Financial Planners - Free or Fee

If you are looking for a financial planner (or advisor) do yourself a favor and don't consult with a free one. The free advisors are never free. Do you think they don't need to earn a living? The fact is they may earn a healthy living selling you too much insurance and mutual funds with front or back-end loads. Some financial advisors (or planners) will only charge you $1500 in fees to do up a full plan and get you the very best investments and the minimum insurance, they will also look at wills, trusts and children's needs. Meanwhile the "FREE" advisor will do a quicky plan and advise you to buy such and such and in the process earn $5000 or more. Then you end up getting too much insurance and dopey investments that don't perform. Nothing is free in life and the more you cheat yourself in the financial area the more you will end up being taken for a ride. Be kind to yourself and your family and hire a trustworthy fee advisor.
Scrooge.

Beware of Northwest Airline - flight 1200 - May 21, 2005

Our trip back from Las Vegas (business...no gambling) was a nightmare. Our midnight flight was delayed almost 18 hours after we had already checked in and sat on the plane for an hour and a half. We were kept in the dark regarding the status of the flight and not even offered a drink of water. It was almost 110 degrees that day. We were then told the plane had a mechanical problem and they were sending us back to the ticket counter for hotels assignments. After waiting at the ticket counter for a long time...it was now 3:30am...the lady in charge started insulting the crowd and then told us they called all the hotels and there were no rooms. This was a lie. The first hotel we called had rooms and the couple beside us called a hotel and they had rooms also. As it turned out we got back to the hotel at 4:30am and checked in and back to the airport at the following afternoon. The airline (this was Northwest Airline - flight 1200 - May 21, 2005) did not refund all of the hotel charge, would not refund all the taxi charge, and did not inform us we could have gotten refunded (something) for our extra food cost. In all they were dishonest and uninformitive. I will not fly with them again. If you decide to use them, good luck if you run into problems.
Scrooge.

Las Vegas - the city where you throw away your money

Just back from a business trip to Las Vegas, I was reminded again how useless gambling is. Every hotel is a casino so I got to spend lots of time watching the gamblers dump the money in the machines. In all that time (I was there a week) I didn't see one person win anything. Are you surprised? I'm not! Do you want to gamble and make money? Then play the stock market. At worst you will only lose a part of what you put in and at best you will make some money. Spend time learning how to invest and you will certainly make more than you lose...and you can satisfy any gambling urges!
Scrooge.