Recent content by hguyw

Baskin, I also have a 403b with TIAA-CREF and I agree, the options for my various accounts are confusing. My best advice would be to schedule a face-to-face meeting with a TIAA-CREF consultant before you do anything. Tell him/her what you want to do, maybe take your daughter with you since she...

I'm been following the thread closely and visited most of the links provided - I know a lot more now than I did. Many thanks to those who have worked to keep it from derailing! I do have a question about my situation, however. I'm ER'd and on my former employer's health insurance, for which I...

Thank you FIREdreamer. I'd been thinking the same thing for awhile now, but I thought it was just me. When I first landed on this board a couple years ago, I enjoyed reading the 'Hi I am...' forum. Lots of different folks in all income strata, and a fair number who were obviously folks of modest...

Well speak of the devil!

I'm still down 5% from my known high in May or June of 2008 (includes contributions).

I have several sleep CDs but my favorite is this one: Sleep Deeply There's more to these than just soothing music. According to the jacket, there's some sort of subtle beat hidden in the music that "resets" or synchronizes your brain waves into the sort that you should have when sleeping...

Well, what Pollen actually said is, "Today, it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to grow one calorie of food energy." What does it mean? It seems fairly obvious to me - over the long haul it's unsustainable, despite other modern "efficiencies" you point to like GPS and soil testing. Common...

Just ran across this on PBS Video. E2|Transport: Food Miles. It's the full 25 minute episode, very well done IMO.

Of the seven transactions, ranging from $5.43 - $74.76, only one was a check ($30). All the rest were electronic debit card (put through as credit, not debit) transactions and would show up on my account (online) as soon as I'd get home. Edit: I doubt very much that a human is involved in all...

BTW, whenever I'm contacted by M&T (as above), I make sure and tell the rep that I took my business to a credit union. I have been told that banks hate, hate, hate credit unions.

They weren't shuffling my accounts around - M&T shuffled the transactions within my checking account to maximize the OD fees. I had made 7 small purchases from my M&T checking account earlier on the same day that CapOne pulled from that same account. There was more than enough money in there to...

I should have been more clear - I really was asking specifically about banks - the vast majority of people have any number of banking options and credit union memberships are so open these days I just don't know why they repeatedly put up with the abuse from the bigger banks. Go to any financial...

I've found Verizon doesn't communicate internally either. They'll finally send someone to fix whatever's wrong, job's done and everything is working fine. Two days later they call to say they're sending someone tomorrow. Huh? I've had that happen a couple of times.

Same guy made Titanic...this sounds terrible but I watched that one twice on TV to see the boat sink. Very impressive effects. Probably even more impressive in the theatre, but I hate it when my feet stick to the floor, so I don't go.

The Verizon thread reminded me of a customer service adventure I had a couple of years ago. I'll end it with a question that some of you folks may care to pontificate upon. In December of 2007, I went online to pay my Capital One bill. The balance was just under $600. I had two accounts on...