When to Refinance Made Stupid

Credit Cards, Debit Cards, and Crazy Americans

As I have written several times in the past (e.g. here and here) there seems to be no subject on which I am more out of step with normal folks than those plastic cards, credit and debit, that we all use to buy stuff.

In the past I have politely implied that this is a failing of mine, that I am just too old or too dense to understand what everybody else does. I hope nobody was fooled by that. I really think I may be the last person in America who can think clearly about plastic.

A few weeks ago, SmartMoney ran a round-up of the best credit card deals. The listing of best offers for the various categories of credit cards was fine, but the introductory gloss managed to encapsulate just about all the craziness (and I do mean craziness) that clouds thinking about cards in America.

… credit cards have lately emerged as the surprise champs, offering fewer fees and better rewards than the typical debit card.

Surprise to who? As far as I know, credit cards, in general, have always had lower fees and better rewards than debit.

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Light Bulb Math

I should probably come clean right at the start of this and admit that I have a thing about energy saving light bulbs. You might call it a pet peeve. What bothers me about them is not that they give off light of a slightly different hue than I am used to. Nor do I have any reason to believe that they do not use less energy, as advertized.

What drives me up the wall is the pious focus on them as a great green savings of energy and/or money. A focus which some years ago resulted in the federal government actually banning the old-fashioned Edison bulb.

Do not get me wrong. I agree that switching to energy saving bulbs will save energy. My point is that it will save only a tiny amount of energy. An amount that really only works as a symbolic act, and symbolism is in the eye of the beholder. What some may see as a visible sign that we love the planet is for me a sign we are governed by innumerate twits. I am here referring to both our politicians and the citizens who elect them.

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Is Cash SmartMoney?

SmartMoney had an attention grabbing headline yesterday. Why Cash Is the  New Plastic exerted an irresistible gravitational pull on my mouse.

Could it be that cash, that archaic and germ-spreading form of money whose demise I have both lamented and encouraged, was making a comeback after all?

The first paragraph of the article reads:

Consumers are spending again, but gone are the days of swiping and signing for everything from lattes to lawn furniture. Shoppers are reaching for paper money, and as they do, stores and even credit card issuers are increasingly ready to reward them – with more cash.

So I guess slips of paper and metal disks are making a goal-line defense. Just when you thought that they would go the way of fax machines, the old school pulls it out in the end. Suddenly, consumers are coming to realize that swiping and signing is just a little too easy.

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Longevity Insurance

As I have written a few times before, I consider the unpopularity of fixed annuities to be one of the larger personal finance conundrums.

Aside from the obvious problem of just not having enough money saved up, longevity risk is probably the number one challenge in planning a retirement. If you do not know how long you are going to live, how can you know how much of your kitty you can spend each year?

Annuities neatly solve this problem. You pay a lump sum to an insurance company and that company agrees to send you a check every month for as long as you are around to cash them. They even come in inflation-adjusting versions that will send you larger checks as the CPI goes up.

This sort of arrangement is practically identical to the defined benefit (a.k.a. pension) schemes that are often wistfully referred to as a part of the Good Old Days. And yet, as products, annuities are remarkably unpopular. They do exist, you can even get quotes for them online, but it is a comparatively tiny niche market. I have never seen firm numbers, but it seems safe to infer that something like only one or two retirees in a thousand buys one.

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