post last week, I made light of the fact that I hadn't ever written a post detailing what an emergency fund is.  Today, I found this picture to the right, which I think fully exemplifies why one should have an emergency fund.

Coincidence?  Almost certainly.  Nevertheless, draw nigh, and I'm gonna drop some knowledge up in here, and I'm going to do so via means of a fairy tale.

Do you remember the story of the Big Bad Wolf  (BBW)* and the three little pigs?  In that story, the BBW is all up in the pigs' grills because he wants to eat them up, and the pigs are all like, "No way, man, we don't want to be eated all the way up," and the BBW is all like, "You pigs totes better get over it because you're about to be in my belly by way of my chompy-chompy mouth."

So the first pig hides in his house made of straw (which is still a pretty good house for a pig to build; most of them just roll around in mud, so you KNOW this pig is already putting on some airs).  The BBW totes huffs and puffs, and faster than you can say "Complications from emphysema," the house of straw falls to ground, and that little pig runs whee, whee, whee, whee, whee all the way to the next little pig's house, which is made of sticks.

Frugal Guilt

I have a confession to make: sometimes, when I figure out how to do something a cheaper way, I start to feel a little, well, guilty.  For example, back in the late 90s and early aughts (aka when dinosaurs ruled the earth), there was a litte music-sharing program called Napster.  I'll admit, I dabbled in downloading free songs, but it didn't sit well with me.  Because of that uneasiness, I estimate that I've probably stolen, er, pirated, er, "music-shared" fewer than thirty songs in my entire life.

In my mind, my basic thinking on the issue is that since I've always wanted a career in the arts, to take other people's intellectual property without compensating them for it is unethical.

I bring this up because because recently, the New York Times has recently decided that it's going to start "trying" to charge people for accessing its stories online, and that also didn't sit well with me.

Chase, or How I Love Technology

A couple of weeks ago, I complained about how Chase made it difficult to make payments towards my credit card.  While I still think that that is a lousy policy on their part, there is another aspect to their banking that I really enjoy.

When I got my iPhone, one of the first handful of apps that I downloaded were banking apps, and, for those who don't know, the Chase Bank app does something pretty nifty.  It lets me take pictures of my checks and it automatically deposits them.  I don't have to go into my branch anymore.  While I don't receive a whole lot of checks in general (my paycheck is directly deposited across three accounts), when I do receive the odd check, being able to use my phone to deposit it is terrifically convenient.

What can I say?  I, like Kip, love technology.



As far as downsides, probably the main one is that if you don't take a very clear picture of the check, the app won't accept it.  This can be maddening after a couple of tries.  However, and maybe I'm just getting better at it, but the last few times I've deposited checks, the first picture that I've taken has worked.

The only other downside is that I, irrationally, feel like I need to hold onto the physical checks after I've deposited them (in case Chase runs an audit or something).  I'll have to recheck Chase's terms, but holding onto these is probably a bad plan, as it will be difficult in the future to remember which checks I have and have not deposited.  I'd hate to get charged a fee by trying to deposit an already cashed check.

How about you?  What technological methods do you use to make your financial life easier?  Let me know in the comments.

San Diego Power Outage Thoughts

Yesterday, according to some early reports, a worker in Arizona flipped the wrong switch while working on a power line, which caused around 1.4 million people in the San Diego area to lose power.  I live in San Diego, but I wasn't put out too much by the outage (my power was turned back on around 10 pm).  In fact, the outage gave my wife and I an opportunity to have dinner (thank you gas barbecue grill!) with some neighbors who we've been meaning to get to know a little better.  Most of the area now has the power back on, but there others who are still in the dark.*

During the blackout, I noticed or heard about two things last night that had to do with money, and I thought I'd share.  One of these is admirable, the other, not so much.

First, the admirable: I mentioned above that I grilled last night.  What I didn't mention is that I had to go to Lowe's to refill my propane tank.  While at Lowe's, I noticed a guy was loading a generator with a price tag of $1,000 into the trunk of a pizza delivery car.  I think this is admirable because it shows initiative; if this pizza company is the only restaurant that can deliver in the area, they stood to make a lot of money.  Also, this company was helping with something vital: they were hoping to continue to deliver food to the hungry. 

Next, the less than admirable: during a blackout, one issue that people are concerned about is keeping food from spoiling.  As such, there was a major run on ice last night.  I live around the block from a 7-11, and that store had a line out the door for hours last night with people wanting ice or cold drinks.  With the demand for ice at a high, I heard on the radio that one local liquor store decided to jack up its prices for a bag of ice from $2 to $5.  While the liquor store certainly *can* price its goods at whatever it thinks is fair, I think it's deplorable for them to do so in the middle of a blackout where people aren't thinking as clearly as maybe they should (the first reports we heard said that we probably wouldn't be back on until late last night, or possible even into today).

Way to stay classy, San Diego.

The major difference that I see between the admirable and the un-admirable is that the first person was taking some initiative to not only help his business, but also to provide food to people who may not have food stored for unforeseeable events.  The second example, the liquor store, I feel like was just taking advantage of the situation.  While I understand that this is how a capitalist economy works, it just makes me a little sad-face.

What are your thoughts?  Do you think the liquor store was justified?  Or, do you think the pizza place was as big of a crook as the liquor store?  Let me know in the comments.

*For what it's worth, the woman in the picture of the link is a coworker of mine.  She is also a part-owner of a local restaurant, and I guess a patron got out of hand last night and attacked her.  Scary stuff.

5 Ways to Save on Theatre Tickets

Live theatre is generally a pricy enterprise for those who want to see it.  Happily, one of the perks of getting a master's degree in drama is that I can go to the theatre and justify the cost to myself under the auspices of "professional development." Still, if there's a way for me to save money when going to see a play or a musical, it's always a good idea.  To try to mitigate the costs, here are a couple of ways that I've used to save money on ticket prices.*

1)  Usher - Do you own a white, collared shirt and black slacks? Congratulations! You're qualified to be an usher! Many theatres offer free admission to people who own the above clothes and are willing to volunteer their time by arriving 30-45 minutes prior to showtime in order to help audience members find their seats. Go to just about any theatre's website for more information on how to get involved in this way.

2)  Friends - Are you friends with somebody who's in a play?  If so, that person likely has some "comps" (complimentary tickets).  If you ask your buddy real sweet and nice-like, he or she just might hook you up to let you see the show for free.

3)  Local Discount Ticket Brokers - In New York, you can buy cheaper tickets the day of the show (or sometimes a few days ahead) from the TKTS booth in Times Square (or one of the other two booths they operate).  The catch is that you need to go in person and wait in line for the tickets.  The logic behind selling half-price tickets is one of simple economics:  it's better for the theatre to make some money (by selling at a discount the day of the performance) as opposed to no money (empty, unsold seats equal lost earnings).  Here in San Diego, there's a local organization called Arts Tix which sells discounted tickets as well.  I'm pretty sure that there are others in other cities as well, I'm just not familiar with them by name.  Readers, do you know of any local discount ticket purveyors?

4)  Online Discount Sites - Goldstar.com immediately springs to mind.  You are able to purchase discounted tickets here online, and it sells tickets to events in multiple cities (Atlanta, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and others).  I have also seen tickets sold on Groupon, but these deals are much more sporadic, and therefore, harder to plan.

5)  Take Advantage of Available Discounts - One of my favorite discounts that I've been getting lately is due to my age.  Theatre is often seen as being kind of old-fashioned, and so theatres are desperate to get young people in the audience.  As such, one of the major theatres in San Diego, The Old Globe, offers $20 tickets to people who are under 30 years old.**  Other discount opportunities include cheaper tickets for students, seniors, and groups.

Anybody else take advantage of other theatre discounts?  Let me know in the comments.

*This comment is not meant to imply that I don't think theatres are worthy places to pay full-price. Particularly in a bad economy, arts organizations, such as theatres, struggle to pay their bills. Personally, I think that if you *can* afford to pay full-price to go to the theatre (especially for newer/smaller/more adventurous theatres), it's not a bad investment.
**As I'm currently 29, I'm going to ride this discount for all it's worth until I turn 30 in May.

Edit 09/19/2011:  This post was featured in the 327th Carnival of Personal Finance at Mrs. Nespy's World

Extreme Mortgage Idea

About a year ago, my wife and I decided to place a bid on a short sale that was happening in the condo complex where we were renting. Our bid ended up being accepted, and we were happy to be paying a mortgage on a place as opposed to renting. After all, many financial advisers in the world seemed to agree that last year was a good time to buy a home as both prices and interest rates were low.

As human beings in a capitalist society are wont to do, a few days ago, I did some research into what the value of my wife and I's investment was. As you may have already guessed, I wasn't pleased with my findings.

According to a search through Chase Bank, condos in our complex that are the same size have recently been selling for about 25% less that what we paid. My wife and I assumed that values had fallen some, but we were not expecting such a dramatic decrease.

Even so, we aren't in such a bad spot financially. The cost of our mortgage (even with HOA fees) is still comparable to what we would have paid if we continued to rent. Further, after the (rightful?) demonization of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) following the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, my wife and I have our mortgage at a low fixed rate. Finally, we qualified for the "free" money that the federal government was offering (although me missed out on the California state incentive because the company who dealt with the escrow was staffed by a bunch of jerkoffs who, though nearly every other company filed the paperwork on behalf of their clients, did not file the necessary paperwork for us. I guess you could say that I'm still a little bitter) to first-time home-buyers, so we're not as bad off as we might have been.

On the downside, our air conditioner has gone to that great HVAC retirement plant in the sky, so that adds further costs to the equation.

Still, though things are somewhat bleak as far as our home being a profitable investment goes, they are not nearly as bleak as they are for others. Some of our friends purchased real estate at the height of the bubble, and the bank, after twiddling their thumbs for months as this couple attempted to work something out with them, eventually called back and gave the couple 48 hours to vacate.*

In the midst of all this, various pundits have put forward ideas about how to resolve this issue of record foreclosures, and Suze Orman has a rather extreme idea that I think actually makes a lot of sense. Her idea is, essentially, if a couple buys a house for $400,000, and, after the crash, the home becomes only worth $150,000, instead of foreclosing on the couple and then selling the house for the $150,000 it's worth, the bank should simply refinance the loan to the original couple so that they now owe $150,000. This keeps the bank earning as much as they would likely earn anyway, and it keeps the original couple, you know, having a place to live.

I can see why banks would never go for this; they want to squeeze every last cent out of the couple that they can. However, the bank is going to be out money either way (unless the couple simply continues to make payments on their drastically over-valued mortgage). Why not save everybody time and headache and simply give the couple a (more than) fair shake?

What do you think? Is this idea something that you could see catching on (like Suze's shiny jackets?)? Let me know in the comments.

*This is why when I see the recent news that Bank of America and Citibank's stock prices are going in the toilet, it's difficult for me to feel too badly.

Tipping on Take-Out?

Wordplay!  Zing!

One monetary issue that everybody has to deal with from time to time is the issue of tipping. In general, if I eat in a restaurant, I leave around a 15% tip. There are some that would view this as being a cheapskate (particularly those that have worked in the restaurant business), and I’m fine with that. I’m not here to make everybody happy. In California, where I live, state laws make restaurants pay servers at least minimum wage, so I’m comfortable not habitually tipping more. If I lived in a state where employers are able to pay their servers less than minimum wage (sometimes as little as just over two bucks an hour!), I would probably be a little more generous.

One area where I have a hard time knowing what to tip, however, is in the area of take-out. Tipping expert Steve Dublanica (who writes for a favorite blog of mine, Waiter Rant) believes that take-out orders should automatically receive a 10% tip. This amount is a little hard to swallow (no pun intended).

For me, when I tip, I am paying for the service. As such, I have something of a chip on my shoulder when I go to, say, a sandwich place, pay for my food with my debit card, and then see a line for a tip on the receipt.* While my bleeding-heart thinks that minimum wage is not enough to live on in California, and that I should therefore be more generous, my fiscal conservative brain thinks that a growing entitlement culture is imposing its will upon me. If there is a line for a tip, then what is being implied is that tipping at this restaurant is the norm, and if I do not tip, then I face the scrutinizing and disdainful gaze of the cashier.

So, as you can see, I’m a little torn.

As a quick Google search attests, opinions on tipping differ across the internet. Here are a couple of rules of thumb that I use.

1) I cannot think of a time when I tip a percentage of the total bill on take-out.
2) If I take out food from a restaurant frequently, I may leave a dollar or two.
3) If the restaurant offers curbside take-out (e.g., the server must exit and return to the restaurant multiple times in order to bring the bill and food to me in my car), I usually leave two or three bucks.
4) If the food is preparation intensive (like sushi), I try to leave the chefs a couple of bucks.
5) If it’s a drive-thru, I almost never tip, unless I go there frequently.

How about you? Do you tip for take-out? Am I an oaf for begrudging take-out workers a couple of bucks? Leave me a comment and let me know.

*One restaurant that my wife and I semi-frequently get take-out from is Pei Wei (which is the fast food branch of P.F. Chang’s). I am consistently pleased that Pei Wei does not have a line for tip on the receipt, and so I never feel badly about not leaving one.

2 Easy Ways to Make Money Online

If you've spent any time trying to find legitimate ways to make money online (I'm looking at you with a jaundiced eye, survey sites), you know that it's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is to pull a couple of bucks off of the internet. However, in my own searching, I've come across a couple of sites that do what they say they will.

1) Fiverr.com - On this website, people post both what they're willing to do for five dollars and/or what they would like done for five dollars. One might assume that this sort of situation would devolve pretty quickly into some pretty grotesque, dehumanizing stuff, but my experience with the site has all been on the up and up. Many of the services people are offering to do have something to do with websites, such as designing logos or blog headers, getting traffic to websites, helping with SEO (search engine optimization), and so on. However, people with non-technical talents have their opportunity to post here as well; I've seen people offering to write songs or poems, or create bracelets from baseball seams. I have purchased through the site, and if you end up dealing with a bozo who doesn't do what she says she will, Fiverr will credit your five bucks back to your account (which is not as good as an actual refund, but at least you're not entirely out your money). To make money, you'll have to think up something that you are willing to do for five bucks that there's a market for.

2) Chacha.com - This is a site that I've just come across, and I'm intrigued by it. According to the site:

"ChaCha gives free, real-time answers to any question both online at ChaCha.com and through mobile phones by either texting “ChaCha” (242-242) or using one of our mobile apps. Through our unique “ask-a-smart-friend” format, ChaCha has become the leading answers service with more than a billion questions answered to date all in a fun, conversational format perfect for those in need of fast, free answers while on-the-go."

How do you make money from this? If you (and Chacha) consider yourself to have superior research skills, you can sign up to become a guide, and then you'll be a person to whom such requests will go. From what I've seen, you probably will not make enough to retire off of Chacha, but people can fairly easily make five or six dollars an hour (lower than minimum wage, but easy to do while watching television or browsing around online).


I'm not a hundred percent sure how Chacha makes its money (to me, it seems like a much more inefficient way of doing a Google search), but there are people who use this service, and the site needs people to research the questions.



I'd be interested to hear from you of any other relatively easy ways you've found to make a couple extra bucks online. Has anyone else tried either Chacha or Fiverr?

The Thrill of Antici...pation

I have a confession to make: I totally splurged on something I didn’t need the other day.

Two days ago, there was a Facebook deal for tickets to the Chargers pre-season football game that is scheduled for tonight. Seats were $40 a piece (for seats that are usually $80). Being the frugal dude that I am, I immediately x-ed out of the screen and didn’t give the tickets another thought.

Yeah, not really.

Actually, I bought three, knowing I could get a couple of buddies to pitch in (well, one was for a birthday present for a former roommate; it’s something of a tradition for us to buy each other tickets to sporting events for our birthdays).

Still, I didn’t need to go to this game. Pre-season football doesn’t count for anything, and so most of the A-list players will have little to no playing time. So why, then, as a logical, financially-minded person did I buy?

Recent research (from the university where I received my M.A., no less) has suggested that the happiest people are not those who spend money on lots of things, but those who spend their time and money investing in experiences. One of my favorite things to do in the year is to go to a couple of Chargers games, and getting to do so with a couple of good friends that I don’t get to hang out with nearly enough is worth the money to me.

An additional benefit is that I have spent my time since purchasing tickets looking forward to the event. The three of us are all Chargers fans (which eliminates the fun of trash-talking), but there’s still the fun and camaraderie that accompanies the texts and emails that have been exchanged speculating on who will be playing and for how long.

It seems like this has turned into a justification post, which I don’t know that I intended. Still, even the writing of this post has pleasantly increased my anticipation for the event.

How about you? Is the joy of anticipation a consideration when planning purchases?

Does Your Credit Card Make It Difficult?

I am happy to report that for the last several months, I have been paying my credit card off in full every month. However, and maybe I'm a weirdo, but I have a hard time paying a big lump sum of money all at once. For example, if I owe $500, it's easier for me psychologically to make two $200 payments and one $100 payment than it is to make one large payment of $500.

It's unreasonable, I know, particularly when I also know that I have been able to budget for the whole amount due. What can I say? At least I'm paying it all off.

Normally, my smaller payments work swimmingly. I make my smaller payments, my card's balance shrinks, and I finish the balance due off by the end of the month. However, a few minutes ago, I ran into a small snag.

My primary credit card is the Chase Freedom card because I like cash-back rewards combined with no annual fees. I made a small payment on 7/31, and I tried to make a small payment again today, but I received an error message that stated that I was unable to make my payment due to the fact that I had submitted another payment within the last three days.

I can't think of a good reason why Chase would implement this policy, other than they are trying to "catch" people, like me, who make smaller payments. While it's not a big deal for me not to be able to pay today (my billing period end date is 8/26), if I were facing this situation on the last day that payments were due (and thus, facing the prospect of getting charged interest on the balance carried), I'd be pretty upset.

The only logical reason I could give for Chase to implement this policy is that it must cost the banks something to send money to one another. However, Chase is my primary bank, so Chase is denying me the ability to move cash money from one Chase account to another Chase account! It's ridiculous!

Have you ever hit up against credit cards making it difficult to make payments, or otherwise hassling you in an (apparent) attempt to collect fees from you? How did you work it out?

One Way NOT to Save Money in Las Vegas

After detailing some ways to save money in Las Vegas last week, I thought it would only be fair to list one way in which I wasn't prudent with my money in Vegas during my recent trip.

After seeing a show, my family and I were left in Harrah's Casino. In an effort to save money, I had purchased and printed out a coupon (from Restaurant.com) for a restaurant in Vegas for dinner, but after I bought the coupon, I called the restaurant for reservations, but the man on the phone told me that they were closing early that night.

Wah-wuh. A restaurant closing early in Las Vegas? Se ridicule!



Anyways, my family decided just to find a restaurant at Harrah's to eat at. Our choices were a buffet (of which we could not stand another), a prohibitively expensive steakhouse, and a burger place.

How expensive can a hamburger be, right? With this in mind, we opted for the burgers (even though they cost, on average, $14 a piece. For that kind of money, that burger had better be good enough to call me in the morning!).

Still, food is overpriced in Vegas, so eating at KGB (Kerry's Gourmet Burgers) was about as expensive as we might have expected. However, the real tipping point occurred when the waitress upsold us on our drink order.

My dad and I each wanted one beer (at $6 a piece: already a ridiculous price). The waitress told us that we could get a bucket of beer (5 beers) for $25, which would result in a $5 savings (versus paying $30 at the regular rate). I was about to say no, when my dad replied that that sounded good. I was surprised, but I went along with it. To make a long story short, after the meal, when the check arrived, my dad was less than pleased (even though he and I split the bill). I think he just heard the part about saving five bucks.

Still, I want to take a minute to think about the markup that restaurants charge on drinks. I can get a six pack of bottled beer at the grocery store for somewhere between $6 and $12, usually. That means that beer costs me between $1 and $2 a piece. I have to believe that restuarant is getting that same beer at a significant discount as they are purchasing in bulk. However, even if they're paying $2 per beer, they're more than doubling or even tripling their money (by selling at the "deal" rate of $5 or the normal rate of $6).

Even if you're not an alcohol drinker, your drink can have an outrageous markup. If you buy soda from a fountain, it likely costs the restaurant a few cents per soda (the cost of fizzy water and the cost of syrup). I think KGB charged $3 per soda, which, if it costs 3 cents per soda to the restaurant, is a markup of a hundred times the cost.

What a racket. I guess the extra money pays for the ambience?