Category — bumblefucked rants

I’m selling off clutter on eBay. People are buying it. Yay!

But some of them bid and do not pay.

I had an auction end on June 29th for $21.50. The buyer said they would pay by the end of the week. Today I got this gem of an email:

due to situations i will not be able to have the money until friday the 18th. please let me know if that is ok. Thank you

Um, no, that is not okay! Why are you bidding on things that you do not have the money to pay for? And why do you expect someone to hold something for you until you can find said money? Argh!

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are a couple of business school professors that did a little study on splurging that yielded results I find a bit surprising.

It seems that they have concluded that splurging on a purchase is good for your health. They even go so far as to say that it makes you happier later. And that not splurging now gives you feelings of regret later.

You know what gives me feelings of regret? Years of splurging that led to the massive debt you see in the sidebar.

So, I have to wonder – did the credit card industry fund this little study? Just saying.

I bought something on Amazon on May 27th. I got an email that they were having problems with the credit card I used (which had a zero balance) so I asked them to try again. It still did not work so I switched cards. That solved the problem. The item shipped on May 28th.

Fast forward to today. More than a month later.  The item showed up on my credit card statement. However, the full amount is also still listed as “pending charges.”

I emailed Amazon and asked them to stop holding the amount as the item was paid for and shipped. Amazon tells me that they are not holding it, but that the credit card company is. So, I log into the Chase online account and see the customer service secure message center. I email them, tell the the situation and how the more than 30 day hold is unacceptable and ask for it to be removed.

I get this response:

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

In order to assist you with your inquiry we must speak to you directly. Please call our Customer Service at the number listed below. We are available to assist you 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If you have any further questions, please reply using the Secure Message Center.

Wow, how very helpful. It really should not be this difficult to remove a hold. Seriously.

I have a Capital One card. I paid it off a few months ago. Ever since I have been getting little emails from Capital One. Apparently they miss me.

They miss me so much that they want me to finance a car so that we can rekindle our relationship. Every month I get an email that reads:

Wouldn’t it be nice to shop for your next car with your financing already in hand? With Capital One Auto Finance® you can head to the dealer and shop like a cash buyer. That way, you can focus on the important things—gas mileage, color, extras, etc. Complete our easy, no-hassle online application today.

And it is complete with the attractive model with car keys in hand, looking very joyful.

Little do they know that I plan on never financing a car ever again. Muah hahahaha.

One of the bad things about being in hella debt is that a lot of your decisions are pretty much made for you. Housing is the primary one. It is sure difficult to save up a down payment for a home and qualify for a mortgage when you owe loads of money and are having to pay out a buttload of your income each month.

And that means renting. Blech.

In my experience, renting an apartment is cheaper than renting a house or a condo or whatever. The unfortunate side effect of this is living in close proximity to other idiots. I am usually reminded of this when my apartment starts smelling like cigarette smoke from the neighbors. Or when I go to leave my 3rd floor apartment but a neighbor is grooming their large dog on the stairs.

Tonight, I am really hating the debt thanks to the people that live below me. Now, in all fairness, I have assumed that they were geriatric and hard of hearing for some time now as there is always a lot of noise from the tv/stereo. Today though I hit my limit with their noise when the floor was vibrating from their loud music. After going into the living room I was unsure if it was coming from below or across the way so I opened up the door. The smell of grilled burgers caught my nose and I realized that some idiot was outside grilling and had turned up their stereo. (Apparently they are not aware that portable stereos are in fact still manufactured.)

So, I decide that I will go ask them nicely to turn the volume down and if they do not that I will call the police. Call me naive, but I expected to find them on the 2nd floor. Oh no. These Einsteins were on the ground floor with their grill and patio chairs and had their 2nd floor apt door open (right below me) with their stereo cranked up.

I asked if they could turn the volume down a bit as it was loud. Actually I had to kind of yell that. The girl yelled back, “Oh, is it loud? Can you hear it up there?” And I was like “Uh, yeah, it’s making my floors vibrate.” Then she asked her boyfriend/husband to go adjust the volume. He glared at me and I went back up.

He did lower the volume a tad. However, it was still loud. I did not call the cops though. I suspect once their food is done that they will actually eat inside and then lower the volume to their normal loud but bearable level. And almost as bad as the noise is that these two people are breeding. There was a small child with them and the woman was very pregnant. Oy vey.

So, now it is not just about getting out of debt. It is about getting out of apartments and away from other people.

There is a whole lotta coffee drinking in this house. We have two coffee makers. Mostly that is because I do not like it when my coffee tastes like coffee so I only drink the flavored kind. Riley, on the other hand, would probably throw a bunch of coffee beans in a cheek in a pinch. She can even drink nasty work coffee.

When we moved about a year and a half ago we got two shiny, new coffee pots. They were the same model and they were Black & Decker. They did not even last a year before malfunctioning. Mine broke first. Apparently, this is a theme that you will soon notice. So, when it broke I went out in search of a new coffee maker at Wal-Mart. Either I am a complete douche or just was not thinking as I bought another Black & Decker coffee maker. I ended up keeping it because what are the chances that it would malfunction too?

About a month later was when Riley’s coffee maker died. She was smarter than me and got a nice Mr. Coffee one.

And today, about six to nine months after replacing the first Black & Decker coffee maker I had to replace the second one. You see, the second one had a malfunction as well.

Today though I knew better than to get suckered by a Black & Decker coffee maker. I looked longingly at the $79 Kitchen Aid one and the $59 Hamilton Beach one. Then I bought a cheapie $14.99 Proctor Silex one. And hopefully it is not made by Black & Decker.

In the past year and a half we have spent $100 on coffee makers. I should have just got a nice expensive one to begin with.

PS – Don’t buy Black & Decker coffee makers!

Student loans bite. Specifically those blasted private loans that I got suckered into at the University of Central Florida. Oh yes, I am calling you out Financial Aid Office People at UCF. Argh!

If you do not have any private student loans, let me share the pain of them with you for a moment. Private student loans have a variable interest rate. Private student loans do not come with that whole ability to defer them like you can with regular student loans. If you want to defer your private student loans for any reason (job loss, attending school again, etc) you have to cough up $150 for the deferment. You also cannot consolidate private student loans without going through this whole process of applying for a new loan where you get a hard pull on your credit report and so on. And you are not guaranteed that you will get the consolidation as it is based on creditworthiness.

I can think of only two pluses to private student loans. One, if you declare bankruptcy you can declare these unlike regular student loans. Two, thanks to the Fed lowering the rate I have seen a rate decrease on these loans.

I currently have a total of 5 private loans with Sallie Mae. And the average interest rate is 7.8% right now. And that total amount is currently around $31,500. That sad thing is looking at each of those loans and seeing that I owe more than the original loan! The smallest loan has a balance of $3,437 but the original balance was $2,000.

It gets worse though. When I look at my payment plan it shows that I will end up paying something like $40,000 in interest by the time I get them paid off. My payment plan has them paid off in October of 2028.

Wow, that means that I will be 51 years old when my student loans are paid off. If that is not sad, then I do not know what is.

My car insurance is up for renewal in June. I was thinking about this the other day and wondered if I had ever gotten around to changing the mailing address when we moved in February. I had not, so I completed a little address change online. This simple task cost me about $75.00.

Here is an email I just got:

Thank you for visiting the Allstate Customer Care Site. Your request to change your address has been processed effective 05/06/2008. Please allow 2-3 days for the change to reflect on your policy. As a result of this change and new rates in effect, your policy premium has increased by $74.12. The adjusted policy premium is $500.46.

Uh, wow. That sucks. I am wondering if they would let me change it back, even though I don’t live at that address any more?

I do not really know much about car insurance or the insurance industry in general. I do know that they tie your rate to your credit, which makes no sense whatsoever and I can’t believe people haven’t raised a stink about it. I also know that my credit score has went up considerably in the past 6 months. I also know that changing your address can make your premium change. I suspect it has something to do with the number of claims filed in your zip code or something. However, I have never had this much of an increase when changing addresses. And I would have thought that the credit score increase might have evened things out somewhat.

You know, I don’t like driving this much.  I don’t like my car. I don’t like the price of gas. I don’t like the price of maintenance and I don’t like this insurance increase or the price of insurance to begin with.

I am pretty stoked about the so-called economic stimulus checks. I have no plans to stimulate the economy though. I plan on using it to pay down a little debt.

So, when I read that the checks were coming early I got excited. You see, my last two digits are “06″ and this week they were sending out money for “00″ to “20″ so I was expecting that money early in the week.

Yesterday it still had not shown up in my account. I was getting nervous here.

Luckily there is a toll-free IRS stimulus check status hotline that you can call for updates. All you need to do is call 1-866-234-2942. Enter in a small amount info (your social, your filing status and your exemptions) and then it tells you when your check is to be deposited.

I called it last night and it said my stimulus check is being deposited today.

I just checked my account – score! It’s there!

So, if your economic stimulus check is MIA, just call 1-866-234-2942 before getting all worried like I did.

One you get it, get some cheap travel tips from Vagabond Traveller and take that money on vacation!

Advert:

Avoid foreclosure with a short sale. What Is A Short Sale?

We live in an apartment. It is not a particularly nice apartment, but it is not a dump. The people across from us smoke. And that’s fine – if they want to do something stupid even though they have 2 small kids then that is their own thing. However, it becomes my thing when I can’t leave my apartment without walking through a cloud of smoke. You see, apparently they are in on the little secret that smoking is stinky and clearly they do not want to do it inside of their apartment. So, they do it outside where we all get to enjoy it. I’m so glad, as I never would have found the time to give myself lung cancer.

We also have smokers that live beside us. Our front doors are pretty far apart so you would not think their nasty habit would have much of an effect on us. Ha! These people apparently like to smoke in their bathroom, which is just great since our bathrooms are basically connected by the little fan in the ceiling. When we shower, we usually turn on that little fan to prevent the mold & mildew buildup in the shower. Since these people moved in, turning on the fan seems to just suck the smoke into the apartment. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering that the fan is supposed to be sucking air out. So, now we have to choose between cigarette smoke or mold & mildew. Of course, sometimes it does not matter. Sometimes you can just walk into the bathroom and be knocked over by the smell of cheap cigarette smoke. I love those moments. In fact, I just experienced one of them.

Renting an apartment might be a great choice financially, but it sure does suck sometimes.