Desperate retailers are not waiting for “Black Friday” to offer Black Friday-style sales events. They are eagerly fighting for every dollar (or remaining credit card limit) that can be extracted from us.

Resist, my friends.

It is not your responsibility to keep retailers profitable or even in business. Retailers must adapt just as we must adapt our spending and saving habits to conform to current economic times.

Thanksgiving and Christmas will still happen without your previous levels of shopping dedication. You may (and should) enjoy the holidays even more with greater focus on experiences and less on acquisition and distribution of stuff.

There is actually science behind what I just wrote.  Using your money for experiences brings more happiness than the temporary high from shopping.

That’s precisely why I am in Atlanta with old friends.

Enjoy your weekend.

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As an XM then XM/Sirius subscriber, I received regular email from XM folks who had all kinds of nice things to say about the service I was paying for. It was the primary way in which they communicated with me. So when I decided to cancel my service, I elected to send an email to XM “Listener Care.” This is what I sent on August 15:

Dear Friends:

Please cancel my satellite service effective at the end of the current billing cycle, which I believe is tomorrow, 8/16. I have generally enjoyed being a customer but recently I find that the channels I listen to most are filled with commercials.

Please acknowledge these instructions as I do not intend to submit any further payments.

Thank you.

I included my full name, address, phone number, and account number. Also, the message was sent from the same email account to which XM had been sending its numerous messages to me.

That was reasonably clear don’t you think?

Shortly thereafter I received the usual “thanks for contacting Listener Care, we will respond shortly” blah blah blah.

Then the circus started.

First, my cancellation instruction was acknowledged but I was offered a three month discount to stay a subscriber, which I ignored. Then I began to receive a series of email messages instructing me to call a number so that I could speak with the “cancellation team.” No offense to the “cancellation team”  members but I wasn’t interested in waiting in a phone queue to then have someone try to talk me out of being an ex-subscriber. So I ignored those as well.

The next series of email messages was accompanied by regular robo-calls, telling me that my account was scheduled for “suspension” due to non-payment and I needed to call another number to arrange payment, blah blah blah.

Periodically I would receive a written past due statement. (This is the reason that I don’t put stubborn/clueless vendors like XM on an automatic bank or credit-card payment program.)

Here is a typical email I received from the “XM Team” on September 10:

Dear Valued Customer,

An invoice was mailed to you last month, but we have not received payment for your XM Radio service. As a result, your service may be turned off shortly.

If you did not receive your invoice, please contact us today to update your billing address and make a payment. For your convenience, you can pay with credit card to avoid the hassles and fees of invoice billing. Simply choose how you would like to update your billing information from the options listed below:

Speak with a live representative. Call XM Listener Care at 888-290-2096.

If you have already contacted XM to submit a payment, please disregard this email.

To which I responded:

How many times do I have to tell you to cancel my account?  This is number three. Stop harassing me for a payment that I am not going to send.

Finally, I could no longer tolerate the robo-calls, emails, and letters, so three weeks ago I called the number left on our voice mail. I was put on endless hold and eventually hung up.

I tried again a few days later and actually reached a human being.  All that poor XM person wanted to talk about was that my service was being suspended and when I was going to pay my past due account to prevent that from happening. What?

I told her that if I owed anything as of August 15 (my cancellation date), tell me what it was and I would pay it immediately but nothing more. I pointed out that I had cancelled my service on August 15.

She asked if I had spoken to the “cancellation team.”  I said no, I had sent an email. She told me that it was XM “policy” to cancel a service only after I spoke with the “Cancellation Team.”  I responded I had tried but was put on hold. I went on to say that I didn’t care what XM “policy” was; I hadn’t listened to my XM radio since my August 15th cancellation instruction and it wasn’t my concern that XM chose to keep the account active thereafter.

She put me on hold to transfer me to the “cancellation team.”  I waited in another phone queue and after a few minutes, hung up.

The emails and robo-calls continued. Once again I was told to call to straighten things out, to which I responded twice by email as follows:

I’ve tried calling three times. On only one occasion could I reach a live person without an extended wait and that person transferred me to another on-hold queue. I’m not doing it again. CANCEL THIS ACCOUNT as you should have done on 8/15. If someone wants to talk to me about this cancellation, they may call me at _____________.  I promise I won’t put them on hold.

And then:

Apparently you are not actually reading or comprehending my messages. If your “Cancellation Team” feels that it is necessary that I tell them verbally what I have been telling you in writing since August 15, one of them can call me at the number I’ve listed below. I am not going to call yet again and be put on hold, just to repeat something. I have been getting regular robocalls on my landline from your “Robocall Team”. All you need to do is put a human on the phone and your problem is solved.

The email response to this was that a member of management would contact me in 5-7 business days.

Of course, it didn’t happen.

I’m now waiting for XM to send my account to the “collection team” at which time I might have to get really upset and escalate things at this end.

That’s what happens when you are dealing with XM, this week’s Fools of Finance.

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Well, a couple of things went wrong. First, many investors missed the entire point of owning a target retirement date fund and misused them as an investment. Then 2008 happened. Folks who expected that their retirement portfolio would be relatively safe under any market conditions (probably a naive expectation) were surprised to discover that their target date fund valuations dropped substantially. Even the most conservative target date funds (those designed primarily for income) fell 17% on average. Those funds with a longer time horizon dropped by almost 40%.  None of them showed a positive return.

And the saddest news of all was for investors who bought funds designed for a target retirement date of 2010. Those funds (there were 31 of them) produced results that were all over the place. The best 2010 target date fund dropped 3.5%. The worst fell 41.3%. Ouch. Happy Retirement 2010!

I don’t care how young or old you are but if you put money in an investment that is specifically designed for your retirement golden years, you never want to experience declines like that. It is emotionally upsetting to say the least and counter-intuitive to the understood purpose of the fund.

So what happened next?

First, many retirement investors pulled their money out and either went to cash or chose another asset class to invest in. (Sadly those folks who pulled out missed the 2009 mini-rally). This happened just when many mutual fund companies were jumping on the bandwagon and joining the parade of new target date funds.

Second, the domino effect caused some of the newcomer target date funds to surrender to the marketplace and simply liquidate.  (A fund liquidates when it stops accepting new investments, sells its current investment assets, returns the remaining funds pro rata to investors, and then closes down.) According to this report, seven target date funds liquidated in 2008. So far in 2009, fifteen have liquidated. There are probably more on the way, as investors remain wary and disinterested based on the 2008 debacle. There are 246 retirement date funds with fewer than $100 million in assets, which is probably below the sustainable level.

This leaves 80% of target date fund assets concentrated in just three companies: Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price.

So what should you do about investing in target date funds? I would go elsewhere with your retirement money, as I did in 2008. I believe that retirement date funds were an experiment gone bad.

If you like the “set and forget” retirement investing strategy, there are a variety of different “lazy man” and “couch potato” portfolios available to you. Investigate them and pick one that matches two important personal characteristics. The first is your risk tolerance. The second is your retirement trajectory.

Note that a retirement trajectory is different from a target retirement “date” because it takes into account how your employment income may phase out over time instead of perhaps suddenly ending. You may be planning for a phased retirement. If so, your “target date” may not be a fixed date at all.

Finally, remember that when you are investing for retirement, your primary objective is to establish and preserve a stream of essential retirement income. Building wealth is secondary.

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Vegas is hurting in almost every economic category, starting with the collapse of the real estate market and ending with underpopulated casinos.

Yet Vegas has not seemed to respond well. The city is increasingly difficult to get around. The streets are crowded. The monorail system is anemic and over-priced. The worst is that the hotels are trying to boost profits by price-gouging convention travelers.

The conventions in town this week are huge. Most of the moderate and high end hotels are sold out. My assistant found a standard room at Caesar’s for the ridiculously high rate of $450 – on a Wednesday. I have been to Vegas many times with Mrs. ToughMoneyLove and sometimes with the kids. We have always stayed at nice hotels and never paid anywhere near that rate. I complained to the desk clerk at check-in. He unapologetically told me that when a large convention is in town and the hotels are full, the rates get jacked-up big time.

That’s classic supply-and-demand capitalism, of course, but here is what really bothered me. As he was checking me in, the clerk asked if I wanted a room upgrade. In response, I asked him if the upgraded room would cost more than $450. “Of course”, he said. I told him no thanks. Ten seconds later he told me that he was going to upgrade me to a mini-suite at no extra charge.

Who is he kidding?

Obviously, there were no standard rooms available. This mini-suite was the only room he had to accommodate my reservation. But instead of just giving it to me (because he had no choice), he tried to suck some more money out of me. Then he pretended he was doing me a favor.

This is a classic case of customer abuse, which to me is foolish behavior in the hospitality industry.

It is sad, really, that Vegas cannot seem to find its place in our economy. I used to enjoy coming here. Considering that Vegas has been built on excess and wasteful spending, it may never regain its former self. Our personal spending habits have evolved and Vegas has not evolved with them. Vegas may not deserve the economic recovery that it desperately needs.

I’m going to give Las Vegas my Fools of Finance award this week.

Have any of you experienced the Sin City recently? Thoughts?

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And what will CIT do after its pre-packaged bankruptcy clears the courts? Start lending again, using the same business model that put it in the dumper to begin with.  How about funding a fine company like Eddie Bauer. Oh – you already did – after Eddie Bauer filed bankruptcy last summer for the second time since 2005? Too bad for us.

The CEO is Jeffrey Peek, who pushed CIT into the sub-prime mortgage and student loan business to “pump up growth.” How’s that plan working out for you, Mr. Genius?

If you own Bank of America stock (I’m glad we sold ours a year ago), you might want to check its balance sheet and think about getting out. CIT owes B of A $7.5 billion, all unsecured.

I don’t give a rat’s you-know-what about whether a company like CIT lives or dies. There will always be another to take its place. I do have problems having billions in our hard earned tax dollars flushed down that rat’s hole.

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I thought Halloween would be a good day to throw a few links out there for your consideration, to see if I can scare you on to something of value.

First, have a look at Cash Commons. This is a brand new site launched by a fellow personal finance blogger, the Mighty Bargain Hunter. The concept is simple. Users ask questions of a financial nature. Other users answer them. It’s all free. I spent some time there this morning reading the questions and offering some answers. I’m going back because I’ve already found some useful stuff there that I can use. Cash Commons can only get better as more readers learn about it.

If you want to know what professional financial planners are thinking about current topics in personal finance, try reading some of the online articles in the Journal of Financial Planning. In the upcoming (December) issue, these subjects will be covered: Constructing and Defending Portfolios During Chaotic Markets; Bonanza or Bust? Roth Conversions in 2010; and Long-Term Approaches to Managing Retirement Healthcare Costs. Each of these is important to most of us.

A site I’ve recently discovered for learning about sales, discount codes, and online coupons, is Offers.com. Some of the offers are exclusive to this site. You can also find free shipping and free trial deals, and learn about upcoming Black Friday deals.

Speaking of learning, the Khan Academy has something for almost everyone. The publisher of this non-profit site has created over 1000 YouTube educational videos on a variety of scientific and mathematical topics. More to the point of my readers, there are sections covering numerous contemporary issues in economics and personal finance. You need to check it out if you are an audio/visual learner.

I hope you benefit from learning about at least one of these links. Either way, please let me know in a comment.

Thanks for reading this week and enjoy your weekend.

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I just returned from the second floor lobby of our office building where I (and many others who work in this building) received an H1N1 flu shot. Yes, the flu shot that is now in short supply across the country. The flu shot that our county health department ran out of last week after only a few days.

How is this possible? Who gave me this flu shot? How much did it cost?

This is where the entrepreneur part comes in.

The company that came on site to provide the shots is called Nursing Resource Solutions. According to its website, it is a local nurse staffing business, owned and operated by nurses, for nurses. That in itself is relatively unusual. Most nurses are employees of large health care facilities and are pushed around by corporate bureaucrats and by physicians. Mrs. ToughMoneyLove – being an RN herself – knows all about this. So I was happy to see that this group of nurses had taken matters – and business – into their own hands.

One of the owners of the business – a young African American man – was on-site with his team of shot-givers. After I received my shot, I asked him how he was able to get the H1N1 vaccine (mist and IM versions) when so many others could not. His answer:  We filled out the paperwork and submitted it early. How refreshingly simple is that?

In other words, this small business was on top of things from the beginning. The owners saw an opportunity and jumped on it. Now they have a product that is in high demand and in short supply. What a great combination for a small business entrepreneur.

I also have to give this business credit for its efficiency. First, they distributed the pre-shot literature and consent forms early by providing it to building management who then emailed it to all of the tenants. Everyone showed up with the forms in hand, filled out. The shot cost only $20.00. No insurance forms were involved. They provided a receipt on request so the recipients could file it with insurance if they desired. Their non-labor overhead consisted of a folding table and chairs and few bags of cotton balls and alcohol swabs.

When it comes to signs of a successful entrepreneur, that’s what I’m talking about.

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