As someone who has taken a few payday loans (car problems, no savings) , I can see how it can become a trap. Although I am in no way an advocate I still think people should have the right to chose. Of course sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves, :o) so what they did here in FL is make it where you can only have one payday loan out at any one time, they use a system that will not allow you to run over and get a payday loan from this other place to save you from the first place, also you cannot automatically readvance your money where they will just tack on a fee and give you another two weeks, you have to pay it back in full then there is a 48 hour wait I believe.
And before anyone yells at me yes I am working on my finances, but I dont have any credit cards (out of choice from learning the hard way years ago) and sometimes you just have to feed the family.
As someone who, even now, sees his American Dream morphing every day, this post was soothing. Definitely enjoyed it. Good luck you and your growing family!
I think a lot of people can relate to what you're saying. I know I can.
In college I had enough money to pay for school but still got "free loans", did I save? Hell no, I was going to "make it big" so I figured I should live it up while I could in school.
When I entered the workplace (computer engineering at the biggest chipmaker in the world) I saw it was for what it was, a rat race. I thought it was going to be like in Atlas Shrugged where people were being creative and coming up with new and exciting new ideas, changing the world. But it wasn't, it was a contest to look better than the guy in the next cube over. I quit and went with a smaller, but similar company where I do not get paid as much but am closer to family.
I think in school we all had a skewed view of what we really want in life. Heck, I think I probably will have a much different view of what I really want in 10 years from now.
As far as giving used goods to charities are concerned, you should be mindful of what you're giving away and why. I work in fund development for a non-profit and people will often get in touch with me about donating used goods and then are surprised when we can't just take all of their old stuff off of their hands - this is especially true of computers. We can only take things that are in good, working condition - taking a donation of a seven-year-old, out-of-date, running-old-software, slow computer causes more harm than good - it is often cheaper and more efficient for us to just buy a new machine.
One thing we've done to get around this is create a partnership with a local thrift store - people can donate their used items there (in our name) and, when they are sold, we get the cash.
I went through just about every major phone company before settling on T-mobile, even with the occasional service problems and years of crappy phones. Why? Simply the best customer service in the industry. You can call T-mobile, talk to a PERSON who will solve your problem almost immediately, and be done with it in less than 10 minutes nearly every time.
And it gets better. I recently bought a Blackberry through T-mobile (now in my 5th year with them), and it turns out that they have a whole separate level of customer service for BlackBerry owners. They must assume you're an executive or something, because since I got this BlackBerry, they now treat me like chocolate covered gold.
Everytime I hear someone going on about how much their cellular phone company sucks, I sit back and smile, knowing that my life (in this respect, at least) is wicked good. I highly recommend you make the switch.
And GET OFF THE PRE-PAID plans. They're just a huge tax on people who can't maintain a budget. You're being ripped off, and I'm sure you already know it!
Regarding your community house flip, I've heard there are programs where you can find these properties, put them into an escrow / closing type of situation and then apply for a grant for upgrades in the name of the "house", and then when they are finished the house goes up for sale. These are also great to combine with programs that help first time home buyers get into a place with equity right off the bat.
Is this by chance what you are doing (if you don't mind me asking) and if so how?
I actually use both Virgin Mobile and Page Plus. I figured since we were going to keep our cell phones prepaid, I might as well have one phone on the Sprint PCS network (VM) and one on Verizon's network (PP) so that we'd have coverage just about everywhere we'd go. While I like VM, I find that Page Plus actually has better overall rates, and you can also use just about any cdma phone with Page Plus.
Great article! But you know what, I have practiced those tips in reversed order. Instead of point 1 to point 7, I've been doing it from point 7 to point 1.
Colin Joss
East Lothian, Haddington
United Kingdom
I recommend Tmobile-to-go for prepaid plans. I currently buy my minutes in $100 blocks for 1000 minutes and the minutes last a year. But I get the $100 cards cheap (I just bough one for $88). So, I pay 8.8 cents a minute for any call. My minutes basically never expire.
My dad has the same thing. But he just had his phone for a year and didn't use his 1000 minutes and had 600 left. So, I bought a $10 card (not many minutes; maybe 30 I think) and it extended the new minutes AND the old 600 minutes for another year!
Tmobile also has the best customer service. But make sure they have coverage as they have more limited coverage.
I do have to wonder, why doesn't Virgin Mobile have better phones? Richard Branson is a smart, savvy guy (I met him, did work for him on Virgin Atlantic and the launch of Virgin Mobile in the UK). Considering that Virgin Mobile's main audience is the younger generation, teens, Gen Y, Gen X, he should know that this market is the most discerning about phone choice. Why not give them the cooler phones, like the Razr, Blackberry, Chocolate etc. Anyone know?
We've only ever had a pre-paid cell phone too. After comparing prices we went with Net10, a somewhat obscure company. The were and still are the cheapest - even cheaper than Virgin. Their coverage is good and ... well ... I only dealt with customer service once when I forgot to recharge my phone before the deadline. They got me up and running in about 10 minutes, so I was happy.
Is by far the best prepaid company- in terms of value and service. I've traveled all over the northeast, and have never ONCE been below two bars (except in the upper two floors of a hall on campus, but they block out certain receptions?)
The phones ARE horrible, but the K10 royale is sturdy and holds a long charge- albeit a very low tech phone. The Marbl (of which I have two..) is flimsy and annoying. It takes FOREVER to get from screen to screen, and there's serious text lag. The slice may be the poorest made phone I have ever touched. However, my ex LOVES the snapper. He's had it for about a year, a year and a half and it still works perfectly.
Also, Virgin Mobile's customer service cannot be beat- provided you can get past the annoying (slightly rude?) "Simone" automated system. I find that, "BRING ME TO CUSTOMER SERVICE YOU EVIL BITCH! Please.. please.. for the love of god... *sob*.." usually puts me through.
My husband and I had a regular wireless plan with ATT when we first got married 5 years ago. It was the first (and one of only three) companies I have ever filed a complaint against with the BBB. You say that as a Pre-paid customer, you were treated like crap. Well, guess what - that's how they treat ALL customers! The man I talked to for an hour blatantly refused to transfer me to a supervisor after I had requested he do so 4 times. (In an think accent: "You don't need a supervisor - I can help you") He finally put me on "hold" to "research something" and hung up on me. Just the memory still makes my blood boil!
It might be worth mentioning at this point that Steven Brewer is my brother. I asked him to weigh in on the topic of becoming active in local politics, because he knows more about it than I do.
Really, though, it's like networking with any other group:
Find people who are working in the area that you're interested in.
Contribute to their work. (This could well be in the form of performing low-skilled tasks, especially if you don't have the appropriate skills yet. But it could also be in the form of doing stuff that they'd be doing if they had the skills or the time.)
Participate in the group discussions about what needs to be done and what the priorities ought to be.
There's always way more work to be done than there are people and time to do it. If you're one of the people who's contributing, you'll come to have some say in what the priorities ought to be.
It's easy to come to have considerable influence, just by helping out. You don't necessarily need to get elected to anything.
If you're happy about buying a house for like 15,000 under the selling price in this economy you must be on drugs. 1st off, the seller's agent already has a signed contract with the seller. The pot is 6% AND she/he splits it with the BROKER. So essentially if there are 2 agents and 2 brokers, all get 1.5%.
So in this case, the agent would get the full 3%, HALF of the whole pot and double the norm.
So, being a buyer it is in your best interest to get a buyer's agent. For god's sake that's why they recently became a reality!
Everyone, don't listen to this fool. There is not a dime out of your pocket as a buyer to any agents and the only risk you take when dealing with the seller's agent is getting what you don't want them to tell them told. Have someone advise you and work the deal. In dual agency, the agent cannot give you recommendations for any bidding. You're on your own people.
I like the first guys comments, this is BS and just a fluff story. I personally thought it sucked but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong... ;)
Here's my take on how to get started in local politics. The first thing to do is to start paying attention: read the newspaper, learn the system of government, and come to grips with the issues. After that, I would argue that you have a choice: you can find the committees that have oversight over what you're most interested in and start volunteering there or you can identify a candidate you want to support and start working on their campaign. The goal is to know and become known to the people who make the decisions that you want to influence. As you become more well-known, you can cautiously use your influence to try to affect the decisions you are most concerned about. Eventually, if you aren't a crazy person and you stick around long enough, people will convince you to take leadership positions in the committees or to become a candidate for elected office.
The details depend a lot on your local community. In some places, you could probably get a small group of people together and try to run for elected office immediately. In my community, those people almost never succeed -- and even trying is often considered a mark of political naiveté.
Perhaps the single most important thing I would emphasize would be to listen. Listen carefully to what people are saying and be cautious to act precipitately or to align yourself with any particular faction too soon. Often, there are political undertones to any proposed action and its often hard for a beginner to understand who's sacred cow is going to be gored by any particular change.
A final suggestion is that you look for ways to volunteer to take on some chunk of the committee's work: offer to make copies or be secretary or something else that no-one wants to do. People learn who you are faster and you can quickly become indispensable.
I've had a Cingular/AT&T prepaid GoPhone for a couple of years now, and I would definitely switch to T-Mobile prepaid if I used the phone much at all (as it is, I use less than 200 minutes a year). T-mobile prepaid gives you 1000 minutes for a $100 top-off card, vs. 400 for AT&T. My son decided he was going to buy himself a prepaid phone with his Christmas bux, and after carefully researching decided that t-mobile was the way to go if you didn't want to commit to a contract. Boost would have been a slightly better deal, but I think the lame phone problem is even worse with them.
I've had a cellphone for some 16 years now. I got my first one back in the UK in 1991. Always had digital. That first one was awful quality... I had 3 or 4 of them. A Motorola brick...
Anyway, when I came to the US, I bought a nice GSM Microsoft Smartphone with me. It's tri-band so I knew it would work here, even though the digital coverage here at the time was very patchy.
I'd had some of that exorbitant pre-paid charges from Cingular, as I'd got a sim-card from them when I got here so I had some kind of service and they were GSM.
I made inquiries about a contract plan as 39cents/min was well over the top. They wanted a $300 deposit as I'd not had a cellphone in the US before, and at that time had no credit history either.
How much interest do you pay on the deposit I asked, in all seriousness. The Cingular guy laughed. I didn't. He said you're serious aren't you? Yes, I was.
I politely told Mr Cingular Guy, where he could put the service, and went to AllTel. Ok, I couldn't use my useful Smartphone, as AllTel are CDMA, and ended up with a basic Nokia for 99 cents for two years.
We're still with AllTel. I've got a nice litle Kyocera now that has a keyboard on, and the wife now has a Blackberry that I got her (contract-free) on eBay.
Here, the AllTel service is the best I've had anywhere, never yet found any serious dead spots either, and never ever any overages.
It's certainly true that a lot of the best stuff faces diminishing returns. One of the best purchases I ever made was my bicycle, but I'd get very little benefit from buying another one every month.
But, when you think about it, there's actually a huge payoff in that: The very best stuff is cheap. The amount that it takes to provide maximum satisfaction is very reasonably priced, and there's no reason to ride the curve down to the point of merely adequate satisfaction.
I guess you could find yourself in a situation where you enjoyed chocolate so much that it ranked up near the top of your "satisfaction" list--just under food and rent, let's say--even though you only spent $15 a month on it. Clearly the answer to that circumstance is not to say, "Gee, I'd better spend more on chocolate!" But you might look a bit closer at the line items below it. Why are you spending $40 a month on internet access or $30 a month on clothing when neither one provides as much satisfaction as $15 a month on chocolate?
The easy answer to "Why spend that much on X" is often "Because it costs that much." (Especially for things you have to buy, like insurance, and for things where there's just one price no matter how much you use, like internet access.) But once you get past the easy answer, there's often room to make adjustments. You can shop around, decide to share things with your neighbors, find a different way to get things done, etc.
Whenever something shows up higher on the ranked-by-cost list than it does on the ranked-by-satisfaction list, that's a clue that you've found a place where some serious investigation into possible adjustments is warranted.
As someone who has taken a few payday loans (car problems, no savings) , I can see how it can become a trap. Although I am in no way an advocate I still think people should have the right to chose. Of course sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves, :o) so what they did here in FL is make it where you can only have one payday loan out at any one time, they use a system that will not allow you to run over and get a payday loan from this other place to save you from the first place, also you cannot automatically readvance your money where they will just tack on a fee and give you another two weeks, you have to pay it back in full then there is a 48 hour wait I believe.
And before anyone yells at me yes I am working on my finances, but I dont have any credit cards (out of choice from learning the hard way years ago) and sometimes you just have to feed the family.
Always bringing the sweetness, aren't you?
I think you are right, however!
As someone who, even now, sees his American Dream morphing every day, this post was soothing. Definitely enjoyed it. Good luck you and your growing family!
Thanks for a very honest post.
I think a lot of people can relate to what you're saying. I know I can.
In college I had enough money to pay for school but still got "free loans", did I save? Hell no, I was going to "make it big" so I figured I should live it up while I could in school.
When I entered the workplace (computer engineering at the biggest chipmaker in the world) I saw it was for what it was, a rat race. I thought it was going to be like in Atlas Shrugged where people were being creative and coming up with new and exciting new ideas, changing the world. But it wasn't, it was a contest to look better than the guy in the next cube over. I quit and went with a smaller, but similar company where I do not get paid as much but am closer to family.
I think in school we all had a skewed view of what we really want in life. Heck, I think I probably will have a much different view of what I really want in 10 years from now.
This piece has some great tips.
As far as giving used goods to charities are concerned, you should be mindful of what you're giving away and why. I work in fund development for a non-profit and people will often get in touch with me about donating used goods and then are surprised when we can't just take all of their old stuff off of their hands - this is especially true of computers. We can only take things that are in good, working condition - taking a donation of a seven-year-old, out-of-date, running-old-software, slow computer causes more harm than good - it is often cheaper and more efficient for us to just buy a new machine.
One thing we've done to get around this is create a partnership with a local thrift store - people can donate their used items there (in our name) and, when they are sold, we get the cash.
I went through just about every major phone company before settling on T-mobile, even with the occasional service problems and years of crappy phones. Why? Simply the best customer service in the industry. You can call T-mobile, talk to a PERSON who will solve your problem almost immediately, and be done with it in less than 10 minutes nearly every time.
And it gets better. I recently bought a Blackberry through T-mobile (now in my 5th year with them), and it turns out that they have a whole separate level of customer service for BlackBerry owners. They must assume you're an executive or something, because since I got this BlackBerry, they now treat me like chocolate covered gold.
Everytime I hear someone going on about how much their cellular phone company sucks, I sit back and smile, knowing that my life (in this respect, at least) is wicked good. I highly recommend you make the switch.
And GET OFF THE PRE-PAID plans. They're just a huge tax on people who can't maintain a budget. You're being ripped off, and I'm sure you already know it!
I like the fact that you point out the value of the flexibility itself. Cool post.
A practical list of tips. Thanks!
Great follow up piece.
Regarding your community house flip, I've heard there are programs where you can find these properties, put them into an escrow / closing type of situation and then apply for a grant for upgrades in the name of the "house", and then when they are finished the house goes up for sale. These are also great to combine with programs that help first time home buyers get into a place with equity right off the bat.
Is this by chance what you are doing (if you don't mind me asking) and if so how?
Thanks for sharing that with us Linsey. =)
As someone who has seen pictures of your beautiful kids, I'd say you came up way ahead on the dream scale.
Or you could sign a low end contract...
I actually use both Virgin Mobile and Page Plus. I figured since we were going to keep our cell phones prepaid, I might as well have one phone on the Sprint PCS network (VM) and one on Verizon's network (PP) so that we'd have coverage just about everywhere we'd go. While I like VM, I find that Page Plus actually has better overall rates, and you can also use just about any cdma phone with Page Plus.
Great article! But you know what, I have practiced those tips in reversed order. Instead of point 1 to point 7, I've been doing it from point 7 to point 1.
Colin Joss
East Lothian, Haddington
United Kingdom
ive had a real plan through verizon for about 6 years and i absolutely love them. customer service is great and the reception is great too!
I recommend Tmobile-to-go for prepaid plans. I currently buy my minutes in $100 blocks for 1000 minutes and the minutes last a year. But I get the $100 cards cheap (I just bough one for $88). So, I pay 8.8 cents a minute for any call. My minutes basically never expire.
My dad has the same thing. But he just had his phone for a year and didn't use his 1000 minutes and had 600 left. So, I bought a $10 card (not many minutes; maybe 30 I think) and it extended the new minutes AND the old 600 minutes for another year!
Tmobile also has the best customer service. But make sure they have coverage as they have more limited coverage.
byw, I love reading your blog!
I do have to wonder, why doesn't Virgin Mobile have better phones? Richard Branson is a smart, savvy guy (I met him, did work for him on Virgin Atlantic and the launch of Virgin Mobile in the UK). Considering that Virgin Mobile's main audience is the younger generation, teens, Gen Y, Gen X, he should know that this market is the most discerning about phone choice. Why not give them the cooler phones, like the Razr, Blackberry, Chocolate etc. Anyone know?
We've only ever had a pre-paid cell phone too. After comparing prices we went with Net10, a somewhat obscure company. The were and still are the cheapest - even cheaper than Virgin. Their coverage is good and ... well ... I only dealt with customer service once when I forgot to recharge my phone before the deadline. They got me up and running in about 10 minutes, so I was happy.
Is by far the best prepaid company- in terms of value and service. I've traveled all over the northeast, and have never ONCE been below two bars (except in the upper two floors of a hall on campus, but they block out certain receptions?)
The phones ARE horrible, but the K10 royale is sturdy and holds a long charge- albeit a very low tech phone. The Marbl (of which I have two..) is flimsy and annoying. It takes FOREVER to get from screen to screen, and there's serious text lag. The slice may be the poorest made phone I have ever touched. However, my ex LOVES the snapper. He's had it for about a year, a year and a half and it still works perfectly.
Also, Virgin Mobile's customer service cannot be beat- provided you can get past the annoying (slightly rude?) "Simone" automated system. I find that, "BRING ME TO CUSTOMER SERVICE YOU EVIL BITCH! Please.. please.. for the love of god... *sob*.." usually puts me through.
My husband and I had a regular wireless plan with ATT when we first got married 5 years ago. It was the first (and one of only three) companies I have ever filed a complaint against with the BBB. You say that as a Pre-paid customer, you were treated like crap. Well, guess what - that's how they treat ALL customers! The man I talked to for an hour blatantly refused to transfer me to a supervisor after I had requested he do so 4 times. (In an think accent: "You don't need a supervisor - I can help you") He finally put me on "hold" to "research something" and hung up on me. Just the memory still makes my blood boil!
It might be worth mentioning at this point that Steven Brewer is my brother. I asked him to weigh in on the topic of becoming active in local politics, because he knows more about it than I do.
Really, though, it's like networking with any other group:
There's always way more work to be done than there are people and time to do it. If you're one of the people who's contributing, you'll come to have some say in what the priorities ought to be.
It's easy to come to have considerable influence, just by helping out. You don't necessarily need to get elected to anything.
If you're happy about buying a house for like 15,000 under the selling price in this economy you must be on drugs. 1st off, the seller's agent already has a signed contract with the seller. The pot is 6% AND she/he splits it with the BROKER. So essentially if there are 2 agents and 2 brokers, all get 1.5%.
So in this case, the agent would get the full 3%, HALF of the whole pot and double the norm.
So, being a buyer it is in your best interest to get a buyer's agent. For god's sake that's why they recently became a reality!
Everyone, don't listen to this fool. There is not a dime out of your pocket as a buyer to any agents and the only risk you take when dealing with the seller's agent is getting what you don't want them to tell them told. Have someone advise you and work the deal. In dual agency, the agent cannot give you recommendations for any bidding. You're on your own people.
I like the first guys comments, this is BS and just a fluff story. I personally thought it sucked but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong... ;)
Here's my take on how to get started in local politics. The first thing to do is to start paying attention: read the newspaper, learn the system of government, and come to grips with the issues. After that, I would argue that you have a choice: you can find the committees that have oversight over what you're most interested in and start volunteering there or you can identify a candidate you want to support and start working on their campaign. The goal is to know and become known to the people who make the decisions that you want to influence. As you become more well-known, you can cautiously use your influence to try to affect the decisions you are most concerned about. Eventually, if you aren't a crazy person and you stick around long enough, people will convince you to take leadership positions in the committees or to become a candidate for elected office.
The details depend a lot on your local community. In some places, you could probably get a small group of people together and try to run for elected office immediately. In my community, those people almost never succeed -- and even trying is often considered a mark of political naiveté.
Perhaps the single most important thing I would emphasize would be to listen. Listen carefully to what people are saying and be cautious to act precipitately or to align yourself with any particular faction too soon. Often, there are political undertones to any proposed action and its often hard for a beginner to understand who's sacred cow is going to be gored by any particular change.
A final suggestion is that you look for ways to volunteer to take on some chunk of the committee's work: offer to make copies or be secretary or something else that no-one wants to do. People learn who you are faster and you can quickly become indispensable.
Good luck!
I've had a Cingular/AT&T prepaid GoPhone for a couple of years now, and I would definitely switch to T-Mobile prepaid if I used the phone much at all (as it is, I use less than 200 minutes a year). T-mobile prepaid gives you 1000 minutes for a $100 top-off card, vs. 400 for AT&T. My son decided he was going to buy himself a prepaid phone with his Christmas bux, and after carefully researching decided that t-mobile was the way to go if you didn't want to commit to a contract. Boost would have been a slightly better deal, but I think the lame phone problem is even worse with them.
Here's a good comparison tool for different prepaid providers:
http://cellphones.about.com/od/prepaid_phones/qt/prepaid_plans.htm
I think I must have been lucky.
I've had a cellphone for some 16 years now. I got my first one back in the UK in 1991. Always had digital. That first one was awful quality... I had 3 or 4 of them. A Motorola brick...
Anyway, when I came to the US, I bought a nice GSM Microsoft Smartphone with me. It's tri-band so I knew it would work here, even though the digital coverage here at the time was very patchy.
I'd had some of that exorbitant pre-paid charges from Cingular, as I'd got a sim-card from them when I got here so I had some kind of service and they were GSM.
I made inquiries about a contract plan as 39cents/min was well over the top. They wanted a $300 deposit as I'd not had a cellphone in the US before, and at that time had no credit history either.
How much interest do you pay on the deposit I asked, in all seriousness. The Cingular guy laughed. I didn't. He said you're serious aren't you? Yes, I was.
I politely told Mr Cingular Guy, where he could put the service, and went to AllTel. Ok, I couldn't use my useful Smartphone, as AllTel are CDMA, and ended up with a basic Nokia for 99 cents for two years.
We're still with AllTel. I've got a nice litle Kyocera now that has a keyboard on, and the wife now has a Blackberry that I got her (contract-free) on eBay.
Here, the AllTel service is the best I've had anywhere, never yet found any serious dead spots either, and never ever any overages.
It's certainly true that a lot of the best stuff faces diminishing returns. One of the best purchases I ever made was my bicycle, but I'd get very little benefit from buying another one every month.
But, when you think about it, there's actually a huge payoff in that: The very best stuff is cheap. The amount that it takes to provide maximum satisfaction is very reasonably priced, and there's no reason to ride the curve down to the point of merely adequate satisfaction.
I guess you could find yourself in a situation where you enjoyed chocolate so much that it ranked up near the top of your "satisfaction" list--just under food and rent, let's say--even though you only spent $15 a month on it. Clearly the answer to that circumstance is not to say, "Gee, I'd better spend more on chocolate!" But you might look a bit closer at the line items below it. Why are you spending $40 a month on internet access or $30 a month on clothing when neither one provides as much satisfaction as $15 a month on chocolate?
The easy answer to "Why spend that much on X" is often "Because it costs that much." (Especially for things you have to buy, like insurance, and for things where there's just one price no matter how much you use, like internet access.) But once you get past the easy answer, there's often room to make adjustments. You can shop around, decide to share things with your neighbors, find a different way to get things done, etc.
Whenever something shows up higher on the ranked-by-cost list than it does on the ranked-by-satisfaction list, that's a clue that you've found a place where some serious investigation into possible adjustments is warranted.