moneytalks

When is it OK to go on a shopping spree? I know one thing, I’m going on a mini one tomorrow. That’s right, nobody can stop me either. I’ve always been very frugal and smart with money. From time to time I get the urge to spend and not only on little things but bigger ticket items as well. One thing I’ll never do though is put me and my family in a huge debt that would be difficult to get out of. The new credit card being used tomorrow has zero interest for TWO YEARS. Now that’s too good to pass up. My new items will be very nice with the upcoming winter months on it’s way. When you’re cooped up in a house with 2 feet of snow outside you want as many toys in the house as possible to pass the time. To conclude it is not always needed to be a cheap person that never spends money. Sometimes you just have to let loose. 

The bank I currently use, Charter one which is associated with Citizens bank, has come up with a great rewards program. The deal is that every time you pay a bill without using paper you get $0.10 up to $120 per year. This means every time you use your debit card, pay online or have a payment automatically removed form your checking account you get the ten cents. Every month the bank will automatically add the money into the checking account that earned the money. For me, I pay with everything online or with my debit card anyway. So this is basically free money. Granted a maximum of $10 a month is not going to break the bank but as I always say you can’t beat free money.Check out Charterone.com for more information. 

I just wrote a blog about the lack of bank deals as of late. No sooner do I write it when Key bank steps up and offers a nice deal. The deal is goes like this, sign up for their key express free checking account then fund the account with two direct deposits of at least $100 and receive a Mastercard worth $100 within 90 days.I can’t say that this is the best offer I’ve seen but it is an offer worth checking out. Click here to find out more details about this offer. The direct deposits do not have to be from payroll. Try being creative with your ways of depositing. ACH payments count, I believe, so try something like that out. In hard time free money is never a bad thing. 

I’m no longer doing much sports betting lately but I figured I could still try to talk about it. If you are out there reading this and still waiting to make your bets for the day hopefully this can help you. First off, the way I “cap” games has nothing to do with stats. The lines makers look at the stats and there is NO way possible for you to find something that they don’t. Since the game of sports betting is all about percentages we must play the best percentages. Home teams tend to be high percentage bets and when they are the underdogs it tends to become a better bet. Another good bet is going against the public. Look at websites like sportsinsights.com and you can get the numbers of who is betting on who. If you put this all together and than add in line movement on top of that than you’ll do pretty well for yourself. By looking at line movement you’re looking for a game that has a high % on one side with no jump in the line. For example if one team is favored by 3.5 and have 75% of the betting public on them, you’d expect the line to jump to 4 or 4.5 to create more money on the opposite side. When a book leaves the line at 3.5 they must be ok with all the one sided money. Today look for Miami +1 at home as a good pick. Hope this helps.

Here in Cleveland we don’t have many locally based banks but one that has made a name for itself is National City. As of late, during the latest downfall of banks it has made a name for itself in nothing but negative ways. With stock prices dropping daily and the threat of being absorbed by Key Bank, another locally based Cleveland bank, they have been in a lot of trouble. As of today they have officially been taken over, but not by Key Bank like suspected at one time, Pittsburgh bank PNC has taken over. At a price tag of 5.6 billion dollars National City is now ran by a man by the name of James Rohr.

 Undoubtedly many of the 8,000 local jobs in the Cleveland area National City has created will be lost. But Rohr assures that there are many opportunities for local workers. As a local resident of this area I can only hope that not many of those jobs will be lost.

I know that this may not be a big deal to a lot of you, especially those who live in areas that already charge tax on groceries. But this is indeed a big deal here in Ohio. As of right now there is no tax on food meant to eat outside of the establishment it is purchased at.

Governor Ted Strickland has asked the Ohio supreme court to over turn a ruling that held up the law prohibiting tax on food. He claims that the new tax, meant to be in full effect by 2010, would generate a whopping 188 million dollars a year in much needed revenue. The problem is that Ohio is the hardest hit area in job loss second to only Michigan. People in Ohio can hardly afford the food bought as of right now, let alone if a new tax is implemented.

As an Ohioan I am eagerly awaiting this decision, for it could be one of the costliest I’ve seen in a long time.

I love passing along information on great bank deals. That is part of the reason that I started this blog. The banks take from us so when we can take from the banks I like to jump on the opportunity. As of late I’ve been struggling to find any of these deals. I have found a few, but none worth writing about. Take for instance National City. They have a 5.0% APY 3 year CD going right now. Great deal but you there is a $10,000 minimum deposit to be eligible for the deal. Not many people I know have 10 grand laying around ready to tie up for 3 years. Because of all this I did not write a blog specifically about that. I guess if you’re reading this and have an extra 10k you now know about this and you can take advantage of it if you’d like. As for deals for the common man like myself, nothing can be found. Maybe the bank problems just don’t allow for them to give out deals. Rest assured that I’m out looking for the best deals and I’ll pass them along when I get them.

I’ll tell you right now that I’m very worried. Worried about a new member entering our family, will we have enough money to take care of him? Will he get along with everyone else? There are a lot of questions I have in my head that I’m looking to get answered. Yes it’s true, Mr. Moneytalks is having a dog. The little lady has been very insistent on us getting a dog. For us, for our son and to adopt a dog in need of a good home. My fear comes from not having enough money for vet bills if something arises and not having enough time, we go out of town for day trips quite often. I loved having dogs as a child and would love to have a dog now, it’s just the fear of not being able to take care of him properly has scared me away from adopting a dog for quite a while. More than likely this weekend will see the start of a new member of the moneytalks fam. I’ll keep all you guys up to date as I know you guys are eagerly awaiting to hear how this goes.

As of right now the government is trying to tell us that the unemployment rate is right around 6.1%. I look around and see the amount of people not working that I personally know and feel like this number is extremely deflated. Here in the United States we only count those who are receiving unemployment checks, as people who are unemployed. Does this make any sense? We have people who run out of time and no longer receive the checks and people who never qualified for unemployment for whatever reason. I’m not saying that everyone who is not working should be counted as “unemployed” because indeed there are wealthy people, retired people, stay at home people and so on. But there needs to be a better way of coming up with this stat because we are not seeing the real picture here. Not to mention that those who work a day or two of day labor are considered amongst the gainfully employed as well. We have a crisis on our hands and the government is lying to us by using misleading numbers. All we have to do is look at the local news and see the amounts of jobs that are being cut to see what is really going on. We are probably nearing great depression like numbers and may soon be seeing great depression like consequences.

I’d say it was about seven or eight years ago by now me and a roommate were determined to spend as little money as possible. With soaring heating costs we figured one of the best ways to save/not spend was to cut out heat for the winter months. With colder weather approaching I had my fears and doubts we could do it. I guess the predictions and stories of $200 gas bills kept us on track to a heat free winter. And just for the record, we didn’t keep our temperature low, we didn’t turn it on at all! We had friends refuse to come over our house all winter. We tried having a movie night and people just left. I guess sitting with your coats on and looking at your breath while watching a movie is not the most ideal situation. It was downright freezing in that house. We both had space heaters that we used for a little warmth, but night time in my small room was the only time it made a real difference. We continued this for the following year before giving up on it the third winter. I have no idea how I did that. I know that in my early 20’s it was something I was willing to try but now at 30 it would be unthinkable. On top of that my girlfriend and 9 month old son may not appreciate it too much. I don’t recommend anyone do this, but it was an experience. I guess for a couple of guys living together they could get away with it. I’ll tell you this, in a time that I had no money, it helped me out a whole lot.