Money Talks

Tips/Gifts for Service Providers?

2 Comments / Community Chest, Daily Dose, Money Talks /

TW’s mom would like to give a gift to the guy who drives the bus for the Senior Center but he’s not allowed to accept money so she was wondering whether he could accept a gift card or what other type of gift she might give him. He goes out of his way to pick her up/drop her off — beyond the call of his actual duties and she wants to thank him.

So — I started researching the problem and I found a whole lot of people who feel very strongly (both in favor and against) the tipping of service providers.

And, I understand both sides of the argument.

Why do we tip folks for doing their jobs?

Shouldn’t tipping be reserved for people who go above and beyond? For those who provide extraordinary service?

Do teachers, bus drivers, hair dressers, postal service, UPS/Fed drivers, garbage collector, etc. always deserve a holiday gift?

Are those who make a “good” wage with benefits less deserving of a tip/holiday gift than those who don’t make said wages/benefits? Even if they provide outstanding, over-the-top service?

How do you decide which service providers to gift? And what types of gifts do you give?

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I Love Wells Fargo, Even When They Piss Me The Hell Off

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Money Talks, Pet Peeves /

There I was, standing in the shoppette at Great Lakes Naval Station, thinking about all of the things I needed to get done and trying to plan every detail down to the last second so I could get – it – DONE when the clerk asked me to run my debit card through the machine thingy again.

No surprise, this happens a lot at the shoppette, the NEX, and the commissary.

I ran it again.

Declined.

He tried it manually.

Declined.

WTF? I just used it at the gas pump outside, with no problem.

Whatever. It happens. The machine breaks. Wells Fargo breaks. No big deal. I pulled out another card, paid, and grumbled my way to the car.

I pulled out my phone, checked my balance — it was exactly what it should have been, so why the heck was Wells Fargo declining my debit card. Who has time for this on Black Friday, for goodness sakes?

Luckily, I wasn’t planning on doing much shopping — less than $50 at the commissary and I had cash for our Robeks/McDonald’s run. No big deal.

As I was standing in Robeks a half hour later, my phone buzzed — an 800 number, I didn’t pick up. They didn’t leave a voicemail. I called it back and oh hell — Wells Fargo Fraud Prevention or Protection or whatever they call that department.

Figures. They decided to question my charges on Black Friday? How inconvenient could that have been if I was a different person or in a different financial situation?

Their nice little recording thingy had me verify my last five charges:

1) Evanston Maid Pro (a cleaning service in Evanston, Il) for $XX. The recording actually says these things.
2) Clarks Shoes (a shoe store in Somewhere, MA) for $XXX.
3) Toms Shoes (a shoe store in Somewhere, CA) for $XX.
4) A denied charge (at the Great Lakes< ILL NEX shoppette) for $XX 5) Amazon.com (a bookstore in Washington) for $XXX (I chuckled at Amazon still being called a bookstore, lol) I verified that all of those charges were MINE (for godsakes) and they agreed to let me use my debit card to buy more of the things, which was nice of them since it's my darn debit card and I have a lot of kids, a puppy, and a grandson to shop for. I do love my bank but damn that was annoying.

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A Weird Thanksgiving Shopping Day

Daily Dose, Money Talks /

TW and I have been going to Kmart, Walgreens and CVS on Thanksgiving for more than 10 years and we’ve never experienced a shopping day quite like this one.

First, we walked out of Kmart without pajamas and without socks and without any weird Christmas gift packages and without any DVDs or video games. That has NEVER happened. Ever. We didn’t even find anything that we wanted to buy for Johnny Mac Pippin OR for Skeeter. Either the stuff we found interesting wasn’t on sale or they just didn’t have the stuff that normally catches our eye. Don’t get me wrong, we still bought stuff — we just didn’t buy the stuff we normally buy and expected to buy.

Weird.

Our Walgreens trip was eventful only in the fact that they had everything on my list — this is not something that usually happens to me on a Walgreens coupon trip.

And then there was CVS. Weird, weird, weird…

Last Sunday, we bought a ton of stuff that gave us the full price back in ECBs so we had almost $80 in ECBs to spend today and as we checked out, the cashier (who checked us out on Sunday, by the way) began to rant about stores being open on Thanksgiving. I don’t know what rock she’s been under but drugstores being open on Thanksgiving is not new. It wasn’t crowded, so I don’t think I can chalk it up to having a stressed out day — their big day was really last Sunday when the big batch of ECB sales came out.

Then, she started ranting about “the company” — and how she doesn’t understand what’s going on with “the company” that they can give away all of this stuff. And all day, every day, people come in with these ECBs and basically get this stuff for free and Target and Walgreens don’t do this so why does “this company” do this?

And when I tried to explain that Walgreens actually does something very similar and I’d just spent $75 at Walgreens fifteen minutes ago and gotten $50 back in RRs she acted like I was lying because she prefers Walgreens and she’s never gotten anything like “this” at that store. And then she ranted some more about “this company” and giving away all of this product for free with these coupons and she just likes Walgreens so much better.

I… couldn’t figure out what the proper response should be since me trying to explain that you can get free stuff at Walgreens (and even Target, lol) didn’t seem to be the right answer. And when I tried to explain how much I love CVS because it’s clean and the people are friendly and it’s just a nicer store she said, again, that her friends say that too but she likes Walgreens.

See — weird. Very weird.

I kind of hope she’s not my cashier again — I kind of liked her last Sunday but after today, I dunno. She creeped me out and made me kind of grouchy. I like CVS and I don’t want my CVS cashier trying to tell me that I shouldn’t.

I spent $15 out of pocket today and walked out with another $24 in ECBs — What’s not to like?

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I Need an Intervention

3 Comments / Daily Dose, Money Talks, Work /

I am employed by BlogHer, Inc as the Community Manager at BlogHer.com. The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of BlogHer, Inc or its employees. I was not asked to write this post. I received no compensation for writing this post. Heck, nobody even knows I’m writing this post except RJ who is reading over my shoulder as I type…

I have the best job in the world. I know, I know – you’re tired of hearing me say this because you do not have the best job in the world. Sorry. Can’t help it. Gotta say it. I do have the best job in the whole wide world. But… every now and then the best job in the world causes a few little problems. Or problems large enough that I start telling TW that I need an intervention. One of the things I do every day at BlogHer.com is help solve problems that members of the community have. One of the ways I help members solve problems is by editing comments that don’t display image or video code properly. Or by deleting duplicate (or quadruplicate) copies of posts. No big deal, this happens all of the time and I’m happy to help. Or it wouldn’t be a big deal if we weren’t running an awesome HomeGoods campaign right now. But we are.

Dozens of people stop by every day to talk about what they’d like to buy at HomeGoods, who they’d like to buy gifts for, and to tell us what they’ve recently purchased with their $25 HomeGoods gift card. They even leave photos (and videos) of things that they’ve bought from HomeGoods with this gift card. Reading those comments every day (sometimes in quadruplicate) caused me to get the itch to go to HomeGoods.


This is scary. While I like HomeGoods, I do NOT like to shop. I really do not like to shop when I’ve already spent about 10K on Christmas and there isn’t a single person in my family who needs anything else. And did I mention TW is kind of under-employed? Yet here I sat… dying to go to HomeGoods. I told TW about the problem. She looked at me like she’d never seen me before. Yea. And then she said, “Well if we went to HomeGoods, we could go to…” and I shut her out. I did not want to hear whatever she was going to say. That is NOT an intervention.


The day passed. I worked, I worked some more, I did laundry and cleaned up the cold room. I tried to nap but the dog barked. I got up and said, “We need to go to the libray.” So we got dressed and went… afterwards, I asked TW if we needed to do anything else… and she said, “Well you wanted to go to HomeGoods… and we need vegan chocolate chips, vegan Worcestershire sauce, and a part for the snow thrower.”


I thought about it and sure enough, it seemed like the smartest place to go was to the Willow Rd shopping center where Lowes, Whole Foods and… HomeGoods live. As I drove, I thought I’d just go straight to Lowes and then to Whole Foods and then we’d go home. I DID NOT NEED TO GO TO HOMEGOODS.

But guess where we went first… HomeGoods.


And I spent $19.58 on this:

homegoods 001

Everyone else was spending a $25 gift card… I think this means I should go back again next week and spend another $5.42, don’t you?

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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A Prius Update

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Money Talks /

I think I have solved the mystery of why my Prius gets (got?) so much better gas mileage than Joy’s Prius… The solution to the mystery is not something I’m happy to have figured out (sorry Joy!)

Joy got her Prius a year ago. It was a surprise Christmas gift. She thought she was getting a snow blower. This means she got her Prius when it was COLD… and her first 6 months of driving were in very, very cold weather. (It’s cold here people, I keep saying it and it is TRUE.)

I got my Prius in June. I got it in Florida. The first month I got it, we used the AC a good bit, it’s really WARM in Florida. Then, we got here and it was “cold” to us, so when we used the AC it was on low… or we simply did not use it at all.

Now, here I am just a few miles away from Joy and the weather is frightfully cold. My gas mileage has… tanked.

The Prius does not like cold weather. I believe it’s not just the cold weather, it does not like running the heat on HIGH for the entire time you’re driving. (We tend to do very short trips and the car never really warms up all of the way until we’re back home.)

When I fill up, and then drive the 20 miles home, the gas mileage isn’t bad. I’m getting in the low 50’s. That’s a bit of a difference from the 60mpg I’d been getting on that drive. But, I’m running the heat on low the whole way.

The gas mileage then drops considerably as we drive through the week. Yesterday, as I headed to Great Lakes NEX to fill up, I started at 36.1 mpg. By the time I reached Great Lakes, I was no longer driving with the heat on HIGh and the mileage had gone up to 42.6.

So… based on just a couple of weeks of driving in very cold weather, I can assume that Joy’s low mileage was related to six months of very cold weather driving, with heat that probably ran on high more often than it did on low.

I’m sort of grouchy that I have solved the mystery, ya know?

It’s freaking cold here… and it is going to get colder.

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A little dueling hybrids update

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Money Talks /

I finally had time to call my father. Yes I’m a bad daughter. Yes he’d been calling my old phone number. Yes I feel guilty. We had a nice chat about the weather. He got to tease me about the cold so that eased the guilt from not calling him with my new phone number.

That led to a discussion about hurricanes. He drove through Hannah, from Charleston to DC and cackled about the dummies who stay home, leaving the roads open for him and the semis. Yes, my father is nuts. No I don’t take after him.

Of course I asked him about his gas mileage. Hah. Turns out he didn’t drive the Hybrid Honda to DC because a couple of weeks ago some woman hit him in Summerville and his car has been in the shop. Oops. Ya gotta hate that.

He did, however, admit that he wasn’t getting good gas mileage – 40ish (which leads me to believe maybe it’s less than 40.) He was pretty fascinated by my story of the 62.9 mpg drive home from GLNS, (today’s trip, I pulled into the driveway with 62.8!)

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Yes I’m talking about the Prius again

5 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Money Talks /

Ya know if Toyota was social media friendly, they’d be paying me for this shit but they aren’t so I’m doing this just because it’s fun and I really do love my Prius. (If Toyota ever wakes up to social media and offers me money, I’ll let ya know – transparency and all that ya know.)

Anyway, I got y’all all excited with my 62.9 mpg photo last week and that was sort of unfair… it was the highest I’d ever seen my mileage and I knew it would go down – and it did, so let me tell you about that.

Right after I filled up, TW went to the doctor which is really close to our house and the next day we went to Starbucks which is also really close to our house. Then on Saturday we picked up Joy in Skokie which is not close to our house. When Joy got in the car, she can attest to the fact that the MPG had dropped significantly from where it was on Wednesday night – it was at 46.7 or 47.2 or something like that. Big drop right?

If you read my blog regularly, you know that we went to Evanston for brunch and then we drove around all over the place on Sunday. And then Monday was coffee day. Tuesday was a trip to the post office and to take the little kids back to their dad’s house. Wednesday was coffee day too… and today, I made my weekly trip to Great Lakes Naval Base for cheap gas & groceries…. and when I pulled into the gas station, this was what was on the display. Not 62.9… just my average 50ish MPG.

prius2.jpg




























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A day in the life of the Prius

8 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Money Talks /

OK so I’m not going to blog about a whole day in the life of my Prius because that would be sort of boring. I don’t drive that much so mostly it just sits out in the driveway looking pretty. This will be the story of one typical trip in the Prius, a trip I make once a week at almost the same time every week (though the day varies a bit, depending on what we need or what our schedule is.)

I head to the Great Lakes Naval Base every week, it’s a 17.5 mile drive through the suburbs of Chicago somewhere around 4:30pm. The highest speed limit posted is 45, the lowest 30 (except on the base of course where it’s 25 or less.) The traffic is usually relatively light, for the suburbs of Chicago at that time of day. Relatively light means if I hit some of the traffic lights properly, I can maintain the speed limit for most of the trip. It’s rare that I can exceed the speed limit, there’s just too much traffic and too many traffic lights for that, except in a few spots past Deerfield and Lake Forest.

When I get to the Naval base, I hit the NEX gas station and fill up with the cheap gas (thank you NEX) which means I put between 2 and 4 gallons in the tank – usually 2 gallons. I reset the mileage tracker, pull out of the gas station and drive just under a mile to the NEX/commissary. An hour later, I head for home. And this is where the fun starts.

When I first fill up the tank and reset the mileage, it starts really low – somewhere around 30-32mpg. When I pull out of the NEX to come home, I’ll probably hit 34-37mpg pretty quickly and from there… I just watch the gas mileage improve. It’s fascinating to watch it move from 34 to 40 to 44 to 47 to 50 mpg!!! and beyond. When it goes beyond 50mpg it feels like we should throw a party or something but I don’t want to get to confident that it’s going to stay there, I’m always sure it’s going to drop again quickly. But when it doesn’t and it’s at 52mpg and staying there – wow.

When I pulled into my driveway after the 17.5 mile drive home…

prius.jpg

I love this car.

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Dueling Hybrids?

5 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Friends & Family, Money Talks /

My dad called today and after he finished thinking TW was me, we chatted about his home improvement projects and about our move and as we were about to hang up because we had nothing more to say, I remembered…. “Hey! I bought a car!” he asked what I bought and laughed. I told him the Metallic Grey Prius and he laughed again. I asked why he was laughing… because he too bought a car. Also a Hybrid. Also “grey”. But he bought the Honda and just picked it up on Monday.

We chatted a bit about our choices and I of course had more to say because I have actually driven both the hybrid Prius and the hybrid Honda – he hasn’t actually driven the Prius and only test drove the Honda once before he ordered.

Anyway… being who we are… we’re tracking our mileage so we can compare every week. Which hybrid will win?

Mine, I’m sure.

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