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I didn’t know this, but a close cousin’s fiance’s younger brother (early twenties) has been overstaying his welcome at my cousin and her fiance’s house.

It has been going on for the past year or so, with the in-law’s brother showing up in a predictable pattern — staying for a month or so, leaves, and eventually shows up a month or two later for yet another extended “visit.”

Initially, my cousin wasn’t too happy about it. She’ll get into arguments with her fiance, and at times was so upset that she avoids coming home as it felt less like her home.

In recent days however, it seems my cousin and her fiance are more nonchalant about the freeloading. Whether it’s because they’ve given up on the situation or have grown accustom to the mooching, I’m not sure, but deep down, I suspect neither of them are happy about the problem.

There are many things they can probably do, one of which is of course put their foot down and kick the fiance’s brother out. Various other suggestions are abound on the Internet, some bordering on the extreme (sell beds, sofa, and couches in the home, get rid of food in fridge, have loud sex, etc.).

I thought about stepping in and talking to the offender in question, but on further thought, regardless of how close I am to these people, that may be overreaching a bit.

It’s a tough situation really, as I can tell the problem is putting an emotional and financial strain on the couples.

Have you dealt with a freeloading family member before? What did you do about it? Suggestions for the couple in question?

My piece-of-crap, six years old, 3.2 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P7 digital camera has finally crapped out on me.

It’s four in the morning and I’ve just spent about two hours prying the camera apart, trying to figure out why the lens will no longer extend out when the camera is powered on.

After electrocuting myself (ah… so thats why they have non-conductive film wrapped around that area) and fumbling with the gears that extended the lens, I still couldn’t figure out why the damn thing is broken. The motor’s working but the gears won’t spin — even though the teeth on the gears appears to be in working order.

There’s a guy selling two of the gears on eBay for ten bones, as these particular lines of Cyber-shots are prone to lenses being stuck in the housing due to gears breaking (a frequent solution touted by people from Googling is dropping or banging the camera against the floor — no joke).

I can buy the replacement gears and see if it’ll do the trick, but I might just be wasting additional time and money — after all, there’s no guaranteed the new gears will fix the problem.

You’ve probably been in this situation before. Your old “good enough” piece of crap that you’ve been using for years finally broke down, and you have to make the decision to either repair it or replace it. It gets especially annoying when the part is easily replaceable, but is costly due to rarity or time consuming due to the part’s location.

Now, I can easily buy another “good enough” digital camera for around $50-$80 bucks. The gears that may fix my old camera cost $10, and it’ll probably take me another hour or two to replace the gears. An hour or two of my time, believe it or not, is actually worth more than $60 — but realistically, it’s not like I’ll be using those specific hours to “work.”

Hmm… what should a cheap and lazy bastard do?

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I’m so going to jail?

Was out of town last week on a short notice and I completely forgot to call-in and reschedule my jury duty appointment.

Jury duty isn’t so bad really, but I may have a slight biased as I have a somewhat above average sense of civic duty from the horrid wonderful days of being an Eagle Scout.

Depending on your count or state, the penalty for consecutively missing jury duty can vary from a hefty fine to jail time, so you shouldn’t simply toss the jury summons in the trash.

Most court clerks are fairly reasonable and will try to reschedule your jury duty date to a reasonable time — and for my county, jury summons are always sent weeks in advance so it isn’t too difficult to plan for.

Strangely enough, I’ve had a summons almost every year while some people I know have never received a jury summon in their life time.

Most mid to large size courthouse are ramping and modernizing their jury duty process to make life easier for jurors. Some, like my courthouse, offers free Wi-Fi access — although I don’t have a laptop so I usually just bring a good book or a notepad.

If you have never served as a juror and you have some free time, it may be something you can consider volunteering for — the lack of a proper jury pool is a significant problem in many parts of the country. It can be an interesting learning experience to see how the judicial process work and see your tax dollar at its best (or worse).

photo credit: cindy47452

Oh man. Just what you’ve been waiting for, another post on gas prices on yet another stupid blog (to be fair, I don’t believe I’ve ever really griped about gas prices on this blog).

I’ll be honest and admit that I use to have a really smug attitude towards people who complain about gas price increase.

“If a couple cents of increase in prices can affect you that much financially, then gas is the least of your worries.” I’ll often thought to myself.

Yeah, I’m an ass.

Being that I’m a bit older and less of a moron now, I came to realized that despite the fact that other developed nation have higher fuel prices, relatively speaking, gas prices can still affect many people in the United States. After all, not everyone drives a 30+ mpg car like me, nor do they have a less than 5 miles per day commute.

Many people across the country have long commutes because they can’t afford housing closer to their job location, and for others, their main profession requires the use of gas in such a way that changes in price directly affects their income.

With gas prices averaging $3.87 as of this post, I am very fortunate that changes in prices affects me minimally. But of course, that’s not the case for many other people today.

Has the increase in gas prices affect your travel plans or your daily life? Do share.

Six Quick Gas Saving Tips:

1. Take it easy.
   Driving at a reasonable speed will conserve gas. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.
2. Cruise Control.
   Engaging cruise control on the highway for better fuel management.
3. Lighten Up.
   Take everything out of the car that you don’t need so your engine doesn’t have to work as hard. If packing for a road trip, try to keep luggage inside the vehicle rather than strapping to roof where it creates wind resistance.
4. Stay in tune.
   Keep up with regular maintenance. Simple things such as changing the engine air filter on a needed basis can improve gas mileage as much by 10%.
5. Pump them up.
   Properly inflated tires play a big role in good fuel economy. Check the sticker at the driver side door or glove box for the proper inflation pressure. Besides affect fuel economy, under/over inflated tires can significantly affect ride handling, vehicle safety, AND add unnecessary wear to your tires, costing you more money in the future.
6. Cool it on the AC.
   Use air conditioners conservatively. Most air conditioner have a “economy” or “recirculation” setting that reduces the amount of outside air that must be chilled.

Related Links & Resources:

• How To Save at the Pump: 62 Ways - Free eBook (440 KB PDF)
• Tips to improve your Gas Mileage - FuelEconomy.gov
• Brand Conscious Buying #3 - Gasoline

I suppose it would be foolish of me to question multi-billion dollar companies’ decision to roll out a feature for their payment cards — after all, they must have done enough research before hand to see if it was worth the additional cost to include the embedded chip for contactless credit/debit card payment.

Plus, it’s not even really about making it convenient for the consumer — it’s about removing one less barrier so that people will use and spend more with their credit/debit card.

Quick info on contactless payment:

• VISA: payWave
• MasterCard: PayPass
• AmericanExpress: Express Pay
• Chase: blink
• No signatures required for purchase under $25

When I received my shiny new Chase Freedom credit card last year, it came with contactless payment ability. Thinking it to be very neat, I decided to gave it a whirl at my local fast food joint, but there was only one minor problem…

It didn’t work.

So I was standing there, waving my credit card to the reader, looking like a tool — for whatever reason, the reader wouldn’t pick up the radio frequency from my credit card. The funny thing was, the cashier didn’t realize the store had a new contactless reader installed, so she politely told me that that isn’t the right way to use a credit card.

After that delightful experience, I never bother using the contactless payment option again, even when I visit merchants with contactless payment readers.

However, things changed last week when I received a mailer from Chase, informing me that I’d receive a $10 statement credit if I use my blink-enabled Chase Freedom credit card at local participating merchants. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m a cheap bastard, so if you wave a free $10 in front of me, I’d be up for some on-the-way frivolous purchases.

Of course, the contactless payment didn’t work again.

At first I assumed my card has a defective chip, but the cashier quickly inform me that the reader I’m trying to scan with hasn’t been working properly lately.

Three other readers at three other merchants later, I finally stumbled onto a local McDonald’s with a working reader. I bought myself a double cheeseburger, wolfed down 1.5 grams of tans fat, and all of this within seconds thanks to contactless payment technology.

I use to hate self check-out machines, but these days I find them to be quite convenient for small purchases. Maybe once I get over the fear of embarrasment from waving a credit card in front of a device with nothing happening, I’d use contactless payment more.

Will I spend more as the credit card companies hope? Probably not. Does contactless payment “speed up transaction significantly” as Chase claims? Even when they were working, I honestly didn’t notice any difference.

Related Links & Post:

• Self Check-Out is NOT Fun
• To Pay, Wave Here - SmartMoney Magazine
• Contactless Smart Card - Wikipedia
• RFID: Problems & Concerns - Wikipedia

Every worthwhile thing in life — in my opinion — will not be easy to obtain. As Randy Pausch said, the walls and barriers are there for those who are hungry enough and wanting it bad enough.

I truly believe that I want financial independence bad enough to climb those walls and get through those barriers.

But why?

Is it simply about retiring in comfort? Having enough saved up so that in my advance years, I can hum around in style, store my infinite supplies of Cheetos in my fancy pantry — that happened to came with my nice big suburban house?

Are we all spending less than our means, saving diligently, and investing wisely, just so that we can live in the future without worries?

For me, those are a part of the reason. I would be crazy to choose a life of worry and financial difficulties, especially in my later years of life. Plus, why not? Everyone always tout that basic personal finance values are common sense. Spend less than you earn. Build an emergency fund. Invest wisely.

It’s entirely boring. There’s nothing sexy about the system, but the math works.

Even so, why follow common personal finance adage? Why should any of us pursue financial independence, which as it turns out, is a very subjective thing? Some of us are fine with a house well-stocked with food. Some of us want the yacht, private jet, and houses with 10,000 square ft. ballrooms. Nothing wrong with either goals in my opinion.

I often debate the subject of why within my own head, but as I grew older, the reasons started to become much clearer and much more focused.

Everyday, I wake up and see my mom heading off to work. And although I don’t get to see him often enough, I know that my dad is doing the very same thing, getting up at six in the morning to head off to work. Many of you reading this do the same thing everyday.

Although our reasons may be shaped with different words and different ideas, I believe the underlying goals are the same as my own reasons for wanting financial independence: it is for the love we have for our loved-ones; for their well-being, for their happiness, and for their comfort in life.

One of my mom’s financial goals was to earn enough money to buy a nice little house in Fountain Valley, CA, so that my grandfather can live his later years in comfort. As the years went on, my mother got closer and closer to her goal, but things came to an abrupt halt when my grandfather passed away due to cancer.

I still remember that day clearly…

My family and I gathered around my grandfather’s hospital bed, and as he passed away, my aunt and uncles started to cry aloud their father’s name. My grandmother clung onto the hands of the man she’s been with for the past sixty years, and I stood in the back of the room… wishing my family wouldn’t have to go through this experience.

Despite the untimely death, my family and I were truly blessed. Tens of thousands of others pass away each day without the surrounding comfort of their family and the care of a modern medical facility.

At the end, all of us being there that day was the founding reason why I wanted to achieve financial independence — to also be surrounded by family and loved ones during some of my final moments in life.

To feel their warmth, look upon them, and know that they will be taken care of. To be comforted by the thought that they will continue to be happy, be well-supported, and be able to somehow contribute to the improvement of this crazy round ball we all live on.

And of course, to be able to smile and ask them, “Did I ever told you guys about this silly, stupid blog I had on the World Wide Web…?”

So I just had dinner a few hours ago (mmm… chicken) and was about to just pay for the entire thing on my credit card because it honestly wasn’t too much and these were good people… but one party decided to pay for their part of the meal by cash, which was just peachy by me.

On the way home, I decided to hop by the ATM to get some cash for my el-cheapo $8 haircut when I realized that I just got some cash earlier. A quick count of the amount revealed that sure enough, the party paid for their fair share of the meal, accounting for taxes and tip - nice!

This made me realize that had the amount been off, it would have bothered me… even if it was just a few bucks here and there (probably not a good trait to have).

I’m sure everyone has experienced similar situations where you decided to split the bill but one party or person always come up short on the amount, neglecting tip, taxes, or forgetting that they ordered a drink here and there.

For whatever reason, stuff like this really bugs me (too cheap?). I’d much rather the person not pay at all, or at the very least acknowledge that they don’t have enough on them. This isn’t a big deal when you’re dinning amongst friends, but if you’re in a large party and a few people come up short, the end result isn’t too pretty and someone will get screwed over.

Solutions? Uh… don’t eat out? Make sure you have dinner with non-stingy people? *shrug*