Window Shopper

Each year, people like the idea of getting a better car so they trade up. Is this a good idea? Sometimes. Sometimes it is not. When is the trade up a problem?

You want a new car. Great. You go to the dealership, shop wisely and get the car of your dreams. The payment might be a little high but you can handle it. Then, a year goes by. Maybe it’s two years. Now that dream car doesn’t look nearly as nice as the latest one so you want to trade up. You go into the dealer again, discuss trading up. The salesperson is delighted to help. You drive out with the newest car in the line. Not bad. You traded in your other car, financed the whole thing and it only added a little more onto your loan. The payment is only a little higher than it was before. You love doing this because you can have a new car to drive fairly easily each year.

What is wrong with this picture? For one thing, it is obvious that you have not yet paid off the first car. So, where does the balance go? It goes right onto the new loan making the loan much higher than the sticker price for the second car. People do this year after year. And get themselves into major debt doing it.

The problem here is that even though the person is getting a brand new car every one to two years, the balance from the previous car or cars is always right there in the deal, making the payments and the loans much, much bigger. And what happens after a few years of this? Massive debt and loans that cannot be paid back. Then comes the default on the loan, repossession. Your credit is now trashed. And all this is because you wanted a nicer ride. Come on.

Do the basic math. If the first car is not paid off and a new car is bought, the balance from the older car has to go somewhere. It goes on the new loan. Now the loan is much bigger than the new car’s worth. If you do this again, the worth of the car cannot possibly cover the security of the loan. If you default, you still have to pay off the balance of the loan. Now you are stuck in financial hell. Okay, you could give the car back. Nice but no cigar. You will still be liable for the balance of the loan you signed for. And you have nothing to drive.

So, what is the solution to the problem? You might just have to ride it out. But there is one thing that can be done but you have to decide what you want to do….have a nice ride or get out of debt. If you want to get out of debt, you can trade down. If you do that, the loan could be smaller, less in payments and even though you have a used car, your debt will be smaller and slightly easier to pay off. No, it isn’t going to fix the problem completely since you still have to pay the loan off but it might just give you a chance to pay it off instead of having massive car loan payments to make. It just might give you a little relief.

Everybody knows that oysters sometimes have pearls in them. But what happens if, in some strange lightning flash, oysters all over the world started coughing up something besides pearls? Picture this:

You are walking down the aisle of your local grocery store when you spot some oysters in a barrel. Time to stock up. As you begin to scoop them up, it suddenly dawns on you that you could get them for free if only you were on vacation. That idea begins to take root. Rushing to the car, you speed homeward. If only your husband will get home early today by reading your mind! As you pull into the garage, you spot your husband’s car. ALRIGHT!

Having talked hubby into heading to the oyster beds, you both are anticipating a huge meal of your own handpicked shells. After looking for quite a while and gathering all you can, you spot an unusually shaped oyster shell poking up slightly taller than the others. As you head for it, you realize that this shell is really big! You call your husband because it is apparent that THIS particular oyster may be a good deal older than the others and will take some special effort to open it.

Working together, you pry open the shell. If you could see your husband, you would see that his eyes are popping out just like yours are. Inside the beautiful oyster shell rests a perfectly formed laptop which is up and running. Okay, the oyster isn’t REALLY surfing the net, right??? The laptop is fantastic! And you have wanted one for ages.

Do you eat raw oysters? You may be at risk for serious illness or worse. How can you tell? For those who have serious problems with stomach, diabetes, liver problems and more, you could be at risk. Please take the time to go to the Be Oyster Aware website to find out more about this subject. In the meanwhile, take a moment and enjoy the idea of having Gulf oysters for supper tonight!

The first thing you want to know is…what is zombie debt, right? And the second is…are you going to have that? Answering the first question..zombie debt is really old debt that you have forgotten about or is actually not yours in the first place. This is especially true of people who’s identities have been stolen. But it is also true of those who have old credit card debt, for instance. So, the answer to the second question is that if you have collectors after you and you have no idea why, that would be the problem.

What happens is: a bank will sell an old debt to the collectors for a very small amount. That gets it out of the bank’s hair, so to speak. Then, the collectors will get extremely aggressive in trying to collect the old debt. It is right here that you should know your rights concerning this situation. For instance, if seven years have passed, it is unlikely that they could actually make you pay the debt. You would want to ask for a printout of the debt owed. Then, when you receive that, you will want to send them a certified letter stating that you know your rights, to cease trying to collect. They should back off. If not, an attorney can advise you further.

However, when it gets settled with one company, often it gets sold to the next company which will start to aggressively pursue the debt again. This could get rather involved and be very costly to fight. So, you will want to get the information as soon as possible. With that, send the letter. And if all else fails, contact your attorney and sue each company that haunts you with the zombie debt.

It has been a hectic month so far. I really do think that it’s a good thing February is about to go away. Recently, our area suffered a pretty devastating tornado, an EF3, which took out a large number of businesses and homes. The businesses were the lifeblood of the community. The small town of Highland, Arkansas, simply does not have that many businesses. When the storm hit, it dug a path of destruction for some time. This particular storm started in Atkins, Arkansas, and traveled 123 miles before ending it’s destructive path.

I talked with a couple of people who saw, first hand, why you want to stay out of the storm path if you are able to do so. One lady was standing in her back yard only a few hundred feet from where it continued it’s damage. She said that her ears were hurting and popping. When she looked up, she saw headlights from cars swirling around up in the air. That’s how she was able to see where the tornado was.

My husband’s brother saw the storm first hand as well. He thought the storm was still a ways away and was driving straight into it. It picked the van up into the air and tumbled it before setting it down upright with only some dents and the windows completely blown out of it. He walked away with a couple of scratches on his forehead.

Frankly, I do not know about this for sure but there were rumors that people were calling their insurance agents to get life insurance quotes before such a thing could happen again. The problem with this storm was that it was a freak. Our tornado season is not upon us as yet. This was a total freak of nature. Before that, about a few days, it had snowed. The kids were out of school for a day because of it. It was cold. Then, warm air came up and we had spring type weather. It was strange.

And now, the people in our area will not allow this to defeat them. Businesses are in temporary quarters, already back in business. Some are fixing the damage and opening up in the same locations. Others will have a slightly tougher time but will come back better and brighter than ever before. And that’s saying something for the willpower of those who live here in our community.

It’s a quest. I want a laptop but sometimes the money isn’t available and sometimes it’s just not my day. All the places I look when I want to save a buck are not the right ones..trust me, they aren’t. I went to a second hand dealer of all sorts of junk. Yep, junk. What I thought was that there are treasures in those old junk stores. Guess the guy selling the laptop thought so too. His price was $150 for a laptop that must have been one of those they tried out as a proto-type. ACK!

I went to a popular site that sells the things. “How could I go wrong there?” I thought. Weeeell, there are ways. Lots of ways. For instance, do you want a laptop that actually has a power source? Then you have to add one. That costs more! Want a few more dohickies? More money. And of course, you want those extras that make things go smoothly, like a CPU. Yep, you guessed it…more money. By the time you put all that stuff on a laptop that started out at about $600, the price can be as high as $2,000. It’s not ALL the goodies but it’s really nice. Sigh.

If I go on eBay, I will find a good price…maybe…but they are not what they seem much of the time. So, I will keep on looking for that certain laptop that’s a perfect fit for me, one that has what I want for a reasonable price. What did you say? “There is no such thing as REASONABLE anymore???” Oh no! Am I doomed to sit here on a desktop pc for the rest of my life???

When I was young and foolish (well..young. I am possibly still foolish..LOL!), I learned how to go to the store and buy everything I needed and wanted. Of course, I was out of money by the time I left the store but what the heck! You only live once, right? After a while, I decided that if I continued to do that, we would never have a single cent past payday.

It did take some time for me to realize that the only way to save a dollar or two was to find the paper and scope out the best buys and then go after those. The stores call them loss leaders. They lure you into the store to buy the thing at a huge discount. Then they expect you to stay and buy more and more. Eventually, you will leave having bought much more than you could afford or care about. It’s a great sales tactic but awful for the low budget consumer.

My plan was to make a list and go after JUST those really great buys. That works most of the time. We actually go to four different stores to get our good deals. One of those stores is over 50 miles from the house but we buy for a solid month AND we also buy for another household. It’s a win win. I do not buy name brands unless that’s the best deal. Many, many of the unknown brands are good and sometimes better. With doing that, I have a huge savings therefore able to buy more for my family. Our cupboards are doing just fine. We are blessed!!!

The main thing here is to plan ahead, try not to shop while you are hungry. That’s a major no no! I did do that a few times. My sales slip at the checkout was WAAAAY more than I wanted to spend. Be sure to keep to the plan as much as possible. Build into your plan some surprises like, for instance, that product was this much last week but now it’s higher. Or how about that product that wasn’t available last week but is this week and you don’t want to miss that great price!

The last thing I am going to tell you is to have good, old fashioned common sense at the store. I do realize that particular quality is lacking in many people so it needs to be learned. If you do not learn it, you will always pay that higher price. Some day, you may want to know how to shop cheaply but effectively. This is the way to do it.

There is no way that we could ever consider our furry people to be anything but part of our family. They are awesome. We have a senior dog of almost 14 years and about a 5 year old cat named Gizmo who apparently feels that anything in the house is a toy….toy mice, string, blankets, food, feet, noses (ours), if it moves..he attacks it. If it does not move, he attacks it. He is non-discriminating.

The only problem is that I am always needing pet supplies so I go online and get them rather cheaply at Jeffers Pet Supply. Those folks are so nice and the products are great. Our dog has a problem with allergies and itches herself quite a lot. We bought a spray from them that has clove oil in it. That stops the itching fast. We love it. All my supplies are coming from Jeffers Pet supply now. I recommend them.

There were a couple of times lately when I looked around at the DVDs coming out and wondered just how long it would be before there were going to be more or less things besides HD and Blu-ray. It just seemed to be sort of an overkill, really. We have a standard DVD player and really had no intentions of changing that anytime soon. But then we found out that HD and blu-ray were at war, trying to curb the market on movies. It was a nightmare to me.

In comes the Japanese who have decided to drop the manufacture of HD DVDs. Hurray! And more recently, like today, Microsoft pulled the plug on making HD as well. That is great. The problem I see is that before, there was a choice but that choice was going to mean some movies were on blu-ray, some on HD DVDs and some on standard DVDs. Our choice would naturally be standard DVD. I could see the nightmare happening though. In order to get all the movies you wanted, you would be forced to have three types of player…standard DVD, blu-ray and HD. Ridiculous.

At this point in time, I am wondering several things. One is…what are those poor people who bought HD players going to do now since absolutely no one will make DVDs in that type? And are we still going to be divided as to whether we get blu-ray or standard DVDs because that looks like I cannot have the movies I want if I have to choose. Hmmmm. This is going to be an interesting year, for certain.

Have you ever played the game…if I didn’t live here, where would I live? I admit, it’s not really a game unless you like the idea. But I have thought about this a few times. It’s sort of a tossup between heading for Texas, which is a place I really love, or going to Branson, Mo., where some of my favorites landed. I mean that I love country music and many country music stars have gone to Branson as well as Nashville. It’s awesome. Then I do have a favorite ministry there too. What a deal.

So, should I toss a coin here? No, I would rather talk it over with my husband. But just think of the things you need to know about. Schools, churches, gas prices (ACK!!! anywhere these days!), food stores and housing. In either case, we would be looking up these things, then we would visit each to study what is available. If we were to pick Texas, we have friends there who could scope out some great houses. If we picked Branson, we really do not know anyone there so the first thing I would want to do is look up Branson real estate agents to find out about the housing around there. You know, this is a really big deal. We haven’t moved in years. I don’t know. I guess we will have to do some heavy thinking about this after all.

For now, this is just a game to see what we could come up with. But some day, perhaps, we might just make such a decision.

The news came out that Google wants to be the keeper of people’s medical records. They have already started to do this with a clinic in California. 1,500 to 10,000 patients will have their records stored through the search giant. They hope to have the records of as many people as possible because they believe that it is a logical step from those searches for health information online right now. However, since the records will supposedly have a password and they are not open to the general public, I do not see how it could benefit the general public wishing to find out more about their health concerns.

What I do see is that this giant, greedy online corporation is trying to put it’s fingers into as many collective money pies as it can. So far, it has tried and, in some cases, succeeded in destroying incomes from some bloggers who need the income badly…like stay-at-home Moms and the disabled people or low income people who need the money just to get the next bag of groceries. If you do not believe me, ask ANY blogger who lost their page rank in the google smackdown.

As for me, I do NOT want my records in the hands of some outfit that has greed and more greed on their minds. These people have proved that they are incapable of compassion or caring about others. So that is not the motivation for their wanting the records. Just ask yourself why they really need those records. WHY???? I can tell you now that it will not be to benefit any other people, only themselves all the way. DO NOT ALLOW THESE PEOPLE CONTROL OVER YOUR MED RECORDS. If you do, soon, they could have more control than you know.