Jeremy Herndon

Private number plates have always fascinated me.  I like to look at other cars plates when I’m driving, or when stopped at a traffic light.  Many of them are designed to “say” something special and are easy to figure out what it is they are trying to say, like “LUV2FLY” or “IOIO” or “C-YA” or even “JAIL-B8.”  I’ve seen business vans with company plates with special designations that referenced the business.  If I had a daughter who drove a car, I’d definitely want her plate to read “JAIL-B8″ until she was 18 years old!  I’m sure she wouldn’t like it, but I sure would feel better about letting her out on her own!

Having these special plates, often called “vanity plates” costs more when you register your car.  Because of that, I’ve never gone ahead and bought one for myself.  I’ve always had other important bills that needed to be paid!  But I understand that there are several states that use the money raised by the sales of these plates for worthy causes, such as supporting youth sports programs.

I think that is a worthy cause, and I’m going to check and see if my state does that too.  If it does, then maybe I’ll go ahead and order a plate.  The challenge is in finding a plate that I like that isn’t already being used by somebody else already!

I don’t know how or why I didn’t hear about the recall on Rolaids! Yesterday my wife went grocery shopping, and I had put Rolaids on the shopping list. I use a lot of Rolaids, and we buy them in the 100 count bottle. The fruit flavor is our favorite. Well when my wife came back from grocery shopping I saw that she didn’t buy a bottle of Rolaids! She had bought a small box that had three rolls in it.

She told me that she had looked for the bottles, but the shelves for the bottles were empty, so she bought what she could find. I didn’t believe her that they would be empty! She told me that there had been a recall on them! Well, I went online and googled “Rolaids recall” and sure enough, there IS a big recall out on the Rolaids! I wonder why I hadn’t heard about it – the recall was announced last month! It MUST have been covered in the news, right? Did any of you out there know about the recall?

I’ve loved downhill skiing ever since my very first experience on the bunny slope over thirty years ago. Over the many years since I have had several wonderful skiing holidays, and some not so wonderful.

One of my most memorable holdiays was when I signed up for a long weekend ski trip with a singles ski club to charter a bus to go to SugarBush in New England. I can’t even remember now if it was in Vermont or New Hampsire! I just remember it was a terribly long bus ride with a rowdy crowd of folks. We had rented out several condo townhouses. Shortly before we arrived we stopped at a small grocery store and were advised to buy “supplies.” No one knew exactly what that meant so although I stocked up on a lot of food items to get me by for the duration of the trip, most of the folks just bought beer and cigarettes. When we arrived at the condos, many of the people then realized that there was no grocery store or convenience store nearby and they were out of luck on getting much food!

Well, I shared much of what I had bought, and in return the group paid for a lot of my meals at the ski lodge (something I wasn’t exactly planning on eating, but oh well!)

Lesson learned? Make sure you really know where your food supplies are going to be coming from so you don’t get caught without anything to eat!

I’ve been considering looking into one of those payday loans so that I can buy my wife a very pretty diamond necklace and earring set that she’s been mooning over from the local jewelry store.  I hate to borrow any money for anything, in this tight economy, but she has made a lot of sacrifices for me over the past few years, and I’d like to surprise her with something special for Valentine’s Day.  It was on a Valentine’s Day that I proposed to her!

I have to admit that one of the reasons that these kinds of loans are tempting is that so many of them don’t require any credit check.  Recently I heard that having too many credit checks on your record can actually hurt your credit rating!  I had just got a copy of my credit report and saw that all of my creditors ran a fresh inquiry on my credit last month, and I found that disconcerting.  And a lot of employers are doing credit checks now too!  I don’t know how or why it is any employer’s business what my credit rating is!  So if I can get a loan without any credit check, I think that might be a good idea.

If the television news can be believed, the average American family is drowning in debt!  I was reading an article in a magazine recently that many people are now starting to fall behind on their mortgages rather than fall behind on their credit cards!  That flies in the face of traditional debt management techniques.  Seems to me that one would take a good hard look at getting some debt counseling before deciding to fall behind on any of those creditor accounts!

Having to choose which bill to pay, and which one to let slide is never an easy choice.  One has to take a look at what would you really lose if you don’t make the payments?  If I were in that position, I’d put the local accounts, such as dentists, lawyers, and entertainment services on the back burner and let them slide a little bit.  Many of those professionals that allow you to make payments will let you skip a payment or two if you call them up and explain your situation to them.  In many cases doctors and lawyers will agree to taking a smaller monthly amount and not charge you any late fees.

When my wife was going through her troubles with her first husband, her lawyer let her pay in small amounts and often let her skip payments for a few months if things were bad.  So my advice is to take a hard look at which accounts can slide, and which can’t.