A lot of people hate moving, and I’m not excluded from that group.  The most painful thing about moving is by far the move itself, from renting a truck to bribing your friends with sexual favors beer or a free meal to help you move that couch you claim “probably isn’t all that heavy.”  One major annoyance I have with moving is  filing all of the address changes.  When you move, you need to update your credit card companies, subscriptions, frequent customer cards, hot dog of the month club…the list goes on.  I moved recently and had to go through this all over again.

The hardest part of this hell is remembering everything your address is tied to, so I started making a list of everything.  As I moved down the list, I realized some organizations make this process easier than others.  There were actually a couple of places that I literally could not, based on policy, update my address online.  Really.  I’m serious.  I couldn’t update my Wells Fargo credit card’s address online either, but not because of policy.  It’s because their website is complete and utter shit.  Well, it was.  I say that because the shit site I used to sign on to was no longer there.  POOF!!! Gone.  I found another website for Wells Fargo cards–that’s right, they have different sites for each different type of account–but couldn’t get it to accept any of my credentials.  I swallowed my pride and picked up the phone to call customer service…for a credit card company.

Read the rest of this entry

There are rumblings in the legislative branch about possibly extending and expanding the first-time home buyer tax credit.

This post’s title originated from an odd and unintentionally humorous commercial my friend heard on the radio advertising male enhancement drugs. The commercial claimed the advertised product would make you thicker and wider. Unless your parts are shaped like a spatula, this does not make a whole lot of sense.  I was thinking about writing a post on this, but decided that I didn’t want to write about wang pills.  I decided the metaphor was appropriate to apply to the housing market, given that we’re all pretty much boned.

Speaking of dick measuring, representatives in both the House and the Senate have proposed among them five different bills affecting the current $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit, all trying to take some credit of their own as saviors of the housing market.  I applied the “popularity contest” principle to these because, despite slight variations, they all propose pretty much the same thing.

The common theme among the five bills is extension of the current credit. I can most certainly agree with this being the forefront of any initiative to modify the current credit.  Like others trying to weather an unsure economic climate, I had already made other financial plans and goals when I heard about the credit earlier this year. The prospect of getting $8,000 in return for purchasing a first home probably got many thinking about buying their first home, but it also left them scrambling.

Read the rest of this entry

Are things really that bad?

I was hungry the other night and decided to go to Taco Bell because, well, it was cheap. It’s bad enough that I’m resorting to saving money by eating at Taco Bell, but you know things are really bad when even they’re cutting back.  What have we come to expect from a Taco Bell taco?

• 100% USDA Choice Grade D meat, a step above dog food
• Partially stale hard or soft shell
• Cheese
• Cost at less than $1.00
• Lettuce
• Approximately 283 packets of hot sauce

To my disdain, upon opening my taco, I found that there was no lettuce (see the opposite of appetizing in Figure 1).  A head of lettuce costs about $1.00 at the grocery store.  Taco Bell, a fast food chain, probably gets them at a bulk discount, maybe at $0.85 a head.  Is the economy so in the tank that I can’t get my expected 15 shards of lettuce on my parasite infested taco? I mean, I’m trying to be health conscious here.  Without lettuce, I’m eating grade D meat on what I assume is some form of a Mexican cracker with a bunch of cheese.  As a side note, “Mexican cracker” is a slight oxymoron, and it makes me giggle.

What does not rouse a guffaw from my gullet is being deprived of my greens on my taco. This increases the likelihood that my colon will become detached from my gullet.  Furthermore, what the fuck is a gullet?  Back to the topic at hand.  I also did not receive my suitcase of various hot sauces. I was merely given enough hot sauce to evenly spread over my three tacos.  Though most of the aforementioned taco criteria had been met, enough had been omitted to make me realize we may be in a recession.  If things are really this bad, I need to start exploring effective ways to make my money work for me that don’t also give me explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea.

If you’ve gone to any major news website in the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably either been confronted with a picture of one of the 2008 United States presidential candidates or…

…a picture of a sad stockbroker.

I’ve compiled the gallery below of sad stockbrokers, providing captions for your enjoyment as you look for something to smile about after seeing that your 401(K) is down 42%.  Remember, for my tips on what to do in these uncertain times, click here.

Click on any of the images below to view them with captions at their original size in a slide show. Yes, a slide show of stockbrokers.  But with captions!!!

Ironically, while I was finishing my final edits on this post (11:32 PM 10/9/2008), I had The Colbert Report on in the background and he offered up disgruntled stockbroker poses for the media to use in their Friday publications.  Bravo, Stephen, we share the same laughing muscle and for that I am honored.  Look for the video after the break.

Read the rest of this entry

As legislators in Washington prepare to vote on a $700,000,000,000 “rescue plan” and stockbrokers line up to trade in their Bluetooth headsets for nooses, you’re probably wondering what you should do with your money. Fear not, because I’ve been following this crisis from the beginning.  Though I have no financial credentials to speak of, have absolutely no understanding of the current crisis, and am still convinced that midgets are the primary component of ATM machines, I am here to provide you with 7 things to do with your money when a financial crisis hits to get more for your buck.

7. Put It In Or Under Your Mattress

This idea is often used to generalize any storage of “hidden money,” or money someone is attempting to avoid paying taxes on. It has also been associated with older people, friends of bank robbers, and anyone else distrustful of banks.  Despite this, I’m not telling you to put money under your mattress to start an emergency fund or for any of the other reasons I mentioned.  What are the two primary functions of a bed? That’s right, sleeping, and performing the reproductive act I learned about on the internet just now.  To my surprise, there was a tremendous amount of research material available on the latter, though many were counterproductive to the purpose of this article as they wanted my credit card number.

In a financial crisis, many people allow depression to take over, but how depressed can you really be if you’re having crazy money dreams every night? For example, I put $20 in my mattress last night and dreamed that I was swimming in a sea of twenty dollar bills.  I consequently peed the bed and ruined my $20, but you get the point.  People also find themselves not only trying to figure out how to cut their losses, but trying to figure out how to make a buck, too.  I’m no expert on the process “where organisms form offspring that combine genetic traits from both parents” (see, I learned something today), but I’d be willing to bet that any money in or under your mattress during the act reproduces with a hybrid of you and your partner’s faces on it (Figure 1).

I wouldn’t put money under your pillow however, as it may turn into teeth.  This might be sound advice for your grandparents though.

Read the rest of this entry