Freezing in NH

Money magazine has an article about online banking: Break the bank: Go online.

• The yields are way higher
• The convenience is finally there
• The service is comparable, if not better
• You’re in control

I’m wondering what cave they’ve been living in.  I’ve had an online bank since about 1999.  I’ve always had an ATM card for that account, and they provide free business-reply envelopes for mailing in deposits.  Since I use direct deposit, most of my money shows up instantly, I just have to wait for the occasional refund check or personal check to get there by mail.  There are several ATMs in my town that I can use for free — one is affiliated with my bank’s network in some way, and the others are in credit unions. 

The only huge inconvinience is change.  If I’m not vigilent about spending the coins I get, I end up with a huge jar of change and no easy way to get it into the bank.  When I lived in a city with Commerce Bank, they’d change it for free in their machine.  Now I just stick it into Coinstar and get an Amazon certificate (they don’t take the 8-9% commission on Amazon certificates).

Free Money Finance posts about an article on how to earn $1 million by not watching TV. 

So what does this all add up to? Say you’re 25 years old and you initially spend $2,000 for your TV, DVD player, entertainment cabinet and gaming system after getting your first job. Add in monthly costs of $100 for cable, $10 for electricity use, $20 for renting movies, $25 for buying games and $20 for an occasional pay-per-view event, and you’re looking at $175 a month. Add in another $525 a month extra you spend due to the influence of commercials if you are the average person, and you are costing yourself $700 a month watching TV.

If you instead invested this money and received a return of 8% compounded annually over 45 years until you’re 70 years old, you would have more than $3.7 million in your account.

The numbers may be correct for an average person, but I suspect that there are a bunch of people who don’t spend that much.  At the moment I don’t have a TV, and I certainly don’t have 700 extra dollars laying around each and every month.  

When I had a TV, I don’t think I spent $700 (not including rent) most months, so if I was only spending $500 total on utilities, food, and everything else minus rent, $700 of it couldn’t be due to the TV.  And I had a very nice 27″ TV for free because an always-need-the-latest-gadget friend moved in with another similar person who already had a nicer TV.  So I got the “old” TV on permanent loan. 

Sure I subscribed to cable, and occasionally bought food that I saw advertised on TV, but if I wasn’t watching the TV I’d be on the computer (similar electricity usage).  So the TV probably accounted for $100-200 a month (cable plus excess purchaes).  Still nothing to sneeze at, but not $700 either. 

I got rid of it because I was wasting so much time watching junk when I could be doing other things.  I’ve replaced a lot of that time with random websurfing, but even with that I still get more things accomplished.  I was never one who could do much other than watch openmouthed when the TV was on, so it was a big imposition.

Colleges fear debt puts damper on donations

“I got a great deal with my financial aid, but I’m still paying tens of thousands of dollars,” said the Orlando, Fla., native. “And now they want more money? I think it’s just ludicrous.”

University fund-raisers are increasingly worried over young graduates like Minsky. They fear that with student debt ballooning today, campus coffers may be suffering tomorrow.

Um, yeah.  Hard to sqeeze out extra money when your student loans are eating you alive.  My school called all the scholarship recipients right after graduation.  I hate to tell you, but an 8k scholarship to a 32k school is not really as much help as you might think.  It reduces the loans by a bit, and elimates all those nice Pell grants, but not much else.