Finding Freedom

The professional baseball team that I sang the National Anthem for has just picked up Jose Canseco for their team.

Whatever anybody thinks about the man, he was one of my favorite players when I was a little boy collecting baseball cards. So, if and when I get to sing for the team again, I hope that I’ll be able to pick up an autograph.

In any case, what I found interesting about the article is that the league’s maximum pay per player is $2500 a month. That is the MOST someone could get. As far as I can tell, they only play three months of the year, although I would imagine that they would probably practice at least a month before games start which I would also imagine that they get paid for. This would mean that for the other eight or nine months a year, these guys have regular jobs like the rest of us.

Sidenote: it seems like this league would really be the people’s choice if they opted to market that. Like, “For three months, so and so is a baseball player, but during the school year he works as a teacher.” I know I’d rather watch people who I could identify with versus high paid professional athletes.

But back to the money, twenty-five hundred bucks is a far cry from the millions Canseco was making at the height of his pro career. However, I suspect that he’s not doing it for the money. I think he, like Rickey Henderson who played for this team last year, is just looking for an opportunity to get back into the majors.

And I wish him luck.

If you follow baseball at all, you have no doubt heard about Brett Myers and the Philadelphia Phillies. If you’re not a baseball fan, I will give a brief synopsis of the situation.

Brett Myers was arrested last week for hitting his wife. Upon getting bailed out of jail, the Phillies allowed him to pitch his next game as he is probably the best pitcher that the team has. The team has received much scrutiny for their decision, and the team let Myers take a leave of absence.

I can only think that the reason that they let him play in the game is that professional sports is a huge business, and you make a lot more money if you do well. What they were apparently not thinking about was the fact that most people in this country don’t like men who abuse their wives and don’t like people who pretty obviously try to sweep a serious issue under the carpet in order to win a game.

I haven’t heard about the fiscal impact for the team since they allowed him to play, but I will certainly keep my eyes open for the economic consequences. I can only imagine that ticket sales will suffer, but that is pure speculation.

The Under 30 Honor Roll is a group of personal finance writers who are all, for the most, just starting out in their jobs or careers. It was organized by Kira over at Penny Foolish.

I have added a sidebar with links to all of the members so far. If you have a chance, give them a read; they all provide unique perspectives on the various money issues that they are dealing with.

Normally, I get to drive into work with my girlfriend, which is terrific because we split the cost of the parking garage, and our employer subsidizes what we spend.

However, sometimes, due to different commitments in the evenings (rehearsals, etc.), we have to drive separately, and usually I will volunteer to just go find parking elsewhere. There are times when I can find free parking on the street, but generally, I am forced to park in a lot.

Tangent: Man, if I ever get a good deal of money together, I’d buy a parking lot. Talk about value versus amount of work done! Tangent end.

My Mecca of parking is the six dollar lot. I love it. Six dollars to park all day? That’s really not that bad, especially if you only do it once or twice a month. Unfortunately, that lot (understandably) fills up rather quickly, leaving me to search out the Sodom and Gomorra of parking lots: the eight to twelve dollar lots.

Yikes! Just the sound of it feels like a shiv entering my back.

About the only plus sign to any of these lots is the fact that some will take card: credit or debit. It is awesome to not have to worry about having cash when you are furiously strung out on caffeine, hoping to get to work on time. On the minus side, it’s really easy to forget, especially if you pay with card, that parking for one day cost you just about a half-hour’s wages.

Ouch! Just kick me in the junk, too, and call me Susan, why don’t you!

Before I get to the haiku for today, I wanted to link to what Dilbert’s creator Scott Adams had to say about tipping today. Here is an exerpt:

“Yesterday I gave a speech at a hotel in San Francisco. Afterwards, the hotel valet was retrieving my car as I waited out front. I guarded my tiny carry-on sized bag against the two drooling doormen as their eyelids made cha-ching sounds. You could almost hear them thinking ‘If I can touch his bag, he’ll have to give me money.’”

The whole post is delightfully funny, as is most of what he has to say on his site, and it illustrates some of the confusion about tipping that we have in our society, especially for those of us who aren’t super wealthy. It’s obvious that we should tip waiters and waitresses, but what about the occasional bathroom attendant or hotel clerk in a fancy hotel? Do we tip them?

Actually, now that I’m writing this, I am reminded that the fellow who writes over at Waiter Rant re-posted an article from the Daily News about what amount is expected for tipping at various places of business. You can find that link here.

Also, Financial Freedumb posted a humorous article on how he hates tip jars, largely due to the fact that they are asking for a tip before the actual service is rendered. He then concludes the post with a pay-pal donation button. That’s funny.

All right, let’s get down to the poetry that describes something that went on in the last week that I know that you all are eagerly awaiting. Or at least I’ll pretend that you are.

Show me the money!
To solve the world’s transgressions,
Foundation gets cash.

I, like most people nowadays, have and use a cell phone. It is in fact, my primary phone because I got frustrated with how poorly Cox treated me as a land-line customer. I signed originally with Cingular because it is the company that my family uses, and, as such, I get free cell calls to them at any time.

Still, even with those free calls, my phone bill is just about sixty-three bucks a month, which is not quite outrageous, but it still seems a little steep.

Does anybody have any advice on saving money with cell phones (other than just not having one)? Are the other companies (T-Mobil, Verizon, etc) any better at keeping prices down? Are they any special tricks or secret hand-shakes that would help me to get a better rate?

Any advice is helpful as I will likely be re-signing soon.

At what point does a job cease being a job and start being a career?

For a lucky few, a career is what you actually went to school for, and it is the place where your passion lies. For some, you get a job where you start making a little better money than you are used to, and you eventually get stuck there for thirty years. And I would even imagine that there are some who tell themselves that they just have a day job to support them while they get their careers on track, but who never manage to quit the day job and never manage to get their careers going.

I gotta tell you guys that the last two of those scare me quite a bit. Oftentimes I get caught up in the, “I’ve got to pay off the credit cards, I’ve got to eliminate my debt, I’ve got to make money” mindset, that I forget about what is truly important to me.

Oftentimes work feels like a circle of Dante’s inferno: I work and work and work and feel that I never accomplish anything worthwhile.

It is not that I am averse to work, it is simply that (and I know that this is subjective and a very special after school special sentiment) I want to feel that I have accomplished something with my life.

As someone much smarter than I am said, “What good is it to gain the whole world, and lose your own soul?”

I will be outlining my plan to get myself on track in subsequent posts. There has to be a better way.

In order to not give too many specifics about what I do, let’s just say that I create invoices for a service that my company provides.

Today, I got an email from one of my larger customers. This customer’s invoices are generally in the neighborhood of eight or nine hundred thousand dollars.

The customer was writing me because I had made a mistake on their latest invoice.

When I received the email, I immediately went into kind of a shock. You know, it was like, “Oh No! They have found some huge, outrageous glaring error in my work! Surely heads will roll!”*

Would you like to know how much that invoice was off by? I’ll tell you.

Six dollars.

Yep, you read that right. Not sixty or six hundred or six thousand, but six dollars.

I was amazed that she had even realized that a mistake had been made. I will correct the error, of course, but this got me to thinking.

What if we, as consumers, were as eagle-eyed in our credit card statements? Perhaps everyone else is, but most of the time I don’t even note the interest rate. I just kind of check to make sure that the amount of the minimum payment is about the same as last month.

With as many people there are that use credit cards, I am sure that the companies must make the occasional mistake, and most of us probably don’t even pay attention.

I, for one, am going to check the statements a little more closely next time around.

*All right, so my response wasn’t that dramatic. Let’s call it artistic liberty.

Though I know that it shouldn’t bother me, I hate how my pay schedule worked out this period. I got paid on Friday, and I will not get paid again until the seventh. Rent, however, is due on the first. This puts rent just about equally between pay checks.

For some reason, I always expect a pay check the day before, or a few days before rent is due. That way I can prioritize in my mind the rent money. However, and I don’t expect this to happen, when pay day is a week away from rent day, I find it a lot easier to prioritize my money in other ways, thus leaving me up the proverbial creek when rent day comes a knockin’.

It’s a silly thing to worry about, I know.

Also, has everybody heard the distinction between Fridays you get paid and Fridays that you don’t get paid? If you get paid, that’s Good Friday; if you don’t get paid, it’s Passover. That’s funny.

For those of you that do not frequent homstarrunner.com, let me just say that you are missing something very funny. This site features, among other things, the handsome character to the left answering emails from visitors to the site. His responses range from being humorous to hilarious.

In any case, he answered an email that had to do with credit cards, and so I thought that I would post the link here in an effort to make those of us with credit card woes smile a little bit.

Here is the link.