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June 19, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! My Favorite Posts this Week
Blog Carnivals that Included BFS
Thanks! I truly appreciate all the time you spent on this process. It’s a great feeling to be chosen!
Carnival hosts, if BFS is in a blog carnival that you are running, please email me the link so it can be added to this weekly list. Thanks!
Guest Posts on BFS
None this week, but if you would like to submit a guest post to BFS, please shoot me an idea or the actual post. I’d also appreciate a one or two sentence introduction for the piece. I’ll get back to you quickly and will give you as much advance notice as possible on its posting date.
Other Info
Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as I am!
June 18, 2010, at 6:00 am
I know, I know…some of you saw the title and cringed. BUT, karaoke is a ton of fun!
Whether you are the one singing or not, just being in a karaoke club will make you smile. If you can sing, you can be a star. If you can’t, you can either be the center of attention anyway or sit back and enjoy the show like me.
Watching my fellow denizens trying so hard to mimic country-western stars or even rappers is always worth a laugh. Butchered songs are actually a lot of fun unless the singer seems embarrassed. I always cringe on the inside for somebody who is insecure and sincerely clap the loudest when they’re done since it takes guts to get up there.
Every once in a while a truly talented person takes the stage and takes my breath away. Great music is joyous. It can make a bad day fade away. Getting lost in the beat and words of a great song is some of the best therapy around. Those few minutes with a talented singer onstage will get you hooked.
I haven’t personally stepped up yet, but I will. As soon as I know a song well enough to feel like I won’t butcher it, I’ll get up there. I do not remember lyrics well or pay attention to the details like I should, so it just may be a while…
Do you karaoke? Are you more of a singer or an audience member? What’s your favorite karaoke song? I need some ideas, lol.
June 17, 2010, at 6:00 am
I mentioned a while back that Fedex was on my Crappy Company list and that I’d explain why later. Now that the whole situation is resolved and I’m not as angry as I was before, I thought it would be fun to fill you in.
The Item
In early April my in-laws asked if I could find a specific porcelain statue for them on Ebay. They do not have their own Ebay account and I had done this for them before a few times, so I found the statue they requested and made our bid. We won the statue and I paid $848 on April 13.
The Delivery Hassles
On April 20, we received a Fedex door tag that said that we weren’t home and they would try again tomorrow. I called to explain that we work until 5pm. The rep said that since it was Fedex Ground, we couldn’t schedule a delivery time but we could have the package re-routed. I agreed and gave them my work address. After typing all of that into the ticket, the rep paused and then simply said that my address wouldn’t work since my name wasn’t the one on the package – my husband was the listed recipient. I asked if I could provide my driver’s license to verify the same address, but she said no. I had to call back with my husband’s work address.
The next day, April 21, we had another door tag on our house. I called and asked why the package wasn’t re-routed to my husband and they said that a signature-required package couldn’t be re-routed at all. I asked why I had spent 45 minutes on the phone the day before if it wasn’t possible. I was then placed on hold. When the guy finally came back, he apologized that I was misinformed and said they’d stick to their word and re-route the package to my husband.
The Return Hassles
My husband received the statue the next day, April 22, and dropped it off at his parent’s house on his way home. When his parents opened it, the statue was missing part of its head and hand…they were shattered. I emailed the Ebay seller and he responded that he’d get the claim number from Fedex since it was insured and I’d need that number to have it shipped back.
I finally received that claim number on April 26 and called Fedex to have the package picked up. The guy on the other end of the phone walked me through all the info they needed including my in-laws address and then asked me how we were going to pay for the pickup! I asked why we’d need to pay since the package was insured and they told the seller that they’d pick it up. He responded that all pickups required payment. I asked what our free option would be and he gave me an address close to my in-laws home.
On April 27 my in-laws took the package to the address we were given and were told that the Fedex Express office could not take a Fedex Ground package. My mother in-law asked why the rep gave us this address and she responded that she didn’t know. She then pointed to a phone on the wall and told my MIL to call and ask. After talking to another guy, my MIL was told that the package would have been picked up for free and asked why we didn’t do that!!! She told them what I was told and they apologized and arranged a pick up time.
The package was finally picked up on April 28 and Fedex still had not refunded the seller’s money when I inquired about it on April 29, May 3, and May 4. Ebay refunded my $848 on May 18 after the seller refused for several weeks - he wanted to wait for his reimbursement even though he still had my cash in his Paypal account.
The Result
To summarize, I ordered this stupid statue on April 13 and didn’t receive my refund until May 18. I spent at least 2 hours on the phone with Fedex and another hour on the phone with Ebay. All of this could have been avoided if Fedex had paid attention to the box that said “This Side Up” or even if they had given a refund faster. They “misinformed” me about package re-routing policy, the package pickup policy, and even the address for the location they wanted us to go to instead!
As I do when I am super unhappy about an experience, I filed complaints with Fedex, the Better Business Bureau, and Consumer Affairs. My Fedex complaint came back with a form letter apology email. My BBB complaint got published. Last Friday, I received an official letter of apology from Fedex saying that they saw my BBB complaint and they enclosed a $100 American Express Gift Check for my inconvenience! When I first wrote this post, I couldn’t imagine anything they could do to make me happy, but a $100 gift check seemed to fit the bill! I’m still not sure if I’ll ever use them intentionally again, but it was a much better resolution than I was expecting.
Have you had any super fun dealings with Fedex? Would you like to vent too? Did you come to a satisfactory resolution?
June 16, 2010, at 6:00 am
This post, The Worst Banks in America, on Five Cent Nickel caught my eye since I really dislike my current bank, Chase. According to the post, the three worst ranking banks are Chase/WaMu, Bank of America, and Citibank. I am sooooo not surprised.
My husband was a Bank of America customer before we met, but awful customer service motivated him to switch. I was a member of a credit union but it was too far away to continue being useful. When we got married, we opened a joint Washington Mutual account. We were actually very happy WaMu customers…we even found the best mortgage rate from them in 2007 – 5.375%.
Then everything crashed, WaMu became Chase, and we were charged for our mortgage twice. How exactly would you react if $1800 went missing from your checking account when you were only expecting one $900 charge? Well, that is probably better than me. I was ticked.
I promptly called customer service. I was told that their systems were down but that they’d start the process manually. A week later I still hadn’t heard anything. I called again and was told that they were working on it but it could take up to 2 weeks total.
A week after that I called again and was told it could take 2 more weeks. At that point, I lost all patience and asked to speak to someone with more authority. After being passed around and put on hold for at least 45 minutes, I finally spoke with someone that told me that the review department had agreed to speed things up but it was impossible to actually talk to them. I was completely frustrated and told them that I was writing an official complaint (which I did) and filing a report with the Better Business Bureau (which I also did).
I had a $900 refund about a week later – 22 days after the accidental double charge. That was about a week before they just took it back for my next payment. 
Let’s just sum it up by saying, I’m not a happy Chase customer. We were looking into other options, but decided it would be simpler to keep them as our brick and mortar bank while shoveling all our money into ING. The only good thing I can attribute to Chase is their low-hassle ATM’s…but even those have issues sometimes and then you have to wait for the bank to open to get anything done.
Do you have any bad bank stories?
June 15, 2010, at 6:00 am
For the last three months, I haven’t been keeping up with our budget every day like usual. I got enamoured with this blog and started blowing off all the little, detail-oriented tasks I used to do like updating out budget every day or two. In fact, I’ve simply been entering all of our numbers at the end of our monthly budgeting cycle and looking at the results. So far, so good.
It seems that practice makes permanent.
We used to look at our food budget at least once a week so we’d know if we needed to cut back the following week. Now it seems we have found our happy spot without needing to keep an eye on it all the time. We have successfully stayed within our food budget three months in a row without having a “come to Jesus” moment halfway through. I am so proud.
Even though large, unexpected expenses like vet bills, car problems, and dental work keep popping up, we are doing fine. Our many excess accounts are taking the slack as expected and we’re still staying on track. I’m hoping that a few unexciting months will help us build up more padding again, but all in all, we’re feeling pretty good about our situation.
I think this may be a permanent change to our budgeting habits. I’ll still enter all the numbers once a month. I’ll still make sure we’re not going hog wild in any specific area. I’ll also make sure we keep hitting our savings goals without fail. BUT, we seem to have reached the point that we no longer need constant monitoring in order to pull all of that off. WOOT!
How are your budgeting situations working out? Do you have a written budget? If so, is it updated weekly, monthly, or annually? If not, what works for you?
June 14, 2010, at 6:00 am
These last couple of months have been filled with all sorts of unexpected monetary hurdles, so I thought this would be a good time to bring up the three levels of budgeting we use to keep ourselves on track. Our monthly, annual, and random expenses are all taken into account on our monthly budget.
Our Monthly Budget
I use three columns of an Excel spreadsheet to list all our budgeted categories, the target amount for each category, and how much we actually spent. This makes it easy to do spot checks. It also has helped me to have detailed records of our expenses.
It’s amazing how often I want to know how much we spent on food, vacations, or grad school in any given month. I used to simply be curious and anal, now I have a blog to think about. Having those records makes blogging so much more fun for me since I don’t have to estimate my numbers. It’s hard to have full disclosure without having the actual data, right?
For non-bloggers, long-term budgeting data is useful in order to see how you are looking overall. It also can be used to track spending differentiations that may lead to budget changes in the future.
Annual Expenses
Like everyone, we have several annual expenses. We used to pay for these out of our emergency fund, but it always hurt to watch that fund get hit for easily remembered events like homeowners insurance. Now we have a spot on our monthly budget for these annual charges.
It’s much less stressful to pay that $800 insurance bill when I can see we have the money waiting in our “Insurance and Tax Account” at ING. Contributing $67 a month to that account is also much easier than watching our emergency fund take an $800 whack in the face.
Random Expenses
Some things just can’t be budgeted for very easily. You expect to buy new tires every two or three years, but you don’t know exactly when. You know your dog may require money for a big vet bill someday, but how do you know when it will get sick?
We budget for these items by putting a set amount into extra ING accounts every month. Spending $500 at Discount Tire can really hurt, but it stings a lot less if you know your “Home and Auto Account” will be able to cover it.
Does your budget take into account all your expenses? If not, how do you cover annual and random bills?
June 13, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 157,387. Now it is 129,304! We are getting close again!
The ultimate goal was to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010 and you helped me blow that out of the water! Now we’re shooting for 100,000 by July 4th instead. Yep, we’re aiming high and it looks like we can make it!
I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would be impossible without all of you. I’ll just come out and say it…you all kick butt!!!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here. I’d truly appreciate it if you haven’t already since I’d like all my readers to be taken into account. 
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added. I copied the list originally and forget to update it regularly. Please help a girl out. Thanks!
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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