Posts Tagged ‘money’

2009: The Year Entropy Accelerated

By Chief Oddball on November 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

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As the ill-fated 2009 starts to wind itself down, it’s making it more clear than ever that it’s not going to let us forget how much pain and suffering it inflicted on us all. Some more than others, obviously, but by-and-large it’s been a pretty depressing year. My family in particular was hit harder by more cataclysmic events at once than at any point in my lifetime, with my dad losing his job due to the slowing economy, the deaths of two family members (just a month apart, no less) and a myriad of other problems besides.

Although Apple and I have fared pretty well in comparison to many other Americans — even other members of our families — we’ve still received a disproportionate amount of negative reinforcement from The Powers That Be. This week, in particular, was like a microcosm of that very idea, presenting us with one out-of-left-field event after another: breakdowns, unforeseen events, ridiculous instances of lightning striking twice. The Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to have conspired against us to accelerate entropy to an almost comical level.

I used to do a lot of bitching on this blog. Not so much anymore. But today is one of those days where I feel like if I don’t get it off my chest here, I’ll take it out on someone who doesn’t deserve it, so away we go with a little old-fashioned rant.

Forfeiting the Comcast Battle (But Not Quite the War)

My seemingly eternal struggle with Comcast over the billing and service for my TiVo HD came to an anti-climactic end early this week. (You can follow the history of the saga here.) After apparently getting a solution from corporate to the two HD service fees I was getting charged — one for each CableCARD in my TiVo — the celebration came to an abrupt halt last weekend when my second tuner lost all HD service. Again.

Sick and tired of it, I bypassed phone support altogether and filed another corporate complaint. This time, however, despite the corporate head office’s agreement with my position, the “corporate liaison officer” at our local Comcast department gave me a call to say there was nothing that can be done. In my area, she explained, the billing system requires that a separate HD service charge be assessed on each single-stream CableCARD. So, if I want HD service on both tuners of my DVR, I have to pay for it twice. And that’s that.

So I asked her, if Comcast would offer me a multi-stream CableCARD to replace my two single-stream cards, would I only pay one HD fee despite getting the exact same service? She said yes. Of course, Comcast still doesn’t have multi-stream CableCARDs here. As a result, I pay twice as much for the same service, because of their lack of equipment. Oh, that’s really nice; I’m so glad I could help. Is that extra money I’m paying you going to finance, say, acquisition of any fucking multi-stream CableCARDs, by any chance? (The woman did say that multi-stream cards were currently being tested and would be offered to us early next year, but I’ll believe that when I can hold one in my hands.)

As a consolation, the Comcast corporate liaison officer told me that they’re already crediting me for the extra $6.95 HD service charge by lowering our second CableCARD fee to $1.50, because it’s normally like 8 bucks. Huh? According to Comcast’s own CableCARD FAQ, the second card fee can be only “up to $2.05.” They’re saving me 55 cents, not $6.95. And if you check that same link, you’ll see that I wouldn’t even be paying a second card fee if I just had a multi-stream card. That’s another $1.50 I wouldn’t be paying if Comcast could offer current equipment.

But by this point I had had it. I’m sorry, I really had. I just can’t do this fucking song and dance anymore. I told the woman to just go ahead and restore service to my second CableCARD, and I’ll pay their extra $6.95 monthly fee. What else am I gonna do? At some point you have to recognize that it’s just seven fucking dollars. I will be hounding them next year to make sure I’m one of the first people to get a multi-stream card — assuming that wasn’t just a line of bull — but until then, I have more important things to deal with.

Speaking of which…I’m just getting started.

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Keep Your Options Open

By Chief Oddball on October 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

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I went to pick up some homemade soup for Apple today. Her Thai friend down at her workplace had made her something special, so when I stopped in to get it, we got to talking a little bit. “I lost more than $60,000 in the stock market last week,” said Apple’s friend wistfully. When her husband died tragically of cancer not long ago, he left his wife a sizable nest egg — and the stock market’s recent drops have taken a big bite out of it.

Still, she was happy she hadn’t lost as much as her 72-year-old retired friend — whose portfolio shrank by an incredible quarter of a million dollars.

There’s no doubt about the fact that the United States — and as a result, much of the rest of the world — has reached the top of a long, steep climb in the economic roller-coaster and has only just begun to careen down a deep, scream-inducing decline. Like any roller-coaster ride (barring some catastrophic freak accident like the cars coming off the rails), I figure this thing will start on another incline one of these days. The problem is, we’re pretty much all on this ride with blindfolds on, so we’re not gonna know exactly when that incline is coming, or how far away it is.

In times like this — which, in my 28 years of life, I have next to no experience with — I can think of no better advice than to “keep your options open.” In all aspects of life, leave the door open to choices, things and places that you may not have ever considered before. Things you might have written off as being “beneath you.” Or “too weird for you.” Or “just not you at all.” Because making a sacrifice here or there might mean a greater sum-total quality of life than you’d have had if you refused to deviate from anything you’re intimately familiar with.

And you’re going to have to do this on your own, because the mainstream media certainly isn’t going to help you. Most of the media spends its time trying to decide exactly what to call our current economic situation. Today at lunch, there was a debate on CNN about whether we are technically in a recession or not. I just have to ask: Does anyone give one damn? Trying to decide the exact flavor of shit that just hit the fan isn’t going to erase the need to clean the shit up. And lest we forget, perception is reality — meaning that if most of the American public thinks that the economy sucks, that means it does. The bigwigs in Washington and on Wall Street had better get used to this idea, because it’s not going to change anytime soon. And all this time spent jawing about what to call our predicament would be better spent actually doing something to resolve it.

Right now, Americans are more concerned with how they’re going to pay bills in the short term, how they can afford to get sick or replace their aging family car in the medium term, and how they can afford to retire in the long term. If you’re a political candidate, expecting them to care about anything else is wishful thinking.

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Money Meltdown

By Chief Oddball on August 7th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

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By now, most Americans are intimately familiar with the “credit crisis” that’s affected our lives in a myriad of ways, from losses on the stock market to difficulty in getting a loan. Lately I’ve been passively listening to the Clark Howard Show on local radio, a talk show about money management, consumer protection and other such topics. Normally I find such topics massively monotonous, which has kept me from ever listening to such radio shows simply on principle. Once I started hearing some of Clark Howard’s show, quite by accident in fact, I’ve realized that it can be somewhat enlightening.

It was during the Clark Howard Show this afternoon that I heard a news bite about the ongoing meltdown in auction rate securities, and how tons of people are losing their shirts after investing in what they thought were only slightly-higher risk funds — funds that were billed by investment firms as safe places to park some money for a few months. Ironically, I recently did a little contract work for a local law firm here in town whose specialty is the Charles Schwab YieldPlus Fund and the bath its investors have taken lately.

The Schwab YieldPlus fund is like the poster child for investment disasters on this scale. It’s apparently fell over 20% in the first quarter of 2008 alone, which was four times more than the NASDAQ fell during the same period. As a result, a variety of law firms have sprung up around the country to tackle cases of fraud that a number of investors are starting to bring against Charles Schwab over the YieldPlus Fund fiasco.

It’s been a long time since I did much investing. My grandfather was a bit of a stock market wiz, to the point where he would routinely become irritated with brokers who knew less than he did, and he commonly made his own buying decisions. I have to admit, I owe a lot to my grandfather’s financial wisdom. My wife and I have taken a conservative approach by comparison; other than our retirement accounts, which are comprised mostly of globally diversified long-term growth funds and contributed to each year, we keep our liquid assets in a variety of old-fashioned savings accounts. It’s not quite “cash box chained to the bedpost,” but it’s not far removed.

At my previous job, several of the guys were big-time day traders. Some of them made a fair amount of money doing that. Regardless of the potential benefits, that kind of thing is just not my bag. In the end, I’m more content to have a long-term retirement account and then a stable account with money that I’m sure will be there if I need it. It may not be terribly “high yield,” but at least it’s not going to turn into a Schwab YieldPlus style meltdown.

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Well, 2008, I Guess I Should Thank You

By Chief Oddball on February 12th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

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Just yesterday I posted up a rant about how much this year is costing us so far, and at the end, I smarmily asked for an end to the surcharges. Well, it seems I owe 2008 a nod of thanks — having gotten our tax return wrapped up, it looks like we’ll be getting a refund from the IRS in the amount of $2,094.

I think that sets some kind of personal record.

So, to 2008: Thanks.

(And, uh…is there any more where that last one came from?)

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This Is Turning Into a Pretty Expensive Year

By Chief Oddball on February 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am

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2008 is barely a month old (barely four days old if you live in China) and it’s already costing us a great deal of money.

First there were the rats in our attic. Well, more like rat, singular. Still, trapping, sealing off and baiting the place cost us $650. Since I run a business out of my home, I’m at least hoping to write off about 1/5th of that as a business expense.

Next came my bicycle. To replace the bearing and tune it up was about $100. Not too much, but you know how the little stuff adds up.

Then, the doctor’s bills. There are still outstanding lab bills for some doctors’ services we used back in October, because the lab and our insurance company absolutely refuse to communicate properly with each other. Twice now, we’ve been billed for over $400 in lab services, when the insurance company will only allow about $170. The lab claims that the insurance company isn’t responding to their billing requests. “Well, I’ve got their Explanation of Benefits in my hand, do you want to see it?” I remarked. Yes, said the lab, we actually would like to see it. So I sent it to them.

After all of this, I hope the lab doesn’t look at that $170 bottom line and decide to just bill us sideways for the rest of it anyway. And as for that $170 the insurance company wants to cover? We’ve got to pay it out of pocket anyway, since we have a $1,500 deductible. Ah, America: Land of the broke. And oh yes, at some point I’m going to get the bill for the doctor’s appointment I had myself last month — you know, that whole ear thing.

Oh, but I’m not done yet. Next comes Apple’s Mazda. We’ll take it in for some routine maintenance, we decided. It’s our workhorse car, so we need to keep on top of it. I also wanted the dealer to see if they would replace the rotted positive battery lead under warranty. They told us they would, confirmed it with management and kept the car for the entire weekend before calling me today and saying: “Oh, you know how we said that would be under warranty? It won’t be, because we just discovered you put in an aftermarket battery.”

Yeah, I did — because a year ago the factory battery was failing and it needed to be replaced. (Speaking of which, why are factory-installed car batteries such pieces of crap these days?) The positive lead was rotted then, too, and I had a dealer look at it before I changed the battery, but said they wouldn’t warranty it either. WTF? Can you guys be consistent? So because they wanted to charge me an astronomical amount of money to put in a new battery, I said “fuck it,” went to Sears, bought a battery and installed it myself. Now the dealer claims that this is preventing them from warranteeing the rotted lead. Sounds more to me like just another case of an American corporation doing everything it can to weasel out of actually providing a service to the customer. No surprise here.

So our total car maintenance bill just doubled to $342, when our budget was $200. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years, it’s that you might as well not bother setting a budget for car repairs — because you can’t make it stick. But what am I supposed to do, not fix the battery lead? Sure, I’ll let it just rot away until one night Apple gets stranded at work around midnight and can’t get home. Then we’ll have to pay a towing fee in addition to the repair charge. Sounds like a great plan.

And I haven’t even mentioned my car yet, which needs its tires rotated badly — they’re making a lot of unseemly noise now — but which keeps getting put off because of either time, money or my own pathological fear of having a mechanic touch my car.

Why don’t I do some of this stuff myself, you ask, and save paying someone to do it? God may have gifted me with a great sense of design and an intricate knowledge of how to deal with all things electronic, but as far as practical mechanical knowledge and handyman skill, I ain’t got jack. But at least I know how to put to work the skills I do have — as it happened, opportunity knocked this morning when an old colleague called up with some emergency web design work he needed done, and he offered to pay me $100 an hour. Are you kidding? Of course I took the job.

But please, 2008 — stop the surcharges, hmm?

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Homeowner’s Insurance Happiness

By Chief Oddball on August 16th, 2007 at 5:25 pm ··· 1 Comment

All of our hard work paid off — today our insurance company gave us a $1,117 credit off our homeowner’s policy after we submitted documentation proving that we have adequate hurricane protection. Since that credit is almost half the cost of the whole annual premium, you can believe that Apple and I are pretty happy.


House Insurance Time Again…

By Chief Oddball on August 3rd, 2007 at 2:41 pm

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It’s time for our annual homeowner’s insurance policy renewal! Since we’re Florida residents, you can bet that this is a sore subject. Each year since the unmitigated disaster of the 2004 hurricane season, every Florida resident’s premiums have gone up substantially. Thankfully we have one of the best-built homes on the market, but even it is only rated for the Florida building codes as they were in 2001. In 2002, those codes were made much stricter, so 2002 and newer homes get better rates. Nevertheless, our rates are usually manageable, and I like the insurance company we’re with.

Our paperwork for the upcoming year’s policy renewal just arrived, and of course, the premium went up $550 to a total of nearly $2,900 for the year. Since a brand new fire station was just built about half a mile from here, we decided to call up the insurance company and see if they were aware of it — because if not, it might save us a little bit of money. While I was on the phone with them, I asked to confirm if they had any credits on file with us about our hurricane shutter panels.

Unfortunately, because the insurer had no evidence that our garage door was hurricane reinforced, they were not able to offer us the windstorm protection credit that I thought the shutters provided. This is because every opening on the house — including the garage door, which is the most vulnerable point of entry for strong winds — needs to be reinforced. When I asked how much it would save us if we were to get a reinforced door and thus qualify for the windstorm protection credit, the agent quoted me a discount of $1,100. Damn. Like, can we go get a new garage door today?

She also told us that we could qualify for a further discount if our roof is at least a 50% hip design, rather than a gable. Since our roof qualifies, she told me to submit some photos of the house for verification — so at least we should have one discount coming to us.

But I was stoked about that garage door, so I started looking into it on the web, hoping to get a ballpark figure of what I might have to pay for a reinforced door. As I watched a Bob Vila webcast about installing a door like that, I realized that the door they were putting up looked familiar. So I went out to examine our garage door, and sure enough, it is hurricane reinforced. Granted, it’s reinforcement that compiles with the pre-2002 building codes, but that’s acceptable by my insurance company (they just give you a smaller discount).

Thus began my search for facts and specifications on the door. The home builder only gave us documentation on our garage door opener, so that was useless. I called the home builder direct, and they forwarded me to the warranty department. A woman there informed me that I should speak to the local garage door contractor who installed our door, so I called them. They agreed to mail me a spec sheet on the door, which should hopefully solve my problem. In the meantime, I took extensive photos of the garage door, its reinforcement mechanisms and county code compliance numbers, and sent it all off to the insurance company.

Of course, it remains to be seen what kind of discounts we’ll be able to qualify for when all the facts are in, but this bears repeating: Check with your insurance company when your policy renews to make sure you’re getting the credits you’re due. Especially if you live in Florida.

Edit: The insurance company has informed us that in order to give us a credit for windstorm protection, they need photographs of our house with all the storm shutters installed. Yay, five hours of hard labor in 96-degree heat — just how I wanted to spend my weekend. But for a discount of $1,100 (equivalent to an hourly rate of $220), I’ll do it.

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