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What I Most Don’t Like about Credit Cards: Betting on the Come

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Craps_table_layoutWhen it comes to finances, I have two exceptionally bad habits. One is to overcomplicate things (which you surely have observed if you’ve been around this blog any length of time). And the other is to just let things go if the status quo sort of works. In the credit card department, there’s something I’ve been letting go for years, a status quo that I’ve always disliked, that I managed to break free of once about 20 years ago (the first time I figured to be camping under the Seventh Avenue Overpass), and that I allowed back into my life after I got a job with a steady salary.

To wit: If a credit card’s billing cycle doesn’t happen to coincide with your budget cycle (which it never does), then at least a portion of each month’s charges amounts to a loan against next month’s income. In effect, every time you charge something during a certain part of the billing cycle, you’re betting on the come: that the income you expect actually will materialize.

And you know…that’s not necessarily a sure thing. Even when you pay off your credit-card bill every month, this hiatus puts you at some risk of one day not being able to do so.

All the time I was working for the Great Desert University, I thought betting on the come pretty much was a sure thing. Even when a layoff loomed, the university owed me so much money that I had little concern about making the transition from paychecks to (too-goddamn-early) Social Security. So I didn’t do anything about the fact that the credit-card billing cycle ran from the 21st of any given month to the 20th of the following month, while, because of the way Social Security and adjunct teaching income were paid, my actual budget ran from the first of a month to the last day of said month.

As a consequence, everything that is charged from, for example, August 21 to August 31st is paid with September income — because the August-September credit-card bill shows up along about the end of September.

While it’s not untenable — it’s been working fine ever since I was canned at the end of 2009 — still, it makes me itch.

Because, being the wacko paranoid that I am, between you and me and the lamppost I don’t think there’s any guarantee that those Social Security payments, which cover all my discretionary budget, are a sure thing.

Come the end of Obama’s second term — which before you know it will be upon us — the crazy Tea-Baggers will go all-out to get more of their avatars voted into office. Even if they fail to get one of their colleagues into the White House, they very well could win enough seats in Congress to tie up the business of government even worse than they already have done. Which is quite enough, thank you.

As we’ve seen, this set feels no compunction about shutting down the federal government to get its way. Matter of fact, shutting down the government is, according to their utterances, what some of them covet. That veterans, seniors, retired government workers, disabled people, the unemployed, and the poor depend on benefits emanating from said government is of little or no concern to them.

So even though I don’t expect my Social Security check not to show up, neither do I think that eventuality is impossible. And that is what makes me itch every time I charge something on the AMEX card between the 21st of a month and the 1st of the next month.

I’ve asked American Express if we could please adjust the billing cycle so it runs from the first to the thirty-first. No way, said their CSR. So I resigned myself to the disjunct and each month have been paying 10 days worth of expenses out of the following month’s income. Even though I hate that.

This policy is probably deliberate. Think about it: a credit-card billing cycle that opens a few days before the start of a normal month-to-month household budget cycle predisposes customers to disconnect from their budgets, leading them to spend more than they can afford. Et voilà: interest payments. Highly profitable for the credit-card issuer.

Recently, while contemplating a scheme to use cash to avoid small, junk credit-card charges, it occurred to me that I could kill off the disjunct annoyance…simply by using cash only between the 21st of a given month and the first of the following month. In other words, discretionary costs would be charged on AMEX if they occur between the first and the 21st. But those that occur during the ten days that AMEX wants me to bet on the come (from the 21st or 22nd to the last day of the month) would be paid for in cash.

Thus I would never borrow against next month’s income to pay this month’s bills.

I like it.

The goal: Stop borrowing against next month’s income for the last 10 days of this month’s purchases.

Advantages

• No more betting on the come against next month’s income.
• Whatever day the new billing cycle occurs no longer matters! (American Express vacillates unpredictably between closing its billing cycle on the 20th or the 21st. By the 20th, I’m typically out of food and need to go to Costco or at least a grocery store. Indeed, last month I assumed the new cycle would begin on the 21st and had planned a full day of errands spanning the Valley from Scottsdale to the near Westside. Luckily, moments before flying out of the house, I called and was informed by a CSR that the July/August cycle ended at 11:30 p.m. that night! In-flicking-FURIATING.)
• Chances of overspending are reduced to almost nil.

Disadvantages

• The estimate of discretionary spending in the last 10 days of the month will have to be accurate.
• The AMEX budget will have to be much smaller.
• Records of AMEX & MasterCard charges will have to be more accurate than they have been.
• Online purchases will be verboten during the last 10 days of the month.
• This scheme will reduce the annual AMEX kickback.

The Strategy

1. Calculate the amount needed between the 21st and the 1st.
2. Subtract that amount from the total discretionary budget.
3. Charge all discretionary items between the 1st and the 21st.
4. Pay cash for all discretionary purchases, except extraordinary costs paid from a different kitty, between the 21st and the 1st.

But…how on earth to make it happen? The bet-on-the-come pattern has been going on so long hereabouts that it’s come institutionalized. And my budget is calculated to the penny: I don’t happen to have an extra $350 (discretionary spending prorated over ten days) sitting in the checking account. The short-term emergency fund has been drawn down to barely a thousand bucks — way too low — by the usual array of harassments that invariably occur during the summer, when routine costs hit the stratosphere. So making the transition from the enforced AMEX budget cycle to my budget cycle presented a challenge.

Thanks to the billing/budget cycle overlap, I’ve already spent $363 of my discretionary budget this month, and as I write this, today is only the first. (You see what I mean about betting on the come? It’s only the 1st, and a third of September’s discretionary budget is gone!) The figure is a little high — the budget averages out to $35.48 a day during a 31-day month, and so during the ten days between August 22 and August 31, I should theoretically have spent only $355. But being out of food and everything else, I made a Costco run on the 22nd, and then made an unplanned $80 purchase a day or two ago.

Only two choices presented themselves:

1. Try to charge nothing for 10 days at the end of September, getting by on only $180 in cash for that period.

…or…

2. Pay off the $363 from savings and reset the discretionary budget ($1100) starting on September 1.

The first option called for another spate of asceticism, a habit of life that has become, shall we say, tiresome. It meant all food and gasoline would have to be purchased before the 21st, and just one emergency bill could break the bank. It also delayed the escape from AMEX’s dictatorship a full month.

However, short-term emergency savings (in weak moments called “diddle-it-away savings…”) isn’t the only emergency savings fund I happen to have. 😉

A much larger fund, set aside for middling dire circumstances, contains several thousand dollars; it has gone untouched for years.

This made option 2 look pretty darned attractive. And because September is a short month (only 30 days), I’d have a pretty good chance at pulling the scheme off.

So, I transferred $365 from long-term emergency savings to checking and used it to pay off the amount I charged on AMEX in the last 10 days of August. The $1100 discretionary budget now comprises two sub-budgets:

$745, for charges only (on AMEX and MasterCard), covering the 1st to the 20th
$355, to be disbursed in cash during the last 10 days of the month.

In this scenario, I’ll never charge anything between the 21st and the end of any month (unless it’s some truly huge emergency). Discretionary costs during the last week and a half of the month will be paid in cash. If any money is left over from the cash disbursed to cover costs during this period, it will be transferred to short-term emergency savings. Once I’ve repaid the $365 to long-term emergency savings, that is.

CreditCardBudgeting

So, say I took out $355 on January 21 and only spent $250 between then and January 31: the $105 difference would go to short-term emergency/indulgences savings. This habit plus the monthly $200 contribution to that fund would plump up that little savings fund pretty quickly.

While it doesn’t allow me to use cash to eliminate the ditzy little credit-card transactions that I hate keeping track of, it will have the effect of reducing the total number of transactions. And since I usually exercise a great deal of restraint during the last week or so of the month, probably a fair amount of the cash budget will end up back in savings. And — mirabilis! — it will bring a stop to borrowing against next month’s Social Security check to pay this month’s bills.

800px-Craps

Images:

Dice used in craps: Roland Scheicher. Public domain.
Craps layout: Betzaar. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Veterinarian Bill Avoidance: Clean the Dog’s Teeth

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P1010966My friend La Maya and her partner favor wiener dogs: they had two miniature dachshunds for years and then, after the extreme elder of the two passed, they got a standard dachshund, which is not what you’d call a huge beast. Whatever its size, a dachshund, like a corgi or a greyhound, is a dog that causes veterinarians to do a little dance of joy, because the critters’ long pointy snouts predispose them to expensive teeth-cleaning bills. I would not even dare to ask La Maya to tote up the amount she’s spent on the pooches’ teeth: it might bring on cardiac arrest.

Cassie the Corgi, AKA the Queen of the Universe, passed the vet’s examination of her teeth the last time she visited those precincts. However, she’s given to dogitosis in the worst way: very, very stinky dawg breath.

As you may have noticed if you read this site much, I resist succumbing to Corporate Profit-Making Pet Products just about as vociferously as I resist Big Pharma. The Queen gets real food prepared in the kitchen, and interestingly, she never evinces an ailment that requires veterinary attention. That may have to do with her breed…maybe with raw luck…or maybe it’s a perquisite of reigning over an entire universe. Who knows?

Some time back, I was cleaning my own teeth with some baking soda — not because I’m interested in whitening them, but because it’s actually pretty good for your teeth and used once in a while does a nice job of beating back the Microbial Enemy. In the course of thinking about this, I came across a site that suggested you can use the stuff on Fang’s teeth, too. And lo! What should I find but advice from the august American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the effect that a small amount of baking soda can be used to clean doggy teeth.

Hot diggety dog.

We’re told not to use human toothpaste on dogs — it ain’t good for them to swallow the stuff. And that’s self-evident. If a toddler swallows toothpaste, thinking it’s some sort of minty candy, it can make the little human very sick. Most dogs are smaller than toddlers, and size nothwithstanding, none of them ARE humans. But, being the crank that I am, I will be da^^ned if I’m going to go out and spend money on special doggy toothpaste. Soooo…. I decided to try this stuff on Her Majesty.

You understand: the Queen of the Universe can be pretty imperious. Baking soda, to my taste, is approximately the opposite of delicious. And so it was reasonable to expect some serious resistance, possibly even rage. The Queen’s fangs are intact. While she does not bite, she certainly could. And so the Human suspected this scheme amounted to taking its life in its hands. But there’s only so much stink even a lowly human can be expected to tolerate.

Here’s the strategy:

1. Get yourself a roll of gauze from the bandage department of your local drugstore or supermarket.

2. Cut off a small amount, about three inches’ worth.

3. Cut off another small amount, in a similar size.

4. Get one of these very wet with cool tap water. Set aside.

5. Wrap the other piece around the tip of your index finger.

6. Dampen this slightly and dip it in some baking soda.

7. Capture the dog.

8. Rub the baking-soda-laced, gauze-wrapped finger around the dog’s teeth, starting with the outside edges (the inside edges can use some attention, too, but good luck with that!). Scour as many edges of the animal’s teeth as you can get to before you are repulsed by the dog’s struggles (which will be pretty quickly).

9. Quickly grab the water-saturated gauze and resume the attack! Wipe off the teeth as best you can before you are again cast out.

The improvement can be amazing.

And weirdly, the dog doesn’t seem to mind the baking soda in its mouth. Cassie sort of smacked her lips a couple of times, but as soon as I wiped her mouth down with fresh water, she was fine.

First time I tried this with Her Majesty, the Eau de Stinko Dog Breath went completely away. This effect lasted for several days! And, IMHO, that is amazing.

Do not expect this to remove existing tartar stains. You’ll need a veterinarian’s professional cleaning to accomplish that. However, as a way to clean the dog’s teeth without having to buy expensive dog-treat-flavored canine “toothpaste,” this is mighty good to know about.

I would not inflict it on the Queen every day. About once every three days seems to suffice to suppress the dogitosis. Baking soda is very high in sodium; inevitably the dog will swallow some of it. Excess sodium is bad for you. So it’s probably safe to assume it’s just as bad or worse for your dog. But as an occasional thing, paired with an effort to rinse off as much as possible: why not?

Adjunct Strategies

Try to get Fang to chew on foods or treats that abrade the teeth a little without adding sugar, salt, or weird chemicals. Some dogs really love various kinds of raw veggies and will chew them up. I once had a golden retriever that thought hearts of cabbage and pieces of cauliflower were gourmet delicacies; in absolute doggy delight, he would chomp on them, scrubbing his teeth in the process. Cassie likes carrots — she’ll treat these like chew sticks, too. Choffing on something like this helps to scour the exposed surface of the teeth. Experiment around with things like raw cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and apple slices to see if your dog can be tricked into a little self-cleaning activity.

Prefer these kinds of natural treats to commercial treats from the pet store or grocery store, which are akin to muffins or candy in terms of dog dental health.

The cleaner you can keep Fang’s teeth, the more you will save on vet bills. The veterinarian has to sedate your dog (expensively) before having at its teeth. If you’d like to be scared, VERY scared, visit this terrifying site on the subject.

More on the Dishwasher Detergent Issue

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In response to Funny’s recent rant about phosphate-free detergents, reader Linda responded with this observation:

 So, I did some more searching online and I found this site that went over several options. http://www.jillcataldo.com/phosphatedetergents With a little more searching, I found that I could buy the commercial (phosphate-full) Cascade at a chain called Gordon Food Service that had some outlets in my area. Since the BF had an appointment not far from one today, I asked him to pick up a box. We had a pretty full dishwasher, so he gave it a test run today while I was at work. Success!! 🙂

So I went over to Jill’s blog and found a truly awesome discussion, complete with details of experiments with various products and photos. Interestingly, she reports that recent science indicates that phosphates are not the environmental menace we’ve been made to believe they are:

A Minnesota study determined that the amount of phosphates generated from home use that were actually reaching bodies of fresh water was about 1.9%. And, in 2011, the University of Washington released a study that determined that phosphorous runoff from detergents, even when discharged directly into the Spokane River, never worked as an algae fertilizer: “Effluents making their way into the river contained phosphorus in complex molecular forms which are not bioavailable. Algae lack the enzymes necessary to break down this phosphorus, meaning it is essentially harmless.”*

*But see comments below and update for the full story on this statement.

Basically what’s happening here is we’re all being made to do without something that works for questionable reasons.

Not quite all of us: it’s OK to inconvenience the hoi polloi and put families’ health at risk by making them eat off dirty dishes, but it’s not OK to inconvenience corporate America: real detergent is still freely available to those who use it in vast quantities: restaurants, hotels, and institutions.

Jill also includes a long list of links to articles proving her point on this matter.

For  me, the TSP used in small quantities (not more than 1/4 teaspoon) is working, although it certainly is a nuisance to have to scrub its stain off the inside of the dishwasher door. And most of a lifetime supply of Finish Powerless Powerball detergent tabs resides on my storage shelves. So I’ll probably finish off the Finish and then buy some of the Professional Line Cascade, since Jill’s tests seem to indicate it works very well.

…hey! Waitaiminit!…

Just checked and discovered the Costco box of Finish hasn’t been opened yet!

w00t! Back it goes!

I’m taking that back to the store TODAY and ordering up some actual detergent for restaurants. The city has several restaurant supply houses, one of which is on my way to a Costco — if they carry commercial dishwasher detergent, I’ll stop there to pick it up. Otherwise: order it online!

Update: Given that Jill takes the quote from the University of Washington study out of context, thereby making it seem to draw a different conclusion than what the report actually presents, let’s take a look at a few lines from the Avatar of Scientific Accuracy, the beloved Wikipedia:

It is unclear what causes HABs [harmful algae blooms]; their occurrence in some locations appears to be entirely natural,[16] while in others they appear to be a result of human activities.[17] Furthermore, there are many different species of algae that can form HABs, each with different environmental requirements for optimal growth. The frequency and severity of HABs in some parts of the world have been linked to increased nutrient loading from human activities. In other areas, HABs are a predictable seasonal occurrence resulting from coastal upwelling, a natural result of the movement of certain ocean currents.[18] The growth of marine phytoplankton (both non-toxic and toxic) is generally limited by the availability of nitrates and phosphates, which can be abundant in coastal upwelling zones as well as in agricultural run-off. The type of nitrates and phosphates available in the system are also a factor, since phytoplankton can grow at different rates depending on the relative abundance of these substances (e.g. ammonia, urea, nitrate ion). A variety of other nutrient sources can also play an important role in affecting algal bloom formation, including iron, silica or carbon. Coastal water pollution produced by humans and systematic increase in sea water temperature have also been suggested as possible contributing factors in HABs.[19] Other factors such as iron-rich dust influx from large desert areas such as the Sahara are thought to play a role in causing HABs.[20] Some algal blooms on the Pacific coast have also been linked to natural occurrences of large-scale climatic oscillations such as El Niño events. While HABs in the Gulf of Mexico have been occurring since the time of early explorers such as Cabeza de Vaca,[21] it is unclear what initiates these blooms and how large a role anthropogenic and natural factors play in their development. It is also unclear whether the apparent increase in frequency and severity of HABs in various parts of the world is in fact a real increase or is due to increased observation effort and advances in species identification technology.

Sources for this paragraph are as follows:

Sellner, K.G.; Doucette G.J., and Kirkpatrick G.J. (2003). “Harmful Algal blooms: causes, impacts and detection”. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology 30 (7): 383–406. doi:10.1007/s10295-003-0074-9. PMID 12898390

Van Dolah, F.M. (2000). “Marine Algal Toxins: Origins, Health Effects, and Their Increased Occurrence”. Environmental Health Perspectives (Brogan &#38) 108 (suppl.1): 133–141. doi:10.2307/3454638. JSTOR 3454638. PMC 1637787. PMID 10698729.

Clearly, this is a very complex issue. Algal blooms, some of them toxic and some of them leading to eutrophication, have been happening since the memory of Person runneth  not to the contrary…and certainly since long before any upright ape figured out how to make soap. That doesn’t mean your dishwasher isn’t suffocating the nearest lake. But it does cast some doubt.

Do You Carry Your Pets Safely in the Car?

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Check out this treacly, sentimentalized report from one of the local Play-Nooz stations: A woman crashes her car. One of the two dogs she’s carting around is killed. She and a second dog — a puppy — fly through the windshield. The woman is crippled — still in a wheelchair to this day — and the terrified, presumably injured pup runs off into the desert.

Miraculously, heart-warmingly, and swathed in goopy emotion, the dog is found — trapped, actually — after two months of wandering around in 110- to 115-degree heat.

Isn’t that sweet?

Hm.

The driver goes through the windshield: no seatbelt. The dog goes through the windshield: not crated. The other dog is killed…not crated?

All very touching, but WTF? If the driver had been driving safely — wearing her seatbelt and seeing to it that the animals were secured safely inside the vehicle — she likely would not be in a wheelchair. The puppy would not have been thrown out into the desert to survive on its own. And the other dog probably would still be alive.

Sorry to throw iced acid on another sugary Hallmark Moment, but from the curmudgeon’s point of view, this is not an uplifting story. It’s a tale of raw stupidity.

Just sayin’…

I’m guilty of driving my dogs around uncrated, too, though I’m at least bright enough to figure out how to use the seatbelt on myself. After reading between the lines here, you can be sure I’m getting a car crate for the Queen of the  Universe. Today.

Some pet crates are pretty pricey — like all pet-related gear, much exploitation of people’s sentimentality goes on. However, at Amazon prices are as low as $22. Since some crates can be pretty flimsy, I personally would pick one from Target (also flimsy, in my experience) or a pet store, where I can actually see and handle the things. But it’s useful to check Amazon for the consumer reviews — especially for reports like these, which show one brand of portable kennel falling apart repeatedly. Paying a little more to secure the animal, considering how much you’ve already spent on the beast(!!), is worth the extra security.

Soon as the stores open this morning, it’s off to the nearest Petsmart for me and the hound.

How about you? Do you keep your pets safe in the car, as well as yourself?

Live-blogging from…What?

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Wow! The biggest storm I’ve seen in 45 years just blew through the neighborhood. Power’s been off for almost two hours. It’s hotter than the hubs of Hades in here, even with all the windows and doors open.

LOL! Idiot neighbors are shooting off fireworks left over from July 4…and why not? This is the first time we’ve had pure darkness in forever, and besides, it’s like a sauna inside the house.

Somebody just tried to call me on a cell phone I couldn’t find. They hung up before I could home in on it…never did find the damn phone. It’s defunct, so I imagine it was the gummint trying to tell me the power’s out.

Appears to be pretty local, though: we can see the baleful orange glow of the city lights off in the distance, and I can hear the roar of traffic, probably from the freeway. The sirens have died down, so presumably the fire department and the cops have a handle on as much as they can get handles on.

Now that the wind is over, it’s still as death out there (except, of course, for the usual racket of Man, the Noisiest Animal). Not a breath of air is moving, so having the doors and sliders open serves no purpose other than to invite the occasional wandering perp to visit.

Cleverly, a few months ago I bought a battery-run camp lantern and enough batteries to run it for awhile.

The battery-run radio, though, seems to be a FAIL. It works, but it’s not bringing in a functional station. Apparently both NPR stations are offline, and what remains is useless blather.

The thing rode in on a huge dust storm along about 6:30, just as I was getting off the phone with a new client. Vast brown cloud descended on the human and the dog, shortly followed by howling winds.

 As in holy sh!t winds. The Queen of the Universe and I took refuge in the hallway, since there was so much nearby lightning that the bathtub, which comes as close to a tornado shelter as this house can offer, seemed ill-advised, given all the metal plumbing sticking out of it. Couldn’t hear that freight-train sound an actual tornado makes, so figured we were OK but didn’t want to be near windows. With all the doors in the hall shut, even if a skylight or window caved in, we would at worst get wet.

Then the rain began. Water piled up to the back door, which is about four inches above grade. Didn’t get in the house, though. The built-up threshold and weatherstripping around the side door kept it out of the garage (except where the door for the car doesn’t hit the ground…), and otherwise the house is built up high enough to withstand a four- or five-inch flood.

{click!}

Finally figured out that the jangling phone bell came not from a zombie cell phone but from the actual hard-wired land line phone! One, count it, (1) of the phones in this house is a real, old-fashioned telephone. All the rest are wireless, but I still have an antique that plugs directly into the phone company’s system. When I dumped QWorst and went over to Cox, I assumed it would depend on the electric being on, since it’s actually wired into cable, not the phone lines. But lo! It lives!!!!!

Called M’hijito, who as usual did not answer the phone. He, being one of the aliens of the New Generation, believes that actually telephoning a human being, person to person, is a rude faux pas, and so he does not respond to such crudity.

But soon learned the jangling was elicited by SDXB, who tried to call an hour or so ago. And…..

 w00t!

 The power just came back on!

Looks like the router’s still down, though. I may have to shut down and reboot to get the laptop online. I’m actually drafting this post in Word on the MacBook laptop.

The iMac, a vast desktop array, is going batsh!t trying to get itself back to its preferred status. I’m running away from that…just let it do its thing and fix it in hindsight.

And so, back to work: have to finish restocking the Queen’s meat supply for the next week, and then to bed!

Thank goodness we won’t have to sleep on the (cool!) tile floor tonight!

😀

 

 

August 24 Roundup

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The other day as I was editing the cookbook I intend to spin off Funny about Money in the near future, I ran across a link to a blogger whose writing I used to admire back when we all used to participate in a prominent (now defunct) make-it-at-home carnival: Rachel of Small Notebook. Turns out her site had been quiescent for awhile, but by sheer coincidence she had just resurfaced with this amazing piece of writing. I’ll not say what it’s about — you must read it yourself. It’s one of the most heart-touching essays I’ve ever come across. The magazine-writing students have to produce a personal experience piece this semester…I’m posting a link to Rachel’s story for them to see as an example.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed some tinkering with Funny’s blogroll. Such a crowd of very fine bloggers is out there, many of them young and endlessly entertaining, that I’ve felt I’d like to include them by way of drawing FaM’s readers’ attention to some of the livelier writing in the PF blogosphere. A few that I added, within recent memory, instantly went off the air. This left us with a truncated list, and so I went in search of some new blood.

I could develop an inordinate fondness for DQYDJ — that would be “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.” This is a writer who consistently posts well-written, original articles full of insightful takes on ideas fresh and standard. No “me-too” articles here: this material is clean, new, and original. Bookmark that!

Blue Collar Workman is back, after a hiatus. To my delight: this is one of my favorite blogs.

No Accounting for Waste is another site gifted with original thinking and articulate posts. LOL! Take a look at this take on “how to lower your Alexa rankings.” Having spent a summer racking up traffic stats and ranking with Alexa, I thought this was one of the funniest (and most right-on) shticks I’ve ever read about blogging.

Streets Ahead Living: youthful, smart, entertaining, well written. Many excellent posts here…check out “If You Like Costco So Much, Why Don’t You Marry It?” 😀

Marissa at Thirty-Six Months is a lively and entertaining writer. Try starting with the post in which she questions the conventional wisdom about paying down debt as fast as possible and move forward to the present day.

The young pups are on the move. Did you see that Asian Pear has been visiting Hawai’i? After many adventures in earlier posts, she brought back loot for the family.

And as we know, eemusings and groom have been on a marathon honeymoon tour of the entire world. Check out this interesting post on the economics of Airbnb — very interesting!

Meanwhile, Donna Freedman has gotten up to some silly stuff at Surviving and Thriving. 😀 Sweet stuff, too: if you love candy, check out this awesome giveaway.

Revanche and PiC are settling in after a busy summer. Now they’re planning a belated wedding reception, a scheme infinitely complicated by the vastness and complexity of Family!

Speaking of travel, Afford Anything is in Boston, the latest stop in a busy summer itinerary made possible by her ability to make a living with a laptop.

Interesting article by David over at Prairie Ecothrifter: the Canadian government wants to know if wind turbines make you sick. While this sounds frivolous, responses in the comments draw attention to the noise and real potential problems of large-scale wind farming.

Miranda Marquit, writing at Bargaineering, discusses ways to build a Linked-In profile that will help you get a job.

Planting Our Pennies presses the readers’ button with a post on subjecting employees to pitches for charitable contributions — a hot topic, it develops.

At Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, newsletter subscribers are told that Crystal and Mr. BiFS are about to head out on a cruise; meantime we get the latest budget update, which is lookin’ good. Luckily: they just enjoyed (hang onto your hat!) a $12,000 dental bill!

Over at Consumerism Commentary, Luke asks readers whether college graduates should feel obligated to repay loans their parents took out to help them through college.

At My Journey to Millions, Evan suggests that in the mating game, credit scores matter.

To join a gym or not to join a gym: that is the question at Money Beagle, first posed by a smokin’ Groupon deal.

Frugal Scholar, wielding a $25-off coupon code, nabbed two coveted long tank tops from Chicos for a total of thirty-six dollah!

At I Pick Up Pennies, Abigail is startled at a large disparity between Petco’s charges for pet food depending on whether you buy online or at a brick-and-mortar store.

Ever wonder what preoccupies college professors? Pay a visit to Grumpy Rumblings for a peek at publishing, gender bias, and the joy of the academic career. Being retired from academia is about like being from Texas…as far from it as you can get. 🙄

Here’s a nice opportunity: Free Money Finance is seeking people to profile — drop by for instructions on how to submit yours.