Xin Lu, I live in Silicon Valley like you, and find the San Jose-area Entertainment Coupon Book to be a great deal for eating out. The selection of restaurants is pretty decent. Most of the coupons are for 2-for-1 entrees, so the book pays for itself in about 3-4 meals. It works best if you're not the kind of person where coupons entice you to eat out more often (I'm not).
Planning the perfect vacation is something that crosses your mind while you work, and the last thing you picture in your perfect vacation is rain. But, it's nice to know that your vacation is "insured" and you can get your money back if some clouds decide to "shower" you with love. I wish you all a lot of sun on your next big trip!
I live in Juneau, in Alaska, and this summer our main hydropower source was out for a month when a huge avalanche knocked down several transmission lines. The power company immediately cranked up its back-up diesel generators, and prices quintupled to 55 cents a kilowatt hour. The next day you saw people stringing out clothes to dry (in a rain forest!), and electricity use was down 30 percent city wide. All the store ran out of clothespins. Some people turned off their main power at night. It was pretty amazing. Now things are back to normal price wise, and so is usage.
Now it's the price of heating oil driving change. At over five dollars a gallon even in the larger cities, people are more than a bit worried about the coming winter. The state has a good energy rebate program for home improvements, but they don't have nearly enough energy raters to inspect houses prior to improvements. The state is also swimming in oil profits, so it looks like we might just have a plain cash bailout for all residents this year.
Philip, I love your posts. I've been telling people you're my favorite writer in the personal finance blogosphere right now, and it's true. You bring a wisdom and depth of experience to the table that seems to be lacking in so many other writers. Please keep up the good work. (And p.s. -- I'd love to feature a guest post from you at Get Rich Slowly. A broad overview of your philosophy, like this, would be awesome.)
I just wanted to let you know that just because a picture is on flickr it doesn't mean you can simply use them in your posts. The one you posted today clearly states "All Rights Reserved". What that means unless you have asked for and received written permission from the author of the picture to use it on a clearly for-profit website you may not do so.
So unless,
1) You are Joseph de Jesus and you took the photo
2) Asked Joseph de Jesus and received permission to use his work on this site.
3) Joseph de Jesus posted the picture under Creative Commons when you snagged it and it just became "All Rights Reserved" after the fact and you can prove this point in court.
you probably should not use the picture.
I might be way off in the left field but I just thought I'd let you know. I run a blog myself with flickr pictures and I'm also a hobby photographer with some pretty nice shots (if I say so myself).
I'll jump in to say that I enjoyed reading Xin's article. I can see both sides -- it's frustrating at many levels of society. I know some people choose differently than others based on what they value at that moment in life, and it really is a personal choice. That being said, I don't know anyone around here who gets government assistance and it "pays" for their nails. Sure there are some who abuse the system, but they are usually gaming more than just our government.... they are usually avoiding all kinds of societal debt, skipping out on bills, and maybe have some "investors" in their lifestyles. An ADC check and some food stamps alone won't buy some of the things mentioned in this article.
We also want to understand that everything is not always what it seems. I have gotten some really nice GAP clothing at garage sales, I have a friend in beauty school who can give me a $90 cut and color for free, and I work hard from home between the hours of 6-10am, 2-3 pm, and 9-11 pm (which appears to those around me like I don't have a "real" job.) Most important to me is that I'm good with my money and that I treat others well.... I wouldn't want anyone to judge me if one day I decided to buy something nice that I worked hard for (be it a Lexus, a cruise, etc). It's my business.
My husband was coming home the other night after work, driving in the rt lane at 55 mph and was pulled over by 2 police officers. After their usual stupid tricks they realized he really was trying to save money. He showed them how the SUV gets 21 mph going 55 instead of 17 mph. They admitted that he was driving fine, but a bit on the slow side.
@xin - You could do that *if* you can get someone to rent the place to you with section 8 subsidy. (I'm assuming you're a 4-person household and your partner makes less than $45k a year.) The law says 75% of these vouchers must go to people making less than 30% of the median, or around $30k per year. I just don't see it happening.
Section 8 is definitely open to corruption. You just don't hear about it much, because the main beneficiaries are landlords. Because it's a subsidy that makes up the difference between around 30% of your income, and the "market rate" for similar units, there are people running sec 8 scams, where landlords rent to their relatives at inflated rents. This works out for immigrants, because they tend to make low wages, but their wealthier relative got into the country and bought a building. It's all legal, but it seems unfair.
The other scam I see is the ghetto duplex or triplex, which is an old house that's been cut up. Each apartment is rented out to a sec 8 tenant, at a rent way higher than any normal person would pay. I'm sure there's a kick-back in there, somewhere. I bet moving a gangster tenant in would bring in the know-how about running the scam correctly.
To reform this situation, they should base the subsidy on the cost to pay for the building and the repair costs, plus a guaranteed profit margin and a long-term contract to maintain the unit as a section 8 apartment. The "market rate" part causes the subsidy to get expensive when rents rise quickly due to gentrification and speculation.
Im 17 years old and I cant get a stimulus check but I have a friend that is also 17 and birthday is actually after mine.She was claimed on her mothers tax return but received her stimulus check yesterday.Why is this?
My children are currently 14 and 18 and have both received allowance since they were 5. I could claim that this was a brilliant plan on my part to impart financial prowess to them at an early age, but in fact it was a response to my son’s incessant desire for more and more Thomas the Train items. We just figured it was easier to give a quarter for each year of life and let him save for the trains rather than his constantly asking us for a new one each time we went to the mall.
In his case it was a huge success. It took 5 weeks for him to save up and he only ever wanted to go to the mall once every 5 weeks. He was never in doubt as to what he wanted to do with his allowance, only which train to buy each time.
When he turned 6 we switched to a dollar per year of life, but now the money had to be divided up into three equal buckets. One third for saving for university, one third for charity which was for our local church, and one third for spending which at that time meant Thomas the Train. We have kept with that dollar per year of life ever since.
His 14 year old sister has gone through a similar allowance process. In both cases we have emphasized that they each have chores that must be done. There used to be lists on the fridge that had to be checked off, but now everyone knows their chores and that they are not paid by chore, but that chores must be done.
Several years ago at Christmas my daughter was very disappointed that she did not have the money she had hoped for to buy presents for her older brother and for my wife and myself. I casually suggested that if she saved a dollar a week, she would have $52 for Christmas next year. The following week when I doled out the allowance she had a new tin for her money. I asked what it was for and she proudly announced that it was for next Christmas. Even since then she has faithfully put that dollar a week aside, and recently she has even topped it up with a percentage of the birthday cash that comes her way. (As she is a June baby, I am impressed that she could look that far ahead and realize that money saved now will be useful 6 months away.)
My parents’ attitude about money and their willingness to discuss things in detail as my brother and I got older was a real help. My wife and I try to include our children in our discussions about money. When they were younger it was mostly about letting them know how expensive things were that they could relate to. One of the first things I remember costing out for them in detail was our vacations.
We took a number of significant vacations, starting when they were ages 7 and 11. That year we went to France for 3 weeks. I was unemployed by the time we went, but we had saved and so we went in any case. They were both young enough to miss the irony of our taking a $9,000 vacation while one of the key earners was unemployed. Fortunately my wife had a good job and we were careful with my severance pay so that we were able to take the vacation despite the change in financial circumstances.
I took my daughter out to do some errands today and on the way home she was talking about that vacation to France even though it was 7 years ago and she was only 7 at the time. I have come to think that while vacations are important, the real value is that we talk about what happened and hence vacations become part of our family culture – they are part of the bond that we share as a family; good stories and even silly stories.
Every vacation since then has been discussed with them in some detail from a financial aspect. It has become a bit of a touchstone for the relative worth of things. They now know that my most recent car cost about a vacation and a half. They know that our recent new roof for the house cost almost two vacations. That is a hard thing for young people to learn; the relative value of things, that is just so obvious to adults.
In closing, give your kids allowance, discuss money openly and add more detail as time passes. My parents did it with my brother and I and we have both been very successful in managing our finances. My son had his first job last summer and saved every single penny for university so I am fairly confident that it is working with my children too.
Barqs, though not the only, is one of the few caffeinated root beers. Most root beers are decaf, but check your labels. Barqs slogan is the "The one with bite" which means the one with caffeine.
Yes, pharmaceutical companies and drug companies are the same, and yes, I do think their profits are unreasonable. The same drugs they sell to us they also sell in other countries for far less money. Basically they have convinced our politicians (and us!) through lobbying and other means that these high prices are reasonable, so the new Medicare drug coverage, for instance, while being a good thing for seniors, is also a big government give-away to these companies.
As for where to look for more information, there is lots out there, but I'll give you one link to Physicians for a National Health Plan, who advocate expanding Medicare to all. They have some good articles and statistics, and since they are doctors, they obviously aren't so worried about being underpaid by Medicare (that's a frequent argument against it, that it underpays doctors).
"others do so much less than him, and live in their McMansions, with their boats, and Gap clothes and drive their Lexus'"
"there she is, in her nice apartment, with her central air, dishwasher and garbage disposal, with her kids in their Gap clothes, and her with her pretty nails"
Stop trying to keep up with the Jones'. There is so much more to life than owning expensive clothes/cars/flats/appliances/whatever.
The best things in life really are free: love, friendship, life...
Hey, guys, sorry to be so late in responding to your questions. I hadn't been blogging for a while and didn't see these comments.
Kimbosabe (nice moniker!) - I have never paid an intermediary company to find me work, per se. Now, you can argue that I DO pay them, in the sense that they take a hefty chunk of change off the top of the hourly rate that I get paid. For instance, if I work at Microsoft and get paid $40 an hour, I can guarantee that the agency is getting paid $55 and they take $15 for every hour I work before paying me. But I don't incur expenses, and I have never paid anyone upfront costs for finding me work.
It's possible that some areas of the country are less prone to using contractors that are hired through an agency. Or maybe it's industry-specific. The reason that it is so popular where I live (Seattle) is that large companies, like Microsoft and Boeing, are loathe to hire people in a permanent basis for projects that aren't terribly long-term. Microsoft is notorious for this, so much so that they got slapped with a lawsuit a few years ago for only hiring contractors (the result of this is that, as a certain category of contractor, you can only work for MS for a year, and then must take a 100 day break before starting another contract with them). They do this to avoid paying health care costs, as the benefits at Microsoft are very good and extremely expensive.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the way these things work in other areas of the US - for instance, when I lived in Manhattan, I was hired for two permanent jobs through an agency (they got a finder's fee for vetting me as a candidate), but I never heard of contracting work to be had there.
I'm going to be investigating the idea more as I start up my own business, so I'll be writing about this topic again soon.
Cruise control isn't the be all end all of driving efficiently, as other driver's have mentioned. I just find that it helps me maintain my sanity on the freeway, especially when everyone else is going really fast. Sometimes I use it to make sure that I only go 30 mph on long stretches of backroads, too.
The thing that has been the hardest about learning to drive slower is to be patient with truly idiotic drivers. You know, the ones who will slow and come to a complete stop in the middle of the street because they aren't sure if they should turn or not? I used to zoom around them while shrieking obscenities through an open window (hey, I never claimed to be a nice person), but these days, I just slow down behind them and wait it out. I try to think of them as Gas Saving Guardian Angels. As long as I make the stopping and restarting as smooth as possible, I figure I'm saving more gas than I would if I make a huge display of passing them.
I think the attitude shift has been more important to me than the gas savings, although the savings certainly don't hurt.
Ok, I want to start putting our mortgage on a card! We pay everything with a Citi cashback cc, but we max out the rewards in just a few months. I am going to get an Amex Blue card for cashback, but I also like the idea of travel rewards to help with the costs of vacations for our family of 4.
Good roads, higher than national averarge petrol means i burn 700 calories a day biking to work. definately visit mapride for your routes and fitness stats.
"Actually you don't have to be that poor in my county to get subsidized housing. Median income for a family of 4 is $90k here so any family making under that can qualify for Section 8 and a variety of other government programs like subsidized insurance."
At one time, I was a young single mother and have since made the very difficult transition from poverty to the middle class. That ground between eligible for benefits and comfortable enough on your own is TOUGH to navigate. I suspect that's where Jen's family falls. Talking about welfare queens with all the fancy appliances and families making 90k and receiving housing vouchers is not helpful, especially since those perceptions don't generally match up with reality.
I went to No Points Traffic Tickets after getting a ridiculous speeding ticket and they took care of it for me. I was caught on radar doing a 60 in a 40 zone, which just didn't make sense because it was in a residential area and I never speed. Nonetheless, I got a free quote by email and they eliminated my ticket! Didn't get anything on my record so my insurance won't go up (I'm not 25 yrs old yet).
Check 'em out, they now offer a 25% for XCoppers clients that got screwed over since they went bankrupt. They will price match too! Good luck!
I think the key to increasing one's abundance is reducing one's wants.
Xin Lu, I live in Silicon Valley like you, and find the San Jose-area Entertainment Coupon Book to be a great deal for eating out. The selection of restaurants is pretty decent. Most of the coupons are for 2-for-1 entrees, so the book pays for itself in about 3-4 meals. It works best if you're not the kind of person where coupons entice you to eat out more often (I'm not).
Planning the perfect vacation is something that crosses your mind while you work, and the last thing you picture in your perfect vacation is rain. But, it's nice to know that your vacation is "insured" and you can get your money back if some clouds decide to "shower" you with love. I wish you all a lot of sun on your next big trip!
I live in Juneau, in Alaska, and this summer our main hydropower source was out for a month when a huge avalanche knocked down several transmission lines. The power company immediately cranked up its back-up diesel generators, and prices quintupled to 55 cents a kilowatt hour. The next day you saw people stringing out clothes to dry (in a rain forest!), and electricity use was down 30 percent city wide. All the store ran out of clothespins. Some people turned off their main power at night. It was pretty amazing. Now things are back to normal price wise, and so is usage.
Now it's the price of heating oil driving change. At over five dollars a gallon even in the larger cities, people are more than a bit worried about the coming winter. The state has a good energy rebate program for home improvements, but they don't have nearly enough energy raters to inspect houses prior to improvements. The state is also swimming in oil profits, so it looks like we might just have a plain cash bailout for all residents this year.
This was a fantastic summation of the real meaning behind simplicity. I enjoyed every word, and loved your mention of Thoreau.
Thank you Philip,
This truly was an inspiring post. I know I certainly would appreciate hearing this "talk" in person!
People are always so quick to blame others for their problems. But in my cases we sleep in the bed we've made.
What is the name of your credit card and I want that deal!
Philip, I love your posts. I've been telling people you're my favorite writer in the personal finance blogosphere right now, and it's true. You bring a wisdom and depth of experience to the table that seems to be lacking in so many other writers. Please keep up the good work. (And p.s. -- I'd love to feature a guest post from you at Get Rich Slowly. A broad overview of your philosophy, like this, would be awesome.)
Xin,
I just wanted to let you know that just because a picture is on flickr it doesn't mean you can simply use them in your posts. The one you posted today clearly states "All Rights Reserved". What that means unless you have asked for and received written permission from the author of the picture to use it on a clearly for-profit website you may not do so.
So unless,
1) You are Joseph de Jesus and you took the photo
2) Asked Joseph de Jesus and received permission to use his work on this site.
3) Joseph de Jesus posted the picture under Creative Commons when you snagged it and it just became "All Rights Reserved" after the fact and you can prove this point in court.
you probably should not use the picture.
I might be way off in the left field but I just thought I'd let you know. I run a blog myself with flickr pictures and I'm also a hobby photographer with some pretty nice shots (if I say so myself).
Here is an excellent article I found about why no one should actually use any kind of flickr photos on their blogs Creative Commons or not: http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/gaming-creative-commons-for-profit.html
I'll jump in to say that I enjoyed reading Xin's article. I can see both sides -- it's frustrating at many levels of society. I know some people choose differently than others based on what they value at that moment in life, and it really is a personal choice. That being said, I don't know anyone around here who gets government assistance and it "pays" for their nails. Sure there are some who abuse the system, but they are usually gaming more than just our government.... they are usually avoiding all kinds of societal debt, skipping out on bills, and maybe have some "investors" in their lifestyles. An ADC check and some food stamps alone won't buy some of the things mentioned in this article.
We also want to understand that everything is not always what it seems. I have gotten some really nice GAP clothing at garage sales, I have a friend in beauty school who can give me a $90 cut and color for free, and I work hard from home between the hours of 6-10am, 2-3 pm, and 9-11 pm (which appears to those around me like I don't have a "real" job.) Most important to me is that I'm good with my money and that I treat others well.... I wouldn't want anyone to judge me if one day I decided to buy something nice that I worked hard for (be it a Lexus, a cruise, etc). It's my business.
My husband was coming home the other night after work, driving in the rt lane at 55 mph and was pulled over by 2 police officers. After their usual stupid tricks they realized he really was trying to save money. He showed them how the SUV gets 21 mph going 55 instead of 17 mph. They admitted that he was driving fine, but a bit on the slow side.
Thanks for sharing! Your details are helpful, and it's great to see real-life examples bringing about positive attitudes in your family!
Linsey
@xin - You could do that *if* you can get someone to rent the place to you with section 8 subsidy. (I'm assuming you're a 4-person household and your partner makes less than $45k a year.) The law says 75% of these vouchers must go to people making less than 30% of the median, or around $30k per year. I just don't see it happening.
Section 8 is definitely open to corruption. You just don't hear about it much, because the main beneficiaries are landlords. Because it's a subsidy that makes up the difference between around 30% of your income, and the "market rate" for similar units, there are people running sec 8 scams, where landlords rent to their relatives at inflated rents. This works out for immigrants, because they tend to make low wages, but their wealthier relative got into the country and bought a building. It's all legal, but it seems unfair.
The other scam I see is the ghetto duplex or triplex, which is an old house that's been cut up. Each apartment is rented out to a sec 8 tenant, at a rent way higher than any normal person would pay. I'm sure there's a kick-back in there, somewhere. I bet moving a gangster tenant in would bring in the know-how about running the scam correctly.
To reform this situation, they should base the subsidy on the cost to pay for the building and the repair costs, plus a guaranteed profit margin and a long-term contract to maintain the unit as a section 8 apartment. The "market rate" part causes the subsidy to get expensive when rents rise quickly due to gentrification and speculation.
Im 17 years old and I cant get a stimulus check but I have a friend that is also 17 and birthday is actually after mine.She was claimed on her mothers tax return but received her stimulus check yesterday.Why is this?
My children are currently 14 and 18 and have both received allowance since they were 5. I could claim that this was a brilliant plan on my part to impart financial prowess to them at an early age, but in fact it was a response to my son’s incessant desire for more and more Thomas the Train items. We just figured it was easier to give a quarter for each year of life and let him save for the trains rather than his constantly asking us for a new one each time we went to the mall.
In his case it was a huge success. It took 5 weeks for him to save up and he only ever wanted to go to the mall once every 5 weeks. He was never in doubt as to what he wanted to do with his allowance, only which train to buy each time.
When he turned 6 we switched to a dollar per year of life, but now the money had to be divided up into three equal buckets. One third for saving for university, one third for charity which was for our local church, and one third for spending which at that time meant Thomas the Train. We have kept with that dollar per year of life ever since.
His 14 year old sister has gone through a similar allowance process. In both cases we have emphasized that they each have chores that must be done. There used to be lists on the fridge that had to be checked off, but now everyone knows their chores and that they are not paid by chore, but that chores must be done.
Several years ago at Christmas my daughter was very disappointed that she did not have the money she had hoped for to buy presents for her older brother and for my wife and myself. I casually suggested that if she saved a dollar a week, she would have $52 for Christmas next year. The following week when I doled out the allowance she had a new tin for her money. I asked what it was for and she proudly announced that it was for next Christmas. Even since then she has faithfully put that dollar a week aside, and recently she has even topped it up with a percentage of the birthday cash that comes her way. (As she is a June baby, I am impressed that she could look that far ahead and realize that money saved now will be useful 6 months away.)
My parents’ attitude about money and their willingness to discuss things in detail as my brother and I got older was a real help. My wife and I try to include our children in our discussions about money. When they were younger it was mostly about letting them know how expensive things were that they could relate to. One of the first things I remember costing out for them in detail was our vacations.
We took a number of significant vacations, starting when they were ages 7 and 11. That year we went to France for 3 weeks. I was unemployed by the time we went, but we had saved and so we went in any case. They were both young enough to miss the irony of our taking a $9,000 vacation while one of the key earners was unemployed. Fortunately my wife had a good job and we were careful with my severance pay so that we were able to take the vacation despite the change in financial circumstances.
I took my daughter out to do some errands today and on the way home she was talking about that vacation to France even though it was 7 years ago and she was only 7 at the time. I have come to think that while vacations are important, the real value is that we talk about what happened and hence vacations become part of our family culture – they are part of the bond that we share as a family; good stories and even silly stories.
Every vacation since then has been discussed with them in some detail from a financial aspect. It has become a bit of a touchstone for the relative worth of things. They now know that my most recent car cost about a vacation and a half. They know that our recent new roof for the house cost almost two vacations. That is a hard thing for young people to learn; the relative value of things, that is just so obvious to adults.
In closing, give your kids allowance, discuss money openly and add more detail as time passes. My parents did it with my brother and I and we have both been very successful in managing our finances. My son had his first job last summer and saved every single penny for university so I am fairly confident that it is working with my children too.
Barqs, though not the only, is one of the few caffeinated root beers. Most root beers are decaf, but check your labels. Barqs slogan is the "The one with bite" which means the one with caffeine.
Hi Joanna,
Yes, pharmaceutical companies and drug companies are the same, and yes, I do think their profits are unreasonable. The same drugs they sell to us they also sell in other countries for far less money. Basically they have convinced our politicians (and us!) through lobbying and other means that these high prices are reasonable, so the new Medicare drug coverage, for instance, while being a good thing for seniors, is also a big government give-away to these companies.
As for where to look for more information, there is lots out there, but I'll give you one link to Physicians for a National Health Plan, who advocate expanding Medicare to all. They have some good articles and statistics, and since they are doctors, they obviously aren't so worried about being underpaid by Medicare (that's a frequent argument against it, that it underpays doctors).
http://www.pnhp.org/
"others do so much less than him, and live in their McMansions, with their boats, and Gap clothes and drive their Lexus'"
"there she is, in her nice apartment, with her central air, dishwasher and garbage disposal, with her kids in their Gap clothes, and her with her pretty nails"
Stop trying to keep up with the Jones'. There is so much more to life than owning expensive clothes/cars/flats/appliances/whatever.
The best things in life really are free: love, friendship, life...
Hey, guys, sorry to be so late in responding to your questions. I hadn't been blogging for a while and didn't see these comments.
Kimbosabe (nice moniker!) - I have never paid an intermediary company to find me work, per se. Now, you can argue that I DO pay them, in the sense that they take a hefty chunk of change off the top of the hourly rate that I get paid. For instance, if I work at Microsoft and get paid $40 an hour, I can guarantee that the agency is getting paid $55 and they take $15 for every hour I work before paying me. But I don't incur expenses, and I have never paid anyone upfront costs for finding me work.
It's possible that some areas of the country are less prone to using contractors that are hired through an agency. Or maybe it's industry-specific. The reason that it is so popular where I live (Seattle) is that large companies, like Microsoft and Boeing, are loathe to hire people in a permanent basis for projects that aren't terribly long-term. Microsoft is notorious for this, so much so that they got slapped with a lawsuit a few years ago for only hiring contractors (the result of this is that, as a certain category of contractor, you can only work for MS for a year, and then must take a 100 day break before starting another contract with them). They do this to avoid paying health care costs, as the benefits at Microsoft are very good and extremely expensive.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the way these things work in other areas of the US - for instance, when I lived in Manhattan, I was hired for two permanent jobs through an agency (they got a finder's fee for vetting me as a candidate), but I never heard of contracting work to be had there.
I'm going to be investigating the idea more as I start up my own business, so I'll be writing about this topic again soon.
Cruise control isn't the be all end all of driving efficiently, as other driver's have mentioned. I just find that it helps me maintain my sanity on the freeway, especially when everyone else is going really fast. Sometimes I use it to make sure that I only go 30 mph on long stretches of backroads, too.
The thing that has been the hardest about learning to drive slower is to be patient with truly idiotic drivers. You know, the ones who will slow and come to a complete stop in the middle of the street because they aren't sure if they should turn or not? I used to zoom around them while shrieking obscenities through an open window (hey, I never claimed to be a nice person), but these days, I just slow down behind them and wait it out. I try to think of them as Gas Saving Guardian Angels. As long as I make the stopping and restarting as smooth as possible, I figure I'm saving more gas than I would if I make a huge display of passing them.
I think the attitude shift has been more important to me than the gas savings, although the savings certainly don't hurt.
Ok, I want to start putting our mortgage on a card! We pay everything with a Citi cashback cc, but we max out the rewards in just a few months. I am going to get an Amex Blue card for cashback, but I also like the idea of travel rewards to help with the costs of vacations for our family of 4.
http://beta.mapmyride.com/
Good roads, higher than national averarge petrol means i burn 700 calories a day biking to work. definately visit mapride for your routes and fitness stats.
"Actually you don't have to be that poor in my county to get subsidized housing. Median income for a family of 4 is $90k here so any family making under that can qualify for Section 8 and a variety of other government programs like subsidized insurance."
Really??? That would be strange since typically, you can't make more than 50% of the median income to qualify for section 8. See http://www.hud.gov/offices/pih/programs/hcv/about/fact_sheet.cfm#2
In Missouri, an uninsured family of 4 doesn't qualify for the state SCHIP program if the parents make more than about 31k per year (and that's the higher income but uninsured eligibility, not the regular eligibility).
http://www.mcplus.org/resource/20070418/fd98070c-c09f-1e1c-6b3ed0ac407d8...
At one time, I was a young single mother and have since made the very difficult transition from poverty to the middle class. That ground between eligible for benefits and comfortable enough on your own is TOUGH to navigate. I suspect that's where Jen's family falls. Talking about welfare queens with all the fancy appliances and families making 90k and receiving housing vouchers is not helpful, especially since those perceptions don't generally match up with reality.
Cheers,
The other Jen
I went to No Points Traffic Tickets after getting a ridiculous speeding ticket and they took care of it for me. I was caught on radar doing a 60 in a 40 zone, which just didn't make sense because it was in a residential area and I never speed. Nonetheless, I got a free quote by email and they eliminated my ticket! Didn't get anything on my record so my insurance won't go up (I'm not 25 yrs old yet).
Check 'em out, they now offer a 25% for XCoppers clients that got screwed over since they went bankrupt. They will price match too! Good luck!