According to the National Association of Realtors, Florida had some nice gains in real estate values between the fourth quarter of 2003 and the fourth quarter of 2004, but Las Vegas, Nevada is on top.
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Housing Market Update
There’s been a story in the news lately about an individual who worked for Google and was fired for having a blog. I think what a lot of people seem to misunderstand is that it’s not the fact that he had a blog that got him fired, it was the fact that conducted himself inappropriately publicly, in relation to his job. Lots of Google employees, and employees of other companies, have blogs. However, if you don’t adhere to your company’s code of conduct, you can be fired whether the offending material is in a blog or published in a newspaper in the form of a letter to the editor.
Mark Jen was critical of his employer right off the bat, complaining about his compensation compared to his previous employer among other things. It’s best to remain anonymous and speak in general terms, but even then you may not be completely safe. Just stick to the rules that you agreed to when you were hired or find another job.
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I noticed today that the bank where I hold my checking and one savings account, Wachovia, charged me a service fee of $15. Regular readers may remember that the discount brokerage department of the same corporation charged me a yearly fee last November, but this time the situation was different. According to their rules, I shouldn’t be charged a monthly low balance fee since I also hold (but don’t use) a credit card with them.
I called to find out if there was something I missed. At first the customer service representative, Mark, told me I did not meet the criteria to avoid the monthly fee. I maintained that I had the latest criteria on the computer screen in front of me, displaying the company’s web site, and I did in fact meet the criteria.
He disappeared to check with someone and he discovered that he was reading an old version of the rules. Mark gladly credited the $15 back into the account and “linked” my account to the new rules so I wouldn’t be charged again.
Thanks, Mark! I wonder how many people throughout the world lose money they don’t even know about because they are getting charged service fees when they should not be.
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Have a lot of time on your hands? Spend it perusing through the image gallery of paper currency. Many different countries are represented by photographs or scans of various bank notes. I don’t suggest printing any of the images on glossy paper to take with you for use when traveling to the represented location.
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I changed the contribution rate to my 401(k) today. Previously 12% of my pretax income was being diverted to the 401(k) despite only 4% of my income being matched by the employer. I reduced the rate from 12% to 4% so I could still get the complete company match while allowing me more cash. This should help my cash savings which has not been growing as much as I want.
I would have made this change earlier, but since I have access to “insider information,” I’m only allowed to change certain contributions to my 401(k) during special “trading windows.”
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Selena Maranjian from The Motley Fool writes about credit card rates going up in an article aptly titled, How to Owe $40,000 by Doing Nothing.
She includes tables showing just how damaging having a 40% APR on your credit can be. That’s a pretty high rate, and apparently it’s a more common penalty rate for those people who don’t keep up with payments.
Update: Well honestly, I was overwhelmed reading about credit cards with a 40% interest rate. Tonight I came across a news article about a new British credit card with rates between 50% and 70%. The article implies that the extra income the credit card company acquires from these fees go to the upper executives in the form of salary and pension.
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An ever-growing body of research shows that most of us adapt quickly to improvements in our finances; we simply learn to covet a higher class of goods. But the happiness-inducing qualities of a solid marriage last and last.
That’s a quotation from this special report from CNN Money. The summary is simple: If you want to be happy, get married and don’t worry about getting rich.
I’d like to have both, please, but I do agree with the article — if I had to choose one, I would choose being in lifelong love. What’s the point of having an enormous amount of money if you can’t share the moments with someone?
The article concludes with good words of wisdom: A seemingly overpriced Valentine’s Day bouquet may be a better long-term investment than anything a hot stock picker can come up with. This is a personal topic and I’m sure there are many people out there who would disagree.
In other news, more people are meeting their mate at work. I’m certainly a single working more and more late hours, but I’m certainly not meeting anybody here. That’s the problem — more time in the office, less time to meet people elsewhere.
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I still need to do more research before I decide whether I like the idea of privatizing social security. For future reference, here’s some information on the current proposal.
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