moneytalks

I’m a huge NBA fan. The Cavs are my team seeing as how I’m from Cleveland. Being a Cavs fan I hear a lot about 2010, that is the year that Lebron James becomes a free agent and he is supposedly going to New York to play ball in the biggest market in the country. Of course he wants to play there, it’s New York City and this is only Cleveland Ohio. Of course a big star would only play in a major market. I think it is more like this, “of course the NBA would only want their biggest star in their biggest money making cities”.

When the referee was caught for fixing games it came as no shock to me. I’ve claimed that the game was fixed for quite a while now so I was more shocked that they are claiming that only one ref was fixing games. David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, has made a point to give the big markets special treatment.

L.A., New York, Chicago, Boston and New Jersey seem to be the teams that are getting the big pushes. Meanwhile teams like Memphis and Philly, Charlotte and OKC are struggling to sell out half the arena. Only caring about the cities that have multi million person populations gives the heart of the league, the small markets, the short end of the stick. The fans AKA the ones who give the players, owners and league all that money are the ones suffering. The Spurs winning all those championships was the worst nightmare for Stern considering that they only play in San Antonio. Boston and the Lakers in last years finals was the dream but that dream will be for not if all the smaller market teams fold. My advise to Stern is to quit having your refs cheat for all the big city teams and try embracing the T-Wolfs and the Cavs. Try embracing all those teams and encouraging big name players to play and stay in those cities or else you’ll be watching a basketball league that only has 4 teams in it.

It is quickly approaching, the day all retailers wait for all year long. It is known to them and to most as black Friday. It is known as black Friday because, as most of you already know, it is when most stores go from the red and into the black. The busiest shopping day of the year, the day people line up outside of Best Buy at 5 0′clock the day before in order to get that mega deal. I’ve been checking out the black Friday websites to see what there is to see and there are quite a few good deals out there this year. A nice central location to find deals at all the stores is bfads.net, I tend to like this one the best out of all your options. This year I’ve seen a lot of things that caught my eye from Blu-Ray disk players for just over a hundred dollars to 1080P TVs for under a grand with some nice laptops and digital cameras thrown into the mix. Honestly, unless you’re willing to spend half a day and a full night in the cold you won’t see any of these great deals, but there are still sales that day. Your best bet is to probably stay home and wait out the large crowds.

That is right, I said that there is no such thing as the once beloved Payless shoe store. That wonderful place that you could go for a cheap pair of shoes. One of the best places for non leather dress shoes for us vegans who wear no leather. The place was probably the holy grail to mothers who needed to put shoes on the feet of their children without breaking the bank.

 Well, to carry on with the wonderful tradition of saving money of footwear myself the little lady and the baby headed out to a local mall and went straight for where the Payless once was. When we got there there we saw that yellow sign everybody is used to seeing. We saw the brightly lit store that had rows of shoes sorted by size. One row being men’s and the rest of the store being overtaken by the women’s. Anyways we walked in and found that although some store has stolen the name Payless shoes, the idea of paying less for shoes is long gone. The boots I ended up buying were nearly $50! Now I’m well aware that there are some boots in Macy’s and other high end stores that are up near a couple hundred dollars. So comparing the two leaves you loving the 50 bucks you have to spend. But compared to the old days when you didn’t have to spend over 20 or 30 dollars leaves you wondering where the real Payless shoe store has gone.

I just got an email offering a nice online savings account with E Trade. This deal is not the big money deal like the $150 National City offer but this is solid and requires almost nothing to qualify. It is quite simple, click here to apply for a new E Trade account funded by new money and you’re in. The money will be added to your account within 30 days. On top of this they have an interest rate of 3.30% which is 8X the national average.

As I often point out, a lot of bank deals have some kind of catch that makes them undesirable unless you are going to fully commit to a new bank. With this you can deposit a dollar and get your money. But to be honest the interest you’d earn is more than you could earn with most CD rates now a days, so making this a primary savings account is not a bad idea. Good offer, I suggest taking full advantage of this one.

We’ve all seen those commercials, you know the ones about how much car repairs are. The ones that scare you into thinking that a new transmission will cost you right around $3,000 and that the average car repair will cost well over a grand. These commercials are there to sell you these extended warranties for when your car takes that inevitable slow ride to the median of the freeway.

Before you pick up your I-Phone or jump on your laptop to buy one of these policies that are going to save you thousands here are a few tips and suggestions for you to think about. First thing make sure that the warranty does not have a deductible or if it does make sure it is not for each part. That’s right some of these warranties charge you for every single part that is replaced on your car. Next, make sure there is a 100% back guarantee within 30 to 60 days as long as no claims have been made. Make sure it is transferable if or when you sell your car. Look for the ones that have towing, rentals and other extra amenities.

These are just a few things to look for if you do indeed find that one of these warranties are for you. I’ve yet to make up my mind about them. Whether they are worth it or not is up to you to decide but hopefully these hints give you something to look at if you make the choice to look into one.

At one time not too long ago CD rates made it worth while to invest in one. Then as we all know the failing economy and bank failures made those interest rates drop like a rock. With news of the bailout and other things we did see a brief increase in interest rates. But when I say brief I really mean brief. We’ve now seen the bottom drop out with a 5 year rate averaging out at 3.90% which means you could find basic savings accounts and money markets where your money is at least liquid not tied up for months or years. There are really no good investment roads to take right now so we are in a vulnerable time. Hopefully the change of the tide in our government will start to see a turn for the everyday person. Perhaps the future is brighter but we may have to wait a minute for it to brighten up.

The day and age of cutting out coupons from the Sunday paper are a thing of the past. Well not completely but they sure are not the only game in town when it comes to money saving coupons. Many websites with printable coupons have arisen the past few years. To be honest I’ve never used one of these but I’ve heard some good things about them.

Coupon Cabin is one site that I’ve seen printable coupons or coupons for online shopping. Target, Dicks sporting goods, Overstock.com are just a few of the stores you’ll find that some sort of savings are offered. In the cyber age why should we be surprised that the an age old tradition of sitting at the kitchen table with the Sunday paper and a pair of scissors is done away with by clicking and printing.

Every time I turn around I see these online, hole in the wall or unestablished banks offering up lousy bonuses for big commitment. The latest one I’ve seen was a “deal” with E-Loan where they offered up 25 bucks just for opening a savings account. Not bad–at least at first glance. As I’ve said a million times people are short on money these days so banks offers of free money are usually pretty good. Even if it is only $25.

Anyways, second glance takes you a bit deeper. Minimum of $100 must be deposited each month for 90 days. OK, I must tie my money up for 3 months and keep giving them more money. Starts to sound a little bit worst but not horrible quite yet. Then you keep reading and the real kicker comes in, $5,000 minimum opening balance required! Are you kidding me? Three months of 5K being gone to some unknown online bank plus they want me to continue giving them money each month and on top of that they give themselves a little loop hole to possibly get out of the whole thing. A promo code is needed. So if you just so happen to fall for this horrible offer, sign up and just so happen to forget something as little as a promotion code it voids the whole things. I’d rather keep my 5 grand under my mattress.

So now it is coming out that National City bank was in trouble far deeper than they let the general public know. It turns out that NCB was begging as many as three banks to buy them out over the past couple of months. One of them being PNC, another being U.S. Bank, the other one I’m not sure of. US bank were the only ones offering up any bids but the deal was not looked highly upon by the government. On the 11th hour PNC stepped up with an offer that was not matched by US bank. Reports claim that government officials have been checking the books of National City as many times as once a day. The bank was on the verge of being forced into bankruptcy if no buyers came forth. Nearly all of the depositors holding more than the FDIC insured $100,000 pulled their money and businesses were refusing to do business with them. And those who were still doing business with them were only doing the most basic dealings but not without collateral. Just goes to show how little these corporate giants let out to the public when the problems are going on.

Money is a concern of most of us, but a lot of us have charities and issues that we tend to care about. Caring about some issues tends to lead us towards donating money to organizations that work towards our own goals. Personally animal rights is my biggest cause. I’m not big on donating because of the fact that I’ve run my own animal rights groups since the age of 16. (Now I’m 30) In the past I have been the one in need of donations. Anyways, most of us have that yearly check that we like to write. But what are we to do when we hardly have enough money to get ourselves through the week? Is the little bit we have that may be “extra” owed to those who may need it more than us? Does that homeless group need that money more than we need a night out with our friends? You may notice a lot of question marks in this blog, that’s simply because I don’t have the answers. This blog is more of a question than anything.

The fact of the matter is that nobody can tell somebody else what is appropriate to do. We all have to judge what is our limit and what is the right thing to do in our own lives. Do these organizations need us all to do our part? Of course they do. But we do nobody any good if we can’t even take care of ourselves.