Updates in this my week in personal finance:

• I finally made the call to get my 401K rolled over into an IRA. Why would I do this? I can control the expenses better in an IRA. The bad news is that I had to change my address from my move 6 months ago. Unfortunately changing the address is not easy. They need to send a form to that new address and I need to sign something. Faxing isn’t a solution it seems.
• I had a talk with Energi Gal today. I expressed that we should have a Financial Day. I’m not entirely sure of her financial state (though I can guess with-in a pretty small range). I’d especially like to roughly plan out our next five years. I don’t know why these are tough conversations, but it seems like no one likes to plan for the future

Non-personal finance thoughts:

• I’ve mentioned in this space various Silicon Valley billboards. Well, on the way to San Francisco from the peninsula I saw something that made me laugh out loud. There’s a place on the drive north on the 101 where you can see three billboards. Each of them is a cell phone provider proclaiming the best coverage in San Francisco – Sprint/Nextel, Cingular/AT&T, and Verizon are the three. I guess T-Mobile’s billboard is under construction.
• I’m a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For a show with a supernatural premise, the lessons learned carry through almost all of parts of life. Unfortunately this week, I was reminded of the Buffy show, Earshot (spoiler alert in the link and upcoming paragraph). It was originally scheduled to air the week following Columbine shootings. In the episode, there is a mix-up where the viewer is lead to believe that a student is going to commit a mass murder at a school. It turn out that it’s really a suicide attempt. The reason for the suicide attempt. From the Wikipedia article, “Buffy talks to him and tells him that the reason why everyone ignores him is because they all have their own problems that actually matter more to them than his do.”
• As long as I’m going to include the spoilers (and you’ve read this far), I might as well go all out. Here’s a quote from the powerful scene:

[Buffy finds Jonathan in the clocktower with a shotgun.] Jonathan: Go away!
Buffy: Never gonna happen.
Jonathan: You think I won’t use this?
Buffy: I don’t know, Jonathan. I just-
Jonathan: Stop doing that!
Buffy: Doing what?
Jonathan: Stop saying my name like we’re friends! We’re not friends! You all think I’m an idiot! A short idiot!
Buffy: I don’t. I don’t think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn’t it? You have all this pain and all these feelings, and nobody’s really paying attention?
Jonathan: You think I just want attention?
Buffy: No. I think you’re up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not Jonathan, I understand about the pain.
Jonathan: Oh right! Because the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that’s a crippler!
Buffy: You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it’s not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It’s not. It’s deafening… You know, I could’ve taken that by now.
Jonathan: I know.
Buffy: [holds out hand] I’d rather do it this way.

My Financial Week that Was…

• With the exception of Wednesday, I stayed late at work each night this week. Since my work provides dinner if you stay late, I was able to eat well for free (as long as you stay under the daily allowance). One night, I brought home my dinner and Energi Gal and I split it.
• I spent almost no extra money this week. Maybe it’s just my lifestyle, but I simply just go to work and come home and partake in some of my free hobbies.

And other thoughts…

• Anyone see the MasterCard commercial where the elephant finds the zoo keeper’s credit card and uses it to help him get supplies for his cold. The elephant just taps the credit card and comes away with blankets and medicine. It’s a sweet commercial, but if an elephant can use my credit card without signing – it really looks like it lacks all security. And this is what MasterCard wants to promote? Anyone who finds your card can use it?
• As a true Bostonian at heart, I was looking forward to Daisuke Matsuzaka’s First start in Boston. I settled for skipping out of work early on Wednesday to watch it on national TV. DiceK, as he is known, cost the Red Sox nearly $20M a year. The ESPN commentators said that he is projected to bring $14M in tourist revenue to Boston. I don’t recall if that was for the Red Sox themselves, or the number for the city in total. I’m guessing the later, but it’s not too hard to imagine the Red Sox selling quite a few million dollars worth of DiceK shirts. It’s hard to overestimate the impact when all the Red Sox executives have their business cards in English and Japanese and sponsors (like Dunkin Donuts) are putting up huge billboards in Japanese.

Here are some quick hit financial thoughts for this week:

• I got an uplifting comment towards my cutting the cable TV article from a person known as Ro. His comment is worth publishing in full, “This week, we bought a Radio Shack antenna, booster, cords and guide wire to switch to antenna. Antenna.web maps your location for best signals. We have 14 channels so far that are excellent quality. We’re pulling the plug on Dish Network this week ($69 a month) and looking forward to cutting more monthly bills that are bleeding us to death. Bell South’s taxes and mystery fees for basic phone line is $14.50 a month ($69 total). I am reading Mary Hunt’s book about living for half price. We are making a game of budgeting, opting for viewing our own videos vs rentals as well as library videos and exchanging with friends. The stress levels are coming down as the bills become less. Entertainment is too time consuming, anyway!”
• I got my rental car from Enterprise today. (You remember my accident last week, right.) They wanted $5 from me to get a Dodge Magnum when I was promised a mid-size car. I asked for the free option and they had a Focus. After a little discussion they gave me the Magnum. Then they wanted me to pay $12/day for insurance (with a deductable) or $22/day for free-and-clear. Hmm, let’s see…. At $22/day the insurance (not the car itself mind you) would cost me $660 a month. This is supposed to be my free substitute transportation from the insurance company? Even at $12 a day, it would be $360 a month – or over $4300 a year. It’s quite a business they’ve got going there selling insurance.
• I have been getting 5% back at gas stations, grocery and drug stores with my Chase card for about two years now. This is coming to an end as they sent notice that they are switching to 1% back starting in May. Nothing like a 5 times reduction in rewards points to leave a bad taste in your mouth. It looks like I’ll switch to my Chase Freedom card at that point (3% rewards on gas/groceries/fast food).  Update: Brandon below mentions that this is not the case and that I’ve been reading it wrong.  He’s right.  The gravy train continues…

Here is my non-financial thought for this past week:

• Ask.com is running a couple of crypt billboards around Silicon Valley. The first says, “The algorithm is from Jersey.” Very cryptic. The second says, “The algorithm killed Jeeves.” I quite like the interesting billboards. Too bad, it seems like a complete waste of money.

(This was supposed to be published last Friday, but I must have hit the wrong button.  Why?  It will make more sense when you read the first bullet of the non-financial thoughts of the week.)

Financial thoughts of the week:

• Loyal reader Shaun Noonan wrote me about his start-up company, Gimmie Gimmie, I Want. The idea behind it is that you can create a wish list and others pool money towards a gift. It’s a great idea, but I was sure I heard of it before. After a little research it sounds quite a bit like Fundable.com. The difference? It seems geared towards smaller groups and possibly children (especially with the name). It also doesn’t take 7% off the top like Fundable. It’s completely ad sponsored. Looks like I’m not the only one with dreams of an alternative income streams.
• I mentioned my car accident earlier today. I’m really looking forward to spending time with a sub-par replacement. In addition, I appreciated spending an hour on the phone with claims agents today. I’ll also appreciate the hour of getting the estimate done later today. It just feels like a lot of uncompensated hassle for me.
• I’ve had a “roll-over 401k plan” on my to-do list for a few weeks now. Every time, I get close something comes up to supplant it on my list.

Here are my non-financial thoughts of this week:

• I’ve been fighting a cold the last three days. I’ve gone through a whole box of zinc lozenges. This cold has prevented me from doing half of the things on my to-do list for the week.
• Baseball season is about to start. Since I haven’t seen one Red Sox spring training game or even read much about the team, it doesn’t feel like spring. Happily Slingbox came out their public beta of their Palm 700P client, so I can watch and/or listen to the games on my cell phone. It’s amazing that just a few years ago I wouldn’t be able to see the game at all from San Francisco. Now I can see it while walking down the street. I don’t even have to pay a subscription to do this – wow.