Finding Freedom

I was tagged by Millionaire Artist to give a list of five things that I’m obsessed with.  I will omit the “paying off the credit cards” obsession, as that one is probably pretty obvious. 

1)  Acting — I love the challenge of creating a character, as well as the opportunity to act in conjunction with characters other actors have created.  I am constantly looking for ways to get better at it, as well as looking for other people who know more about it than I do in hopes that some of their wisdom will, through osmosis, get into my head.

2)  Music — Whether it is listening to it, analyzing it, performing it, or some combination of the three, I remain pretty happy that I got my degree in music.  I should have perhaps opted to go to a different school that the clown college that I went to, but that’s a different story.

3)  Football — I was going to put sports, but I realized that the only sport that I really, really am concerned with is football.  Sorry baseball.  I still like you, but you kind of lost me when you went on strike in the mid-nineties for more money even though many of you were already making a butt-load. 

4)  Games — Whether it is a card game, a casino game, or a board game, you can bet that I probably have some strategy already in mind of how to play and win at it.

5)  Books, and the Knowledge Therein – This mostly exemplifies itself in my life by the number of books I have and the number of books I want to read.  It’s kind of cyclical, though.  I go through spurts of loving to read and spurts of not really looking forward to it.  It’s funny.

It seems that sometimes everything is about money, and, in the case of my friends’ upcoming divorce, part of the issue has to do with money, especially as money relates to what each person expected from life and from marriage. 

I feel freedom to discuss this here as neither of them knows that this site exists.

Part of the story is that the two had decided that one of them should find a well paying job using skills learned in college while the other one went to graduate school to pursue a degree in photography.  They had also decided that the one in school should also work.  However, due to the demands of being in school full-time, any work would have to be of a part-time, and therefore, much less paying nature.
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I cannot begin to imagine the incredible stresses on a person who is considering divorce.

I cannot begin to imagine how horrible it would be to receive divorce papers in the mail when you are thinking that things are going to work out.

I don’t understand how I can be friends with both people…after.

I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but a couple of friends of mine are pretty likely going to be getting divorced here in the near future, and, as I tend to be an empathetic person, much of my thoughts and concerns have been with them, and not really in the realms of personal finance.

They are young, and they’ve only been married a few years.  They don’t have any kids, so I suppose that’s good in the long run. 

I just thought that out of all of my friends, this would be the couple that would last.

It looks like there is a new convenience to be purchased.  Are you sick and tired of waiting in long security lines at airports?  If so, the Clear card is a card that allows passengers who have been pre-screened to get through the security lines at airports more quickly.

You will need to purchase the card from the Clear program that is run by Verified Identity Pass, Inc.  With the 9/11 attacks still very much in our consciousness, I would think that any program like this would have to be run by the government if any such program were going to get to exist at all.  But, that is not the case, although the website says that the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) works closely with the company that runs it.

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To anyone who has a sweet tooth and is looking to save money, today is your lucky day.

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream parlors across the nation are giving away free ice cream cones today.

I don’t know if it’s every flavor that they are giving away, but if it is, I am looking forward to enjoying some Phish Food in a just a few minutes.  That’s mm-mm good.

I have a bit of a confession.  I spent a good deal of money over the weekend on some things that I certainly shouldn’t have spent a good deal of money on. 

I’m a bit disappointed because I thought that I was past these little spending splurges, and looking back now, I can’t help but think how much better that money could have been spent paying down some of my debt.

Sigh.  I suppose these little trips off of the savings wagon make being on the wagon that much more pleasant and pleasurable.  Let’s hope that I remember that next time.

First off, I want to say welcome to those who are coming over from MillionaireArtist.  It was very kind of her to mention me, and I hope that you find something worth reading over here.  You can go here to get a snapshot of how I’m doing financially right now, you can check out this post where I briefly discuss my last acting job, and you can take a look at a little bit of helpful advice I’ve discovered when making credit card payment

Secondly, I’ve decided to spend a little bit of time on Fridays to point out four blog posts from the personal finance community that stuck out to me in the last week.  I hope that they will stick out to you as well.

Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary brings up the question Should High Schools Require Money Management Classes?. 

Yet Another Blog about Money amusingly gives his opinions on How Men Should Dress.

Katie at Aridni explores the dichotomy of time and money in her article Time vs. Money — Picking your Assets.

And finally, Erik over at Money Crashers gives Four Ways to Get Out of Debt Before Christmas.

With the basic premise of this site being that I have been bad with money in the past, I am generally loathe to reveal many more deficiencies within my personality.  This is partially due to the fact that I try to present myself as a generally reasonable person, and, while one or two flaws that I’m working on make me seem kind of like a boring modern day Odysseus, I fear that revealing any more than that will make your mind’s eye view me more and more like this.

However, last night, in dealing with a very personal issue, I realized that it had something to do with personal finance, and that I should probably post about it here.  That very personal issue was that my room is pretty dirty.

Hello.  My name is Steven, and I am a messy, messy person.

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I spent the weekend at home with my parents and grandparents.  It was wonderfully relaxing, and, as most weekends spent at home often are, it was full of delicious food.

One thing that my parents and I talked about was the fact that I was a little worried about my car, as it seemed to have a slow oil leak.  My parents suggested that, before my car got too much worse, I should trade my car in while it still had some trade in value and get either a used or new car that didn’t have that problem.

This got me thinking.  While it would certainly be exciting to have a new car, I didn’t think that the prospect of having another set of bills to pay would be the best choice given my current situation.  I don’t think that the situation with my car is serious enough to warrant getting another car just yet, and I suspect that if I keep on eye on my oil level, I can keep the issue from getting out of hand.

I guess that this shows that I’m getting a little bit better with my spending.  I hope that I continue in that same direction.

Most likely if you are interested in personal financial stability, you are already a little bit wary of credit cards.  I thought that I would chime in a bit about one of my credit cards that is a pain in my butt.

I picked up my Aspire Visa a while ago, when I was still spending much more than I should have been.  When I realized how high my balance had climbed, I figured that I could just make several payments a month, and that would bring the balance down to an acceptable level (i.e. zero).  However, the kind folks over at Aspire Visa have decided that they are going to do their best to keep interest building on the credit card by using two schemes:

1)  Part of the agreement with the credit card is that the customer can only make three payments every ninety days.  This means that I can only, essentially, make one payment a month, or else I will be risking late payment fees somewhere down the line just because I was trying to pay off the darn thing.  I feel that this is especially pernicious of this company because all of my other credit cards allow me to make payments anywhere from exceptionally frequently (Discover lets me make a payment every three or four days if I want to) to reasonably frequently (My Bank of America balance transfer lets me make four payments a month).

2)  If I opt to pay online, the site charges me a fee of $4.95.  This also makes the payment process more difficult as I really don’t have the convenience/reasonable customer service option of being able to pay online, since I don’t want to give them any more money than I absolutely have to.

In short, I suspect that many of you would have looked over their customer agreement and decided not to go with them in the first place.  However, should you still be on the fence, I suggest that you go with some other credit card.