- RT @Dave_Champion Obama asks DOJ to look at whether AZ immigration law is constitutional. Odd that he never did that with #Healthcare #tcot #
- RT @wilw: You know, kids, when I was your age, the internet was 80 columns wide and built entirely out of text. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: RT @FinanciallyPoor "The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." ~ Unknown #
- Official review of the double-down: Unimpressive. Not enough bacon and soggy breading on the chicken. #
- @FARNOOSH Try Ubertwitter. I haven't found a reason to complain. in reply to FARNOOSH #
- Personal inbox zero! #
- Work email inbox zero! #
- StepUp3D: Lame dancing flick using VomitCam instead or choreography. #
- I approve of the Nightmare remake. #Krueger #
Saturday Roundup
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve got a birthday party today and a class to teach tomorrow. Sometimes I think I take on too much, but it’s hard to roll that back when the side-hustles are all making a bit of money. What I need to do is make the side-hustles profitable enough that my straight job is optional.
In other news, I’m 10 days away from my first blogging anniversary(here). I’ll have to come up with a way to celebrate that.
Favorite posts this week:
GOOG-411 is shutting down, but there are alternatives. My favorites are Google SMS and Bing-411.
I’m a Zimbabwean quadrillionaire due to their version of “quantitative easing”. If you’re not pushing an agenda, QE is also known as devaluing the dollar.
I’m happy to be living in the future. When I told my wife this story, she was ready to cry at the beginning, but had to see the pictures by the end. Yay, technology!
And finally, thanks to Chris, here’s a primer on the absurdities of the security theater known as TSA:
Carnivals I’ve rocked:
Experiences v Stuff was included in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.
Thank you!
If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.
Why I Hate Payday Loans
I hate payday loans and payday lenders.
The way a way a payday loan works is that you go into a payday lender and you sign a check for the amount you want to borrow, plus their fee. They give you money that you don’t have to pay back until payday. It’s generally a two-week loan.
Now, this two week loan comes with a fee, so if you want to borrow $100, they’ll charge you a $25 fee, plus a percent of the total loan, so for that $100 loan, you’ll have to pay back $128.28.
That’s only 28% of actual interest; that’s not terrible. However, if you prorate that to figure the APR, which is what everyone means when they say “I’ve got a 7% interest rate”, it comes out to 737%. That’s nuts.
They are a very bad financial plan.
Those loans may save you from an overdraft fee, but they’ll cost almost as much as an overdraft fee, and the way they are rigged–with high fees, due on payday–you’re more likely to need another one soon. They are structured to keep you from ever getting out from under the payday loan cycle.
For those reasons, I consider payday loan companies to be slimy. Look at any of their sites. Almost none are upfront about the total cost of the loan.
So I don’t take their ads. When an advertiser contacts me, my rate sheet says very clealy that I will not take payday loan ads. The reason for that is–in my mind–when I accept an advertiser, I am–in some form–endorsing that company, or at least, I am agreeing that they are a legitimate business and I am helping them conduct that business.
In all of the time I’ve been taking ads, I’ve made exactly one exception to that rule. On the front page of that advertiser’s website, they had the prorated APR in bright, bold red letters. It was still a really bad deal, but with that level of disclosure, I felt comfortable that nobody would click through and sign up without knowing what they were getting into. That was a payday lender with integrity, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
Net Worth Update – January 2014
This may be the most boring type of post I write, but it’s important to me to track my net worth so I can see my progress. We are sliding smoothly from debt payoff mode to wealth building mode.
Our highlights right now are nothing to speak of. We did let our credit card grow a little bit over the last couple of months, but paid it off completely at the end of December. It grew mostly as a matter of not paying attention while we were doing our holiday shopping and dealing with some car repairs.
That’s it. We haven’t remodeled our bathrooms yet, but we have the money sitting in a savings account, waiting for the contractor. We haven’t bought a pony yet, but we did decide that a hobby farm wouldn’t be the right move for us. We’ll be boarding the pony instead of moving, at least for the foreseeable future.
Our net worth is up $13,000 since September. Our savings are up and our retirement accounts are down because there are two inherited IRAs that we need to slowly cash out and convert to regular IRAs.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-17
- RT @mymoneyshrugged: The government breaks your leg, and hands you a crutch saying "see without me, you couldn't walk." #
- @bargainr What weeks do you need a FoF host for? in reply to bargainr #
- Awesome tagline: The coolest you'll look pooping your pants. Yay, @Huggies! #
- A textbook is not the real world. Not all business management professors understand marketing. #
- RT @thegoodhuman: Walden on work "spending best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy (cont) http://tl.gd/2gugo6 #
