Popularity is fickle

Yesterday I was a Slithering Reptile. Today I am an Insignificant Microbe.

What? What did I say?

TTLB Ecosystem

Review of Linkworth

Linkworth is an intermediary that connects online advertisers with site owners. The company has recently launched a site review program called LinkPost. Like ReviewMe, they seem to be jump-starting their new business venture by purchasing reviews of their own site on participating blogs. This post is one such review.

I have been meaning to write a follow-up post to this one about third-party advertising brokers I've used on my blog, and this seems as good a time as any to do that. When this post reveals that I prefer Linkworth to the other ad brokers I've used, I promise it's not because they are paying me to write this post (although they are, in fact, paying me to write this post). As I said, I have been meaning for months to retract the praise I lavished on Adbrite the last time I covered this issue.

Adbrite was great at first. I made money more quickly, and was able to cash out more quickly, than I had with Adsense. For a low-traffic niche blog like this one, it seems that I can make more money when I am paid just for posting a link than I can using pay-per-click schemes. I don't seem to have very clicky readers. Anyway, I had configured my Adbrite account so that they set the price for my ads. Heck, I thought. They know better than I do what my real estate is worth. But over time, the price shrank until they were blithely selling ads on my site for a penny a day! I got to approve the ads, luckily, so I started rejecting new advertisers, but c'mon!

Linkworth, on the other hand, has a much higher standard price. Linkworth ads consist of a text link with some surrounding keywords (meander down my sidebar to see what the ads look like). Once an advertiser signs up with you, they seem to stick around month after month. So far, I have 3 advertisers from Linkworth. I get a nice little Paypal payment from them every other month and I'm pretty happy about that. Penny over at Money and Values has been using Linkworth longer than I have, and I think she's been pretty happy with them.

Adbrite, on the other hand, can bite me. I'll wait til I get to the payout minimum again and then cancel my account.

It will be interesting to see how Linkworth's new LinkPost program will develop. They differ from ReviewMe in that they want bloggers to use a specific button (see below) to indicate that this is a paid post. They also suggest that bloggers use keywords in LinkPosts that will help their search engine rankings. For the review of Linkworth, they have requested that I work the phrases Search Engine Marketing, Text Link Advertising, and Make Money Online into my post. Because I'm writing about writing for them, if you follow me, I don't mind inserting these somewhat akward phrases, but I think in some cases it would feel very strange and contrived to try to work in specific phrases, especially if I was supposed to make them linkbacks. Hmm. Maybe it's always simpler to list the keyword phrases and state bluntly that that's what you're doing, as I have done here.

The Linkworth site is generally easy to use and the reports are a little bit clearer than Adbrite's, although Adbrite's earnings reports have improved recently. I like the cool minty color of Linkworth's site. Unfortunately, some of the features of the site are a little buried. The default home page is all about selling ads, and I had to dig around a little bit to get back to the info about the LinkPost program. Their knowledgebase is pretty sparse at the moment, but they seem to respond to trouble tickets reasonably quickly. They really need to hire someone to write their copy. The text is charming in that it sounds exaclty like people talk, but printed text really shouldn't sound exactly like spoken words unless it's on somebody's MySpace blog. In my humble opinion.

Linkworth's affiliate program rewards you only if you refer paying advertisers. If you refer siteowners who want to sell ad space, you get nothing. I would put an affiliate link in here right about now in case anybody reading this wants to buy ads through Linkworth, but the code they want me to use is a little beyond the scraps of web design I learned way back in library school when HTML was still considered hot.

For small-time site owners who want to make a few bucks through some discreet text ads, I would definitely recommend Linkworth. It's done well by me so far, and unless their prices suddenly drop into the toilet like they did in my Adbrite account, I'll be sticking with Linkworth.

Shouldn't weekends be restful?

Plans:

Friday night. Take 5:30 train home. Partner will fetch kid from preschool. One of us will cook. It's my turn to get the kid ready for bed and it's his dad's turn to actually put him to sleep. Read a really insipid escapist novel and drink hot chocolate. Think about hoovering filthy floors but make more hot chocolate instead.

Saturday. 9AM, Go to a local playground where a friend's kid has a T-ball game. Our son will play with their younger kids. The adults will chat. Late morning, meet our friends D. and N. for brunch. D's parents are visiting and he wants to introduce us to them. They are mega conservative and they will probably be dead bores, but D is awesome so we take any chance to hang out with him. Home early afternoon. Think about planting some expired spring bulbs (mini daffodils) in the grass median on the street behind us, but postpone it. Go grocery shopping at the supermarket and the co-op. Evening--one of us goes to babysit for a friend's kids so they can go out. This will probably be me since they have multiple cats and my partner is very allergic.

Sunday. 9:30 AM, meet someone at a local coffee shop who I met online. He's on the board of a local nonprofit and he wants to recruit me for the board. I don't want to serve on the board, but they may have a paid position soon and I want to be at the top of their list. Eat bagels with him and talk about how we can help each other out. Go home and think about doing laundry but put it off a little longer. Make food for two potlucks. 3 PM, the whole family goes to a potluck party with some coworkers from my moonlighting gig. This will be good for networking, and the hostess of the party lives about ten blocks from me so I want to get to know her better. 5:30 PM go to another potluck meeting for a neighborhood organization we belong to. Hope it doesn't go til 10PM like it did last year.

Luckily, I am not working Monday, so I'll be able to hang out with my kid and recuperate from the weekend. Maybe we'll go check out the giganotosaurus skeleton in Center City.

HMOs suck

...and I'm disorganized.

I have an early-morning radiology appointment tomorrow that I made about two weeks ago. I realized at about six o'clock tonight that I had forgotten to get a referral. I have a script from a specialist ordering the test, but I don't have a referral from my primary care physician. Of course, by the time I realized this, everybody was closed. My insurance company's precertification offices open at 7AM, so I'll call them at about 7:01, but I know they're going to tell me that I don't need a precert, I need a referral, which I can only get from my PCP. The PCP opens at 8:30. My radiology appointment is at 7:30. I'm going to have to go down to the radiology lab with my friend A. in tow and hope that they'll let me prep for the test (I have to drink some noxious stuff an hour and a half before I go "on the table" as they say). Then, as soon as my PCP's office opens, my friend will sprint over there and pick up a referral, returning with it in time for me to have the test done at 9AM. Hopefully. Or the radiology department could just tell me to go away and come back for the next available appointment, which will be at least two weeks away. Or the PCP could refuse to give my referral to my friend. Meanwhile the specialist who ordered the test will be having conniptions because she wanted the test done quickly, and my PCP still hasn't gotten around to faxing the results of my last blood test over to the specialist's office so I'm already in the doghouse for that.

And meanwhile, I will be freaking out because I don't particularly want to have cancer again. Once was enough, thank you. Now, before you get all set up to have a big pity party, I almost certainly do NOT have cancer, but I keep having inconclusive and wacky blood test results so I keep having to have more tests that are themselves inconclusive. Besides, the cancer I had before was an especially good kind, as cancers go. Still, my imagination runs away with me if I'm not careful.

Now I am going to go shave my legs, because the last time I went to the radiologist (in February) my nervousness was compounded by my mortification at having to hang out in a gown with my winter-pelt-legs exposed to the world. Then I am going to eat something high-protein and drink a lot of water, because I can't eat or drink anything after midnight. And then I am going to bed, and despite the fact that I am going to have scans of my pelvic, abdominal and chest cavity tomorrow morning (if the referral thing works out), I am going to sleep like a log because I am that tired.

And if you don't know what all this has to do with finances, then you try going through a million diagnostic tests five weeks before you're planning to walk out on a job with health insurance. The world of HMOs is bad enough with out adding in COBRA, new insurance companies that may or may not cover my doctors, the rules about pre-existing conditions, etc.

Grumpily yours,
TBH

Ambulance chasing

I found out today that one of the other part-timers at my moonlighting gig passed away yesterday. Having never met the man (he works at a different campus), I jumped very quickly from the thought "oh, what a shame, his family must be really torn up" to the thought "maybe I'll finally be able to get some more hours" and from there to the thought "holy crap, I am so heartless thinking about my own gain right now."

But the fact remains that I never met him, although technically we were coworkers for over three years. So maybe I can allow myself to feel just a little bit--not happy, of course, but pleased that I will probably be able to get another shift, which is extremely welcome as I prepare to leave my primary employer.


Edit: Why didn't anybody tell me I had spelled "ambulence" wrong? Now I feel like an idiot. And I was an english major, too.

Impulsive real estate purchases = BAD

Today a neighbor and I were kvetching about Ray Nagin's recent visit to Philadelphia, when he congratulated New Orleans for being so much cleaner than stanky Philly. My neighbor, S., was so affronted that she was outside sweeping her already immaculate front steps, just to show him, when my son and I went for a walk this morning. She wants our block to enter into some kind of clean block contest. Excuse me while I go pick up the teeny tiny ziplock baggies and the little glass vials off my lawn first. I wish I was naive enough not to know what comes in those little baggies and vials.

Anyway, we got on the subject of a house down by my end of the block that has been vacant for over a year. The folks who own it never maintained it even when they lived there. They were too good for the neighborhood and were always talking about how they were going to get out of Dodge. They built a fancy house in the suburbs, and a reliable source told me that they also bought all new furniture (including several televisions) for the new house, leaving all their old stuff behind in the house on my block. I am sickly fascinated with this wild foolhardy spending. Not only that, they've left this other house sitting here unrented and unsold. It's not even on the market.

Well, I'm tired of picking up their Sunday papers (which still arrive like clockwork) and trampling the unshovelled snow on their front walk just to make it look like somebody is at least entering the house regularly. So I was talking with S., Madame Immaculate, and I was telling her that I've got this slacker's phone number and I'm trying to get up the gumption to call him and ask him to please rent or sell his goshdarn house, or at least try to stop by once a month so we don't end up having squatters for neighbors. She said if I give her his number she'll call him up and ask him how much he wants for the house. "Maybe I'll buy it from him," she said.

This woman is in real estate (she's an appraiser) and I know she owns at least one rental property. I don't think she and her husband are rolling in dough or anything, but I think they're doing pretty well for themselves. Plus, she's the block captain, and in general she's community-minded and seems to know her stuff. So after I promised to email her with the guy's phone number and walked home, I started thinking.

Maybe I should buy the house WITH her. She's experienced. She'd be a good business partner for a totally untrained first-time real estate investor. I know the block is a good one and seems to be getting better all the time. The neighborhood is still depressed, but there are some definite signs of life. I'm just a few doors down, so it would be relatively easy to cut my landlord teeth. The house is a little bigger than mine, four bedrooms, and I know it could be turned into a two-unit rental pretty easily.

After several hours of fantasizing about my future as a real estate mogul, I came back down to earth. There are several problems with this scheme.

1. I really don't know S. well enough to go into business with her. Sure, she throws a mean block party, but she also often drops the ball on little things like scheduling the next block meeting. (We're about four months overdue for a meeting and she keeps saying she'll get around to it.) As a resident on the block where she's captain, her slight flakiness doesn't bug me because I know she's busy working and parenting and so on, and I know I'd be even more flaky if I was block captain. I'm just glad she's doing it and not me. But if we owned a house together I'd be really ticked off if she dropped the ball on important stuff like scheduling maintenance, etc.

2. My partner really, really doesn't want me to get into real estate investing. At all. As a socialist, he thinks landlords are the spawn of the devil, and would only be willing to be a landlord himself if he practically gave the renters the shirt off his back into the bargain. We've talked about creative landlord/tenant relationships, but if I owned property with someone who was seeing it as an investment, pure and simple, I'd have to charge my renters market rate, etc. Plus, M hates the idea of having to do maintenance on another house. One is more than enough for him, and I have to say I agree with him there. I know my way around a hardware store reasonably well, but I'm not what you'd call handy. I do have a responsibility to think about how it would effect my partner if I bought another property. Because we're not married, he would theoretically not share the liability if I owned part of another property, but since he and I do have most of our finances co-mingled, and we do own a house together, he could be seriously affected if I made an investment that didn't work out.

3. Buying another house now would screw up my asset allocations bigtime. I'm quite happy with the way our primary home is appreciating. We have no debt except mortgage debt, a reasonably healthy emergency fund, and a nice balance in our son's college accounts thanks to a recent gift. But our retirement account balances could use some love. I'm trying to focus on building these. Putting more of my assets into real estate seems like it would not be the best plan right now.

4. Even if I was going to invest in more real estate, buying another house on my block doesn't exactly give me diversification. If the slow revitalization of my neighborhood doesn't take, I may be stuck with TWO houses in an undesireable area.

5. That house needs so much freaking work. I know it does. If the outside is anything to go by, the inside has got to be a total pit. I don't want to take that on.

6. It would be a stretch to come up with the cash to do it. If we were both working, I might consider using some of our emergency fund for something like this, but not very much of it. Owning two houses means twice the liklihood that I'd need to tap that money for a true emergency. I do have around 12K of my own, not shared with my partner, in a taxable account that I'd consider fair game for an investment. But I'm about to quit my job and live off some of that money for a little while. So I don't really have any spare cash at the moment. Plus, if I quit my primary job, what mortgage lender would want to loan me a bunch of money? Assuming I could get a loan, I'd really have to scramble to come up with enough for a downpayment and renovations, plus carrying costs til it could be rented. For this property, I'd probably need $10K for my half of the downpayment and another $15-20K for my half of the necessary renovations. No, I don't have it. Not by a long shot.


So, I will not be approaching my neighbor to propose that we buy this house together after all. But it was an interesting fantasy to while away the afternoon with.

This concludes another rambling post. Feel free to chime in with even more reasons this would be a terrible idea. If I start feeling tempted again, I may need them.

Meme: Five obsessions

I've been tagged by Him and Her of Make Love, Not Debt.

It's hard to limit myself to just five, but here are the first five that come to mind.

Money. Do I have enough? Could I be saving more? Should I give more away? How can I earn more? Am I getting a good deal on every single thing that I buy, ever? Could I be a smarter shopper? Is my investment strategy too conservative? Too risky? Am I too concerned about money? Should I just relax and go with the flow and figure it will all work out? Maybe it's unhealthy that I check my accounts online almost every day. All three hundred accounts. Do I have too many accounts? Am I making this more complicated than it has to be? Maybe I should simplify. But which accounts should I eliminate? Should I open a new account specifically to save for replacing my car eventually? But I was going to have fewer accounts. Maybe I should rethink that.... Okay, I think you get the picture.

Food. I prefer to eat like a Hobbit: at least six meals a day.

Sleep. I could do with a lot more of it and it's all I can think about some days. I've had insomnia since I was a kid. All I know is I have never gotten enough sleep. The last 3 years have been worse. There is a small whirling dervish in my house who absolutely cannot sleep for more than an hour or so unless he is in contact with another person's body. I spend half my nights in the master bedroom, sleeping diagonally across our queen-sized bed and missing my partner (who is in our son's room). The other half of my nights I spend squeezed into a twin bed with my son the human windmill, sleeping intermittently and getting whacked occasionally by an errant limb. I'm often cold in there, because he likes to kick the covers off himself and also his bedfellow. The other problem is that I stay up too late reading most nights, because it's my only time to myself all day and I'd rather be tired the next day than have no time to myself.

Books. If you have considered becoming a librarian because you love books, don't do it. Librarianship is all about computers nowadays. So I still have to indulge my book lust every other waking hour of my day, not while I'm at work. I like to read. A lot. Preferrably for many hours a day. Luckily my spouse and kid like books also, because if they didn't, what would I have to talk to them about?

Dinosaurs. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Dinosaurs are my kid's current obsession. For over two years before he got into dinosaurs, it was all about vehicles (trains, trucks, cars, anything with wheels). He talks about dinosaurs all the time, and expects us to be as fascinated as he is. It would drive me crazy, except that I have decided that it's in my best interest to find dinosaurs compelling also. Soccer moms, to stay sane, probably have to decide that they are going to love watching youth soccer. Me, I'm a dinosaur mom.

Okay, I tag the authors of the following sites. If you are one of those people who always throws out chain mail on principle, then you probably are not into memes either. Feel free to ignore this and just be glad you got a free link out of the deal.
Frugal Zeitgeist
Fox in the Snow
udandi and the craft of money
This Examined Life
Millionaire Artist

How to make spring come more quickly

We returned last night from a conference about 100 miles north of where we live. We were only gone two days, but as we drove south I noticed that suddenly the spring trees are blooming more gloriously, and in my front yard the buds on all my tulips are swelling portentously. The crocuses are long gone. I have one pink hyacinth and two daffodils blooming. The rest of the hyacinths and daffodils and my dwarf purple lilac are all budding. Tomorrow I'll go to the garden store to buy flowers for my window box. Hot pink geraniums this year, I think. After last week's snow, it is now eighty degrees outside.

It's been a late spring, but I'm glad it's finally here.

Guide to raising kids from MSN Money

Check out this article:

Your 5-minute guide to raising kids

There are some great points in here, but I have just one question.

What the heck is wrong with rinsing and reusing plastic baggies? Doesn't everybody do that?

Hanging on by my fingernails

Well, in spite of all that's going on, I'm still standing.

But hasn't anybody around here heard of the value of a little white lie now and again? Yesterday when I arrived at work, my officemate asked casually, "How are you doing?" I opened my mouth to respond and she said, "Never mind, I can tell just by looking at your face."

Another coworker came in a few minutes later, and she also asked, "How are you, TBH?"

"Fine," I said. "Pretty tired."

My officemate interrupted: "You are so not fine."

"What?" I said. "I'm just a little tired."

All week, when people ask how I'm doing I say, "Tired."

The responses? "You look it."

THANKS A LOT, GUYS.

I'm in the home stretch. After two months of having two full-time workers in the house and only having 3 days a week of regular childcare, we are almost out of the woods. Our second round of houseguests left yesterday. Tonight, all three of us pack up and go to a conference. We've hired a local college student in the town where the conference is to watch L while we are attending meetings. I'm not presenting this time, and we're staying at a hotel a mile away from the conference hotel, so it should be better in some ways than the last conference we attended as a family. We've never met the sitter, but checked her references and feel pretty good about it. Next week, my work hours will drop from 35-plus to about 30 per week, because one of the grants I've been on is ending. That will give us a little breathing room. I've set my quit date for May 31, to be followed by a week of vacation after which I won't return to work. My boss is okay with that. I have seventy-four thousand things to do before I leave here, mostly documenting unfinished projects so my coworkers and my eventual replacement can pick up the threads. I have more medical tests next week, a nasty one this time involving two different friends who will take care of the kid so my partner can come along and distract me in the waiting room before the test. My dental work is finally done, and I have two pretty new crowns. The baby's big dental procedure is a few weeks away. I know this period of my life is easy-peasy compared to what some people go through, but I'm still finding the stress to be a little hard to take.

I hope you'll forgive me if it seems like my blog has devolved into a series of short and very personal posts, interspersed with site reviews. I don't want the site reviews to take over the site, but I'm having a hard time turning down the money at the moment. I promise the content around here will improve in a month or two when I've gotten a clear diagnosis on my medical situation, seen my little son safely through oral surgery, and left my hellacious job.

Thanks for hanging in here. This is almost over.

At the zoo

Me: L, look at that peacock. It's opening up its tail feathers. Have you ever seen that before?

L: Mama, look! I see a duck. It's a duck, Mama.

Me: Over here, L. I see some zebras.

L: Oh, wow! That log is shaped like a hippo, Mama. I see a hippo made out of log.

Friends who like personal finance

Most of my friends are profoundly uninterested in money. It's mostly a good thing, because I'm obsessed enough as it is. But I really enjoy having a good long chat about mortgages and 529 accounts and Roth IRAs now and again. Unfortunately ALL of my friends who like talking about that stuff live in other states.

But this weekend we are hosting M's sister and her family. Within an hour of their arrival, M and his sister were happily making a soup (cooking is one of their favorite things to do together) while the kids played, and my brother-in-law and I were free to park our butts at the dining room table and talk about how our investment strategies have changed since we last saw each other at Thanksgiving. M and his sister roll their eyes when we get going like that, but we all have a great time together.

Review of CreditDemystified.com

Want to borrow some money? There are plenty of folks out there who want to lend it to you, and they're using all kinds of tools to find customers. Countrywide Home Loans has created a site to educate consumers about different types of loans, and attract customers to their mortgage products.

Credit Demystified is easy to use, with easy-to-find navigation tools along the top of the page. The site is fairly slick, with the kind of clever and professional photographic images that large PR departments are so adept at using. The site gives basic instruction to users about how to improve their credit, and how to consolidate debt by borrowing against home equity. This is the message of the site, delivered sometimes subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly. Home loans of all stripes are portrayed as the solution to financial problems. The different types of home loans are described, and in this current economic climate I'm pleased to see that fixed-rate mortgages are emphasized instead of variable rate mortgages, which can land unwary borrowers in hot water when their interest rates go up.

The site does have a smattering of information on other aspects of financial planning, such as retirement saving and how to deal with debt as you approach retirement. I find the definitions of basic financial terms, especially those related to debt and credit, to be very clear and straightforward, although many of the explanations end by steering you toward consolidating your debt with a fixed-rate mortgage. That's not such a bad step on the road to eliminating debt, so I feel fairly charitable towards these folks even if they are quite obviously promoting their own agenda.

My favorite part of the site by far is found in the "library" of "free guides" (which are basically brochures). One of the free guides is called "Your home - The ultimate financial power tool." I don't know why, but I find that very funny.

This is a paid review, contracted through ReviewMe.

Job satisfaction, or lack thereof

Do you like your job? Please tell me someone does, because I certainly don't.

If you're a regular reader of this site, you know that I'm about to throw caution to the wind and quit my primary dayjob. I recently came across this post from six months ago that shows how conflicted and awful I was feeling about my work last September, and how trapped I felt:

Do you have an "F. You" fund?

The problem is, I rarely like my dayjob. I don't like working full time, and while there are things about my field that I really love (working with college students, working with historical documents, working with cool technology, working with smart geeky misfits like myself) I hardly ever actually like the particular job I'm in. The politics of working academia get to me. The work is tedious. I get bored spending so many hours at a desk. It's to the point where I don't even think I should leave a job I dislike, necessarily, because I'm unlikely to like the next one any better. I'm a malcontent. (This particular job I do not dislike. I loathe it and can't wait to escape. Big difference.)

What I'm wondering is, am I alone in this? Do you like your job? What does that even look like? Do you look forward to going to work? Do you feel happy while you're working? If you were independently wealthy, would you still do this job? Do you find your job stressful and challenging, but do you find it so fulfilling to do it well that it seems worth it?

I'd love to hear comments, or read posts in response, that tell what your field is and whether you would say that you actually like your work.

Responses from readers:
Do I like my job?
Reminiscing about being a Temp



Related posts:
Major life changes for me this year?
Career change: The specifics

Finding life insurance quotes online: A site review

There are many reasons to buy life insurance. Perhaps you've recently become a parent, and you want to make sure your little one is provided for in the event of your death. Perhaps you are in a committed relationship, and it has occurred to you that your partner or spouse could not continue to pay the rent or the mortgage if your income were to disappear. Perhaps you want to make sure that your loved ones can throw the biggest and best funeral on the block when you die. Whatever your reason, you need to educate yourself about the types of insurance out there, decide which one best suits your needs, and figure out how much coverage you should buy. Traditionally, folks called their local insurance agent. The agent sold them a policy that may or may not have been appropriate. The customer's mind was at ease, and the agent's wallet was fattened by a nice commission from the insurance company.

Today, however, the smart shopper can go online and get a clear idea of the going rates based on gender, age, size of the policy, and an increasingly complex set of variables that describe the health of the insured. This post will look at a specific site that can be used to get rate quotes online, and offer some informational sites that do not provide quotes but can be used to learn about life insurance in preparation for buying a policy.

Term Life Options
Term Life Options is a portal that allows users to obtain rate quotes on life insurance policies from insurance agents in their area. There are also several informative articles that help folks learn about different kinds of life insurance policies. The site steers readers toward term life insurance policies, which do not have a cash value but provide the most coverage for the smallest premiums for a specified period of time. The other most common form of life insurance is whole life insurance, which have higher premiums but do not have a limited term, and carry an often vaguely defined cash value so that if the policy is cancelled before the insured dies, some or all of the premiums can be recovered. Universal life insurance is like a whole life policy, except that you can change your premiums and death benefit along the way. Variable life insurance gives you more options for selecting investment vehicles for your premiums. However, common financial wisdom is leading more and more people to select the cheaper term policies, and invest the money you'd save by not paying the higher premiums on a whole life or universal life policy.

This site is simple, clear and readable. When I went most of the way through the process of requesting a quote, I found that it was quick and pretty painless to enter my data. I give extra points for the site map, which is accessible via a link at the bottom of the main page. I also appreciate that there's a contact link there, but I'd be happier if it offered a phone number.

The articles on various types of life insurance are a good start, but a little work could make this site a real resource for life insurance seekers. The articles recommend that you use a good online life insurance calculator to see how much coverage you need to buy. Great, but where's the link? There is a page on the site that links to some calculators, but the links should be easier to find. A few well-placed links in the articles would increase the usefulness of the site. If the site owner doesn't want folks to navigate away from his page, he could simply make the links open in a new window.

I was disappointed but not surprised to find little or no information on this site about how life insurance payouts are taxed. When my partner and I bought our own policies several years ago, we were given incomplete advice by our insurance agent. As a result, if one of us were to die during the 20-year term of the policies, the surviving partner would be hit with inheritance taxes on the payout. As an unmarried couple, our insurance agent should have advised us to buy policies on each other, instead of being the owners of our own policies. The proceeds of my policy will be part of my estate, and my partner and son will have to pay taxes on it, giving them that much less money to help them survive the loss of my earning power.

All in all, though, this is a good basic site if you've already done your homework and are simply looking for a series of quotes on life insurance policies.


Selected other sources of information about life insurance

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is, as ever, a useful resource. The life insurance article attempts to encompass information from both Britain and America, which makes it a little bit over-informative. The average user won't want to read the whole thing, but it is easy to use internal links to navigate to the parts of the article that interest you. A quick scan of this article will make you familiar with the necessary jargon, and point you to more specific articles on each type of policy. This article DOES address the taxation of life insurance proceeds, although it is a rather skeletal treatment of the topic and merely serves to inform readers that they need to get more expert advice on taxes when buying a life insurance policy. The article concludes with an extremely useful collection of external links.

Money Magazine
This simple list of ten key things to know about life insurance is a quick read from folks who are used to giving sound financial advice. Wikipedia attempts to be objective. Term Life Options steers users gently towards term life insurance. But this Money Magazine page explains clearly and quite succinctly why term insurance is better for most people. Life insurance policies with an investment component are very expensive, they say, and lead many people to leave themselves underinsured because they can't afford to buy adequate coverage AND pay for the investment component. Point number five sums it up nicely: "Keep your investing and insurance strictly separate."

The final point on the Money site tells readers to seek insurance quotes online and avoid aggressive salespeople. Term Life Options is one option for obtaining such quotes, but should be used in concert with Wikipedia, Money Magazine, or any number of other sites that can educate you about the finer points of life insurance and the various options.

This post was commissioned by the owners of Termlifeoptions.com. For more information about this site's policies on paid reviews, click here.

Baby number two

...is not in the cards for Ms. TBH. I can hardly keep it together with only one kid. Plus, the one I have is so scrumptious. I would miss him if I had to spend half my waking hours caring for his little sister or brother.

So to get my baby fix I have been obsessively reading two blogs by new mothers.

Fox in the Snow
Mighty Girl

Enjoy!

Small-town life

You wouldn't think Philadelphia would feel like a small town, but it does.

Today three Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door. I had barely opened the door when one of them said, "Hey, I know you. You work at my school!" He's a student at the college where I work as a librarian.

"Hi," I said. "How'd you do on that paper I helped you with?"

In a town of 1.4 million, I run into someone I know almost every time I leave the house.

In other news, L's legs are finally long enough to reach the pedals on his tricycle! Whoopee! The world is his oyster. Now, if he can only figure out how to pedal forwards instead of backwards....

March 2007 budget report

Better late than never. Without further ado...

Income
Gross pay: $7231
FSAs and reimbursements: $158
Total income: $7389

Savings
Retirement: $899
College: $25
Short term: -$324
Total savings: $600

Expenses
Taxes (except property taxes): $1052.32
Mortgage (PITI): $600
Childcare: $634
Insurance (except homeowner's): $713.86
Utilities: $334.89
Groceries: $570.95
Restaurants: $205.56
Transportation: $460.27
Health and fitness: $1030.80
Clothing: 0
Professional (dues, etc): $137.58
Household supplies: $83.39
House maintenance: $0
Entertainment: $19.96
Gifts: $55.46
Donations: $56
Personal: 38.29
Travel: 0
Total expenses: $5835.64

Reflections
I think we're doing well on the big stuff (house is affordable, car is affordable). But I really suck at economizing on the small stuff. I mean, we spent $777 on food in March! For three of us! That's outrageous. Granted, we did have some locust-like houseguests, but they bought a whole bunch of groceries while they were visiting so we should have pretty much come out even.

I'm going to try to do better on the grocery bills this month. No more delicious but expensive premade foods.

Related posts:
Feeling flush, for now
Net worth report for April 2007
February 2007 budget report

My mother, the blogger

My mother is thinking of starting a blog. I am amused, amazed, and a little horrified.

It's not that I don't think she should start one. I think she'd write a great blog. She has an interesting life, she's a good writer, and she's a pretty open person so I think she'd be willing to talk honestly in a public forum. She's also an artist, so I'm sure the visual presentation would be much better than mine is. I have a lot of good qualities, but I a NOT a designer.

So why am I horrified? She has been using a computer for her work for decades at this point, but her knowledge stops at word processing and image editing. For some reason, the internet (I'm talking email, websites, search engines, anything related to the internet) remains a mystery to her. I see myself ending up providing too much tech support for her if I'm not careful. She has a website for her business and she pays a web design company every time she needs to so much as update a link. But she doesn't want to hire her web desinger to add a blog to her site. She wants to do it on her own. I tried to explain to her about Blogger and other free online software. It was going well until she wanted to know how she could drive traffic (not the words she used) from her blog to her business website. I explained that she could link back to the site whenever she mentioned something in a post that was relevant to her business.

"That sounds great," she said. Long pause. "What exactly are you talking about?"

Oh dear.

The conversation further deteriorated when she started to understand that people can and do make money from blogging. She immediately got dollar signs in her eyes, especially when she found out that I pull in a little bit of pocket money every month from the ads and paid reviews on my site. She's envisioning funding her retirement by blogging. I tried to backpedal, but it was too late.

She didn't quite understand who these people were who would pay someone to link to their site.

"Well, they're people like you, Mom," I said, digging myself in even deeper. "You're a business owner. You could pay someone whose blog was relevant to your business, whose readers were potential customers for you, to advertise your business on their site. Or you could pay someone to review your site."

"So I could just send you a check and you'd review my site?" she asked.

"Well, you would use paypal."

"You take paypal? That's great. How much?"

"No, wait, not ME, Mom. You would pay a different blogger, one whose blog has an audience you're interested in reaching. Not me."

"But I want you to review my site."

"Mom, my blog is anonymous."

"So what?"

"So if I review your site you'll know what my blog address is."

"How?"

"Mom, you could just Google it."

"Why would I do that?"

"Mom--"

"Why can't I pay you to review my site?"

"My blog is anonymous."

"I would respect your anonymity. I wouldn't Google it. Why is it anonymous, anyway? So you can write whatever you want about me?"

"Yeah, that's it. My blog is all about you, Mom."

Childcare update

I wrote about the decision we have to make about where to send our son for preschool next year in this post.

Here's where we are.

Our current school WILL hold our spot for September if we take July and August off to send him to a cheaper co-op camp.

Our current school, which had been pissing me off earlier in the winter, is back in my good graces because one of the teachers has been really helpful lately with L's resistance to potty training.

I led a successful fundraiser for our current school a few weeks ago and the Board was so easy to work with, and I had such a good time talking to the families who came to the event, that I am feeling all warm-fuzzy about our current school.

We decided NOT to send L to the co-op preschool that is near our house because the school population was too homogenous.

We have an appointment to look at another preschool with a good reputation in a few weeks. They have space for us, the price is lower than our current school, and there are other advantages.

Okay, here's the kicker--yesterday I got a call from the other co-op school (are you confused yet?) that is much less homogenous. We were on the waiting list, but they have a spot for us. Yay. And they want to know by next week if we want the spot. Crap.

The other school is around $300/month. Our current school would be $530. That's a big difference, especially when I will be working less hours.

Because this other school is a co-op it would be harder for me to get a dayjob later if I don't sell the movie rights to my as-yet-unwritten novel immediately.

We have to make the decision before we get to go look at that other school we're interested in.

Our house has become like a hotel for a parade of visiting family this month, we're both working a million hours, neither of us has even cracked open our 2006 income tax booklets, and I have to go in for even more medical tests tomorrow because my test results keep being inconclusive. Who has time to make major decisions?

Okay, these are good problems, right? We have a pretty good school now, and we just got into another good school. It's better than having no options. But I just hate these quick-decide-now-or-the-chance-is-lost moments.

Feeling flush, for now

When I wrote my net worth report this month, I was listing all the reasons we've got extra money sloshing around at the moment.

I forgot one of the big ones: I got paid 3 times in March. Getting 26 paychecks a year means that twice a year there are months with three paychecks instead of two.

Ohhh. That makes sense now. Good thing, because I have paid out nearly $1200 in the last three weeks in dental bills for myself and my son. I've got another $1300 due for L's teeth at the beginning of March.

I like my job

...the one that's 24/7 and doesn't pay in money, that is.

Forgive me for writing yet another non-financial post about my kid. I'm getting into this bad habit of cluttering up my PF blog with kid posts, but it's sort of hard to help myself.

Today I was home with my son until I had to go to work in the late afternoon. It was great. We went to the hardware store to buy a new plunger (we have a little plumbing situation on our hands, but this is supposed to be a cheerful post). Then we went to a big regional city library. He loved the kids' section, and made me read to him from reference books about dinosaurs for a long time. Then he played on the computer while I picked out some picture books. We came home for lunch and easter candy (eaten in front of a Reading Rainbow video, bad mother that I am) and went to the playground. There was much running and chasing of L's soccer ball (I did more chasing, how does that happen to me every single time?). Then he went down the slide and landed in somebody's sticky melted popsicle about five minutes before we had to walk up the street to the pediatrician's office for his 3-year check-up. I had to take his pants off and rinse them in the sink at the doctor's office, but they were too wet to put on. Luckily at age 3 you can still kind of get away with having no britches on in public. The doctor visit was fine. We got some good advice about a little digestive issue we've been having with L. I will not forever embarrass my son by telling you about it. L had a shot, and cried, but I was proud of how brave he was. Then we had time to go to the local cafe and blow $8 on smoothies before I had to dash back to the car to go to work.

A good day. I like being with my kid. It sure beats the rest of my jobs.

Net worth report for April 2007

I wrote a witty and detailed net worth post last night but then my freaking computer froze, and my son was demanding dinner. The nerve of him, huh? Here's take two.



Our net worth rose quite dramatically this month. At least, I thought it was dramatic. We had a net gain of $5,415, or 3.87 %, for a total household net worth of $145,292.

How'd we do that?

* My company decided to make a nice lump sum payment into my retirement account. I still haven't figured out why they did it, but I'm not complaining.

* I finally received a big reimbursement check from my flexible spending accounts.

* My partner's work hours increased to full time, and my work hours have yet to decrease. This sure is fun, having all the bills paid and not being down near the low-water mark in our checking account. It's nice financially having both of us work this much. But we're both exhausted and I can't wait til the end of June when I'm leaving my dayjob.

So, there you have it. I hope you'll all stick around for yet another month of money-obsessed ramblings here at *Tired but happy*.

Review of Nationalpayday.com

Nationalpayday.com is an online payday loan provider.

Why, you ask, would a personal finance blogger who advocates savings, frugality, and debt elimination be reviewing a payday loan provider's site? Well, the truth is, I'm getting paid for it. I accepted the commission because I thought it would be an interesting challenge to talk about why I do not advocate using payday loans, while also evaluating a site that sells payday loans. And when I went to look at the site, I expected to find the online equivalent of a flashing neon sign. Instead I found a site that was pleasant and easy to use. It's always more fun to write a positive review than a negative one, and the company was willing to let me explain in detail why I discourage the use of payday loans as long as I also included a thorough review of their site.

First, what are payday loans? They're short-term loans designed to tide you over til your next paycheck. The most familiar way to get payday loans is to go to a storefront that offers them. This wikipedia page has a nice shot of your average brick-and-mortar payday place like the ones in my neighborhood.

Payday loans are generally something you only do if you have no other options, because the interest rates are much higher than other types of loans. The advantage is that you get approved easily as long as you are employed, and you get the money extremely quickly, so it's helpful if you have a real emergency.

Okay, now, if you're reading this because you're shopping for a payday loan or you regularly use them, there is one very simple thing you can do to decrease the likelihood that you'll need one in the future. Please, START AN EMERGENCY FUND. I know it is crazy intimidating when people tell you that you need six months' worth of living expenses saved for emergencies. Although that would be great if you could swing it, I'm not talking about that kind of emergency fund. I'm talking about a little pot of money that will pay for the kind of crisis that you would normally take out a payday loan to cover: Emergency-room co-pays, filling a prescription that you absolutely must have, buying food for your kids when you're flat broke, paying your utility bills so you can get your heat back on, bailing your grandmother out of jail, whatever it is. If you had, say, five hundred bucks in the bank, you probably would be able to get through to the next paycheck without taking out a loan. The trick is that if you spend some of that money to get through a crisis, you have to start right away paying yourself back. And you need a good understanding of what constitutes a crisis. The short answer to that question is that almost nothing is a true crisis.

If you have a little more time, you can sometimes find somebody to give you the money for free. My city, and many others, has a special fund to help folks keep their heat on in the winter. There may be other foundations, especially small local ones, that will help you pay medical bills or weather other crises.

But the best foundation for this type of help is Modest Needs. This foundation gives very small grants (a few hundred bucks or so) to individuals who are usually self-sufficient but need one-time help to keep them from spiraling into debt and poverty. They help with things like first-and-last-months' rent so you can get an apartment, or fixing the brakes on your car so you can get to work.

Now, having delivered my lecture on why payday loans are something you should avoid, and having given you a couple of ideas of how to avoid them, let's look at a specific payday loan site.

If you do need a payday loan, you might as well get it online. I am all for doing things online. Less errands to run means more time to do things you enjoy (especially sleeping), and you don't have to deal with worrying about running into someone you know when you're coming out of a payday loan place. You do need a checking account to use this service, so folks who don't have a checking account may still want to use a brick-and-mortar store.

I must say, I like the design of this site. The background is restful and grey. Nothing blinks. It doesn't feel like you're getting a hard sell. The navigation is fairly straightforward. You do have to do a little bit of chasing around to find out what the deal is with the so-called "free" loans they advertise, but it turns out that despite their admission on this page that "free payday loans are not actually free", you can get your first loan without paying a fee or any interest as long as you pay it off in full on its due date (which coincides with your next payday). Sounds pretty free to me.

So why are they giving out free money? The catch, of course, is that you may not really be able to pay it off in full, in which case you are on the hook for a 25% fee. That plays out to be the same as if you were paying 25% interest per month. This is NOT the same as the 25% ANNUAL rate you might be paying on your credit card. I am bad at math, so I won't attempt to figure out what the annual rate would be on a payday loan, but you should definitely use this only if you are sure you can pay it off on your next payday. The company does NOT recommend that you keep this loan for an extended period. In their FAQs, they say that "All payday loans . . . should be paid back rapidly, and not used for an extended amount of time."

The other way that the company makes money on your "free" loan is that you will probably find the service very easy and it will help you out of a tight spot. Next time you're in a tight spot, you'll come back, and this time they will charge you their normal fee of 25% of the loan.

The online application process is relatively easy. I followed it through as far as I could without hitting the submit button, and it took me about ten minutes. Loans are approved and land in your checking account within 24 hours. There's no question that this is an easy service to use.

By far my favorite part of this site is the section on the main page if you scroll down. The articles here read like the chapter headings of any personal finance book: Planning for the future, Money management, Dealing with debt. The short articles do advocate sound financial practices, such as thinking about something you want for 24 hours to avoid impulse buying. And if you still want it after 24 hours, a payday loan may be the solution! You should definitely take these articles with a grain of salt, but it's interesting that this section is included. It's not unlike the surgeon general's warning on packages of cigarettes. I appreciate that the company at least wants to make sure its customers are going into the deal with their eyes open.

Overall, I find this site to be user-friendly and honest. The fees are not buried in fine print or double-speak. In several places on the site, the company urges customers to pay off the loan on time. It's true that they make money if you let the fees rack up, but they seem to be aware that they're more likely to get their money back if you pay up quickly.

Please, don't use a payday loan unless you truly can't avoid it, and even then, use one only if you can pay it off on your first payday. If a payday loan is your only option, that's a sign that you need to make some major changes to the way you handle your finances. Maybe you're overspending, but maybe you're simply not earning enough money to live on. If that's the case, take a good hard look at what you can do to improve your earning power. Education, a change of career, going to work in the private sector instead of that idealistic nonprofit job--whatever you have to do to get solvent, do it. Payday loans are the loans of last resort. If you need one, you should be doing everything you can to make sure you never need one again.

Advertising and paid reviews on *Tired but happy*

I've been getting more requests for text ads and site reviews so I'm going to clarify my rates and policies and refer back to this post as needed.

Sponsored links
Links up to 27 characters including spaces are placed at the top of the sidebar to the right. Links can be purchased for a minimum of one month and a maximum of 12 months in advance.

1 month link: $20
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12 months: $200 (two months free if you pay for 12 months up front)


Site reviews
I do occasionally accept commissions to write reviews of financial websites. Reviews are a minimum of 250 words, or more, at my discretion. I always disclose that I am being paid to review the site in question, and I retain complete editorial control. I do not accept pay to endorse sites. If you pay for a review, you can expect an honest one. I am willing to look at a site on spec and give you a general sense of the tone of the review.

Paid review of 250 words: $90


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Credit card balance transfer website: A review

Who uses credit card balance transfer offers? As far as I can tell, readers of this site who do this regularly probably fit into two categories. Either they're borrowing money and keeping it the bank to earn interest, or they're trying to reduce consumer debt and are using low interest (or better yet, no interest) credit cards to consolidate debt and pay it off faster. If you're in the first category, chances are you do this all the time and already have a system for finding good offers. If you're in debt paydown mode and only need to shuffle your debt around once a year or so when your credit cards' temporary low interest rates expire, you may be glad to have a resource that helps you identify the best offers.

The Credit Card Balance Transfer Website is a resource for finding and comparing credit cards that offer temporary zero-interest credit to new customers. This site is super useful. From the main page, you can quickly select a credit card company or even a specific card offer, click on a link, and get a breakdown of all the terms and conditions. From there another link takes you straight to an application. No sifting through paper junk mail, trying to figure out which of the credit card offers are worth pursuing.

Now, this site ain't pretty. It's not going to win any awards for web design. But it's not designed for browsing. You get in, get your info, and get out. It has a site map (yay, site maps) and some useful text toward the bottom of the main page that gives you a rundown on what you should be looking for (and looking out for) in a balance transfer offer. The site counsels users to look for offers that give you zero percent interest for a year on your balance transfers AND new purchases.

Overall this site is simple, useful, and performs a function that I haven't seen anywhere else. I think the site could be improved by making it visually a little less loud (hard to do when you're using the eye-catching icons of the credit card companies, but not impossible). I'd also like to see some kind of comparison tool, or even a low-tech table, so you could compare offers more efficiently. Right now, all the info you need is gathered here, but I personally would still have to print out a bunch of pages and look at them side by side or get out the ol' paper and pencil to really compare my short list of offers.

Full disclosure: This is a PAID REVIEW.