Credit Card Brains

My annual budget-friendly trips have become a highlight of, well, my life. During the past few years I’ve traveled on the cheap to California several times, to Washington and Oregon and to Ireland, to name a few. I early await trip-planning season every year. And every year, I book a reward ticket on American and use my credit card rewards to keep the cost of most trips around $1,000 for a week-long expedition.

But have you tried booking flights lately? It’s out of control! I’d spend the cost of my entire annual trip on airfare alone. The cost of flying to the Pacific coast has doubled since the last time I flew there, and now my miles are ridiculously difficult to redeem. We were considering a trip to Belize, but the flights cost an arm and a leg. I checked a few other destinations and the costs and mile redemptions are nuts…

This is a vacation crisis, people!

I feel blindsided. I mean, I know the cost of gas is bad, but what happened to Southwest’s cheap flights? I guess I haven’t been following the effects of airline consolidation and the high prices of gas haven’t really hit me yet either(don’t laugh, I don’t drive).

So what’s a girl to do this summer? I was really relying on cheap airfare for the summer. I need some suggestions for a good August destination with outdoor adventures stat! I’m thinking now I should just try to go to the boundary waters in Minnesota or do something in the Midwest. Which kind of sucks because I really love meeting people from all over, learning about the history and culture of new regions and GETTING FAR AWAY with my long vacation time.

SOS!

Wind rushing in my face, the bright sun beaming down, the fresh smell of Lake Michigan on a beautiful spring morning and a run for a good cause … those were the perfect conditions in place when my mom snapped this rather intense pic of me. I like how it looks like I’m in the lead.



For the second year, I completed the “Run to Remember” to benefit the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, which supports the families of officers lost or catastrophically injured in the line of duty. My dad is a police officer, and he’s been injured (though not catastrophically!) a few times on the job throughout the years, so the cause feels close to home. This was my first ever solo fundraising drive (outside of a group or organization), and I managed to raise $285. My goal was $300, and even though I didn’t make it, I’m glad I tried.

I imagine there are better ways to fundraise than simply e-mailing your donation URL to family and friends and posting a sign at a party, but that’s all I did. I was really worried about seeming too pushy, so I only asked for $10 donations. In the process, I learned a few important lessons about fundraising:

1) People are fundraising for a lot of things. I have a really big family, so my cause was “competing” with an Easter Seals drive and with donations to support a relative’s efforts to adopt (it’s a long, happy story for another day). At work, a colleague was raising funds for a health research foundation. All worthy causes, and for the average person, it’s probably difficult to choose where to put the extra $10 or $20 on top of annual donations. For the fundraiser, breaking through the clutter is a challenge.

2) People don’t feel compelled to donate to your cause just because they like you. Truth be told, I was sort of surprised by the lack of response. I usually try to make a small donation whenever somebody I know is running, walking or rolling for a cause. But I guess folks have a lot of other things going on in their lives that prevents them from donating, and I can’t take that personally.

3. People who do donate are spectacular superstars. I tremendously appreciate donations from friends and family who supported my efforts. After this experience, I have a new found respect for those who do manage to scrape together a few dollars here and there to help the fundraisers out there.

4. Just e-mailing people isn’t enough. I’m not sure what cause I’ll raise money for next year, but I’m pretty sure I’ll do more than just e-mail. Certainly lots of people don’t check their inboxes and it’s much easier to ignore donation requests completely over e-mail.

Overall, I think this experience really opened my eyes to how difficult fundraisers have it. I realize the police department isn’t at the top of the list of causes for most people, who probably believe their taxes are already supporting the officers’ families, and that this cause doesn’t affect everyone in the same way that it affects those of us with loved ones in the police department. But the fact that support is hard to come by kind of makes me want to push harder for the same cause next year.

Originally, I was thinking about fundraising for colon cancer research in 09, since both of my grandmothers were afflicted with it, but the ACS has a huge fundraising machine behind it. I’m thinking it might be more impactful for me to stay with the Memorial Fund and try to raise more next year.

Either way, the first one is under my belt, I’m glad I did it, and I have a long time before I decide plans for next year’s fundraising drive.

If you’re interested in donating to the Chicago Police Memorial Fund, you can visit my fundraising page here. (Note that not all of my donations are reflected on the page.)

Last night, a group of friends old and new gathered to celebrate the passage of time, the ritual of the 30th birthday, for two of our best party boys at the mysterious Debonair Social Club on the city’s West side.

The bar, billed a “boutique video club” by a local review site, featured a curious mix of clientele, decor and wait staff. Among mash up of goth-ish goers, heavily tattooed leather fans, 80’s material girls and quasi-punk lovers, my casual crowd was totally out of place. The bouncers seemed more focused on keeping people out than getting people in, and the bartenders were ridiculously rude, but for the most part, we didn’t mind. Intrigued by the people watching and the strange interplay of Nirvana, Annie Lennox and Fall-Out Boy on the speakers, we spent most of the night debating whether the place was an all-out gay bar, a bar for the more dramatic theater crowd or simply an oasis for the eccentric. The videos and images on the high walls offered more than a little fodder for conversation.

Today, in thinking about a bar whose image is up for grabs, I began noticing how within my own social scene, people’s images, personas and passions have changed over the last 10 years.

The fun-loving, free-sprited lifestyle of our early 20’s - yet so filled with drama, tension and angst - seems to have given way to a more focused kind of existence. As some friends said good-bye early to be home with their babies, others laughed about recent stints living abroad in Europe and Brazil while others discussed career goals and other aspirations. Of course, this conversation was often punctuated by the occasional sing-along to Billy Idol and eventually became more vodka-driven than not, but still, this morning I can’t help but think about the change that’s occurred.

If our early 20’s are all about defining our identity, determining our priorities and filtering out what we don’t want in our lives, then our late 20’s - for some of us, at least - are about internalizing those priorities and goals and setting in motion a path to get there.

I’m not sure how long this “setting in motion” phase lasts. But I would define it as the point in between once you finally identify what you want out of life until you actually are able to achieve it. Crap. Scratch that out. Because that sounds an awful lot like life itself.

OMG, the enormity of what I wrote just hit me…

When did we become adults?

That’s the difference, isn’t it. Individually, we’re at different stages, but collectively, we’re all officially adults now. I’m at once proud and sad.

Is that what our 20’s are really about? You pay the student loans back, you learn to succeed in the nine-to-five (Ok, 8 a.m.-to-8 p.m.) world, you buy the furniture and the wall art, you adopt pets, you learn to manage your finances and live well within your means.

And somewhere in there, adulthood happens. Who knew?

Check out this interview I did with Kimberly Palmer at US News & Report. I think it’s worth a listen over your lunch break.

Podcast: Being Young and Thifty
US News & World Report
Interviewer: Kimberly Palmer

What do you guys think?

(No more to read on this one, so ignore this >>>)

From the WSJ: National City Is Under U.S. Scrutiny National City Corp.’s banking unit, which has been buffeted by rising bad loans, has recently entered into a “memorandum of understanding” with federal regulators, effectively putting the bank on probation.

The confidential agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was entered into over the past month or so. … Such MOUs are

Dear Chicago:

I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but I’m writing to let you know that I’ve absolutely had it with your attitude. I WILL NOT, no matter how cold, snowy or downright nasty you get, WILL NOT wear my down parka another minute until at least October. I refuse! You may have gotten the best of me this winter by jacking up my heating bills to over $200 each month, leaving permanent salt stains on all my clothes and shoes and halting my driving lessons with your “ice storms,” but mark my words, frienemy, your frosty days are numbered.

Watch out Chicago. Because as soon as your cold snap ends, I will be out on your town with a vengance.

Regards,
Nicole

From the LA Times:

Merced provides a great contrast to Oceanside. Both areas have been inundated with foreclosures, and REOs are driving prices sharply lower.

In Oceanside (at least some areas), the prices have reached levels attractive to some investors. The rental market is tight in coastal north county San Diego, and these investors will provide somewhat of a floor on prices.

However

Several readers have sent me the link to this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about a wretched tale of mortgage fraud. It’s worth reading, both for an understanding of how many parties need to be complicit for such a blatantly fraudulent transaction to occur, but also for the way it tracks the hardening of attitudes of the lender over time, from an initial spontaneous recognition that this borrower got fleeced but good to a later tendency to blame the victim. Kudos to the Journal Sentinel for digging into the details of this one.

From MarketWatch: Soros says commodity bubble echoes ‘87 climate

The investment flood into commodity indexes bears eerie similarities to the craze for portfolio insurance which led to the stock market crash of 1987, said hedge fund investor George Soros, who warned the rush into commodities has created a “bubble.”

“In both cases, the institutions are piling in on one side of the market and they have sufficient weight to unbalance it,” said Soros in testimony prepared for a Senate panel on energy manipulation.

“If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987, there would be a crash,” he said.

On Friday, the FDIC announced the 4th bank failure of 2008, and the 2nd failure in May. The FDIC estimates that the failure of First Integrity of Staples, Minnesota will only cost the FDIC Insurance Fund $2.3 million. This is a small amount compared to the estimated cost to the fund of $214 million - announced earlier in May - associated with ANB Financial in Bentonville, Arkansas.

It appears bank failures are starting to become more frequent, and some analysts are estimating between 150 and 300 banks will fail over the next couple of years.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

To put these failures into perspective, here is a graph of bank failures since the FDIC was created in 1934. There were 3 bank failures in 2007, and 4 already in 2008. This hardly shows up on the graph.

The huge spike in the ’80s was due to the S&L crisis.

Note: thousands of banks failed during the Depression, and bank failures were very common even before the Depression, with about 600 banks failing every year during the Roaring ’20s.

I suspect bank failures will become much more common (although nothing like the late ’80s), and we will be on Bank Failure watch every Friday afternoon.