We are coming up on what we Americans call the Holiday Season. And it is a season: not just one holiday, but a joyous period in which every day is special. A few of those days don’t have names yet, but I am sure that in time that gap in our culture will be filled. Here’s a rundown of the next week or so.
The traditional fun begins with Travel Nightmare Wednesday. Observed the day before the last Thursday in November, this holiday is celebrated around the nation by crowding into planes and spending quality time with loved ones inside cars crawling along interstates.
Then comes Thanksgiving, when we solemnly thank the Almighty for football and giant balloons in the shape of cartoon characters. Some families also give thanks that once again they deep fried the turkey without burning the house down.
Things pick up a bit with Black Friday, a holiday that celebrates the simple pleasures of buying stuff. Traditionally, it is observed by talking about how everybody else is going to the mall that day and recounting how it is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It is not, nor has it ever been. That honor usually goes to Most Busy Saturday, which falls this year on December 19th.
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Last week Moolanomy ran a long post on Forex Trading Basics and How It Works. Although reasonably factual, the post qualifies as bad money advice 
for strongly implying that there is a possibility that investing in forex might be a good idea. It also ends with a paid link to a forex broker-dealer.
Forex, if you don’t know, is trading in currencies, also known as foreign exchange. And if you didn’t know that, I’m sorry I told you. You could have probably lived happily ever after without knowing that this particular intersection of investing and gambling existed. Oh well. Too late now.
Superficially, currency markets are simple. A person might buy some Japanese Yen, for example, in the hopes that it would go up in price relative to the dollar. If it does, it can be sold for a profit, if it goes down, for a loss.
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This is the fifth in a series inspired by a toy at CNNMoney. Previous installments covered housing payments, emergency funds, asset allocation, and buying your employer’s stock.
Using the search box just to the right here, I have discovered that in 217 posts to this blog I have used the phrase "life insurance" exactly twice. Once in an early Frugal Friday, and once in a post about annuities. Both mentions were in passing.
That may strike you as odd. In fact, it surprises me. Life insurance is a part of personal finance and certainly a likely topic for bad advice. And yet it doesn’t actually come up all that often in the media, traditional or otherwise.
It’s in the CNNMoney tool.
You need enough life insurance to replace at least five years of your salary – as much as 10 years if you have several young children or significant debts. But you might not need it at all if you have no dependents.
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Would you rather pay $399 now and $20 a month for two years, or $199 now and $30 a month for two years? If you are a rational consumer, you probably prefer the $399 deal. The other one is like a $200 loan at 20% interest.
And yet, according to a long and meandering article from yesterday’s New York Times on the madness of cell phone pricing schemes, we wacky Americans preferred the iPhone at $199 with a $30 data plan over the previous deal of $399 with a $20 plan. I’m not sure I buy that. iPhone sales could have increased for a number of reasons, including the fact that the $199 phone was an upgraded version. Still, the Times piece does bring up a number of peculiarities about the economics of cell phones.
In case you live in a cave, I’ll explain that here in the Land of the Free we "buy" heavily subsidized cell phones from the companies who run the cell phone networks and in exchange agree to a service contract with that network, generally for two years. The cell phone company takes a loss on the phone and makes it up on the service end.
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There is a part of me that really wants to believe that politicians advocate dumb ideas not because they are dumb but because they are cynically trying 
to garner support from other people who they think are dumb. Imagining cynicism in others is more cynical than imagining simple cluelessness.
But then I read something like this from The New York Times.
In an effort to rein in the spread of the H1N1 flu, Representative George Miller, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would guarantee five paid sick days for workers sent home by their employers with a contagious illness.
I’m sure that most of you are smirking already, but for those who don’t immediately see what is humorously stupid here, let me lay it out. This bill would force employers to pay for sick days when they send employees home with the flu. This means it will be more expensive to send sick people home, so employers will be less likely to do it. This, in turn, will have the effect of increasing the spread of H1N1, not reining it in.
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The traditional fun begins with Travel Nightmare Wednesday. Observed the day before the last Thursday in November, this holiday is celebrated around the nation by crowding into planes and spending quality time with loved ones inside cars crawling along interstates.
Musings | Frank Curmudgeon | 
November 20, 2009 12:59 pm | 
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