We live in a decidedly credit-centric culture. Whip out cash to pay for $200 in groceries and watch the funny looks from the other customers and the disgust from the clerk. It’s almost like they are upset they have to know how to count to run a cash register.
If someone doesn’t have a credit card, everyone wonders what’s wrong, and assumes they have terrible credit. That’s a lousy assumption to make, but it happens. For most of the last two years, I shunned credit cards as much as possible, preferring cash for my daily spending. Spending two years changing my spending habits has made me comfortable enough to use my cards again, both for the convenience and the rewards.
Having a decent card brings some advantages.
Credit cards legally provide fraud protection to consumers. Under U.S. federal law, you are not responsible for more than $50 of fraudulent charges. many card issuers have extended this to $0 liability, meaning you don’t pay a cent if your card is stolen. Trying getting that protection with a wallet full of cash.
The fraud protection makes it easier to shop online, which more people are doing every day. At this point, there is no product you can buy in person that you can’t get online, often cheaper. How would you order something without a credit card? Even the prepaid cards you can buy and fill at a store will often fail during an online transaction because there is no actual person or account associated with the card. The “name as it appears on the card” is a protective feature for the credit card processors and they dislike accepting cards without it.
If you’re going to use a credit card, you need to make a good choice on which credit card to get. There are a few things to check before you apply for a card.
Annual fee. Generally, I am opposed to getting any card with an annual fee, but sometimes, it’s worth it. If, for example, a card provides travel discounts and roadside assistance with its $65 annual fee, you can cancel AAA and save $75 per year. A good rewards plan can balance out the fee, too. I’m using a travel rewards card that has a 2% rewards plan. That’s 2% on every dollar spent, plus discounts on some travel purchases. In a few months, I’ve accumulated $500 of travel rewards for the $65 fee that was waived for the first year. The math works. A card that charges an annual fee without providing services worth several times that fee isn’t worth getting.
Interest rate. This should be a non-issue. You should be paying off you card completely every month. In a perfect world. In the real world, sometimes things come up. In my case, I was surprised with a medical bill for my son that was 4 times larger than my emergency fund. It went on the card. So far, I’ve only had to pay one month’s interest, and I don’t see the balance surviving another month, but it’s nice that I’m not paying a 20% interest rate. Unfortunately, as a response the CARD Act, the days of fixed rate 9.9% cards seems to be over.
Grace period. This is the amount of time you have when the credit card company isn’t charging you interest. Most cards offer a 20-25 day grace period, but still bill monthly. That means that you’ll be paying interest, even if you pay your bill on time. To be safe, you’ll need to either find a card that has a 30 day grace period, or pay your balance off every 15-20 days. Some of the horrible cards don’t offer a grace period of any length. Avoid those.
Activation fees. Avoid these. Always. There’s no card that charges an activation fee that’s worth getting. An activation fee is an early warning sign that you’ll be paying a $200 annual fee and 30% interest in addition to the $150 activation fee.
Other fees. What else does the card charge for? International transactions? ATM fees? Know what you’ll be paying.
Service. Some cards provide some stellar services, include concierge service, roadside assistance, and free travel services. Some of that can more than balance out the fees they charge. My card adds a year to the warranty of any electronics I buy with it, which is great.
Credit cards aren’t always evil, if you use them responsibly. Just be sure you know what you’re paying and what you’re getting.
Really, I am. When I get home from work, I want nothing more than to plop down on the couch, dial up a movie and ignore the world for a few hours. I need some downtime to relax.
While I am keeping the couch from flying away, my wife gets home, makes dinner, does the dishes, changes the cat litter and maybe vacuums the floor. Once dinner is cooking, she usually throws in a load of laundry. Three kids is a great way to guarantee a lot of laundry needs to get washed.
I have just two things to say about that:
It makes me feel really lazy.
I love you, honey!
I’ve never considered it a problem because I work my butt off on the weekend. My wife isn’t happy with the arrangement because I tend to do next to nothing during the week. I think it’s a good balance. I’m productive on the weekend, she’s productive during the week. Unfortunately, my habitual laziness has caused a bit of tension. We’ve had a few “discussions” about that balance. It’s obviously not working.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new. When I get home from work I’ve been doing just 1 thing. I do one thing per day. One day, I fold laundry, another day I do the dishes. Some days, I pick a room to organize. It’s never very much, but it’s always something that needs to be done and, possibly most important, it looks like I’m doing more so my wife feels less abandoned to the housework. I’m not actually doing more, but it gets spread out over the week, so it looks like more. Slowly, surely, all of the work is getting done.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working. More is getting done, my wife feels like I’m helping out more and I get more time on the weekends to pursue whatever I feel like pursuing. It’s a win for each of us.
How do you balance relaxation and a shared workload?
Our regular plan is to build a menu for the week and go to the grocery store on Sunday. This allows planning, instead of scrambling for a a meal after work each night. It also give us a chance to plan for leftovers so we have something to eat for lunch at work.
We work until about 5 every weekday. When we don’t have the meal planned, it’s usually chicken nuggets or hamburger helper for dinner. Not only is that repetitive, but it’s not terribly healthy. It is, however, convenient. If we plan for it, we can get the ingredients ready the night before and know what we are doing when we get home, instead of trying to think about it after a long day of work.
If we don’t plan for leftovers, we tend to make the right amount of food for the family. When this happens, there’s nothing to bring to work the next day, which means I’ll be hungry about lunchtime with nothing I can do about it except buy something. Buying lunch is never cheaper than making it. I can get a sandwich at Subway for $5, but I could make a sandwich just as tasty and filling for less than half of that, using money that is meant to be used for food. All during wrestling season, we make 30-inch sandwiches on meet nights for a cost of about $5, feeding ourselves and at least a couple of others who didn’t have time to make their dinner before the 5:30 meet.
No leftovers also means no Free Soup, which is a wonderful low-maintenance meal that leaves everybody full. Nobody ever gets bored of Free Soup. (Hint: Don’t ever put a piece of fish in the Free Soup, or the flavor will take over the entire meal.)
Unhealthy, repetitive food for dinner. Over-priced, low-to-middle-quality food for lunch.
OR
We plan our meals right and have inexpensive, healthy food that doesn’t get boring for every meal.
It seems to be a no-brainer. Except, I don’t have lunch today because we didn’t plan our meals and used the last of the leftover hamburger helper for dinner last night.
Today, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of prescriptions. I always get the generics, because they are less than half the price of the name-brands, while still being chemically identical. That’s not what I’m talking about, although it did save me about $75 today.
When the pharmacist rang up my medications, the total came up to $35. That just wasn’t right.
Many chain pharmacies have gone to a cheap pricing model for generic drugs. That usually means $4-6 per monthly prescription. Cub Foods doesn’t have that.
So I asked for the price match.
Cub Foods matches prices on generics with whatever large pharmacy is nearby. In this case, they matched Target’s prices, bringing the price from $35 to $10. Instant $25 savings. I just had to wait for them to look up my prescriptions in their match-book.
Pharmacies with cheap generics:
K-Mart offers a 3 month supply for $15.
Target and Wal-Mart both have a 30-day supply for $4.
Publix offers a 14-day prescription for some antibiotics for free. That’s insane! It’s also a heckuva way to get people in the door. “Why don’t you shop for half an hour while I fill your scrip?”
If your pharmacy is anywhere near any of these stores, call and ask if they’ll match the price for generic drugs.
A few tips:
Before you go get your cheap drugs, call ahead and make sure what you need is on the cheap list. Don’t assume.
You won’t be able to use your insurance to buy the cheap generics. The overhead in insurance processing would mean that the pharmacies would be operating at a loss for each prescription. You can’t make that up in volume. Between our copays and deductibles, it’s far cheaper to just pay the generic price without involving the insurance company.
Don’t be afraid of generics. It’s not like Nike. Generics are chemically identical to the name brands. There are two differences: the price and the letter stamped on the side of the pill.
The stores offering cheap drugs are generally bigger stores hoping to use the drugs as a loss leader. Places like Walgreens or CVS make up to 70% of their profits from the pharmacy. They can’t stay open treating that as a loss leader.
Rumours swirl around Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian that their marriage is in trouble due to the basketball star’s addiction to recreational drugs. The couple has not been spotted together since June, and Kardashian has been photographed recently not wearing her wedding ring. On Sunday, August 25, TMZ reported that Odom had been missing for 72 hours after a dispute with Kardashian that some say was a failed intervention.
Los Angeles Hotel
On Monday, August 26, ESPN reported that Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, claimed that Odom was in a Los Angeles hotel and that friends were attempting to get him help for a drug problem that the agent declined to explain further. The agent also said that Kardashian knew Odom’s whereabouts. Kardashian herself tweeted that she was unhappy with the news reports about her family, but failed to elaborate on whether the reports were true or false. ( http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/9601746/agent-disputes-report-saying-lamar-odom-missing)
History of Drug Probems
In 2001, Odom violated NBA drug policies twice in eight months, apologizing at a press conference after the second offense. Odom claimed he did not have a drug problem and was only guilty of smoking marijuana. Odom often speaks of losing his mother to colon cancer at the age of 12 and his father’s heroin addiction, eventually moving in with his grandmother. In 2006, Odom’s son, Jayden, died of sudden infant death syndrome. In 2011, a cousin who Odom was close to died of gunshot wounds in New York, and just two days after the cousin’s funeral, Odom was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a teenager. Odom’s chauffer driven SUV collided with a motorcycle, causing the bike to go out of control and strike a 15-year old pedestrian who died of head injuries the next day. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/02/sports/la-sp-lamar-odom-accident-20110803). Odom took a 10-day leave of absence from the Dallas Mavericks, claiming his father was ill right after the incident.
Clash over Partying
Odom Shooting (Photo credit: compujeramey)
According to insiders, Odom and Kardashian have often clashed over his partying, but that she had kept his addictions secret from her family. According to many who have known Odom well, when things are difficult for him, he likes to get away and hide, which is what some say he did when he took leave from the Mavericks and just recently when he disappeared for a few days. (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20728355,00.html) Insiders are reporting that Kardashian is contemplating divorce, which will be costly for Odom as there is a strong infidelity clause in the couple’s prenuptial agreement, and there are rumors that Odom has been unfaithful.
High Cost of Addiction
Most of the rumors surrounding the Kardashian Odom marriage are related to the fact that two women have come forward claiming affairs with Odom while he was married to Kardashian, and not due to his drug use. However, the fact that there is a strong fidelity clause in the prenuptial agreement indicates that Kardashian may be unwilling to ignore his dalliances. If it is proven that Odom committed adultry and the couple divorces, Kardashian retains the Tarzana mansion the couple share, $500,000 for every year they were married, two vehicles, shopping money and spousal support. However, many reports continue that infidelity is not the problem in the marriage, but Odom’s continued use of drugs. Odom checked into a San Diego rehab in 2012, but left after only three weeks, and insiders claim that Odom’s recent disappearance was related to an intervention, staged by Kardashian, to encourage him to return to rehab.
Regardless of whether the marriage ends due to infidelity or drug use, it appears that addiction may be a costly proposition for Odom due to the clause in his prenuptial agreement.
