Having money is great. Saving money to have more when you need it is always a good idea and it always pays off. But there is a conspiracy out there to separate me from my money. Whenever I want to use some service or to obtain some type of good, may it be in the form of some type of edible treat or skin warming fabric, people want to charge me money for it. I can’t stand being charged for things that I need to survive, so when I stumbled upon a nice little scheme to get me 50% off the price of admission to various places of necessity I was shocked and awed by its subtle elegance. You see, with a little guile, a small amount of assembly skills, and an extremely flexible (or smallish) companion, you will never have to pay the full price for admission ever again.
Here is how it works:
- You and a buddy (spouse, teenage child, friend, grandparent, total stranger, or pooka) decided what you want to pay half price to go see - it could be a movie, sporting event, or fair
- Together you requisition a child transportation device (CTD) made popular by various celebrities because if you are going to save a few bucks you might as well do it style
- Make sure one of you can fit in it - adjust the CTD accordingly if one of you cannot
- Reinforce said CTD to support the weight of a grown man - you never know whne you might need it
- Go to your location
- One of you get inside CTD - be sure to cover it so that the people think that there is a baby inside the CTD
- Pay for one (1) admission
- Enter venue
- Wait till lights dim(or enter restroom ) and escape the CTD
- Subterfuge completed
In case you think that his is just a little too far fetched, check out this video that proves that this will work 100% of the time - no questions asked:
Since this obviously works, let us to turn our attention towards where we might be able to go in order to take full advantage of the massive money saving potential that these kind hearted individuals opened our eyes to. In San Diego and its environs this scheme could pay off big at:
*All genders welcome. You don’t even have to be the “child’s” parent. Score!
Now that is a lot of savings! If you are a truly ambitious individual you could forgo the friend and just try and get some random stranger to claim you as their child as they wheel you into a movie theater for free - for free! All they would have to do is park you inside the restroom of your choice and you could enjoy an unlimited number of free admissions to all sorts of destinations.
Greedy-people-who-want-to-take-my-money-for-their-goods-or-services: 0
Steward and Family/Friends/Random internet strangers: 1
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Posted in Frugality ~ 1 Comment
The Carnivals
Both the Carnival of Personal Finance and the Festival of Frugality are up and running. The Carnival of Personal Finance #148 is up at Gather Little by Little. My post on outsourcing to your kids was included as an editors pick. In Glblguy’s comments on my article he made a good point that when we outsource tasks to our children it is important that they have a voice in the proceedings. Otherwise it turns into a masked form of slavery, and nobody wants that!
Kyle from Rather be Shopping was also kind enough to include my article about money poetry in the massive Festival of Frugality #121. Thanks!
Website Metrics
Now on to my random website metrics. Today I was playing around with Google Analytics and fell quickly in love with their Map Overlay feature. It tells me how many people have accessed my site from different countries around the world (19 from Germany - w00t!) which can then be broken down further into states and then cities. I decided I wanted to take a look at my U.S. stats since January 1, 2008. I noticed that I have had visitors from every state in the Union. Some states brought me way more traffic than others and this got me thinking, “I wonder if the number of people who have come to my site is equally distributed across the United States given that different states have different population levels?” It was spreadsheet time.
Here is the fruit of my 6 minutes of labor in all its glory:
The far right column is the hits to population rating. A value of 1 in this field would be a completely proportional number of hits for the number of people estimated to live in a given state. The average rating for my data is 0.95, which tells me that on average I have have a fairly disbursed reading public. The median number is .79, indicating that I may have some states that supply me with more visitors per population than other states.
I’m not really sure what this information does for me (very little I think), but it sure seems interesting. I may try do this again someday, but right now I’m just content to save it and store it away somewhere in magical computer information land.
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First the woes - I got hit with a $39 late fee yesterday because my due date was on a Sunday (why?) and when I made the payment on its due date it wouldn’t except it until Monday, a day late. Talk about a bummer. I will try and call my credit card company and see if all the advice I’ve read about calling and asking them to waive a late fee for a loyal payer will work. Time will only tell. What makes it even a bigger bummer is that on Friday I knew that this type of thing was going to happen so I reminded myself on the bus to remember to do it once I got home. I think reading Oliver Twist
on the ride home was not the proper step to take to ensure that I would remember. I think from now on I will pay the credit card as soon as I get the statement. Its may cost me a few pennies in interest, but it will save me $39. If I can’t get the fee waved then it is really going to cut into the free $100 I am getting from them for making my purchases with their card. Stupid 39% stupid tax.
The other weird thing that happened with my credit card is that our limit mysteriously jumped by 40%. That is kind of good since the amount of available credit that you use is a factor in determining your credit score. I don’t imagine that our spending will increase with this new limit so that will hopefully improve our credit score some over the next few months.
Lesson learned: Pay your credit card bill on time
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Posted in Banks & Credit Cards ~ 1 Comment
I like poetry. It’s fun to read and even more fun to write. I enjoy the rhythm that well crafted words can have as they sit on a page - their hidden accents crying out to be given voice. Most of the poetry I have read in my life has not had much to do with money. It’s mostly about love, or beauty, or love, or the violence inherent in the system, or love. Mostly it is just about love. My favorite poet is probably William Blake - he has this craziness about him that I find appealing and interesting. He didn’t really write about money either, so that is what makes this little bit that I found the other day all that more interesting.
Let wealth come in by comely thrift,
And not by any sordid shift:
‘Tis haste
Makes waste;
Extreames [sic] have still their fault;
The softest Fire makes the sweetest Mault.
Who gripes too hard the dry and slip’rie sand,
Holds none at all, or little in his hand.
Robert Herrick, from Hesperides and His Noble Numbers
This snippet is from a poem that comes to us from a work published in 1648. I think, though, that its wisdom is timeless. Except for the part about the Fire and Mault, which probably meant something 360 years ago but means absolutely nothing to me now, this stuff makes a lot of sense. It teaches me to:
- Be honest about how I make my money - read comely thrift > sordid shift. Look mom, it rhymes too.
- Avoid get rich quick schemes and wasteful choices - they only lead to you looking like an idiot and losing money (and maybe turning some form of cold, sweet, and delicious treat into a pool of hot, saccharine, disgusting liquid because it gets exposed to fire)
- Holding on to money too tightly is a surefire way to lose some of it.
That last one is pretty deep and it reminds me a lot of Princess Leia, who is only 16/17 as wise as Yoda so she is still pretty wise. It particularly reminds me of how when I was still in high school I entered into a reasonable sum of money due to some deaths in my immediate and extended family. At its peak I probably has close to $15,000 in the bank. Unfortunately, that is exactly where it stayed - earning me practically nothing. I had a brother who recommended I invest it in a mutual fund or a CD, but I was too scared to lose some of it investing and was deeply concerned that a CD just wasn’t liquid enough for me and the ripe old age of 17. I mean I could have needed $15,000 at any minute! I held onto my money way too tightly, didn’t take any risks, and ended up paying for it in terms of never realized gains. Money is a tool, so use it like one.
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