Friday, August 31, 2001
It's Bill Time!
It's bill time around here. The once a month ritual of going through the accumulated snail mail, tossing all the junk, and writing checks. I'm lucky in that all the bills are due around the same time, so I attempt to do this around the third week of the month, but usually it ends up being about the last day or so.
They (and although I'm not sure who they are, I suspect it's the same group of people who are classified as being experts) say that once you hit thirty, you are set in your ways, and being 32, I'm definitely set in my ways, and one of those ways is procrastination.
It'll be hard to change.
“Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night … ”
Going through the pile of snail mail I find that my mortgage company never received my last payment. In the seven years I've been sending in my mortgage payment (to three different companies; curse those corporate mergers!), I've never had one lost on me, until now.
And here I thought that U. S. mail was sacrosinct—that it would always arrive and never be lost. That the U. S. Postal carrier would keep his appointed rounds through rain, snow or dead of night.
Time to update my answering machine message
Another annoying piece of news I received in snail mail is the new Florida area code of 754, which is overlaying the area code of 954 in which I live.
What this means is that any number I now get can be in one of five (5!) area codes—786, 305 (both Dade County, aka Miami), 954, 754 (both Broward County, aka Ft. Lauderdale) and 561 (Palm Beach County, aka West Palm Beach, dahlink!). The area code of my current numbers isn't changing—it's just any new numbers assigned get assigned to the 754 area code.
And if that weren't bad enough, it now means I have to dial 10 digits for most numbers, except those in north Broward and south Palm Beach, until April of 2002. Then all calls to Broward will require 10 digit dialing.
Charges
Another bit of annoying news from my phone bill: the FCC Charge for Network Access! It's $5.00 for the first line, then $6.95 for each additional line.
Excuse me?
Is this to disuade people from having multiple lines? Usually, additional items are cheaper, but I guess in this case the local ILEC had enough political clout with the FCC to charge more for additional lines.
“I want to own nothing, but control everything.”
And yet one more annoying item from todays phone bill. This time it's “Pay by Mouse! And Save a Tree!”
It's not that I'm against saving trees, but I'm noticing a very disturbing trend towards paperless currency. Direct deposit, direct billing, credit cards, even the toll roads now have transponders so you no longer have to stop and toss a few coins into a basket or towards the toll collectors. Every month I get bulletins and news slips extolling the virtues of never having to deal with checks again! Never have to lick those nasty stamps! And heaven forbid your check is lost in the mail!
I want to own nothing, but control everything.
—John D. Rockefeller
I suppose it's a form of Ludditism in me, but I'm comfortable with cash. It's anonymous, and at least it's still tangable, even if it is back only by the full faith in the United States Government.
I've had this conversation with a previous roommate many years ago, and it revolved around my fantasy of buying a car outright with cash (that I was actually able to fulfill two years ago) and that was a very stupid thing to do. It is, if you are filthy rich. If, on the other hand, you're in the lower income brackets or, like me, just really dislike car payments, then paying cash is still the best thing.
But why, if a person could easily afford it, not buy a car (or a house, or, well, anything)? Because that would mean they lose that money! For instance, if you have a spare $40,000.00 laying around (and come on, we all have that problem) then you can easily afford a nice Corvette. But but it outright, and you are out the $40.000.00 in cash you had. But instead, put down about $5,000.00, get the rest on a loan. And since you're obviously wealthy, you get a nice rate, say 7%. Take the $35,000.00 you didn't spend, and if you invest it you can get a rather conservative 20% return on that over the period of your car loan. You end up with one Corvette and $4,550.00 at the end of the car loan, instead of just a Corvette.
Okay, that $4,550.00 will probably be eaten up by insurance costs, but you get the idea. The money that otherwise would have been spent is instead invested and thus the rich get richer. Sweet deal if you can swing it.
One other aspect the very rich do (if they're smart) is to hand all their assets over to a trust, which they run. Any money they give to such a trust is tax deductable, and if you give enough of your income over to the trust, your personal tax liability goes down to nothing! Now, the trust may have to pay taxes, but the trust can do things to decrease its tax liability through business expenses and since you run the trust itself, you give half your income to it, then draw an income from it, and buy everything through the trust and write it off …
Hey, it worked for Nelson Rockefeller, who not only legally didn't have to pay taxes, but was also the unelected Vice President of the United States.
50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can't be wrong.
You know, there's something endearing about a celebrity who runs his own website. And no, he's not bitter.
