Carnival of Wealth, Investopedia Edition

April 2, 2012

A Forbes Media Company. Steve, we loved your work on Saturday Night Live

 

Folks, did you know that Investopedia regularly features our work? Articles that you CAN’T get here on Control Your Cash? The fun thing about writing for Investopedia and its trillions of readers is that it forces us to phrase everything in a somewhat less incendiary style than the one we’re comfortable with here. It’s like when Vinnie Moore has to lay off the shredding and just play the notes when he’s touring with UFO, but can still whale on the whammy bar on his solo albums. For the 99% of you who didn’t get that analogy, here’s another Investopedia/Yahoo! Finance link.

Onto the Carnival. Personal finance blog posts from across the globe. If you’re a blogger, submit yours here. Send us garbage at your peril. For the overwhelming non-blogging part of the audience, you folks who are just here to learn a little about personal finance and maybe get entertained in the process, just keep reading:

If you turn at least 77 this week, live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and/or are blind – and we’re not sure which of those is worst, probably living in Northern Ireland – Edward Webber at TaxFix.co.uk tells you how you can avoid paying taxes (in the UK, duh) in 2012.

Teacher Man at My University Money thinks credit cards, like single-malt scotches, are perfect for college kids. His point is that you need to build credit, and the sooner the better. If you can’t handle your liquor, as it were, grow up. Enjoy Teacher Man’s curious admixture of insight into the human condition and up-and-down grammar.

Yeah, living in Northern Ireland is far worse than being blind.

Ryan Souza at Your Life For Less joins the parade this week, and reminds you not to be a lightweight with regard to comparison shopping. Don’t stay with a trusted brand just because it’s comfortable, especially if an acceptable substitute can save you serious cash.

Case in point? Your humble blogger reluctantly admits that throughout his early 20s he never bought groceries at Walmart because, well, that’s where the poor people shop. The ones made fun of on that People of Walmart site. I can’t be seen shopping with them. Besides, it’s filthy in there. (As far as I knew. I’d never actually been in one.)

Then it dawned on me: I am poor. Partially because I’ve been buying groceries at more expensive stores. The first time I sucked it up and bought groceries at a Walmart, not only did I not catch bubonic plague, I saved about 40% off what Albertson’s was charging. And never (or at least, hardly ever) went back. Walmart became this shopper’s trusted brand.

Until WinCo showed up a few weeks ago, in her slutty makeup and 9″ heels, smiling and complimenting me on my broad shoulders and tiny waist. She started running her acrylic nails through her frosted hair and I was hooked. I still can’t figure out how WinCo sells red peppers at 48¢ a pound, but that’s someone else’s concern. Walmart, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be back.

As usual, Tim at Faith and Finance put less work into this week’s submission than we did into that previous paragraph. Tim lists 8 jobs for recent MBAs, who presumably have already thought about what they’ll be doing after graduation and don’t need a blog post to remind them that

If information technology or management information systems is your specialty, you can command a great salary at a strong company, especially with an MBA.

Thanks. He basically lists 8 positions, and ends each description by telling you that your chances of getting hired for any of them are greater with an MBA. Tim also encourages people to get jobs working in human resources, which is the most loathsome career path in the world.

Parents, if your children have the right equipment, encourage them to get into porn instead of HR. We’re not kidding. At least porn actors don’t live to make other people’s lives miserable. Then again, what’s more fun and professionally satisfying than reciting the list of company benefits and denying employees’ requests for vacation days? HR administrators are the evolution of the insufferable little girls in elementary school who reported even the most miniscule infractions to the teacher. Bad, bad people. All of them.

PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net would be one of our favorite contributors even if he only submitted his aesthetically pleasing charts. Or if he only submitted his clever, informative prose. Put them together and you have a personal finance blogger most folks can only aspire to be like. This week he asks “Who gambles in Canada?”, a country where people were buying $10 lottery tickets back in the 1970s (not adjusted for inflation).

Speaking of Canada, apparently Rob Carrick of the Toronto Globe & Mail stole our idea and wrote a personal finance book for people who know nothing about money. Is his available on Kindle? For $7? No, it’s $17 Canadian, and that on undercutter extraordinaire Amazon. So you can order it and wait 10 days to receive it, or click the above link and be reading ours in less than a minute. Ours which actually applies to you if you’re American, like most of our readers are. Anyhow, Boomer & Echo reviewed Mr. Carrick’s book.

Did the guy behind Free Money Finance sell his site? Just wondering, because it’s changed radically. This week he lists a few simple actions for building wealth. Driving 70 miles out of your way to wait 4 hours to buy lottery tickets isn’t on the list.

Joe Morgan at Simple Debt Free Finance boils it down even more. He thinks you should increase your income and reduce expenses if you want to build wealth. We’ll try it out, see if it works, get back to you on that.

Every week we get posts that offer pointless advice. It’s rare that we get one that recommends you do something that’s dumb from every angle, but then we’d never heard from Jeffery (sic) Weber at Smart Balance Transfers before. Jeffery thinks you should use a credit card to pay your income taxes. Which is insane because, as Jeffery even admits, the IRS requires you to go through an intermediary that will charge you 2-4%. But hey, double miles.

We’re due for something good. John Kiernan at Wallet Blog reminds us that plenty of people don’t know who their health insurer is. If you have a vague idea that your insurance is handled by Blue Cross, Blue Shield, or some combination of the above, you might be surprised to know that those names refer to multiple insurers whose coverage can differ wildly from state to state. Your acupuncture treatments for that nasty bout of shingles might not be covered in Delaware after all.

We buried Liana at CardHub deep in the mix this week, only because that way it’ll mean something when we put her in the leadoff spot again. She gives the stark details of Chase’s practice of overstating past due consumer debt, which it then can sell to third parties. Chase is essentially rolling back odometers on debt collection, and we can’t understand why this isn’t a bigger story.

Ken Faulkenberry at AAAMP Blog brings it every week. This time, an important discourse on one of our favorite topics – fundamental stock analysis vs. technical stock analysis, a/k/a alchemy.

In a similar vein, Mich at Beating the Index shows how to identify that scourge of the market, the emotionally invested shareholder. Understand that being emotionally invested in the market is like being emotionally invested in the weather. You can’t control it, all you can do is intelligently anticipate what it’s going to do. Wishing and hoping are wastes of time. Mich’s posts are usually fairly advanced, but this one’s easy (and useful) for everyone.

There are hundreds of corporations that don’t understand Twitter. And then there’s American Express, which doesn’t necessarily have an entertaining feed, but is using Twitter’s structure to expand its business. And it’s gloriously simple. Use a hashtag, get a credit from a specific participating retailer. Laura Edgar at Nerd Wallet gives the details.

Finally, the craziest post we’ve ever received. This one makes Erika the passive-aggressive wife at Newlyweds on a Budget seem normal. Everything about this – the font choice, the graphics, the errant spelling, the long-windedness, the name of the blog (Wizard Corpse?) – screams out for help. Let’s all join hands and pray for the anonymous lunatic who sent it to us. And if he doesn’t cast a spell on us, we’ll see you here next week.

Filed Under: Carnivals, Investopedia Tagged With: ,

March’s (Financial) Retard of the Month

March 30, 2012

 

Sandra Fluke, failed courtesan

 

Technically this month’s honoree reached her zenith late last month, and while she’s faded into obscurity 4 weeks later there’s no reason why we can’t give her the distinction she so deserves.

Meet Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, she of the sensible haircut and uptight demeanor that betrays her as the kind of person Charles Dickens had in mind when he remarked that “Youth is wasted on the young.” Actually, not that much youth. She’s 30, which is becoming a perfectly acceptable age for a college student in the 2010’s. A college student who can’t support herself and doesn’t even display a desire to. If you find that incongruous with the idea of Controlling Your Cash, read on.

By the way, we labeled her a failed courtesan because she expects compensation for sex, and she isn’t getting any. (Compensation.) In her defense, she doesn’t exactly look like a firecracker between the sheets.  (Also, we originally used “prostitute”, but so did Rush Limbaugh and no one cares that we wrote the relevant parts of this post before his on-air attack.)

Ms. Fluke testified before a Congressional panel, complaining that the Jesuit school she attends doesn’t cover contraception in its student health plans. The assumptions she makes are undeniable:

  • A private institution is obligated to pay for certain preventative health measures that have nothing to do with the act of studying law at said institution. She might as well be complaining that she can’t get a Pepsi on campus because the university has an exclusive contract with Coke.
  • An institution that subscribes to Catholic tenets, including the one about contraception being immoral – however antiquated that belief might seem to Ms. Fluke or anyone else – is obligated to reject those tenets to accommodate a student who chose to attend there and presumably knew the rules going in.
  • This is all the federal government’s business, and by extension, ours. After guarding the coasts, collecting taxes, and keeping the International Space Station in orbit, one of the other critical items on the list is seeing to it that not only can Sandra Fluke have sex with abandon, but that someone other than her (or her partner) needs to provide the condoms and spermicidal lubricant.

So, Ms. Fluke, why’d you choose to attend a school whose health plans aren’t to your liking?

[I r]efused to pick between a quality education and our health, and we resent that in the 21st century anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

No, you’re being asked to make the choice simply because no one – not your employer, not your church, not your educational institution – promised to or is obligated to offer you a suite of services that match up exactly with what you want.

That’s a nation with a $15 trillion debt in a nutshell. The very definition of economics is the study of infinite wants chasing finite resources. You have to allocate. We all do. To quote Paula Pant, it’s “Afford anything”, not “Afford everything.” What is the practical difference between Ms. Fluke demanding “contraception”, which she never bothers to define past the conceptual level, and demanding a BMW to drive to classes in?

At least Georgetown is teaching her to speak in obfuscated lawyery jargon. Again, she demands “contraception”. What, an IUD? A transdermal patch? A tubal ligation? Instruction in the rhythm method?

For decades now, it’s been an article of faith among health departments at the national, state and local levels that condoms are safe and effective for preventing someone’s wayward semen from mixing with someone else’s questionable vaginal secretions. Also, condoms are obscenely cheap. In fact, it’s hard to find a college campus where some organization hasn’t taken it upon itself to give them away to whoever wants one.

We haven’t brought them on board as a sponsor yet, in between the payday loan places and the medical marijuana suppliers, but Condom Depot was easy enough to find. They sell standard Durex non-lubricated prophylactics for, at the absolute most, 60¢ apiece. But given the frequency with which Miss Fluke needs contraception, Condom Depot can get her in for half that. 3000 condoms for $900.

Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary.

A. If you’re making the equivalent of $12,000 a year, you should probably find another line of work. Especially in your 30s.

B. Sex is…what’s the word? Voluntary. There’s no way you can’t get to the following conclusion from her premises:

I want to engage in behavior that has nothing to do with my position as a student. If I choose to have sex, the institution I attend must accommodate the kind of sex I want.

If Georgetown is obligated to provide her with $3000 worth of contraception, however she defines it, why not nipple clamps and anal beads, too? Like many a previous sensibly coiffed woman to have come before Congress with an agenda, Ms. Fluke sees a crisis where none exists. And like many an American in 2012, to say nothing of many a Financial Retard of the Month, her overwhelming directive is to expect something for nothing. Again, a voluntary exchange of money for services. If you don’t like the services, keep your money. And judging from how little Ms. Fluke makes, she should be keeping her money anyway.

Ms. Fluke can make an unsubstantiated, outrageous, unverifiable claim about how badly she, an innocent woman, is being screwed by a heartless and faceless entity that puts profits over people. That the people in charge of that entity are so paternalistic that they even go by the title “Father” makes Miss Fluke all the more sympathetic in the eyes of an uninformed public. She also used the word “needs” as a noun 9 times in her testimony, an unmistakable giveaway that she’s an idiot.

Health insurance is supposed to be a way to minimize risk. Go without a few dollars now, and you won’t go without a lot of dollars later should you lose an arm or need cancer surgery.

Protected sex isn’t a crisis with a low risk of occurring. It’s a commonplace (depending on your partner and your availability) activity. So is sneezing, and there’s no logical difference between Miss Fluke demanding that her college’s health plan cover “contraception” and demanding that it cover something to blow her nose into.

This affects all of us in the sense that a blanket policy costs more money than a true insurance policy that would only cover catastrophes. If you want a policy that’ll cover heart transplants, but allow you to pay for your own blood tests – well, try and find such a policy. When every line item of a policy is mandated by the government, prices rise. So does coverage, whether the insured wants it to or not. Some of us don’t need condoms. Others would gladly pay for them ourselves.

But yes, keep voting for politicians who see nothing wrong with tying up Congress’s time and taxpayer money on such trivialities.

This article is featured in:

**The Carnival of Financial Camarerie #28**

Filed Under: Financial Retard of the Month Tagged With: , ,
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