By Mary in Hot topics, Confessional Booth on May 5 2008
Word has it that the Great American Giveaway by the U.S. Government has commenced. People who have automatic deposit accounts may have already noticed the money in their accounts.
For those who will get a paper check in the mail, that should show up in a few weeks.
And are we surprised that retailers are staying up all night trying to figure out how they can be involved in as many of these stimulations as possible? Not me. After all … there’s going to be a whole lotta’ spending going on, and the retailers who can attract the most of that money Read More…
By Mary in Credit Cards on April 30 2008
Oh good, happy to see you here! I assume that you read today’s edition of Everyday Cheapskate and you’ve come to comment on the pending Credit Cardholder’s Bill of Rights Act of 2008 (H.R. 5244), recently introduced into the House of Representatives.
Clearly there are at least two sides to this issue. On the one hand personal liberty and free enterprise are good things. There is something to be said for free enterprise (credit card companies, banks) being able to operate in a free society in any way they want, offerings products and services to potential customers. Read More…
By Mary in Waste NOT! on April 28 2008
I cannot tell you how many times in the past four months I’ve asked myself why on earth did I even bring this up. Maybe I should have kept this decision to stop being so wasteful in 2008 to myself. Then when it became too burdensome, I could just quickly allow the idea to scuttle off into the graveyard of forgotten resolutions.
But I didn’t. I so blithely announced to the whole world that just like I was born an overspender, I tend to be wasteful and my decision was Read More…
By Mary in Gardening on April 20 2008
Finally my investment is paying off. What were only seeds in November and sprouts in January, as of this morning are 6-foot vines with sweet pea blooms. All two of them.
The blooms are king-size—larger than any I have ever seen. The red one has little fragrance but the purple one makes up for it. As you may recall, I ordered an assortment of seeds from Enchanting Sweet Peas and rather than trying to keep them separate, I mixed them together so I’d be surprised.
(Don’t be confused by the foilage. It’s something from another bush . I didn’t want to sacrifice a single bit of the sweet pea vines for the photoshoot.)
I can’t wait to see how many more blooms appear tomorrow ….
By Mary in Waste NOT!, Rants, How-To on April 13 2008
Way too often, I’ll come home only to find two sometimes three big, thick telephone books thrown onto the driveway or front porch. Since I live in a large metropolitan area, they can be 2-inches thick, too.
My first reaction is … WHY? I don’t use them, don’t need them, didn’t ask for them, and don’t want them. I haven’t used a telephone book to look up a phone number in years. Have you?
I am not ready to say phone books should banned or outlawed. In fact, I’m happy when we get to govern ourselves and not rely on governments to keep piling on ridiculous laws. I’m big on personal freedoms, free enterprise and capitalism. So i don’t want the government telling me or the companies that produce telephone books what we can do in our business or to whom we can offer our goods and services. Printed phone directories should be available to people who want them, but not forced on those who do not.
I have wondered must how much paper it takes to make so many phone books, how much gas it takes to delivery them and just how much it really costs by the time I pick them up, throw them into the recycle bin for them to be on their way back from whence they came.
I did a little research … 615 million phone books are distributed in the U.S. each year, weighing 660,000 tons! Fewer than 40% make it back to recycling. Who knows how many phone books are delivered and immediately pitched into the trash.
Well, I have good news. The Yellow Pages Association and the Association of Directory Publishers will be announcing a opt-out program in 2010. Similar to opting out of junk phone calls and junk mail, we’ll be able to opt out of getting telephone books delivered to our homes.
And until them, as in starting right now, you can make individual calls to the distributors to opt out effective immediately.
The directory publishers listed below make it possible for you to stop receiving their books, but they don’t make it easy. None of the menu options includes “opting-out” of getting our directory. Follow this roadmap and you should get to a customer service representative who can help you.
— ATT/ Yellow Pages: 1-800-479-2977
— Verizon: 800-555-4833, press 4, then 5, then 2
— DEX: 1-877-243-8339, press 2
— Yellow Book: 1-800-929-3556, press 2
I’m calling first thing in the morning
By Mary in Food on April 8 2008
Okay, kids … I need your help. The subject is my Woman’s Day column for August which is due in about 2 days. Yes, I am the queen of the tight deadlines.
Subject: Extreme Grocery shopping. The premise is that food prices are through the roof, and unless you have a printing press in your basement turning out $20 bills (it’s a joke so please do not send me scathing messages that I am encouraging criminal behavior) chances are pretty good that if you are a typical supermarket shopper who cruises in every few days to buy a load of what looks good, you can no longer afford to eat. It’s time to learn from the masters—the elite among us, those amazing people who go to the extreme to keep their food costs low, their pantries full and their families well-fed with nutritious food.
We’ve talked about this in the past and many of you have posted your best-kept secrets. But I don’t have time to wade through thousands of posts to find the brightest and the best ideas. So here’s the deal: I’m asking you to do this again. Use the comment feature below and tell me as briefly as you can the self-imposed rules you follow to eat on the cheap.
Be specific, give me examples. Name names, cite products, brands, and supermarkets if you want. Most importantly, if I can use you as an extreme example in this column, give me that permission right in your comment. But do not give your email address or phone number. I will need permission to use your real name and state of residence and I will get that from you by private email. Got it?
Now here’s the kicker: I need you to start commenting ….. NOW. Just think, if you make it to the column more than 20,000,000 (yep 20 million) readers will get a chance to learn from your extreme ways.
I’ll just be sitting here [fingers drumming] waiting to hear from you …
By Mary in News, Mary's Sked on April 3 2008
I haven’t slept since Feb 3.
That’s what happens when I have a new book deadline on top of what started all of this in the first place, Debt-Proof Living newsletter (yes I’ve written and published this every month for more than 16 years and counting … and if you do not get it what is wrong with you?), my monthly column in Woman’s Day magazine, and my daily (do you hear me … d-a-i-l-y) newspaper column, Everyday Cheapskate.
For those of you who have not written a book (yet), let me describe what that’s like. Agony. Torture. Isolation. Fear. Self-doubt. Pressure beyond the legal limit. Seriously it is the scariest thing I do. I don’t know why. Probably the result of combining all of those things I just mentioned.
In 1996 I wrote The Financially Confident Woman. To my utter amazement that book won the coveted Gold Medallion Award, which hangs in my office to this day and never ceases to surprise me when I look at it. And after 12 years FCW had become dated (which means, of course, outdated). When I wrote that we’d never heard of something called a credit score, for example. So more than a year ago FCW was taken out of print which just killed me.
Anyway, it became clear that it needed to be rewritten, updated, revised and brought into the 21st Century. Think of it like this: You own a house that is really old and Read More…
By Mary in Rants, Credit Cards, Debt, Uncategorized on April 1 2008
It all started with this message from Jackie K.,
“You have certainly hit a nerve with me when you talk about the unethical terms of the credit card agreements. My husband made a payment on a Saturrday to Chase credit card that was due on Sunday. The payment was made in cash at the bank itself. They said it was late and charged us $39 and increased our interest rate to 29%. He has been a customer with this same company for over 15 years. We called to straighten things out. Obviously , Read More…
By Mary in Rants on March 25 2008
You know what I love the most about the era of the Internet? The really cool new vocabulary. Think about it … did you ever “blog” when you were a kid? How about “google?” And now I’ll bet you do your share of both nearly every day.
Here’s another one: phishing. Have spoofs trying to pose as Citibank, Paypal or eBay gone “phishing” in your email inbox? That’s the practice where a really bad guy dresses up like a good guy and tries to get you to fall for their ploys of needing you to “verify” your personal information. Then they grab it up and proceed to steal your identity.
Cramming is another one of those sneaky ways thieves steal your money right out from under your nose—while you’re not looking! It happened to me … some looney bin crammed a bunch of stuff on our home phone bill several years ago. Wasn’t a lot, like $3 or so for some mysterious thing that looked liike it was probably legitimate. But it wasn’t. Can you imagine a thief getting millions of people to pay $3 a month? See what I mean? A horrible scam. The problem, and I can’t figure out how this can happen, but the phone companies allow third-parties to just call up and add stuff to individual phone bills! It’s outrageous. These thugs depend on people being to mystified and confused to question anything that sounds like it might be legitimate.
And now here’s a brand new word for you: smishing. This is something new that you need to know about: It’s when a thief goes phishing via text messaging. No kidding. According to Clark Howard Americans will face an estimated 1.5 billion spam text messages. It’s the same players … phony messages from Paypal, eBay and Citibank and who knows what else.
So will your cell phone provider put a stop to this outrageous pratice? Heck, no! They make money everytime you send or receive a text message so don’t expect their help anytime soon.
Consider yourself forewarned. If you get a text message you do not recognize or suspect in any way, delete it immediately.
By Mary in News, How-To on March 24 2008
Last week I got a call from Carolyn Kepcher (you will remember Carolyn from the first three seasons of “The Apprentice”) with this question: How would you advise people who’ve just found out they’re unemployed? Of course in the wake of the announcement that Bear Stearns is financial toast, the idea that any of us could be just one pink slip from being homeless unemployed seems scarily possible.
I gave Carolyn my best advice which appears in today’s New York Daily News. Go read it then come on back to discuss.
So let me ask you … could you survive if you or the income producer in your home were to get a pink slip tomorrow? Are you ready? Have you built a fund from which you’ll be able to pay your bills without that paycheck?
Do you have a good idea about how to apply for unemployment benefits? What about health insurance if you are separated from your employer?
And last … what are the chances you could be facing this soon? Remember the folks at Bear Stearns thought they were very secure. After all, it was one of the five largest investment banks in the world.
Are you concerned? Concerned enough to get ready now, while you still have time?
I promise you that if you have at least three months’ living expenses stashed away, you have a very high probability of coming through unscathed. In fact, you might come out better than you were before because you will have less stress and the freedom to wait for a job that you really want—not the first thing that comes along.
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