1. Clean air conditioner coils. If your house has A/C, there’s a box outdoors that draws outdoor air into it through a zillion little metal slots, dumps the heat from your house into it and blows the hot air out.  If the airflow through those little slots is blocked, less heat is transferred, and the A/C runs longer (and longer).

Use a vacuum cleaner with the brush attachment and GENTLY clean the dust and dirt off the outside of the slots/fins at least once each year.  Also, cover it up each winter and the entire unit will last more years, saving you big bucks.

You’ve probably seen advice to do the same to the coils on the back of your refrigerator, but it’s difficult to move.  If you pull it out to clean underneath it, clean off the coils at the same time.  Refrigerators cost more to run dirty, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to cost of the A/C cooling your entire house.  In the meantime, you can easily slide out the flat bowl you’ll find under the refrigerator (behind that pop-off grille at the bottom in the front) and clean the layer of smelly crud that really doesn’t belong in your kitchen.  It’s there from all the things that have ever spilled inside the fridge and dripped down to the bottom.

If your A/C is blowing warm air into the house, it probably needs a freon recharge.  A pro will have to do that for you, probably under $100.  Don’t call the first hot day of the year, or you’ll wait at the end of a long, long line.  Always check the system a few days BEFORE the hot days begin.  Never run the A/C when the outdoor temp is below 60 degrees F unless you like expensive repairs, no matter how hot it is in the house from that big party.

If the air coming out of the register is cool, but barely moving (not blowing) you’ve likely frozen up the heat exchanger inside the house (inside the furnace).  This happens when you turn the temp setting too low (so the A/C runs constantly) or if the house was really hot and damp and you turned on the A/C.  If it’s a combination furnace/AC unit, switch to Heat and run the furnace about 15 minutes to melt all the ice (you’ll hear a small water pump run as the ice melts and the water is pumped out).

2.  Pace traffic signals. You can save a lot of money by just paying attention while you drive.  Traffic signal systems are a joke in most areas.  They’re often paced to STOP traffic flow, not encourage it, in a lame outdated attempt to slow speeders.  When you sit at a light, you get the same mileage as every other car, truck, semi and bus;  Zero MPG.  (Actually, since you’re burning fuel but not moving, you’re all getting negative MPG.)  When you start moving, your mileage starts at 1 MPG, then 2 MPG, then 3 . . .  You get the picture.

If you can slow long before the intersection (don’t block traffic — use your head) and coast through the light on the green, you can get better mileage in the city (at a steady 40 MPH) than you do on the highway (at 70 MPH) — yes, you read that right.  You’ll also save money on brake jobs, tire replacement, collisions, etc.  Look further ahead of you than the next guy’s trunk.

3.  Brake pads last longer with gradual, gentle braking than they do with hard, panic stops.  See #2 above.  One caveat. When coming down a long, steep hill, riding the brakes can make them overheat and actually fail.  In those cases, start slowing earlier, then brake 5 seconds on, 5 seconds off to slow your descent.  Some people are taught to ‘shift to a lower gear’ but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll find that new brakes are cheaper than used transmissions.

4.  Tire pressure is critical for safety and mileage (read, ‘money’).  Low tires can be damaged or even destroyed by a bad pothole.  Low tires wear unevenly and require premature replacement.  The extra heat caused by extra flexing at freeway speeds can cause a blow-out.  They’re harder to roll down the road, so they use more fuel to go the same distance (substantially more fuel).

Get a digital tire pressure gauge at any auto parts store ($5 – $10) and use it.  (Some cars have a dashboard warning lamp — resetting some of them can be clumsy — check with your car dealer, but it shouldn’t cost you anything.  If they want to charge you, use Google to find an answer.)  Tire stores usually offer free air when they’re open.

You’re supposed to check pressure when the tires are cold (not driven for 4 hours) but that’s really not necessary.  Check them when they’re cold one time, then check again after you’ve driven a while and you’ll see there’s not much difference unless they were really low.  Just check them and air them up when they need it.  You’ll find a tag on the driver’s door or the glovebox door telling you what pressure to use.  Press the gauge and the air hose firmly on the tire valve or you’ll only let air out of the tire.  Don’t even get me started on all the SUV’s that have rolled over and killed people just because a tire was low and blew out on the freeway.

5.  Spark plugs last a long time in modern cars — usually 50 to 100 thousand miles.  Having a garage change them can be expensive, depending on the model.  If you feel your engine is missing (has uneven acceleration, runs rough, poor acceleration), call the dealer and ask how long the plugs should last.  If you’ve still got quite a ways to go to meet the standard, try switching to Shell gasoline for a few tankfuls.  Shell has extra chemistry that cleans the fuel system and important parts of the engine.  If that’s what it needs, changing the plugs won’t help, anyway.  If that makes a change, but it’s still not right, you might have a clogged fuel filter.  Some cars are cheap and easy to replace, some are multiple, difficult, complicated and expensive (inside the fuel tank, for example).  Make sure a lowball estimate includes all the filters, or have the easy ones done first.  If you’re feeling ambitious and want to work on your car yourself, get a Haynes manual — Chilton’s manual are good for changing light bulbs.

6.  If you have high-speed internet service from your cable TV company, using Vonage for your phone calls can save you a bundle and still get you a full suite of features.  Your cable company may also offer an identical service, but Vonage has unlimited calls to the U.S. and 60 countries, and is usually cheaper.  Basically, instead of having your phones connected to the wire that runs to the telephone pole and goes to the phone company, you’ll connect one of your phone jacks into a small box that plugs into your cable internet connection, and all your phones are connected.  It’s very easy to do.  At around $35 a month including taxes, it’s probably much less than you’re paying now for phone service.  Vonage can even be your answering machine, so you can get your messages from your phone or any computer connected to the internet.  They’ll even turn your messages into text and email them to you.

Two caveats. If you use a FAX machine, depending on the model, it might have some trouble and require multiple sends.  Test a few inbound and outbound FAX’es right away and switch to your cable company (or back altogether) if it’s too much trouble.  Also, if your cable internet goes out, your phone goes out, too.  Since most folks also have a cellphone, that may not be a big issue.  If a phone pole or wire gets knocked down and takes out your cable, it may have taken out the phone line, too.

7.  That annoying dryer filter.  How often should you clean it?  Every load of clothes.  A clothes dryer is a real energy hog, and cleaning the lint out of the filter lets it move hot, moist air outdoors.  Any blockage just makes it run longer.  Block it enough and you might even start a fire.

8.  Fixing your water heater temperature is a gradual change.  Any water over 120 degrees F is too hot for you to stand.  If you heat water higher than that, you just have to mix it with cold water to make it tolerable.  What a waste!  And you’re overheating it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever.

On the front of a gas water heater (gas heaters have a tube on the top that goes to a chimney and black pipe that carries gas) you’ll see a big dial near the bottom marked something like Off, Warm, Hot.  Move it down a little bit.  Wait a day or two for things to settle down and see if you can stand pure hot water on your hands.  If not, move it down a little bit more.  It’s much easier to move just a tiny bit at a time than it is to yo-yo back and forth, so just take it easy.

Electric water heaters (no chimney, but a fat electric cable) have their thermostat under a cover.  Many need a screwdriver to make adjustments.  Just be careful not to touch any wires.  Switch off the breakers in the fusebox if you’re nervous.

Eventually, you’ll find the setting that gives you water that’s as hot as you like without mixing in cold water.  It will waver within about 10 degrees, so ‘close’ is ‘good enough.’

9.  Drafty old windows waste your money in winter (heating season) and in summer (when the A/C is running).  Storm windows are now replaced with double-pane windows.  Many styles pop out for easy cleaning on both sides.

I’d like to see utility companies finance your window replacements, then get repaid by charging the same bill until the windows are paid off.  That way, you’d get immediate comfort, the same old bill for a few years, then a permanently lower bill.  Sadly, that’s an idea way ahead of its time.

10.  Shop around for credit card rates every year and transfer funds.  This one can save you a lot.  Each year (perhaps while you’re gathering your income tax paperwork) call each of your credit card companies and ask about balance transfers and tell them you want a lower rate on your current card.  Write everything down and you’ll see who is hungriest for your business.  When you’ve gotten all the answers, call them all back again.  I know this sounds redundant, but you may be very surprised — once they learn you’re a serious shopper and they’re likely to lose your business, perhaps forever, they may suddenly come up with better plans than those they told you about during the first round of calls.

If you don’t get very good transfer rates, there are other companies that want your business.  Google credit card interest and you’ll find websites that specialize in showing you cards with low transfer rates.

Always read the fine print.  There are often fees (not always) for a transfer, and they should be considered.

Two caveats. When you transfer money to a card at a low rate, they apply all your payments to the low rate transfer and not to any high-rate balances until the low-rate transfer is paid off.  That means you could get charged high interest on part of the non-shrinking balance for years.  Make sure you understand clearly what they’ll do with your payments.  Also, if you move money to a new card and then make any ordinary purchase with it, that purchase (at a high rate) may not get any payments applied to it until the transfer is paid off.  A casual $10 lunch could turn into an astronomical amount after years of interest.  If you transfer to a new card, cut it up and don’t use it.  When they send you a new card later, activate it, then cut it up.  You can’t add purchases to that card.  I always get a kick out of phone calls from card companies that want me to know about using that card or some special offer.  I explain, “Don’t you understand that I don’t dare use that card for any purchases?”  ”Oh, yeah, I suppose you’re right.  Thanks.  Bye.”

11.  Dispute all credit report black marks.  I’ve got another blog entry here to explain this one.  Basically, dispute any black marks on your report and call the bureau 30 days later! Some of them may come off and you can have lower interest rates for car loans, home loans, auto insurance, etc.  This can amount to thousands of dollars in your pocket for less than an hour of your time.

12.  Shop around online, then compare and haggle with a local store manager (clerks have little authority).  You don’t have to buy online to save money.  Just having the price and description on a printout from a website may be enough to convince local vendors to give you a discount on the same item.  Maybe not.  But it only takes a few minutes to look up items on eBay, Amazon and Froogle.  Even if they don’t match the price, they may offer a discount, free delivery or other service or benefit.  If they’re stuck on bad-mouthing internet sales, you’re probably wasting your time.  When all else fails, ask if they’ll give you a discount for cash (since they pay a few per cent fee to use your credit card).  Say something like, “I’d really like to buy it here, from a local merchant, but the (spouse or partner) insists we save money by buying it online.  Can you do anything at all?”

13.  Buy filet mignon at Costco instead of expensive steaks at local markets.  At $10 a pound, it’s cheaper than any steak in any other market, and they’re delicious.  Check online at costco.com to find a local store.  They have an annual membership fee, but you can recoup it even if you only buy steaks!  Filet mignon is tender and has almost no fat, so it’s perfect for any weight-loss plan.  We cut them in half (they’re very thick), cut ‘em up for stir-fry, or even as topping for a salad.  I take along a small cooler to keep everything cold and fresh.

14.  Restaurant meals can be cheaper if you split a meal with a friend, or take some of it home for later.  If you split a meal, remember to tip your server as though you had two meals, since that’s what they served.  Waitstaff is often paid less than $3 and hour, since they’re expected to make the rest of their income in tips.

15.  Women find second-hand clothing shops to be loaded with bargains.  Many shops are duds.  Go to the wealthy towns nearby — they have second-hand shops, but the clothing will be far more valuable, and not much more expensive.  They don’t sell clothes that haven’t been laundered or need repairs.  Mens’ clothes are less common.  Take them back when you’re done with them and sell them to someone else.

16.  Your bank wants you to pay your bills through  their website using automatic or manual debit.  Since you can set up regular monthly or even weekly payments, you’ll never have another fee, never need stamps, and won’t ever have a payment lost in the mail or forgotten.  Ask your bank or just go to their website (use Google to find it quickly).

17.  When you buy checks from your bank you pay far above top-dollar.  It’s a revenue source for them.  All checks work the same, no matter who prints them.  Go to Walmart, or Google discount checks and save about 80% of the price of your next check order.  Once you’ve ordered, they often keep track for your next order.  Remember to include all the fees and shipping to compare.

18.  Check online vendors for auto insurance, then use that info to haggle with your current agent.  He’ll know you’re on track to do that when you call and ask for a printout of your current coverage, since you’ll need that to compare apples to apples.  It’s easier to just stay with the same agent if you’re satisfied with them.  Insurance companies have a series of rates, and the highest rates pay the agent the highest commission.  He wants to get the fattest paycheck he can, but he’ll be willing to get you a lower rate than lose your business altogether.

All insurance agents have access to lower rates if they know you’re savvy enough to understand how the system works.

19.  Combine your auto, home, and other insurance policies into one agent.  They can get lower rates, again because the company pays lower commissions to the agent on a larger piece of business.

20.  If you drink bottled water, consider getting a filter for your kitchen tap.  Refill the old bottles and refrigerate them.  You’d do that with an expensive (plastic) ‘sports’ bottle and never think twice.  One caveat. The refills will end up costing far more than the original appliance.  When you shop for filters, compare the prices on the refills.  They’re all over the map.  You can also get very inexpensive factory filters (or if stores don’t carry them any more) on eBay.  Just search by the name of your filter.

21.  Log every purchase you make for one week. I have a friend who has an application for his phone to make it easier.  $4 each workday for coffee?  That’s over $1,000 a year, so after taxes, he takes a $1,500 pay cut to enjoy coffee.  If you log everything you buy for one week on a piece of paper you carry around, you may be surprised and make some new choices.  To find out an annual cost, just multiply a week’s cost by 50 (52 weeks in a year).

22.  Before you head to the movie theater or video store check Metacritic.com or RottenTomatoes.com for reviews that are the compilation of critics all over the country.  Since critics are professionals, they tend to rely on quality over entertainment value, but you’ll get far better info than from that 30-second TV trailer.  If you’re about to be disappointed by a movie, this tactic could save you some cash.  And you get to see something you enjoy, instead.

23.  Buying prescriptions online or by mail instead of locally can save money, time, and more money.  Your health insurance company usually has an online vendor they prefer, so your co-pay can be far less or free.  Also, your local drugstore wants you to come back each month (more co-pays) but the online vendor might give you a 90-day supply, saving you two co-pays (or perhaps no charge at all).  Auto-refills just pop up in your mailbox.  You may also find that the local pharmacy doesn’t even give you what your doctor ordered.  If he says 10 pills, but the insurance only covers 5, they won’t even ask you to pay for the rest, they’ll just fill it for 5 and tell you to come back when those are gone to pay cash for the rest.  Dumb.

One caveat. If you need your prescription pronto, obviously this won’t work.  But for regular stuff, you can save a lot of money, time and hassle.

If your scheduled refills are a nightmare because they all expire at different times, try to work with your doctor to get them all to expire at the same time.  You’ll finagle the quantities a bit for a few weeks or months, but you’ll be glad you did.

24.  Tired of paying for books, movie rentals, or magazines?  Get them from your local library.  What, they don’t have something that you want?  Tell them to get it.  No library can possibly own everything, so they share resources.  It may take a few days to get the book you want, but they can get it.  They have the authority to go all the way to the Library of Congress if you insist.  The Librarian is your resource manager for information.  If you can’t find what you want, pester them.  They’ll figure out a way to get it as long as they know you really want it and you’re not just wasting their time.

25.  Never get any life insurance policy that includes a savings account of any kind. They’re all an incredible rip-off, no matter what the “agent” says.  I put ‘agent’ in quotes because he’s not your agent.  He’s a commissioned salesman who gets paid the biggest fee by selling you the product that makes the most profit for the company, not for you.  He may seem really nice and friendly (they always are).  If he’s recommending a policy that includes any savings component, he’s a scoundrel, and he knows it.  Smart people know to shop around and find a good, 20 or 30-year (long enough to get the kids out of the house) term policy that won’t go up in price and put their savings elsewhere.  If you save properly, you’ll have enough money when the policy runs out that you won’t need life insurance.  Here’s why . . .

The purpose of a life insurance policy is to protect the family from the loss of income in case the breadwinner dies prematurely.  Period.  Once the kids are grown up and have their own jobs, the spouse has far fewer needs than when the kids were growing up.  If you’ve been saving properly, she would probably be just fine by spending the accumulated savings.  If the kids are grown and there’s still not enough savings, you’ll need a small life policy.  Kids and non-working spouses get a $5,000 ‘burial’ policy, unless that expense wouldn’t hurt the family.  In those cases, the family is already self-insured.

The typical ‘benefits’ of a life insurance policy that includes a savings plan are completely flawed, but look valuable.

A.  If you need a loan, you can get one at a very low interest rate, typically 1% or 2%. (If this is my savings account, why should I have to borrow anything, and why am I paying interest on my own savings?)  To add insult to injury, if you borrow $10,o00 from your ‘savings’ to pay for kids’ college, and then you die, they reduce the death benefit by (wait for it) $10,000.

B.  If you want money in retirement, you can cancel the policy and get your savings account. (Uhh, why should I have to cancel my life insurance to get my savings?)

C.  If you die, your spouse gets the death benefit. (Who gets my savings?  Oh, the insurance company keeps my savings.  How convenient.  So that means that the longer I live, the more money I lose, and the more I have at risk.  I become more of an insurance company than the insurance company!)

D.  This is perfectly normal.  After all, don’t your homeowner’s policy, and your health insurance, and car insurance, and business insurance all have savings accounts locked inside them?  They don’t?  Hmmm . . .

This all started about 100 years ago, when life insurance companies found they could make far more money by swindling people out of their life savings than by simply selling insurance.  It worked.  Today, life insurance companies hold all the money and property, not wall street or the banks, but most people don’t know that.  When a life insurance company brags about how much money they have in assets, that just tells you how much they stole.

The worst one I ever saw was a John Hancock (I thought he was one of the good guys!?!?!?) policy that included a ‘mutual fund’ (using the term very loosely) that paid 18% each year.  The fine print on page 62 showed that the company owned the fund, not the policyholder.  Once they got the premium, it was their money, not yours.  The fund got 18%, but the policyholder got 6%.  All perfectly legal.  Right there on page 62.  Why doesn’t the government protect you?  Because their lobbyists make sure that each state controls them, not Washington.  No state has the strength to stand up to them, so they continue to rob us.  It’s all legal, right down to the misleading claims your agent told you.  I don’t care how nice he seems to be.

26.  When you make the last payment on your car loan keep making the same payments into a Vacation Club account at your bank or credit union.  When it’s time to buy another car, pay cash.  Keep making the payments.

27.  Don’t lease a car unless its leased to your business.  Leasing cars has become very popular, but it’s a real loser for individuals.  The one advantage for an individual is that you can drive a much nicer car than you can actually afford.  That should be a red flag right off the bat.

Businesses have two reasons to lease;  first, they get tax benefits (you don’t).  Second, they can predict their budget needs months and years in advance (individuals are more flexible and have more authority over their money than any business).

Leasing a car means you don’t have to sell it when you’re done with it.  For a business that suddenly had to get rid of 100 or 1,000 cars, that would be a problem.  But you don’t have that problem.  Leasing also means you pay what the dealer tells you to pay.  Essentially, that means they’re using the sticker price, not a lower, negotiated price.  If you take good care of the car, it’s worth more when you turn it in.  But the dealer gets that benefit, and you get nothing.  If you break or dent something, they’ll charge you to fix it, even if you would have been fine leaving those things as-is.

Many people who lease a car find they run out of miles before they run out of time.  They end up paying for a car they don’t dare drive.  If they do drive it over the agreement, they pay exorbitant fees to simply drive their car.  If they drive fewer miles than agreed, again, the dealer gets all the benefit, the driver gets nothing.  Small wonder the dealer wants you to lease instead of buy.

It also means you’ll be shopping for a car at the end of the lease, rather than when you want to do so.  That might not be a convenient time for you, but there’s nothing you can do.  If you choose to buy the car at the end of the lease because you took such good care of it, you’ll spend far more money with that plan than if you had just bought it on Day 1.

28.  Consider dropping collision coverage on your vehicle when you’ve paid off the loan.  Check Kelley Blue Book’s website or just call your bank, auto insurance agent, or any car dealer to learn what your car is now worth.  If it’s now worth $5,000, and you’re spending $1,000 each year for collision coverage, you will never get more than $5,000 no matter what.  Maybe that’s not a good use of that $1,000.  Drop the collision coverage and put the money saved into that Vacation Club account toward your next car.

29.  When you consider any savings you get you’re not looking at the real number.  It takes you about $1,500 in earnings to bring home $1,000 because of taxes.  If you save $1,000 that you would have spent, it’s like getting a $1,500 raise.  That makes any effort much more interesting and palatable.

30.  This last one isn’t so much about savings as it is about comfort.  It will actually cost you a few bucks, but could make your home much more comfortable, especially a 2-story house, a house with a hot sunny area, or a place with a basement.

The furnace and air conditioner in homes don’t work the way they do in commercial buildings.  In a commercial building, a fan runs all the time to circulate air throughout the building, and the heat or cooling shifts in and out to meet what’s needed.  If they didn’t, the huge spaces involved would get stale, or damp, or too hot or cold.

A home has a similar fan, but it shuts off when the furnace or A/C turns off, so the air stays where it is.  That means hot air upstairs or in a sunny room, and damp, cool air in the basement.  If you could turn the fan on all the time, all the air throughout the home would be the same temperature and humidity, all the time.  No hot spots, no cold spots, no damp spots.

You can do this, if you wish if you have gas forced-air heat and/or A/C.  On your thermostat, you’ll find two switches.  One is marked Heat – Off – Cool, and you use that as the seasons change.

The other is marked Off – On – Auto.  It’s set to Auto, and it controls the fan.  When the furnace or A/C turns on and off, the fan automatically turns on and off, too.  If you switch it to On, it just runs all the time, constantly circulating the air throughout your home.  This will dry out that damp basement, so you can get rid of the dehumidifier (saving you some money for electricity) and make the basement much more livable.  If you set the thermostat at 70, the entire home will be 70, not just the room where the thermostat is.

One caveat. A furnace is designed to last about 20 years.  They put enough oil in a pair of long tubes to lubricate the fan motor for over 20 years.  If you run the fan constantly for many years, it will use up the oil sooner.  This is not a problem, it just means you’ll have to oil it (or have a serviceman do it) in 5 years or so.  Just because you’ve never done it before doesn’t mean it’s difficult.  (Turn off the furnace, pull the pop-out panel at the bottom and a big slide out tray. You’ll see the pair of tubes, one goes to each end of the fan motor. Just fill them up with oil.)  If you do decide to do it yourself, I’d recommend going to the auto parts store and buying two items; a Zoom Spout oil bottle (that has a long, slender tube to put oil in odd spots, about $3.  Dump the oil into the recycle bin at the store) and a quart of synthetic motor oil, like Mobil 1 or similar (about $4) and put some in the Zoom Spout bottle.   Synthetics are vastly superior lubricants and will last much longer than ordinary oil.  Almost any weight (5W-10, 5W-30) will work, since there’s no real work involved in a fan motor, as compared to a car engine.

That’s it for now.  If you’d like to lose some weight, check out Free, Easy Way to Lose Weight.com

Charlie Gosh

Use a hair blow-dryer.  That’s it.  If you’re away from home or don’t have one, SOME hot air hand dryers in public restrooms let you swivel the nozzle so you can dry your face, but many don’t swivel.

Blowing warm air in your ear kills the bad bacteria living in the tissues nearby.  Any germs that feast on you prefer the same temperature as your body, just below 100 degrees F.  When you get sick and develop a fever, the purpose is to kill germs that can’t thrive at higher temperatures.  (If your temperature gets too high, above 105 degrees, brain damage sets in.  That’s why hot tubs are regulated, usually by law, to never get above 104 degrees.)  So, a good fever is between 100 and 104 degrees.

Next time you have an earache, or even if it’s just getting started, blow some warm air on it.  Hair dryers also have a ‘cool’ button that blows air without heating it.  Switch the cool in and out to keep your skin from getting too hot.  Try different speed settings, too.  You want to gently dry your ear canal, not abuse it.

Don’t overdo it.  Burning yourself will just weaken your tissue and make it even easier for germs to eat you (face it, that’s what they do).

Outdoors, a hat, earmuffs, a ski band, balaclava, or a raised collar can help.  Simply stuffing a little piece of soft paper tissue in your ears will help by blocking cold air and sealing in warmth.  Or, hold your hands over your ears.  They can all look a little silly.  Which do you prefer, looking silly, or pain that could lead to hearing loss?

Drying or warming your ears works great any time you finish bathing or swimming, especially if you’ll go outside on a cold or windy day.  The moisture inside your ear canals is slow to evaporate, and as it evaporates, it drains heat away.  The cold slows down blood circulation in there, making it harder for your body to bring nutrients and blood to the area to fight germs.

If your earache persists or gets worse, obviously see a doctor.  Even a lowbrow walk-in clinic may be a better choice than doing nothing or waiting.  An infection can spread quickly and destroy your hearing.  Permanently.  There are other things that can cause an earache besides what’s covered here.

If you have too much earwax, you can get a kit at any drugstore (under $5) that has a peroxide-type chemical (do NOT use hydrogen peroxide — it’s too strong) and a water bulb to soften wax and dirt and flush it out.  Use the bulb very gently or you can irritate the sensitive lining in your ear canal.  Do not stick Q-Tips into your ear canal to remove wax.  A friend or ours did that, then heard a loud rushing sound (and pain) as she accidentally punctured her eardrum (in order to vibrate 20,000 time a second, it must be very thin and soft).  Obviously, even after healing, her ear will never hear as well as it used to.

Ditto for loud noises, too.  Protect your ears from loud sounds, especially if they continue over time.  Hearing loss from loud noise is all cumulative.  It’s so gradual, you’ll never notice while it’s leaving you.  And you can never go back.  (Contrary to popular belief, hearing aids are not sexy.)  Kitchen blender kind of noisy?  Cover your ears.  Running a leaf blower or lawn mower?  Plug your ears with paper tissues if you have nothing else.  That loud music last night still has your ears ringing?  That’s the sound of dead nerve endings that used to hear things.  Alcohol makes it much worse by weakening the muscles that try to clamp your eardrum when you hear loud noises, so drinking makes you lose your hearing even faster.

Good luck,

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

For too many people, what they WANT to be real is more important than what IS real.

There’s much to be said for wishing and hoping, and for chasing a dream and making it happen.

But it’s hard to watch ordinary people slide into wanting something so badly, they’ll follow anyone who says it out loud, no matter how ridiculous or dangerous.  Right-wing, left-wing, center-of-the-road, it’s happening more and more.  It’s scary to realize that the people who make up our country are becoming sleepwalkers, wandering around in a haze.  It’s as though many of us are forgetting how to think and reason.

There’s some precedent.  If we want something to be true, we’ll seek and find facts that support our belief.  But we’ve grown into a phase where many of us will believe ANYTHING that’s complete fiction, so long as it’s made up by like-minded folks who know how to appeal to our emotional hot-buttons.

Bill Maher and Ann Coulter come to mind as a pair of entertainment gurus for a group on the left, and another on the right.  They are successful as entertainers, speakers, writers, and guests.  They say outrageous things, and their followers can’t wait for their next installment.  But there’s a big difference, and it’s not between Bill and Ann.

It’s their fans.

Bill is a comedian.  He makes stuff up.  His fans think he’s funny.

Ann is a frustrated comedian.  She’s sharp and she’s witty.  She makes stuff up, too, and tries to be funny.  But her fans mistakenly believe she’s deadly serious.

They both make up outrageous, impossible scenarios so they can put famous people in the middle of them.

Bill’s fans laugh.

Ann’s fans wonder why no one else is reporting this “important news story.”

I have a theory about what’s causing us to grow more crazy and dull-witted as time goes on.

Trace minerals.  Or, actually, a lack of them.

Ancient Rome had a problem with minerals, too.  They chose to use a lead lining to waterproof the aqueducts that carried their water down from the Alps.  They actually had running water.  But a steady diet of lead made them eventually grow stupid.  They became an easy target for their barbarian enemies, and the sacking of Rome began the end of the Roman Empire.

For hundreds of centuries, mankind has lived — and thrived — by eating foods that grew from the ground.  Trace minerals in the soil get supplied to us in fruits, vegetables and berries.

But now, factory farms grow hybridized plants in mineral-depleted soils with top-applied fertilizers (which make the roots grow upward to seek nourishment, instead of deep downward to find minerals).  Also, we thrive on a ‘western diet’ that means more meat, less potatoes (unless they’re deep-fried).  Vegetables?  Barely on the list.  Fruit? Sure, as long as it’s packed inside a pop-tart.  And those we do eat are still from those factory farms.

When our body doesn’t get the chemistry it needs from our food, it can’t be expected to work at its best.  We’re getting to the point where, for many of us, it’s barely working at all.  When our brain doesn’t get the trace minerals it needs, we can’t be expected to think straight.  And many of us don’t.

I’m not talking about dietary calcium, iron, zinc, and the common minerals we all know about.  No, the trace minerals we need are a thousand times smaller each day.  Rubidium, vanadium, lithium, manganese, boron, magnesium, iodine, selenium, molybdenum, nickel, chromium, and more we don’t even know about.  Some that we don’t even know what they do.  Eat too much, and they’ll poison us.  Too little, and things we need just stop working properly.  We need a tiny, tiny bit every day, but we’re not getting enough.

The daily dose we need is so small, it’s hard to understand.  Take an ordinary slice of bread and cut it into one million pieces.  Each one would weigh about 30 micrograms, about a daily dose of each trace mineral we require, so that slice of bread would last us 35 lifetimes, about 2,700 years.  If you’re looking for a comparison, stack your car key up against your car.  No matter how cool your car is, that tiny key is what makes everything else work.  Without the key, you can still slam the doors, spin the wheel and sit in the seats, but the most important functions are out of reach.  Trace minerals in your body may be small, but each one is important as keys that unlock all those weird chemical processes in our body that we may never completely understand.

We’ve had trace minerals in our diets since before we were people, and, suddenly, starting in America with the modern farming practices we began after World War II, we’re losing them fast.

Political crazies make the zaniest comments anyone’s ever heard, and scads of people just lap it up.  We can’t get enough.

News stories every week about somebody going totally ape-bat crazy with a gun, shooting everybody in sight, then taking their own life are becoming so commonplace that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t always like this.

It wasn’t.

If you have a better theory why we, as a nation, are getting so crazy, I’d be glad to hear it.  The scenario I just described doesn’t really hold any hope of improving.  And the rest of the world wants to eat the same foods we eat.

What can you do?

Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.  Tell your friends.

The range of goods is beyond understanding.  Anything from razor blades to trucks.  For cellphone accessories, a $30 item in the stores may cost you $3 on eBay.  There are a few things they won’t accept like firearms, porn, counterfeits, etc.  You don’t need anything to search and check it out.

Most important, it’s easy to learn what everybody else ends up paying for an item.

Next to eBay’s “Search” button is a link named “Advanced Search” — click it.

Type in the name of the item you’re looking for, then check the box just below it marked Completed listings only and press the Search button.

You’ll see completed auctions and the price they finally sold at.  Sort them from low to high price and you’ll see the lowest price anyone has paid recently.  Sort high to low and you’ll get an idea of the range people are willing to spend.  There’s not much sense in paying more unless it’s a rare item.

Also note the time of day these auctions ended.  They’re in Pacific Time, so you’ll have to adjust for your time zone.

You may find that the highest prices were around 5 PM Eastern Time as folks want to do whatever it takes to win before they leave work, or around 1:30 PM as they check out auctions after lunch.  Auctions ending at 3 AM can end up pretty cheap.

But you probably don’t want to wait up until 3 AM to outbid other people.  If you’re feeling ambitious, depending on the item, you might want to use an Auction Sniper tool.  This is a website that automatically places your highest bid for you just seconds before the auction ends.

If someone bids more, you’re not tempted to go over your budget, because it’s over.  If the price is lower, your competitors won’t have time to get into a bidding war with you, because it’s over.  Some Sniper tools will give you a few free snipes to tempt you to buy more.  Just Google   auction sniper to find them.  They’ll need your eBay ID and password, since they’ll be placing bids on your behalf.

You should never tell anyone your PayPal password.  Period.  You don’t need to worry about someone placing eBay bids for you, but PayPal is for money.

Be sure and read all the details in an auction before you bid.  The Advanced Search tool will also let you limit the open auctions you see.  Check out all the filters and try them out.

As you lose weight and inches, your clothes will be too big.  You may be tempted to go out and buy a new wardrobe to celebrate.

Not so fast!  You’ll continue to lose weight on this plan, so new clothes won’t fit for long.

Try this instead.  You can find designer-grade used clothing stores in upscale neighborhoods, where you’ll see expensive clothing at a fraction of its original price.  Check the Yellow Pages under Resale Shops. Or, check local thrift shops for used clothing, ask your friends. Look for Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul (SVDP) and similar stores if you’re on a limited budget. In my neighborhood, the National Council of Jewish Women runs clothing thrift shops, too.

Humiliated?  Hey, what were you going to do with your clothes, now that they don’t fit any more (and never will again)?  You have some clothes that have nothing wrong with them, right?

Would you borrow a freshly-washed sweatshirt from a friend?  Of course.  That Valentino sweater you spotted for $40 could have cost 20 times that when it was new, and it looks really sharp.  (Always inspect expensive used items very carefully for flaws.)  Wealthy people can afford plenty of expensive designer clothing, and some sell it once they’re bored with it, or it’s the wrong season or fashion. The recent market crash means that a lot of ordinary folks who bought very nice clothes with a credit card are now willing to sell them for a song.

At the budget thrift shops, paying a dollar for a pair of slacks or two dollars for a top goes easy on your wallet while you’re dropping sizes.

People won’t drive far to drop off their old stuff, so check upscale neighborhoods for the nicest resale shops.  When you find one, ask them where to find others nearby.  You’ll be surprised what you’ll find there — true designer-brand clothes, accessories, jewelry, shoes, handbags . . .   Mens’ clothing is less common in upscale resale shops, but plentiful at some Salvation Army and SVDP thrift stores.  Every store is different, and tries to cater to their local neighborhood, since that’s where their stock comes from.  And, if the price is right, you can pick something nice that might be just a little too small for you right now.

Used clothing is popular because it’s a fraction of the price of new clothes. If the shop finds anything substantially wrong with it, they usually won’t want it.  No customer wants to buy something that needs repair, no matter how low the price.

When you’ve “outgrown” your new collection of designer duds, take them back again and have them sold for you, typically on consignment.  That means you won’t get any money until another customer buys it.  Rotating their stock through your closet and back to their store will save you a bundle of cash compared to buying new clothes, but your money could get tied up a while.  You’ll typically get less when you sell it, since the difference is the store’s profit.

Turn it into a regular routine as you lose weight.  Try out different, wild, snazzy, temporary outfits.  Hey, this could be fun!

I’d go with ‘brand new’ on socks and underwear, though.  

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Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

You can still legally be called by any political group, survey company, and non-profit outfit that cares to pester you.

Calls claiming to ‘lower your credit card interest’ are total scams, often from another country, so they don’t have to stop, even if you ask. I tell them, “That sounds great. He just went next door. I’ll go get him. I’ll be right back” and set the phone down. Time is the one thing they hate to lose. They’ll stop calling.

All automated sales robo-calls must now be authorized by you, in writing, in advance. The rest are now illegal and carry a federal fine of $16,000 per phone call. There are exceptions for purely informational calls — your next dental appointment, your flight’s been cancelled, a few others.

There’s a fun, easy way to make sure the rest stop calling you. Permanently.

Political callers usually ask for someone by name because they’ve donated money in the past, but you don’t even have to say you’re somebody else.

Interrupt them and announce in a happy voice . . .

“I’m so glad you called our Consumer Information and Marketing Hotline Service. The fee for using this service is $100 for the first minute and $100 for each additional minute. In order to continue, I’ll need your credit card number, or a company purchase order, or we can arrange financing for you.”

Or, use some variation; their company must pay you the $100, or they still haven’t paid their bill from the last time they called, or ask for the employee’s full name and business address so you can send them the bill personally, etc. They bothered you. Have some fun.

Smart folks will hang up and take you off their list. (In all honesty, you can just politely ask them to take your name off their list, but this really is much more fun. There’s very rarely reason to be rude.)

Dummies will apologize and say they made a mistake; they didn’t know.
Continue your ruse and tell them, “That’s OK. I just need an email from your manager, stating that you didn’t know about the fee for our service, and I’ll tear up the bill.”

Drop a letter from your email address so their message will bounce and they’ll waste their time, knowing they don’t dare call you for a correct address.

If they ever call back for any reason, they can’t claim ignorance, so demand your payment!

Be very wary of any company that offers to improve your credit for a fee.  You can do all the same things they can.  Give them money and you’ll likely get cheated.

Basically, you’ll get a free report from each of the three credit reporting agencies, look them over carefully for any errors, then dispute those errors.  Will it remove everything you’d like?  If the entry is correct, your mileage may vary.  But it’s worth a shot, and you may be very pleasantly surprised.  There’s no harm in trying.  There’s nothing to gain by repeated requests to remove correct entries.

Start by going to AnnualCreditReport.com.  There are many other websites that will get the reports, but they’ll charge for this or other services.

Answer a few questions to prove who you are and you can print all three reports.  (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion agencies can all have slightly different info.)  Everything’s free.  You can do this once each year.  Next year, you might stagger them so you get a different agency’s report every four months.

Go over each detail carefully and mark every error.  These can lower your credit score.  It’s not uncommon to find incorrect old street addresses, other people’s addresses, etc.  Have all errors removed or corrected.  Read the instructions and contact each agency to dispute the items you’ve marked.

Dispute every item you’ve marked.  ”I dispute that the July, 2008 payment was late” even if it was actually late in June; it might come off altogether.  Do this in writing and mail it to the agency.  Use the US Postal Service’s “return receipt requested” card to receive notification when each one is delivered.  It’s not expensive.

The most important thing is to document everything you do, including dates and names so you can follow up on the phone one month later.  A piece of paper, a Word document on your PC, sticky notes, an email to yourself, a calendar entry — doesn’t matter.  Just do it somewhere so you can follow up in exactly one month.

The agency contacts each creditor about your denials.  The creditor must respond within 30 days, or the item automatically comes off your report.  (Some sources state 45 days for free reports.  Call at 30 days.)

Even if they manage to keep something on your report, you can include a statement about the entry for a small fee.  Your intent is to influence future loan decisions, so be sensible and be very brief.

Remember to contact the agency by phone exactly 30 days after they receive your denial (evidenced by your “return receipt requested” card) to follow up and make sure the item is removed.  If you don’t call them, they’ll often wait longer than 30 days for the creditor’s reply, so hold their feet to the fire.

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You’re better off never getting those black marks in the first place.  Here’s a method that works very well for me to pay all my monthly bills on time.

Most banks and credit unions have a program to automatically pay your bills for you by sending a check or doing a money transfer for you (ACH Debit stands for Automated Clearing House).  This is NOT the same as having a vendor pull money from your account, which I strongly suggest you do NOT do (except perhaps for car insurance payments, which will always be the same amount).  Vendors make mistakes.  That $100.02 you owe for an electric bill could become a request for $1,000.20 and get pulled from your account (and bounce all your other checks and payments).  They’ll fix it later (after you find the error and complain) but you’ll have a lot of headaches before it’s over.  Just say “no” to letting a vendor pull funds in any amount whenever they see fit.

Instead, your bank will give you a web-based tool to set up automated (single, weekly, or monthly) payments that you SEND TO the vendor.  You choose the date and amount, and the bank sends the money electronically, or they’ll print and mail a check for you.  Many banks don’t charge anything for this service, since they save money on check-handling costs.  Some charge a few dollars, but ask them if they have a plan to waive the fee.  (Your auto-deposited paycheck or a minimum balance may qualify you.)

Large monthly payments can be split in two to match your bi-weekly paycheck.  If you’re paid weekly, you could even pay 1/4 each week, so long as they get all their payments before the due date.

Leave plenty of time for the payment to reach the vendor before the due date.  Many credit card companies don’t use the same calendar as the rest of the world (slimy!).  They often have “floating months” that will change your due date as it suits them.  Don’t get chumped when they change your due date without warning.  Everyone should study every statement every month to look for errors and other information, including bill and bank statements.  Most systems give you only 60 days to report errors or you’re stuck with them.  If you’re not watching your money, no one else is, either.

Using the bank’s ACH payment service also means your check won’t get lost in the mail (it happens — a lot).  It’s easy to track payments since they’re itemized on your monthly bank statement and online.  If there’s ever a question or dispute, you have a solid trail and records to straighten everything out, and the service will usually go to bat for you.  If you mail checks, you’re on your own.  Using this method, it may take a year for you to go through a single book of checks because you just won’t use them.

You can choose to make the payments end on a certain date (e.g., car payments), or run indefinitely (your gas bill budget plan).  You can change the amounts or dates any time you wish, or send some extra money on demand.  Once you get your accounts set up (the bank will need to know the account number and address for each vendor) it’s really easy to maintain them.

Do nothing more, and all your bills get paid, on time, every month, without fail.  All you have to do is open your vendors’ bill each month and look it over to make sure everything’s on track.

They may not handle government payments, child support, or insurance payments.  In case there’s a question, they don’t want to be in the middle.  Many car insurance companies will pull premium payments from your account each month instead of a huge bill every six months.

If you wish to raise your credit score, you have good reason.  That number determines the interest rate you get on any loan (or if you even get a loan).  Keeping your credit score as high as possible just saves you a lot of money.

There are a few more things you can do.

Be sensible.  Opening new credit cards, then closing them soon after may be a way to get a free airline ticket or a prize, but looks bad on your report.  Max’ing out a card is bad.  Closing your oldest accounts is bad.  Anything that looks like you’re handling credit in an irresponsible manner is bad.  Every vendor wants customers that use credit responsibly, pay their bills on time, and behave the same as their other good customers.

If you do close an account, call on the phone and insist that your account read, “Closed at customer’s request.”  Otherwise, it can look like the vendor closed it instead of you — bad.

If you are late with a payment, you’ll be charged a late fee.  Call the vendor on the phone and ask if they can waive the fee.  If you’ve been responsible and haven’t made a similar request lately, they may just remove it and that’s the end of it.  If you’re over 30 days late, they’ll report you to the agencies as a missed payment/more than 30 days late.

Until a few years ago, utility companies didn’t report payments over 30 days late, but now they can.  Make all your payments on time.

In many states, a poor credit score will raise your car and other insurance premiums.  Insurance companies figure if you’re careless with your monthly payments, you’re probably a careless driver or a bad risk, and the numbers hold up.  You’ll also pay more for the interest rate on home and auto loans and credit cards.  It can even keep you from getting hired.  Many hiring managers figure if you’re sloppy with your payments, you’re more likely to be sloppy with your job.

There are many benefits to removing black marks from your credit reports.  The cost is next to nothing, the time involved is brief.  The most important part is your follow-up at the 30-day mark.

Good luck,

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

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In a chemistry class, our instructor said he would show us how to pound a nail into a board using a glass bottle.

We all laughed.  We were anxious to watch him smash the bottle.

He tricked us.  He filled the bottle with water, screwed on a cap, and inverted it to make sure there were no air bubbles (air can be compressed).  He explained that liquids cannot be compressed, so he couldn’t just press in a rubber stopper without exploding the bottle.  Since water cannot be compressed, the glass could not change shape even when used to pound on a nail.  He proceeded to pound the nail into the wood with a glass bottle.

Later, he pointed out that liquids can be compressed just a tiny, tiny bit.  That’s very good for us.

If an undersea earthquake causes two pieces of seabed to shear sideways, there’s no compression of water, no tsunami.  But when an undersea earthquake causes a huge area of seabed to jut upwards suddenly, the water above that upheaval can only be compressed a tiny bit.  The rest is an enormous volume of water that’s jerked violently into motion, dispersed into the surrounding water, and sent in every direction.

If water were not just a tiny bit compressible, the other end of that column would instantly appear across the ocean, devastating the land without warning.

Instead, being just slightly compressible, it moves across the ocean at about 500 m.p.h.

We can’t see the wave in the ocean because it’s underwater.  It passes under a ship without incident, though some areas have sensors to warn us.  The original water doesn’t move to a different continent, it just pushes the water in front of it, so the “movement” energy is transferred.  One molecule bumps the next quickly, but not instantly.

When the column of water suddenly hits the shallows in front of the shore, it gets pushed up into the air, the same as any other wave.

So, the speed of “compressibility” of water in real life is about 500 m.p.h.  That’s about 9 miles in a minute, about 800 feet per second, the speed of a commercial jetliner, or 10 times as fast as the family car.  If you’re 1,000 miles away, you’ve got about 2 hours to prepare.

The amount of water that ends up on land compares to the area of seabed lifted, and how high it lifts.

A compressed water volume is a little slower than the speed of sound in air (~ 700 m.p.h.).  Basically, they’re both the same phenomenon.  A wave in the air is faster because air is not as dense as water, so less air gets moved.  It’s quicker, but doesn’t go as far.

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

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You might be able to get a free repair or replacement.  Not on everything that breaks, but you may be surprised.

There are a few methods I’ll tell you about.  First is lifetime guarantees that go unused.  The second is selectively using a Platinum or Gold credit card for purchases.  Cellphone contracts usually offer an insurance program. Everyone is offered an extended warranty on appliances and major consumer electronics purchases (but don’t buy the warranty — there’s a better way).  Don’t overlook your Homeowner’s Insurance Policy because it covers many things you don’t know about — but don’t call your agent to find out if you have a claim!  Last, but not least, are local ‘tech’ schools, where students may do repairs at no or low cost.

Many consumer goods have lifetime guarantees, but very few people exercise their right. When you buy something, check the tags and labels to see if it has a lifetime warranty. When you find one, make a mental note or start a list in a document on your computer.  Some are easy (go to the manufacturer’s website, fill out a form, then mail the item to them) and some are more difficult (they want the original receipt).  Some let you just return the item to the store. Tools, some electronics, household goods, some clothing — all kinds of things come with a lifetime warranty, but most people don’t pay any attention.  From now on, you will.

For example, all Targus brand laptop carrying cases will be replaced when they wear out — zippers fail, handles break, stuff happens. They can afford to do this because most people don’t take them up on it.

Sears Craftsman brand tools are not as super-strong as expensive professional tools, but they’re replaced at the store if they fail (don’t admit that you abused it, or they may balk).

Lots of other items work the same way.  If someone is throwing out something valuable, check the manufacturer’s website to see if it has a lifetime warranty.  Take the broken item off their hands and you can get a brand-new one.

A Platinum credit card could come in really handy.  Gold and Platinum level cards have “extras” in their agreement to encourage you to use them. As long as you use the right card for a purchase, you may get free travel insurance coverage, baggage insurance, rental car insurance, concierge services, airline points, or maybe they’ll replace lost, stolen, broken or defective items, etc. Some cards pay money back to you.  Call the phone number on your card and they’ll be glad to tell you about the free features you already have.  Any time you’d ordinarily write a check for a big-ticket item (vacations, furniture, college tuition, appliances) consider getting something for nothing; use the card, then write the check to pay off the card.  If you started that document I mentioned above to track your lifetime warranties, update it with the extras for each of your credit cards to keep track of which one to use for each kind of purchase.

Some cards extend the warranty (typically double it) up to an extra year.  Sometimes they’re far more gracious than the actual manufacturer.  Which brings me to a story . . .

My accountant bought a new laptop with his Platinum VISA.  Since he promptly paid it off, his total cost was the price of the laptop, nothing more.  But he got a warranty program that didn’t cost him a cent.  A few months later, he accidentally spilled water on his new laptop and it fried.  It was clearly his fault, and the manufacturer knew it, so they demanded $800 to replace the motherboard.  He contacted his credit card company.  They had him pay for the repair and send them the bill, and their insurance company sent him a check for $800.

Most cellphone contracts have an insurance program available, usually for $5 or $6 a month (that’s $60 to $72 a year) that covers ANYTHING that happens to your phone.  Do the math.  If your new phone costs $150 – $300, it may make sense for you.  If you only paid $40 or $50 for your phone, and could do that again, it’s hard to justify the insurance.  Don’t forget; maybe you got a big discount or rebates on an expensive phone, but you won’t get the same break if you need another phone before your contract expires.  If you’re hard on phones, tend to lose them (or drop them in the lake) or your dog likes to chew things, this could be a real money-saver for you.  I’ve met a few folks who have deliberately “lost” their slightly-malfunctioning, out-of-warranty phone just so they can get a new one rather than pay a repair bill, but, for ethical reasons, I cannot recommend that plan.

Most of these cellphone insurance plans must begin within 30 days of your purchase.  Also, if your phone is gone, you’ve probably lost your photos, contacts, phone numbers and addresses.  Some new (expensive) phones automatically back up your data to a server, then drop it into your new phone.  Some systems enable you to remotely delete the data on your old phone in case someone finds it or stole it.

Next are the extended warranty programs offered with appliance and electronics purchases.  This one is easy.

Truth be told, most things that are going to fail usually do so pretty soon after you buy them.  Items that wear out after the warranty, but sooner than you expected because of poor engineering or materials should be a tip that you’re buying the wrong brand.  For expensive purchases (like a car, appliances, tires, computer, etc.) do a little digging around on the internet to see if other people have an opinion about reliability on that model.

Manufacturers often issue a ‘silent recall’ that is announced only to their dealers.  If they can get you to pay for the repair, they’re OK with that.  If you let the dealer know that you’ve learned there’s a widespread problem with your item, you may get it fixed free, or at a dramatically reduced price.  I saved over $500 on an auto repair this way with about ten minutes research using Google.

Consumer electronics are widely available, and people shop around for the best price.  There’s not much opportunity for a seller to make much profit because there’s so much competition.  But their extended warranty plans are high-profit.  If your sales associate seems to press a little too hard to buy the warranty, it’s because his manager may have made it clear that if he doesn’t sell enough of them this week, he’ll miss his quota and be reprimanded or even fired.  So, what can you do?

First, politely decline the extended warranty.  Politely, since it wasn’t the salesman’s idea anyway, though he may or may not get a small commission for selling it.  If you wish, you can get under his skin a bit by asking, “Do you think this model really needs the extended warranty?  Maybe I should be looking at another brand, or check the brands at a different store.”  Sometimes a lower price is caused by superior efficiency, sometimes by cheaper components.  Again, a little Google research can give you some insight about other peoples’ experience with this model or brand.

Next, take the money you would have spent on the extended warranty (or 10% of the item’s price — your choice) and put that money in your bank account’s Vacation Club, or your sock drawer, or any other place you won’t filch it.  You now have your own extended warranty insurance program, and you get to keep all the profits.  If you do that each time you buy anything that offers an extended warranty, you’ll build up quite a war chest.  Use that money for repairs or replacements.

Nearly everyone has a Homeowner’s Insurance Policy or a Renter’s Policy.  Price varies widely, and so does coverage.  Most people think it only protects you if your house burns down.  But if you read your policy, or just ask your agent, you may discover that it covers thousands of items you never dreamed of.  The time to ask about coverage is before you buy. You may learn that for just a few dollars more, it can cover items in your car, a dinged car fender, and things that don’t even belong to you.  Excessive small claims are not a good idea, but big-ticket items may be covered.  Your policy might fix your laptop after you spill coffee on it, or pay the medical bills for a neighbor who hurts himself while working in your yard.  Call your agent to ask about existing coverage, but never discuss a specific issue unless you will file a claim — they keep a record of your inquiry that can cause you problems even if you don’t file a claim.

If you have accumulated some wealth, ask a few insurance agents about an Umbrella Policy — these are inexpensive policies that take over after your ordinary insurance program runs out of money, and cost far less than raising the limits on those other policies.  Wealthy people always have an umbrella policy, sold in 1 million-dollar increments.  For example, your auto coverage should take care of the medical bills if you hit a pedestrian.  But what if you accidentally cause many people to be injured?  Your auto policy can’t possibly cover all those medical bills, and they’ll just take your money if you have a lot of it.  You couldn’t afford to buy 2 million-dollar of coverage in an auto policy, but you can afford a 2 million-dollar umbrella policy that wouldn’t even be involved if your auto coverage took care of the entire claim.  Ditto for covering your valuable collection or art on your homeowner’s policy.  Or if the neighbor’s toddler drowns in your swimming pool.

There is one important caveat for Homeowner’s policies.  Many insurance companies now share their databases of claims and payoffs to limit fraudulent claims, and even a phone call to your agent to inquire about a potential claim.  But there’s one area where some people can really get hurt.  If you have water damage and place a claim, they’ll likely pay for the repairs.  But water damage sometimes causes mold. Mold damage can be extensive, and expensive to repair.  Mold may return over and over again, necessitating additional repairs.  Some insurance companies may raise your premium or even refuse to renew your policy after the initial repair, fearing additional expense later on.  You may be able to get another company to sell you a policy, but they’ll see you had a claim and charge high premiums.

The big problem may occur years later when you sell your home.

Your buyer will request a mortgage from a lender to buy your home.  The lender always insists that the buyer obtain a homeowner’s policy to protect against fire loss.  But the insurance company may access the databases and discover that you’ve had water damage, and decline to sell a policy to the new buyer.

No policy, no mortgage.

You might be forced to sell on a land contract or similar instead of getting cash at the sale.  This will prevent you from using that cash toward your next home.  Instead of weeks, it could take decades to get your money out, and that’s if all goes well.  This scenario doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.  If you’ve got a small claim for water damage, you may be better off not involving your homeowner’s insurance company, or even calling your agent.

As a last resort, local technical schools might be able to help you.  Technical schools and colleges can tell you on the phone if they’re interested in repairing your stuff.  Also, many local K-12 school districts cooperate to pool resources for technical training.  For example, one high school might have a well-equipped metal shop, another nearby district will have a high school with a substantial auto repair facility, and a third may have a full-blown electronics repair lab. The districts realize that it makes more sense to share their students than to build lesser versions themselves, so they shuttle tech students to the next district for part of the day for specialized training. Sometimes a rural county will house multiple technical disciplines in a single building and all the local school districts send their tech students to that building. A quick phone call to any local high-school counselor will uncover what facilities are near you. If you have a non-working item, you may be able to get it repaired at low or no cost, and help a student get some real-world training at the same time. For example, a computer repair lab can add a new hard drive to your desktop (or perhaps fix your old one) and take a look at your broken microwave oven at the same time. That non-working CD player you were going to throw out is a valuable resource to a student.

While students will do the work, they’ll be under the supervision of a qualified instructor. They usually have a vast array of tools and reference sources. If they tell you your repair is out of their league, you’re no worse off than you were before. Need a muffler for your car, or some dents removed? Kitchen appliance on the fritz? Printer that just doesn’t work right? Call that counselor and find out what you have waiting for you. You’ve already paid for the facility with your tax dollars, and students benefit from the variety you can bring to them. Getting your repair for a song is just icing on the cake.

Tell your friends.

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

There are lots more resources shown further below, but your first step is usually to just Google it (canon pixma mp500 printer manual, for example).  If you want pictures, use images.google.com; for maps, use maps.google.com; and for local businesses, local.google.com. Shop for prices at Froogle.com, and get up-to-the-minute or old searchable news at news.google.com.

Many overlook this obvious solution. If you need information of any kind, type your problem into Google.com. Professional PC support staff rely on Google when they have a thorny issue they can’t resolve. You can track down the answer to almost any question as long as someone has had the problem (and solution) and posted it on the Internet.

Google only shows you 10 results, then makes you click and wait for the next page to load. To get more results per page, set Google to show you 100 results per page (Advanced Search is next to the Search box). Also, if you know the answer is within a specific site (e.g., Microsoft.com), you can usually get much better results from Google than from a site’s own search engine by using Google’s Advanced Search to restrict results to only those found at a specific site, like Microsoft.com, or About.com, or all of the .edu education sites, or .gov government sites, etc.  Advanced Search give you powerful tools to improve and refine your search.

Some sites want a payment or subscription to give you answers.  I’ve always been able to find what I needed without doing that.

If you don’t get good results, change your Search terms. You can use “quote marks around a term” to search for that exact phrase;  you’ll eliminate web pages that have the right words, but not in the right order.  Punctuation might be ignored.

(The sites below have a Search Box that works the same way as Google.)

If you want to learn about a specific topic, try Wikipedia.org.  What is life like in Singapore?  I want a layman’s description of a quark.  Who discovered pi?  Wikipedia is created and edited by everyday folks just like you (who purport to know about their topic) and can be corrected by anyone, too.  Then re-corrected, and updated, and so on.  Read the rules and create an account before you start adding your knowledge.

Want to know how the sun works? How a Stirling engine works? How radioactivity works? How anything else works? Try HowStuffWorks.com.

Learn how you can make interesting things you can’t buy (anywhere) by browsing Instructables.com.

People write descriptive articles to show off their knowledge at eZineArticles.com (it’s not a magazine, it’s an electronic magazine, or eZine).

Need a step-by-step description of how to do something, with audio and video? Try YouTube.com, one of the most popular sites in the world.

Still can’t find a good answer? Maybe you’re working on a math homework problem, or advice on something very specific or unusual.  Go to Yahoo.com, point to “View Yahoo! Sites” and click “Answers” to post your question (you’ll need to create a Yahoo! ID and read some rules).  Everyday people will provide answers, often within minutes.  It’s up to you to pick the best response.

If you want general advice on a topic, try About.com and eHow.com.

Get used books, movies, video games and music at Half.com. There are over 110 million used books, rare editions, signed books, etc. at AbeBooks.com. They consolidate thousands of bookstores all over the world into one website.

Want to buy something? Amazon.com is probably the safest merchant on the Internet.  eBay.com can offer real bargains and hard-to-find items.  Here are the rules for those sites:

Amazon sells items they stock, but also allows other vendors to piggyback on their system, so some items are sold/shipped from other vendors. If you buy $25 or more from Amazon stock, they often give you free shipping. But if an item comes from another vendor, Amazon can’t include free shipping. Also, the same item can vary widely in price, depending on the vendor, so Amazon may have multiple pages selling the same item at different prices. Check around a bit by searching for the actual name of the item to see all the offerings.  You can also find reviews from actual customers near the bottom of an item’s web page, so check identical items for more reviews.

Amazon is also a good place to find a real bargain on a cellphone (with or without a service contract) under “Today’s Deals” in the Electronics/Cellphone section.

eBay sellers must disclose accurate, important details about an item (new, used, scratched, bulk packaging, etc.) or risk being banned from selling. Don’t forget to check any listing that doesn’t have the small photo on the index page, since many people skip those auctions, and you might find an overlooked bargain. Be sure and READ THE ENTIRE AUCTION before you bid.  Your bid is a contract to complete the purchase.  Make certain you agree with the payment and shipping options, packaging, condition, etc.

Most (not all) sellers accept PayPal for payment.  PayPal is a terrific way for you to use your credit card or bank account to pay for many things without exposing your account info to the seller.  PayPal moves money from your account to PayPal, and then to the seller, so the seller never sees your information.  If you have a PayPal account, don’t ever even respond to a ‘phishing’ email that starts out, “Deer Crustomer, Yor PrayPal recount iz upended. Clik hear too frix thatt” because it’s not from PayPal, no matter how good the logo looks. (This goes for any email that doesn’t know your name — banks, brokerage houses, credit cards, has bad grammar or spelling, etc.  They’re all fakes.)

If you want to ‘snipe’ an auction with an automatic bid at the last possible moment (to prevent a bidding war or get the best last-minute price on an auction that ends at 3 A.M.) create an account at AuctionStealer.com.  You’ll need to give them your eBay ID and password so they can place your bid for you.

You should never give anyone your PayPal password — it’s akin to your ATM PIN number.  You can give anyone your PayPal ID if they need to send you money.  You’ll need your ID and password to take money out or spend it.

eBay also has many items that can be purchased immediately, marked, “Buy It Now.” One shortcoming of PayPal is moving funds from your bank account to PayPal has a 3-day waiting period (credit card purchases post immediately). So, if you win an auction on Monday, and move the money from your checking account to PayPal on Monday, the money comes out of your checking account on Monday, but PayPal sits on it until Thursday before making it available to you.  There’s no fee of any kind for the person paying; the receiver of funds pays a small fee.  Since eBay sellers know this, they typically give you 3 days to get your funding in order to complete your purchase (credit card transactions occur immediately).

Also, you can send an internal eBay email to the seller at any time to ask questions, describe problems, etc. in ‘My eBay’

Look for a feedback rating and total sales made by this seller in the top right corner of the eBay auction page.  It’s a bad idea to send thousands of dollars to a seller that’s only had 10 transactions selling $10 items.  Seller’s with 99+% Positive Feedback and thousands of sales are businesspeople that have shown they can behave responsibly.  It’s a safe way for millions of people worldwide to shop.  But there’s one more important feature . . .

eBay will tell you how high to bid! (Well, sort of.)

Click on Advanced Search (you’ll need a free eBay ID) and you can choose “completed listings only” to see what others have paid for the same item during the past week to get a good sense of the item’s worth.  For example, new Susan Bristol sweaters sell for $180 in stores, but go for $30 to $40 on eBay.  If the bidding (caused by newbies) gets higher than that, pass and go to the next auction.  Some clothing and other items are used, and can be a real bargain.  NWT means ‘new, with tags,’ NIB means ‘new, in the box’ and NR means ‘no reserve’ (even if the final bid is only $1, they’ll sell it anyway).

eBay is a terrific place for hard-to-find items, or goods that are typically overpriced.  Want a car charger, spare battery, and a case for your cellphone?  The local cellphone store charges $25 to $30 for each item like this, since selling accessories is where they make their profits.  You’ll find a much greater selection on eBay for under $10, for all of them in one package, including shipping.

You can even buy used cars on eBay, sold by a dealer, delivered to your door. A friend of mine bought two Mercedes autos this way from a dealer in Vancouver (who handled all the customs paperwork) and saved $5,000 for each one over identical local models.  Want a classic creampuff with 20,000 miles on it?  Need a car or truck part you just can’t find (or want a bargain price)?  Just go to Motors.eBay.com. Again, ALWAYS READ THE ENTIRE AUCTION and send an internal email to any seller with any questions.

No description of sellers would be complete without CraigsList.org for local items.  There’s no feedback available about the seller, but you can go see the actual item, since everything you’ll see for sale is in your town or area.  If someone far away wants to send you extra money for an item they could easily buy near them, suspect fraud.  A common trick is to send you a much larger check (with some lame reason attached) and have you wire the extra cash back to them.  Their check will bounce, even if your bank cashed it and gave you the money (you’ll be responsible for paying it back).  If you get an offer like this, contact your local police department, especially if you have the actual check in hand.

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

While you wait.  With no hassle.  Any time you ask, as long as they’re not swamped with customers.  Take a few pieces at a time, not your entire collection.

Waiting a few minutes for a friend at the mall?  Get your rings and bracelet cleaned to pass the time.

Why would they do this for you?

First, it costs them next to nothing and only takes a minute or two.  They clean their own stuff all the time.  They may get chatty, or offer to show you anything you wish.  Jewelers get lots of window-shoppers; most people don’t just walk in cold and buy something expensive.  If they can get you into their store and be nice to you, that’s a point in their favor when you’re ready to buy something in the future, since it’s obvious you already own jewelry, and now you might feel like you owe them something in return.  That’s why there’s no fee, no hassle, no hesitation.  They’re actually glad to do it for you.

You should NEVER leave valuable gemstones with any jeweler for more than a few minutes unless you have a competitor check it out before and after (a pro can spot most fake diamonds in a second).  While it’s rare, jewelers have been known to swap a valuable stone for a fake that looks just like it (to you and me).  Any jeweler at another store can take a quick look at your stone.  All you want to know is, “Was it genuine before I dropped it off, and genuine after I picked it up?” You don’t want to discover years later that you were duped.

If you’re buying or selling a gemstone, especially diamonds, ask the jeweler to hand you a loupe (pronounced ‘loop’).  You don’t need to stick it on your eye like they do in the movies, just hold it with your other hand.  It’s a small 10X magnifier that will let you see details you cannot even imagine (try this at home with any magnifier).  Almost all diamonds have flaws, but some are better than others. If you’re buying, consider bringing along your own 20X magnifier to see even more (the jewelers’ standard is 10X).  The details determine the price/value of a gemstone and no two are alike, even if they’re the same price.  If you’re looking at it with your naked eye, you’re flying blind.  Once it becomes obvious you’re not a run-of-the-mill customer, you’ll likely get a fairer price on anything you buy.  And you can see for yourself why one stone costs more or less than another, even though they appear the same.  Bigger flaws generally mean the stone is more likely to break in two pieces if you bang it into something (it happens).  You cannot see any of this without a magnifier.  You can also inspect the quality and workmanship of the setting.

If you’re getting an appraisal for insurance purposes, always show the appraiser the nicest, most expensive piece first.  This sets the pace, showing that while you may have some lesser pieces, you also shop at better stores than average.  He will appraise everything higher if you do it this way, since you probably paid a lot for the nicest item.  Show him the cheapest item first and he’ll downgrade everything you have.

Sometimes people find lost diamonds in parking lots.  They get knocked out of their setting by car doors, clothing, etc.  If you want to look for them, check at more upscale malls, and look toward the rising or setting sun to see the glint off the stone between you and the sun.  If you have a stone that’s loose in its setting, have it fixed right away or you could lose it.

Don’t take valuable jewelry on vacation; it’s much more likely to be lost or stolen.  Don’t leave valuables in your car if you use parking valets or full-service car washes – they can be stolen (or sucked into a giant vaccuum cleaner!).  When you travel, always put everything valuable into a hotel safe or put it inside your luggage with a luggage lock.

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

Who are these people?

Would you like to become one of them?  Read on

It’s all in the history.  Let’s look at the past 60 years, last ten recessions and their U.S. Presidents, according to www.recession.org

The U.S. had a recession from July 1953 – May 1954  (10 months, Eisenhower, Rep.)

Another one from August 1957 – April 1958  (8 months, Eisenhower, Rep.)

A three-fer for two-term President Eisenhower – April 1960 – February 1961  (10 months, Eisenhower, Rep.)

This last one ended less than 30 days after Kennedy took office because of policy changes he made.

So how could Kennedy do (in less than 4 weeks) what Eisenhower couldn’t accomplish (in 10 months)?

Kennedy made different choices than Eisenhower did.

Kennedy and Johnson, Democrats, 1960 – 1968, no recessions. Wall Street called these the ‘go-go’ years.  The middle class thrived, the stock markets boomed.  The U.S. government borrowed money to supply the Viet Nam War and spent it buying U.S. goods and services.  In all fairness, baby boomers fresh out of college propelled many new ideas.

February 1970 – December 1970 (11 months, Nixon, Rep.)

November 1973 – March 1975  (16 months, Nixon and Ford, Rep.) brought on by the 1st Arab Oil Embargo, then stretched out artificially as businessmen forced the nation through a string of artificial, deliberate, contrived shortages and resulting massive price hikes on sugar, coffee, salt, candy, beef, milk, natural gas, onions, toilet paper . . .  You name it; first it disappeared completely from store shelves everywhere, then returned quickly at a much higher price that became permanent.  It got so far out of hand that Nixon had to call for a freeze on almost all wages and prices, in spite of the GOP’s image of fighting to keep government regulation out of business.

Enron picked up the ball two decades later with similarly contrived fake electricity shortages in California, but they got caught.  And, yes, Nixon really was a crook; he used his power as president to have the FBI and IRS target people he didn’t like, and hired criminals for illegal activities to ruin the Americans on his “enemies list.”  His Vice-President, Spiro T. Agnew, resigned (8 months before Nixon’s resignation) for being caught red-handed taking a $100,000 bribe, in cash, in the White House, as a payoff left over from a kickback on highway contracts from his years as Governor of Maryland (that was about 10 years pay for an average U.S. worker).  They were both crooks, and the rest of us paid very dearly for their crimes.

A pattern is emerging, but there’s a minor glitch.

January 1980 – June 1980  (6 months, the shortest recession of all, under Carter, Dem.) brought on by the 2nd Arab Oil Embargo, and triggered by the Federal Reserve’s decision to hike interest rates dramatically.  We should have seen it coming.

January 1980 – November 1982  (22 months, Reagan, Rep.) Reagan made many changes to the U.S. government and American society.

The “Black Monday” stock market crash under Reagan of October, ’87 wasn’t technically a recession, but a few people made — and many more lost — a great deal of money. The Dow lost nearly one-third of its value. Money isn’t ‘created’ when stock prices change, money simply moves from one person’s account to someone else’s account. A lot of money changed accounts that day.

July 1990 – March 1991  (8 months, George Bush, Rep.) This one cost Bush his re-election bid against Clinton in November, ’92, just like what happened to Eisenhower in 1960.

Clinton, Democrat, 1992 – 2000, no recession.  Again, in all fairness, Clinton rode the Internet boom simply by being in the right place at the right time.  These were terrific economic times for the middle-class, but that meant business owners had to pay higher prices for labor. (Labor costs much less during a recession, as you know.)  It ended when Y2K was finished and the dotcom bubble burst (you remember; everybody and their uncle bid up the prices so high everything was overvalued? Where have we seen this before?).

In June, 1999, the NASDAQ crashed 2 weeks after George W. Bush announced he’d run for president, and the DOW plummeted in December, just two days after Bush was handed the presidency by the Supreme Court.  Multiple coincidences? Or just a glimpse of the big blows that would come later against our nation, when the ultra-wealthy made billions?

March 2001 – November 2001 (8 months,George W. Bush, Rep.)  This recession was gaining momentum well before 9/11, which certainly aggravated it.

December 2007 - Today  (George W. Bush, Rep., inherited by Obama, Dem.) Bush borrowed incredible sums in September, 2008 to prop up the financial markets and their owners, though the GOP tries to fool everyone into shifting the blame to Obama.  Bush also took out gigantic loans to pay for the War in Iraq, but kept two sets of books to hide them from the public.  (If you or I had a business and kept two sets of books just to fool lenders and owners, we’d go to prison.)  Just as had happened with Bush’s father, the U.S. economy crashed and burned shortly before a presidential election.  Wretchedly poor planning on a monumental scale.

If only the crude oil markets had been less greedy, they might have pushed the date back a year and all that misery would have fallen right into Obama’s lap.  ($14 billion profit in three months for just one company?  Who do you think paid all that money to them.  Oh, yeah — American workers.  That’s about 50 cents a day profit from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. And there are many more oil companies, so they all add up to many dollars per day per person.)  How many textbooks can we buy for $14 billion?  Oh, well, I’m sure they’re doing something with all that money that benefits our society.

Do you see a pattern? Regardless of the policies, the reasons, world events, the preceding administration, your favorite party, my favorite party, or anything else, one fact stands very clear.

In the last 56 years, the U.S. has had a total of over 10 years of recessions under every single Republican President (and Bush II, Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower had multiple recessions).

Gross incompetence?  Helpless victims to their own policies?  The Fed is the real cause?  Wall Street caused it?  OPEC oil price hikes? Sunspots? All the above?

The cause doesn’t really matter for our purposes.  Just go with the history.

There was a 6-month recession under one Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. Still think this is a all a big coincidence? Still think no one can predict a recession?

I’m not telling you who to vote for, or vote against.

I’m just trying to keep you from getting burned next time around.

Let’s do the math.

During 27% of the time that a Republican was in the White House (10 years of recession during 36 years of leadership), the U.S. economy was in a recession.

When a Democrat was in the White House (1/2 year of recession during 20 years of leadership), that number is just over 2%.

Don’t think this happens through a Republican presidents’ incompetence. That’s just not reasonable, not by any stretch of the imagination.  No one smart enough to become president could be that stupid.

But it doesn’t make any any sense, either.

Everybody knows the Republican Party stands for all the things that strengthen the U.S. economy. We’re also told Democrats want to tax everyone like crazy and give all our money away to people who are too lazy to work.

Well, in case you weren’t around, Reagan’s 1980′s massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy were their big payoff that was supposed to create new factories and jobs. Unfortunately, all those new factories were built in Mexico and Asia while they closed matching factories in the U.S.  Reagan wasn’t stupid, the “trickle-down” voters were the fools in the deal.

We lauded Nixon because he “opened China.”  Before Nixon, China was a distant novelty.  Thanks to Nixon getting the ball rolling for U.S. businesses to be able to create factories there, China now owns more US dollars than you will ever understand.

Ooops!  I forgot one important detail.

Maybe this one explains it all.

Republicans are the party favored by the ultra-wealthy (and the super-ultra-wealthy).

Why? Well, if you earn $30 thousand a year and pay $8,000 in federal income tax, a 10% tax cut represents about 800 bucks; enough to buy a nice sofa. But to someone making $100 million a year, that same tax cut represents about as much money as you will earn in your entire lifetime.

The ultra-wealthy want those tax breaks and often support the GOP’s political ambitions by donating heavily to re-election campaigns and finding ways to funnel gigantic donations legally (PAC’s, TV ads, support through ownership of conservative radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, direct party donations, fundraisers, loans, etc.).

Congress fully obliges the ultra-wealthy by lamely refusing to stop the bribes (oops, sorry, “campaign contributions”).  Wealthy people always expect a good return on their investment — that’s what made them wealthy. duh.  It’s just the way American business does business.  You and I can safely be called, “cannon fodder.”

Many wealthy people simply donate to BOTH parties so they’ll have influence no matter who wins.  Historically, it’s clear that Democrats in the White House don’t go as far as the GOP to trash the middle class, our entire country, our economy, and our society just to return the favor to their buddies.  Except for a few notable exceptions (mostly Senators from Minnesota) they all take the money, Democrat and Republican alike.

In this last recession, we managed to fireball the economies of the entire planet (so wealthy pals overseas got a piece of the action).  Only insignificant Moldova’s miniscule economy was untouched, because their meager savings are all in cash.  Everybody else got hurt.  Hurt bad.

All this pain and misery just to make a buck.  (That’s not fair — it’s actually so many bucks, we can’t even comprehend the amount of money that a few people made on this last recession.)

How?

When the economy tanks in a recession, all valuable property is suddenly available at deep discount prices.  Blue Chip stocks, hotels, parking lots, your competitor’s business, every other business, resorts, office buildings, furs, yachts, land, condos, apartment buildings, villas, vacations, diamonds, ships, antique cars, new cars – the list goes on and on. Except gold, a form of gambling.

The wealthy know how to make money from a recession.  When prices are stable, there’s no ‘room to move’ to rake in big profits.  They need a recession to really shake things up and put all prices in freefall.  They buy stuff cheap. Later, they sell it at standard market price.

So, if you were incredibly wealthy and held influence over our elected leaders, what’s the biggest gift they could give you for all the cash they were handed? (Which, essentially, was responsible for winning their election.)  That’s right, a big sale on everything valuable (including labor).  A recession. The bigger, the better.

The economy always bounces back, right?  At least that’s what your ”investment advisor” told you when you asked why he didn’t turn all your holdings into cash just before the inevitable crash. Yup, you got burned again, and somebody else now has every dime you lost.

Super-wealthy people don’t make their profits when they sell property at market value; they lock in their profits when they buy at a discount.  Anyone can only sell at ‘market value’ but you can sometimes buy at serious discounts, then wait for the price to return.  For the last 60 years, this is what’s happened when a Democrat goes to the White House after a Republican has ruined the economy.

Democratic Presidents tend to make choices that benefit US society in general, to the detriment of the ultra-wealthy.  Republican Presidents tend to make choices that benefit the wealthy, under the proposition that everyone wants to be wealthy, and that the wealth will trickle down to the masses willing to work.

The bad news?

Everyone’s not going to be wealthy but many want to believe they will when the Republican candidate wins, cuts their taxes and gets government out of their way.

Republicans routinely garner votes by promoting emotional topics over substantive issues, and this works well on about half the voting population, which is about 1/4 of the total voting age population (since only half the people who can vote, do vote).

Do the math.  As long as a political party can consistently align itself with one-fourth of the population under the banner of, “Vote for me and I’ll make you rich!” we’ll likely continue to have a recession every time there’s a Republican in the White House.  Those voters will never believe their leader is using them for their vote, then selling his favor to the big campaign contributors, because they want to.

Deal with it.

Now use this knowledge to help yourself and your family.

A recession is an incredible opportunity for you to make a lot of money with your investments.  Now that you know a Republican president is almost a sure-fire recipe for a recession, make it work for you. The economy generally thrives during the very early stages of a Republican presidency, then crashes badly, (if he’s re-elected, it happens again) then a Democrat gets elected and it recovers.

Be ready to move your investments from stocks to cash before everything tanks.  Once everything has fallen, move back into stocks again at fire sale prices for instant, built-in profit.

Or, you can just keep doing what you’ve been doing before a recession (nothing) and continue to get the same results you’ve been getting (financial loss or disaster).

If you have someone else handling your investments for you, they probably did nothing.

Professional financial advisers will say, “Let it ride; the market always bounces back.  I’m too lazy to move every one of my client’s money.  Besides, if everybody sold, the prices would fall even harder for the rest of us.  If I got you out too early, you’d complain about the gains you missed.  It’s easier for me to just do nothing.  I lost a lot of money, too.  Be patient, and in just a few years, you’ll get it all back.  That’s what I’m doing.”

Professional money managers will try to talk you out of this behavior.  They may call your activity ”trying to time the market” (which is mildly akin to day-trading, a risky, fast-action, high-stakes gambling game).  But that’s not true.  Timing the market means studying, buying and selling individual stocks when you think each one’s price will rise or fall.  Instead, you’ll be timing the entire US economy, a much slower, more obvious task with greater rewards and almost no study except for paying attention to the news and your daily life.

You’re not trying to choose a company, you’re deciding when to get in and out of the entire stock market altogether.  The stock exchange folks HATE it when you do that, and mutual fund reps may actually try to talk you out of it.  After all, their paycheck is riding on you doing what everyone else is doing — nothing.

Don’t bother with call/put options or short sales either, since they are all time-limited, and no one can tell how long each phase will take.  Just be in stocks when a Dem is in the White House, and get ready to move entirely to cash when a Republican moves in and the economy (sort of) booms, then looks like it’s going to crash (because it’s going to crash).  Move back to stocks when it looks like things are improving and the market is on the upswing again.  Be ready in case a Republican president’s second term gives him confidence to pull off a second recession.

Don’t wait until the last possible minute to get out or the very first sign of recovery to get back in.  Use your head, pay attention to what’s going on.  For example, the ’08 crash was triggered by ridiculous mortgage agreements that didn’t even bother to see if the borrower had a job and $4-a-gallon gasoline at the height of summer travel. Everybody just stopped spending money, fearing gas would go to $5 and housing prices would tumble.  A few months earlier, we’d all heard the warnings about Adjustable Rate Mortgage problems and all the upcoming foreclosures, so this wasn’t a surprise.  In the late 90′s, everyone knew the dotcom prices were way out of line, but we didn’t want to believe it would fail because we were making too much money.  Each time, everybody knew the bubble was about to pop, but we didn’t know what to do about it and were making huge paper profits.

Now you know.  Watch who’s in the White House and use your head.  When the time is near, move into cash, then later back into stocks or mutual funds.  Instead of losing half your money in ’08, you would have doubled your money in ’09.  That’s what many of the wealthiest people did.

If history is any teacher, we’ve got about 6 to 8 years before it happens again.  Be ready next time.

Charlie Gosh

If you’d like to hear similar info from a successful professional advisor, check Jim Stack’s InvesTech newsletter, under $200 a year for a monthly email newsletter, with shorter trial offerings and a free sample issue.  No, I don’t get anything for sending you there. He has a top-notch record and he says much of the same thing you’ve just read from a different angle.

Charlie Gosh

A true story . . .

In 1996, Bill Clinton was a featured guest for an HBO comedy special held in Washington, D.C.’s Ford Theater, the same theater where Abe Lincoln was assassinated.  (Clinton sat on the main floor, surrounded by Secret Service.)  One comedian after another made us all laugh.

When it was Paula Poundstone’s turn, she was barely into her routine when she broke out and greeted the dignitaries directly.

“Hello, Mr. President (audience laughs).  Hello, Mrs. President (audience laughs).  I see all the Secret Service all around you, there.  But one question.  Who is that older gentleman sitting right behind the president, inside the ring of Secret Service agents? And why is he sitting directly behind the president?”

No one had noticed him before.  No one knew who he was.  And, shades of Lincoln’s death, he’s sitting directly behind the president.  Who is that guy?

“Let it go,” Clinton directed her and waved his hand to dismiss her.  Most people, when directed by the President of the United States to ‘let it go’ would do so.  But not Paula.

She directs her comments to the audience.  ”We all want to know, right? Who is that man sitting right behind the president, inside the ring of Secret Service agents?”

Clinton finally relents, grudgingly.

“He owns Chiquita Banana.”

“That’s interesting,” notes Paula.

Quick, cut to commercial.  (When we return, Paula is gone, and the next comedian is on stage.)

In that moment, I understood many things that had been a mystery for nearly a decade.

Chiquita Banana.  Guatemala.  Honduras.  Sandanistas.  Oliver North.  Late-night shredding of tens of thousands of important documents.  The Iran-Contra affair.  The CIA is badly stained, North is found guilty, Admiral John Poindexter is indicted, Reagan is publicly humiliated, many more top government officials are involved, but none ever goes to prison.  The nation is outraged that we’ve been illegally selling weapons to Iran in their war against Iraq and using the proceeds to fund illegal activities in Central America.

All to protect that guy’s land.  Peasant farmers lived on that land for centuries as serfs, but this guy owns it now.  The Sandanistas fought to seize the land and give it to the farmers who live there.  The U.S. supplied guns, training and intelligence to protect that guy’s land from being seized and given to the people who live there. The CIA funneled anti-aircraft missiles and thousands of anti-tank missiles illegally through Israel to be sold to Iran.  The CIA used the money to support the Contras, who were fighting the Sandanistas in Central America.

The Contras won.  Chiquita Banana got to keep its land and maintain the sharecropper arrangement that ties farmers to the land where they live and work, but can never own.

No matter who is in the White House, this guy will still curry their favor.  We never did learn his name; we’re not supposed to know that he even exists, much less that he’s this close to the president.

Do you think he gives lots of money to both parties?  Seems possible . . .

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You don’t have to pay taxes on it. You don’t even know the money exists.  It’s not collecting interest, and no one will come looking for you.  (Sometimes people will try to match you up with the money for a fee, but you can do it yourself for free.)

I got over $1,200 this way, and I’ve helped others retrieve thousands of dollars they didn’t even know was waiting for them.

First, if you’ve ever had an FHA-backed home mortgage loan, and the loan has been paid off for any reason, you likely have some cash that’s just waiting for you to claim it.  More about that in just a minute.

Or, go to your state’s Treasury Department website and check their Unclaimed Property list to see if anyone has turned in money in your name. I know that sounds really unlikely, but it happens a lot (more than 1.5 million times every year in New York, for example).  An old bank account, summer job paycheck, insurance payout or tax refund check you never cashed must, by law, be turned over to your state treasury (in your name) 5 years later.  There are lots of reasons your money can end up here.

Basically, you check online to see if they have anything for you, mail the state capitol a notarized form with your name and address, and they send you a check.  You should never have to pay anybody a dime for any of this money (except a few bucks for notary service, or often free at your bank).

Just go online to your state’s homepage (your state’s two letter name plus .gov as in NY.gov for example) then type  Unclaimed Property in the Search box.  Or, drill down through the menus Govt. Agencies, Treasury or State Comptroller, Unclaimed Property . . . Read a few FAQ answers, see if they have money for you, fill out a short form, get a check in a few weeks.  Since any taxes were paid years ago, you just cash the check and keep the money.

Also check http://www.missingmoney.com/ to cover the other 49 states.  Or check Google for more.

The FHA refund plan applies to anyone who ever got an FHA -backed home mortgage loan issued by HUD’s Federal Housing Authority, and then paid it off.  An ordinary, “conventional” loan might be quoted as 6%, but FHA loan rates, typically lower, are quoted like this:  5 per cent, plus a 1/2.  The ”plus a 1/2″ per cent pays an insurance premium to protect a pool of similar loans that were all placed around the same time as yours. Anyone who pays off their loan by selling the house, refinancing the mortgage, or just plain paying it off, owns a portion of that exclusive, self-liquidating, self-insurance fund.  If you don’t ask for it, Uncle Sam will patiently hold it for you until you do ask, no charge, no fees, no interest.  They’ll wait forever if you don’t ask for your money.

Your money. Often a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on how long you made payments on the loan, how many other homeowners in your pool defaulted on their loans, etc.  It just takes a few minutes to find out how much money is waiting for you.

For FHA refunds, go to http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/comp/refunds/ and find if there’s money for you.

Tell your friends.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

You may want to do three things before you leave; turn off your main water valve, use a checklist, and leave a lamp on.

I have a checklist we use, I’ve posted it below for you.

If you’ll be gone more than a day or two, and the outdoor temperature could get below freezing, you can protect your home from burst pipes.  If the power fails while you’re away, or the furnace stops, or the ice maker springs a leak, or the hot water heater tank leaks or bursts (all of these things happen), you could suffer dramatic damage from water leaking, which could freeze if there’s no heat, making a real mess.  Even if it doesn’t freeze, that’s no way to return from a relaxing vacation.

Your homeowner’s insurance policy will probably fix the mess (eventually), but you’re better off not needing it.  Some water damage cannot be fixed.  Returning home late at night to find six inches of ice on the floor, or ice pulling down a ceiling or wall is nasty.  Especially if the ice is blocking the front door shut.

Easy way out?  Turn off the main water valve just before you leave. Any adult can do this.

If your home is heated with a boiler (you have steam or water-filled radiators or baseboards for heat), it needs to top off its water supply occasionally; if you turn off the main water valve, leave it open a little bit so the boiler can get make-up water.  Or, just leave it alone (main supply valve is open).

If you pump water from your own well, you should have a circuit breaker dedicated to the water pump; just switch it off.

While you’re gone, there won’t be any water available for bathing, toilets, watering the plants or pets, etc. if you have a housekeeper or plant/pet-sitter come by.

Find your main water shutoff. It’s good to know where it is, anyway, just in case you spring a leak while you’re at home. You should test it long in advance — no surprises.  Look for your water meter and find the pipe that leads to the earth or the house from the meter.  The main shutoff valve will be found very nearby. There may be one on each side of the meter — use whichever one is easiest.  In a condo or apartment, it may be near the hot water heater.  Try it now to make sure it actually works — if you can’t shut the valve off, you no longer have a shut-off valve and won’t be able to turn off the water in an emergency.  The handle may turn only a quarter-turn, or it may spin around many times.  Test your results by opening a faucet.

Just before you walk out the door to catch that plane, turn off the main water valve.

DO NOT DRAIN THE HOT WATER TANK at the tap at its bottom or its burner will fry it, but you could turn the water heater thermostat to the “Vacation” setting to save a few bucks.  If you’re really fastidious, also turn on a faucet in the lowest sink you have and gravity will drain most of the pipes.  A pipe with water in it can still burst if it freezes, but no water will flow if you’ve turned it off.  It’s still expensive and clumsy to tear open walls and floors to fix a broken pipe.

If you leave town during cold weather and the power or furnace fails, etc.,  at least you won’t have water damage.

Next, before you walk out the door, find a light to turn on (a bathroom is best, but any room that blocks prying eyes is good).  Thieves casing your home may see that you’re not shoveling walks or moving cars, but they can’t be sure there isn’t someone still awake with a lamp on who can call the police if they break in.  It’s easier to rob a darkened house down the block.  Some people leave a radio or TV playing — same idea.

Phone cards. We found that phone rates in Mexico, for example, using the phone in the hotel room to call home are $10 a minute.  A 5-minute call home to tell everybody you’re OK will cost $50.  The advice was to buy a phone card and use it at a pay phone for a much more reasonable rate.  Many hotels have a toll-free number so you can ask about similar fees, or just send an email.

See the travel checklist below.

Charlie Gosh

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

If you’d like to copy, paste, edit and save your own copy of this list, follow the steps below.

Basically, you’ll highlight the list, copy the list, then find a place to paste, edit, and store your customized version. This method works almost everywhere on any PC, so it’s a handy tool to practice and learn.

1. Highlight the list (left-click-and-drag your mouse over the entire list).  If you have trouble with that, try the keyboard combination CTRL-A instead to highlight All, but you’ll get my entire blog entry. Just delete later what you don’t want using the highlight to cover many, many lines, then hit the delete button one time.

2. Right-click the highlighted area. You’ll get a small menu. Left-click on Copy.

3. Click your Windows Start button, then click Run, type the word   notepad in the box and click the OK button.

(If you can’t find the Run choice on your Start Menu, press the Windows-R key combination.  The Windows key has a 4-piece flag on it, usually near the bottom left of your keyboard; press Windows and the R key both at the same time and release them.  If both of these methods seem too difficult, just launch Microsoft Word or your favorite word processor, or even compose a blank email to yourself.)

4. Notepad will open. Right-click inside the blank writing area to get a small menu, then left-click on Paste.

5. The list should now be in Notepad (or Word, or in an email you’ll send to yourself).  Edit it as you like.

6. Click File, Save As, choose a folder you will remember (your Desktop is handy) and choose a filename (TravelList, for example) then click the Save button.

7. Your new version should be an icon on your Desktop (or send it to your email Inbox).  Double-click that icon to open, click File, Print to print a copy or two.  Edit as you see fit, then save your new version.  Email a copy to yourself and you can get to it from anywhere.

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I use this list by first crossing off each item I know I won’t need, then cross off each item as it’s completed.  Once an entire line is crossed off, I draw a vertical bar at the beginning of that line, then connect the bars as each line is finished.  I can see in a flash if a line does not have every item crossed off by looking at the growing vertical bar in the left margin.

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NO carry-on liquids over 100 ml / 3 oz., and put them in one quart-size baggie.

Liquids or sprays in luggage in sealed baggie to handle leaks.

Take a bottle of water, empty prior to security, fill before getting on the plane.

No sharp objects at airport security, or they keep them.

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airline tickets/choose seats, hotel confirmation, car rental, limo/shuttle reservations

luggage, luggage locks, business cards, carry-on bags, check dry cleaners, empty car trunk

binoculars, contact lenses & solution, eye drops, glasses, medication, vitamins, gels, sprays

cameras (empty the old photos), tripod, memory cards, batteries, battery charger, cables

headphones, CD player, MP3 player, DVD player, cables, power supplies

magazines, books, CD’s, notebook, DVD’s, toys, keys

foreign AC power adapters, tell neighbor we’ll be away

tour books, maps, directions, check TripAdvisor.com for advice

air tickets, cruise tickets, hotel confirmations, car rental/limo, passports/pens/carrying case

cash, call banks for international ATM/credit card use & rates, phone card

gas in car, oil change, return/get library books, airport limo, parking coupon

check weather reports, check cellphone coverages, porch/bathroom lamp, nightlights

mow lawn, move potted plants to get watered, stop newspaper delivery

dress socks, white socks, underwear, t-shirts, dress shirts/ties, slacks, jacket/blazer/coat

jeans, shorts, jewelry, sandals, flip-flops, bathrobe, sunglasses

shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash, cologne, antiperspirant, makeup, shavers

bathing suits, beach towels, swim float, snorkel, swim mask, ear plugs, hats

suntan lotion, hand lotion, band aids, aloe gel

tennis shoes, dress shoes/clothes, rainwear/umbrella, sweater, parka

cellphones, chargers, spare batteries, shaver, spare watch, (leave valuables home)

pay bills, renew license plates, check eBay to see if something needs to be paid

chewy bars/nuts/snacks, cooler/food, laundry detergent, bar soap, sheets, towels

do laundry, empty washer & dryer, clean out perishable foods from refrigerator

laptop, Kensington lock, power supply, ethernet cable, hand/headset, jump drive

toothbrushes, chargers, cases, oral irrigator, spare batteries, floss

leave a note for postman, no sharp objects in pockets (aircraft)

housekeeping, pet care, pillows for car trips, clothes iron, hair dryer

trash to curb, bottled water, change answering machine/voicemail message

turn down thermostat, pack gifts, cards, check in for airline

water plants, turn off water supply, lock doors & windows

create email “out of town” reply notice, shut down PC’s

during thunderstorm season unplug audio/video equipment, PC, printer, microwave oven

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Always check your seat before leaving anywhere.  Airlines are notorious for making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to return lost items, even if your name and phone number are clearly on it.  Their attitude is that you were foolish enough to lose it, so it’s not their fault.  Putting a business card in your belongings may sound like a good idea (and you should do so in case someone else finds it) but don’t sit by the phone waiting for an airline to call you.  If you leave something on a plane or in an airport, you might get lucky if you try hard enough, but don’t expect them to make any effort to call you, or even tell you which city your stuff ended up in (since your plane could have gone anywhere after you got off, and even somewhere else before your stuff was found).

Everything they don’t return is held for 30 days, then given away to a giant store in Scottsboro, Alabama that brags that they get 7,000 new items each day.  Translated, that means airlines give away 7,000 items belonging to their customers every day.

You may benefit from drawing your last name with a bar of soap on the top of your luggage to make it easier to find (both for you and the lost luggage staff).  If the airline lost your luggage, it might simply show up on the next flight from your town.  If they find it, they’ll usually deliver it to you at their expense (though it’s a polite gesture to give the delivery guy a few bucks for a tip — he’s just a working stiff whose only role is getting it back to you).

If they say they can’t find your checked luggage, they’ll offer to give you $200 to pay you off.  Tell them you know the law (even if you don’t) and that you had expensive clothes and a camera in that bag and you’ll see to it that you get $2,000 for it.  I have personally seen this work — a fellow traveler went three days without his luggage and then used this method.  Ten minutes later, the airline called back and had miraculously found a bag they’d given up on.

If you’re out of town and your luggage was lost, ask around — all cruise ships and some hotels have a selection of new clothing they’ll give you at no charge to tide you over until your bag arrives.

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Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

Your tires will last much longer if you:

Increase their inflation pressure.  The higher the pressure (within reason!) the better your mileage and tire life, but the ride gets slightly stiffer (you may not even notice).  All tires have tiny leaks, and you should check their pressure at least twice a year.  If you lose a valve cap, replace it – they cost next to nothing; any tire store should give you a few just for asking.  Lower pressure causes the tire to flex more as it rolls, and that increases friction and heat.  A really low tire is MUCH harder to roll down the road — do a test on a bicycle if you doubt it.  You’ll find maximum inflation ratings on the tire.  Don’t go to the maximum – 5 or 10 pounds below max is fine.  Measure tire pressure with a gauge when the vehicle has been parked for a few hours.  Inflate tires to nearly the same pressure, but some cars do best at 42 psi in the front tires with 40 psi rears.

Truck tires and handling are very different from cars.  Get advice about your truck or SUV from a tire store.

There’s a trick to using the air hose to sucessfully mate it with the valve on your tire.  You have to press them together very solidly.  The first ‘give’ you’ll feel is your tire’s valve opening (and letting air escape from your tire).  Press harder, and the valve in the air hose opens up, too, so air pumps into your tire.  You can test the air valves with your fingertip — you’ll see that the tire valve is soft, but it takes quite a bit of force to open the valve on the air hose.  Press them together too lightly, and you’ll just let air out of your tire.

Don’t fill a bicycle tire at a service station that has a big indoor compressor.  If you must pump up a bike tire, don’t hold the air chuck on the tire valve — just press it quickly and release, repeat as needed.  It will fill very fast.  If you hold the air chuck to the valve, the tire will blow out (very loudly) almost instantly. Keep squeezing the tire until it feels very firm, but not solid. Use a tire pressure gauge.  Cheap gas station tire pumps inside a little box (that often charge 25 cents and make a lot of noise) are safer for bicycle tires because they’re so slow you have time to stop pumping.

A leak can be caused by a nail or hole that’s hard to find, or a leaking valve or valve seat.  A plug is a quick, $10 fix at a gas station, but it stresses the tire badly.  A patch at a tire dealer costs a little more, takes longer to install, but is much better for the life of the tire and your safety.  Many tire stores give you any patch repairs you’ll ever need, but some tire stores charge a fee.  A hole in the sidewall of a tire is usually unrepairable.  Tires over 5 or 6 years old, regardless of their mileage or tread wear, tend to dry, crack and fail, and should be replaced.

Avoid the contractors’ parking area at the building supply store.  The pro’s can drop nails when they’re loading their truck.  Drive and park somewhere else.

For the same reasons, avoid alleys, construction areas, industrial areas, homes being built, etc.  On the street, stay in the worn area of your lane — trimming the inside edge around a long curve may seem exciting, but no one else drives there.  If there’s a piece of junk waiting, you could be the one to find it in your tire.

Turn through corners slowly.  If you can hear your tires squeal at any time, you’re causing extraordinary wear.

Don’t bump into curbs.  Instead,  slow down, wait until later to turn the steering wheel, then turn it more aggressively than you usually do.  The result will be a short, sharp turn far from the curb, instead of a long, wide turn that runs into the curb.  You don’t have to be extreme, just work more in that direction.

When shopping for tires, some have physically harder rubber than others.  Harder tires usually last longer, have longer mileage warranties, and may cost more.  If the tire costs an extra $30, but lasts nearly twice as long, do the math and decide if you’ll own the car that long.  Harder tires also take a little longer to wear in after a tire rotation, so they ‘growl’ for a while.  That noise is excess wear until they get broken into their new positions, so you may want to stretch rotations a little further with harder tires.

Whenever you walk by a tire, look at it for stones stuck in the tread.  Use a key or similar tool to pry it out.  Stones cause the tread to squirm and heat up.  You don’t need to spend a lot of time on inspection, just find whatever you can.  Check harder after driving on a gravel road.

Many tire stores offer their customers a free tire rotation every 5,000 miles.  Car dealers often charge $30 to $80 for the same service.  You can do it yourself, but it’s not much fun, because you have two tires off the car at any given moment.  The tech can also show you if wheel balance or alignment work needs to be done, evidenced by odd wear patterns.  If an alignment cost is extraordinary, inspect the severity of  wear on the tire tread; if it’s very minor, it may be difficult to justify the expense (usually a few hundred dollars).  Front or rear wheels might need alignment.  Don’t run into curbs and big potholes and you’ll likely never need an alignment.

If you’re inclined to compare tire brands, take a walk through any parking lot alongside the cars. You’ll see that the metal weights installed on tires to balance them are sometimes huge, sometimes tiny, sometimes not even needed (or might have fallen off).  The fatter the weight, the ‘less round’ the tire is, so overall quality is suspect.  Avoid brands that have large balance weights.  If you do this, you’ll probably find Michelins have the smallest (or no) weights, no matter which tire model.  Pirellis are often even rounder, but they’re for performance cars and can be quite expensive.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

But what are these mystery ingredients? Their name gives no clue what they’re actually made of.

Up until the late 18th century, if you wanted strawberry flavor in a food, you needed fresh strawberries.  Then about 130 years ago, chemists found a wonderful new solution for food companies; coal tar.  Mine coal from the ground, crush it, mix with water, cook it to make a thick soup, heat it up, evaporate the vapors, cool them and one of the (many) things you get is  .  .  .  artificial strawberry flavor.

It was a boon to the food industry.  For the first time in history, they could have strawberry flavor year-round.  Or, at least something that fools your taste buds into thinking it’s strawberry.

Years later, an even better source was found.  Crude oil.  That’s right, Texas Tea.  Black Gold.  Petroleum.  Yeah, that stuff.

Chemists found they could distill a whole army of new products from crude oil, and coal tar fell from favor.  Gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel fuel, motor oil, axle grease, anti-freeze, insecticides, pesticides, mildewcides, rodenticides, bike helmets, pharmaceuticals, food wrap, toys, CD’s (and their cases), vinyl siding, trash bags, plumbing, lawn furniture, artificial strawberry flavor, artificial blueberry flavor, almond flavor, banana, grape, orange, vanilla, yellow coloring, red, green, blue  .   .   .   You name it, the list just goes on and on and on.  It’s really very versatile stuff.

But it’s not food.   Artificial colors and flavors are made from crude oil.

Put it in your gas tank?  Stinky.  Put it in your mouth and eat it?  You can do better.

Strangely enough, this branch of chemistry is called “organic chemistry“ while everything else is called “inorganic chemistry.”  Organic food producers must really love this little irony.

Crude oil is simply all the plants and critters that were growing a long time ago, all smooshed together.  If we did that today, it would be like filling a giant blender with everything around us – corn stalks, poison dart frogs, mosquitoes, bacteria, sunflower roots, oak leaves, poison ivy, tree bark, sulfur, arsenic, lead, poison mushrooms, cherry blossoms, some stuff that’s good for us, some stuff that isn’t, plants that slow our heartbeat or make our hair fall out (or grow thicker), quite a few things that cause cancer, probably a few that cure it.  Everything.  Blend well, cover with dirt and let it brew for 65 million years.

So, the next time you read a food label (you do read ’em, don’t you?) and you see artificial color, artificial flavor, BHA, BHT, propylene glycol, or almost anything else you can’t pronounce, at least you’ll know where it came from, even if you still won’t know what it is.  You’d need an advanced chemistry degree to really understand it.  And it won’t be strawberry, even if they can fool you.

It’s not food.  It’s not good for you.  That’s why they won’t list “made from crude oil by-products” on the label.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

The dirty spots easiest to overlook are:

1. Can opener. The cutting wheel on a can opener gets caked with dried food for years.  Small pieces fall into food you open later, so you eat it.  Yuck. Look at the cutter and you’ll be totally grossed out.  Clean and rinse it with a brush, a toothpick, whatever . . .  Manufacturers typically do not recommend you put a can opener in the dishwasher, or even wash it, to prevent it from rusting.

While you’re in the kitchen, there are two more grungy spots.

First is your sponge or dishcloth.  They’re damp and contain tiny bits of food.  This is a perfect breeding spot for bacteria, which are spread to anything you wipe.  Some sponges have an anti-bacterial chemical added to them for just this reason; Costco sells giant packages of them.

Just rinse and wring your sponge often to get the bits of food out.  Wash the sponge in the dishwasher, always rinse it well and store it in the sunlight (the ultraviolet in sunlight kills germs).  Replace sponges every few weeks; use the old one for cleanups on floors, bathtubs, outdoors, pets, etc.  Never touch a kitchen sponge or dishcloth to a wooden cutting board.  Throw the dishcloth in the laundry every few days.

Next, wash your wooden cutting board once a month with a solution of 1/2 teaspoon of laundry bleach in 2 cups of water to kill germs that can contaminate food and can cause food poisoning.  If the surface is really rugged, consider wet-sanding it, with the grain, with fine sandpaper to keep food from getting trapped in the cuts.  Bleach is very powerful — always dilute it, and don’t get it on your clothes or anything else (obviously).  Restaurants routinely use a diluted, powdered, bleach product to rinse cooking utensils.

Bacteria are all around us.  Typically, they’re harmless if we handle foods properly.  We get into trouble when we mix the harmless bacteria from one food on to another kind of food, then give it a chance to grow there.  Cutting meat on a cutting board, then cutting cheese on the same board is an example.  Or handling raw vegetables, then raw chicken.

Rinse utensils and hands after handling any raw protein (meat, dairy products, chicken, fish, etc.) and before handling any raw foods.  Don’t use utensils to handle raw foods and then cooked foods without rinsing.  Raw meat (especially chicken) contains bacteria that are looking for a place to grow.  Rinse that fork or tongs while you’re waiting for food to cook. Food poisoning is one of those things that sneaks up on you.  When someone tells you they had the “24-hour flu” you’ll know there’s no such thing.  They were poisoned.  Small children and the elderly can die from food poisoning.

2. Light Switches on the wall.  Since we know where the light switches are in our home, we don’t look at them.  Our visitors and guests, however, are shocked to see how dirty they get.  Be gentle — you can scrub the paint right off the cover plate if you’re too ambitious.  If you find a greasy spot that won’t come off, try a little Soft Scrub or even rubbing alcohol. (Soft Scrub works great on old bathtub stains, too.)  An alternative is to replace ordinary switch covers with brass or other metal covers, which don’t hold dirt as easily as paint.

3. Washing machine.  Those “skid marks” on underwear carry e. coli bacteria.  Put them in the washer and the bacteria just gets spread around, not killed.  You’d think they’d just get rinsed away, but research shows they contaminate the washer and subsequent laundry.  Put a little bleach in with your whites, and use Pine-Sol or a similar disinfectant with other loads.  Some recommend just running an empty cycle (with detergent) every month or two to help rinse out the tub.

NEVER mix any cleaning agent with bleach or ammonia — these are very powerful chemicals that can actually become lethal if mixed with other cleaning supplies.  Always dilute bleach; the fumes alone can quickly overpower you and damage lung tissue.

4. Carpet right by the door. Dirt, oil and sand get tracked in on people’s shoes.  The bulk of it lands right by the door.  Over the years, this area gets dark from dirt and oil, and worn from sand cutting the fibers off like sandpaper.  Vacuum here more than average to get up the sand, or put down a throw rug to lengthen carpet life and appearance.  If you have oil spots on your driveway or parking areas, people will bring in oil on their shoes.  Get a bag of oil-dry from any automotive supply or just buy a small bag of cheap, clay-based kitty litter.  Rub some into the concrete with the bottom of your shoe and the oil spot will just disappear, then sweep it away (or just leave it to catch the next stain). Watch where you walk in parking lots, too; you’ll be astonished at the wet, caked oil slicks you’ll find in popular parking spots and under drive-thru windows.

Some people dwell on dust mites, disinfectant hand soaps, and Lysol or similar products.

Dust mites are microscopic cousins of spiders.  They’re alive and thriving on your body right now, typically at the base of your eyelashes.  They’re completely harmless (unless you get nightmares from their photos), but some people are allergic to their poop.  If so, Kirby vacuum cleaners, which have monstrous sucking power through their attachments, go for under $200 used on eBay (even new ones are 20% off retail there), or check your local Craigslist .  Concentrate on bedding and mattresses to get the biggest benefit, or just clean them with your current vacuum attachments for some relief.  In the worst allergy cases, replace pillows each year with synthetic materials.

Technically, you’re cleaning up their feces and your microscopic dead skin particles that the mites eat.  If you’re a tough sell, you can have a Kirby salesman come to your home and demonstrate this bed-sucking technique, but you’ll be hard pressed to say “no” to their tough sales pitch for a new, $900 (yikes!) vacuum cleaner.  They may give you $50 for your old one as a gimmick to clinch the sale. wow.

Antibacterial cleaners containing Triclosan (which is now found inside three out of four Americans’ bodies, according to the CDC — Centers for Disease Control) and hand soaps are believed by many to be hazardous.  The CDC states they are not “demonstrably useful in the healthy household.”  They have no effect on viruses.  They may eliminate the “friendly” bacteria in our bodies, which are necessary for us to live and are a vital part of our immune system.  Products containing Triclosan can be useful in health care facilities where infections are common, patients are infectious or have reduced immune response, and where MRSA bacteria are found. They kill almost all germs, but the tiny fraction that’s left over is now resistant to that chemical and has a big, clear playing field to grow on (your hands and your home) since you just wiped out all of their competitors.

This is genetic engineering, creating new, resistant varieties of bacteria in your kitchen or bathroom and on your hands.  Instead, just use plain soap and water and wash your hands frequently.  Also try to avoid disinfectants in sprays and liquids with a 0.001% active ingredient you can’t even read, let alone pronounce.  These are typically crude oil by-products, and by definition, are very, very powerful toxins.  They can also create super-bugs and jeopardize everyone’s health.  You’re not performing surgeries in your home.

No discussion of dirty spots in your home would be complete without mentioning the way we get a cold or the flu.

A.  Someone with a cold or flu is oozing the virus in their runny nose, watery eyes and sneezing.  They get the virus on their hands from touching their eyes and nose, sneezing into their hand, or handling tissues.

B.  Next, they touch a surface (countertop, handle, doorknob, handrail, keyboard, etc.) and deposit the virus there along with some oil from their skin. This is critical; the virus needs that oil to survive until you happen along.  Within a few minutes or hours, the oil dries up and the virus dies.

C.  You come along and touch the same surface.  You get the virus on your hands, and then touch your eyes, mouth, or nose. That’s when you get a dose.  If you wash your hands with soap often, and refrain from touching your face, you’ll be far less likely to get sick.  Cleaning common surfaces with ordinary soap and water removes the oil, and the virus dies.

D.  Shaking hands with someone with a cold?  Don’t touch your face until you get a chance to wash up.  No harm, no foul.

E.  Using anti-bacterial cleaners is pointless.  They have no effect on viruses that cause colds and flu.

For extra credit, don’t grab any more door handles than you have to.  Push building doors open with your forearm, pull a slightly-open door by its edge.  Pull public restroom doors open with a paper towel to avoid a whole host of bad boys from e. coli to hepatitis.  Pull on a door handle or push an elevator button with any part of your hand you won’t use to rub your eyes or nose later.

Tell your friends,

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

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When research scientists add up the risk factors from all the chemical ingredients in tobacco, they’re way below the number of actual deaths from smoking.

Statistically, the chemicals in tobacco are far less dangerous than we think.

The numbers don’t add up. They’re not even close.

When you plug in Tobacco’s Big Secret, suddenly all the risk vs. death numbers match up.

The secret?   Tobacco smoke is radioactive.

It’s true.  Google it, or look it up on Wikipedia.

Since the late 1930′s, the tobacco industry has been using a really cheap fertilizer made from the mineral apatite (pronounced just like appetite) that gives tobacco a ‘sweet’ taste (their description, not mine).

Unfortunately, apatite in its natural form has uranium, radioactive polonium, radioactive radon, radioactive lead, radioactive bismuth, and a lot more nasty radioactive stuff all mixed inside.

Apatite is radioactive.

. . . . . . It's cheap, it's tasty, it's "hot"

Apatite is mined, crushed, processed into a phosphate fertilizer, then applied to the soil in tobacco fields. The radioactive pieces break free, hitch a ride on air currents and bits of dust, then get stuck on the gooey hairs and leaves of the plant. Each year, adding more fertilizer makes the soil — and the plants — even more radioactive.

But remember, it’s cheap and makes the final product taste ‘sweet’  ( YUCK ! )  so they’ll never want to stop using it.

The radioactive chunks stay stuck on through the manufacturing process and are freed when the tobacco is burned. Burning does not “clean” the radioactive particles, it just spreads them into the air.

The smoker inhales this witch’s brew of varied radioactive particles. Many get glued to the lung tissue by the tar in the smoke and start damaging tissue right away, while others take minutes, days, months or years to cause their damage.  Some are exhaled and combine with the smoke from the cigarette’s burning end to mix with other second-hand smoke that spreads around the area.  The entire area becomes mildly radioactive.

Yep, second-hand smoke is radioactive, too.  That’s the actual reason it’s so harmful.

The pieces that remain in the lungs bombard internal organs with nuclear particles long after death.  The damage from each radioactive molecule is small, but they’re cumulative. Each day is a little worse than the day before.

How much atomic radiation are we talking about? An op-ed piece in the New York Times in late 2006 tried to flesh out some numbers.

Some scientists try to compare the tissue damage from cigarettes to that caused by a chest X-ray, though they’re not exactly the same kind of damage (one is a ray, this one is a particle that has actual mass and volume and causes far more tissue damage).  Older studies get much lower numbers by comparing 1980′s-style X-ray machines, so some old studies quote 300 chest X-rays per year, while others compare 2,000 “modern” chest X-rays each year to a pack-a-day smoker.  Modern digital X-ray machines use even less radiation, so comparisons today would be even higher.

You can read some facts at the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website on Radiation in Tobacco and Radiation Protection – Tobacco Smoke (intended to protect workers whose jobs involve radioactive specimens) or you can Google the topic and learn more. This would make a great science project for students of any age.

Check out this United States National Institutes of Health NIH.gov training page .  The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements has a web page too.  They list a chest X-ray at 8 mrem, a year’s worth of average exposure to ordinary stuff like bricks, radon in the basement, air travel (cosmic rays), etc., at 360 mrem (or about 1 mrem each day), and a year of pack-and-a-half a day smoking at 16,000 mrem.

Those figures put less than 1 cigarette per day at more than all the other background radiation we all get. But the radiation from tobacco smoke is the worst kind of all for tissue damage.  Alpha particles are pieces of actual matter (instead of a ray of energy) made up of 2 neutrons and 2 protons that bang physically into our own tissue.  It’s literally having nucleii blasting into your body about 1/8 of an inch deep, at the speed of light.  Repeat forever.  Other nuclear events, beta rays and gamma rays, take their turns, too, but the alpha particles do the bulk of the damage.

Even worse, since it creams delicate internal tissues instead of the top (dead) layer of skin, it’s much deadlier than simple background radiation.

Your body tries to heal itself, but it has limits.  Damage is spread through the entire body by the bloodstream, so healing is difficult and, eventually, impossible.

When the radiation risk factor is added to the chemical risk factors, the death numbers finally add up.

Bonus: It turns out that people are about 20 times more likely to die from lung cancer today than they were before apatite was used for fertilizer, in spite of much lower smoking rates and tremendous improvements in medical care.  Now that’s progress.

While smoking rates went down . . .

The entire PowerPoint presentation from the American Cancer Society can be downloaded from http://www.cancer.org/downloads/PRO/Cancer Statistics 2004.ppt

The story goes that U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop tried to warn the public of all this 20 years ago in a televised message, but went largely unheard.  Unfortunately, I can’t find any evidence that he ever said that.  Maybe this industry does a really good job of burying things.

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By the way, in the U.S.,

smoking kills about 1 in every 5 people,

about the same percentage that smokes (20% of the U.S. population). Does anyone else see a pattern here? It sounds like everyone who smokes dies of a smoking-related illness.  Smokers live about 12 to 15 years less than non-smokers, and many of those years are very unpleasant.

Every year, nearly a half-million people in the U.S. die from smoking. On average, that’s about 10,000 people from each state. About 1.2 million die annually in Europe (and their package warning labels put ours to shame. Canada has strong anti-smoking labels with graphic photos.) Worldwide, smoking causes one death every 8 seconds.

Smoking-induced diseases like cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke, etc., kill more people than the next 6 causes — alcohol, cars, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs — combined.

And I was just joking about, “Don’t tell anyone.”

Tell everybody. Cigarette smoke is radioactive, and that’s what does the damage.

So, why haven’t you heard this anywhere else?  There are two schools of thought . . .

First is that if people found out that low levels of radioactivity were harmful, they’d get upset about nuclear power plants.  The distinction about “radioactive particles selectively bombarding internal organs” compared with “random rays hitting dead skin that soon sloughs off” would be difficult to pack into a 30-second commercial.  Nuclear power plants would get a bad name, even though their emissions are actually much lower than those from a cigarette and a different kind of radioactivity.  That’s right; you get far more radiation (and a much worse kind) from smoking than you would living downwind from a nuclear power plant, and it lands and sticks in a much worse place in your body.

The second idea is that the tobacco companies have an awful lot of money, are not known for playing fair or telling the truth, and wouldn’t hesitate to squash anyone that tried to bring them down.

Pick one.

Charlie Gosh

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Except . . .

Sometimes, the fruit just isn’t quite ripe enough yet. Or, maybe one item in the variety isn’t something you like.

That’s OK. They’ll make it right. No charge.

Just call them on their toll-free phone number and tell them what you want. If the (delicious) pears aren’t quite as tasty as you expected, they’ll ask you to leave them on the counter for a few days to ripen, and send you another shipment just to make sure that you’re thoroughly thrilled with Harry & David. If there’s anything else you don’t enjoy, just call them.

And they’re so nice about it, when you get off the phone you’ll want to buy from them. If you really want to do something special for someone, or as a thank-you for doing business (or just for yourself) they have a “fruit-of-the-month club.” You can’t find fruit as tasty as this anywhere else.

Actually, this method often holds true for florists, too.  If you get a flower arrangement delivered by a local florist, and the flowers don’t look terrific for 1 full week, a quick phone call to the local florist is usually all it takes to get them replaced, pronto, at no charge. (If you want to tip the delivery guy $5, he won’t complain.)

For these merchants, the money it costs them to replace the product is a drop in the bucket compared to the profit they’ll make over the years by keeping you or the sender as a customer. Besides, most people don’t call. Being able to claim “all our customers are happy, or we make them happy” is a powerful reason to keep buying from them.

Be happy. Tell your friends.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

For example, we recently stayed at a Hilton Hotel. Having their HHonors card meant:

• we didn’t stand in line to check in,
• we got a free room upgrade near the top floor of the building (with a fabulous view),
• free choice of newspapers every day,
• nice free Starbucks breakfasts every day for both of us, or
• for $7, an upgrade to the $29 buffet, including tips,
• discounts on other hotel services, and
• free bottled water from the mini-bar.

Those extras would have easily cost us $300+ over 5 days. We saved an easy 50 bucks just in tips.

Our traveling companions didn’t fare so well.  They had a view of the pool, paid $29 for breakfast, and read our old papers.  They bought bottled water.

(I’m Sorry!!  I thought everybody knew about this stuff.)

Some hotels have free happy-hour drinks.  Some have nice free sack lunches, or ???.

All free, and you’ll be treated better. Just sign up online at their website.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97

This book was very popular about 20 years ago, and many top managers gave copies to their mid-level managers to read.  Sadly, many saw it as another “new book the boss wants me to read” and neglected it.

The radical ideas Goldratt presents don’t work unless everyone understands them and gets on board, so it fell by the wayside. A shame, since it addresses and shows how to resolve many of the thorniest issues in business and personal life today.

I strongly recommend you read this book.

Charlie Gosh

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Tobacco has a big secret that will astonish you . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=48

Learn a simple trick to take advantage of the next recession . . .  http://www.charliegosh.com/?p=97