A trip to Transylvania may seem like a walk in the park when compared to the hidden vampires lurking in homes across the country. Best Buy announced today that it will help innocent victims put an end to this vampire reign of terror by declaring October 30, 2008, National Vampire Awareness Day.
Vampire Power is the electricity that consumer electronics and appliances use while they are switched off or in a standby mode. This insidious phenomenon is responsible for wasting an estimated $4 billion in the U.S. annually and the Department of Energy notes that this figure could rise by 20 percent by 2010. Forty percent of all electricity used to power electronics and appliances in the average American home is consumed while they are turned off and the government has estimated that “vampire power” consumes enough energy to equal to the output of 17 power plants.
"You know that thing when you see someone cute and he smiles and your heart kind of goes like warm butter sliding down hot toast...? Well that's what it's like when I see a store," exclaims Isla Fisher in Confessions of a Shapoholic, due out Feb 2009!
“With Wall Street engulfed in the biggest financial crisis in a generation, there are a few things that consumers can do to protect themselves from this perilous storm,” says Gibran Nicholas, Chairman of the CMPS Institute, an organization that certifies mortgage bankers and brokers. www.CMPSInstitute.org
#1 – Make Sure Your Investments Are Protected Through the SIPC
The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) is a non-profit, non-government organization whose primary goal is to return funds and investments to investors if the investment bank holding these assets, such as Lehman Brothers, goes bankrupt. The SIPC will make sure that you recover the assets you hold in the investment account. For more on the SIPC, see http://www.sipc.org/
#2 – Make Sure All Your Bank Accounts Are Covered with FDIC Insurancehttp://www.fdic.gov/
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent federal agency that was created in 1933 to insure bank depositors and protect them against the failure of their bank. Additionally, you may consider asking your bank if they participate in the CDARS® network (Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service®). http://www.cdars.com/index.php
If, as you watch the continuing mortgage meltdown drama, you start to think that the lenders simply don’t care, well, you may be right.
Today’s New York Times reports on one man who sent a message to multiple email addresses at Countrywide mortgage, which has since been purchased by Bank of America, begging for help in order to remain in his home of 16 years. He received a reply from the CEO -- who obviously thought he was forwarding the message, but inadvertently hit the “reply” button -- that the man was obviously being counseled to write what he did and that it was “disgusting.”
Jane Dough is Daily Cent's own resident personal finance expert who knows that women have to balance more than just their checkbooks! Her mission is to help Daily Cents readers make sense of investing, budgeting, saving for retirement and education, real estate and taxes and to have a little fun along the way. Meaning: no lectures! After all, it’s about more than the bucks.
Jane Dough