Have Faith in Your Government

Even the Treasury, it seems, is not without a sense of humor. Included with my refund check (WOOHOO!) was an informational flier with the title "Don't Be a Victim of Predatory Lending or Other Bad Deals," which at first glance seemed like a thoughtful thing for the Treasury Department to include in this Era Of Madoff. Further inspection, however, revealed this delight in small print at the bottom:

For more free information, the U.S. Department of Treasury invites you to: visit www.mymoney.gov or text* "smart" to 22122 on your mobile phone.
* Standard message rates apply. Other charges may apply.

Now, if you're like me, and you stay up way past your bed time watching television programs that you could probably live without, you're well familiar with what "other charges may apply" tends to mean. For the uninitiated, it means that the recipient of your text will not only sell your phone number, they will also automatically sign you up for their own dodgy subscription service at an outlandish monthly rate. It seems like kind of a bad deal to me that the Treasury Department has been reduced to such practices to pay off the bailouts, but I guess everyone's just trying to get by as best they can these days.

Jerks.
View Full Post

Unappealing Tasks

Okay, so. In addition to the general cost-cutting (have I mentioned I'm about to start making my own bread?), I've been looking at proactive ways to stay OUT of the credit/debt/whatever trap before I fall in.

For instance: I thought I paid a doctor's bill about a million years ago. Apparently I didn't; I got another notice (the "pay this before we collect on you, starting with your kneecaps!" type), discovered I had no record of paying it, and so got on the phone. It was a genuine mistake, the hospital sent me around five different bills for a single visit... Ech, anyhow, watch out for that. And lo and behold, as I'm talking to the guy and say "I lost my job a month ago..." he suddenly says "Well, for people in your situation, we do have permission from this vendor to give a discount, if you can pay that discounted rate in full."

Oh, realllly?

Yes really! And it turns out it was a 50% discount! Outrageous! So I saved a fair amount of money, which was delightful, and immediately decided to deploy this in every possible place I can.

It doesn't work that way often, obviously. But simply by getting on the darn phone and making a few calls, I was able to knock $5 off my monthly Verizon plan -- the rep took a look at my average phone usage, found a minute plan that's closer to my actual usage, and voila. On top of that, she reminded me that I've got an app on there that's costing me $10/month. And when I was first learning my way around New York, that was a fair expense, but now? Cut cut cut. So that's $15 off my phone bill.

Next up, heating and gas. (I'd actually sat on my gas bill for a little while, so this was three months' worth of cost.) After a 20-minute wait after a bunch of other panicking masses, I got a lovely woman and explained to her that I'm unemployed, that I'm ineligible for unemployment benefits (thanks, contractor-happy corporations!), and that I'd like to sort out a payment plan. Within a matter of minutes and a 45 cent charge to do a cheque-over-the-phone initial payment, a $400 bill transformed into a monthly $125 payment schedule. Shazzam.

I called the credit card company, only to have them bizarrely tell me that I couldn't get the rate they're offering to new sign-ons. So I went and found a new card, this time with shiny airline points included (and yes, I should've had an air points card all along, I know). On top of that, it's got the option of balance transfer and 6 months of 0% APR.

I do have a few friends who used this balance-transfer trick for years, shifting debt at set intervals to a shiny new 0% APR, but I can't decide whether that was a smart move or if it somehow dings your credit history. Then again, they were moving real mountains of debt, not the relatively small sums I charge up. Regardless, I intend to keep using the original card, just more sparingly -- I usually pay my credit bills ASAP, and the APR it jumps to later is comparable to my existing card, so all of this is good with me. And my existing balance is completely manageable; if I had a crazy amount of debt on plastic, I probably would've tried to talk them into forgiving some of it, but it just wasn't justifiable here.

I've also been signing up for discount store cards -- as in, the ones where you swipe/log it to get discounts and coupons. I never did before, because I am a taxonomist and therefore know exactly how marketers can use that collected information, but there is a time for noble posturing and a time for picking up loose change on the subway, and we are in the second of those times. And now all I've got left to do is get on the phone with the cable/phone/internets company and I think I'll have minimized my exposure as much as possible.

(Side note - do cut flowers ever turn into flower zombies?)

Only in horror films, and possibly New Zealand.



View Full Post

What Not to Do

When unemployed, it is very important to ration one's money, or "budget," as it's commonly known. It is very important NOT to go shopping when bored, and NOT to just pop into a store because you happen to be in the area and the store happens to be closing and all stock happens to be 40-80% off. You see, if you do that sort of thing, you end up unnecessarily giving them some of your limited-supply dollars and coming home with something like this:

Books, clearly, are not bad in and of themselves, but it is utterly absurd to pay for them when just last week you stopped in to your local library branch and got a shiny new one of these:


This is why I'm not allowed out of the house.
View Full Post