The wurster, the better

I cashed out my old 401k’s I had from 3 prior employers (Conrail, Malvern Systems and Aon) and moved them into my new bank PNC (who is also my employer). About time. I just got tired of my old bank (Citizens) and decided to finally put everything into my new bank. I’m hoping that the PNC investor will help me rebuild my portfolio that was decimated by the recent economic situation. It seems I lost about 50% of the value at one point, although it did come back a little. Maybe we will have a retirement nest egg to actually use. Do you believe that? Not me. I just want to have a place to live and food on the table and be able to take care of my family.

In all lines of business and pretty much in everything we do daily, accountability comes into play. We consumers assume many things including the quality of food that we buy in being fresh and healthy and germ-free, the quality of products we buy in that they are well made and safe and won’t cause health issues. And so it should be in the financial industry. We assume that people in control are doing what is best for us, their clients. They are accountable for bad investments they make. They should not be given bonuses and large amounts of money when we, their clients, are losing and losing our life savings and our future. It is just stupid and doesn’t make sense to give them money. They need to be accountable.

I sent this to the editor of The Catholic Standard and Times.

We had our first snow last Thursday. It didn’t mess up too many things although getting to Collage (our daughter’s social therapy group) was a little tricky and then only a few people made it.

Money and bills and finances – these seem to be the most popular reasons for fights between a husband and wife. So, I decided to have one yesterday after finding out that we owed an educational consultant almost $4000. Whoa!!! And then I freaked out. I try to let my wife have free reign over helping our daughter in all ways, but she lacks common sense when it comes to money and spending it. She has always had this flaw as do a lot of people. Hmm, could this be a reason why our economy is in such a mess?

I got my monthly Odiogo listen stats as seen below. I guess this means that my blog is not very popular.

Total MP3 file downloads in the table listed below:75.

Month ——– Downloads —- Listen Button
Apr-07 ___________________________
May-07 __________________________
Jun-07 _________________________16
Jul-07 __________________________24
Aug-07 __________________________9
Sep-07 __________________________8
Oct-07 __________________________5
Nov-07 __________________________6
Dec-07 __________________________7

That’s okay with me as I do believe this technology is important for people who can’t read.

We still have our Christmas decorations up. They are coming down slowly. I’m not in a hurry to do a lot of things. I had a chest x-ray and blood tests done last week because of a problem I seem to have (although now I think it’s due to the ten pounds I’ve put on over the past couple of months). We’ll see how things go when I see my cardiologist next week.

My sister-in-law Jeannie came over last night and gave me a belated Christmas present which didn’t arrive in time. It’s a book called “Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community” by Thomas Berry. As I have always been interested in the environment and helping our planet, she thought I would like this book and author. If you take a few moments to visit the wiki link about the author, you will see why.

And, today, I changed the privacy settings on my blog to make it visible to search engines. I had made it invisible a long time ago because of huge spikes in bandwidth usage by the search engines. Let’s see how it goes now.

As I get older, my ability to plan and organize is decreasing. I feel considerable stress and pain such that I just give up while planning thinking what is the use. I feel alone in the financial responsibilities of my family. It doesn’t seem I get any help from anyone, even though I ask for it over and over again.

Having recently had a $2000 auto repair bill and then receiving our $3000 tax bill in the mail, I wondered how I would pay for them. Then I received our $1000 home owners insurance bill in the mail. I really don’t look forward to getting our mail each day. So, anyway, this made me look at all of our finances (mostly credit cards) to see how we stood. We don’t stand any where but are rather buried 3 feet under the ground. We just refinanced last year around this time and now we are going to have to do it again. This time, we’ll have to do it for 10 years instead of 5 years. I really wanted to be out of this major debt before I was 65, but that won’t happen. I really wanted to look forward to retiring, but not now.

If only my family would cut back on their spending ways to the tune of about $1000 per month.

So, now we have $15000 in credit card debt with me adding $4000 in the next week or so. Refinancing is the only solution and the 10-year monthly payment will give us more financial freedom. Hopefully we won’t incur bounced check fees which we have twice over the past year totaling about $300.

I was really hoping that our oldest daughter would have helped out during the time she has been working, but that didn’t transpire. And now she will be going to graduate school with the spending continuing and no income except for us.

This refinancing should help reduce my stress levels somewhat – I hope.