Well, folks, it’s Cyber Monday, and chances are that you are going to be one of the eleventy billion people taking advantage of downtime at work to troll the pre-holiday sales online today. Personally, I love shopping online, particularly when it allows me to avoid the holiday crowds at the mall, and the Cyber Monday deals available make everything more appealing. But if you’re not a veteran of online shopping like I am, then you should probably keep a few things in mind before you venture out into the world of online shopping on its busiest day of the year.

1. Be Wary Of Deals Sent Via Email. Sometimes online retailers will send out special deals via email, and they might redirect you to a retailer site and instruct you to enter a code. If you receive a deal via email that you want to use, be wary of using links provided in the email: online phishing schemes will often involve impersonating large retail outlets and ask you to enter in credit card information to a site that looks like it is the larger retailer. To avoid any problems like this, always go directly to the retailer site by entering their address into your browser’s url window. Legitimate offers will ordinarily include a coupon code for you to use during checkout, and doing it this way can safeguard you from scams.
2. Only Enter Information That Is Required And Reasonable. There is no reason you should ever have to enter your Social Security Number in order to make an online purchase. You might have to enter your billing address or the three digit number on the back of your credit card, though. When giving information to retailers, even retailers that you are certain are legitimate, you should always operate on a need-to-know basis to the extent that it is possible. Look for the little asterisks beside fields that tell you which pieces of personal information are essential to making your purchase. If you feel uncomfortable revealing all of the required fields, then don’t make the purchase — even large, legitimate companies are the victims of security breaches and information theft on occasion, and as usual, you are better safe than sorry.
3. Consider Getting Temporary Account Numbers From Your Bank Or Credit Card Company For Online Purchases. Many financial institutions feature a service where you can get a temporary account number that is good for just one purchase online. Taking advantage of this is a good way to feel extra safe that you will not be overcharged or have your account emptied by online theives.
4. Make Sure You Are Buying What You Think You Are Buying. Online shopping is awesome for a variety of reasons, but it does offer some challenges in making sure the item you want is the one you are ordering. Make sure to check things like quantity (e.g. you only want one CF card for your digital camera, not a pack of 10), versions (i.e. did you mean to buy the hardcover copy or the paperback?) and condition (i.e. is that used book that you are buying from Amazon really “like new” in the sense that it’s appropriate to be given as a gift, or is there an inscription inside that will be difficult to explain later?). Online shopping is so quick and easy that it’s doubly important to double-check details whenever possible.
5. A Deal Is Only A Deal If You Were Planning On Buying It Anyway. This year, it is reported that 87.7% of online retailers will be offering some kind of special Cyber Monday deal. These deals range from free shipping offers to special heavily discounted offers that change every hour, and the time limitations involved all contribute to a feeling that if you don’t buy now, you will miss out. But the rules for Cyber Monday are the same as they are for any other purchase: a deal is only a deal when you are planning to buy something all along and manage to get it for a better price. Stick to your list, and you’ll wake up on Morning After Cyber Tuesday feeling like a winner.

"5 Tips For Cyber Monday Shopping" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 30, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

I read a post the other day about how Microsoft is going to start paying Rupert Murdoch to deny Google the ability to index content sources like The Wall Street Journal. This is apparently the first step in Microsoft’s plan to convince a bunch of the world’s prominent content producers to wall off Google so that Google will, eventually and theoretically, be forced to start paying the content producers in order to index their content.

What the what?

From Murdoch’s perspective, I suppose this deal seems appealing because it promises a (temporary) influx of cash into the flailing newspaper industry. Microsoft’s motives are less clear, but I suspect it is connected to a deep seated desire to stick it to Google in any manner possible. Regardless, though, the whole scheme rests on a faith in the idea that this content is so good that people will want to find it and miss it when it’s gone. Even if they don’t know it’s there, because it’s not in Google.

I have to assume that there is some piece of the plan that makes it make sense that I’ve somehow missed — something like a metaplot where Microsoft brokers a deal with Johnson & Johnson that allows them to put skin-burrowing nanonrobots into baby shampoo so that — post 2010 — all new babies will grow up to develop an inexplicable affection for crappy unstable web browsers, large, heavy, and hideous CPUs. Oh, and The Wall Street Journal.

It must be infurating for Microsoft to not just be able to tell us, directly, what we should buy and what kind of media we should want to read. They must long for the good old days where they could just directly force us to buy things, without the infuriating run-around of search engines that allow us to cross-reference and compare things, for free, in half a second. Still, what is the plan going to be, once the generation of people who even know what paper newspapers ever were is dead, and the generation who already reads their news online (and which already generally ignores the WSJ because of its tendency to be fascist and greedy) forgets that the WSJ ever existed? Because it’s not in Google.

I already had some doubts about the credibility of the WSJ when they linked to me on their Loose Change blog. Because, really? You’re coming to an ex-academic in English literature for information on marketing? That’s the best you can do, Paper of Financial Record? But this is really beyond the pale, even if, as usual, I cannot articulate why nearly so well as can Seth Godin, whose pithy “Rupert Murdoch Has It Backwards” sums up all of my initial thought on this move in three sentences:

You don’t charge the search engines to send people to articles on your site, you pay them.
If you can’t make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. Charging money for attention gets you neither money nor attention.

Yeah. What he said.

I had been thinking that surely there must be some other explanation here, right? Surely there is some other thing afoot that I don’t understand because is this not the publisher of the newspaper to which business icons and moguls all over the country turn for information to help them . . . well, to help them run their businesses? The WSJ may not be in the business of advice, but they are certainly an authority in the field of business news; surely some business savoir-faire must have rubbed off over the years? I hypothesized to Mr. Right-Click that sure, people will want to read something like The Wall Street Journal, and they might even want to pay for it. But if you make finding it too much of a hassle, or make reading it too hard, or expensive, I’m not sure that it will work. And Mr. Right-Click said, “Yeah, just ask Howard Stern how well that worked out for him,” and I thought yeah! That’s exactly it! That’s exactly why it won’t work, because even when you are a fan of something in one medium, it takes SO MUCH to overcome the hassle and annoyance that following it to another medium, and adopting a new set of rules for it, requires. It takes a level of dedication and loyalty that the average audience member of mass media just doesn’t have.

When Howard Stern was on free radio, the most vocal and recognizable segment of his audience was comprised of the creepy zeros who would follow him around from venue to, talking about boobs and farts. But that wasn’t the majority of his audience: the majority of his audience was made up of relatively normal people who had to commute to work and enjoyed his show because of the release it provided. I even count myself among this group. And when he moved to satellite, I intended on following him there, too, as most of his audience probably did. But when it came down to it, what a hassle! And now it’s been what, four years? Does anybody even remember what Howard Stern’s voice sounds like?

"Microsoft And Murdoch: The Only Question Is Who Is Dumb, And Who Is Dumber?" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 25, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

If there is one thing the holidays are good for, it’s to make you feel like you need a vacation. Since it’s unlikely you’re going to get a vacation any time soon, you are probably looking for ways to get rid of stress. Here are some tips for reducing your stress level at home and abroad for less money and less hassle, some of which I’ve shared before, and others are completely new and improved. I also hope you guys will chime in with your ideas for how you are able to control stress

1. Get A Massage Done At A Place That Specializes In Massage. If you book a massage at a spa, you’re going to be paying a premium for the use of the amenities there. Sometimes, it can be worth the extra cost to take advantage of the jacuzzi, sauna, et cetera and a spa. But for a quick destressing massage, you might consider going to a smaller establishment that only does massages — you will pay much less for the same treatment in a slightly less chichi environment. (To clarify: I’m talking about reputable establishments that offer lower-cost massages by certified massage instructors, not the “massage parlors” that offer happy endings.) When you’re just trying to fix a few knots in your neck in between appointments, there’s no need to pay a 50% premium for more Enya music.
2. When You DO Get A Spa Massage, Choose A Shorter Length. If you’ve got enough time to really take advantage of the spa amenities and have decided to go the spa route for your massage, consider going for a shorter-length version of the massage. Unless you’ve got some kind of injury that needs special attention, you’re probably just going to fall asleep on the table with a 60 minute massage. Go for the 45-minute or 30-minute option and use the extra time in the jacuzzi.
3. Use At-Home Remedies For Puffy Eyes. Are you tired? Do you have puffy eyes? Don’t waste money on spa solutions or expensive department store creams to solve this problem: the best solutions for puffy eyes from lack of sleep can be found at home for little to no money. Put some spoons in the refrigerator (or, if you really need help, the freezer), and use them on your eyes in the morning to reduce swelling. And for extreme cases of sleep-deprivation, you can remove the bags under your eyes by dabbing a bit of Preparation H (the cream version, not the petroleum version) under your eyes — it will reduce the swelling. No, I’m not kidding, and yes, I do it myself, all the time. That’s right: I put butt cream on my face. Get over it.
4. Aromatherapy At Home. I’ve mentioned before that you can make the same eucalyptus-oil-scented towels that you find at spas at home fairly easily. just get a few washcloths, wet them, and put a couple drops of eucalyptus oil on them. Roll them up, wrap them in saran wrap, or throw them in a ziplock, and put them in your refrigerator for later. You can experiment with using different essential oils for different purposes.
5. Exercise. Exercise. Exercise. I know you don’t want to hear it, but exercise is the most effective form of stress relief on the market, and it’s relatively free. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of deploying this method of stress relief: you just have to do it. So do it. Now.

"5 Ways To De-Stress For Less" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 23, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Last week, my friends, on the afternoon after I had to euthanize my cat, I fell victim to a scam artist. I know! Me. I cannot tell you how humiliating it is to admit this to you guys, but I figure that if I can fall victim to a scam, then anybody can, given the right circumstances. And if that isn’t a personal financial issue, then I don’t know what is. I only hope that you can continue to take me seriously as a personal financial blogger after I cop to this idiocy.

So here’s what happened: I was at home with Mini in the afternoon, and there was a knock on the door. I hate it when people knock on the door, by the way. It’s almost never something I want to deal with. But there I was, the only adult at home, so I had to deal with it, and the person at the door is a guy who is maybe in his early twenties, he looks harmless enough, and I open the door, remaining suspicious, but no longer fearing that the individual was going to attempt something malicious. Which was, of course, my first mistake.

The kid was selling books, the proceeds of which were to be used to send himself and some other of his college classmates to England. Naturally, I wasn’t interested in any of the books he was selling, but he had an answer for this, too — his mother was a nurse at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and they would donate the books to the hospital. Perfect! Because as it happens that’s where we got Mini’s ears fixed! And not only that, but if we donated a certain amount of money, then his uncle would come out and detail our cars! The story just got better and better! And today, as I recount what happened and pare it down to its bare bone facts, I realize that it sounds so stupid and absurd that I bought this crap hook line and sinker, but naturally his delivery was much more impressive in person.

Here’s the thing about scams: right now, you have a set of ideas in your head about what suggests legitimacy in solicitations. You don’t realize it, but you do. These things include:

1. Detail. The right details can make an otherwise absurd story believable. In this case, the scamster told me about a program with Children’s Hospital, where my son had an operation. He also used the real names of people who live in this neighborhood as his parents, and described somebody who actually lives near me as being his mother. He had to have known enough about this neighborhood to know that I would not actually know this woman personally, that I might know her by sight, but not well enough to know if she had a college aged son or not. He might have even known about my son’s operation, if he had been looking at mail or something. He also added superfluous detail in places where you would not require it, and strangely enough, this makes us think a story is legit, when in fact it should suggest the opposite.
2. Context. When I am headed into the grocery store, I am expecting to be solicited. I am expecting somebody to try to sell me something. I have my guard up. At home, it’s not up. I might be annoyed by having to deal with the doorbell ringing, but am not expecting a scam necessarily. And having had a childhood where I was routinely sent from door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions and the like in the name of charity, the whole thing seemed plausible.
3. Charity. For some reason, somebody selling something is often far more suspicious than somebody trying to get money for charity. I have to assume it is because we have a sort of default setting of guilt when it comes to charity — if we don’t give, we feel bad. Or if we don’t, we are aware that we are supposed to feel bad. So someone soliciting for charity seems less suspect, when in fact they maybe should be more so.

Now, if I hadn’t been overly emotional on that day because of my cat dying, perhaps this never would have happened. But it did. And not only did I give this guy money — this is where it gets REALLY embarassing — I told him to come back when my husband was home because I thought he’d be interested in donating stuff that would end up going to Children’s Hospital, too. Oh yeah, and he did come back, and Mr. Right-Click sat him down and demanded the money back, asked him for his ID and the phone number of the guy’s mother (who supposedly lives in our neighborhood). Conveniently, the guy said both his ID and the money I had given him were in his car, and so he left “to get them” and never came back. Mr. Right-Click of course didn’t fall for any of it, and if we hadn’t been juggling getting Mini to bed at the time, he probably would have followed him to his car and/or called the police. As it was, I guess it was a good reminder about stupid tax for me.

"Why I Won’t Ever Get Taken By A Door-To-Door Scam Artist (Again)" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 18, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

I think this might be some kind of Canadian gang sign.

Do you people realize that it has been basketball season for well over a month now and this is the first post I’ve written on the NBA? If I were you, I would consider myself lucky. Because MAN is there a lot of material to work with, already this season, even after just about 8 games per team. The antics both on and off the court of NBA players this season have already provided me with a wealth of opportunities to wax philosophical, so instead of sixteen separate posts on the topic, I thought I’d consolidate into one list on Business 2.0 and the NBA. So here are the thoughts I’ve had on the NBA and the 2009-2010 season thusfar. Enjoy.

1. Sometimes Your Product Is Awesome, But Still Nobody Wants What You’re Selling.
   Unless you’re already a basketball fan, you probably have not heard the name Allen Iverson before, even though he is a fairly certain inductee to the Basketball Hall of Fame once he retires. Unlike superstar basketball players like Shaq, LeBron, or Kobe, who are all on a first-name basis with even the non-basketball viewing public, Allen Iverson has quietly maintained a lesser stature in the popular imagination, despite being one of the most prolific scorers in the history of baskeball. The other three have weird, memorable names, and personalities the size of Rhode Island. But Allen Iverson, as good as he is, is just plain old weird.

   Weird for a basketball superstar, that is. Because he’s short, by NBA standards, so he plays point guard. But unlike most point guards, AI has been known to lead the entire league in scoring. See, point guards are supposed to run the court, look for plays to make, openings for passes, get the ball in the hands of the superstar. They are not supposed to score, except on occasion, so much as they are supposed to serve as a a stabilizing force on the court. Shorter players cannot go up against the “bigs” in the paint, but they are fast, and they are stable, and it’s tough to get the ball away from them, even when you tower over them, because they can do things like dribble the ball between their legs and — sometimes — pass the ball through your legs if you’re not watching carefully enough. But somehow, AI missed the memo on the purpose of point guards, because what he does best is to score, to make plays for himself, and to be the star, rather than to assist the star.

   AI has posed a problem for the teams on which he has played because, even if he drives ticket sales and makes lots of points, he makes it tough for a team to develop its other talent. He’s too short to really play down in the paint, and he’s too much of a superstar to create openings for other players. And like most superstars, he expects to start the game and be catered to, and he expects a big salary in exchange. Which is why, after being asked to play off the bench for the the Memphis Grizzlies (the crappy team to which he was traded this season) AI decided to quit playing basketball “for personal reasons” after playing only 3 games in the 2009-2010 season.

   AI is a star, but his product doesn’t fit well into the current market conditions of the NBA. With the NBA set up as it is now, it is tough for a player of his talents to fit into a team, and basketball is still a team sport. Rather than adapt, AI appears to have (at least for now) quit, which I suppose is a viable option when you’ve already been playing for a bunch of years and have money in the bank. But not all entrepreneurs can be so lucky — when the market isn’t conducive to your product, the best way of dealing with it is to put your ego on hold and adapt.

2. Even When Your Product Is Awesome, You Need A Backup Plan.
   It may be that things will change in professional basketball at some point in the future. Maybe at some point it will become more common for shorter players to dominate in scoring the way that AI does. Or, it may be that the taller players will keep selecting themselves out because of the problems they tend to have with injuries. (Take Yao Ming, for example: he’s huge, and he’s great, but he’s been plagued by foot problems his whole career and is out for this entire season.) It’s not completely far-fetched that there will come a time when there are more shorter players who become their team’s major scorers, but at present it seems unlikely. And in any case, that day is not going to happen in time for AI, who is in his mid-thirties. As a player, AI’s choice is to either adapt to these conditions or quit: he can either check his ego at the door and come off the bench for a bad team, or try to find another way to do what he does best. The best businesspeople do not get caught off guard by these kinds of things, or quibble over what is fair and not fair. They adapt and find a way to succeed because they are always planning for a worst case scenario. People who are successful are people who understand that their product is only as good as its ability to adapt to the dictates of the market.
3. Use The Market Realities, Even When They Hurt Your Ego, To Your Benefit.
   Allen Iverson could learn something from Canadians, because the only thing we Americans like more than Canadians, is making fun of Canadians. That’s why this move by Steve Nash the other night in the game against the Lakers has amused me to no end: unhappy with the ref’s call of a foul on a shot, Steve Nash decides to put on backwards Batman glasses in order to better illustrate his point to the ref. Too bad the ref isn’t Canadian, because I think she probably just thought, “What the hell is that funny Canadian doing now?” But seriously, take a cue from the Canadians on this one: instead of being upset by the “blame Canada” jokes and the constant references to “eh” and Strange Brew, Canadians do what all people with a good sense of humor do: embrace their stereotype as America’s dorky upstairs neighbor, and use it to their advantage. You’d be hard-pressed to find a comedy show or troop that isn’t dominated by Canadians, and why? Because Canadians are funny, even when they don’t want to be, and instead of getting mad, they laugh all the way to the bank.
4. The Sum Of The Parts Of Two Greats Might Be Worse Than Those Greats Alone.
   Last season, I wrote about the peculiar economics of the then-hypothetical trade of Shaquille O’Neal to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The results of this trade, now that it’s actually happened, are even more interesting. Cleveland won all of its regular season games at home last year save one, to the Lakers, who went on to win the NBA Championship (BOOYAH). LeBron won the MVP in no small part due to this feat, which is highly impressive and highly unusual. But even with the great LeBron, Cleveland could not make it to the NBA Finals, because (as I wrote in last year’s post) you usually need two or three hall of famers on a team in order to win an NBA Championship. Now that they have Shaq, you’d think they’d be better, right? Well, wrong. They’re record so far is 7 wins and 3 losses, which is not bad, but it’s hardly off to the start that everybody was hoping for. It may be that these two will end up making a great team, or it may be a total bust. The best bet, though, is that each of these great players will have to adjust their games a bit to work well together — and that is always the question when it comes to winning games.
5. Give Your Customers What They Want, But Know That This Will Only Make Them Find Something Else To Want.. The other night I was watching the Lakers play the Phoenix Suns. This was a highly anticipated game in the Western Conference because the Suns and the Lakers have been trading off the number one position for the season so far. Well into the fourth quarter, it became apparent that the Lakers were going to win the game because the point discrepancy was getting too large for the Suns to come back in the time left in the game. At this point, the crowd started chanting “WE WANT TACOS! WE WANT TACOS!

   Now, if you’ve never gone to a Lakers game, you might be confused by this chant, but what it means is this: the Lakers have a deal with Jack In The Box that everybody in the audience at Staples will get a coupon for two free tacos if the Lakers 1) Win the game and 2) keep the opposing team under 100 points. So when the Lakers win, the big issue becomes if they won “enough” to get tacos. And suddenly, a pair of tacos that retail for $0.99 is the goal of the thousands of spectators at Staples, the game being an assumed victory. I have to imagine this is particularly humiliating for the opposing team, who is already losing, to have their defeat put on the backburner to cheap hangover food. But still, it happens every time, and you would think these people have forgotten that they can get these stupid tacos for less than 1/10th of the beer they’re drinking at the game. The taco becomes the symbol of embarrassing defeat, the better to stick it to the opponent. And I have to assume that’s why Grant Hill, a player on the Suns, was cheering, “YEAH! NO FREE TACOS!” when Phoenix’s score tipped the 100 point mark, and it was clear that the Lakers fans would not be getting tacos the other night.

   The takeaway? Whatever you give your customers, they’ll find something else they want more. Anticipate where they will go next, and you can have an army of people chanting for your craptastic $0.99 tacos on national TV.

"5 Things The NBA Can Teach Us About Business 2.0" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 16, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Oh, green. Green, you have gone wrong. I’m sure people have been doing this since the beginning of time, but to create a cottage industry out reusable toilet paper, and call them “family wipes”? Nononononononononono, Greenies! Wallypop is a company that you might have heard of before, but just in case you haven’t, they make Family Wipes, a disposable toilet paper alternative.

Wallypops Family Wipes.

Which is refreshing, because I don’t know about you guys, but the burden I’ve felt from not having a means of reusing and recycling my toilet paper has been a KILLER. And also, because nothing says family togetherness like cutting up a bunch of old pediatric nurse uniforms, sewing them into squares, and using them as a conduit that allows you to share your fecal matter with the rest of your family members via butt cloth.

"Still Another Piece of Evidence That The Green Movement Is Not Only Pretentious, Annoying, Sick and Macabre, But Also Just An Excuse To Be Cheap And Gross" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 13, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

Divorces suck. But they don't have to be so expensive.

I know, I know, I just featured cost-cutting techniques for weddings on Monday, and how much of a cynic do I have to be to have a feature on divorces two days later? Listen, I’m neither a fan nor an advocate of divorce, but I am a realist, and when I was writing the wedding post it struck me how much I know about the divorce process for someone who has neither been divorced (nor ever plans to be — I love you, Mr. Right-Click!) and who is not a lawyer herself. See, I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this here, but I’m kind of uniquely qualified to write a post advising people on how to save money on their divorces — I happen to be the child of two family law specialists who have been practicing law — primarily divorce law — for well over thirty years each. And let me tell you, when you’re at the dinner table with two divorce attorneys during your formative years, you pick up a few things. You learn about how clients sometimes run up their bills for not good reason. About how fights over things like pictures can end up costing people thousands and thousands of dollars. Now add that early training to the fact that I’ve also worked as a legal secretary and a paralegal in countless law firms, and you’ll understand why I’m far too familiar with the pitfalls of divorce law. Listen, I’m hoping you don’t need ever this post. But if you do ever find yourself in need of divorce advice, do your best to bear the following in mind.

1. Do not call your lawyer unless it is absolutely necessary. Most lawyers bill in 1/10th hour increments (every six minutes), and all of the time you call them or leave messages for them counts towards this billing. This is true for most any type of law, but it’s especially important in the case of divorce because people tend to use their lawyers as therapists, or to make them feel better about things. Do not be so stupid. For one thing, many lawyers are going to cost more per hour than a good therapist, and . . . well, let’s just say that lawyers don’t become lawyers because they’re really understanding of human emotion. Call your friend, call a therapist, but don’t call your lawyer, because the clock is always running.
2. You can call your lawyer’s secretary, but be judicious. The dirty secret of billable hours is that your lawyer’s secretary is probably not going to bill for time on the phone with you. This is a good backdoor way of getting information about your case without stuff being on the clock. But you need to be very careful about how you use this option — legal secretaries tend to be very busy, and you want them to be on your side. If you call them all the time with unnecessary questions, they aren’t going to like you. You should be nice to them and respectful of their time, it’s definitely in your best interest.
3. Organize your paperwork and financial records yourself. This tip comes straight from my mother’s vault: the single most important thing you can do to save yourself money when getting a divorce is to organize all of your financial paperwork yourself. One of the first things that has to happen in a divorce is an assessment of a couple’s financial picture, and this requires going over bank records, credit card records, brokerage account statements, retirement fund statements, tax returns, and any other miscellaneous financial asset documents you can think of. Do yourself a favor and organize all of these in chronological order, and put each of them in folders, ideally with summaries that state what everything is, and where it is, so that the lawyer can find everything they need quickly. You do NOT WANT TO PAY THE LAWYER TO ORGANIZE THESE DOCUMENTS. It can take hours and hours to go through this stuff, so if you organize it yourself, not only will you save yourself a TON of money, you will make your lawyer happy because they won’t have to waste their time going through things trying to find receipts.
4. Wherever possible, pay as you go. Lawyers will sometimes let you run a bill for your case, and in some cases you will have to do this. But if at all possible, do not run a bill. As is the case with any form of debt, costs can get out of control quickly and without you realizing it. And a smart lawyer will be charging you interest rates on any balance you run — as much at 10%, which is worse than many credit cards. Paying in cash regularly will keep you from spending a lot of extra time on stuff that doesn’t need to be done.
5. Determine if you really need a lawyer. If you and your spouse have no children and don’t have a lot of assets, you might not need a lawyer. If you have kids and not a lot of assets, you still might not need one, provided you’re reasonably amicable. But let’s say you’re getting divorced, hypothetically, from somebody who has amassed a large amount of assets, and that person says that he or she doesn’t want to use a lawyer. That is a case where you run, don’t walk, to the best attorney you can find. You need to run because that person has probably already met with half of the attorneys in the general geographical area, and because of this, they won’t be detainable for you. You need to get an appointment with somebody who is decent whom your spouse hasn’t already contaminated.
6. Just because a lawyer costs $700 an hour does not mean they’re better at lawyering. Lawyers are like mechanics in a lot of ways. You have to shop around, and it takes a while to know enough about how they work to know if you have got a good one. Some people try to forgo this by just hiring “the best” in a given field. Though there is definitely some truth to the old adage “you get what you pay for,” this is another case where there are circumstances that can drive up a lawyer’s price for no good reason. Say you hire a big firm well known for family law. Are you getting the partner who made the team’s name? In that case, it might be worth it to pay more. But the likelihood is that you are going to get a young, inexperienced associate who is doing most of the work. And, yes, that associate’s work will be billed out at less than what the partner costs, but it will still be far, far more than that associate would ever be able to charge as a sole practitioner. You need to ask the right questions when trying to find a lawyer, including who will be working on your case and when, and what their experience is, and what their track record is.
7. A referral from one of your friends is a good starting point. Lawyers refer people to other lawyers all the time, but this is not always a sure-fire means of determining a good attorney for you. They might refer you to one of their friends, or they might refer you to somebody who has a history of sending them 20% referral kickback fees. It’s very hard to determine what an individual lawyer’s referral policy is, but you do know your friends and (hopefully) trust their judgment. Your best bet is to find somebody who has had a divorce in your area and see what they thought about their own lawyer, and the lawyer on the other side

8. Even with a good lawyer, you aren’t always going to get the result you want. The reason people hate lawyers so much is because effective litigation (any kind) ends with both parties unhappy. Never is this more true in the case of a divorce. You cannot reasonably expect to get everything you want in a divorce. It’s a divorce — it sucks. It’s going to suck. And beyond cases of gross malpractice, most of that suckitude is not going to be your lawyer’s fault. So lower your expectations and just try to get through.

"8 Tips For Cutting Costs On Your Divorce" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 11, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.


]]> http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/11/cheaper-divorce/feed/ 4 http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/11/cheaper-divorce/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abdpbt/XuRq/~3/QQVNzCS-DXM/ http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/09/cheaper-wedding-tips/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:00:11 +0000 anna http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/?p=4135


Weddings are way too expensive.

Allison is an ABDPBT reader and an event planner from Toronto, and she recently asked me to share my thoughts on how best to avoid going into debt while planning a wedding. I told her that I hadn’t ever written on the topic before, but I’d be happy to do so because it’s a great idea for a post. Rather than addressing the topic of debt specifically, though, I’m going to concentrate on how to get a good wedding for less, and how and where to cut costs and stick to your budget, because, in my mind, the only way to stay out of debt, ever, is to make a commitment that you will not go into debt, no matter what. Without that commitment, it really doesn’t matter how frugal you want to be, because there will come a day where a problem arises and it just seems easier to pull out a credit card. When you’re planning a wedding, problems occur left and right, and the opportunities to try to throw money at the problem will just keep coming up. So the precursor to this list of cost-cutting tips for weddings is the golden rule of commit to never going into debt, no matter what because even if it seems like the world rests upon your ability to have the perfect wedding, the ugly truth is that it is just one day out of a lifetime, and that lifetime will be so much more pleasant if you don’t have debt.



I asked for hair like Debi Mazar in Good Fellas. This is as close as my hair gets to that.

1. Take advantage of other people’s generosity, maintain your boundaries, and be considerate. Some people are luckier than others when it comes to financial assistance from their families with weddings. If your family is not able to contribute financially to your wedding, then you will need to realistically assess what kind of wedding you can pay for on your own, in cash, and leave them alone. Please do not ask your parents to go into debt to give you a storybook wedding: this is bad juju and not the way to start out a marriage. But if your family can afford to contribute, and they want to contribute, then by all means accept their generosity. Now is not the time for pride, but bear in mind that when people offer money, they sometimes think that buys them the right to have a say in decisions. This can, and does, lead to budget concerns — your family wants to invite more people, they want a different dinner choice, they insist on an open bar. It’s very hard to stick to a budget with too many cooks in the kitchen. So if you are going to get financial assistance from your family, make sure that everyone’s boundaries and expectations are in check before any money is accepted. It might seem cheap or tacky to talk about money this way, but believe me, you are going to rue the day you agreed to let your mom pick out your flower arrangements because she gave you a few thousand dollars. You would be surprised about how much flowers can cost.

   

   Also, don’t forget that there are lots of ways people can help you with a wedding: maybe they have connections with vendors, maybe they can barter with people, maybe they have access to beautiful venue that they can help you get at a discount, or for free. Which reminds me, the above picture shows where I got married. That was an extraordinary example of how families can be generous with their time and resources — it is the view from my sister-in-law’s home. We had our wedding there — for free. Please don’t hate me.

2. Your Budget Is Your Budget. Accept It And Move On. Everybody has a wedding budget. Within that budget are a set of choices. You have to decide where you are willing to cut things, and what you want to spend more on. Nobody can really help you with this at the end of the day. For my wedding, I spent more on my dress but I was able to save on the location fee and alcohol (since I don’t drink this wasn’t tough — we offered beer, wine, and champagne to guests, but no open bar. But more on alcohol decisions later, that is a big budget line-item.) For some people, photography is most important, and others want lots of flowers. It’s up to you. But you should start out with a rough idea of how much each budget item will cost. Even if you get really cheap food, you still have to have enough money to feed all of your guests.



3. Beware of the Wedding Industrial Complex: It Eats Money Even When Its Already Stuffed. Any time you can keep the word “wedding” out of your negotiations, with anyone, over anything, you will save money. A white dress is just a white dress, until somebody says “wedding,” and then it’s 800% more expensive. The same goes for flowers, favors, cakes, bands, DJs, et cetera. It’s a scam. Stay away from vendors that talk about offering wedding-specific items — there’s no such thing as a wedding photographer. There are photographers. There are favors, not wedding favors. There are caterers, not wedding caterers. Just keep the wedding part out of your negotiations as much as possible, and keep the vendors on a need-to-know basis about this stuff. As far as the caterers know, they are providing food for a formal event with 100 people (or whatever). There’s no reason they need to know it’s a wedding. This may sound like paranoia, but it’s more accurate than you would believe.


The tulips bloomed.

4. Simple And Elegant Goes A Long Way. My flowers were white tulips that cost $0.88 per stem from an online vendor, and by arranging them in an unusual way, I got a great effect for almost no money. (We put them upside down and right side up, alternately, submerged in water, in round vases.) For innovative ideas in flower arranging techniques that you can rearrange, check out the lobbies of trendy hotels or restaurants — they usually have ideas that you can grab and recreate at home for less.
5. Crafting is your friend. The little details of a wedding can be really seductive when you first start planning a wedding, but it’s important not to go overboard on these little favors and other props, particularly if you have a tight budget. I did a lot of stuff for my wedding ahead of time since I like to do crafts, and if you’re going to do it I definitely recommend the DIY approach. I have no idea what it would have cost me to have all of these things made by a planner — I don’t want to know.
6. Use Craigslist to Find Vendors. At my wedding, we had a chef who used to work at Nobu making the food. We found her on Craigslist, and she cost about 1/10th of the estimate we got from another caterer (not coincidentally, that vendor was a “wedding caterer.”) This will require a little bit more footwork on your part, but not a ton. Just post a notice on Craigslist in the area of your ideal reception location and ask for references. You can get a good idea of a reasonable price by asking for estimates from all of these vendors, and if you’re in or near a big city, this is particularly crucial because there are tons of very talented people looking for work that will give you a good deal. You just have to find them.


I still love that damn cake.

7. If You Have Photoshop, Just Buy The JPGs From Your Photographer. We hired a photographer from Craigslist who had won a Pulitzer Prize for her photography, and she brought an assistant for the whole day, all for about $800. After the wedding, she gave us the CDs with all of the original photographs on it, along with some of her own edits. Since both me and my husband are pretty into computers, we knew we could put out our own photo edits that were as good as any that a professional photographer could do. We just needed a pro to actually take the pictures. This is more work, but in my experience it’s worth it because the markup on photographs is insane.


Oh sure, in pictures the weather looks perfect.

8. No Matter What, Stuff Will Go Wrong. Let It Go Wrong Without Your Debt. It rained on my wedding day, at the end of June. This really pissed me off, and the week before when people said it was going to rain, I was very grumpy. That morning I was in a fantastically bad mood. But the thing is, everything worked out in the end — it turns out that cloudy weather is the perfect lighting for pictures. Everything that goes wrong on that day will have a silver lining, or will become a story that you tell your children. You will be much more at peace with this idea if you don’t go to into debt trying to make your day “perfect.”


My hair looked better before the ceremony.

9. Professional Hair and Makeup Are Probably Optional. A bunch of people will disagree with me on this, but I think that getting professional hair and makeup is not a requirement for your wedding day. Hey! Stop hissing at me! Here’s the thing: when you put your appearance in somebody else’s hands, there is no guarantee you are going to end up looking the way you want. And yes, you want to look beautiful, and glamorous, but you also want your husband-to-be to know who you are when you’re walking down the aisle. In my case, I had a new person doing my hair and makeup since I was far from home, and things did not go as smoothly as they might have. In the end, I’m not sure that it’s always the best idea to spend money on hair and makeup.
10. Consider a Destination Wedding. We did not have a destination wedding per se, but we decided to have our wedding at my sister-in-law’s house in New York, and we live in Los Angeles. Not only did this give us a free location for the wedding, it also allowed us to invite a bunch of people that we were pretty sure would not come to the wedding. This is a kind of sneaky way to get around the problems with guest limits and parental expectations for invitees.


We danced into the proverbial fire.

11. Remember What Is Important. Too many people get caught up on the wedding and don’t think about the marriage. Weddings are fun, and fun to plan, and lots of fun to obsess over. But no matter how little you want to hear it, the wedding is just one day! You have a lifetime to spend with your new spouse, so start it off right!

"11 Tips For Cutting Costs On Your Wedding" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 09, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.


]]> http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/09/cheaper-wedding-tips/feed/ 9 http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/09/cheaper-wedding-tips/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abdpbt/XuRq/~3/ItF68fuKPSY/ http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/06/anthro-card/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:00:42 +0000 anna http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/?p=4102 I allow Anthropologie to enlighten me about what "we" hold dear.]]>


I don't know about you, but I'm dying to find out.

Somehow, I have become a person who buys clothing at Anthropologie. I cannot say that I ever thought this would happen. I have a pretty strict no-extraneous-fabric-flowers-on-clothing rule, and I’m not into flowy skirts or embroidered tights. But as we move out of the Naughts and the remainders of the unfortunate sartorial period hallmarked by the experimental ostentatious femininity of Sex and the City, I’m finding that Anthropologie stocks clothing reliably that is appropriate for my career as a mother (i.e. washable) and as a lazy bum (i.e. comfortable) but that I can still go outside in (i.e. not sweat pants). Plus, they offer some more intriguing takes on what are, basically, outfits comprised wholly of t-shirts and jeans.

Whatever.

I suppose it was only a matter of time: you cannot keep shopping at Urban Outfitters for much longer after you hit 35, unless you are very very specific in your choices, or refuse to let age force you to quit smoking hash. When they started stocking the Cute Overload book I knew I had moved out of their target demographic. Then, of course, there’s Banana Republic et al., but if you shop there for too long, well . . . how many oxfords and khakis can one have, really?

I was buying my pants yesterday, and the Anthropologie guy said, “Do you have an Anthro card?” And after I realized he was not talking about something for which a terror alert might be issued or that might require me to wear rubber gloves whilst sorting mail, I decided to listen to his pitch. I’ve talked about permission marketing here before, but I mostly don’t participate with companies in it (Daily Candy being the one notable exception) since my thought is that it’s rare that a company is going to offer me marketing materials that I actually want to read. I have to feel like I’m getting something out of the deal that is worhtwhile in order to sign up, and most opportunities just aren’t worth it for the occasional 20% off coupon or whatever. (And don’t get me started with the companies that require you to intentionally opt-out of these kinds of programs . . . drugstore.com, I’m scowling in your general direction.)

Besides, the Anthropologie guy assured me that this mysterious Anthro card would welcome me into the world of all things Antropologie. And all at once my mind started racing, because like I just admitted, I have apparently become somebody who shops at Anthropologie. Would I get the inside scoop on sales? New products and trends? An at-length explanation for why they have added an -ie suffix onto an English word that should end in -y? Who knew? I decided to sign up and see what happened.

I’ve only been an Anthro cardholder for one day, but already I’ve acquired several new things. Take this membership kit wrapped in a gratuitous felt bag made out of the kind of fabric one might happen upon, as if by magic, at a French flea market! Do the French even have fleas? I don’t know!



Hey look! Gratuitous packaging!

I have to wonder at this inclusion, since it’s precisely the kind of thing I don’t like to deal with at home (superfluous packaging that forces me to either feel guilty about throwing away or find some kind of alternative use for). On the other hand, it’s kind of nice to get something pretty to take home, for “free,” even when it’s useless. And I have to assume the Anthro Card team knows that customers might feel this way.



I wonder if this will get me past some kind of velveteen rope somewhere.

The inside of the fabric bag is filled with equally superfluous and expensive material. The card itself is nothing to write home about, but the pull-out flyer does a good job of creating the illusion of something handmade that is actually mass-produced. I have to assume that this cost quite a bit to produce. Which must have a little something to do with what “we” hold dear:




I don't know about you, but I'm dying to find out.

I’m still a little skeptical about whether or not this permission marketing will turn out well for me. The offerings seem a little paltry for me. From me, they will learn things about my buying and returning habits, which products sell well in what geographical area, what kinds of people are among their repeat clientele.



Yes. Yes. I hold this dear. I do! I do! Pick me!

I might get some discounts here and there. Some tips on cool ideas for Commodity Fetishism. Probably some fabric bags or something, too. And If I need to take stuff back and I’ve lost my receipt, no problem.



Old-fashioned service. Yes. What ever happened to that? Wait. Are you saying I'm old?

On the other hand, I want to encourage this kind of marketing. I like it so much more than the interuption format. At least I know this is something I signed up for, from a retailer that has products I tend to like. That alone is revolutionary. And I’d like to see more companies doing it, so I’ll sign up. One thing about the Anthro card that might be a good feature, though, is for those times when you get home and are confronted by this:




This is some newfangled version of a security tag they didn't have back in the olden days when I worked retail.

Maybe add a feature where a guy drives to your house with a security tag remover and fixes it for you? Just throwing out ideas for both of us to grow, Anthropologie.

"Adventures In Permission Marketing: The Anthro Card" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 06, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.


]]> http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/06/anthro-card/feed/ 1 http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/06/anthro-card/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abdpbt/XuRq/~3/GSDYTAxSrE4/ http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/2009/11/04/why-the-backlash-against-debit-cards-confuses-and-perplexes-me/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:12:35 +0000 anna http://www.abdpbt.com/personalfinance/?p=4059


Photo by anachronist84 at deviantART

I don’t have to tell you that I’m not a typical personal finance blogger: I don’t recycle my toilet paper rolls, and I use dryer sheets exclusively in the manner in which God intended, viz. to scent and soften mine and my family’s clothing as it gently tumbles in my natural-gas-guzzling dryer. To add insult to injury, I gleefully wash my clothing with Tide in my full size laundry machine, and have never even once attempted to use coffee grounds to “stop the bleeding.” So, as you might imagine, it’s not strange for me to read something in a personal finance blog that confuses or perplexes me. This happens so often, in fact, that I have a folder in Google Reader devoted to “Personal Finance Blogs That Often Confuse Or Perplex Me.” Really. I do.



You thought I was just being hyperbolic, huh?

The thing is, neither Guzzo The Contrarian nor Frank Curmudgeon are in my “Personal Finance Blogs That Usually Confuse And/Or Perplex Me” folder in Google Reader. As a matter of fact, they are both in the Google Reader Folder called “Good Personal Finance Blogs,” and that is in spite of the fact that Guzzo uses a [praise Allah!] summary feed!




Summary feeds will be the death of me.

Yet both of them have featured posts about how they hate debit cards in recent memory, and this fact alone is causing me to question my whole life’s epistemology.

Guzzo says it’s because he assumes htis is a means of the bank making money of its customers, which, touche, but isn’t that what credit card companies do, too? I know that, in theory, if you use your credit card and pay off the balance in full each month, this will not happen (provided you don’t have an anuual fee), but you would only have to miss one deadline, or not have enough to pay one time, for this to not be true. The odds are, you’ll end up paying interest fees at some point if you use a credit card. That’s how they stay in business. There are people who haven’t yet, but I think the people who never have and never will are very few and far-between. Frank’s complaint is that there’s no good reason to use a debit card, because if you overdraft, the bank will just charge you a huge overdraft fee, rather than denying the charge, so it could potentially end up being a more costly endeavor than running up credit card debt. I will acknowledge that debit cards would be better all around if there were no such thing as these exorbitant overdraft practices that banks have developed, but that’s like saying you shouldn’t write checks because if they bounce, they will cost you money.

Guzzo cites a joint NYT/Frontline piece on how banks use debit cards as a means of getting you to pay overdraft charges. So you overspend on your debit card, and they cover the overdraft, and then charge you an exorbitant rate for the “service” of doing this. Banks are scumbags. That’s what they do. Besides, isn’t this a problem with the concept of overdraft protection and its associated charges or keeping accurate banking records, rather than a problem with debit cards in the abstract? If you are tracking your money carefully — and I have to assume that Guzzo is — then this kind of overdraft charge should not ever happen. It has never happened to me, and I’m not even very careful. I use cash for much of what I do, and I also keep a general idea of how much money is in my account so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. People who are more organized than I am even write these kinds of things down — infact, isn’t that what people did back in the olden days when we wrote those things called checks? Do you have a problem with the concept of checks and overdraft protection, too?

Other than the overdraft charges — which I think consumers really have to accept responsibility for, anyway — I don’t see how we are paying money for debit cards, exactly? I don’t pay a fee for using a debit card. The only time I’ve seen a fee is when you go to some nickel and diming gas station like Arco, and they’ll charge you 40 cents for using your ATM card. And that’s pretty much cheaper than any finance fee you’re going to find at a credit card company, but they don’t let you use your credit card at Arco anyway. At least with a debit card, there is in theory a finite number attached to how much one can overspend. At some point, they’re going to stop taking your card. If I were to use a credit card, I could run a tab up into the high five digits before anyone cut me off, and this was true back when I was a *graduate student* in *English*, too. I’d much rather risk a few hundies in overdraft protection fees than five figures of debt at a high APR.

The thing is, Frank and Guzzo — god love ‘em — are two of those annoying people who don’t understand why debt is so bad for some of us, because they were born with an ability to treat money responsibly. For them, it is far more likely that they might make an error about how much cash (exactly) is in their account at any given moment than it is to run up their credit card bills unnecessarily. I envy them. But the reason that people are using debit cards more and more is because of that balance system that is in place — overdraft fees are outrageous, but they are still better than dealing with massive credit card balances. Some of us just cannot take the risk.

"Why The Backlash Against Debit Cards Confuses And Perplexes Me" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on November 04, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.


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