Here’s a story that has little to do with personal finance but plenty on being a gluttonous cheapskate.

So once upon a time, I was watching a DVD in front of my computer, while wolfing down those Costco Kirkland Signature™ Chocolate Chip Cookies.

If you shop at Costco, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I have this habit of splitting my cookies in half before I throw them in my mouth, and I did so with each of the cookies I came across.

As the numbers of cookies diminish down to the last few, I commit to my routine of: pick up, split in half, throw ‘em in mouth, and chomp away.  Imagine my surprise when one of the cookie wouldn’t detach, after I’ve already split it in half.

Hmm, what the.

Since the room was quite dim, I held the cookie up to the brightly lit screen.

Nice.

The split cookies were connected by a single strand of long, thin, human hair.

At least, I hope it’s human hair.

The first thought that came into my mind was, “Man, that’s some strong hair.” The second thought was, “How many cookies do I have left?”

After doing some basic arithmetic in my head, I counted three cookies.

So what did I do?

Naturally, I ate around the strand of hair.

Moral of the story?

Next time, take a picture and complain to Costco, so you can get another box of cookies for free. Better yet, bring it to them and show it to them.

Where’s my third chicken strip!?

I was opening up a box of Swanson Fried Chicken Strip TV dinner (10 for $10) for a quick lunch, and to my horror I found only two chicken strip. I knew something was wrong when I pick up the box, and it didn’t feel like 11 ounces.

Oh yeah, if you value your health and sanity, you’ll stay away from TV dinner. But if you don’t care, here’s the Single Man’s Guide to TV dinner. You should also check out the breakfast from hell, take a look at the “Nutrition” Facts picture.

Damn. Missing chicken strip. Fraudulent check card charge.

Things are just not going well for me lately, huh?

Update:

Well due to suggestions from ya’ll, I’ve shoot off a complaint to our good friends at the Pinnacle Foods Corporation. Their response was ridiculously fast:

Dear Mr. Cap:

We are sorry that you were disappointed with your purchase of Swanson® Chicken Strip Dinner. Pinnacle Foods Corporation maintains strict quality standards to ensure that the correct amount of product is consistently added to each package. Evidently, this package was improperly filled, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

We are sending you a coupon via Postal mail, which you can expect to receive within ten to fourteen business days.

Sincerely,Teresa XXXX
Consumer Services Representative 000558XXXX

I got a $3 coupon in the mail. Yay?

NEC 16X DVD/CD Burner (OEM), a “free” pack of 25 8X DVDs, shipping, tax = $50

Gosh they’re so cheap now. Just a year ago, a 16X DVD burner will set you back $200-300.

Did I really need it? I guess not. Although I’m running out of space on my hard drive so I needed a new storage method. Before this I was using a 4x HP CD burner from 1998.

To offset the extra spending, I’m not going to buy Cap’n Crunch (or its generic alternative) for a month.

What was that? Cereal doesn’t cost as much?

I go through one box per day, busta.

What the heck is wrong with me!?

I now owe $2.50 – again.

First I forgot and owed 50 cents. I quickly renewed it online (yup, I can do it online even after its overdue), but then I forgot about them again. Bad memory? Laziness? Stupidity!?

So yeah after I renewed it online, for whatever reason I put them away under my desk… and er, forgot about them. Stupidity sounds about right…

$2.50. Sigh.

That could have bought me half of a small popcorn at the theater.

So this has never happened before — I went over my credit limit by $13.45. Doh!

Enjoy the default APR rate of 89.95%, sucka!

I have been charging a lot on this card lately (textbooks) — getting ready to sock drawer it once I get close to the limit. I guess I’m definitely near the limit now. The Chase VISA in question has a 15 months 0% APR on balance transfer and purchase (ends Sept 06). Knowing that I was getting close to the limit, I went ahead and cancelled all scheduled bill payments that was going to be made with this card — or so I thought.

While I was busy complaining to Time Warner about my cable on Friday, I forgot to cancel my scheduled online payment to them. The charge was made on Friday and went through on Saturday. Along with that bill pay, these pending charges will most likely be posted to the account on Monday.

As most of us know, you can have your APR rate bump up to the default rate (in my case its about 21%) for many reasons, and going over your credit limit is definitely one of them. Though whether I’ll have my rate bumped up or not is up to Chase. I have made a payment of $100 that will also be posted on Monday (according to the new Chase site) along with the pending charges, so I wonder what will happen?

Will I get the $35 over limit fee? Will my 0% rate be bump to the default rate? Let’s find out on Monday!

P.S. Oh yeah, if the rate does go up, I’m just going to pay off the card.

$1 Chicken Nuggets Tuesday.

I bought myself a new monitor, a Viewsonic VP171B. Its sorta crap, its sorta not. My current monitor is an old 17″ CTX CRT monitor. I’ve had it since 1996, its making funny noises these days and the gamma / brightness level is totally down. I’m using the computer a lot more lately, so I figured this is as good of a time as any to charge it on the new card. I’ll pay it off before any interest ever occurs on it.

One nifty feature is that, like many LCD monitors out there… it rotates and spins. So now I’ll have more vertical space to read blogs. Sweet!

Semi-wasted money? $310.65 + $14.30 (s&h) + $25.18 (tax) = $350.13

Here’s some upcoming plan of mine for this blog.

• Part 3 to Credit Card 101, maybe Part 4 too. I think I’ll go over student credit card, what to expect when you apply, pros and cons of student cards, etc.
• An article on FICO scores. What factors in it, how it affects us youngins, why we should even care about it.
• Another part to the lovely “Stop Buying Crap”
• I have an upcoming vacation to Hawaii, so I might write about that too.