The Capitalist Maven

Well news today indicates you couldn’t be more wrong.  The government has revised its GDP estimate for the spring quarter April-June to 3.3% growth!  Regular readers already know I’ve been a contrarian to “the US is in a steep recession” view that has been perpetuated by the media.

What has happened to the economy has been a paradigm shift.  Instead of an economy based on piles of lumber stacked on top of dirt (housing), the economy has shifted to favor exports of goods and services.  Many people think we must be in a recession because their pile of lumber is worth less than it was 3 years ago.  While bad news for pile of lumber owners, it’s good news for the US as a whole.  Selling knowledge, airplanes, and cars to Europe and China makes for a much better economy than the pyramid scheme that was the housing bubble.

I’ll check back again in October after the Q3 GDP numbers come out.  I still think we’ll be in positive territory.

Jon Economy

I’ve mentioned Priceline in my blog before. I mentioned how they are great for booking airline tickets because there is no booking fee and you have the ability to earn 3% cashback through such sites as Fatwallet. $400 airline ticket = $12 in cashback. I’d also like to comment about their bidding process for hotels.

The way Priceline works is that you don’t know what hotel you are going to get. You might have a pretty good idea, but there are no guarantees about which specific hotel you will get. You bid choosing an area and star level and Priceline will come back and tell you whether your bid was accepted. They encourage you to make your true maximum bid by restricting your ability to rebid. Your reward for going through this process is some very nice hotels at substantial discounts.

I bring up the topic today because I just booked part of my honeymoon using Priceline. While a substantial portion of the honeymoon will be paid for by Marriott points, for our days on Kauai and Oahu I went through Priceline. Kauai is somewhat of a difficult animal for Priceline because #1: it’s a small island and #2 most of the nice properties are timeshares. What’s left is 2 hotels in the resort category and 3 in the 3-star category. Because all the hotels are very nice in the 3* category there, that’s where I bid, getting the ResortQuest Makaiwa for $100 a night, a discount of $20 a night over the AAA rate. I’ll get 3% of the total cost back in cashback + I saved $80 over just booking the hotel straight out. In Oahu, I did somewhat better since nicer hotels are far more numerous, getting the Hyatt Regency Waikiki for $130 a night, a $71 a night discount from the AAA rate.

There are various tricks of the trade to Priceline, which you can learn at betterbedding.com or biddingfortravel.com. At these sites you can learn how to “rebid” and see other posters winning bids to get an idea of your price range. You can also learn what hotels are known to be within a zone, so you can have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I’ve successfully used Priceline for stays in Orlando as well as many smaller cities, each time receiving a substantial discount over the best available rate. Do some research and I’m sure you’ll be a Priceline addict like myself.

Jon Deals, Travel

We went to a local italian place for lunch today. While waiting for our meal one of my coworkers told us how he went to the Olive Garden a bit further away and didn’t like it. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t like it but just didn’t. He then relayed how he knew someone who had worked there and they said that the pasta was the only thing fresh there everything else was frozen.

I can’t understand why people love to hate Olive Garden. Yes, like the DMV, they always have a long wait. But would a restaurant (which you certainly have a choice of) have a long wait if it wasn’t any good? I’ve been to Olive Garden many times and never had a bad meal. In fact, I frequently eat too much there because it is “that good.” Yes, the breadsticks do look manufactured, but they sure do taste good. And I certainly believe the rumors that the food comes frozen. But what is wrong with that? Many research grade chefs working on dishes and picking the best ones on a huge scale, is it any wonder they create some incredible food? It’s not like the chefs in Boston’s North End (Boston’s playground for italian food elitists) are growing their “fresh” ingredients out back, their ingredients are shipped in the same as Olive Garden. In fact I’m certain the research people at OG have a much better idea how to get fresh tasting food into their kitchen than the italian guy in the North End trying to recreate food from the subtropical italian countryside in snowy Boston.

I love the food at OG. It’s loaded with fresh garlic (well fresh tasting anyway, who knows if it actually is) and premium ingredients. The meats are always very tender and very good cuts. Some dishes have a wood fired oven taste to them which is amazing. The service at OG is always extremely good. Yes, frequently you end up with a long wait. On the flip side however, I’ve had reservations at North End restaurants and still had to wait 30 minutes for my “reserved” table. I’d rather have the convenience of arriving whenever I please if I am going to wait either way.

So what is the real reason why people hate the OG? I think it boils down to elitism. When a farmer in Iowa and a factory worker in Michigan can experience the same food, it spoils the experience for the elitist millionaire in Boston. If it’s more expensive and highly localized such that it’s only accessible to an elite few, it must be better right? Wrong if you ask me.

Jon Budget

Found a great article on Kiplinger’s today:  “We Have Met the Enemy“  Basically he says that if you are upset about the current economy, you only have yourself to blame.

“It’s a natural tendency to blame others for our misfortune. And it’s also human to demand of elected officials that they “do something about it.” And that’s what we Americans are doing.

We want Washington to lower the prices on gasoline and food and to enable our dollars to buy more on a trip to Europe. We want someone to fix the housing mess and make the value of our homes start to rise again.”

For once it’s good to see someone in the media place blame where blame is due, on the American people, instead of the evil oil companies, evil banks, or evil corn farmers.

Jon Economy

Recently I’ve been begun to detect alot of Jones envy from my fiancee. We have several friends that anything but careful when it comes to their spending. They always like to show off their newest toy. So my fiancee happened to be playing around with their Ipod and decided she had to have one.

I’ll admit in retrospect my approach to persuading her away from this purchase was wrong. I insisted her existing off brand mp3 player was just fine rather than help her investigate alternatives. There are currently many Ipod alternatives available from Sandisk, Creative, Microsoft, etc. many of which are praised for their innovative functionality. The Ipod by comparison is starting to become pretty long in the tooth. It’s been around along time by technology standards, nonetheless it is the Tiffany of high tech. So off she went to Circuit City and with the saleman’s help came home, not with the Nano she had been talking up, but with an 80GB Ipod Classic. So she’s using about 1.5G of a device with all the weight and durability disadvantages of spinning media. When I asked her what she planned to do with 80GB, she wasn’t quite sure… “Movies maybe?” I asked her, “What movies?” She really had no idea. Video codecs and conversion are really beyond her computer ability level.

Another time visiting friends they were showing off their fancy wine refrigerator. That became her new Jones item.

Her: “I want a wine fridge.”

Me: “What are you going do with that?”

Her: “Put my wine in it.”

Me “Putting a few $6 bottles of wine in a fridge is worth $200 + whatever it costs to run?”

As it turns out, running it for 2 weeks costs more than a bottle of wine. The thermo-electric coolers used in these Chinese made wine fridges are small and light but horribly inefficient. Most seem to use around 70Watts 24/7. That comes to about $105 a year with Massachusetts electric rates. I don’t think she was fully aware of the operating cost of such a device and has pretty much dropped the idea.

Now it’s back to the Ipod, this time for the accessories. Having an Ipod is not enough, you’ve got to show it off. Just like nobody keeps Tiffany’s jewelery in their pocket, your Ipod must be on display. “I want to be able to listen to my Ipod around the house without headphones, I want an Ipod speaker system.” Ugh… one of those crappy plastic things with 1 inch speakers that makes your Ipod sound about as good as a cell phone ringtone. I pull out a 3.5mm to RCA cable from my pile and explain that she can hook it up to the stereo and it will sound awesome. “No, that won’t work, I want it to charge it too.” So off to Ebay I go to find a piece of plastic that can both charge and provide audio out, and most likely hold the Ipod up in display position to show off to the friends… $12 later, I’ve got a device that does both but also adds a remote. It’s still in shipping but I don’t have any worries. It will make her happy and sound great.

Jon Budget, Money lessons

So I mentioned before in this post, that I have used restaurant.com to get some great deals. Well apparently for one day (8/8/08) only, they are offering their best deal ever: 80% off. The website is really slow, but I managed to get in my order for 2 local restaurants. A $25 one for $2 and a $10 one for $0.60. Not bad at all. If you have a Fatcash account over at Fatwallet, you can get some of that $2.60 back if you link through.

The coupon code is “FIRST”.

Enjoy!

Jon Deals

This weekend I visited Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT. They have been sending me $25 free bet coupons all summer and I have been wanting to take them up on the offer. Unfortunately the casino is 100 miles away from me, so even if I win the bet it doesn’t pay for gas. That’s why I was happy to find a local bus company that offers trips to the casino for $30. For your $30 you get a free buffet coupon ($18) and 3 $10 free bets on Wheel of Fortune or Sic Bo (Boggle as my friends like to call it). Basically you get your $30 returned to you, so it’s a free ride. They have similar deals on so-called “Chinatown” buses for $15 with the same gift at the casino but I’ve heard you get what you pay for with these… I wasn’t about to try the “Chinatown” bus by myself.

So I caught the bus at 8:00am about 1 mile from my house and arrived at the casino 2 hours later. The bus was not crowded, quiet, and the A/C worked great. They handed out the coupons as I got off the bus and off I went to use up the coupons. I looked all over for Wheel of Fortune and couldn’t find it. I asked at the Player’s Club booth where it was. The nice lady pointed me in the right direction but offered “Those coupons are also good for Sic Bo right over there, it’s alot of fun too.” Having never played Sic Bo, I went over to the empty table and asked the dealer for an explanation. “Choose one of these boxes to place your bet and it will light up if you win.” I responded, “OK which box is the even money 1:1 payout?” “The Big or the Small”, he responded. So I put the first coupon on big. “You win.” So I tried again on big. “You lose.” And one more try, “You lose.” 1 out of 3… Grrr… Stuck on the wrong side of my expected return of $14.58. In retrospect I am glad the lady sent me to Sic Bo as the house edge is lower than Wheel of Fortune (”Not even the Rain Man can beat the Wheel of Fortune”) but nonetheless I was a victim of probability and failed to get my expected return. Better luck next time.

So, off to the Blackjack table to use my $25 bet. I find an empty seat and place my bet. First card dealt to me, an ace, awesome. Second card… a f$%^*& five. Dealer’s card, a face. So I draw out to what ends up to be 20. Dealer turns over the hole card, another face. A push. The shoot runs out so I have to wait for a shuffle, grrr. This time I draw out to 19. Dealer ends up with another 20… Damn it.

So, off to the craps table to actually gamble some money instead of coupons. After an initial bad start, I’m up $150, and 3 hours (and many beers) later I cash out for a $175 gain. By this point I’m starved so, off to the buffet. I’m glad I didn’t pay $18 for it. The only really good things were the roast beef and creole seafood stew. So I ate lots of those and lots of dessert which was also good.

Then I’m off to 25cent video poker to kill some time. Desiring a bit more excitement than Jacks or Better(it’s no coincidence that the abbreviation is JoB), I opted for Double Double Bonus (DDB). It sucked $20 right out of me. I reluctantly put in another $20. Shortly thereafter hit a 4 of a kind, which brought me back to even for the second twenty. 2o or 30 hands later another four bagger. Alright now I’m back to even. I continue as I’ve still got half an hour before the bus is to leave. Sure enough another four bagger. I’m up a solid $20. I then go through another dry spell before cashing out for $42.50, up $2.50. Oh well. At least I recorded some decent cheapskate play to my comp card which should hopefully keep the coupons coming.

After all expenses I was up $155 and a free lunch, not a bad day.

Jon Deals, Travel