Money Blue Book

Even though I’m not really a big time shopper, I seem to be writing a lot of a shopping related entries recently. I’ve been bitten by the holiday bug and now I have presents and dollar signs floating in my mind.

What Recession? Shoppers Are Still Out In Force

Although the economy is cooling due to mortgage problems and high oil prices, it seems like this year’s Black Friday kickoff has gone quite well. Retailers are reporting much higher shopper turnout than years past and all that remains to be seen now is whether this red hot pace can be sustained. After stripping stores clean of all Black Friday sales items, shoppers are now turning to the internet to smoke out the remaining bargains – and there are lots of them. Many will turn to the internet now to shop online and take part in the Cyber Monday extravaganza. I generally do the bulk of my shopping on the web so I’ll definitely be joining in on the online festivities. There are so many online deals going on right now!

I’ve Done Well Financially So I Plan to Share Some Wealth

Last year was hard because financially I was struggling big time. Credit cards kept me afloat and my job was in major transition. Although I’m still not precisely where I want to be financially, I’m in much better shape this year. I think I echo the same Black Friday consumer optimism that many have despite the nation’s current economic condition. So I probably won’t be cutting back too much on my holiday spending this year and will be looking to be more generous with my holiday budget. My investment portfolio has been hit very hard recently but I have been able to maintain an optimistic long term outlook and have faith that things will get brighter when the market rebounds in the coming months.

Frugality is a good mentality to have, but during the holidays I prefer to be more open with my wallet. After all, money is only a means to an end. I enjoy finding ways to make and save money, but what good is it if you never put it to good use? I’ll have the rest of the year to live frugally and save but during the holiday season I prefer to be extra generous. Of course I’m still going to make sure I abide by my usual online shopping rules of looking for bargains, discount codes, and cash rebate opportunities.

Now I Have To Decide When To Shop and What To Buy

Like many people, I’ve been secretly doing some light holiday shopping at work this Cyber Monday morning. I’ve had to keep it somewhat discrete because I know my supervisors probably would prefer that we not do it during working hours but luckily I know they don’t track our online usage. For everyone else, I’d recommend using discretion since many companies frequently track the sites that employees surf on. Big brother might be watching so be aware!

It’s always interesting to see what everyone else is buying and what’s hot this year. Take a look at the most popular product searches on Yahoo right now in the graphic I obtained from CNN on the left. It’s not surprising to see popular gadgets like the Nintendo Wii, Apple iPods, and GPS navigations systems represented, but I was surprised to see tires listed as well. Can you imagine receiving a set of new tires for Christmas? Even for car fanatics, that must be a weird present to receive. Would you wrap and slap a bowtie on it to make it more presentable? Gee honey, thanks for the lovely romantic tires – it’s what I’ve always wanted!

Since my parents and a few of my friends and relatives live overseas, I’m always on the hunt for ways to make cheap international phone calls. Domestic calls are never a problem because I just use my cell phone minutes where long distance charges are already included.

I’ve looked at the international phone rates of traditional land line carriers but none can compare to the cheaper prices offered by online voice over internet protocol (VOIP) services like Skype.

It Was Good While It Lasted

I’ve tried many different programs over the years. Some have been absolutely wonderful but sadly many ultimately went out of business due to unsustainable business models. One of my past favorites was FreeCalls365, which allowed users to call landline phones using their PC’s. They made money from ads that were displayed on their dialer program while you talked. They’ve since gone out of business.

A few other dearly departed programs include AllFreeCalls and Yak4Ever. These two companies were closely related and started out as AllFreeCalls before it shut down and later resurrected by a new operator as Yak4Ever. Both companies exploited the same Iowa state telephone law that allowed them to provide free international phone calls to users. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) kickback scheme they utilized was based on the FCC’s own requirement that large telecommunication companies pay part of the fees incurred by rural telephone providers. By partnering with local phone companies in Iowa, AllFreeCalls and Yak4Ever were able to take advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to keep a portion of the fees generated from every inbound call to an Iowa number as kickback. All users had to do was dial a local Iowa/Minnesota number, enter the international phone number they wanted to reach, and they would get instant free calls.

Eventually the scheme failed due to pressure from the big telecommunication companies which simply stopped paying the fees altogether due to their refusal to subsidize non-Iowans for calls that were mostly routed out of state. Their refusal to pay and the FCC’s seeming reluctance to enforce payment ultimately caused the ruse to collapse, thus ending their run.

How I Make Free International Phone Calls Via The Internet Now

All the juicy free calling services are mostly gone now, but I’m still on the continued lookout for free, cheap, and more versatile ways to make free phone calls overseas. Currently I use Skype’s application, but unfortunately I am not able to make international calls to a traditional phone through Skype for free. Computer to computer calling is free via Skype, but computer to landline phone calls still cost money, although Skype’s international calling rates are impressively low. My parents use SkypeOut for cheap computer to phone calling and they tell me that they easily pay less than half of what they’d normally pay with a regular landline phone plan. Voice quality is nearly the same quality as that of a regular phone conversation as well.

Whenever my parents and I want to talk for extended periods of time, they call my cell phone using a regular phone and signal me to get onto Skype. Once we respectively log into Skype via our computers, we can talk for as long as we want. It’s not as convenient as phone to phone calling, but it’s absolutely free and saves us a lot of money on international phone calls.

The Internal Revenue Service is at it again – trying to steal our hard earned dollars. Just kidding. This time it’s not really the IRS, but someone trying to masquerade as them. Recently I’ve been receiving spoofed emails from someone trying to impersonate the IRS to solicit confidential financial information from me. Screenshot of the Scammer’s E-Mail Message – looks real doesn’t it? But it’s a fake.

Spoofing and Phishing

Spoofed e-mails are forged messages where the e-mail header is altered to appear to have come from someone else other than the true source. Many of these spoofed e-mails come from scammers who send these messages out on a massive scale to unwitting recipients to try to get people to respond to them. Spoofed emails are frequently disguised to be from places of authority such as government agencies or banks, usually asking for sensitive and confidential data such as name, login, password, credit card numbers, and social security information. This disguised request for sensitive data is known as phishing and is a frequently used tactic by scammers to fish for and steal confidential information. Be careful, once confidential financial data has been harvested, the stolen information is usually used for criminal purposes.

I’ve seen so many of these types of spoofed e-mails from scammers over the years, mostly disguised to be from well known banks like Wells Fargo, Citibank, Sun Trust, and other major online sites like PayPal, eBay, and now the Internal Revenue Service. Through the untrained eye, it might be easy to fall for these types of spoofed phishing attempts but if you know what to look out for, you’ll be better prepared to distinguish faked messages from legitimate e-mails.

Things to Know and To Look Out For:

1. First of all, be aware that they exist and that more likely than not you will receive them at some point or another, particularly if you ever give out your e-mail address for any online service.
2. Keep in mind that most legitimate companies will rarely solicit confidential data from you directly. In fact, most banks and credit card companies routinely remind customers that they will never ask them to send personal or financial information by, or in response to, via a link in an e-mail.
3. Know the type of sensitive personal and financial information that scammers attempt to phish for – passwords, pins, credit card validation codes (the three digit number on the back of your card), debit or credit card numbers, bank account information, and social security numbers. Always safeguard this information closely.
4. When you do receive a seemingly legitimate email that asks for you to click on a link or if it asks for any personal information, ask yourself, was the e-mail solicited or not? If it was not requested by you, chances are it may be a spoofed email from a scammer.
5. Avoid clicking on links from unsolicited e-mails altogether. The safest and most trusted way to visit a website is to go directly there by typing it into your web browser and bookmarking it.
6. If you do want to click on a link contained in an email message, check out the link’s website address (URL) before proceeding further. Does the revealed website address match the company’s true domain name? In the case of the email that I received, the address was listed with the number zero for the letter “O” in “IRS.GOV”, a red flag indicator that the e-mail was originating from a spoofed domain.
7. Scammers are lousy spellers as many of them are located in scam and fraud friendly countries such as Nigeria, Romania, and Indonesia. The scammers from these countries tend to have either horrendous English language skills or have a tendency to unnecessarily overuse big words in their writing. If there is even a single spelling or grammatical mistake, your antennae should go up immediately and put you on alert.

During graduate school I roomed with a medical student, who’s still a good friend of mine. Although he and all of his medical friends studied hard, they also partied hard – very hard. They were quite the rowdy bunch. Together with his medical and dental friends from other neighboring prestigious schools, they consumed alcohol and other things like you wouldn’t believe. Although I could probably go on for days about the many weird things that happened in our apartment, the thing I wanted to talk about was one of the things he used to do for money (no he wasn’t a drug dealer, if that’s what you’re thinking).

Make Money By Being a Human Guinea Pig

What my roommate used to do was answer advertisements in the newspaper or respond to requests through his medical school for open call patients who were interested in participating as subjects in scientific studies. The scientific studies he submitted himself for were for substance abuse related clinical research projects. His qualification for the studies involved his chronic prior and current usage of alcohol and illicit substances (party drug variety). The studies were always confidential and he was paid quite handsomely for his time. I think he agreed to be a paid guinea pig because he needed the extra money for further boozing.

Frequently this involved him showing up at the research center for a few hours at a time and allowing the researchers to put him through a series of mental and physical tests. Now you might be thinking, easy money – how hard could it be? But everytime he came back from those experiments, he was very groggy and disoriented, having been required to ingest some type of experimental drug and then complete a gaming test on the computer to assess his mental faculties. The pay was reportedly very good at a few hundred dollars for a few sessions, but I think the tests eventually took a toll on him. He was never in any danger or pain but it simply consumed too much of his medical school studying time. Every time he came back home he had to spend the rest of the entire day recuperating from his experience at the lab. Studying or performing any type of strenuous activity was out of the question due to his non-permanent but extended dreamlike state. However, by voluntarily submitting himself to experimentation by researchers and allowing himself to be poked and prodded like a common laboratory guinea pig, he managed to earn some extra spending cash and make some money on the side.

I guess I’m not really suggesting that anyone go out and subject themselves to experiments like this to earn a few bucks, but some people donate sperm and others donate eggs, so I just wanted to throw this one out there as an interesting insight into what some people do for extra spending money.