Friday Fiscals: Black cat dancing on a broken mirror

November 13th, 2009

Happy Friday the 13th. Check out these lucky links from my reader:

Cash Commons, a great place to ask money questions, now has a full page of registered users and over 70 questions in the mix.  A special thank-you to these bloggers who popped over this week, as well as all of the other active members:

Have a great weekend!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »


Where is that extra French hen?

November 11th, 2009

(If you have a true love, then you have thirty of them from last Christmas! Most people really only need twenty-nine French hens.)

Regifting this year is up.  Way up. A Consumer Reports survey found that a little over a third (36%) of American adults said they’d recycle a gift this year, which is a 50% increase from two years ago.  Regifting is an art and MP Dunleavey has a dozen good tips for learning that art.

With Christmas decorations hitting Costco in August, and “leaked” Black Friday ads popping up, and overt announcements from Walmart a month ago promising 100 toys for $10, it’s clear that stores really, really want to sell stuff badly.  (Not that they haven’t always wanted to sell stuff, but the retail wars seem to be getting more heated.)

So the realization that more people still want to give stuff that they already have in their possession is a little telling about how bad things are, no?  This increased regifting behavior will be a drag on year-end sales:  each re-gift means, roughly, a gift that wasn’t purchased.  If there are roughly 200 million American adults, and 5% of them re-gift one $10 gift (5% is the increase of “would re-gift” adults from last year), then that’s $100 million less that retailers will get this year, just due to regifting. Add to this outright lost sales, and pretty soon we’re talking real money, real hits to the bottom line, and real downsizing.

But you know what?  That’s what should happen. When people overspend, they need to underspend.  When people underspend, businesses that rely on people spending will run into hard times.  It’s not our duty to keep businesses afloat.  We should use the fruits of our labor in ways that benefit ourselves, and right now that includes reducing debt and saving for retirement.

So dust off those Christmas knickknacks, rewrap them, and pass them on, preferably to people other than the those who gave you said knickknacks.  Lots of others are doing it!

Posted in Economy, Shopping | 6 Comments »


Friday Fiscals: Wii Fit Plus edition

November 6th, 2009

My wife got Wii Fit Plus earlier this week and it makes you think on some of the games.  Nice build-on to Wii Fit.  Besides, what other game can I flap my arms and fly around in a giant bird suit?

Here are some links of interest from my feed reader:

Also a big thank-you to these bloggers who’ve participated for the first time this past week at Cash Commons:

Have a great weekend!

Posted in Roundups | 3 Comments »

Convenience credit card users are not perfect customers

November 5th, 2009

This article on MSN Money misses a bit in the title:

Banks punish perfect customers

The article is another one on how credit card companies are hitting otherwise conscientious users with annual fees.  The users that are being targeted now are those who pay their bills on time and don’t carry a balance.

These are not perfect customers as far as the bank is concerned.  They are close to the worst, actually: just one step above those customers that declare bankruptcy and discharge their debts.  Convenience users are not very profitable for the credit card companies, and could well cost the companies money.

Who are the best customers?  Customers that pay the minimum balance each month for years and years.  Even better are ones that do so while going over their credit limit and occasionally are slightly late on a payment, triggering more fees.  They’re the profitable ones for the banks.  If it weren’t for the profitable customers, the credit card companies couldn’t afford to hold onto the unprofitable ones.  But what’s happening now is that the CARD Act is clamping down on a number of these very profitable practices, and everyone suffers.

The tone of the article is interesting, in that it suggests that credit card companies exist to make the lives of responsible people easier.  That’s just not true.  They exist to make money.  They don’t make money by letting people like me get three weeks’ use of their money, interest-free, and a rebate to boot.  They tolerate people like me because I might fall on hard times, carry a balance, and then they’ll make money off of me.  They’ve kept me around only because I’ll go elsewhere if they make life too difficult for me.  (Perhaps they already want me to go elsewhere.  I don’t really know.)

If most people are responsible with credit and pay their bills in full, then we’ll mostly be convenience users and will have no choice but to pay fees.   But the convenience users are starting to pay fees now because banks are needing to look for sources of income, as it’s been made clear that credit card users shouldn’t have to face the full consequences of their misdeeds.

Posted in Commentary, Credit | 7 Comments »

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