Iced Tea Forever

Ever since we bought our house I’ve been amazed at the amount of junk mail we receive related to our mortgage. And it includes all our information too, these nasty outfits know every detail about it.

A lot of them want to set you up with special payment plans that end up paying your mortgage off early. Well who could be against that? What a great deal.

Not really.

What they really want is to take your money in fees.

So their special payment plan (that you pay a bunch to set up) makes a payment every two weeks instead of once a month. Over the course of a year that means you make an extra payment, hence paying your mortgage off early.

Here’s my Super Saver Tip, actually I think I got this from Clark Howard. Take your monthly payment, divide it by 12 (months/yr). Add that amount to your monthly payment, pay that amount extra every month.

So if your house payment is $850, you divide 850 by 12 and get $70.83. Add that to your payment and you get $920.83. If you make 12 payments a year of that amount, you’ve made an extra payment. All without forking over hundreds of dollars to those sleazy direct mail scam artists.

What do you think? Am I on to something or did I overlook an important detail?

I’m going to post about financial matters, just for fun. I’m going to mention specific figures.

See, in the circles I grew up in money matters weren’t something you usually talked about in public. How much you earned at work, what something cost, etc. etc. were usually kept under wraps. But I am fascinated with business matters and financial issues, and I like to know what the numbers are. They make things much more interesting.

When Mandy was born, the difficult labor and eventual C-section culminated in a six-day hospital stay, if I remember right. The total bill for that little vacation came to right around $20,000. Wow! Thank you God for medical insurance.

Having a chronic disease, I have to take a lot of prescriptions every day. Unfortunately, many disease-specific drugs don’t have cheap generic counterparts. My out-of-pockets costs, AFTER insurance covers the majority, are over $100 a month for my prescriptions.

Regarding my current sabbatical in this medical resort, I came in here last Sunday morning, and the plan is to send me home today. That’s what, about five days. It will be awhile before I know the total bill of course, but I have one little tidbit I want to share with you.

When I was first stricken with Crohn’s Disease, I was deathly sick for about three months before the docs finally got it under control. They piddled around with this weak drug, then that ineffective drug, and on and on. Finally as a last shot before slicing me open and hacking out my colon, they tried a new (very expensive) IV drug called Remicade. It did the trick, I literally started feeling better overnight.

So this week, they finally broke down and brought out the Remicade yesterday. Hopefully it will do the job again and I’ll be feeling better soon.

I wanted to know how much it cost though, so I had the nurse look it up. This one IV infusion of Remicade gently dripped into my veins yesterday cost. . . . $10,714.25. Dead serious. That is not a joke.

So anyway, I hope you enjoyed those numbers. I know I would have if someone else had done something like this, “do unto others” you know.

As if you don’t get enough just plain junk in the mail, you’ve got to watch out for scams too. I have experience being ripped off by direct mail, so something I got today raised a red flag.

It was an official-looking envelope and letter with a return address (and letterhead) of Pennsylvania Ave, DC. However, the reply envelope is addressed to Northbrook, IL.

The single-page letter generously offers to send you a Certified Copy of your Property Deed for only $59.50. Wow, how gracious of them.

And sure enough. I found a bunch of references to the same rip-off, and even some recent news items about it. It seems they’re targeting Northern Hoosierville right now.

You can usually get a property deed from your local County Recorder’s office for a few bucks.

They’re out to get you. Anybody here listen to Clark Howard? Does the name “Bank of America” bring any stories to mind?!

I regard banks as if they were caged vipers, just waiting for a chance to destroy me. Well, maybe it’s not quite that bad, but I’m very cautious. They usually stick it to you any way they can. So far I’m real happy with our loan officer though, I have feelings of gentle benevolence towards that bank.

After we got married we closed my wife’s checking account. I was not impressed with that particular bank at all, and breathed a sigh of relief when all ties had been cut. Today we got a piece of mail from them.

Inside was a “certificate” that said, “Present this coupon at any of our locations and receive a free mouse pad with our Thanks.”

I couldn’t believe it! They’re giving away mouse pads! Ha ha ha!! I hope their generosity doesn’t get away from them!

Do people still use mouse pads? I haven’t used one in ages. And if they do, what do they cost? Fifty cents?!

And they capitalized “Thanks.” Weird.

Needless to say, it’s going to take a lot more than a mouse pad for them to sucker me in.

Ha ha! Just got off the phone from another police platinum-gold-silver level fundraiser attempt. Now what’s interesting here, right off the bat he told me they weren’t using any lame fundraising outfit to make the calls, they were doing it themselves.

When I got to my now-standard question, “Will this sticker on my car help me out if I get pulled over?” he said, “I tell everybody that asks me that, they can run every green light in town!”

Touche! An answer worthy of the question.

In further elaboration though, he did faintly imply that if the offense wasn’t too bad (e.g., 55 in a 45 rather than a 65 in a 45), the officer would see that I was a supporter and it just might make a little difference! Maybe Clark was right!

I’m having so much fun with these calls, I just may send them a little money. And what if I’d get stopped with the sticker and get a ticket anyway? Oh man, I couldn’t wait until the next call! I’d let them have it! “I had the sticker on my car and I got a ticket anyway, etc., etc.” Now that would be fun.

I haven’t done that in a while.

Every so often I get a kick out of getting car insurance quotes. You know that junk mail you always get promising that you’ll save hundreds of dollars switching to Guy Ko or your bank’s auto insurance scam? It’s actually kind of fun to call them up and go through the rigamarole of getting a quote.

Because at the end they say, “It’s only going to be $4,278 for six months on both cars! Do you want to go ahead and switch to our scam?!!!!!”

And I get to brightly say, “Nope! That’s WAY more than I’m paying now! Ha ha ha ha!!!”

For some reason, it’s really satisfying.

Oh my. Nothing shakes your confidence in an official organization like a few well-placed typos. Speaking of which, nearly every time someone writes about grammar or mispelling issues, they commit an error themselves. I wonder what I’ll do in this post.

There are a lot of signs posted in the Den of Iniquity like “Keep Isle’s Clear” and “All Employee’s Must Use Safety Knives.” I’d wager that more than half of such signs posted on the factory floor boast such an egregious error.

I was applying for an online savings account recently, and the Rates Policy mentioned a penalty for early “withdrawl.” That particular account must be the Redneck Special.

It seems that lately each month brings a new financial low here at ITF headquarters. Let me clarify, a new low in income that is, but a new high in expenses. It has been just unbelievable.

Due to this unfortunate phenomenon as well as some other circumstances, I’ve had the occasion recently to revisit the old budget. Some things need to be tightened down and readjusted. And one cut in particular pains my heart at its deepest levels.

A category which had been spiraling out of control was eating out. So no more. Slash. Cut.

I’m going to be in denial for quite some time, I think.

The last while I have really been wanting to go to Cracker Barrel. And Ryans. And that place in Bristol that Bill told me about. Not to mention going back to the Blue Gate for more ham. And what about grabbing a hamburger now and then?! It’s almost too much to fathom.

If you call us up and propose visiting a restaurant, we’re going to say no. Regretfully. Certainly not because we don’t want to.

Unless you’re buying!!!

So Morgan, nope. Not anymore.

You know what though, if I pay with a credit card. . .!!!

So the first unsolicited email I get from the new Contact Form is my accountant reminding me there were only three and a half weeks until April 15!

Oh man! I’m going to take that dumb thing down!

I told him awhile ago that I was going to try getting all my stuff to him early this year, so I guess I deserve it.