What’s my problem, than? I’ll tell you what my problem is. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but another thing that’s becoming trendy (or so I think since I’ve only seen it happening in the past year) is for your credit card companies to send you checks to use for whatever reason you wish (to pay other cards, to pay bills, to transfer some money into your bank account etc.). Overall quite a good idea. I don’t know if you’ve gotten any of them (I believe you would need to have a balance lower than 50% of your credit limit to get them). These checks usually have an expiration date, meaning you can only use them by a certain date, which in my case, on most batches I received, was about three months from the date I got them.

And now we’re getting to the problem (finally); two weeks later I’ll receive another batch. And two weeks after that, another one. And so on and so forth. I mean here you are encouraging me to go paperless to save the trees, yet you don’t even wait for the expiration date on the checks you sent me just two weeks ago to come and you send me another batch. Absolutely wasted paper. And needless to say they don’t send only the checks. A bunch of other junk advertising comes along with them (don’t even get me started on that one).

As I said, I do believe the whole idea with the checks is a good one – you never know when you need them. But there’s two things these banks could do (either one of them or both of them in the same time). Either keep your mouth shut (so to speak) and don’t try to make me feel guilty about ruining the environment with my paper bills, when you yourself couldn’t care less about it and when the actual reason for which you prefer your customers to go paperless is because it cuts down on your costs, thus increasing your profits. Or/And have a software that tells you the expiration date of the last checks you sent me and, in the same time, whether I have used any of them so far or not. And have that software tell you when to send me the new checks: when I have only a couple of the previous ones left or when there’s about a week or so left before they expire (whichever comes first). Don’t even tell me you can’t have something like that (’cause I’ll take it as if you think I’m stupid). As for whether this would be cost effective or not, well… I guess it’s less expensive for you to waste the trees. But then I go back to my problem: stop trying to sell me paperless on environmental reasons.

In the same area of wasted paper, here’s another thing that bugs me. I have a checking account. Attached to that account is my debit card. When I opened the account, the bank representative offered me to have that card work like a rewards credit card (you know the deal: you buy on credit you get something in return). In my case we’re talking about United Airlines miles. Considering I’ve never had a rewards card of any kind so far, I accepted the deal (which costs me about $25/year without me ever being able to use those miles – they’ll expire before I have enough of them) just for the heck of it.

Ever since then, I receive, from the guys at United, credit card offers. And they’re linked with that debit card I mentioned. Each and every one of the offers comes with an updated balance of my miles together with a big fat number of free ones I could get if I apply for this credit card. Of course these offers have expiration dates as well. But do you think they wait for those offers to expire before sending me new ones? You got it: NO. And just like the case with the checks, new ones come in, literally, every other week. Sometimes the envelopes just sit there on my desk for weeks and weeks just pilling up. I don’t even open them anymore.

And you’re telling me you care about the environment? And you’re trying to sell me paperless to save the trees? Are you freaking kidding me?

I know what many of you are going to say: Dude, it’s just marketing. Everyone knows these things are going on and you just have to live with them. Just let it go.

And I ask you: Why? Why should I let it go?

You can rest assured I’m not as naive as to even imagine I could have anything changed about it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take a few minutes of my time to express my disgust with these companies and folks who would do anything in the name of the good ol’ buck.

As for the fact that is nothing but plain marketing, I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person who believes that there’s a limit to everything. And if you see that your prospective customer is just not interested, it’s time to give up. Or if you just have to keep on trying, at least stop the harassment. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what it is: harassment. Don’t do it so often anymore. Give the guy (or girl) a break before you come knocking on the door again. It’s true they might have changed their mind in the mean time, but stop expecting this to happen within a few days. It won’t.

The other day I heard about this guy who has worked for the past couple of years with one goal in mind and one goal only: to buy a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. He made a $10,000 down payment and is going to pay about $600 a month for the next 5 or 6 years.

He’s in his late twenties (just like myself). I’m struggling to get out of debt (that I got in when I was young and stupid – and not because this kind of extravaganzas) and come up with some sort of a plan for the future that would, at least, insure my children have a comfortable future. And here’s this guy, who, I strongly believe, should think about the same way, indulging himself in buying a brand new forty-something thousand dollars car on which he lost at least five grands once he drove it out of the dealership.

I wish him all the luck. And it seems he’s going to need a lot of it, as he’s quite upside down in this matter. He just bought the car and got himself in trouble.

Here’s the story. It seems as if these models are hot cakes for car thieves. The first night he bought it he went to a club, ironically, attended by some of those thieves. In the neighborhood was a police patrol. The cops were aware of the type of people who go to that club, and even more ironically, they were actually looking for a stolen Lancer just like my guy’s. When they saw “my friend” arriving, they did their job and gave him a hard time suspecting that was the Lancer they were looking for and him to be involved. Eventually they let him go.

Even though this story has nothing to do with what I’m trying to point out here I decided it was worth telling it.

So what am I trying to say?

I know it’s popular to “live your life” and stuff. I do it too. But within certain limits. Is it worth doing it at such a huge expense? At the expense of your financial future? At the expense of your children’s well being? I strongly believe the answer is no.

I know I may sound old fashioned, boring, that I don’t know how to live my life etc. I’m not really like that. But I believe in setting limits and understanding when something is off those limits and accept the situation. Believe me, I would love to drive a hundred-something thousand dollars car (there’s plenty of them out there I would love). And if I would stretch my finances really good, I probably could afford one. But at what expense? At the expense of endangering my financial future? Because, unless we’re millionaires, that’s the result.

Just think about it: In a couple of years, that car will most likely be worth about half its value. Nicer and more sophisticated ones will get on the market. For a middle class guy, it will be impossible to keep up the pace. And by the time you’re done paying it, it’ll probably be worth a few thousand bucks. It’ll be just a regular car. For the period of your installment, considering the payments, insurance and maintenance for such a car, you won’t be able to save much (if anything). You’ll wake up in your early thirties with no savings and (by now) an average 5-6 years old car.

But hey, you lived your life. I ask again: at what expense?

Am I jealous? Trust me I’m not. Not when I think of the price he’s going to pay. My 2004 Chevy Cavalier runs just fine. Takes me where I want to go. But I know I’ll be somwhere when this guy will probably just start realizing the situation he’s in.

Am I judgemental? Maybe. But how can I not be when I saw so many others do the same thing and afterwrds banged their heads against the wall for being stupid about it.

Is it none of my business? Most likely. But then again, I was actually just wondering if I’m out dated, old fashioned, boring, plain crazy or not, and if others see such issues the same way I do.

Honestly, I wish him good luck and I trully hope he’ll find some way of getting himself out of this. I know the guy. And believe me when I tell you the income he has right now won’t allow him to accomplish much as long as he’s paying for that car.

I’m talking to those drivers who think the whole damn road belongs to them. Whether you’re in a hurry or not, for those of us who can’t stand wasting our time on the road, such drivers are a pain in the…

You know them. They’ll drive at a very low speed on one lane (their favorite one is the left lane). When another driver comes from behind at a (much) higher speed, although there’s plenty of room on the road for them to switch lanes to make room, they just refuse to do it. If there’s so much room why doesn’t the speeder change lanes? Well we do it.

The problem comes when you have two, three of the named drivers driving one next to each other at almost the same (low) speed. The whole road is free in front of them, yet they refuse to regroup to make room for the faster traffic to pass them. And, laddies and gentlemen, we just got ourselves a little bit of traffic.

If this were the only outcome. Unfortunately, such drivers cause more than traffic. They are one of the cause of mad, stressed out drivers that might, somwhere down the road, cause an accident.

How is that? Simple. Besides those drivers who speed for no reason (simply because they like to drive fast and they get a bit of an adrenaline from speeding) most of us do so when we’re in a hurry. In most cases it means you’re late for something which, further on, means you’re already stressed out. When you see our “beloved” drivers who refuse to cooperate on the road (and in many cases they think they’re doing the society a service by assuming the role of police) you only get more stressed out. You just can’t understand why the damn guy or woman can’t get out of your way. You’re already picutring yourself late for work or for a meeting with a very important client or missing the plane or whatever.

All of us, when put in such a situation, we get even more impatient. There’s only a short distance from this moment to making a wrong decision that could cause an accident.

You keep trying to pass your “enemy”. Whenever you see a little bit of room you think you might fit in, you take advantage of it. This means that whatever that spot may be, there’s definitely not going to be enough room between you and the car you’ll have in front of you. And if, God forbid, the guy slams the breaks for some reason, you got yourself in a nice little accident.

This is how the main characters of this post are the direct cause of an accident. They can also be an indirect cause. Simply by driving the rest of nuts. By making us mad. We all know mad drivers are not good drivers. When mad you make wrong decisions. No wonder every single driving instructor and driving course emphasizes the importance of being and staying calm behind the wheel. But how can you when you see so much ignorance, selfishness and self-importance around you? I personally can’t.

And if my above reasoning didn’t manage to convince you that, for the safety and well being of all drivers on the road, you need to get out of the way of faster moving traffic, let me tell a short true story.

When I was getting my public chauffeur license, since I did not have a CDL, I had to take an 8 hours class of safe driving. There were a total of about 25 people in that class (all of them sent there by a judge for traffic violation tickets). One of the topics covered was what to do to not get other drivers mad. For the same reason I tried to explain above. If you do, you put yourself as well as other fellow occupants of the roads in danger.

One of the gentlemen that was taking the class decided to share how he got a real life lesson about this issue. He was driving on one of the highways in our area and saw a driver tailgating him. So he decided to teach the bastard a lesson. He just barely touched the breaks enough for his stop lights to light up and scare the guy behind. Little did he know what he was getting himslef into. To make the story short, the tailgater decided it was his turn to teach our gentleman a lesson and followed him with the clear intention of starting a fight. The only way our story teller got rid of this crazy guy was to stop in front of a fire station. Otherwise God knows how this pursuit would have ended.

For all of you out there who decide to teach other drivers a lesson, who just won’t cooperate with the rest of the traffic, who just plain don’t give a damn about other members of the traffic: stop with this attitude. You are getting yourselves as well as other drivers in danger.

So, just Get Out of the Way!