Categorizing purchases Jun 5, 2014
I've noticed I tend to unintentionally group purchases into one of three categories:  expenses, hobbies, or investments.  Expenses are things that are basically just the cost of doing business, or the cost of living life.  This includes gas and groceries, but I also lump things like wine into this category.  Obviously wine isn't an essential item, but I've reached the point where I drink wine almost as regularly as I use gas to power my car, i.e. every day. 

Hobbies are things that cost a decent amount of money, but the cost gets spread out over time.  I like bourbon whiskey, and I probably have $300-400 worth of it in my house at the moment.  That price point was daunting when I first started getting into whiskey, because I felt like I'd never be able to try the brands I wanted to try without putting up a big chunk of change.  But spread out over time at $30 a bottle or so, the cost wasn't that big.  It's not small or regular enough that I'd call it a cost of living life, but small enough that I can buy a bottle every few months or so and not have to think about it. 

I'd like to get into Scotch, but that counts as an investment in my book.  A bottle of Scotch is often 2-3 times the price of a bottle of bourbon.  Investments require planning and budgeting, and because of their increased price (and my relatively un-lavish lifestyle), it seems like they should be treated as such.  Obviously I would never mix good Scotch with Coke, but even drinking it regularly would feel a little wrong.  Since I don't light my cigars with hundred dollar bills, it feels like expensive purchases should be treated differently, as investments. 

Anyway, this was supposed to be about money, and it became a thing about booze.  C'est la vie. #money
Subprime success story Mar 18, 2014
One thing you don't hear much about the financial collapse due to the subprime mortgage industry is a success story.  I have one:  In 2005 I bought a house.  I was 22 years old.  I had just graduated college and started a job.  I had little credit history.  I had less than $10,000 in savings.  By some miracle, I was approved for a mortgage with the following ridiculously good terms:  30 year, fixed rate for the first 10 years, interest only payments required, no down payment.  This fit my financial situation perfectly, and I was smart enough to make more than just the interest payments.  A few years later, I did a healthy refinance, and loans like that were nowhere to be found.  If the subprime industry didn't exist, there's almost no way I could've bought a house, probably until the industry collapsed. #money
Types of money Mar 14, 2012
I recently refinanced my mortgage, and the final piece of the closing costs could only be paid with a bank check.  All my checking and savings accounts are online, which has caused me approximately zero problems up until this point in my life.  Bank checks can only come from brick-and-mortar banks, and you need to have an account there (at least I think that's how it works; banks are an example of a confusopoly).  I tried to negotiate with the company by offering any of several other forms of payment that are universally accepted across the globe by all businesses for pretty much any financial transaction:  Cash, check, or credit card.  They declined my offer.  Needless to say, I eventually got a bank check, which was the first time I've walked into a bank building in a good five years.

Which brings me to my point:  It's interesting that different types of money aren't equal.  I realize you can write a check without having the money in your account to back it up, and you can charge something to a credit card with absolutely no intention of paying it off.  But surely cash should be accepted no matter what, right?  From my perspective as a good consumer who has enough money to pay for the things he buys, all my methods of payment are equal.  You should accept my money whether it comes to you as paper or plastic.  Also, I'm the customer.  It's not that I think I'm always right, but shouldn't you at least try to accept my form of payment as long as it doesn't cause you excessive financial harm?  I'm trying to give you money.  Take it.  Take my money. #money
Stock market news Feb 14, 2012
I subscribe to the CNN Breaking News Twitter feed.  It's good for small doses of relatively important news items.  One item that tends to show up every day or so is something about the stock market.  This morning it said something about a European country doing something ... yadda yadda ... and the Dow Jones is up 31 points.  The Dow is at almost 13000 right now.  A 31-point increase or decrease is about a quarter of a percentage point.  To be honest, I'm not the kind of person who's interested in financial news to begin with, but it seems to me that for something to be "breaking news," it should at least break the one percent mark. #money
Natural disasters and economics Aug 30, 2011
I wonder if anything more positively impacts the economy than natural disasters.  For example: 
  1. Food.  People always rush out to buy milk and bread.  Wendy bought milk and bread before the hurricane, but only because we literally just ran out of milk and bread and needed a routine resupply.
  2. Supplies.  People always rush out to buy flashlights and batteries.  At this point in the history of mankind, you'd think everyone would have enough of those left over from the previous natural disaster.
  3. Safety.  Declaring a state of emergency and activing the National Guard just sound like expensive propositions.
  4. Cleanup.  Chainsaws and sump pumps aren't free, nor do emergency workers work pro bono.
  5. Rebuilding.  When stuff breaks, you have to fix it.  Somehow this transcends whether or not people can actually afford it.  If a tree falls on your house, you need a new roof.  If your basement is flooded, you need it unflooded.
And the government, with its FEMA and its states of emergency, is just asking for targets to throw money at.  If anything can fix the global economy, it's a global natural disaster. #money
Take my money Aug 23, 2011
I signed up for a new bank account online.  This bank also has a physical presence, but I doubted I would need to take advantage of it since I haven't been inside a physical bank in a good five years.  However, I got a paper check in the mail, so I went to the physical location to deposit it.  After having a problem at the ATM and then *gulp* speaking to a human, I was told I wouldn't be able to deposit money at the physical location because I have an online-only account.  I sat there for a minute, thinking how stupid it was that one division of the bank didn't work with another division of the same bank, and I considered yelling at the poor bank teller to take my damn money, since (a) I already have an account and (b) banks typically like money.  But alas, one cannot reason with a person who follows orders from a computer screen.

I heard a story recently where a government employee patented something he was working on and set a price for licensing it.  Since he was working for the government while he came up with the patentable idea, the government would receive any proceeds from licensing.  Sure enough, somebody licensed it and asked the inventor where to send the money.  The inventor asked around and couldn't find any way for the government to accept the money, so he told the licensee to give the money to a local charity.  This is one of the many things that's wrong with our government:  It doesn't know how to accept money. 

Update:  I recently tried to give money to a charity.  I knew how much I wanted to give, and I knew what person I wanted the money to go to (a sponsor child).  I searched and searched through their website, and despite being a technologically-minded person, I couldn't figure it out.  Charities essentially exist to accept money from people.  Sure, charities also typically exist to help people.  But they help people by accepting money from other people.  Not being able to accept money, when accepting money is one of your core functions, is pathetic. #money
Perception of government benefits Aug 17, 2011
A somewhat recent study showed that more than 25% of people who receive food stamps don't believe they receive any assistance from the government.  Almost 40% of Medicare recipients are in the same boat, as well as almost 30% with Social Security. 

Lumped into those statistics are people who don't believe their mortgage interest tax deduction is a government benefit (60%) and people who receive federally-backed student loans (53%).  I don't think real-cash-money from the government in the form of food stamps and health care should be in the same category as paying lower taxes and receiving low interest rates.  Here's a good take on that: 
A 529 program is not a government program like food stamps, it is the absence of a government tax ... People who use 529 programs and who think that they have not used a government social program are not willfully ignorant, they are demonstrating a healthy if fading appreciation of the distinction between civil society and government.  What Rampell et al. implicitly imagine is that the natural state is slavery and any departure from that state a government benefit. Thus, if the government taxes your saving for a college education less than your other savings, you should be grateful for how government has benefited you and your children. And if the government doesn’t jail you today, you should be grateful for how government has granted you the benefit of liberty. This is the attitude of a serf not an American.
#money
Unappealing savings Jun 23, 2011
The packaging for compact fluorescent light bulbs says something like, "Save $11 per year on energy costs."  Seriously?  You want me to buy a new product and replace my current light bulbs so I can save $11 per year?  It's like when my bank called me to advise me to move some money in my checking account to an interest-bearing checking account which would yield about 0.1% APY.  Even a big bank account with like $10,000 would only make $10 in interest per year.  Having to change my direct deposit, billpay, and order new checks simply isn't worth $10. 

Related:  Driving to save money #money
Tax incentives Feb 25, 2011
We were thinking about getting a new heating system for our house, and one of the vendors mentioned that we had just missed out on a tax incentive where we could've claimed something like a $5000 deduction.  At first I was disappointed because I'm a big fan of deals, and missing a deal is worse than not knowing there was a deal in the first place.  But then I realized that a deduction on our taxes really isn't much of an incentive.  For some reason my mind equates "tax incentive" with "saving money," and while that's technically what happens, it doesn't mean I pay $5000 less for a home heating system.  It means I pay taxes on $5000 less than what I would normally pay taxes on, which doesn't really mean anything to me.  In other words, tax incentives are hardly incentives at all. #money
Nothing is free Nov 23, 2010
MetaFilter commenter: 
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
(via Lifehacker) #money