Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
Happy Valentines day to you. I say that, not because I want you to run out and buy me chocolate and gifts, but rather just to be nice. At our house, we have never embraced Valentines Day as a day to spend lots of money to try to prove our love to each other. We sit firmly in the "Reject consumerism on pretend holidays” camp.
Well, it’s starting to get uglier in Belgium and I can only imagine how long it will take before the US ends up in a similar situation. http://www.businessinsider.com/belgium-brussels-police-firefighters-2012-2 Firefighters were out protesting against a raise in the retirement age from 58 to 60 and it was up to the police to keep order. In the end, the police officers ended up all wet from the
I met up with some friends of mine last week for a drink in downtown Seattle. I hadn’t seen them for years and had a great time catching up. They are all quite successful in the Information Technology field and have faired well through this economic downturn. As we talked, late in to the evening, I marveled at how fortunate we had all been to
Check out this link: http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/68430/tomtom-tomtom-go-live-top-gear-edition-with-5-screen-lifetime-map-updates For $60 and free shipping you can get a 5” TomTom today. This is a GREAT deal. If you are interested, you better act fast though!
Yet another celebrity sponsoring a prepaid card. Of course there are fees. Please just go to a credit union and get a card! http://www.businessinsider.com/george-lopez-hops-on-the-prepaid-card-bandwagon-with-mango-financial-2012-2
Have you heard about this new show? It’s called Bayou Billionaires and is about people who are being paid large sums of money by gas companies who are digging for gas in their yards. From the little that I’ve seen of it so far, they should rename the show, “How to spend all your money foolishly until it runs out”. I’m sure I’ll watch it
Facebook submitted their paperwork to take the company public and raise upwards of $5 billion. The last estimate I saw put Mark Zuckerberg at $25B in net worth at that rate. Wow. I won’t be buying any of Facebook’s stock because I think they are probably the most hyped IPO of all time and little guys like me don’t stand a chance at getting a
I must confess that I love watching consumers exercise their right to shop where they believe they’ll get the best value. The latest article on MSN highlights that online banks are seeing large increases in new members as people, fed up by the latest fee hikes at commercial banks, shop around for better deals. While I still think credit unions are the best place to
These days it seems like every other house on the block is headed towards foreclosure in some areas of the country. We’ve seen a few around our neighborhood but overall it’s been relatively light compared to some parts of the country. When people walk away from a home and the bank forecloses, there is often a gap between what the bank sells the house for
Amazing. I never thought I’d see a 30 year mortgage rate below 4%. It’s an amazing time to buy or refinance a home if you meet all the latest criteria. You know, have a job, have 20% equity in a home (refinance), have a 20% down payment, have a high credit score and the list goes on. We refinanced a couple years ago at 4.87%