Reliving prom a little with my daughter

Posted on 17th March 2012 in Business, Entertainment/Fun, Friends/Family, Internet, Life, Money/Finances, Opinion, Shopping

Guest post written by Donna Reins

I realize that I’m way past the age to care about prom dress shopping, but I like to put myself in my prom-going shoes to help my daughter some. Prom is a much bigger deal now than it was back when I was in high school. I guess that I shouldn’t be that surprised about it because there are so many things that are made specifically about prom and TV and movies make it into a much bigger deal than back in my day. It gets me a little excited too so I’m having a lot of fun helping her pick out all kinds of prom stuff.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of research to help her pick out some prom trends for this year and when I was doing that I saw some bankrupt alternatives online. I hadn’t been looking for them, but I thought that I could really use them with all of my credit card debt, so I’m going to check them out.

I’ve already seen all types of gorgeous dresses, but I’m really supportive of a cocktail length dress and awesome shoes instead of a floor length gown. I think that the shorter dresses tend to cost a little less anyway.

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Have Banks All Lost Their Minds?

Posted on 12th March 2012 in Business, Life, Money/Finances, Opinion

The mason jar that I keep on my dresser for collecting all the loose change at night was pretty full. Since I had to go to the bank today to cash a check, I decided to take the jar with me and have the bank exchange it out for dollar bills.

Before leaving the house, I looked through all the loose change for any wheat pennies and any other unusually old coins. I found 6 wheat pennies and set them aside. Then I carried the jar out to the truck and away we went.

When I got to the bank the teller was not happy at all to take my jar of loose change. She made no effort her hide her disgust with having to handle my coins for me. First of all, she asked me why I hadn’t sorted and rolled all the coins. I told I though the bank had a machine to do that. She said, “No – not at the branches.”

She went into a back room and came back out with a large ziploc type of bag. Opening the bag, she turned my mason jar upside down and dumped all the coins in it. Then she asked me for a deposit slip for my account. I was surprised that she asked for that – I wanted cash back for my coins. Again, with great disdain, she said, “No – we don’t do that at the branches.”

Unless I wanted to drive all the way downtown to the main office with my jar of coins, my only choice to be rid of the loose change was to give them my coins with a deposit slip, and wait for them to send the bag of coins to the home office where someone would dump them into a coin sorting machine, add up the total value of the coins, and then credit my account with a deposit. And that it would take 3-5 business days for the deposit to be credited to my account for me to be able to withdraw that money.

I’m sorry, folks. This is just crazy to me. Its not a lot of money and its not an urgent matter to me. But my coins are legal tender and I took them to my bank where I have done business for over 14 years. You would think that the least they could do is exchange coins for dollar bills and not take your money for 3 – 5 business days before you can get it back.

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A Perfectly Good Cell Phone, Down The Toilet

Posted on 12th February 2012 in Internet, Money/Finances, Shopping, Technology/Gadgets

Funny how the title of this post basically tells it all. I dropped my cell phone into the toilet. What a dope! Of course I don’t have insurance on the darn thing. So it’s looks like I’m now in the market to find a new cell phone. I’m glad that Internet will make it a much easier task so that I won’t have to go running from store to store to find the right one for me. But it still will take some time to do a decent amount of research, I don’t want to get stuck with something that I will regret this time around.

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Breakfast for Supper

Posted on 12th February 2012 in Food, Money/Finances, Opinion

Do you ever eat breakfast for supper?  I don’t very often, but I plan to eat it more often!  I like breakfast, and rarely have time to eat one.  And by that I mean the full-blown eggs and bacon and toast, not just a bowl of cereal.  Or pancakes with syrup, or french toast.  I really enjoy all of those.  And with the economy getting worse, it seems like a good way to trim the cost of dinner!  My wife and I have decided to eat breakfast for supper a couple of times every month.  Pinching pennies can taste good!

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Last minute shopping

Posted on 22nd December 2011 in Friends/Family, Life, Money/Finances, Opinion, Shopping

Not being a fan of shopping for gifts, I tend to do a lot of my Christmas shopping at the last minute. Yes, I admit it, I procrastinate on things like this. There is a good reason for this, though, when I finally get around to shopping for the gifts, the people that I am buying gifts for don’t have a lot of time to change their minds about what they want! There have been years in the past when someone told me that they wanted something for Christmas, and then when I got it for them and they unwrapped it, they told me that they had decided to not wait for Christmas and just bought it for themselves! So waiting until the last minute helps to keep that from happening. To be honest, I’ve started to think that the best way to give Christmas gifts that the person really wants is to just give them a gift card to one of their favorite stores. That way they can get what they REALLY want!

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