How's Does a Free $50.00 Sound?

I just stumbled across an offer that I thought was worth sharing. Wachovia is offering $50.00 for opening a new checking account. That's it - no strings attached. Go HERE to see the details of the offer. If you're too lazy, here's the gist:

• Offer is for new customers only
  
• You must open the account with a deposit of $100.00
• You must open the account before 1/31/2008
• The bonus will be deposited within 120 days of opening the account

That's all there is to it. This is better than most of these offers I've seen. Typically they require you to open with a higher balance, open a fee-based account (this one works with a free checking account), or set up a few direct deposits. If you can part with $100.00 for 120 days, you're going to get a 50% payback. Not too shabby. If you've got a Wachovia nearby, I'd say definitely take advantage!!

We're Back...and That Was Not Fun

Let me just start by saying that this Christmas will go down as the Christmas nightmare to end all nightmares. I don't even know where to start. Everyone at my in-laws (including me) did our best imitation of the picture for most of the time we were in Arkansas. Couple that with some serious flight delays, standing in long lines, a baby that would not sleep, and losing my fantasy football season despite starting 10-0 and you can see where this is headed. UNBELIEVABLE.

We did enjoy having Bailey's first Christmas. Santa brought her some nice new tub toys, some books, and left some building blocks and a new playroom for her for when she got home to Charlotte. Other than that though, it pretty much was awful. Next year, we're staying home and we'll just visit after Christmas.

Here's hoping yours was better than ours!

Online Savings Rates are Dropping

As expected, the Fed recently cut interest rates again and we're starting to see the cut's impact on savings rates. My HSBC Direct account recently cut my interest rate by a quarter point and most online banks are following suit. I wrote about online savings accounts a month or two ago and recommended 3 banks - HSBC, ING Direct, and Emigrant Direct. All have recently cut their rates.

• ING Direct went from 4.2% to 4.1%
• Emigrant Direct went from 4.75% to 4.65%
• HSBC went from 4.50% to 4.25%

So...what should you do about this? You can always look for CDs which typically offer higher yields than savings account but tie your money up for a period of time and charge a penalty if you have to touch the money before the period is up. You can also consider moving your money from one account to another - chasing the highest interest rate. That, however, has a cost to it as you're not making any money while the funds are in transit from one online bank to another. To see how much that's going to cost you and determine whether it's worth your while to move the funds, head over to My Money Blog (the name of the site - not MY money blog) and use their "Ultimate Rate Chaser Calculator" - a great tool to demonstrate how much money you'll lose moving money around and how long it'll take to make the money back.

Scientists Discover Real Life Smurf

I was casually watching the news last night when they ran a quick segment on a man named Paul Karason. Apparently this guy is moving from Oregon to California in hopes of finding a more accepting environment for his BLUE SKIN. He has been drinking colloidal silver for years as a sort of cure-all tonic and I'll be darned if it hasn't turned his skin blue. Read more HERE.

When I saw Paul, immediately I thought that this guy will definitely be getting the role of Papa Smurf if/when the Smurf live action movie is made:



This guy's a dead ringer?!

Never Stop Learning

One recent trend that deserves monitoring is the trend towards making educational material available for free. Many top name universities have started putting their courses online - for free! Colleges are seeking to build their brands and connect with potential applicants across the globe. Those of us who aren't potential applicants can benefit from their largesse!

ITunes has a portion of their site dedicated to college lectures that can be downloaded for free. You can get all kinds of material here - from seminary courses on Old Testament to cutting edge science courses from MIT. If you ever think back to your college days and wish you hadn't opted out of that hard European History course, odds are that you can probably find one online and enjoy all the learning - without all the stress of taking the tests.

Go HERE to see what's available on ITunes U. If you're not an ITunes user, HERE is a list of universities with courses available online. Check them out and learn something new. Enjoy!

Taking Some Holiday Time Off

We are on the move for the holidays so things will probably be pretty slow around here. I'll be back after Christmas! In the meantime, browse the archives. I hope you'll find something helpful there!

I Guess It's a Cultural Thing?!

In the USA, we get this:



In Japan, they get this:


Weird.

Are You a Collector?

I recently found out that the guy that lives across the street from me has an entire room in his house dedicated to KISS memorabilia. I have yet to see said collection but am extremely excited about the prospect of doing so. I collected baseball cards as a kid and have held on to them in hopes that someday every other guy my age will lose his collection and I'll have something of value. I'm not much of a collector of anything anymore. I am, however, always amazed when I watch these shows about obsessed collectors and they show people that have entire rooms in their house dedicated to some random band or TV show.

I did a little web searching on the topic and came across some pretty strange collections. These people are truly devoted to their subject of interest (to say the least):

BEER CANS













MR. POTATOHEAD MEMORABILIA
(this is only one of the 6 pictures of his collection)
See the rest HERE

























VIDEO GAME MEMORABILIA















There are many many others - some weirder than others. I found a ping pong ball collection that dates back to the 1920s. A Smurf collection that takes up an entire room. A Strawberry Shortcake doll collection that takes up multiple rooms. A condiment package collection that contained over 3000 packets of ketchup, mustard, you name it. Weird stuff. If you have a room dedicated to collecting something (other than dust), I want to know about it!

Do Your Own Tech Support

In my extended family, I am the tech support staff. I'm OK with that fact most of the time (unless the call for help comes in the middle of an important game or someting). There are, however, things that we all could do that would make things easier for whoever that person is in your life that you call when your computer is not working as it should.

CrossLoop is a tool that allows you to give remote control of your desktop to someone via the Internet. When my mom calls me for support, we can both log on to CrossLoop and I can control her computer from my computer. I can see her screen, access the programs on her computer, etc. which makes technical troubleshooting SO much easier. Definitely download this and get your tech support go-to person to do the same!

Most of the problems that I find on other people's computers are caused by spyware and that's why you need to download AdAware. AdAware is used to scan your computer of malicious files, spyware, etc. and clean them off. If you don't know what spyware is, it's junk that you don't want on your computer that you pick up as your surf around the internet. At best, it slows your computer down. At worst, it can completely freeze your computer, log your key strokes, all kinds of stuff that's bad. Get this one for sure and use it at least once per week.

Spyware Blaster is another spyware related program that you need to get. This program addresses/stops spyware BEFORE it gets on your machine. Running AdAware is great to clean off anything that you may already have but you need SpyWare Blaster running to keep the stuff off in the first place.

The last piece of software that you should get is called CCleaner (it used to be called Crap Cleaner - seriously). This is a program that scans your computer and gets rid of alot of dead files that you don't need anymore. It also cleans up your cookies (pieces of software that websites put on your machine so that they can 'recognize' you when you come back), gets rid of temporary internet files (some sites save some of their content on your local machine so the site will load faster), etc. This is a good tool for cleaning up disk space and keeping things in good working order.

All of these programs are free and all of them are essential tools that I use when I do technical support for people. If you are scared to use them, drop me a note and I'll walk you through it or connect to you using CrossLoop and show you how to do it. Either way - get them for yourself and you should notice improved performance. Good luck!

Professional Athelete Guessing Game

These things are so dang popular I thought I'd do yet another. Oh yeah - I'm gonna keep doing them until somebody starts to like it.

Now - here are 9 professional atheletes. Other than never having been in your kitchen, what do they have in common?