So, I’m essentially on call. Hopefully, I just get a breathing space on Saturday to have the party.

I took the boys out tonight for Younger Son’s birthday dinner. Had to break the news that my sister and her kids wouldn’t make it (first time ever; gas is just too prohibitive). They took the news pretty well, though they were still disappointed, especially since Hubby has to be out of town until Saturday morning. It’s a tough year for the kiddoes; thankfully, Younger Son was happy we could order some cake for dessert, and he didn’t even have to finish his salad. Thank goodness for small blessings, eh?

Although Younger Son’s cold is starting to sound more like barking, and I’m starting to worry that it’s settling into his lungs. If he sounds worse overnight, I’ll have to get him into the doc tomorrow. Budget for October is looking not so good at this point, although most of the extra expenses have come out of petty cash rather than credit, but still, not comforting.

I’d sit around and wish that I could win the lottery, except I don’t play, so that sort of puts the kibosh on things.

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I’ve been with this company, in one capacity or another, for more than a decade. I’ve weathered layoffs, and acquisitions, and divestitures, and I’ve still not ever seen anything on this scale. It was horrifying.

And we’re in relatively good financial shape – paying out a higher EPS (earnings per share) than YOY (same time last year).

So I send my thoughts out into the great void tonight, and hope my friends, and everyone devestated by the current economy, will pull through without too much lasting damage.  It is not much of a wish, I admit, but I think it is the best we can hope for in the short, or perhaps even medium, term.

It is the very definition of “sucks out loud.”

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This in October, when both my boys have birthdays.  We have one combined party to save on expenses, and I already do the invitations and catering myself (including tables, folding chairs, tents – all either left over from my single, entertaining days or thanks to my sometime duties in marketing communications (I have nifty publishing tools)), but oy vey, it doesn’t take much to add up.  I’ve even cut *way* back this year, and it still feels tight – more so, perhaps, because more went on debit instead of credit, a minor accomplishment.

And now some gurus are suggesting that the pubic sell their utility positions.  I know I said something earlier about cookies, and foodstuffs are not, imo, a bad investments, but when the go-to guys are suggesting that you divest yourself of traditional utilities, then I tend to get a tad more nervous.  Not that I will, necessarily, because I think as long as we have power people will want it, but that’s a fairly old-school sector, which should remain viable, even if diminished, even in the worst of modern times.  The idea that it might not be stable – well, it send more chills down my spine than the dot-com or even the housing bubbles. 

Hitting utilities like this would be akin to Atlantans avoiding bread and milk while being warned of a blizzard; there’s just something fundamentally wrong with that picture.

I changed my allocations today, with slightly more targeted at bonds, because I don’t know how long this crazy, upside-down world will last, but I’m not divesting individual utilities or their suppliers just yet.  Perhaps it’s Pollyanna syndrome, but it’s just so difficult to get a handle on the idea that Americans won’t pay for power (generated in any form), that I can’t give up my positions there wholesale, despite whatever Jubak might have to say.

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The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organized a Sweepstakes marking the year 2008 anniversary we rolled out over 400,419,864 USD for our Mid-year Anniversary Draws. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts which we enjoy their patronage.

The selection was made through a computer draw system attaching personalized email addresses to ticket numbers. If you ignore this massage, you will defiantly regret it later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an E-mail beta test.

So, if I don’t go to the spa right now, I will feel bad about it in a rebellious or cantankerous sort of way?  Well, at least this one’s learned to use spell-check, if not a dictionary.

I’m making light of this scam email, but people do fall for it, losing thousands of dollars before the scammers move on to their next victim(s).   If an email seems too good to be true, it is. 

1. No stranger wants to give you money for you to donate to charity in their name,
2. No deposed dictator’s family is asking a complete stranger and average Joe to help them free millions of dollars from a secret account,
3. You cannot win a lottery you haven’t entered,
4. There is no Mr. Smith who died in an accident of any kind, leaving behind a fortune and no relatives or instructions, so that his lawyers are picking random people from the internetz to pretend to be related and inherit. 

None of it is real.  The only people getting rich from any of these schemes are the thieves preying on the desperate, the ignorant, and the greedy.  Run Away!

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People get sick and/or injured.  Health insurance or no health insurance, people pick up viruses, and the right ones can turn into pneumonia, or strep throat, or chronic bronchitis, or staph.  Children, especially, tend to bring stuff home.  People can also turn out to have long-term illnesses or disabilities, which insurance may or may not cover.  People may need surgery – replete with deductibles and getting billed separately for every aspirin and toilet flush.  This tends to add up.

Savings may not be able to absorb the sum total of either any one, or any combination, of adverse events, but it will certainly provide a cushion and help to ameliorate the damage.  If you have more debt than you can pay off in a month, even putting your $25 oil change on credit will hurt you – as I learned the hard way – forget about buying a new/used vehicle after an accident, or replacing a water heater, or “acts of God.”

In fact, I might even argue that you need liquid savings even more when you’re paying off debt, because otherwise all of those “unexpected” expenses, which we all know should be expected on some level, will just pour that much more acid on our all-too fleshly plans for repayment.

So, Evgren says* savings too.  Seriously.

*Evgren is not a guru, nor a financial planner, nor the Dalai Lama.  Evgren is not clairvoyant, nor even super-human.  Evgren Says because Evgren has an opinion and a free blog, and any reader is both free to, and should, perform his/her own due diligence.  Evgren is not responsible if the blizzard does indeed push off to the east and hit Altoona.  Or not.  Evgren does like tall trees.

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So I called them last week to see if they would waive the monthly service charge.  The customer service rep, who was really a nice guy, said no.  I’ve got an account with perks they don’t offer any more – free checks, free online banking, unlimited check writing, free debit card, free overdraft protection, 5 free stop payments per year, and some other things he didn’t even get into.  Never mind the fact that, in the last six years, I’ve requested one debit card (during that conversation), and made one stop payment.  I don’t avail myself of the other “perks.”  I don’t write checks for money I don’t have or don’t want to give away, I write, maybe, 6 checks a month, I pay my bills using the online services of my creditors (immediate withdrawal), rather than relying on my bank to process a piece of paper and make a deadline which doesn’t affect their credit.  And I’ve been a loyal customer for 20 years.  But Customer Service Guy can’t do anything for me.  WEV.  What’s my other choice right now, Wachovia?  Yeah, right.  So I suck it up and deal.

But then I call tonight to find out the APY on my savings account – it’s been so long since I set the darned thing up that I don’t even have the beginnings of a clue.

Imagine my shock when Other Customer Service Guy says “0.1%.”

Yep, that’s right, 0.1%.

Me:  Seriously?  <pause>  Do I have any better options?

Other Customer Service Guy:  Let me check. (<Insert Jeopardy Theme Here>)  Unfortunately, for a savings account that will keep your money liquid, the only other account we can offer pays 1%, but that requires a minimum balance of $5000.00 to avoid a $9 / month service charge.

Me:  You’re kidding, right?  I’ve got an offer from ING Direct for 3.0% APY, liquidity within 3-5 business days, with just a $250 minimum balance.  I’ve been with you all for 20 years; can’t you come close to that?

OCSG:  <no hesitation> Sorry, but no.  Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me:  Nope, you’ve given me my options; thanks.

OCSG:  Have a good evening!

So I immediately log on to ING Direct and transfer $250 from my checking.  I had planned to let my old savings account have my monthly savings deposits, but since they’re really not all that interested in my money, I’ll give it to someone who is.  Or who is, at least, willing to offer me better than 0.1-stupid-percent-APY.

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So I started looking into my options.  I looked at debt settlement (no; I’m current; I pay my bills; settlement is a step away from bankruptcy, in my book, and defaulting on my word, and I won’t do that if I can avoid it), debt management (they wanted my AmEx, even though I didn’t want to enroll my AmEx – just pay it – how can you enroll in debt management when they want to take your livelihood?), a personal loan (took several days and came in, finally, at 8.99%), and I took a chance on my credit, enabling me to get two new cards at 0% interest for 12-16 months, with interest rates fixed thereafter at 6.99 and 9.99%.

In short, I was selling my loyalty to the highest (or lowest, depending on your point of view) bidder.  Whoever gave me the best deal would win.  Maude knows my current cards had no chance – my rates were so high because of universal default.  Even though I’d always paid my Discover bill on time, and more than the minimum, Discover jacked my rate up to more than 30% when I was late – once – on my Sears card (for a purchase I didn’t even know my husband had made on that card).  I called to get the interest rate reduced; Discover wouldn’t budge and didn’t care.  MBNA followed shortly thereafter.

You know, if I’d been late on the cards that jacked me up, I’d've understood, and dealt with it, but I was current on those cards.  I was late on a store card, whose balance I didn’t even know about originally, for a freaking $300 vacuum cleaner.

So.  Credit cards suck.

In any case, after all of this 20-30% interest which pushed up my balances even though I was paying more than the minimum, my loyalty was for sale.  Give me a card with a reasonable limit, for a reasonable rate, for a reasonable time, and you’ll have me.  Chase gave me that – enough to transfer the ridiculous “universal default” MBNA charged me after the late payment on Sears, and more than that – 0% n purchases, too, with 1-6% back, depending on the nature of the purchase.

I know many people have many problems with Chase, but when my loyalty was for sale,  they went out of their way to buy it, so once I’m purchasing on credit cards again (with every intention of paying it off monthly) , Chase will absolutely get my business.

 Now, I get that, despite my ignorance, I was responsible for the payment to Sears.  But since my husband was not an authorized user of my card, it would have been nice if they’d have at least called me before they charged the amount.  I bet, like Dolores Claiborne, if it had been a woman trying to charge her husband’s account, that there would have been at least some sort of notification before the charge went through, and especially before they reported it as late.

But hey, I’m just a girl consumer.  Beyond what card I’ll use to stuff another t-shirt in my drawer, what do I know?

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Strangely enough, it’s in the positive, a little over $90k.  I attribute this first to the fact that we got a good deal on our home (purchased well below market several years ago, so we still have equity even in this climate), and to the fact that the first time I was offered a 401(k), I jumped at it, and paid in the annual maximum while I was still single, maintaining a 12% contribution rate after that until the birth of my first child.

Now I’m sitting at 8% contribution, but all of those years in my early twenties socking away that money was one of the things I’ve done right.  The market isn’t helping me right now, of course, but I’m only in my late 30s, years away from retirement, and it’s not panic time for that yet.  I probably should look at moving some of my contribution rates around because I’ve got 30% going to an S&P 500 fund and I’d like to limit any additional exposure to financial stocks.

You know the best thing I ever did with my portfolio?  I bought Nabisco.  Even in the worst times, people still buy cookies.

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And now, off to stare at the ceiling for a few hours.  After all, tomorrow is another day.

But I was running late this morning and didn’t pack a lunch.  I’m starving.  My stomach is rumbling so loudly at me, I’m sure the people across the hall can hear.  Normally, this would be a Wendy’s day – run out, grab the single combo meal, come back and eat at my desk.  The meal itself would be $4.90, and the gas to and from Wendy’s maybe a dollar or so.

I have the cash.  It’s not like it has to go on a card.

Two things are holding me back right now: One, I only began this new life two weeks ago, and this is probably the first real test of my willpower, and the thought of giving in just feels like so much failure.  I will no longer be a credit dilettante, frittering away hard-earned money like so many ashes scattered on the sea.   And certainly not on Wendy’s.  I’d rather save for a nice meal I’ll enjoy than mindlessly scarf a blob of meat-flavored fat topped with with some sad looking produce.

And second, there’s no gas around here.  I was sitting at a quarter of a tank and was lucky to find one gas station open today that (a) had gas, and (b) would let me purchase $30 worth.  In terms of scarcity increasing value, gas has recently become about the most precious commodity in Georgia.  Even if I were inclined to mindlessly scarf a blob of meat-flavored fat, I’d have to determine if the brief satiation would be worth possiby not being able to get to work at the end of the week.

Nope.

But hey, I did find some saltines and a box of oatmeal in my desk.  I guess that’ll be a meal that’s just right.

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