Pay your monthly bills intelligently

A while back I was doing my normal monthly routine of monthly bill paying; it’s very boring and depressing, having to pay out MY money to these other companies. After I have paid all of my bills for the first half of the month which is about 8 of them I have paid out over $1300.00; I get to save my home mortgage payment for my second paycheck. After I have paid my bills, I am so down and out that I do not feel like doing anything. Then I got to thinking. What if I could skip paying one bill for one month and keep that money in my pocket to use for anything I wanted. So I started to see if that could be done. I asked some co-workers about this and they thought I was crazy. There is no way you can skip a monthly bill payment and get away with it. You don’t pay a bill, you get hit with late payment fees; and then you have to pay the last months and this month’s payment together to bring the account current. Believe me, I have missed a payment and it’s not fun. The bill collectors call day and night you asking “when can you pay this bill”, most of the time I do not even pick up the phone. So I kept thinking, there must be a way to avoid paying a month bill. Where there is a will, there is a way.
After many days and nights of thinking about this, I figured it out. There IS a way to avoid one bill payment and not get hit with any late fees. This was amazing. I made a 12 month calendar and marked my entire bill due dates and then I marked all of my days I get paid. If I pay my bills when I have money, which is my payday over time I can really skip a bill. This is way cool. The 12 month calendar showed me that if I paid my bills on my paydays, when I actually had the money. I could skip paying a bill a few months later. If I did this constantly, I could skip one of my bills one time each year. Remember I have to pay 8 bills every month. Some of them are small like only $20 dollars and some like my car payment is over $350.00. Wow, avoiding paying my car payment that is money I want to keep. I talked again to my co-workers, carefully explaining how to do this. Proving on paper that this does work and they still would not believe me. Well it’s their loss.
I have been doing this now for about 3 years. In June 2011, I was able to skip my mortgage payment and buy Disneyland annual passes for my family. In November 2011, I skipped my car payment and made Christmas a little more special for my entire family. This is not rocket science, anyone can do this, and all they need is a steady paycheck and pay your bills online. As the saying goes there are two kinds of people in this world, those that do and those that cannot do.
Currently I am selling this idea, with a total money back if you do not save at least $200.00 on bill payment. Goto my e-bay auction page to purchase this and to read more.

To Do Things Right, or Do Things Now

With the economy in the tank, and gas prices high, everyone seems to be rushing around doing something. But is that something just getting done, or is that something getting done with care. If you do a task that needs to be done now, you might hurry and cut some corners, maybe fudge a little just to get it completed. It will be ok, but that is it, just ok. Only to have whatever you did, be a temporary fix and have to go back and do it again later on to make it right. Why not do that task with care, and do it right with the right parts, taking your time the first time. You might delay the task until you have the time or the right parts, which will means you may never get done. So it comes down to a question, get it done now and possibly have to do it again, or wait, a day, a week, a month to get it done right. I personally would want to wait, and do it right. Of course, this does mean I may never get to it. But im human, I can change my habits. I can “split the difference”, I can do the task now, but maybe take a day or so to get it right, using the right parts and taking my time. With that new attitude, things will get done and everyone will be happy.

Reserve Price

I shop ebay frequently, in fact when ever my computer is on, I'm on ebay, viewing all of the auctions. I do more viewing than purchasing. When purchasing, its buyer beware on ebay or any auction website. Some of the items on ebay are advertised a new, and its true, but the items, especially electronic items are ones that did not sell in a store for one reason or another. On the ebay auction listing, there is lots of information, the starting price of the item, a picture, shipping information and sometimes a reserve price. Sometimes the seller places a "reserve price" on the item for sale. The auction listing says, for example $10.00, but the "reserve price" is hidden and is usually more than that price, sometimes a lot more. You can bid $11.00 on the item and keep bidding and keep bidding $14.00, $20.00 and on and on, but never win the item. Placing a reserve price on an auction item is dumb. If you want to sell a $10.00 item for $50.00 just put $50.00 as the starting price. Don't waste buyers time with a reserve price. If an item is worth more than you want to sell it at an auction price, or you don't want to sell it, just keep it.

Satellite TV providers

I get annoyed at some commercials. The ones that really get to me are the ones that complete against each other. Like ATT and Verizon (see my post below). The newest ones that get to me are from DirecTV and Dish network. Both are satellite TV providers. Each one has different channels packages you can add on or purchase separately to make your TV viewing better. But which one is better? Channels are channels, which company has what channels I'm not going to debate. What matters are all the hidden fees you have to pay; both companies have them, so stop with your bragging. Some of these fees are collectable upon insulation, 6 months, or 12 months later, or when you cancel your service. My information comes from the latest flyers I received in the mail. OK Direct TV is first. The flyer says I can get 150 channels for $29.95 a month, sounds pretty good. BUT that’s for a time period of 12 months. After 12 months, the price is automatically increases to $58.99, but that’s not the best part. That price will not kick in until 6 to 8 weeks AFTER your have had the service installed. Plus you have to have an E-mail address and be subject to lots of junk mail. Forget to pay your bill or miss a payment in those 6 to 8 weeks, no more rebates. Cancel your service before the 12 months is up you get to pay an early cancellation fee of $17.00 from Direct TV or $20.00 a month from Dish Network at the time left in your contract. Contract you say, yep both companies want you to sign a contract. Want HD channels? It's a fee of $10.00 a month from Direct TV or you have to sign up for auto pay and paperless billing from Dish Network.
This is just the tip of the ice burg on small print from both satellite TV providers. I guess I will stick with cable.

Keeping what you want, knowing what you need

I’m not a pack rat, although some may say that after seeing my inside of my garage. But everything I save I some how know I will need it in the near future. What is the near future to me? It could be a few months or a few years. It’s not uncommon for me to have some thing “saved” in my garage that has been there for 6 years and I finally need it. But if I did not have that item saved, could I go out and get it, maybe, find it in an auction on eBay, maybe. I could pay a high price and have to wait a few days for it to get here, maybe. But why do you have to buy when you could have saved it, for free? Here is one good case and point. I have an IBM ThinkPad laptop computer; I have had it for over 8 years. It has Windows 98 installed on it. The processor speed is 500 MHz, pretty slow when you compare it to today’s laptops. For the past few years, it has just been a DVD player for my daughter on long road trips. Well it finally crashed; some of the hard drive files got corrupted. An average person would probably never have or use a computer that was over 8 years old, or even think about restoring it to working order. That’s not me. When I purchased the laptop I got a DVD drive and also a 1.44 floppy drive with it. The drives simply snap in to the laptop. Why would anyone even keep the 1.44 drive when they would only use the DVD drive? I did. I got the 1.44 drive off the shelf, snapped it in. I also found my saved windows 98 restore disk. I booted up the 1.44 drive with the restore disk and I fixed the hard drive. I replaced the 1.44 drive with the DVD drive and the laptop is good as new. The time to find the items I needed, took me less than 5 minutes, keep in mind that the items have been setting on the shelf for 8 years. If I would have had to buy them, I would still be waiting and be out some money.

Cell Phone Coverage

At&t has a series of TV commercials currently airing. These ads promote all the good things about AT&T’s cell phone network verses Verizons network. Of course, Verizon has completive TV ads showing the opposite. Verizons TV ad shows their networks coverage map with more cell phone network coverage, lots more, that at&t’s map. Funny thing, at&t’s ad never shows their map. At&t’s ad promotes the fact that you can surf the web AND talk at the same time with your web enabled phone. But if your call gets dropped, or you have “no service”, who cares that you can surf and talk at the same time.
In another TV ad, at&t goes on to tell you about their roll over minutes, and how Verizon does not have that feature. If you don’t have any coverage, your rolls over minutes are not going to matter. Plain and simple, coverage is everything. All the features in the world are not going to mean a thing if you do not have cell phone coverage. Isn’t that what cell phones are for, mobility? If you still can’t figure out which cell phone company to use, try Sprint, their network coverage is better than both at&t or Verizon.

Customer Service

Today I went to pick up a medical prescription for my wife at CVS pharmacy. I know that CVS has higher standards than Wal-Mart, that’s why we choose to go there, or so I though so. Being a paying customer that pays a premium should expect and get excellent customer service. I did not get it this time. One customer service feature CVS offers is a phone call with a prerecorded message, informing you that your prescription is ready. We got that call. Walking up to the pharmacy I mention that I want to pick up a prescription. I give the pharmacist, yes; I was talking to the pharmacist, one on one. Usually you get to talk to a “pharmacy attendant”. He looked in the alphabetical bin to find my wife’s prescription, it was not there. He then types on the computer to make sure I know what I’m talking about and that a prescription IS ready. The computer shows nothing. He consults with a co-worker; I can over hear her say something referencing an old and past medication that my wife no longer takes. By now it’s starting to take longer than expected. Both the co-worker and the pharmacist are looking through all of the bins one by one, medicine by medicine. They finally find it, it was in a bin with a letter no where near my last name. I sign the medicine out going log and pay for the medication. Good thing that is done. In today’s economy, when you pay for customer service you should receive it. What should have taken less than 5 minutes, took over 15 minutes.