Tag Archives: credit

The Lost Truck

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I take two guys up to find a misplaced pickup truck.

The call came mid-morning on Tuesday, just as I was preparing to take Zero-Mike-Lima down to Mesa for scheduled maintenance. The woman told me that her son and father were out in the desert looking for her son’s pickup truck. He’d parked it somewhere on Sunday before dawn, left it for some coyote hunting, and couldn’t find it in the morning.

One thing led to another. The son and his grandfather showed up at the airport. I gave them a safety briefing and loaded them on board the helicopter. A while later, we were heading out to the triangle of land between routes 89, 93, and 71, just north of Wickenburg.

Normally, I can spot just about anything larger than a washing machine from the air — especially if it’s a color other than desert beige. The truck had a crew cab and was pewter — about as close to desert beige as you can get. But it was a truck. A shiny, four-month-old truck. And that triangle of land isn’t that big.

I started by following the son’s directions to where he thought he’d come in from route 93. No luck. He claimed he’d parked near a corral. There were about a dozen cattle tanks in the area, each with its own bit of fencing that could be considered a corral. We flew over and around each one. Nothing.

I then went into a standard search pattern grid. Back and forth across the desert, moving northeast to southwest. Nothing.

“It must have been stolen,” the son said. “I can’t believe it. I left the windows open a crack. I guess someone must have found it and taken it.”

I found it hard to believe. It’s not as if there are car thieves hanging out in the desert, waiting for a hunter to park a brand new, $38,000 truck and walk away.

But the truck just wasn’t there.

I climbed about 1,000 feet for a final look. The entire area was spread out beneath us. No luck.

I headed back to Wickenburg. I wrote up a statement they could show the police to prove they’d looked hard for the truck. I cut them a good deal on the flight time, feeling sorry for them.

This morning, I called the mom to collect my fee via a credit card. I told her how sorry I was that we hadn’t found the truck. She told me that they’d found it afterward. It was by a hill. She didn’t have all the details.

I got the credit card info and hung up.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. There was only one hill in that entire area. We circled it and flew all around it. It’s not as if it’s a forest out there, with big trees to hide something the size of a truck. If it were out there, we would have seen it.

Which leaves me to wonder whether he had me looking in the right area after all.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.

What You Need to Believe to Be a Republican

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More political deep thoughts.

My friend, Elizabeth, e-mailed this to me today. I don’t know where it came from, but would be pleased to include the appropriate credit if someone else can point me to the original author. I thought it was something worth sharing.

What You Need To Believe To Be A Republican

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney and Rumsfeld did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush couldn’t find Bin Laden.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle and antagonize our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals, Arabs, and Hillary Clinton.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s driving records are none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Supporting “Executive Privilege” is imperative for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born in perpetuity.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.

Got something to say? You know where the Comments link is. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of feedback I get from this one.

A Penny Saved…

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I put Ben Franklin’s saying to the test.

Not long ago, I wrote a post explaining how someone could take advantage of a credit card introductory offer for a low (or no) interest cash advance, put the money in an ING CD (or some other high-paying, insured savings account), earn interest, and then pay off the credit card balance before the interest jumped up from its introductory rate. I calculated that I could earn about $700 on a $20,000 credit card cash advance.

Well this works both ways. Mike and I have a home equity line of credit, which we used a while back to buy our Howard Mesa property and a few other things. Back when we signed up for it, the interest rate was very low. But today, it’s 7.5%. Not exactly a great deal anymore.

Enter Capital One (for the sixth time in a week). This offer was 0% for purchases and balance transfers for a full year. Best of all, there were no balance transfer fees. According to the offer, I could get up to $30,000 of credit. And the balance transfer option could be applied to a loan.

You might know where this is going.

I did some math. What if I put $25,000 toward the home equity line of credit, thus reducing the balance by that huge amount? Over the course of a year, I’d save $1,875 in interest (that’s simple interest calculation, which is close enough for me). Then, before the credit card interest rates jumped into their double-digits, I’d write a check from the home equity line of credit to Capital One, thus paying off the entire balance before any interest could accrue.

Of course, I would have to make those minimum monthly payments to Capital One. But if I got into a problem with that, I could always use the home equity line of credit to pay that, too. Besides, my payments on the home equity would be reduced — perhaps by the same amount as the Capital One credit card. Wouldn’t that be a kick!

Understand that the net effect of this on my personal debt would be zero — I’m borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (so to speak). I’d just save a bunch of money in interest. And, like Ben Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So I applied for the account with the transfer. Let’s see if I get it.

The odd thing is, I’ve been taking advantage of those year-long 0% interest offers for years. I usually have $10,000 to $20,000 floating around in interest-free debt with a credit card company. (I paid the last one off about six months ago, though, and haven’t applied for a new one since.) With all the credit information available to credit card companies these days, they must be able to figure it out. Yet they still offer me free money, I still take it, and I still pay them back in full before they can start the interest clock.

I win, they lose. And they keep coming back for more.

Go figure, huh?

“No More Confusing Interest!”

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“Just pay $7 per $1,000 outstanding balance per month!”

I guess Capital One thinks Americans are too stupid to understand how interest works. Kind of strange when you think about the level of debt most people carry. Experience should have taught them by now.

Yet yesterday I got a credit card offer from Capital One (not in my wallet). The ad promised “No more confusing interest” and that I’d only have to pay $7 per $1,000 of outstanding balance. Per month. On top of the minimum payment, of course.

I did the math. It isn’t difficult. 7 / 1000 = .007 x 12 = .084. That’s 8.4%.

I don’t know if that was a fixed interest rate. I shredded the offer right after doing the math. I doubt it, though — I don’t think you can get a fixed interest rate credit card anywhere these days. But, at the same time, I don’t think it’s such a good deal, especially when you can still get interest free intro credit cards. I got another offer for .99% for five or six months the day before yesterday.

On related matters, I realized yesterday that if I took advantage of a credit card offer for $20,000 cash advance at 0% interest for a full year, stuck enough in my checking account bank to cover minimum monthly payments at $250/month (that’s $3K), and invested the rest in an ING CD at 4.5%, I’d come away with a $705 profit, even after paying a cash advance fee of $75. (Yes, I created a spreadsheet to do the calculations for me. I did write a bunch of books about Excel, after all.) There’s no risk of loss — ING accounts are insured — but timing is everything. You need to have the principal ready to give back to the credit card company before that intro period is over. You might want to stick with a 9-month CD to make sure it’s available when you need it; the rate drops to 4.35% and the profit drops accordingly.

Once an accountant, always an accountant. I guess.

New Mac mini

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Small is beautiful.

Two weeks ago, when my old G4 went into a coma while serving up 10 Web sites, I thought it was going to require extensive (read that “expensive”) surgery to revive. If the Mac doctors had told me that, I would have let it die a dignified death and would have replaced it with a Mac Mini. With a pretty fast G4 processor and plenty of hard disk space, I could have added a bit more RAM to make it a good little server. (Emphasis on “little.”)

Mac MiniLucky for me, my sick G4 only required about $400 worth of parts and labor to bring back to near-new condition. I didn’t feel lucky then, when I was handing over my credit card, but I do feel lucky today. Why? Because Apple just released a new Mac Mini with an Intel Core Processor.

If I’d bought a Mac Mini last week when the new machine wasn’t yet available, I would have been very ticked off today.