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Credit cards

Making Cash Look Better and Better

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Way back in last August, I came across a story at CBS Marketwatch predicting the End of the World for Debit Cards. I’ve never used them, myself — to my mind the debit card simply has too many disadvantages. Not only do they present the potential for surprising little fees, but they make it way too easy to blunder into an overdraft. Plus anyone who steals the thing can drain your account to nil and, if you have overdraft “protection,” sink you into debt.

So it was with some interest that I noted my son has quit using his. He always used to pay everything with cash or a debit card, but recently he’s taken to charging everything on a credit card and then paying the balance in full at the end of the month. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? :-D)

Between that habit and the invariably on-time mortgage payments, he had such a staggeringly stellar credit rating that he easily wangled a 0% loan on the car he purchased a month or so ago.

Personally, I’ve started paying for more things with cash dollars — only because I would like not to be paying for this month’s purchases with next month’s income. The end-date for the AMEX billing cycle, which appears to be set in stone, falls on the 20th of the month. Thus it’s always out of synch with my monthly budget, which annoys me no end. So these days I charge purchases made between the first and the 20th and then use a small cash budget to cover expenses that occur in the last ten days of the calendar month.

Debit card? Yeah: I use it to extract said cash from an ATM. But I can’t even imagine using it to make purchases.

So how was Marketwatch’s prediction, from your point of view? Are you using your debit card less?

Credit Bureau Security Freeze: The (Mostly) Pros and (Few) Cons

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As you may recall, as the current identity theft drama materialized, a fraud specialist at Experian recommended placing a “security freeze” on my accounts at all three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Since she sounded like she knew what she was doing, I went ahead and did that.

And know what she was doing, she certainly did.

Yesterday, after having spent the entire day trying to reach a human at Social Security by way of rerouting my direct-deposited SS checks to the new credit-union account, I finally stumbled upon a live person, late in the afternoon. I’d tried to register myself with SS’s online site and failed, so called a “Help Line” tech — instead of the hour and fifteen-minute wait to reach a human at SS’s main phone number, it only took about ten minutes for this woman to surface.

She said the reason I couldn’t register online at Social Security is the security freezes I set up at the credit bureaus: The government’s site checks with credit bureaus before allowing just anyone to claim they’re you and get online as you.

I said, “So, now I’ve got to go to these bureaus and undo all these security freezes before I can get my check?”

Actually, I was so upset, so frustrated, and so scared that at least one and probably two or three checks are not gonna reach me that I started to cry.

She said no, she could manually enter credit union’s routing number and new account number, which she (purportedly) proceeded to do. Let’s hope she succeeded!

She then said having a credit-bureau security freeze is a good thing, because it goes a long way to prevent identity thieves from hacking into the Social Security Administration disguised as you, even if they have your SS number. Although it doesn’t protect you from all forms of identity theft, it goes far enough toward blocking credit-card and Social Security fraud that she suggested keeping it on the credit bureau accounts permanently.

Consumer’s Union, which has been among those lobbying for security freeze laws, points out that a security freeze costs you a one-time fee of just a few dollars or, in some cases, nothing — credit “monitoring” is an ongoing fee-based service — and it’s more effective because it proactively prevents anyone from opening an account without your permission. All credit  monitoring does is notify you after the barn door has been opened.

A security freeze is different from a fraud alert, which you can also establish with the credit bureaus. A fraud alert tells creditors that you have alerted the credit bureau of possible fraud but does not prevent them from viewing your records. A security freeze prevents prospective creditors, insurance companies, and employers running background checks from seeing your credit file unless you give your consent.

And that is a very, very large benefit when it comes to protecting your privacy! It’s huge.

The trade-off is a degree of inconvenience: for you to open a new credit instrument (such as a credit card, a car loan, or a mortgage), you have to go to all three credit-union sites and jump through the telephone punch-a-button hoops to enter a PIN and lift the freeze long enough to get your transaction through. Then you have to go back and punch buttons again to reinstate the security freeze.

This is not very difficult, though. And not difficult at all compared to the enormous hassle and grief occasioned by an identity theft. On average, most people have to spend 40 hours cleaning up the mess created when some crook opens a credit account in their names.

The credit freeze does not affect your credit score. You still can get your annual credit reports for free. Your existing creditors (and their collection agencies…) can still view your credit files. And the credit freeze does not stop nuisance “pre-approved” credit-card offers from showing up in the mail or by phone.

There are some kinds of fraud the credit freeze does not guard against. For example, the increasingly popular income tax fraud — whereby the hacker fills out a fake income tax return and has a tax refund sent to the address of his choice — is outside the purview of this device. Obviously, if someone steals your credit or debit card, he can rack up some bills (or, with a debit card, drain your bank account and credit reserve). But for anything where a credit search is required, this tool is very valuable.

The State of California has a law that gives you a right to put a security freeze on your credit records. The state’s Web page describing the security freeze is worth bookmarking — it not only explains the process and how to install a freeze, it gives you tools for recovering a PIN should you lose it.

Consumer’s Union recommends that you protect yourself with a security freeze if you’ve learned that your Social Security number has been compromised in a security breach, if your mail has been stolen, if you’ve already had an incident of identity theft, if you’re in the particularly vulnerable age group of 18 to 24, or if you have to carry around a card (like a Medicare card) bearing your SS number.

* * *

Arriving at this knowledge was a freaking nightmare, I’ll tellya. Yesterday devolved into a true day from Hell.

I showed up at the Social Security office in search of a live human right when they opened: 9 a.m. Three parking spots remained in the lot, and one of them was a disabled space. The line to get past the security guard was out the door.

Fortunately, I’d brought my computer so I could work on a client’s book. Took a number and sat in the only open seat that had a little room around it.

There was a reason for that: in front of me were two street people. The woman was high on some sort of drug — in the course of her endless droning conversation with her pal, she remarked that she was taking an extra-heavy dose of oxycodone. The man smelled bad.

Between this woman’s nonstop babbling and the guy’s stink, I couldn’t focus on my work. Finally another seat opened up across the room and I was able to dodge into it before another customer could beat me out.

So I sat there for an hour and a half!

To no avail: at 10:30 I had to leave to go to a real appointment. Thence to La Maya’s house for lunch. By then I was so rattled I carried a bottle of wine over there for a house gift…i.e., as the day’s drug of choice.

La Maya doesn’t drink much, but in due time La Bethulia showed up, fresh from a job interview that sounded extremely promising. So between the two of us we consumed about 4/5 of the bottle.

Back at the Funny Farm, the telephone awaited. After first trying to get through on the Social Security web page, I did have the luck to reach the CSR described above and, with any luck (please, God!!) got my checks routed to the new checking account.

Meanwhile, the magazine writing students had posted their final papers: 15 of those also awaited. Read papers until about 9:00 p.m., at which point I fell face-forward into the sack.

In all this flailing around, I forgot to plug in the lights I hung in the trees to try to protect them from the frost. So the lime tree will probably lose about a third of its canopy. Still…at 6 this morning, before sunrise, it wasn’t cold enough to destroy the oranges, I don’t think.

Thank heaven for small mercies.

🙄

This post was kindly included in the Carnival of Personal Finance at Money Life and More.

Chase, UPS, and Credit Card Application Fraud

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DebitCardWhile I was spending half the day on Monday dorking around with the latest identity fraud moment, it did occur to me to wonder why on earth a person would apply for a business credit card under a fake name and then fill in the business’s correct address. Wonder-Accountant speculated that the form may have had a mailing address as well as a street address. But if that were the case, then Chase would have sent the letter asking for more information to that mailing address. Instead, they sent it here. I had about concluded that what appeared to be application fraud was really more like a prank when I came across this amazing report, detailing an alleged collaboration between insiders at Chase credit card services and UPS.

Now, I have no way of knowing whether what this guy says is true. But it would explain why the perp would ask to have his fraudulent credit card sent to my business’s real address.

JoshEAC, the post’s author, describes learning that a credit card had been ordered from Chase, supposedly by his wife. After considerable argument, in which a Chase customer disservice representative suggested that his wife was lying to him when she denied ordering a card, he managed to obtain the UPS tracking number for the card Chase claimed to have sent. At this point he began to proactively track the package wending its way toward him via the Brown Trucks. In the middle of the afternoon, he saw that the package had been diverted from home delivery to the pick-up counter at a UPS station. Three hours later, the tracking system reported that his “wife” had changed her mind and asked to have home delivery after all.

And lo! A day or two later Chase calls to inquire about the fraudulent charges being racked up on the “wife’s” new credit card!

Two possibilities presented themselves to JoshEAC: gross incompetence on Chase’s part — altogether credible given the outrageously ridiculous interactions he had with the bank’s customer disservice reps and their supervisors — or organized fraud committed by insiders at Chase and UPS.

If you buy the second scenario, someone on the inside at Chase creates a fraudulent application. He arranges to have the fake credit card sent to the mark’s real address via UPS. He has access to the passwords for this account. The card is shipped off to the mark.

A few hours later, his co-conspirator at UPS arranges to stop delivery to that address and then, shortly afterward, to have the card delivered to her, only this time on the UPS crook’s truck. The card, of course, never arrives at the mark’s home. With the stolen password, the perps start charging thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise on the hot credit card.

Well. This conspiracy theory could, no doubt, be nothing more than a figment of its author’s imagination…EXCEPT that it explains, to a “t,” why the identity thief would enter my S-corporation’s address on his application for a fraudulent card. Presumably, once the card was diverted through UPS, the crook inside Chase would simply change the address in the bank’s records, thereby diverting the future statements, too. Or set the account not to deliver paper statements at all.

My monthly dues payments to the Scottsdale Business Association are paid by check and deposited to the group’s account at Chase Bank. The checks are printed with my business’s name and address only. That would explain why the perp didn’t have my name. And, since this is evidently an inside job, it explains why the fraudulent account was set up at Chase and not anywhere else.

JoshEAC described this episode in December, 2011. If he’s right, it means that two years later Chase has done nothing to bring a stop to this caper. Whoever’s responsible for it presumably continues to collect a paycheck and at the same time, no doubt, collects payment from “customers” who put him up to issuing fake credit cards.

By now, though, what’s happened is that the thieves have developed the sophistication to realize that small businesses are even more vulnerable to application fraud than are individuals, because the major credit bureaus give short shrift to business credit-card users. Identity-theft protections are set up to serve individuals. As a business owner, I’ve run into a wall — about my only recourse is to report the episode to the police and pray for the best.

Doing battle with Apple consumed most of the afternoon on Wednesday, and yesterday I was in business meetings or teaching all day. I’m out of food and gasoline, today being the first of the month, and so will have to spend this morning driving around the city by way of restocking the larder. So, the soonest I’ll be able to call the police again will be this afternoon, and presumably I’ll miss the guy again, since they’re not in any hurry to deal with this thing.

But if and when I actually meet with a police officer, you can be sure I’ll hand him a printout of JoshEAC’s post.

 

 

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.

Cash or Credit?

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DebitCardA while back, Mrs. Planting Our Pennies posted an article with an entertaining short video ruminating on the eerie quality of cash to disappear without a trace as one goes about one’s daily life. The video actually plugs Dan Ariela’s Coursera course on financial irrationality, echoing Dave Ramsey’s theory that most of us spend less if we use cash than if we buy everything with credit cards.

Mrs. PoP goes on to reflect that she and Mr. PoP have the opposite experience: cash disappears without a trace, whereas the paper trail created by credit-card receipts and statements makes it easier to keep a grip on spending because it’s easy to see where the money went and when. I was delighted to learn that someone else in the world has a similar experience to mine — not only the PoPs but many of their readers who commented. I thought I was some sort of strange outlier! Cash flows through my fingers like water — a walletful in the morning can be empty in the evening, and I have no idea where the money went. Something about the extra hassle factor of pulling out a credit card and having to fool with signing for it slows me down enough that I don’t buy just any pointless thing that strikes my well-honed whim.

It may be “painful,” as Ramsey suggests, to spend cash; but evidently some of us find it more painful to do without whatever doodad we happen to crave at any given moment.

As you may recall, late last spring, as part of an overall decomplicating strategy, I decided to use cash for small purchases. The idea was that I would withdraw a couple hundred bucks at the beginning of the month and use that to cover things that cost $30 or less. The initial idea was to make it $50 or less, but at that rate four purchases would consume $200.

This scheme actually did work, on two fronts: it cut the number of transactions that I have to keep track of in reconciling accounts, and, weirdly, I did spend less in the first month of the experiment.

This month, alas, I never did make it to the credit union to pull out some cash. My credit union doesn’t scatter ATMs across the city, and although customers can use other ATMs (I think), there’s a gouge for the privilege that I refuse to pay. I live about eight miles from the nearest branch of my credit union — that’s a 16-mile round trip, or, in the Dog Chariot, almost a gallon’s worth of gas — and there’s nothing up in that direction for me except a Home Depot and, much further up the road, a Costco. Since I try to limit visits to those worthy retailers, if I have no specific reason to go to one or the other of them, a jaunt to the CU through homicidal traffic is a nuisance that costs me about $3.35. This month it was a week or ten days past the August 1st before I hit Costco, and because I also needed some things from stores that are closer to a different outlet in a different part of town, I never did make it out west to the credit union.

And interestingly, what should I discover but that this month I’m already $87 in the hole on the credit-card budget, whose cycle doesn’t end until the 21st. Last month, when I used $120 worth of cash, I came in $143 in the black!

Naturally, the red ink on the AMEX budget comes in a month when power and water bills hit astronomical levels. And I had to pay Gerardo the Wonder-Lawn-Dude an extra $50 for some outrageously hard work he did in gawdawful heat.

And strangely, no single huge purchase jumps out from this month’s AMEX charges. Instead, I spent a bunch of money on small, separate bead-crafting expenses for the pieces I’m planning to donate to the choir’s silent auction this file ($135.76); $50 on propane and a new propane tank from Costco (not unreasonable); and a staggering $388.72 on a dozen trips to grocery stores. I did manage to stay out of Costco pretty well — hence all the grocery-store runs — however, in the two Costco runs I did make, I spent an equally staggering $378.73

Some of that $378 covered a couple pair of bluejeans to adorn the now much-slenderized body. None of my pants or shorts will stay up, so I really did need those. And the cost was nominal: Costco blue jeans run about $18 or $20 a pair.

You’d think that shifting to a mostly vegetarian diet — meat shows up on my table about twice a week now — would cut grocery costs. But in fact, fresh veggies and fruits are not cheap, and you have to eat them or else watch them spoil. Salad greens don’t lend themselves to freezing. That means I’m racing off to Sprouts or Trader Joe’s every time I turn around. Also, I visited Whole Foods, where I bought some (gorgeous!) wild-caught fish and two whole organic untrammeled chickens (on sale!) and splurged on too much sushi and a bottle of pricey craft beer.

But…the diet was under way when I started this experiment, so in theory grocery bills should have been no higher this month than they were then. The Mac ate the Excel spreadsheet I use to track the monthly budget (never have the same  DropBox file open on two computers at the same time! :roll:), so I can’t confirm that comparison. But it’s safe to assume grocery bills must have been about the same, with the possible exception of the Whole Foods episode — which, after all, put about a month’s worth of meat servings in the freezer.

In the “never” department, also never go into grocery stores when you’re hungry.

It looks like what happened is I lost track of how much I was spending on groceries and on beading goods and tools. At one point I got ripped off by Bead World — a saleslady sold me a pair of wire cutters that she knew would not work on the wire I had in my hand at the time, and they won’t take returns (they won’t get a return, either: a return customer). Then I bought a pair at Michael’s, but wouldn’tcha know: you get what you pay for! So I had to order up a decent pair, for twice the cost, at Fire Mountain.

So this month, in fact I did spend a lot more in using the credit card to cover everything (there’s a $3.06 charge in here, for godsake!) than I did when I used cash for small purchases. The “under $30” category amounts to a kind of Dave Ramsey-style “envelope,” and in fact when I ran out of the cash dedicated to discretionary spending that month, I consolidated shopping trips and limited purchases to real necessities, cutting back on the number and hence the amount of small expenditures.

Since it costs upwards of $3.35 to drive to the credit union, it probably would be cost-effective to get a debit card and pay the gouge to withdraw money from an ATM.

Just what I need: another card to help me spend money! 😀

A Couple of Things I Can Afford to Do Without…

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1. New(er) Car

Toyota_Sienna_LEThe other day I picked up the Dog Chariot from Chuck, the Paragon of Mechanics. He charged me $300+ for a brake job and several other small details. I said I was thinking about replacing the tank with a Honda CR-V or a Toyota RAV-4. He and all the guys at the shop argued that the Chariot should run to 200,000 miles without major problems.

It only has 118,000 miles on it now. (“Only” 118,000 miles! Who would ever have thunk an American car owner would utter a phrase like that?)

Normally, I drive about 10,000 to 12,000 miles a year. Without the commute to various college campuses, the mileage is likelier to run on the low side than on the high side. So…if the Men of Chuck’s are right, the thing should last another 10 years!

Every day that car runs, it puts money in my pocket in the form of low insurance bills and negligible registration fees. If it actually survived another eight or ten years, a great deal of money could stay invested, rather than being engrossed by the various parasites who want to take it away from me.

I’d like to drive to the high country during the summers. But I’m not comfortable driving the aging Sienna up the rim, which is a steep climb, nor do I relish being stuck by the side of the road way to hell and gone out in the desert. But duh! It would cost a lot less than Arizona’s $420 registration fee to rent a car and drive it to Jerome or Flagstaff. What the heck? I could rent a Mercedes convertible for less than it costs to register a $25,000 car in Arizona! And not have to pay 25 grand for the privilege.

Yesterday morning I took the little tank by the annoying car wash (at Chuck’s behest: “Take it to the car wash!!!!!”) and paid their demand for an extra $4 to dust the interior. Therein lies the key: give them some vigorish and they do a decent job.

The clunk came out looking almost like a brand-new chariot! Very nice.

So I decided to touch up the paint on the two spots where the white enamel chipped off, one where either a rock or a BB hit the tailgate and another where I broke the tail-light and chipped off a little paint around the assembly. The trick (I learned after I left the tailgate open while backing into the garage and whacked it on the garage door) is to squirt a couple of light coats of white enamel spray paint over the nekkid metal ding. It worked, more or less…good enough for government work, anyway.

custom_paint_jobContemplating another eight or ten years of living with this contraption, it occurred to me to wonder if it would be worth having the clunk repainted.

I’ve always wanted a candy-apple red car. How cool would a candy-apple red Sienna be, anyway? Maybe with some nice yellow and orange flames along the sides?

2) Overcomplicated Decomplication Strategy

Several readers remarked, in puzzled tones, that my scheme to cut the number of credit-card charges to keep track of, month in and month out, was effectively self-defeating. They noted, for example, that buying a cash card for a grocery store would not be regarded as a charge for groceries but rather as a charge for a piece of plastic, counterproductive when the Costco AMEX kicks back 6% on charges for food, 3% on gasoline purchases, and 1% on everything else. Presumably a piece of plastic would come under the rubric of “everything else.”

Much more obvious strategy: cut the number of trips to the usual suspects among retailers. Where is it written that I have to jet off to the Safeway every time I notice that one or two small items have run out? Can one not make do for a few days?

Why not simply cut the number of trips to Costco to two a month (max)? And the trips to Safeway to four a month? Every Thursday morning, I drive right past the favored Safeway on the way home from the weekly networking meeting. Stopping for groceries then would serve two purposes: a) save gasoline by combining trips and b) reduce the number of visits to the supermarket.

Two Costco charges + four Safeway charges + three Costco gas fillups ≠ 98 gerjillion annoying little charges. Actually, they = nine charges.

What if I took out about $200 or $300 in cash each month, and paid any bills under $20 to $30 with actual dollars? Here in this stack of charge slips I see a $4.16 charge to Safeway, a $10.73 charge to a restaurant, a $12.39 charge to Trader Joe’s, a $19.05 charge to the propane dealer, and on and on.

If only Costco gas bills and bills over $30 were charged, last month’s number of transactions would drop from twenty-eight to to twelve. If the threshold were $50, then the number of charges made last month would have been seven. And if I limited Safeway trips to once a week and Costco expeditions to twice a month, the number might drop even further.

So. The new Decomplication Strategy: Use cash for purchases under $50; limit routine shopping junkets to specific days of the month.