Financial Friday

I love surfing personal finance blogs, hearing tips & tricks and pretending that I can speed the whole process of mastering my money. In my cybertravels, I've turned up a few favorite ideas:

1) Create an ING Firewall Account - Do you worry about getting hacked? If you have something like Paypal, which connects to your bank account, a single hack could open your entire financial resource to an intruder. Create a free ING Direct online savings account and link your payment accounts to this. When you need to pay something, put the money in the firewall account. If you're mugged a crafty crook will only get $50. ING Direct accounts are a breeze and you can have more than one (each with a different account number). If you don't have an ING Account, comment here and I'll refer you. I'll get $20 and you'll get $25. That's dinner on me. ;) (From Bargaineering.com)

2) Opt Out of Pre-Approved Credit Card Offers - Every time you get pre-approved credit card junk mail, they are accessing your credit report. Someone clever could open this account in your name, and max it out before you know what hit you. Use this site to get off those mailing lists. It only takes a minute. There is a place where you can enter your SSN, and the site is secure (backed by the three major credit bureaus). But you don't have to enter your SSN, it just might mean that some pre-approved applications slip through the net.
(From Bargaineering.com)

3) Ladies: Be Realistic, and Start Now - I had no idea about some of these statistics. Women account for over 80% of consumer spending, and at the same time elderly women make up over 80% of this country's impoverished. This article is a real eye-opener.
(From Wisebread.com)

4) The Weekly Cash Diet - Funny, honest updates from the trenches as a man commits to a budget by taking out $100/week for disposable income. What's worth it, what's not and what's surprising make it fun to follow his progress.
(From ConsumerismCommentary.com)

5) How to Raise Frugal Kids - Noreen Valcich invented this. When we were little, if we spotted a yard sale I'd announce that I'd decided to join the traveling circus in a desperate act of distraction. Shane would start throwing punches, I'd dry-heave. Not once, not ever, did it work. Someday, I'll write an entry about the effectiveness of making your kids sort through other people's junk on a sheet thrown over their lawn. Suffice to say, it makes for frugal adults. I plan to do the same someday with my kids.
(From ManvsDebt.com)

Love in the Library: CONFESSOR

I had to read these back-to-back. I couldn't stop one book from the end!

Confessor by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Whew! Nearly 10,000 pages invested in this epic series, and I absolutely loved them. I'm a bit spent after 11 books (which I took year to read through). I'm very satisfied with the ending - it was a nail-biter that still managed to tie this all up. The material is very graphic, and I feel pounded by the warfare and horrors that Goodkind takes time and (sometimes endless) pages to detail. A bit less of that might have been nice. Still, it served the purpose of the story. His characters are complex, flawed, wonderful and horrible by turns. I won't rush into another series of such breadth and depth, but my time with the Seeker of Truth was very well spent.

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Love in the Library: PHANTOM

Phantom by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ten books down! I really enjoyed this, but it's the first book in 10 that's felt like not a lot happened. It's gearing up for a big ending, and a few well-loved characters make a splash, but I felt it lost a little steam. Hopefully that steam was just donated to a whopper of a finale. No one wants to hear me go on about Richard and Kahlan being apart for another whole book, or gush about Rachel being a kick-ass guest star, or pick at Nicci's overwrought longing for Richard. Speaking of endless, Terry Goodkind, we get it. We get what the Order is like, and why. You've explained thoroughly, now you're bordering on ad nauseum. We've been here for 10,000 pages, have some faith in our collective memory. And now, let's kick Jagang's ass and restore peace to the New World!

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Feb 22 - National Margarita Day

Because Jimmy Buffett says so.  And around here, we listen do what Jimmy says.

Parlez-vous Olympics?!

I LOVE CANADA.  So I'm extra excited for the Winter Olympics!  Hockey and skiing and pretending that I'm not hoping the figure skaters wipe out.  Also wondering who will light the Olympic flame at the Opening Ceremony tonight (it's not Gretzky) and if we might see Bryan Adams among the surprise performers. 

Best way to get ready for the Games?  Obviously...

Love in the Library: THE BOOK THIEF

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Beautiful and devastating, The Book Thief is also wonderfully different.  It's so creative that it's a bit tough at first, the narrator talking to himself, to you, telling the story.  Zusack writes like he thinks - not stream of consciousness (mercifully) but with phrases so exact, that capture so precisely, they are better than their grammatically perfect counterparts.  To write them correctly would be to take away their power.  Zusack doesn't do that, and I think that's the mark of a great writer.  That language can be art, can have power of its own, is the truth of The Book Thief.  It's true in the story the book is telling, and it's true in the words the book uses to tell it.

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What I Could Do With $2.8 Million

Yesterday's Super Bowl was the single most-watched TV broadcast of all time with 106.5 million viewers.  And the commercials were mostly forgettable.  The only one I've heard talked about today is the Google "Parisian Love" ad.  True, I work in an office full of women.  But if 100+ million people are watching, aren't some of them female?



I also liked a few of the Doritos commercials, and the Volkswagen one where Stevie Wonder calls out a punch buggy.  I hardly remember any others, except how stupid the Go Daddy commercials are and how "Milka-what?!" save the E-Trade babies for one more year.

What did you think?

UPDATE: All the women not watching the Super Bowl were at the theaters for "Dear John"  Second highest Super Bowl weeekdn box office gross ever, after the Hannah Montana movie.

Emptying the Poor Box - Tax Time

I feel like the Sheriff of Nottingham - all fat and weasely with a droopy belt, taking money from little rabbits.  I just did my taxes.  I used 3 different services - TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct.  And I got 3 totally different results.  Guess I'll just pick the one that gives me the most?

I carefully entered the same information on each.  Since I'm scared of the IRS, I was conservative too.  TaxAct gave me the best result, though I do lots of 1099-MISC work every year so I still owe a little money.  But the difference was staggering - hundreds of dollars on both federal and state returns!  That makes me really want to see a CPA, but if I already owe a little, I don't want to pay someone $250 to tell me about it.

How do you do your taxes?  Are you confident doing them online, by yourself? 

Love in the Library: HOLY COW

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a great book if you're thinking about traveling to India. Sarah Macdonald doesn't pull any punches in describing the country - it's down and dirty and it takes her a long time to fall in love with it. Late in the story, when she welcomes some friends from home into her now-Indian life on their first trip through the subcontinent, she sees in them the horror that she first experienced herself. And thus realizes how far she has come. I couldn't promise that I'd love (or even like) India, but Sarah's journey is more than geographical - it turns her into the kind of person you'd have to be to survive, and take anything from, the Indian experience.

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