The Scrolls

Posts Tagged ‘Money’

Priorities

AKA: Help, I can’t afford the internet!

It annoys me every time I see someone complaining  online about how hard life is and financial struggles and not being able to pay rent/buy groceries/get diapers, especially when I know they’re paying for internet or I see them on for more than 50% of the day.  I know that some people are using the internet for free or that some people have jobs with a lot of time to surf the internet. There are exceptions, of course. I don’t deny this.

But I think that sacrificing the internet (or cable or MP3 player or cell phone etc) before you are evicted or your baby is starving is probably a better idea than keeping it just so you can bitch. And even if you’re not spending money on things that aren’t really necessary, and your internet is free or you go to the library, why spend all that time online when you could be looking for a job? If all else fails, spend your time online working, doing freelance writing or being a ChaCha rep or something.

I guess this just falls in the overall category of “shit that people bitch about even though they don’t use the power they have to change the situation.” Cut it the fuck out world.

Accepted.. Conditionally?

I got an acceptance letter, of sorts, from MATC today. It seems I am accepted for the funeral service program (although I don’t know how much I really want to do that so yea..) but with conditions. What the conditions are, I do not know. The letter assures me that many conditionally accepted students progress normally through out there program and I shouldn’t worry. Wait, what?! That means that some students don’t? Because that worries me. I wasn’t worried before but now I am.

I also worry about working with program and financial counselors. The FAFSA thinks we can contribute $7,000 which is much more than the courses will cost (thus no financial aid). I think not. So how many classes I take will really depend on the cost. And, of course, I still have to take the classes online and cannot possibly meet with a counselor face to face. I’m just super anxious that the school won’t work with me on these things and I should have just continued taking individual classes online like I have been doing, especially because one of the more important reasons I applied for the program at this time was to get financial aid. Bleh.

The future, it worries me.

Show me the Money!

Money is today’s topic and we’re not talking about personal finances really. I was just considering the millions of dollars which go into presidential campaigns. According to Open Secrets, Obama has raised just shy of $400 million dollars during his campaign with $66 million of that amount being raised in August alone. According to that same source, this is most than twice the amount which Senator Mccain has raised and what makes this most impressive is that Obama’s campaign raised much of that money through donation by Every Day and Average Joes just like you and me.

Impressiveness aside, I just cannot help but wonder: What the hell costs so much?!?

Now, I know what I do not know and that is how a campaign is run. But I also know that the most prominent results of these campaigns cannot possibility cost near the millions that each candidate has spent. It seems implausible that the cost to film and air ads, produce merchandise or even salaries.

A little research shows that 75% “of a campaign’s outlays will ultimately go to paid communication: direct mail, radio, television and Internet ads.” But although Craig Smith might have been Lieberman’s campaign manager 4 years ago, I cannot help but wonder if he’s ever actually had to budget.

And this is pretty apparent when Hilary Clinton admits that much of the money goes to FedEx shipments. Seriously? Shipments? To me, this seems like something that a normal person would try to cut down on and while I can guarantee presidential candidates have more of a need for shipments than I do, it seems like they just think “I have millions of dollars to my name, I can afford to send this and this and this and…” I bet if you took at all those little, unnecessary expenses and tried to weed them out or consolidate as much as possible, a presidential candidate wouldn’t need hundreds of millions of dollars.

Of course, it’s not just presidential campaigns that get me. I wonder the same thing when the president asks for millions more to go toward the war effort. It seems like the obvious things that need to be paid for – salaries, weapons, food, contractors – can’t really add up to the insane numbers that are requested for the effort. Granted, I can at least see a need for money in this field whereas I can’t see a whole lot of need for money at all when it comes to campaigning.

I believe that in both of these examples, the person doing the spending and the person issuing the money are far apart. Estimates and requests are made, money is handed out and, again, because people feel they have a never ending source of income, they don’t budget properly. Sacrifices have to be made and it’s often in the wrong place. Cutting funds when it comes to armor and weapons is not going to protect our troops out there.

However, where the money is going is not the only qualm I have. Where the hell is it coming from? Because our nation is in debt and it’s such a debt (over $9 trillion!) that we wouldn’t even be putting as much as a dent in it if we applied all the money from presidential and war campaigns to it!

It seems to me that a debt like that is essentially indicative of the fact that we, the United States of America, do not have any money and, if that is indeed the case, where the hell are we getting money to put into anything least of all to throw at the war?

Whenever my mind tries to compute large sums of money in the millions, billions or trillions it just fries. I simply cannot imagine that many $1 bills (or even $100 bills for that matter). It’s become increasingly obvious that the people who are involved with that money cannot either; they are only involved at a level where they pick a nice number, track on some zeros and call it good. Because the money is never actually seen and only exists (or does not exist) somewhere in some bank’s computer, we become out of touch.

What does this mean at the end of the day? We continued to spend, the debt continues to climb, the value of the dollar continues to fall and the economy continues to drop making it hard for the average Joes like you and mean to exist while other parties, purposely or not, continue to squander away our money without thinking twice.

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems?

Well, that’s how the saying goes, isn’t it?

Money has been on my mind quite a bit recently. For starters, I just finished my taxes and what should have been a healthy little exercise turned out to be quite a lot less fun than normal (which isn’t much fun at all).

I had done my taxes on the H&R Block website last year, for free, so went to sign in this year. I go through the whole process without a problem and get to the end and leave it to check on a few things with Rian (and in hopes that it will somehow give me more of a refund. lol) and I get back, thining all I have to do is basically “click” send when it tells me that I can’t e-file (on any site, period) because of my filing status.

Fine, I’ll just print it out so I talk to their chat helper person – the first one who doesn’t recieve my messages and closes the window sooo I talk to another and he keeps telling me to click links which aren’t there because, as it turns out, I have to pay. He tells me that, in order to use this service for free, I need to register a new account and cannot import any of my information.

Okay, fiiine! Be that way if you want. So I go to register a new account and they won’t let me select the status I want at all! After a few phone calls to the IRS, I order some forms to be sent to me because I have no printer ink and don’t know the password to Wendy’s computer. >_>

However, my aunt and I stopped off at the library a few days later and picked up the forms I needed (and instructions!) after I went driving. So, yesterday I start my taxes and I finish my federal, only to see that I somehow owe them money, but H&R Block had said I’d be getting a refund.

As it turns out, I forgot to -ahem* claim myself and after I fixed that minor error, I got the same results as I had on the web site and went ahead and did my state taxes, as well. I intended to send them off today but became distracted by Maple Story. -lol*

My taxes are about a third of what they were last years, which seems to be common among everyone I know. -stomps* I want money, dammit!

Speaking of – we finally recieved our bonus checks from work for not going over our alloted accidents for the safety committee. They kept telling us it was “$500″ but it turns out, that they took out taxes – about $150 from mine. They might as well not tell us to expect anything because we expect what they say and a lot of people made plans for all of the $500. I really don’t need it, but it’s the principle of the thing, y’know?

I thought I was starting to save up the money I’d spent, but my checking account has quite a bit less than I thought – I think because I forgot to factor in bills. Damn them!

As I’m looking at my account statement, I see that I’m beeing charged for Emusic.com and while I signed up for a free trial several months ago, and haven’t used it since, they seem to think it’s okay ot start billing me without even letting me know, so I sent them a scathing e-mail demanding my money back! d=

Alas, I need to throw my clothes in the washer and hit the sack, like I intended to do almost an hour and a half ago!

Money Honey

I just added up all the money I spent between my last two checks, and it was damned near a whole check, meaning I’m only making money a little faster than I am spending it. Blarg.

My biggest thing is all these little expenses at work, probably for food during breaks/lunches and then I always get “other stuff” which I don’t need. So I need to cut back on that, no more “other stuff.” A few big online purchases but those were splurges only and will remain as such. I need to be more of a penny pincher, I think.

However, I’ve been buying stuff which I truly do need, lately. Things like furniture (because I have so little of it and it’s something you really need
I also need a new job. I did some looking this morning online and found some positions which seem suitable, in fact there’s one I think I’d love to have. Tomorrow, I’ll go down there, I think.

Yep, that’s about it. Obviously, work sucks. On the contrary, Rian does not and so I shall end this blog to love him up because he rocks and I blog because I love him. -snix*

Food For Thought

On Avon I read this: “Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.” Some replied with this: it will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to get a new bomber.

Although there are many variations of the quote, I cannot agree more. Maybe it’s me, but I think that the more educated people tend to be less prone to violence. Of course you can find someone who has just gone through 13 years of public schooling and is still violent, but then I believe we need to find a way to really make an impression on these people. However, in order to do that we need one thing: money. We need money to find and develop new methods, to fund new programs, and to show that we care. And I know some people can go to school and just not get it. Again, we need to find a way to help them to understand and if they leave holding a diploma, and never having learned a thing – then the education system hasn’t done its job.

I do believe that there are certain parts in humans that are just naturally drawn to violence, and I think in order to counteract this we need to appeal to the intellectual inside. I know we can’t save them all, and I don’t expect to, but I think we can be doing so much more than what we are. If everyone in the world were an intellectual then we’d have all our debates over tea and chess boards, not tanks and bombs.

I’m just spouting. I don’t know. I have so many ideas and thoughts on this and I thought for once I’d post a blog about something which I really care. Military is a prominent part of modern society, even though it seems to me quite primitive. I wish we could eliminate it completely, but we can’t and if there is going to be any sort of elimination it will need to be tapered. We will need to rid the world of the threats that make us believe we need such large militaries, if there really are any necessary reasons.

Those in power will need to realize the need for a better education and a reduction in military. These people will need to be educated. In order to give education that money we need to reduce the military and in order to reduce the military we need a better education which, in turn, means we need more money for education. )=

Why can’t money grow on trees?

Well I do have some good news: my hits have gone back up. They’re getting much closer to what they were before. It means all the theories that I had about why they were going down are crap. d=

But, I also need $200 for the down payment for housing and I’ll need $800 for the first month in Arizona. I think I can get the money, but my problem is that I don’t know if I have a way down there. If I go by plane or trane I’ll need my stuff shipped but that’s expensive. Ashe wants to drive but I don’t think her mom would let us. It’d be a fun trip through and I’d definitely be more comfortable.

Hum. People keep double commenting. Please, only hit submit once. It will post, even if it is a bit slow. i’m not sure if thats the problem, though; this was enver a problem before and it’s happening frequently, now. I think perhaps YACCS is having some problems.
I have a few questions to answer.

Q: will i get with glen?
A: The better question is whether or not you’ll learn proper English. I am not a magic 8 ball. XD

Q: Why ?
A: Why not?

Q: Cole! Don’t touch me there! Only the preist can!
A: What’s a preist?

Q: where is pie?
A: I don’t know. I couldn’t find it, )=

Q: Will I marry Erin Eaton
A: No, you’re gay.

Q: are you a panda
A: No, but I do think they’re cute.