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October 2007 - Posts
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I didn't think that it would come down to it, but then again it wouldn't be the first time that I have been wrong. The national average for a gallon of gasoline is now above three dollars. I thought that it would be a few days worth of a fluke the other just yesterday when I started to fill up my gas tank at three dollars and fourteen cents per gallon, but on again, wrong...ong...ong. I couldn't bring myself to fill up my tank for that price, but now that the price has begun to creep even higher, I could kick myself for not doing so. This is almost as bad as the gas prices were in the Florida panhandle during the hurricane Katrina crisis back a few years ago. Now that the Gulf coast isn't dealing with multiple hurricanes, I would imagine that their gasoline prices are a lot better off than we have up here in the midwest. I know understand why many of my friends have given up driving their vehicles and have surprised bicycles instead to get them back and forth to school. It's not that I drive to school every day, but still, getting around town to be where I need to be when I need to be there costs gas money as well. On top of that, I am paying a car payment and a car insurance payment every month, so it would be pretty foolish of me not to use the car that I'm paying for, right?! Well, in order to combat these rising gasoline prices, I have started using my car a lot less than I used to. I used to drive to school for the sake of convenience at least twice a week. I liked having my car closer by in case I needed to go anywhere after school or if I didn't feel like waiting for the bus to truck me home. Now that I've learned how the bus system works around campus, I have a better idea of when the buses arrive and how long it will take me to get to or from school on any given occasion on any given day. This makes it a lot more convenient in the cold weather, even though it takes a little bit more time to ride the bus around campus. I can handle that if it's going to keep me warm and save me gas money. I just wonder how long this trend can possibly last. I also know that for all of you out in the West or out in Hawaii, the gasoline price problem is far far worse than it is here. Actually, I would imagine that out here in the Midwest we have some of the less expensive prices on the whole around the country. I know that when I go home to visit my family in New York, the gas prices as soon as I cross the border into New York from Pennsylvania are immediately thirty to fifty cents more per gallon. Then again, I always try to fill up in Ohio, because the prices are always at least ten to fifteen cents cheaper than they are here. Does this have to do with the way that different states tax gasoline? I had never thought about that. I had assumed that the federal government had something to do with gasoline prices, but then again, maybe they only oversee the production and supply. I just have no idea. It's strange that the more I think that I know about something, the less I realize that I understand...well at least about things of this nature that I have no real contact with. Sure, I fill up my gas tank and drive where I need to go, but I have absolutely no interaction with the system on a higher level. I'm just another American at the mercy of Uncle Sam and Uncle "whoever" who is out there somewhere dictating how much of my money he wants so I can drive my car around. It's just no good!
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OK, I'm pretty confused about all these things that are happening with the Citi group. Normally, I probably wouldn't care less if it was any other financial lending company, but in this case I am somewhat intimately linked with Citi overall. On account of the fact that, number 1, I have a credit card through Citicards, and number 2, all of my private undergraduate school loans are through Citigroup, means that I have the potential to be affected by whatever is going on in this company. As I read in the news today, the chief executive officer of the company is on his way to resigning, and as the sources tell it, there is no one that the corporation has in mind who is willing and/or capable of taking his place. This is one of those examples of when a young adult, somewhat newly on his/her own doesn't know what the future will bring in some financial situation. I'm pretty sure that I don't have to worry that much, because such a huge corporation like Citi has to have its ducks in a row if they have been lending and whatnot to so many hundreds of thousands of people. I'm sure that there is some kind of contigency plan to handle this kind of stuff for its customers, but on the other hand I can't help but borrow. I'm very thankful at least that my loans are locked in at an interest percentage so they can't fluctuate as a result of this, but then again, is that even reasonable. It seems that I have blocked all of that unpleasantness out of my mind, owing to the fact that my mother used to take care of all that loan business when I was down in Florida. Since she, myself, and my brother were all in school at the same time, it only made sense for one person in the family to have all the paperwork and deal with all the loan details. All I've ever known about the situation is when my interest payments have been due, so I went ahead, as with all my other bills, and set up an electronic debit from my checking account that I know will happen every month in order to deal with the payment. It's as simple as that...and more or less painless in comparison to the payments that I'll end up having to start paying when I finish working on my graduate degrees. Anyways, if any of you out there has some idea of ways that problems with such financial institutions affects customers and borrowers, definitely give a shout out and let us all know. I've surely tried researching the question, but thus far, I haven't really gotten anywhere.
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After about three months of searching, I finally decided to go ahead and book my flight home to New York for the Christmas holiday break. I have been trying to monitor any fluctuations in airfare prices between Indianapolis and home, and I've come to the conclusion that the prices really never change much outside of a range of about twenty dollars or so, depending on if you travel on days during the work week or on the weekend. It's hard to believe that the flights from here to home are almost as expensive as from the Florida panhandle to home. I thought that flying from a big-ish international airport would be far less expensive than flying from the Tallahassee air"shed" like I used to have to do. This isn't exactly the case. For some reason, due to some major construction of a new terminal at the airport in Indianapolis, a lot of the flights and service from here to elsewhere in the United States has been slowed down. That means that the prices for flights aren't as great as they probably should be. Either way, I usually split the price of my flights home with my parents, so that means that I will only have to endure the expense of half of this crazy ticket. Seeing as though Christmas is on a Tuesday this year, finding an suitable flight was even more difficult. Flights on the weekends surrounding the Christmas holiday were absolutely ridiculous, starting around seven hundred dollars. That means that I had to travel outside of the holiday week in order to save some major money. Grand total, my flight was around three hundred fifty dollars...not too bad actually for the Christmas holiday. I'm going to be staying home with my family for about nine days, so at least I'll be getting a good long trip out of my money. It's pretty funny that I found flights roundtrip from here to London for less than I'll be paying to fly home roundtrip to New York. That's the funny part about domestic airlines. It's amazing that is so expensive to fly around this country in comparison to flights three or four times as long overseas. I'm sure that it will be well worth the money to be able to go home and see my whole family and a bunch of my friends for the Christmas break. I don't get a chance to get home very often, owing to the fact that I go to school almost eight hundred miles away from where my family lives, so I always need to make the most of the time I get to spend up there. In addition to the money that I had to spend for the ticket, I'm going to have to start planning for money set aside for my Christmas shopping. Now that I'm "an adult" I am supposed to be responsible for getting gifts for everyone. In years past, my mother always took care of gifts for my cousins and aunts and uncles, but now I'm all on my own...especially now that my little brother is all married and in possession of a full time job so that he can afford to buy all kinds of gifts for everyone. That means that I need to learn to be frugal and creative in my gift giving. Luckily, I'm on a fellowship and I also have my little side jobs, so I have the opportunity to make and save money while I'm in school, so affording Christmas shopping isn't too tough.
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I'm one of those people who doesn't like to use their credit cards. If you saw the amount of times that I reached for my wallet to pull out a card to swipe though, you wouldn't think that was the case. What most people don't realize is that I pay for almost everything exclusively with my debit card. Since it's a visa labeled card, I can use it pretty much anywhere. I have a couple of "real" credit cards that I could use for things, but the problem is that I hate making big lump payments. You following? I know a lot of people out there who have credit cards with reward points, travel points, cash back, etc. like to use their credit cards for everything and then just pay off their entire balance each month. For some reason I just can't bring myself to do that. Granted, it doesn't sound like it would be a good idea, but I think that I would probably have a panic attack each month when it came around time to pay my bill. There is just something about seeing a big chunk of money leaving my checking account that makes me cringe. On the other hand, I'm trying to learn to change my ways, because my particular credit card company has recently implemented a new fangled rewards system where I can really get a good amount of money back each month for my purchases. I'm well aware that it will take to some getting used to, so that is where I'm hesitating changing over my account to this particular card. On top of the new adjustment, I realize that I will have to go through every single thing that I have linked to my credit card and have it changed to reflect the new account number, and that alone is a scary thought that I don't have the time to deal with at this point in the semester. It may not be as bad as changing everything that comes out directly debited from my checking account, but still, it would be pretty inconvenient. I suppose that this lack of interest in having big payments coming out of my checking account goes back a long way. I am never one to take big risks, and therefore I prefer not to take risks with my money either. I like to know that I have what I need in the case of an emergency, so therefore liquid assets are a great thing. I guess when it comes to my particular mindset, my assets are semi-liquid, because I still have to go to the bank to get them or swipe the card. I rarely ever carry any cash on me, because when I have the cash in hand, it feels more like "play money". I suppose that my mindset is that it is already out of my checking account, so why not spend it. Yeah, I guess that does sound a little bit odd, but at least I know that that is how my mind works when it comes to cash, so I've made it a point over the years not to keep a lot of cash on hand. I remember several years ago flying back to Florida after Christmas break when my grandfather was driving me to the airport, and as always he asked me if I had enough money or if I needed anything. I told him that I didn't need anything but that I didn't have any money on me because I don't like to carry cash. He thought that was just the most ridiculous thing to travel across the entire country with no cash on hand, so of course he promptly handed me a fifty dollar bill, and that was the end of that!
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The fact that it took me twenty-five years to go overseas makes it seems very amusing to me that on a daily basis, I'm eyeing the inexpensive winter travel prices I keep finding roundtrip to Europe. It reminds me that the reason that I never got to go overseas earlier in my life was the fact that I never had the time to do so. Ever since I was in the seventh grade, I have been constantly on the run with school, band, work,...you name it, I was probably involved in doing it. The story didn't change much in college, as I was equally if not more busy with two majors and three minors. I took classes and worked during the summers so that I could save a little bit of money to combat my out of state fees and tuition. Before I even graduated from undergrad, I had secured a job and for the following two years I worked in Florida until I was prepared for graduate school. I never had any time or opportunity to go anywhere or do anything fun. When I knew that I was going to graduate school and that I had saved up enough vacation time to get out of the country, I jumped on the opportunity. I saved a lot of money by purchasing my ticket early and going for my birthday in January. Having learned about the inexpensive nature of winter travel tickets to Europe, I have been looking for the past couple of years for opportunities to go back, even if only for a week. Now that I've settled into graduate school and have my life more or less on track, I want to get out and travel again. I've asked my grandmother to come to Europe and travel with me, because although she has been on cruises to Mexico and the Caribbean, she has never traveled overseas to anywhere really different and exciting where she can be exposed to a truly different culture and different languages. Once again, time seems to be the problem, as I have to figure out when I can fit in a trip overseas while I'm enrolled in school. Since she is technically retired, her schedule is obviously pretty flexible. I have myself signed up for email travel alerts to find great airfare prices, and each day I'm tempted to just buy the tickets and go. Just today I found roundtrip airfare plus three days in a hotel in Germany for under six hundred dollars...in short, that is just an amazing deal. The travel would be in the middle of December, but I would imagine that Germany is absolutely beautiful at that time of the year. The problem though is that I more or less have a list of places that I want to visit before others, and honestly Germany is not on my list of top places. I've been to France, and now I'd like to see Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the Czech Republic, as well as more exotic places like India, Egypt, and of course the rest of Africa. Places like England, Germany, Mexico or even Hawaii just don't have any appeal to me at this point. My grandmother informed me that in this situation I remind her a lot of my grandfather. He liked to plan things on the spur of the moment and just go. That sounds like so much fun, and I can't believe it's something that I'm thinking of doing...especially since I'm always thinking about moving forward quickly on the "straight and narrow" with very few deviations. I just have a sneaking feeling that I'm going to be buying tickets somewhere sometime really soon.
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Some of you faithful financial blog readers might well remember my strings of posts from several several months ago about problems that I was facing with my bank and checking account owing to the fact that I opened my account in Florida but then moved to Indiana. Although I was assured that this change of states would be no problem, a buyout in other banks that caused my bank to expand to new states has ended up causing me major problems. There is apparently a major miscommunication somewhere along the way where people at the bank in Florida where I opened the account and my branch here can't see to get anything accomplished for me. I thought that I had taken care of all my address and information changes with the bank branches and corporate offices, but I have learned over the first year or so that I've lived in Indiana that this is just not the case. My problem stemmed from the fact that I ran out of deposit tickets and simply wanted to order more. I only write one check a month, in addition to any unusual cases where I might have to write one for something at school. Either way, I go through a lot more deposit slips than I do checks, so I needed to order them separately. Long story short (hopefully), the bank in Florida messed up my order three times in a row, and as a result, I was charged three times for my deposit slips...one time of which they printed me business deposit slips for almost seventy dollars. Another long story short, I still have not been refunded the entire amount of the transaction, which although it is not a big deal financially at this point, really miffs me. Although my bank here did end up taking care of one part of the refund for about twenty-five dollars, there remains a portion of the total ninety-some-odd dollars that I paid that has yet to be reimbursed. I have been to the bank several times during which the woman who helped me through this has asked me how I'm doing, but it's clear she doesn't know that the refund has never gone through. I simply have not had the time to roll into the bank during regular banking hours and talk to people who apparently don't have the proper qualifications to do their job, or else I would have gotten my refund already. One of these days when I don't have fifty things on my plate, I'm going to have collect all the documents that I need (in the form of my monthly checking account statements) and head down to the bank and show them instance for instance what I paid, what I got, and what I was refunded. I really don't feel like I should have to do this, but I also readily realize that this is likely the only way that it's going to get done. And even that I saw with a grain of salt, because this whole situation has been going on since the beginning of last May, and it wouldn't surprise me if it took another several months to get resolved. I should have just swallowed the effort and gone ahead and changed banks once I got up here. The bad is sure starting to outway the good at this particular bank.
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As most of you know, one of the most important things that I do in order to keep up with the ever-changing world of personal finances is to read the news. Since I've been so busy lately, I've gotten into a bit of a slump in researching new materials to share with all of you. Sure, I still read the newspaper and check out the news on the internet a few times a day, but if a story doesn't make it to the headlines, then I normally don't get a chance to read it. Since I've gotten a little bit ahead of the game with my end-of-semester work, I got a chance to sit on my couch today to relax and read the news. I decided to go looking around on some of my favorite news websites to see what is new. I had forgotten how much I enjoy looking at the british broadcasting company news site, because the articles found on the site provide quite a different perspective on nearly everything they report on. The journalists who write these articles are not members of the American public, and therefore they aren't aligning themselves with one political party here or the other. They are reporting the news as real news, without an American spin. As I was enjoying the news today, I happened to come across a great feature on the BBC site that I hadn't noticed before. In one of their sidebars, I noticed a column called Business Explained, in which, in a somewhat editorial way, some journalist talks about a relevant feature of some popular newsworthy business idea. I thought that it was particularly fitting that the Business Explained topic this particular week is on Oil Markets, which is therefore something that we can all learn from. As most of you probably know, the oil markets have been fluctuating pretty consistently (funny, right?!) over the past several months, and after reading this article, it's much clearer to me why it is doing so. The article explains where the major petroleum trading goes on in the world and how the different petroleum companies and indices calculate prices in comparison to one another. Did you know that all petroleum that comes into the United States to be sold, or that is produced in the United States to be sold, is priced against the West Texas Intermediate index? I had never even heard of such an index until today. Apparently, the fluctuations in this index in comparison to the rest of the petroleum indices in the world drive our gasoline prices at both the stock market and at the pump. I was always under the assumption that the gasoline prices in the United States had a direct link to the prices and production set by OPEC in the Middle East...that's the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies, just in case you weren't aware of that. As it turns out, the index of pricing and production for OPEC is a totally different and more or less unrelated animal all together. Even within OPEC, the price set by that index is influenced by seven distinct types of petroleum as well. Who knew it was so complicated? Well, I guess that we should have supposed that things were complicated in the oil industry, as the product is under such high demand and is produced by so many countries around the world.
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I just read an article in the news that absolutely blows my mind...so much so that I came to the computer lab on campus in order to write to you about it. While we all may be well aware of the dangers of leaving unnecessary appliances, lights, and the air conditioner running all day every day, I would bet that you would never have thought about the actual amount of energy and therefore money that leaving items in your home plugged in and on standby actually costs. According to the article I read just a bit ago on CNN dot com, economists and energy experts agree that nearly five cents on every dollar that we spend on energy costs comes from these standby devices. That means when you have your cell phone plugged in to the wall and it finishes charging but you don't unplug it, it continues to draw electricity from the wall. The same thing goes for your electric razor, your computer on hibernate, and the compact disk or DVD player that you may have left on without a disk in it. Anything with a power button or a power activation that can draw current from the outlet will do so any time that it can. Other small kitchen appliances can do this as well. Things like blenders, mixers, coffee pots, and the like all draw a small but continuous amount of energy from your sockets and therefore add a small but continous amount of money each month to your utility bills. Think of the difference five percent can make in your monthly and then yearly electricity bills. For some of us, maybe that doesn't make a huge difference, but I bet that there are plenty of individuals out there who are unaware of this energy drain, and probably would enjoy saving the extra money. I'm going to make up an example, just so see the impact. OK, let's take a nice round number like a one hundred dollars heating bill. I think that that is a pretty reasonable number for a small home per month. So, five percent of that one hundred dollars montly electricity bill is five dollars, and five times twelve is sixty dollars. Therefore, just by having this latent energy drawn out by "standby" sources, you are costing yourself sixty extra dollars a year. That's a third of a car payment, an entire car insurance payment, a cell phone payment, or a really nice dinner out for two at a good restaurant. I did a little bit of extra research, and as it turns out, you can contact your local power company or utility company and they will be able to provide you with a list of items that draw off this extra energy so that you can begin combatting the problem. You might think that they would be foolish to tell you about this, but on the contrary, it is in their best interest to help keep these unnecessary costs down and that extra energy per everyone in their service area available for real use or emergencies. The less energy wasted, the less they have to produce, and that means the cheaper the costs will be to you, your neighbors, and others in your city. I would encourage you all to take a few moments and look around your home and see what kinds of devices you have plugged in that are costing your money each month. If you're one of the many people who is running low on cash from month to month, this a great way to start saving yourself some "free" money. Let me know how it goes...you'll be surprised!
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It seems like only about a week ago that I was wearing shorts and flipflops on the weekend to go to the store. The temperatures were reaching the high eighties and sometimes even breaking ninety degrees on a regular basis. In short, it was just plain hot outside. It seems that all it took was one cold front to bring in the cold, grey, windy weather that seems to have stuck. Overnight the trees started changing color, cars started groaning when started, and people began to bundle up with their scarves, jackets, and hooded sweatshirts. Some people rebelled and insisted on continuing to wear shorts and flipflops, but when they were the ones shivering at the bus stop, I'm sure they wished that they had decided differently to put on something warm that morning. With the official start of Fall, or maybe perhaps Fall disappeared and we jumped directly into Winter, I'm planning to be one of those people who keeps bundled up. Having lived in Florida for six years, I am one who enjoys the hot temperatures, and as a result, Winter just does not sit well with me. You won't often find me without a hooded sweatshirt...at home, at school, or at a coffee shop studying. My desire to stay warm comes at odds to my "non" desire to want to pay for Wintertime utilities. In the Summer for some reason, I can bear a little bit better when it is on the warmer side in my apartment, because I can just turn on a fan to blow in my general direction wherever I happen to be sitting. I simply can't do this in the Winter, unless of course I go buy space heaters. The cost of heating the whole apartment ends up being a lot compared to the amount that we are accustomed to paying each month for utilities, which is usually about forty dollars. Last Winter, our montly payments almost doubled, but again, that's probably expected for two Florida boys living in the Midwest during the Winter. I try to make every effort to keep the heat turned down, but then again certain rooms in my apartment are just colder than others. My bedroom and the living room, consequently the two rooms where I spent the most time, are always the coldest. This is because these two rooms are on an outside wall with big windows. Since our apartment complex doesn't have storm windows or anything like that, the cold air just seeps right in, or I suppose more appropriately, the warm air in our apartment just seeps right out. Now if you think that I'm fretting now about the situation with heat in the apartment, keep in mind that the outside temperature is still getting up into the sixties each day...I dread thinking about what it's going to be like in another few weeks or a month when it starts snowing. I suppose that it hit me the most today that Winter is on the way because last night was the first night of the year that the temperature has fallen below freezing, which I noticed when the thermometer read twenty-nine degrees when I woke up. Things are a little frosty, and the air just looks cold and clear. This does not make me want to get out of bed or leave the house, because I know that I'm going to have to wait for the bus in a long cold line. Anyways, I'm now debating going out and buying a space heater but wondering if it's worth it in the long run. How will spending the money now for a space heater help me to save money on my overall utility electric bill for the Winter? So many questions to think about...but still freezing!
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Just when I thought that I had it figured out, my travel arrangements and plans for Christmas break and Spring break (the next two times that I will be leaving Indiana) have changed dramatically, and there is nothing that I can do about it. One of the ways that I try and save some money flying the friendly skies is by booking my airfare through Southwest Airlines. As many of you probably already know, Southwest Airlines has become a "go to" for inexpensive airfare and they are well-known for their unassigned, first come, first serve seats. Southwest has recently implemented some changes that have affected the way that many of us will now travel, including their eventual elimination of their seat yourself style. The company is in the process of readjusting the cities they fly to, and it just so happens that both of the places that I need to fly to, or had planned to fly to over the next two breaks, are on the list of the airports that the company will no longer fly to as of the first of November, this year. That means that I know have to totally change the airline that I will fly with, as well as the amount of money that I have to plan to set aside for my travel. In the case of my Spring break plans, that means almost an extra one hundred fifty dollars added onto my travel. That obviously put a big damper on my plans for saving money. I'm just glad that I thought to start planning my trips early so that I know to start saving some extra money in order to compensate for this change in prices. I suppose that the scariest part about the whole situation to me is the fact that we are at the absolute mercy of the whims of these large airline corporations whose choices dictate the success, ease, and price of our travel. Most of us have a necessity to travel by air owing to the fact that we live and/or need to travel long distances in a limited amount of time. It would be foolish if the airlines did not capitalize on these need, though it pains me to say that. The airlines are out to make the most money possible of course, and since they know that travelers are often in a bind, the can set their prices as high as they like, and people will be forced to pay them. Luckily I live near a large city where several airlines fly out of, and therefore I will at least have the opportunity to make a logical decision as to the flights that I will take to get home and on my Spring break vacation. Many Americans do not have this luxury, as they live in or around small cities that have small airports that may have only one airline that offers service to it. In these cases, these individuals have no choice but to accept the prices offered by that one airline. Then again neither I nor many other Americans have the opportunity to take advantage of the travel options that people who live in places like New York City have available to them. With three different major airports with dozens of airlines flying in and out countless times each day, it is likely the most convenient and least expensive area to fly out of in the country. At this point, with all the new travel hangups I'm experiencing, I could almost kick myself for not taking advantage of grad school in a much larger city. Ah well, live and learn!
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OK, so there's this friend of mine...and before you ask, no it's not me... So there's this friend of mine who has recently fallen on a patch of financial difficulty that he is doing his best to get around. It's a case where he is extremely talented and in school full-time, and as such doesn't have the ability to find a convenient well-paying job in order to get out of this slump. He is also not receiving any funding from school, so everything that he needs for school, you know tuition, books, rent, etc. has to come out of pocket. It's not a happy situation for anyone to be in, but nonetheless he is a very strong individual and he is working through it. The problem arises occasionally when there are situations where one absolutely needs to spend some money in order to do what needs to be done. Situations like this pop up along the way where one or more of us are together to eat, hang out, or travel where we absolutely want this one friend to join in, but due to his financial circumstances, it would be nearly impossible for him to take part in all the things that we and he would like to without some help. One other friend of mine and I have come upon a somewhat unspoken agreement that we would try to help out our other friend to the best of abilities when situations like the one that I just mentioned arise. On the one hand, it is a little bit scary thinking about handing out money when I have loan payments, a full set of monthly bills, and whatever other expenses of my own, but on the other hand, it is an absolutely wonderful feeling to be able to help out a friend who is having tough times. Although it's not really spoken, I am one hundred percent positive that he is totally appreciative of my actions, and that appreciation alone is worth the money. I guarantee that if you knew this friend, you would want to help him out as well. He is the kind of person who is so smart and nice and fun to be around, that you would really want him to be involved in whatever the group is doing. Just by helping out with little things like a cup of coffee here or there or lunch every once in a while, those little "few dollar" purchases really make a difference. The most amazing part about my friend that we've been talking about is his attitude toward his situation. Never once would you hear him complain or fret outwardly about the situation. Although he doesn't hide the situation, he isn't one to dwell on things, but rather he keeps moving ahead doing what he needs to do, assessing the necessities, and doing away with unnecessary expenses in his life. The situation really is a true testament of mind over matter, or mind over finances, because he makes it very clear the fullness to which one can live life with less resources than others. Of course I wish him every bit of luck as he struggles to get out of his financial slump, and I know that he has been trying desperately to find a job that would allow him to keep his school responsibilities intact. I just hope that he finds that break soon, as I'm sure that life will become extradordinarily more easy for him to endure. A wake up call in the situation is knowing that there are plenty of others who are far worse off than he is. He has a home and a car and a network of friends who care about him, whereas there are plenty of others who have far less. I'm very proud of his efforts and I'm more than happy to be able to help him out in any way that I can.
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A couple weeks ago I wrote a post commenting on the great deals that I have been able to find through vendors contracted with my university concerning new computer and peripheral purchases. I had thought that these deals would be carried over to the computer stores on campus, but I've learned as of today that my assumption was very wrong. I am in the market for a new flash drive or two considering the fact that the two that I have are nearing their capacity, and there are simply things that I don't want to give up or delete. Looking on the vendor sites, I found some really great flash drive deals. For example, a one gigabyte drive was only about ten dollars, and even a four gigabyte drive was just over twenty dollars. These are great prices, considering what you end up having to pay for if you go to shop for these items at a Best Buy or other office supply/computer store. Well, I thought in order to avoid the shipping costs and the wait for the hardware to come in the mail I would just go down to the computer store at our student union and pick one up. When I arrived, I asked about the flash drive prices and was surprised to learn that the four gigabyte drive that I had my eye on was going to be almost fifty dollars. The undergraduate who was working at the store informed me that the way the system works, they can only offer software and certain hardware at the discounted prices, but smaller things like compact-disks and flash drives are available through a different vendor that requires prices being set at higher rates, similar to those found in typical retail stores. Well, I thanked him for the information and decided not to challenge him about the prices, since obviously he isn't the one who is setting them. But while I was walking away, I wondered how many unsuspecting students actually went in there and paid all that extra money for those drives. My guess is a whole bunch of people do so. Most people don't know any better, and probably wouldn't know what a good price on a flash drive would be if it was right in front of their faces. Most people probably wouldn't even know where to go to look for a good price anyways. People rely on going to Target, WalMart or Best Buy in order to find just about anything they need and aren't aware of the markup that goes on in these stores, particularly for electronics. These stores simply cannot keep enough of these products in stock to be able to afford keeping them on at a decent price. This is why I fully support the increased trend to shop online. Sure, you can't hold something in your hand before you fork over your credit card information, but if you go on faith and recommendations, you can likely save a whole lot of money. The other thing that helps is that most places that sell online have great return and refund policies, so if what you end up with isn't all that you thought that it would be, you can just send it back, and most places will take care of the problem promptly. So, I suppose that today's pearl of wisdom from me would be to take a look around and become aware of your options for seemingly expensive items like electronics. Since electronics are widely available, particular things like flash drives and common computer items, a lot of online warehouses can keep them in stock in high quantities and therefore sell them at much more affordable prices than you will find in most typical retail stores.
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I'm sure that all of us can relate to having had to fly at some point in conditions that could only be describe as entirely uncomfortable. It seems that the prices for airline tickets and what you actually get for them seem to be moving farther and farther apart from one another. On occasion, and usually just by a stroke of luck, you will find that the airli | |
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