One of the things that always scares me about ordering things over the Internet is having to pay for the shipping. Especially if there is a chance you may have to return the item and have to pay return shipping too! Many times you can get great deals over the Internet, but the bulk of the cost is the shipping and handling charges!
That’s why I really like to shop at Zappos. Especially for something that has to be tried on, like shoes or clothing. They pay for shipping, both ways! And they have a 365 day return period! There have been a few times when I’ve ordered something from Zappos and had to return it for a different size, and their shipping speed was fantastic! Their customer service cannot be beat. The return routine was very fast and easy. And to be honest, when I was doing some price comparison of items, their prices were right in line with other companies that were charging for shipping.
I’m afraid to tell my wife that I need a new pair of slippers. A couple of years ago she bought me a really nice, really expensive pair of slippers from LLBean. At the time she was working there and got a good discount on their merchandise, so she bought the whole family LLBean slippers for Christmas that year.
At first I didn’t wear them at all. I don’t know why, I think that I just tucked them into the closet and forgot about them – they probably got buried underneath something, but about a year ago I found them and decided to start wearing them. Well I spilled some soup on them a couple of months ago and made a huge mess of them. My wife told me to only spot-clean them, that they could not be machine washed. I insisted on putting them through the washer and dryer. My wife warned me that would ruin them, but I got all “manly” and insisted that they were fine.
Well, washing them DID ruin them, but I couldn’t admit it to my wife and let her know she was right. The inside lining is totally ruined and even though I’ve tried to remove the lining, I just can’t. They hurt my feet to wear them. So now I want a new pair just like them and I’m afraid to ask my wife to order another pair for me. I just don’t want to see her give me that “I told you so!” look.
For those of us who are not interested in investing in precious metals, or the stock market, there are some decent options close to home. You can invest in CDs or simply open a savings account, or an interest-bearing checking account. CD rates being offered by banks change frequently – sometimes it seems to me that the bank CD rates have changed from one day to the next, but to be perfectly honest I don’t check the rates every single day. I’ve just noticed when I do go into my bank that they have posted the best CD rates on a board for the customers to look at.
I’m sure that bank rates differ from one institution to another, so it is a great idea to compare bank CDs online. One website that offers these comparisons is the selectcdrates.com website. Along with offering quotes on rates from various states, the website also has a link to a tips section that has a lot of good advice on handling financial matters.
I’ve been trying to mentor some young people on job-hunting. I see how earnest they are, wanting to find work, and I try to help them out as much as I can. Whenever I hear of a job opening somewhere, I fill them in. I know that a lot of jobs are landed through social networking, and many jobs are not even advertised in any form. These folks have been looking for years, and are not on unemployment. It’s a miracle that they have not turned to crime.
I give them pep talks and help them work on their resume, and tell them I have confidence in them. It is so sad to see how hard they are working trying to find a job and they get turned away time and time again. It is very sad to see – they are disillusioned and discouraged. One of the things that upsets me is that these discouraged and disillusioned job-seekers are not even counted as part of the “unemployment figures” that the government releases. So when the government says that the economy is looking up because unemployment is down, that is just a lie. Very sad.
Are you a die hard football fan? Are you related to one? My father was a die hard football fan. He loved to watch the nfl Sunday football show on television every weekend. I’m sorry to say that he died before we found out about the nfl sunday ticket program through directtv. If you have directtv, you can get a great deal on their nfl sunday ticket schedule.
Don’t know what the nfl sunday ticket is? It is a package that allows you to watch up to 14 NFL games every Sunday throughout the football season just by paying their monthly nfl sunday ticket price. If we had this service when my father was still around, he would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven!
My 24 year old daughter needs an operation on her knee. She injured it while running. She runs a lot. She is a part time police officer, and running is part of her job. Because she is part time, she gets no benefits. That means no health insurance. This is not the type of injury that hits you immediately, it is something that creeps up on you over time. So we can’t prove that it was work-related and go with worker’s compensation.
She can’t work now because she can’t run. The operation is going to cost about $8500, which she can’t afford (and neither can we) because she isn’t working and has no health insurance. She can’t get a job now because of her injury, and she can’t get it fixed because she doesn’t have the money because she doesn’t have a job. Does this sound like a vicious cycle to you? Very frustrating. She’s looking for another job right now, but as I’m sure you well know the job market is pretty tough out there!
As I’m sure you can imagine, I sure would like to have a better system out there to help people like this!
Have you ever had to ship gifts across the country for a birthday or Christmas? The shipping expenses are often more than the cost of the gift itself! That’s why I’ve decided to give everyone that I have to ship gifts to a gift card instead of buying something that costs a lot to ship. I figured that way I can afford to give them the $30 to spend any way that they want instead of spending $10 on a gift and $20 on the shipping!
Maybe even cut out a picture from a magazine and include it with the card to tell them what to buy with the gift card, so they know that I had something specific picked out. And even customize the card with my smiling face on it so that they won’t just re-gift it to someone else!
My wife keeps telling me that she wants a new doorbell. She claims that she can’t hear it when someone rings it. I keep telling her that she can’t hear it because she is deaf. Well, three times this week the mailwoman has tried to deliver packages to the house and rang the bell. Everyone was home at the time, and no one heard the bell – not even the dogs. The dogs usually go wild when the doorbell goes off, and they didn’t even react. So I guess maybe I have to admit she’s right and just go get a new doorbell. I hate when that happens!
I’ve noticed that there seems to be some confusion among consumers about different types of credit services. There are many different types of services related to managing debt. There are debt management, credit repair, and debt consolidation to name a few. Many people don’t understand the differences between them. To be honest, sometimes I get confused too between them all too.
So if you are contacted by a company that offers you credit repair services and tell you that they can help you with bad credit repair, please be careful and make sure you understand exactly what services you will be getting for your money. Are they simply advising you to contact the credit agencies (or offering to contact the credit agencies on your behalf) to see if their reports are accurate and to tell them to remove any incorrect information? You can do that for free by yourself!
Are they offering to consolidate your debt by putting all of your debt and payments in one account? Sounds good – they offer to lower your monthly payments that way, but the credit experts are warning us that actually hurts your credit. And debt management – well I think that is where they try to get the credit card companies to accept less money than you owe them. The problem with that is you can’t use the credit cards anymore! And you have to come up with a large lump sum to pay off your lower debt balance, which many of us can’t do!
So, folks, be careful and make sure that you fully understand what it is you are getting into!
Don’t you just hate it when your car develops an intermittent problem? One of our cars has developed an intermittent problem with the tail and brake lights. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t! I’ve “fixed” them several times, only to have them stop working again, then working again, then not, repeatedly. I know that if I take it to the repair shop they will charge me at least $40 to tell me that they can’t fix an intermittent problem because it works fine when they test it. It’s enough to drive me crazy!
Sometimes I think my wife is extra paranoid about Home Security. She wants to keep all of the doors and windows locked at all times, whether we are home or not. I am not used to having the house locked up that tight because I grew up in an area where no one locked their house up - ever. But my wife grew up in an area where there were a lot of home intrusions and she gets frightened if she goes out and then comes home and finds that house empty and unlocked.
She has been telling me that she wants to invest in a Home Security Surveillance System. Especially now that her sisters and her mother have all bought Home Security Systems for their homes. I told her to start researching the different systems and get some information about features and prices, and then we’d sit down and talk about it. I don’t feel the need for one because I own a gun and know how to shoot very well. But my wife abhors guns and doesn’t want to learn to shoot, so for her peace of mind maybe we’ll get a system for her so that when she is home alone she will feel safer.
I am really sad to say that gone are the days when a man’s word was as good as his handshake. There have been too many times when I have put my trust in people who are my relatives, and supposedly good friends that when they borrow something from me that they will return it. It’s really sad to think that I cannot trust my own friends and relatives anymore! What makes it really sad is that I hate to say “no” to them when they come to me and ask me to borrow something. But weeks go by and when I ask for it back they sometimes claim that they never borrowed it!
My wife tells me that when they borrow something that I should have them put in writing that they are borrowing it and when they will return it. I hate to think that I have to do that with my own friends and family, but I think that it has come to that! And she says to tell them that if it isn’t returned by the “due date” that they can not borrow anything else until it IS returned. I hate to take that heavy-handed course, but I can’t afford to keep lending out things and never getting them back!
In our attempts to keep our electric bill as low as possible, we have been thinking about installing ceiling fans throughout the house. I’d like to have one in every room except for the bathrooms. Keeping the air circulating will allow us to raise the temperature on the thermostat but still be comfortable. And of course, using less electricity helps the environment! It might also help my wife’s dry skin problem I mentioned in my previous post – less air conditioning will lessen the dryness of the air.
Last month I installed two Hunter ceiling fans in our living room. I chose them because they have the reputation of being quiet, and I don’t want to have to turn up the television any higher to hear it over the noise of anything mechanical!
I’d also like to install a couple of outdoor Minka aire fans on our porch. Having the air moving out there while we are sitting outside would make the porch a much more pleasant spot to sit and socialize. Especially for my wife, who loves to sit outside and look at the flower bed and watch the dogs playing with each other.
I think that one of the most ironic things about summertime is the fact that it is so hot and humid outside that we run an air conditioner (and fans) day and night to help keep the house cooler so we are more comfortable. But the air conditioners do also act as dehumidifiers, so the air inside the house is so dry that we have to run humidifiers to keep our skin from drying out too much! My poor wife’s skin is so dry that her fingertips are cracked! I think we should buy stock in the hand-cream business! She sure has to use a lot of it!
A few years ago a friend of mine (Ed) decided to become a stock broker. I tried to be supportive and do my Stock Trading though him and the brokerage firm that he was working with. The only problem that I had with him was when I called him and told him that I wanted to buy stocks in certain companies he always tried to talk me out of what I wanted to buy and steer me towards what he thought was a better investment.
I got pushy and demanded that he buy the stocks that I wanted (and he did) and they made money. The stocks he recommended lost money (I kept track.) I came to the conclusion that I was better off with an Online Broker because that was not going to ruin my friendship Ed. Well, maybe it would if he found out! So I’ll just keep my Online Trading a secret from him as long as I can!
Today I took my wife to that tie-dye place that I went to yesterday. I wanted her to see the beautiful work there. She was absolutely enthralled with the stuff! She ordered a shirt for our youngest son for him to wear to school in his school colors. She and the store’s owner have become instant best friends. They chatted and chatted and chatted some more! By the time we left the store they had struck a bargain where my wife is going to do some custom sewing for the woman in exchange for a good deal on some of their items! Who knows, this might turn into a little side business! Wouldn’t that be funny!
I would really like to see some Celebrity Speakers start to speak out about how this country needs to get its act together and fix our country’s healthcare system. I think it is simply inexcusable for us to be allowing our legal, law-abiding taxpaying citizens die horrible deaths simply because they can’t afford the healthcare that they need.
I would love to be hearing about large conventions and meetings with Keynote Speakers that are focused on getting the job done. I would really like it if they had the info right there to answer any questions and assuage their doubts. I’m getting really tired of hearing so many people trying to use scare tactics against improving our healthcare system. We need to take action; there are too many people out there that need help and can’t wait much longer for us to do the right thing. And I’ve noticed that more often than not, getting celebrities involved in causes helps those causes to succeed.
Yesterday I decided to stop by a store that I’ve been wanting to go to for a long time. I don’t know why I never stopped there before; just never seemed to find the time. But yesterday I was driving past and I knew I had a few minutes to spare so I decided to pull in. There was an elderly woman sitting at a picnic bench right outside the front door, folding T-shirts. I decided to just sit down beside her and chat. I don’t know why, I just did!
So we sat there chatting, her folding her T-shirts, me just enjoying the nice weather and the conversation. The talk turned to family, and the passings of loved ones. Seems she lost her hubby about three years ago to cancer. He had been sick for months and ran up huge hospital bills. She’s convinced that if they had been able to afford health insurance to help with his fight against cancer, he would still be alive today. That is such a very sad story. Certainly one that makes me wish that this country took better care of the health needs of its citizens.
Jerry sent me the link to a blog called Online Siesta that he suggested that I read. I found it interesting because it is a blog about how to make money with blogs! It is full of great tips on how to make money with your blog. As I’m reading the blog I see that it is written by the Vice President of Infolinks.com, which sells in-text link advertising. Apparently the way bloggers make money with this is similar to other programs where the blogger puts in hypertext links that generate revenue when the reader clicks on the link.
That seems like it is a good way to make money, assuming that the reader actually clicks on the link. As for me, when I’m reading someone else’s blog I really can’t say that I click very often on the links. I wonder how many other people actually click on them? I really enjoyed reading the post about the 10 top reasons to NOT use in text advertising – it obviously is sprinkled with sardonic humor that I get a kick out of!
Ever since I can recall, my wife has been very anti-gun. She has been vocal about how much she feels uncomfortable having my guns in the house. She’s says she’s afraid that if someone breaks into the house and finds them that they will use the guns against her. Yesterday I went out to run a few errands, and when I got home she surprised me by telling me that she wants to learn how to shoot my .25! It seems that a couple of strangers came driving up our long driveway and it scared her pretty badly. So now she wants me to take her to the shooting range and show her how to handle a gun – just in case she ever needs to use it. I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder how she’ll take to the gun! She’s been so vocal against it in the past. It will be interesting – that is for sure!
Computers and/or Internet, General life, Shopping | Dean | 
July 31, 2009 4:14 pm | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe