Jeremy Herndon Blog

Today I got what I call a “phishing phone call” from someone that I think was trying to scam me out of giving out credit card information to them. They claimed to be from SunTrust, but the caller ID simply said that it was “Out of area.” They were calling with the pretense of lowering my credit card interest rates, but in order to take advantage of the offer they wanted my credit card numbers and I wasn’t willing to share that with them and promptly hung up. What a waste of my time.

When solar panels first hit the market, they were hailed as a great way to reduce the energy costs for heating and cooling a building, and for generating electricity as well. I’ve always been very interested in learning more about ways that I can make a difference in conservation projects, environmentally friendly projects, and lowering expenses.

So I was very excited about how solar energy was going to actually be a reality in my lifetime, and not just some fantastic imagineering project from the imagineers at the DisneyWorld complex! And I’ve been glad to hear that tax credits have been made available to help the homeowners recover some of the expenses of installing solar powered devices and equipment. However I have been discouraged over the harsh financial reality that in this economy, retrofitting existing buildings with solar panels is probably not going to be high on the priority list of most households. I’d like to see the economy improve as more and more people and companies get behind solar energy.

I’ve been told that in the next few years I am going to need to replace my roof. I’m wondering if that would be a good time to look into installing some type of solar energy system. What do you think?

Easy money is always a temptation.  It’s going to be even more of a temptation in this economy.  As long as I can remember, there have been scams to make people believe that it is easy to Make Money at Home by signing up to a specific program, and sending in some kind of fee or payment to get started.

Those type of programs make  me really nervous.  I’d like to Make Money Online.  Who wouldn’t?  I’d love to just stay in my pajamas most of the day, work at my own pace at my own convenience and Make Money from home,  And I know that those types of opportunities DO exist.  But I’ve also seen a lot of television news articles about how a lot of those advertised opportunities are scams, so I am really cautious about signing up with any kind of program that sounds “too good to be true.”  I’d really like to hear from someone that I know personally and trust that they have done it themselves and then they prove to me that it works for them.

For some reason the winter has gone by faster than ever, and it looks as if Easter is right around the corner. Yesterday my wife and I were grocery shopping, trying to use up all of the coupons that we had that were going to expire as of the end of the month and every where I looked I saw some kind of reference to Easter. There was a demonstrator there handing out samples of a particular brand of spiral ham. We did end up buying one of the hams, but it was only about two pounds worth. My wife said that she thought we would go ahead and have it for Easter, but when we got home and were unpacking all of our groceries it looked as if we did not buy very much meat so we might actually end up eating it sooner than planned.

As we were shopping I kept finding things that I thought we should buy and she kept saying “not today, not today, hurry up.” We were actually at the grocery store for two hours shopping, and spent around $400.00. All of the coupons we used saved us over $40, but I was still in shock that we spent as much money as we did. Of course we DID have two shopping carts full of food, so I suppose that I should not have been THAT shocked! But it did give me a greater understanding of just how much money we spend on groceries!

My aunt has been talking about wanting to hire me for installing artificial grass around her planned in-ground swimming pool. She explained that she was told that she has to let the swimming pool settle for several months before she can pour concrete around it and she does not want to have people running around on the bare dirt while the pool is settling. So her daughter suggested that artificial grass might be a good temporary thing to put down around the pool.

I was really surprised when she called me to talk to me about that because the last time I had heard any mention of her putting in an in-ground swimming pool no one else in the family wanted her to put one in. She said that she is putting it in for her own health, but she is putting in a very large 20′ by 40′ in-ground pool! Seems to me that if she was doing it for her health then just putting in a lap pool would be all she would need. But she has got a stubborn side to her and she has insisted that she wants the whole thing and since she is paying for it out of her own pocket then nobody but her has any say in it at all!

She has also mentioned that she wants me to take care of the landscape lighting installation around the swimming pool. I think that for lighting I will suggest some solar powered lamps, on both sides of the privacy fence that she will need to have installed. She sure is going to be spending a lot of money! I hope that she gets her money’s worth of excitement out of it! I just cannot imagine putting in a full-sized swimming pool after the kids have grown up and left home.