I’ve got four issues of coupon-heavy All You magazine to give away, along with several other items in the “shopping” family.
spending
The importance of midnight movies.
I went to a 12:02 a.m. screening of “Prometheus,” one of the most unsettling films I’ve seen in a long time. Not horror-movie scary, sci-fi-movie creepy. It left me so jittery that when we got home at about 2:45 a.m. I couldn’t go right to sleep.
Instead I added video codes to today’s MSN Money post, cleaned up my e-mail inbox and finished tidying the scene of an earlier kitchen mishap involving overboiled blueberries (apparently I have something against my friend’s stove).
It was 4 a.m. before I finally went to bed, which probably isn’t the healthiest sleep habit. The kettle corn consumed at the theater wasn’t so smart, either, no matter how much I try to convince myself that popcorn = corn = daily vegetable intake.
But damn, it was fun. My friend’s got me hooked on midnight screenings. We’ve seen five since I got here.
How much is the senior prom worth?
Would you spend 6% (or more) of your gross annual income to send your teen to the prom? A survey by Visa Inc. indicated that families earning less than $20,000 per year planned to shell out $1,200 for the annual school dance.
I don’t know what’s scarier: The fact that parents are willing to do this or the fact that kids think it’s necessary.
Hey! I didn’t win the Mega Millions!
You probably didn’t, either. Although winning tickets were sold in several states, odds are they weren’t yours.
The odds really do stink, you know. That’s why some wags call the lottery “a tax on people who are bad at math.”
Going out on a fiscal limb here, but…I don’t think the lottery is so bad.
It’s not that I think the lottery is “good,” i.e., an important part of a balanced financial portfolio. I just think it’s not-so-bad in the way that potato chips are not-so-bad. An occasional handful won’t kill you. If you focus on chips to the exclusion of anything healthy, then you’ve got a problem.
A loan repaid.
I got a big surprise in the mail the other day: a check for $850. That’s the amount of the loan I made to a friend 15 months ago, plus the Western Union fee to get it to her.
In fact, it’s $6 more than I sent. I guess I should consider that interest, or maybe bus fare and aspirin.
Frugal-hacking my way through a month without pay.
Two dates for you:
February 7 – The last direct deposit for my day job
March 11 – The earliest I can expect to get paid again
I’m not saying this because I feel sorry for myself. For reasons I’ll detail below, I’m doing fine. I’m bringing it up to remind other freelancers – and fully employed folks – to get creative about meeting your needs.
I’ve got a new day job. Come over and visit.
My biweekly personal finance column at MSN Money has morphed into a daily frugality blog. Since life never happens quite as you wish, the new gig was poised to launch right when I got sick last week.
My mental picture is of the Fates passing a joint and cackling with laughter as they watched me struggle with computer connection woes six or seven hours after what was later determined to be a gall bladder attack.
Eventually everything was resolved and Tuesday was the debut for Frugal Cool. Despite the semi-preachiness of the inaugural headline (“Frugality: The right life choice”), this is not an eat-your-vegetables kind of site.
Blog roundup: Attack of the choleliths edition.
A few nights ago I had what I thought was a really bad case of indigestion and nausea. Zantac couldn’t touch it. It got worse. I tried to make myself vomit and couldn’t.
Eventually I realized that (a) indigestion shouldn’t feel like this and (b) I had eaten a fairly healthy dinner. A doctor’s visit and an ultrasound determined that it was a gall-bladder attack.
The day I saved Heckboy.
On my way home from the store recently I found nine cents, a My Coke Rewards cap and two ice-cream bars.
About that last: While waiting for the light to change I saw a discarded plastic grocery bag on the ground. As a rule I pick these up for my sister to use when she walks her dog. This bag held one of those Klondike Bar six-packs, with four missing.
The supermarket register receipt indicated they’d been purchased only about 15 minutes earlier, and it was a chilly day. You bet I took them home.
If you feel you must say “eeewww,” go ahead. I’ll wait.
The $11.5 million Christmas tree.
No, I am not kidding. Picture a 43-foot-tall artificial tree draped with more than $11 million worth of jewelry and precious stones.
If you want to get a closer look, you’ll have to travel to the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. But not too close a look — the tree has four guards.