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The best way to get rid of debt is to pay it off. The best way I’ve found to pay it off faster is to round up your payments to a nice number. In my case, I round to the next hundreds place, but you could round to the next tens place or thousands place, depending on your situation.

To see the effects of paying more than the minimum amount each month, try the loan acceleration calculator, which I added to this site this past weekend.

“Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.”
– Matthew 5:41

Recent news articles have mentioned that recent stock prices have been volatile. Or you’ll hear about the stock market’s being volatile. I always understood that to mean that the prices changed rapidly.

One example of that is Virgin Mobile (ticker symbol VM). I bought that stock upon a recommendation from a previously reliable person. I bought at $5.something on 3/27/08 and the stock is now at $2.13 (4/3/08) . Now that I have owned VM, I recall hearing my high school chemistry teacher tell me that volatile means “evaporates readily.” And that is a fitting description of my VM stock.

“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”
– James 4:14

Recent news reports mentioned that no college seniors are on the all-American team for basketball. This highlights the existing trend of players leaving college early to go to the NBA. The NBA no longer accepts athletes right out of high school, so they have to put in at least some time in college. But those who are good enough to play in the NBA go there as soon as they can.

This means that the seniors who are left on the roster are not good enough for the all-American team. I get the feeling that this could mess up the leadership position of captain. What if all the leadership has left the college team for the NBA? With only youngsters who are looking to the NBA, how is a team going to work as a team?

If you want to play sports and graduate, basketball is the worst option. If you don’t even make it to your senior year, how are you going to graduate?  All other major sports (18 of them) have better graduation rates. The fact that basketball players have the smallest chance of going pro, compared to other sports, only compounds the problem. If you want to compete in college athletics and are deciding between basketball and something else, choose something else.

“Wisdom is with aged men, {With} long life is understanding.”
– Job 12:12

I was having problems viewing certain websites in Firefox. They were pages I viewed often, so it was very annoying that the sites would not work. They would appear to ignore any CSS. I could still use the web pages because the HTML was there, but the pages were less effective than usual. Opera displayed the pages correctly, so I knew that the page source itself was fine.

After days of searching, I finally found the solution: force a full reload. Read the MozillaZine article about it, and look for the text about “Bypass the cache and reload the current page, by holding down the Shift key as you click the “Reload” button on the toolbar.”

I was almost amazed that it was that simple. I figured something had happened with the recent upgrade that Firefox had downloaded for itself. But it made sense, somewhat. Only the most-used pages looked bad because Firefox was using the cache for the style sheets. Most other pages did not have the CSS in my Firefox cache already, so it had to download a fresh copy.

I received a notice from an organization that I could save some money on car insurance. What I liked best was that the letter was personalized, just for me!

I have included an image of the entire front of the letter, and then I have highlighted the personalized part.

For those who can’t see the image, it says “Mr. Sample… you could save $346 a year or more on auto insurance”. However, I am not Mr. Sample; that is not my name.

“A {good} name is to be more desired than great wealth, Favor is better than silver and gold”
– Proverbs 22:1

The Health Savings Plans (HSAs) that have recently become popular (because they only recently were passed into law) do have some problems. Maybe not problems…more like things that steepen the learning curve. These are some differences from the traditional HMO/PPO that people should know.

The plan (or insurance company or provider or etc.) does not pay for anything anymore. You pay. Under traditional plans, you would have some medical treatment or pick up a prescription and pay either nothing or a small co-pay. The medical service provider would then bill the insurance company who would then pay it. The insurance company may or may not have let you know what the cost was, and you may or may not have had to pay a portion of it.

Now, with an HSA, the medical service provider bills the insurance company, which tells the service provider to bill you for the service. You get a bill for the full amount and are responsible to send them a check or use your HSA-provided debit card to pay for items that need to be paid at time of service. All the insurance company does is track your expenses and negotiate lower rates for you. After a certain point though (“the bridge”), the insurance company does start acting more like a traditional insurance company.

Before, with a traditional plan, if it said that you had coverage, you had that coverage from day one. Now, with an HSA, you have coverage but the money in your plan is not there right away. For example, if your company’s plan states that you will have $1600 of coverage from your pre-tax contributions for the year, you do not get $1600 at the start of the year. The company can divide it and give you only $400 per quarter.

I think that is the real draw for company’s to push HSAs for their employees – it helps manage their cash flow. If employees have significant health-care charges early in the year, now the employee is responsible for the difference. You have $750 of medical expenses but only $400 in the account, then you pay the extra $350 out of your pocket. You can reimburse yourself from the account once it gets the next installment, such as the next quarter. But the employee is now handling the float. The company’s cash flow is more even and the burden of what is effectively a small loan is passed to the employee.

“if he does not lend {money} on interest or take increase, {if} he keeps his hand from iniquity {and} executes true justice between man and man, {if} he walks in My statutes and My ordinances so as to deal faithfully– he is righteous {and} will surely live,” declares the Lord GOD.”
– Ezekiel 18:8-9

A mom near Chicago was charged with child endangerment for not leaving the child out of her sight. Thankfully, charges have been dropped. Still, she should never have been arrested. The Crestwood police department seems to have shot first and asked questions later.

Leaving a sleeping 2-year-old in a car instead of taking her into sleet is reasonable. Staying within 30 feet (and sight) of the car adds to the reasonableness. Locking the car also helps. What exactly was the danger? Where was the abuse? What has caused more harm to the family and therefore to the child – being left in a car for a couple of minutes or having the mother arrested and taken away from not only that child but also the others? Which is in the best interest of the child – having the mother nearby while sleeping peacefully or having the mother go to court and being subjected to a bunch of scrutiny and stress?

Treffly Coyne’s actions did not warrant such a harsh treatment from the community service officer – such micro-managing of parents for something that is not a problem. The state of Illinois is providing training for people who are expected to report child abuse. You are to notify DCFS when you notice that someone has “put the child at risk of physical injury”. That law must be read to include the word “reasonable” in front of “risk”, otherwise, no one could do anything with his children. What is more likely to cause physical injury – sitting in a locked car or driving down the 2-lane road to get to the parking lot? Simply putting the child in the car and driving somewhere causes the child to be at risk of physical injury. You wouldn’t expect all parents to stop driving, would you? You couldn’t even take your kids to Cedar Point.

The problem is that “reasonable” is subjective. And subjective laws are open to misinterpretation and differences of opinion. I’m sure a jury full of parents would have found her innocent if the case had gone to trial, but I am glad the prosecutors dropped all charges.

And as for the other children, the ones that are old enough to remember this event, the ones that were left standing in the sleet while their mother was being arrested, what effect did this have on them? Was being left in the cold, wet winter in their best interest? Will they ever trust a police officer again? “Find a police officer if you are in trouble. He is there to help you.” They won’t believe that for a while.

Yes, the community service officer was doing an officer’s job. In the light of recent tragedies involving children in cars, the officer should have investigated. If you see a child locked in a car, check to see if a parent is around. But the key word is investigate, not prosecute. If there is no imminent danger (child is warm, breathing, etc.) then let the family life continue as it was. Do some more investigating in the background if necessary, then bring charges if something is apparent. But don’t interrupt the family life first in order to protect the child from nothing.