Money for the Rest of Us

I’m a big fan of HSBC’s online high-interest savings account. In part because there is an ATM right near where I work which makes for easy (and fast) transfers.

Today, I was walking by my local HSBC and there was a table outside. I was curious and so I stopped and chatted. Turns out they were giving a way FREE compact fluorescent light bulbs! Apparently they (being the US company based in NY) were the first major company to go completely carbon neutral. They are doing all sorts of things to promote the environment. They have a whole campaign going that’s called “There’s no small change.” (Get it?)

I realize that their campaign saves them money by not having to mail paper statements (postage, materials, etc.), but it’s still wonderful that they emphasize saving the environment!

That’s right, I’m in the middle of finals right now (including stats); so there probably won’t be regular posting until the end of next week.

I have a wonderful loving old Golden Retriever who has kidney disease.  We discovered this about 2 years ago after she had been peeing on our rug (even if we were gone for just 3 hours) and we took her to the vet.  After a number of blood tests they determined that she has kidney disease and that a special kind of perscription dog food would help.  It does– she doesn’t pee on the rug any more and she still is relatively healthy for a 12-year-old dog.

Here’s the kicker– the biggest and best value bag of the food is $66.  This lasts about a month and a half.  Now, on a small non-profit worker’s/student’s budget, this is a ton of money, but it’s well worth it to be able to have such a loving animal around.  So, yesterday I drove over to the vet to pick it the bag of dog food and I got a parking ticket!  Yes, suddenly that $66 bag of dog food became $116.  I was parked halfway in a legal spot with my flashers on and was only inside for 5 mins.  What are the chances that the parking enforcers would come by right then?

The moral of the story is, watch where you park (especially in DC).  A product’s price can suddenly go through the roof when you start adding additional costs.

The weather is certainly not pleasant in D.C. today. It’s cold and rainy and windy; but at least we’re not flooded (yet) like the rest of the Northeast. Thanks goodness there is some good reading to start out the week. Take a look at the following posts:

The 96th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at All Financial Matters.  My post on the 5 Best Online Comparison Shopping Tools was featured.  Two posts from the Carnival I particularly enjoyed were: Five Steps to Get Your Home in Shape for Summer and 8 Secrets of the Naturally Slim (Wealthy).

No Limits Ladies has a great post about Single Women and Budgeting Software that may help you choose what software you want to use for your budget.

And for those of you who are pondering what to do with your life, Lifehack’s How to Use Natural Selection to Drive Your Career is thought provoking.

Yesterday I had my first experience with the “Digg Effect.” Early in the day my post about “How to Find Cheap Plane Tickets” made it to the front page of Reddit.com (It was as high as #4 at one point.) My site was running a little slowly, but managing. At some point in the evening (when I was in class, of course); my site went down.

When I got home from class I was checking my website and noticed that it was no longer running. I contacted my host and they informed me that they “took it down for abuse of resources.” Obviously I was extremely upset that they took it down without informing me, but at the time I was more concerned about getting it up and running again. I wondered where the sudden surge of traffic came from and quickly found out that I wound up on the front page of Digg.com sometime early last night. Of course, this is what every blogger loves and hates: a surge of new visitors, but a hosting company that can’t handle it. (Now, I thought I had systems in place for dealing with this—I had installed wp-cache, but apparently hadn’t activated it properly. Even when I did, my hosting company told me that it still wasn’t ok with the amount of traffic.) So, I set up a very very poor looking site at googlepages and redirected all the traffic from the Plane Tickets post to that site. Even though I wasn’t pleased, I left it for the evening and set up another static page this morning (which is what you will see as of the moment.)

I’m still getting a huge amount of traffic (compared to normal). I’m trying to work with my hosting company to see what they can do for me, but unfortunately they only offer email support (though I’ve pleaded and pleaded to speak with someone on the phone). So, as of today, my site will most likely be running more slowly than normal. Please bear with me in this. I will still get the next post in the series about cheap travel up by the middle of the day.

Please send me an email (moneyfortherestofus [at] gmail [.] com) or post a comment if you have any advice about working with hosting companies/finding new ones.  Thanks!

When completing the final edits today for my post about finding cheap airplane, bus, and train tickets I came up with a brand new and better idea about how I want to structure the travel posts. Because I want it to be the best it can possibly be, I’m going to wait until I’ve made the necessary changes to post. (And since school is quite busy this week, that may not be until Monday.) Not to worry though, I still have a few other posts planned for the rest of the week!

I’m back from Europe– well-rested and ready to get back into the swing-of-things. I have a few anecdotal financial stories (funny and not so funny) from the trip that I’ll post throughout this week.
As promised, today I will be starting a a series of posts I’ve written about how to travel cheaply. Over the next three weeks, follow my series “15 Tips for Cheap Travel” I will be discussing everything from “How to buy Cheap Tickets” to “Minimizing Expenses While Away.” I think it should be a helpful series, so be sure to check back.
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I will be heading over to Europe to visit some friends during my spring break next week, so there won’t be any new posts. But, be sure to stop back on the 19th. In celebration of my trip and to help everyone prepare for summer vacations I will begin a two-week series about how to travel cheaply.

It happens to nearly everyone, your wallet gets lost or stolen and you panic. Where do you begin and what do you do? Addressing the problem of a stolen wallet can seem overwhelming, but if you follow the three steps below, you should be well on your way to a having new wallet with new cards with as minimal hassle as possible.

First, however, a caveat: You should report the wallet as lost or stolen as quickly as possible. The longer you wait the more difficult the situation will become.

1. Call your credit card companies and banks. For each credit card or ATM card in your wallet, call the issuer and report the item as lost or stolen. Most banks and credit card companies are very friendly about this and will help you through the process of canceling the card, getting a new one, and reporting any fraudulent charges that may have already occurred. You’ll have to answer a number of questions and may even have to fax in some other proof of identity (like a utility bill), but it all depends on the issuer. Also, if you need cash instantly many banks will allow you to take a certain amount out (usually around $200) if you go to the local branch and speak with someone.
   Think about what other cards were in your wallet. Call your department of motor vehicles, insurance companies and any other company whose card you might have had in your wallet. Though uncommon, it’s possible that the finder/thief will go to the movie store and check out (and never return) several movies or video games in your name.
2. Call one the three credit bureaus. Call either Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. You can ask them to issue a fraud or security alert that is either temporary or permanent. This alert will not deny you any credit, nor will it affect your credit score. It will only force any companies requesting credit to further verify your identity before issuing credit. You only have to report to one of the credit monitoring bureaus as they are required to share information with the other two.
3. File a police report. This can be the biggest hassle because it requires that you go to the local station and fill out some paper work. Filing the police report may be required by credit card companies or banks if there have already been fraudulent charges.

If you take these three steps as quickly as possible usually you can get new credit cards and ATM cards within a few days and the entire issue can get cleared up within a month.

Extra tip: It’s a good idea to always leave one credit card or ATM card at home. You don’t need to be carrying all cards at all times; and that way, if your wallet gets lost or stolen you will still have another form of payment.

This morning I woke up and was shocked at what I found on the front page of today’s Washington Post: the Clintons were $12 million in debt when they left the White House.

No matter what your political leanings, you have to admit that it’s a terrible sign of our times when a President can leave his position with this much debt. Granted, most of the debt was from legal fees from Whitewater, Lewinksy, and campaign fundraising, but still. I suppose one could argue that having debt is the most American trait of all traits…

So how did the Clintons escape this debt and now be worth between $10 and $50 million dollars? Book deals and speeches. The entire Post article is about the speeches former President Clinton has given. He has averaged 352 speeches a year according the to article. But, only 20% were for his own income. Other speeches he gave for free or for donations to The William J. Clinton Foundation (his AIDS charity). In total, he has received over $40 million from speeches since leaving the White House 6 years ago.

The Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, said:

“The reason that he picked paid speeches is that it is an efficient way for him to make a living for his family and allow him a lot of time to do charitable work, which is his passion.”

There are three big personal finance issues I think we can take away from this article.

1. No matter how deep in debt you are, there is always a way out. (Granted, it’s much easier when you’re famous; but $12 million is a lot more debt than the average person has to escape from).
2. By finding something you’re good at and enjoy doing you can succeed.
3. Promoting yourself by working for free is an effective method.

I think that it’s amazing that Clinton only charges for 20% of his speeches and still earns this much money. (About $150,000 per paid speech, on average). But, it makes sense. He promotes himself by speaking for free. You might argue that he doesn’t need to promote himself, but I would disagree. By giving speeches for free he is also allowing others to see his speaking talent lies beyond politics. He also does motivational speeches. When people see that someone is good at something, it justifies paying that person a lot of money. This is a good lesson in entrepreneurship. Provide your service for free will help build up your reputation.

I’m still in shock that a President can leave the White House with so much debt. But I think what is most surprising is that a person with so much debt can still have so much power. President Clinton was, at one time, arguably the most powerful person in the world. And he had millions of dollars of debt. It goes to show that money and power don’t always go hand-in-hand. You can have money without power and you can have power without money. Though, I would imagine that the Clintons now enjoy having both.