Jasper Jones

So the Senate passes a bail out bill with tons of pork attached and sends it over to the House of Representatives. After several days of politicking and behind the scenes deals, the House met on Friday and passes the bail out bill. It was hand carried over to Presidnet Bush who signed it immediately.

The big whigs on Wall Street must be partying their asses off this weekend. I know that the executives at AIG all went to a 5 star resort to celebrate their Government bail out gift. This whole thing makes me so disgusted I can’t even speak.

Not that I pay much attention to the stock market, but the news all last week was about how dire the economy is, with a huge bailout requested by President Bush for Wall Street.

The housing market has been in trouble for almost a year now and now insurance companies and banks are in trouble.

The talking heads on the news channels have been declaring this an economic emergency and insisting that Congress needs to take taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street. Well, I don’t think that is the best solution to this situation and it is nothing more than the consequences of Bush’s faulty and failed economic policies these past 8 years. To come from an economic surplus that was left by the Clinton administration to the dire situation we are in now is more than just egg on the face of the President.

Sure enough the expected vote in Congress did not happen today. The bailout was voted down in the House of Representatives. And the Dow closed down almost 800 points today. Should not have been a surprise to these people.

Checking out at Wal-Mart, I was among dozens of other shoppers with carts loaded up and anxious to pay for their purchases so they could get home or on their way. I used my charge card to pay for the basket full of odds and ends, and I realized that I probably spent a little more freely knowing that I would be paying with my charge card. If I had needed to use cash, I doubt I would have bought as many things. I tend to be more frugal with my cash, I don’t carry much and don’t like to spend it unless I have to. In fact, if the store doesn’t accept credit cards, I probably won’t even shop there unless they are the sole provider of that product or service and I have no choice in the matter.

Kelly was telling me more about her dad and how he has been building this personal portfolio of investment real estate. He started out with a lump sum when she just was a little girl and her grandfather passed away. Her dad inherited enough money to pay off his own house and have some left to invest into a vacation condo down in Florida.

They got in touch with a real estate broker at Bardell Real Estate who helped them buy a condo near Disney World in Orlando, and every summer her dad would take the family to Orlando for a 2 week vacation. They stayed in their own condo, basically for free, and the rest of the year he rented out the condo to other people who were coming to Orlando to visit Disney World or Universal Studios. Because of Florida’s nice weather, the Orlando area has lots of tourists, pretty much year round. The Bardell Real Estate brokers specialize in helping investors buy villas and other properties in the Orlando area.

After a few years her dad decided to get something bigger and they bought a nice villa in Orlando. He decided that buying property in Florida was lucrative, so then they bought another villa. Now he owns 4 rentals in Orlando and also the condo in Chattanooga. The money he gets from renting them out more than pays for the mortgages.

I really like that idea of buying real estate as you can afford it and building a portfolio. It sounds like the perfect way to build a solid future and also have someplace to go and stay for free when you want to take the family on vacation.

This morning I went to print out the homework for my English class and as soon as I hit the print button a little gray dialogue box popped up and says “You are almost out of ink.” Well, that’s just great. We’ve only been using this printer for maybe 6 weeks and not really doing much printing and I’m already getting a message that we are almost out.

Well, at least we got a warning. It used to be that you just ran out and wouldn’t even know it until you picked up the stack of papers in your report and thumbed through them when you noticed that the printed pages started fading and then disappeared, so all you had was half a pile of blank sheets of paper. Don’t try turning those in for a grade, folks.

With our college student budget, Alex and I are going to have to save money on things like new printer cartridges. We can’t just run down to the drug store and buy brand name ink cartridges and pay top dollar for the privilege of a brand name on the box. What we do is buy compatible cartridges and save about 30% off the cost of a new brand name cartridge.

The best way I’ve found to save money buying compatible inkjet printer suppliesis get online and use the web site called inkjetdeals.info to find a place that sells compatibles for your printer model, like our Epson.

There are brick and mortar stores that carry the different brands and there are online stores, too. If you have time to order your cartridge online and wait just a couple days for it to come in the mail, that’s usually the best way to go for the maximum savings.

But if you are totally out and desperately need to buy an inkjet cartridge to use immediately, sometimes this site has coupons and discount codes you can use at local stores, like BestBuy.

The guys are pretty much broke but not in desperate straights. We just are very frugal with the cash that we have and are always looking for ways to get more money. So we were hanging out at the softball game last night and talking about ways we might raise some extra cash for Christmas.

Alex has a girl now. Her idea is to open a kiosk at the mall and sell gift items for the Christmas selling season. I don’t know what kind of gift items will sell around here. But she’s very insistent that we can make some good money if we all go in together and take turns manning the cash register for the 3 months.

Even though I’m working the night shift at the hospital I might have an extra day here and there to help out. But to be honest I think this is more for Alex and his girl to handle. I can handle some of the background effort, like finding wholesalers and arranging for credit card processing and things like that.

I firmly believe that if you are selling a retail product that you must accept credit cards in today’s world. Most people don’t carry much cash any more - they use either credit cards or debit cards to pay for things at the store. In fact, the only cash I spend is at the fast food places. Most places I go take my credit cards without blinking an eye, and if they didn’t take plastic then I probably wouldn’t be shopping there.

Alex’s dad is an engineer and when the bridge collapsed up in Minneapolis several months ago, he was called in by the Feds to do some consulting work on the bridge repair. He’s an environmental engineer, and to be honest I don’t really know what he does or what it has to do with the environment. Neither does Alex. LOL!

Anyway, his Dad really like Minnesota and has been calling here encouraging Alex to come up to Minneapolis on our next break and spend some time with him up north. He’s even told us about the local newspaper, the Star Tribune, and how it has lots of listings for Minneapolis jobs.

He says there are a lot of companies hiring in Minnesota and that Alex can write his own ticket after he graduates. Of course, Alex should go on up north and check out the area before he takes any career advice and moves up there. Plus, graduation is still eight months away. But we are getting a lot of mail from recruiters and it’s never too early to make your plans for after graduation. Hell, maybe I should check out the job listings and go up north for a visit with Alex - we might both find something.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock these past couple of days - what with school and working at the hospital. But I had no idea that we were having a gas shortage around here. I went to get gas after class and pick up a 24 pack of Pepsi. But when I pulled up to the pump there were plastic grocery bags over all the handles. So I went into the store and asked what’s up, and the clerk tells me that because of Hurricane Ike that all the gas stations are out of gas. All the BPS are out of gas, some of the Shells are out and a couple of the Exxons have mid grade and premium gas - but they are sold out of regular.

I hadn’t even noticed but station that have taken out the numbers from their signs that post the price per gallon are signaling that they are out of gas. If there’s no numbers on the sign - drive on by.

Well, it’s going to be pretty tough to get to the hospital from here if I can’t find some gas.

College kids are constantly bombarded with offers of credit and loans. Let’s face it, these are the people most likely to need a little boost with money. If taking a heavy course load, most student can only deal with a part time job at minimum wage to keep some spending money coming in. It’s a time of great sacrifice and limitation for a lot of people, but unfortunately, life happens and sometimes we need to raise cash quick to take care of unplanned expenses.

One solution to covering small emergencies is to take out a short term personal loan. An easy way to apply for Personal Loans is to use the internet to apply for the loan. But kids need to use this resource sparingly and responsibly. There’s no sense getting off to a bad start with a lot of debt right out of college, but if you need help to get through this difficult time, its good to know what resources are available to you and sometimes a short term personal loan is really the best solution to the problem.

According to Consumer Reports Magazine, if you are thinking about buying a new car this year you should factor in a number of costs above and beyond the sticker price of the car, such as

• the loan interest rate,
• depreciation,
• fuel economy and
• typical maintenance and repair expenses.

The average car’s maintenance and repairs should run about 4 per cent of the total cost of the car over a five year. Using this method, the magazine released their picks for the top 10 most expensive cars for maintenance and the 10 least expensive cars to maintain. Interesting list and even more interesting is that my car is not on either list.