How to Tell When Things are Bad
Sep 15, 2008 Rant
Well, Ike didn’t get too bad here. Got some high winds, but fortunately the power only blinked once, so I was able to post updates to Twitter all night. Needless to say, between keeping the twits updated, the refugees that stayed with us, and the coffee, I didn’t sleep much this weekend.
Fortunately, the decision to live-tweet a hurricane helped improve my follower count!
That’s all the good news I have.
I’ve been out of work for three weeks now. I DO have a job, but I took my physical Friday and I have to wait for them to mail the results to the company. Not only that, my unemployment was denied. We are staring right down the barrel of losing our phones, internet, cars and maybe electricity.
This is not a place I ever want to be in again.
We can’t sell the car because it’s not paid for. And it’s not in our name. Can’t cut the cable off, because the internet is tied in with it and my wife needs it for school. Can’t cut the phones for obvious reasons (they are cell phones - we don’t have a landline…and they are locked in a contract).
I really hate being down. I especially hate the incessant flow of bad news.
Suggestions?
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Blogging As a Method of Stress Relief
I’m going to have to apologize in advance for this. It may sound more like I’m ranting, but I’m just so stressed out and I just had a disheartening realization.
My blogging and trying to make money is doing nothing to help my family. Nothing.
I would like to thank Bank of America for causing my bank to go into overdraft over $160 because of the ORDER in which they process items, and because their online banking window can still show a positive balance while in reality, behind the scenes, they are considering you to be overdrawn and NOT telling you about it (yes, I saved the conversations with their ’support’ that prove my statements).
This year I’ve made a fair amount of money with my blogging but have been forced to spend almost all of it on either fuel or food/drinks (mostly drinks) related to working my ‘real’ job which only pays $12.00 per hour. When you add the fact that now I apparently owe the bank money and cannot access the balance in my PayPal account any other way (yes, I just recently applied for their debit card), it’s hard to use the ‘extra money’ that is there.
I have two kids. A couple of weeks ago, my son got sick and had to go to the hospital. I make too much money for CHIPS, and I can’t afford insurance, so it put us in a bind. We have sold just about every book, CD, video game, etc. that we can get our hands on to try to make enough money for food and gas.
You know, sometimes I wish I were a Texas plastic surgery expert, I wouldn’t have to worry so much.
And yes, I’ve tried discussing cutting spending on things before. Since I have ZERO control of the cashflow around here, I am pretty much just written off or ignored outright. It makes people mad to hear what I have to say about the money because ‘I have no idea what goes on and how the bills work, and I shouldn’t worry about it.’
Blogging, for me, has become something I love to do because I have some kind of creative control over it. You know, since I sold my guitars. And, I know that I can make a little bit of spending money with it, even if it all gets spent on necessities.
Blogging helps me blow off a bit of steam. I enjoy being creative and getting paid for it.
In truth though, it really isn’t helping our situation any. I’m learning a lot reading other blogs, but in reality I’m not making enough money with it to actually help. Well, I am, but it is being spent on other, more pressing things, so I can’t save any of it.
It looks like I will reach that $500 goal for the year, but the laptop I was planning on getting will probably not be happening. Until it does, I’ll be blogging live from the abnormally hot garage.
I keep jokingly telling myself that ‘one day, my blogs will take off and I’ll make a decent supplemental income with them’. I’ve always been a bit naive, and I’m thinking that this is just another in a long series of stupid ideas that I will not be giving up any time soon because I believe I can do it.
I need to go back to college. I can’t, because I don’t have the time or money at the same time. Mostly, I don’t have the time. I can get the money. Grants will cover everything. But I also work a 12 hour night shift, and being a truck driver, I MUST be rested to safely do my job.
Meh. Some days I just hate being me.
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Tags: Personal Finance, Rant, Sucks
Someone Please Tell Me
Jun 8, 2008 Rant
There has got to be a better way to make money with a blog than copy-pasting pre-written sponsored posts in blocks of three.
I mean, all bloggers have to pay their bills, but geez…I feel horrible about doing that to my readers. It’s just non-content that makes me feel terrible…like I just spammed my mother.
My paid posts are pretty much the only source of income I have from this (and my other) blog. The ads just aren’t generating anything useful, and I’m just starting with freelancing (which I hope can replace all these crappy paid posts). So far it’s off to a good start, but still, I feel bad.
I want to apologize to my readers for the aforementioned commercials.
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Always Check Your Receipts!
May 23, 2008 Personal Finance, Rant
The other day, I stopped in a convenience store (Fas-Start, on Hwy 21 in Bryan, TX…just for your information) to pick up some stuff. I payed for it with my debit card, using the ‘credit’ option. I feel that it is more secure that way, because anyone can memorize a 4-digit code, but it’s a whole different thing to successfully forge a signature.
To make a long story short, the total of my purchase was somewhere around $6.50 cents (give or take a few cents). The cashier told me the amount, I gave him my card, signed the ticket, and left.
The next day I signed in to my online checking account, to see what my current balance was. I was a bit surprised to find that the idiot had rounded my purchase up to an even $7.00 and ran it.
Now, that may not seem like a huge amount to have stolen, but for those who are snowflakers, you would understand why it sucks so much: it adds up.
So let’s look at it this way: suppose the thieving scumbags did that to everyone who made a credit purchase (and I assume that they do it quite frequently). Even .50 each time, for only 10 customers…that’s $5.00. They are helping themselves to extra bits of change. MY change. And, since they are dishonest, I have no problem sharing the location of the store in this post, to help my fellow readers and friends keep from having their hard-earned money stolen by lowlife jerks.
The moral of this story? If you feel a bit sickened by stuff like this, you can always try fresh air as a remedy, but I doubt it will help. A better idea is to always check your receipts in the store. I didn’t do this. If there had been a discrepancy, I could have asked them immediately to rectify the situation. Since I did not do this, I’m out of luck. I can guarantee that I won’t be using them again, and I will most certainly tell people not to use them.
Note: I’m not the only one that has had trouble with this store, for the record.
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Tags: bryan, fas-start, lessons, money, Personal Finance, stealing, Sucks, truck stop, tx
Slipping just a bit…
May 11, 2008 Rant
I apologize for the lack of updates recently. My work schedule is stupid.
Yesterday, I got up at 6:30 and left the house at 6:45 to pick up a car. Not surprisingly, Cross Country had given us the wrong freaking street. I eventually figured out where the customer was, and drove for about 10 minutes to find him. As it turns out, he was about 5 blocks from my house. Way to go, Cross Country.
Took his car to Dallas. Came back, picked up another car and drove it to Houston. Got called for another pickup at 5 this morning. I’m a bit tired.
Ah well. Word to your mother.
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Tags: happy mothers day, mothers day humor, rants, slow news day
