Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas 2012

Even though I've been dropping hints for months, somehow I didn't get the money clip I wanted from Santa. And the one from Kohl's was just not going to cut it.  So I went online and bought one for myself from Overstock.com. Amazon, in this case, was actually priced higher!

On Christmas day, I went to the movies. I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in HFR 3D. What a glorious way to watch a movie. It's like you're in the same room with the characters.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Pea Soup

I made split pea soup last weekend for maybe the second time in my life, or so I can remember. It was fantastically simple using Hurst's dried split peas. All you have to do is follow the instructions explicitly and add a bit of ham.

F*cking TWC!

Sometimes, all you have to do is call and plead your case to the nice customer service folks at Time Warner Cable to get your monthly bill reduced.

I initially changed to TWC to get cable internet, which is the fastest internet in my neighborhood. That was their only service I had for awhile. Then my DirecTv bill spiked right before I found myself laid off from work, so I turned it off I bought a digital TV receiver. It was O.K. for awhile, but to be honest, just watching local channels plus PBS kinda sucked, but especially after KTLA turned off their music video channel.

So I called TWC to turn on the cable, which I never had since I've lived in the condo. It was an ordeal because the regular guy didn't want to run the drop to my bedroom. He had to call his supervisor to do it. Once the supervisor was here, the installation I wanted was no problem. Later, I decided to dump AT&T in order to get "bundled" service AKA phone, cable TV and internet at a discount.

Well, as of this last bill, all of the discounts finally expired and I was in payment shock. And that's exactly what I told Kendall- customer service professional at TWC. First, I said I was thinking of turning off my cable phone because my highest bill with AT&T was $32. So, Kendall puts me on hold for about 30 seconds, and then comes back on the line to tell me, we don't want to loose your business, so we can give you a deal for $125 a month for the next 12 months. And then I say, well I also called to turn off some of the cable packages because I'm just not watching them (and I just bought a Roku box for Christmas), so if you could do that, too, we've got a deal. So I turned off the HBO and Showtime because honestly, True Blood is the only thing I watch on HBO and that doesn't come back on until June. And I also turned off the Choice Tier, too. So this brought my monthly payment down to $108 or about $100 less than the bill I'm going to pay in December which is GAG-CHOKE, WAY TOO much!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

More Financial Links:

http://moneyning.com/mortgage/how-to-recast-your-mortgage/

Recast. Maybe you've heard this rarely used financial term before and didn't know what it was. Well, what a recast basically is is a principle reduction plus a re-amortization of the remaining balance on your loan. The above link which takes you the MoneyNing blog by David Ning explains it all.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-practical-moves-avoid-problem-080054368.html

Good advice on how to gain control over your finances.