Tag Archives: Finances

Jim Cramer got schooled by Jon Stewart

March 14, 2009 9:24 am / Leave a Comment /

Yesterday I read an article and watched a 20 minute (or so) video of an interview that Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” did with financial expert and entertainment show host Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” and I was left with one overwhelming question: when did Jon Stewart become such a good news person?

He tore into Cramer in a non-confrontational way that sent Cramer backpedaling almost from the opening of the interview. He asked very real, common sense, every day type questions that pretty much all regular folks have been asking for the last year or so. He put Cramer on the spot and never let him out of the corner he backed himself into. It was amazing. At the end of it all it was definitely 10 rounds won by Jon Stewart.

Not there was anything to win. But I think Stewart actually held very little back in asking a very influential man in the world of finance how things got to where they got to and why he (Cramer) seemed to do nothing to prevent it. In fact, it felt less like and interview and more like two dudes talking over a beer at a local pub.

Yes, it was a bit awkward to see Jim Cramer wuss out the way he did. He literally folded from the moment he first opened his mouth. It wasn’t pretty. I would have liked to have seen him be a bit stronger when getting hit as hard as he did. But the bloody, honest truth is that Jon Stewart left very little for Cramer to use as a crutch.

He pulled out video clips of an off-air interview Cramer gave in which he said that he himself had done some of the things that many investors did to put the economy into the place it is in now. He (Cramer) made light of some of the situations people could end up in when investments were finagled the way he did it. It was actually pretty disgusting to hear, and at one point even Jon Stewart told Jim Cramer that hearing him say those things made him angry.

If you haven’t had a chance to see the video yet I have it here. It is about 20 minutes long but well worth the time it takes to watch it. Oh yeah, and you might want to in a place where folks won’t look at you funny for laughing out loud because there are times you will be doing just that.

Posted in: Personal Messages, Rants / Tagged: , , ,

Do we at least get tickets to the games?

February 10, 2009 6:25 am / Leave a Comment /

According to a Bloomberg News article Citigroup and seven other US banks are spending federal bailout money on large stadium naming rights deals.

Citigroup Inc., targeted by lawmakers for paying $400 million to put its name on the New York Mets’ new ballpark, and seven other banks that received government funds may face questioning by Congress for spending $845 million on stadium sponsorships.

I have no qualms about putting the government in its place. So in regards to this article I can say without prejudice that the government has failed its people in monumental fashion on this one.

How can a bank help its struggling homeowners when they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising? People are still being foreclosed on, homes are still being lost, businesses are still going under. Why in the bloody hell would a bank that sought out federal financial aid use any portion of that money on naming right to a stadium? No jobs would be created in the making of that stupid move. No homes would be saved, no people would be helped. So how does that reflect the intention of the government to help out its people?

I know that the Obamassiah is trying to make changes to bailout fund handling, and he talks a big game when it comes to doling out cash, but I cannot see how he is going to make sure that stupid crap like this doesn’t happen under his $800,000,000,000 bailout plan. Yes, he can limit executive salaries, bonuses and stock options. But how is he going to reach deep into the heart of the business and put an end to financial mismanagement like this? Without going communistic/socialistic in the process? I just don’t see how that is going to work.

In the meantime I think I will use my part of the federal bailout money to buy some tickets to some sporting events. Oh wait, we don’t actually get any money as part of the Obamanator’s plan to save the world from financial destruction. That’s right.

But since my tax dollar are going to buying a sweet new sign on several ball parks, can’t a brother get a couple of tickets? Just as a thank you?

Posted in: On Politics, Rants / Tagged: , , ,

Tough economic times indeed

January 30, 2009 3:36 pm / 3 Comments /

Given the nature of the economy we live in it is no wonder that so many people have fallen on such hard times. Jobs are being lost, houses are being foreclosed on, cars are being repossessed, families are being destroyed and the list goes on and on. It is a tough time to be alive but thank God we are alive. I cannot wait to see the end of this thing.

Today reminded me of how tight things are for us. Before I get into all that I have to qualify my situation a little bit. I was not affected by the housing crisis like everyone else. I rent, I don’t own. So that means that in a world of people losing homes to outrageous mortgage movement I have remained pretty much untouched with that. My landlords are awesome people. They own the home we live in and during the course of tenancy, which has now extended to six a half years, they have not once raised our rent. They have done everything they could do for us as landlords and have done it faithfully.

No, my financial situation stems from my own personal inability to be a strong man. I let the spending in our house get ridiculously out of control over the last few years and allowed our debt to climb to a point where there really is no light at the end of the tunnel. Well there is, but it is attached to a large train barreling down the track.

Because of my decisions our once very good credit rating has evaporated into the depths of credit risk. Though I make a very good salary it is nowhere near enough to manage the levels of debt I have allowed my family to take on. Gone are the days of a large 401K (not because the market shafted me but because I had to draw on it in order to get out of what I thought was a critical mess I was in about 18 months ago). Gone are the days of no car payment because I had to refinance my car that owned outright in order to pay off debt that was run right back up within a few months. Bad decisions have led to most of the trouble I am in. And we are in some trouble.

As I checked my bank account this morning I realized that after the rent is paid and an obligation I have to tend to is handled (this is an unavoidable obligation that must be handled) my family – me, my wife and five kids – will have about $100 to live off of for the next two weeks. That gets to pay for food, for gas and anything else that might come up over the next two weeks. I cannot remember being in this tight of a position ever. Especially when not having any savings or credit to rely on for that time.

Worse yet, everyone I know that could possible assist me are in the same predicament I am. My brother and sister are both fighting their own personal financial demons at the moment. My sister-in-law makes barely enough to support herself. My in-laws are on one income since my mother-in-law got laid off a few months ago. So there is really no one to turn to for help right now.

I can’t borrow because my credit is crap in a can. I have no credit because we ran up our credit on stuff we didn’t need and could probably not even find anymore. I have no savings because it was spent on paying back creditors for credit we ran up. I have no assets because they were all used up before. This all leaves me in a rather precarious position. And quite frankly I am scared.

I know we are going to make it. We always do. And I am finally at a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for real. We are about a month away from being back on time with our creditors and utilities. A month from now we will have plenty of money to live on after the bills are paid. Two weeks from now it will be a struggle again, but not as bad as this.

But for now I have to find a way to contend with all of this. Not sure how I am going to do it, but it will get done. Of course, if you have any suggestions or ideas, I am all ears. Well, eyes, as it were, since I am reading. ;)

Posted in: Personal Messages, Rants / Tagged: , ,

No sooner did I say I didn’t want to …

January 2, 2009 10:58 pm / 1 Comment /

… then I do it anyway: today was teh suck.

What made it the suckiest day of the year so far was a combination of miscommunication, lack of financial accountability and complete failure of management on my part. You see, it was just after noon today and Sandi had gone to the store. While she was out a black, unmarked tow truck slowly drove through my court. Up the court it went, down the court it returned. And it stopped, in front of my house.

Anyone that has ever been even remotely associated with the car business knows that plain Jane tow trucks, whether white or black, mean only one thing: The repo man cometh. But it couldn’t be for me.

Immediately I thought that there was no way that this truck could be at my house to take my Vibe. I just paid it, just before Christmas. And the Suburban had to be in at least decent shape. At least I thought it was. But to be on the safe side I decided to call GMAC and see where my account stood. Apparently it didn’t stand at all.

I was told by my account rep that my account was severely past due and that I needed to come up with some ungodly amount of cash to remove the repo order that was on my account. Yes, you heard that right, my truck was slated for repossession. And that scared the hell out of me.

I had a vehicle repossessed once before, back in 1997, and it took forever to get that case resolved. It was costly, embarrassing and detrimental to my credit for years and years. There is no way I could allow this to happen again. So I had to negotiate and negotiate fast. And I did.

In the end I agreed to immediately pay some smaller ungodly amount of money to hopefully get the repo man off my back. That was, of course, after I discovered that GMAC has apparently been trying to get in touch with me for weeks. Though I have had no messages from them at work, at home or on my cell phone. There has been this one 800 number that has called quite a bit but every time I answer it there is no one on the other line. I guess this must be the times my rep says he left messages for me.

Either way I had to get the repo order lifted, so I ran around today getting large sums of cash gathered up and sending it by wire to GMAC in hopes that the repo man could be called off in time. I am still not sure if it worked, but I am hoping that when I wake up tomorrow that my vehicle will be where I left it (which incidentally is not at my home – I cannot take the chance that the order didn’t get lifted in time). This is a hell of a way to start the year.

Pray for me. I need it. Times are tougher than I thought they would be two days into the year. I really cannot afford to start off this way, so I am coveting as many prayers as I can get. And pray for my kids, too, please. They are taking this well without knowing everything. But I can sense they can sense something. So I need prayer for them as well.

Regardless, something has to give. I cannot end a year like last year by getting off to a start like this year. That is a recipe for disaster.

Posted in: Personal Messages, Prayer Requests, Rants / Tagged: , ,

Feeling the effects of cowardice and the economy

July 28, 2008 8:07 am / Leave a Comment /

I have been going through a major transformation in my life the past few weeks. Most of this transformation has stemmed from the fact that a few weeks ago I came to a life shattering conclusion that I have been a coward for a very long time. Somewhere in my life I decided that it was more important to make people feel good than to do the right thing. And because of this decision I made, Lord knows when, my life has been a series of bad decisions based on someone’s tears, fears, angst or discontent.

The effects of a cowardly man are far reaching. Everything that requires the strength of a man are shot to hell when a man refuses to be strong. And I believe things are designed to be that way. Men are made strong so we can use our strength. We are made aggressive so we can be aggressors. We are made to withstand because we need to withstand. It is in our makeup. Strength is not supposed to be something that looks good on a model or handles itself well under circumstance, strength is a meant to a be a lifestyle, a characteristic that is exuded daily by all men.

I have not lived that lifestyle. I have indeed allowed myself to be swayed by many different circumstances. And in so doing I have surrendered my position as a man, a leader and head of household to my wife. I have not only stripped myself of the authority and dominion inherent to me as a man but I have also placed my wife in a position where her identity as a woman is cloudy because of the things she has to do because I have chosen not to do them.

One area of long standing contention in my marriage has been finances. I am the sole provider of the house and have been for about five years or so. In the 13 years that Sandi and I have been married she has worked outside of the home for about five years with the remaining eight years being spread out over several periods in our marriage when we had new children or some other life event allowed/necessitated her be home with the kids.

Up until a few years ago I had managed the money in our home. I was diligent, relentless and incredibly passionate about making sure our bills were paid and our obligations met. I had the bank account balanced against my register every morning. I knew, to the penny, how much money I had available to my at any given point of any given day. I was on it.

Unfortunately at that time we did not make a whole lot of money so even though I had things firmly under control we did not really have a lifestyle. We had kids, a place to live, cars to drive and a little bit of food in the fridge. But that was about it. And Sandi felt like she was being locked out of the finances.

So in response to her feelings I decided to offer control of the finances to her. I am not one for two people handle the same task at the same time so I told her that she could have it if she was willing to take it all. She agreed and a few years back I gave her everything I had in relation to our finances. And you know what? For a couple of years she did a kick ass job of making sure everything was handled appropriately just as I had done. She also saw to it that there was money for other lifestyle type things so we were not always so stuffed on what we could do or when.

She even made sure our credit improved. From very early on in my adult life I seemed to do everything under the sun to make sure that my credit was craptastic. She actually improved our credit standing and in late 2005 we began taking on credit again. It was nice to be able to qualify for things that required good credit because had, for so long, been such a huge credit risk that we were either completely unable to do things based on credit or we paid a huge premium for doing things on credit. So I felt great about her handling the money and the success we were having.

In September of 2006 I changed jobs. I began to earn about 50% more than I was earning at my old job. We had lots more money and what appeared to be a growing lifestyle. And then things began to take a turn for the worse in our finances. We had amassed an enormous amount of debt. Things were not getting paid. We began to get calls from creditors. We began to not have money. This was about summer 2007.

Being faced with some troubling circumstances ahead I made a few decisions and didn’t make a few others that led to an increased lack in my household. The long and short of it is that I ended up costing my family my retirement to get us out of hock in June 2007. The biggest bills were paid, some smaller ones were paid off completely. We put some money (about $6,000) into savings and put a little more (about $2,500) into savings for our children ($500 each for five kids). It felt good, but in a bad way. While the bills were paid and we had some savings immediately I knew that withdrawing $60,000 worth of my retirement would have a negative effect on our lives.

Spring forth to December 2007. Even though we had paid off almost all of our debt just six months earlier we were maxed out again. I had about $200 cash to spend on Christmas for my entire family, my wife and my kids. My credit cards were shut off or at their limits. Times were tough. Bills were not getting paid again. Calls were coming in again. The kids began to understand that Privacy Manager, or 1-800 Services on the phone meant that neither mom nor dad wanted to take that call. In January of this year I was faced with another decision to make.

I chose to borrow against my paid off car so I could pay down our American Express bill. Again. We paid a few others too but the AmEx bill has always been the one that has gotten us into trouble. And mind you we had burned through the $6,000 grand in savings (I was saving that for the tax bill on the retirement withdrawal that I knew was coming) and the kids savings had been wiped out too. We had nothing at our disposal except my car. So I had to do something. I hocked my car.

Now in the midst of all this I had made a firm decision in my head to take back control of the finances of our home. And each time I was completely swayed by my wife’s tears and heartfelt sentiment that she could get things back under control if she just had a little more time. Plus she said that she didn’t want to be kept out of the finances again and that when I was doing the money before I would just push her down and not listen to her. So again, I caved. Each time we hit rock bottom I would try to get us back up to a point and still let the situation run. I was scared of my wife’s reaction and feelings.

Let’s come back to here and now shall we? We are just about to move into August. The last time we paid anything to American Express, I come to find out, was April. Our truck payment is behind. Most of my cards are behind a month or more. Some have even gone all the way to collection agencies. I am getting multiple calls daily from various collectors that want to be paid. And, even though I was just told a few weeks ago that our car payments were up to date and that we are good, I also find out this past Saturday that we are overdrawn in our back account by $800.

“What? How could we be negative?” she says. “I was watching that.”

This morning we are up to $1,000 negative in our account. If it gets any worse we will not be able to pay our rent. We are already not going to be able to buy groceries. Our utility bills are mounting because they are months behind and I have a truck payment that is about to get to 60 days late. How much longer should I wait to see if this thing gets better?

Granted things have gotten out of hand in terms of cost all over the place. The economy is crap right now thanks to fuel prices. The cost of gas is driving the cost of everything else up so things that we rely on daily are getting harder and harder to afford. But when it comes right down to it, how would that explain the condition of our expenses?

I blame myself. Sandi should never had been put into a position to handle this. It is my role as the leader of our household to take care of things like this. I have failed her, my family and myself. I have let this get out of control. That gets fixed now.

A man with no balls allows all sorts of mischief to take place right under his nose because he is too damned scared to make a change. Today, I take my balls back. This will be fixed.

Posted in: On Family, On Manhood, On Marriage, Personal Messages, Rants / Tagged: , , , , , ,