On the auto-bailout plan

From bloomberg.com

"The legislation calls for the appointment of a so-called car czar who could force GM and Chrysler LLC into Chapter 11 bankruptcy if the companies don’t come up with a restructuring plan by March 31. "

2 complaints here. Firstly, why in the world do we use the tile "czar" (even if it rhymes with car)? Is it because it really is a position of arbitrary authority that the government chooses to create without regard to the powers they are actually granted by the Constitution? If so, why are they such brazen bastards about it? Why not give the position a friendly non-threatening (Gover-buddy?) name to cover up the fact that you've got Lady Liberty trussed and gagged in the back room?

Also, why the hell don't we just not give them the money? The economic conditions force a restructuring on their own. I'm sorry but a world without consequences is a world of mediocrity, and in the case where Government is mitigating the consequences, corruption.

Why no individual sized plain yougurt?

I like yogurt. I like the way it tastes, I like the different flavors out there, I like the fact that it comes in nice individual sized cups for you to enjoy throughout the day with no mess. There is however one gaping hole in the typical yogurt lineup; it is almost impossible to find plain yogurt in a size less than 32ozs.

This has been a thorn in my side for a while for several reasons. Firstly, yogurt is very healthy in its plainest state; when you start adding sugar and flavorants, not so much. Recently I bought a bunch of individual sized cups of Lucerne brand yogurt at Safeway. The 8oz cup of pomegranate and raspberry weighed in at 250 calories, and tasted way too sweet. When you try to cut down on the calories on these yogurts you'll find out that almost all lower calorie yogurts are sweetened with Aspartame. Even if you don't believe the hype about Aspartame causing pretty much any and all health problems (look into it, there are some awesome crazy-person websites out there) I just don't like yogurt to have the Diet Coke aftertaste. Furthermore, I just like the taste of plain yogurt, perhaps with some granola, or even cornflakes, mixed in.

So what is one to do with no snack packs? Make your own damn snack packs! When I was in college I was making my own yogurt and needed ways of storing all that I made. i discovered that my grocery store carried these 8oz plastic "jars" near the canning supplies. They are designed for making "freezer jams", whatever those are. They are the perfect size for a serving of yogurt, and they're readily available for about 60 cents each. I now buy the 32oz containers of plain yogurt for about 50 cents/oz versus 70-80 cents/oz that the sickeningly sweet individual sized cups cost, and split it into 4 8oz jars. If I want something more, I can mix in some frozen blueberries, or fresh if someone else is paying...

Why saving is better than a raise.

Ben Franklin once said "A penny saved is a penny earned". Now he's dead, guess he wasn't so smart after all. The fact of the matter is that a penny saved is BETTER than a penny earned. Why? Taxes, duh. P enny erned is olny .6-.7 pennies after Uncle Sam steals his portion under threat of jailtime. The fact of the matter is that you are better off striving to shave an extra few percent off of your expendetures than bust your hump and hope for a meager raise in the following year. Here are a few tips that I use to cut back.

1. Track your spending. - This has been a staple of every list of financial tips since the beginning of time but it's always been a pain in the ass until very, very recently. Even my copy of "Personal Finance for Dummies" which is only a handful of years out of date claims that categorizing and tracking your everyday spending is more trouble than it's worth. What happened between now and then? Mint.com! Seriously this tool has to be the best thing I can imagine for keeping track of expenses. It links to your bank accounts and credit cards and automatically catagorizes purchaces (with very decent accuracy) , displaying your spending habbits with awesome graphs. If you don't use it, you are missing out big time.
2. Sell your old crap. - Books and video games are your best bet here. If you've got a book or a game that you haven't used in a year or more, you need to sell it. Half.com is a great place to do this. I recently sold several Nintendo DS games for about twice what gamestop would have paid for them, making myself an extra 150 bucks. Technical, and Text books are another way to go if you're newly out of colege like me. If you have a technical book you don't use, sell it now before it loses its value (prices on these drop like stones). If you have a text book, and you didn't get ripped off by selling back to your book store, or other book buyers, you can fetch much more competetive prices selling without a middleman online.
3. Buy used, especially the afforementioned books and video games. Movies too... if you buy movies. You should look into a lobrary if you like books too, although I admit I like to buy my books for 4 or 5 bucks each instead.
   
4. Ditch Comcast. A lot of you won't do this, you wan't to be able to watch your tv when you want. I've gone without subscription television for years now, never willing to spend money on it during college. I continued that tradition into adulthood and I couldn't be happier. I flirted with the idea of getting cable installed, but when i heard what they were going to charge me for installation alone, a procedure even a monkey could do, i decided against it out of principle. This act of righteous indignation now saves me 70 bucks a month, or $110 in pre-tax income. NetFlix and the Internet (yeah i have DSL from Sonic.net, not cable) is all you really need.

US Air: The death of a shitty company

When I was growing up we always flew US Airways. My Mom has had her US Air rewards credit card since the seventies and we used it actively, racking up free flights. As a result we lined up again and again to climb aboard another US Air flight.

In addition to the airports in Baltimore and Philly, both about 2 hours away, there is a tiny commuter airport about 30 minutes from my house that only has US Air flights. The old habits and the allure of the short drive to the commuter airport kept us loyal for far too long. We forgave the crappy service, and the often canceled commuter flights out of Philadelphia. We barely flinched when they stopped offering meals and began selling poorly stocked snack boxes for 5 dollars. Then... one day it all came into focus. My Girlfriend turned my on to JetBlue, an airport where you got more... More drinks, more snacks, free headphones and TV! and the headphones aren't that idiotic 2 pronged design that only exist on airplanes? This was heaven.

Fast forward several years. I haven't flown US Air in a good long while. I've flown flight after flight in comfort, getting the whole can of coke instead a a chintzy ice riddled cupful. But an event has led me back home; and JetBlue, sadly, would be unable to bear me there upon their silver wings. I bit the bullet and booked a flight home aboard a US Air flight.

I expected that it would happen, I just thought it was too horrible to ever come true. US Air has begun charging for drinks. And not just cocktails, I'm talking Coke... juice... water! 2 dollars for Coke? The most insidious part of this is that it comes on the heels of the ban on carrying your own drinks through security. Conspiracy? probably... In any case, this poor attempt by a dying company to sqeeze a few pennies of extra revenue out of its passengers.

Tomorrow I will be flying and I will NOT be paying for a coke. No way. I will be taking an empty nalgene through security and filling it in the terminal. Furthermore I will will take all pains to never fly US Air again.

But I'm being dramatic... All airlines are going through tough times. Even JetBlue has begun charging for checking a second bag. JetBlue however, has always made an attempt to provide the best service possible, I can't say I've recieved the same on any of the many trips I've flow on US Air.

I've got news for you US Air, I'm not so keen on your regional airports with marginal service anymore. I'm willing to drive to/from Baltimore just to fly on an airline that is NOT US Air. Goodbye...

Who does your shopping

The loyalty rewards card is a staple of modern grocery shopping. Sure it is probably less useful than they try to tell you it is, reducing ridiculous prices back down to reasonable prices comparable to what you would have paid at other stores, but you'd still feel bad at missing out on the opportunity to not be gouged at the till.

One thing that irks me about these cards, as well as a cadre of paranoid weirdos out there is the application you need to fill out to lay your hands on one of these magic money cards. Do they seriously need my phone number and address? I understand that grocery stores often require these cards to take a personal check, but who has written a check at the grocery store in the past decade? I think I remember my Mom writing a check back in the mid nineties but I was largely distracted by the Bubble Yum and Archie comics in the checkout lane and the few details that I did glean have been lost to the ravages of time.

In any case, I've made a point to remain anonymous on the loyalty card applications: often in the most blatant ways... The 123 Fake St. Anytown USA way. How do you folks feel about this? Do you not care enough to make up an alias? Do you have a plausable alias? a ridiculous one? As for me, Sam Adams does all my shopping.


P.S. Nothing makes me happier in the grocery store than when they hand me my receipt, smile, and say "Have an nice day Mr. Adams"

The velcro cable cathcer

I have a lot of electronic gadgets. Not a ton, but enough that it becomes annoying to deal with all of the power adapters that I have to keep track of. I need to find enough outlets to supply juice to the half dozen portable devices I use, and hopefully keep my apartment free from wires snaking their way into my path at every turn.


I've been a reader of Lifehacker for about a year now and I've seen a few projects that are designed to manage the ever growing bramble of cables that accompany the gadgeteer lifestyle. One of my favorite innovations they have covered is the "cable catcher", something that keeps the business ends of your charging cables from sliding back behind your desk when your phone/computer/camera is not attached to it. What a great idea! and it's available at the low, low cost of... $70? right...

LH readers offered up their own alternatives made from cheap and recycled materials, however none of these is very discreet; you can definitely see these when you use them. Also, I wanted my charge station to be on my dresser, a piece of furniture that doesn't immediately lend itself to being clung to by binder clips in my case (although that is a seriously cool trick).

My solution for the invisible cable catcher: Velcro!
For less than 5 bucks I got 4 feet of adhesive Velcro strips at Target, enough for half a dozen large cable catchers or more (I hope you don't actually need that many).

What I did:

1. Cut 8" lengths of from each of the two strips (the spiky kind and the softer kind)
2. Peel the adhesive backing off of the spiky strip and affix it to the back of my dresser just below the top surface
3. Leave the adhesive backing on the soft strip, you don't need to stick it to anything
   

After that I just run the cables between the two layers and the cables stay nicely in place. It's easy to get a little more length if you need it, or a little less if you prefer. Other elements of my charging station include a Power Squid to manage all those ridiculously over sized adapters that just about everything comes with, and a very nice valet my girlfriend gave me, which is essentially a very manly tray for your various accessories and pocket change. All in all its a very convenient way to keep the cables at hand, in one location, and to keep them from falling behind the dresser.

As for the rest of that Velcro you paid for? I like putting it on the back side of cabinet doors and sticking up tins of spices. Instant hidden spice rack!

Why I Love ING Direct

When I graduated from college and took my first job at facebook it became time to start taking my finances more seriously. For me this meant setting up a checking account that local ATMs would not charge fees for, and a high yield savings account. I had accounts like this back in Delaware, but this wasn't too convenient in California.

Initially I saw Wamu as the clear winner. Their online savings account required a low minimum balance of something like 300 dollars, and their free checking accounts are a pretty sweet deal; no minimum balance and free checks for life. All these sweet deals and the fact that the nearest branch and ATM is visible from my office window.

I opened the free checking in person without a problem and got my debit card, the fee-free ATMs were very much welcome. After this I tried many times to open the online savings account, a process which can only be completed through the website, but I was always rejected for security reasons despite answering all the security questions correctly (questions about mortgages and car loans that I MAY have taken out in 2002, when i was 17... These answers were all NONE OF THE ABOVE, duh I was 17, great security!). I think it was because I have no credit history attached to my current address since I just moved to California recently. This was an extremely frustrating process; the branch, and the support line were completely useless when I had problems. The contact email was slightly better, but every time i wrote in, or replied to their emails I got a different rep who did not read the entire thread for context so often gave unhelpful answers. Customer service nightmare...

I then went to ING Direct. They offered a slightly lower interest rate (3.00% vs 3.30%) but had a great reputation on some of the blogs I had been reading. Their savings accounts also required no minimum balance, kind of cool although 300 bucks isn't terribly hard to swing for a savings account. I decided to sign up for an account. ING had the same concerns over my new address, however instead of giving me an unhelpful error message and asking me to try again in 7 days, they gave me a number to call with a very helpful woman on the other end who verified my information and opened up my first savings account. I was surprised at how easily this went after months of fighting with WaMu. It was easy to link the account with my WaMu checking account, and my old checking account back on the east coast for easy transfers.

After that I decided to create some extra accounts to structure my savings for different goals. It takes like... 10 seconds to create a new savings account (again with the high yield). You can give all of these accounts nicknames for easier tracking. The website as a whole is very easy to use, I'm very pleased with it compared to other bank sites I've used.

I then set up automatic savings plans; transfers scheduled on a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly basis, to help me save and reach some of the goals I had set. These transferred money from my external checking account to my various savings accounts without me having to think too much about it, very cool.

I liked ING so much I decided to look into their interest checking product. Typically interest checking is kind of a scam. They usually require large minimum balances and offer mediocre interest rates. Not so with ING. The interest is lower, only 1.75% (although if you have more than 50k you get 3.3% or more) currently, but there is no minimum balance, no fees, nada. One of the coolest features of the checking account is that they don\'t have the traditional systems for overdrafts. Typically if you overdraft you get charged like 30 or 40 bucks per transaction. It\'s a real bitch. With my checking account they essentially extend me a line of credit on the account above and beyond the current balance. I am able to charge up to 500 dollars beyond the balance of my account. If I draw beyond the balance of the account I don\'t pay any fees, but I do pay 9.00% interest on the difference. That\'s way better than a 40 dollar fee for buying a pack of gum. The hitch? you don\'t actually get paper checks.

What you do get:

• MasterCard Debit card linked to the account
• The ability to send paper checks via the website through the mail
• The ability to send "Electronic Checks" (ACH transfers)

Given that i write 1 paper check a month to the power company I figured this isn't a huge deal. I have 2 external checking accounts anyway and the last thing I need is another checkbook.

I now only use my WaMu account for deposits if I need to deposit a paper check or some birthday cash, no need to carry that debit card. I use my East Coast checking account to pay various bills (telephone, DSL, Power) since I had them set up that way anyway. As for the rest? I use my ING debit card for all other purchases, and if I actually need cash there are ATMs that don't charge fees for my account at the Safeway that I shop at, and (and this is the best part) at the E*Trade center right next to facebook's cafe. I walk right by the thing like 2 times a day. It's easy to find an ATM near you using the ING website.

I'm very, very pleased with the setup. The only thing that makes it more of a delight is mint.com :)