Money Blue Book

Whenever I see a predatory tow truck driver or a parking meter maid strolling by, I just want to roll down my window quickly and yell out - “Hey you! Go (*bleep*) yourself you (*bleep bleep*)!”

As you can tell, I am not too fond of tow truck drivers. My disdain also carries over to others in the parking profession, including but not limited to opportunistic car booters and sneaky meter maids who dart from car to car with their little hand held tri-corder gadgets, tucking tickets under windshield wipers and escaping before the driver comes back and catches them in the act. While these parking ticketers bug me somewhat, they don’t irritate me as much as tow truck drivers. Perhaps it’s because parking ticket fines are usually not as financially hefty or as personally offensive as getting your car manhandled and forcibly hauled away by a stranger. Most of the time, I see tow truck drivers as nothing but conniving, predatory, and opportunistic vultures who feast on the vulnerable and distracted plight of unsuspecting drivers.

Just Watching Others Get Their Cars Towed In Their Absence Irritates Me

A few years ago I lived near a shopping center located next to a major Metro subway station. Every morning as I walked to the station to take the train to work, I witnessed the daily spectacle of tow truck sharks preying on those who failed to notice the no parking warning signs for non patrons. At the start of every morning rush, like clockwork precision, several red tow trucks would park themselves in partially hidden locations throughout the shopping center parking lot, embed themselves among the other cars, and lie in wait for subway commuters to improperly park their cars and walk away. Oftentimes as I walked by their tow trucks, I could see the drivers eating their breakfast sandwiches behind the steering wheel as they waited. As soon as the commuters had walked out of sight and demonstrated that they weren’t parking their cars so they could shop at a plaza store, the tow trucks would take turns swooping in, jacking up each vehicle one by one, and speeding away with their precious cargo like a thief in the night - racking up an instant $150 towing fee for each car, plus an extra $25 per day service charge for the cost of daily impounding. What a lucrative but conniving racket.

The livelihood of tow truck drivers is based on their ability to successfully hide in the bushes with their getaway vehicles and lie in wait for hapless drivers to make a parking mistake or slip up. In their eyes, a breach is a breach - if you park past a certain white line, that means you’re going to get towed - there’s little mercy. When that happens, it’s almost a given that at least one tow truck vulture will pop out from the shadows and holler “Gotcha!” as he gleefully impounds your vehicle with cranes and hauls it away to the junkyard. I don’t really care much for their self righteous claims that they are simply doing their jobs. They purport to follow the law and abide by no parking signs, but the reality is that oftentimes these warnings signs are not always sufficiently clear, evident, or easily understandable. The whole towing business is absolutely ripe for unchecked, unaccountable, and abusive practices.

A&E’s Parking Wars Reality Television Show Tries To Humanize The Entertaining Lives Of Tow Truck Drivers, Car Booters, and Meter Maids - But They Still Come Off As Jerks, Albeit Funny Jerks

I guess the world of reality TV shows has finally come down to this - an entire show devoted to the people we all love to hate. Yes, they get yelled at, cursed at, bird flipped, and harassed, but apparently they have feelings too as well as stories to tell. The A&E Channel has released a not-so-new anymore show called Parking Wars that follows the daily working lives of parking meter maids, tow truck drivers, and grunts who make a living from slapping indestructible boots onto vehicle wheels. For those who’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to work on the seedy side of the parking business, this show does a good job of telling it like it is - through the daily lenses of the ticketers and the towers.

While the show infuses the parking meter maids and tow truck drivers with some personality and offers a glimpse into their gritty service with a smile lifestyle, they still come off as predatory and opportunistic hounds who howl with delight when they successfully snag and trap a potential victim - a person who probably was simply at the wrong spot at the wrong time. It’s clear these vultures get a kick from handing out tickets and I’m sure they feel a rush of superior adrenaline when they get to flex their powerful authority by taking away some one’s valuable vehicular possession. Street signs confusing or yellow no parking lines not easily apparent? Tough luck! Ticket and tow, and ask questions later - for they are the law. After all, what is the ordinary layperson going to do - spend thousands of hopeless dollars and file a lawsuit over a $200 towing charge or a $300 booted car fee?

In an episode of Parking Wars, the camera trailed one particular meter maid as she ducked behind a building corner and waited for the right opportunity to pounce - taking a few moments to bask in the inquisitive glory of the A&E camera crew. It was 3:55 p.m. on a weekday and she was waiting near a downtown city street that was close to rush hour time. According to warning signs, street parking was prohibited at the start of rush hour, designated at 4:00 p.m. The parking girl chatted away about how much of a rush she got from ticketing people and the excitement of giving them out. As soon as her watch ticked 4:00 p.m., she eagerly dashed out to begin her ticketing raid, working her way from one side of the street and down the row of parked cars that were now illegally parked on the street. In the distance the camera crew could see a few worried drivers run towards their vehicles, trying to beat the parking violation clock. Some successfully ducked into their vehicles and drove off before their cars were ticketed while others beat it only by a few minutes. One driver who received a ticket only a few seconds before he arrived back protested. However, the parking meter maid was unrelenting and refused to rescind tickets already written.

In one case we had two individuals who verbally protested their ticket concerns to the meter maid over a broken and easily missed no parking sign that was literally dangling upside down. However, their complaints fell on deaf ears as the quota driven ticketing attendant offered no sympathy. Those drivers who parked in the spot guarded by the upside down, broken sign perhaps had a very legitimate lack of proper notice defense. A reasonable driver would not have been able to read the signs as they may not have been readily apparent to a reasonable person. I recently experienced a similar parking ticket scenario. I received a small parking ticket in a neighborhood where there were no visible signs denoting the side street I was parked on as restricted parking. While there were signs elsewhere, there were none readily apparent where I had parked. Luckily I had my digital camera on me at the time, which I used to take photographs of my parked vehicle and the surrounding signs and street shots to prove my case. However, other people are not always as fortunate and most are at the authoritative whims and mercy of parking ticketers.

It’s A Rude And Dirty Job But Somebody Has To Do It… I Suppose

Yes they are financial predators that profit from the absent-mindedness of hapless drivers but I suppose they do serve a legitimate societal purpose. None of them are ever going to win a popularity contest but on some level I suppose they are just dutifully doing their job. After all, some do come to our rescue and save drivers who are stuck in a ditch or have a flat tire on the side of the road, and I’m sure some do a great job of clearing away road blockages and making our highways and local streets more passable. A tow truck did come to my rescue when I spun off the icy highway and into a ditch in upstate New York during one particularly bad winter storm last year. Occasionally, commendable credit is due.

But my biggest concern with the parking authority is that oftentimes, drivers are powerless to protect themselves against improper tows, unfair tickets, or even against scrape and scratch damages to our vehicles caused by improper and negligent towing techniques. Oftentimes it’s simply your word against theirs. I suppose the only real solution is to just stay out of their way if possible. Follow street signs to the letter, timely feed the meters, and don’t park in a spot if you have any doubts. That way, none of us will ever have to learn our parking lessons the hard way and find ourselves as entertaining sideshow victims on Parking Wars.

As gas and oil prices continue to push vigorously into higher unprecedented levels, my wallet lets out a single quivering tear drop. But when I find myself mired in the unmoving water boarding torture that is rush hour traffic - I end up rooting for higher gas prices so that financial natural selection can put a slowdown to the serious problem of traffic jams gone wild.

I hate living, visiting, or even driving near cities with bad traffic. Unfortunately I happen to live near a major metropolitan hub that Forbes Magazine views as the city with the worst overall traffic in the United States - Washington D.C. I was rather taken back when I read that since I had always assumed the smoggy Southern California city of Los Angeles claimed that title, but then the dubious distinction doesn’t exactly surprise me. The D.C. Beltway certainly deserves that title as the highway is always filled to the brim with honking drivers.

Why does the local suburban crawl population in our area keep expanding every year? It only adds to the ever growing traffic congestion problem in the region where I live and grew up. Just because the public schools in suburban Maryland and Virginia are some of the best in the nation and the federal government places the vast majority of its jobs in the city doesn’t mean everyone have to move here. Why not move to say - neighboring West Virginia or the Appalachian area of Southern Virginia? I hear they have plenty of empty space and farm land that can use some occupying. But in all seriousness, the traffic in our nation’s capital is utterly insane and spiraling out of control. It is absolutely abnormal and I refuse to accept this dysfunctional bumper to bumper driving as the price of living in a popular metro region.

The American Love For Driving Is Getting Out Of Control And Needs To Be Reigned In

I have friends who spend hours and hours in traffic everyday and see the routine as perfectly normal - they’re simply used to it. When I ask them how they deal with the emotional agony, and wear and tear to their vehicles caused by repetitive stop and go traffic every morning and afternoon, they simply shrug and say they’re used to it. Most seem to have accepted this lot in life as simply part of the personal daily sacrifice needed to live in a city that offers great schools, great malls, great culture, and great jobs. Unfortunately I’m not as accepting of this plight as they are. Perhaps it’s because I’m a life-long public transportation commuter. Since college, I’ve only commuted by car to work a few times before. The vast majority of the time I take public transportation through the D.C. Metro - our underground subway train system. D.C. Metro is very convenient and reaches most of the major employment centers in the city. Fare prices are reasonable and the subway cars are generally well maintained. However, many people simply refuse to give up driving.

It’s truly a national obsession - Americans are infatuated and in love with their cars. Most refuse to give up their love of driving and insist on clogging up the highways with their one occupant vehicles every morning. They insist on being able to enjoy the convenience of commuting to work on their own and see driving their cars as the ultimate liberating American experience. But how liberating is it really when you are stuck in rush hour traffic for a 2 and a half hour commute each way for a total of 5 hours, when the total back and forth commute should have taken only an hour?

Back when I was a child (I sound like an old guy - but I’m only in my late 20’s), my family only owned a single car - a compact red Toyota Corolla, for a family of 4 people. It was occasionally inconvenient to share just one vehicle, but we managed well and relied primarily on public subway transportation. Nowadays, families have multiple cars and even children are now getting their own. With the hyper-consumerism mentality of today’s younger generation, it’s almost expected that each teen gets to have his or her own ride to drive around in. In some households, the number of vehicles, motorcycles, sport utility vehicles (SUV)’s, trucks, and recreation vehicles even dwarfs the number of individuals that make up the household as people nowadays own accessory vehicles such as fancy sports cars for special driving occasions. Eventually, all of these vehicles end up on the highways at the same time - stretching road handling capacity to the breaking point.

Yesterday I needed to run some errands during the day in an area inaccessible by subway so I decided to take my car - bad mistake. I hopped into my car and proceeded to my destination. On my way back home, I didn’t realize it was afternoon rush hour until it was too late. By the time I had winded onto the 495 Beltway there was no turning back - the die had been cast and I had become a member of the afternoon herd. I was only a mere 15 miles from home, but my slow chug through heavy rush hour traffic took 2 hours. The constant tapping of the break pedal was frustrating to no end.

Thankfully, High Gas Prices Will Help Control The Number Of Future Cars On The Road And Thin Out Rampant Traffic Jams

That’s why even with today’s spiraling and increasing gas prices at the pump, there’s a silver lining. With higher oil and gas prices will inevitably come a shift and change in American driving habits. The higher cost of driving will force many to think twice about storming onto the roads, and force solitary drivers who commute every day to work by themselves to buddy up and join a car pool. For those who absolutely must commute by themselves, this will require them to re-evaluate about where they need to go and plan ahead to maximize their gas usage. Higher gas prices will help eliminate traffic congestion and allow those who really need to drive to have a better and more efficient transportation experience. Yes it will financially affect me as well, but the price to pay will be worth the greatly improved driving experience.

In most major national and international metropolitan areas such as New York City, Tokyo, and in most densely populated Asian and European cities, city inhabitants have adapted well to a public transportation lifestyle. Many who live in traffic clogged cities don’t even own cars and get around fine on foot or via public subway trains and buses. There really is no reason why we must all be driving around huge clunking vehicles when a smaller vehicle option would do just as well. I’m looking forward to the day when higher gas prices eliminate most of the hulking SUV’s from the road and replace them with tiny two-man cars or even personal Segway scooters.

Of course, for such major driving and oil consumption habits to change, gas prices would have to increase and surge even more - double or triple from their current levels to maybe $8.00 or $10.00 a gallon. I’m sorry car lovers and driving enthusiasts - but I’m secretly rooting against the development of alternative fuels and the adoption of electricity, hydrogen, and ethanol powered cars. All they’ll do is make it cheaper to drive and substantially increase the number of drivers already on the road. In the alternative, if cheaper fuels are developed, I’m all in favor of some type of driving tax or federal traffic toll. Something needs to be done to reduce the number of cars overflowing our roads, choking up our infrastructure, and creating perpetual bottlenecks.

These days I’ve been working from home and enjoying time off from my full time contract legal gig. On some level I miss the daily human interactions and the regular social associations offered by traditional lines of work, but I don’t miss the early morning mandatory work schedules or the need to kiss a supervisor’s butt cheeks for the sake of getting on his or her good graces for promotion purposes or to ensure a steady stream of future work opportunities. The inevitable downside of working as someone else’s employee has always been that you are funneling your own efforts and personal abilities to help someone else grow their business and make them wealthier. In exchange for your services, you are usually offered a set salary or in my case, an unpredictable but very decent wage rate, as well as the occasional health benefit package and transportation related fringe benefits. However, the fact remains that as long as you continue to work for someone else, you never truly own the fruits of your own labor - and I think it’s important to own your own fruits.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned to incorporate blogging and online websites such as my personal finance and frugality blog and a few other attorney based blogs (I prefer not to reveal them here) into my tentative business goal of one day truly working for myself and ending the cycle of exchanging hours for money. While my online sites are certainly growing rapidly and exceeding my own expectations, since none of my non-traditional income streams have yet to fully develop and mature, I still have to rely on traditional employment means to support myself. Thus as much as I’d like to, I still cannot abandon my day job entirely. However, that doesn’t mean I must walk the age-old career oriented path that most people resort to following. With my college and law school degree already in hand, rather than working the law firm path, I’ve chosen to tap into my entrepreneurial spirit and work temporary positions to fund the growth of my home based businesses.

Unless Your Day Time Job Is Working As A Full Time Computer Guy Or Computer Gal, Finding Extra Time To Work On Your Online Side Ventures Is Difficult

While some personal finance and online commentators seem able to juggle their personal full time jobs with their blogging business duties, I’ve found that certain jobs are particularly difficult to juggle, particularly if you are walking the career oriented path. In my case, working as a full time practicing attorney would leave little time left for business blogging projects on the side. The hourly and work pressures (of office hours and take home assignments) would simply be too demanding. It’s certainly not a coincidence that the vast majority of online bloggers, and particularly personal finance bloggers tend to be predominantly computer network administrators, software engineers, or computer programmers - individuals with continuous access to computers and ample blogging time throughout the day while on the job. Unfortunately, most employees of other professions don’t have this same flexibility and luxury of ready-access to the computer that the computer techies have. That’s why for those individuals working in the legal, education, or even health care field, working full time jobs on a contractual, short term basis may be the only manageable way to generate livable income, but still have the vacant time to develop a side business that stands a chance to grow into a viable income replacement project one day.

Working A Temp Job Makes Devoting Time To Developing Home Based Businesses Possible

Since working as a full time temp worker in the contract attorney field, I’ve noticed that the working lifestyle, the flexible hours, and the non-stressful schedule of the temping profession absolutely compliments and suits individuals like me who want the ample time after work to devote to side projects. The fact of the matter is that blogging and working as a contract employee on a temporary, non permanent basis actually go quite well together. Trying to build several online and real life businesses takes substantial amounts of extra curricular time - the type of extra time outside of one’s job that those not in the computer field are usually unable to set aside. At the same time, it is not that I want to end up temping for the rest of my life, but I see it as a currently necessary and convenient way to support myself temporarily while building up the core of my side businesses while I am still relatively young in the grand scheme of things.

For those looking to build passive income streams through creating an online website business or running a self employment operation, you may want to give short term and long term temping some serious consideration. I know many would argue that that there is no future in performing temporary work, but personally, I see the same bleakness in permanent jobs that purport to offer job stability, and professional growth prospects. I have seen too many of my friends and acquaintances get badly burned in their professional careers and family life due to complete and over-reliance on their employer’s good graces and whims.

Plus, with self employment and having your own home business, there are a wealth of self employment tax deductions and tax deferred investment options at your disposal - not available to full time employees working for someone else. A few of them include the option to deduct the home office part of your home rental used in the regular course of your trade or business, as well as the ability to capitalize and reduce your taxable income of the portion pertaining to business assets, such as the cost of a business laptop notebook computer. I will discuss the wide variety of self employment tax deductions and financial benefits in a future post.

I just made the most wonderful discovery a few days ago. Well it was wonderful in my eyes at least. I sleep pretty late these days so I decided to take a stroll downstairs to the condominium lobby. I currently rent a unit in a medium size condo complex. We have a small cozy lobby area with a front management room that doubles as a sales office. However, now that most of the condo units have already been sold, the small lobby is now more of a reception room for guests. Since I almost always enter the building from a side gated entrance, I rarely pass through the main lobby. But on this particular day I decided to visit the lobby for no particular reason other than to have some place to walk to. When I got there I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before. Our building apparently stocks a free complimentary automatic Flavia coffee and tea maker for guests and residents to use! I’m sure some readers are rolling their eyes going “oh brother” at my almost whimsical fascination with my “treasure find”, but it’s a big deal for me. While Flavia coffee machines don’t exactly produce gourmet, five-star cups of coffee or tea, they do a decent job of churning out fairly acceptable drinks. They are also extremely convenient. Like most of the dispenser pod-based machines out there, Flavia coffee and tea makers utilize pre-made coffee and tea packets to brew the drink. You simply select select the drink you want by picking out the packet of your choice from among a set selection. Then you pop the packet into the machine and the maker instantly brews your drink in a few seconds. Piece of cake!

Free Complimentary Coffee and Tea Machine Stations Offer Not Only Convenience, But Also Help Me Save Lots Of Money

But it’s not just the convenience of having such a handy free machine at my disposal. Most importantly it’s the potential cost savings from here on out from not having to buy my own coffee and tea products anymore. I regard coffee and tea as the type of recurring expenses that play a slow but debilitating role at chipping away one’s paycheck savings. I lump them into the same common daily expenses that should be done away with to promote better money saving habits - other similar types of useless expenses include cigarettes for some, and lottery tickets for others. Sure they help sooth the senses and serve as mental relaxers and momentary fun for some people, but they really hurt your pocketbook and wallet in the long run. These small but cumulative expenses really add up over time - into the thousands of dollars per year even. If you were to drink just one paid coffee per day at $3 a day, that’s already $1,095 a year - and in fact, many people consume more than just one cup daily.

That’s why my discovery of a free complimentary coffee and tea machine in the convenience of my own apartment complex is so wonderful. Some might point out that the machine is being paid for by the condo fees exacted from condo owners, and that the rent I currently shell out to my unit owner is indirectly subsidizing the cost of the machine and the replacement coffee and tea packets, but I still consider it a great bonus. Now that I’m aware of its existence, I plan to maximize this benefit to its full potential. So long as the service is available to me, I plan to transfer the expense of my occasional coffee and green tea drinking habits to this free machine. Instead of continuing to buy the occasional Starbucks or Caribou coffee, or continuing to purchase my own green tea bags from the local Asian grocery store, I plan to save money by consuming drinks made by this complimentary machine exclusively. In some strange way it reminds me of that old TV show, “Married With Children” and how Al Bundy and his wacky family would completely raid the free cheese sample trays whenever they visited the local supermarket. But hey, if it’s free and it’s available to residents and guests alike, why not fully take advantage of it? I saw plenty of empty cups in the trash can so people are obviously using the machine so it might as well be me as well.

Drinking Green Tea Is A Healthy Habit - Drinking Free Green Tea Is Even Better

Besides, this will help promote more green tea drinking, similar to the bottled water drinking habit I’ve picked up for health purposes. From what I’ve read and heard, green tea is a very healthy product to consume on a regular basis. It’s uniquely rich in powerful antioxidants that not only inhibit the development of cancer cells, but are also effective in lowering bad cholesterol levels and help inhibit the development of abnormal blot clots that lead to heart attacks. Since my Flavia machine discovery, I now visit the 24 hour unmanned lobby to grab a cup of free green tea after every home meal. I feel great health-wise, and so does my wallet! If you’re not convinced, maybe this will.

On a side note, this isn’t my first encounter with free Flavia coffee and tea machines. In my line of contract legal work I frequently move around and work at different office locations. Many of these law offices offer a variety of complimentary coffee and tea machine services. Sometimes the machine is Flavia and sometimes it’s a Keurig machine. They pretty much all operate the same way - requiring the deposit of a little coffee or tea pod to create your drink. They all taste about average compared to barista brewed drinks at Starbucks, but the free price tag usually makes up for any loss of taste (I guess I’m not a very picky coffee or tea drinker). Some of the bigger law firms and business offices even stock large automated Starbucks coffee machines that actually grind real coffee beans. They really make a nice consistent cup of vacuum perfected ground coffee. You can bet your money that I fully took advantage of those easy-to-use coffee machines when I was working at locations that offered those services for free. I was drinking to my health and my pocketbook.