Asha Anujeeva's Attitude

Although so many people are wary of the future, especially in these difficult times, I still have faith in my IRA Accounts being good investments.  I’ve been involved in Stock Trading for as long as I can remember – my very first stock was in Disney.  Although I am a small time investor, I think that using Online Trading services is a good idea for me.

I like being able to do some research and think things through without anyone trying to pressure me into buying their “stock pick of the day.”  I especially enjoy reading The Motley Fool and considering what they have to say.  I think that they give pretty good advice.  I remember buying some stock in Wal-Mart a long time ago based on an article that I read in the newspaper from The Motley Fool and I have to admit that I was scared about it, but the stock has performed very well and split several times since then.  The only thing that I don’t like about buying stocks is having to keep track of information for the tax man later down the road.  Kind of makes me not want to buy stocks in the first place!

A friend told me I could save t of money on printer ink if I bougt refilled cartridges from a store called Cartridge World. So I drove all the way across town to check out the store and heir prices.

The cost savings was supposed to be about half over the HP Brand name cartridges, but that’s not true – it’s more like 15%. But I went ahead and bought one to try it out – after all, I saved 15% and had already driving all the way over there.

Print quality was supposed to be the same as OEM, but that’s not true from what I saw when I printed out several recipes and couple of photos to mail to my mom. The recipes are just for me to have handy, so print quality was not a big deal. But the ink was noticeably lighter, especially the black type, than the other recipes I have in my binder.

But if you are pinching pennies and can’t get to a COSTCO for their refill service, which is cheaper than the Cartridge World price, it might be worth it to you to try Cartridge World. You can save a little money if you don’t mind a lower print quality, plus recycling the used cartridges is the green thing to do.

One of the things that has always fascinated me was how so many people got caught up in the frenzy of digging for gold “back in the day.”  People were killed over the rights to a parcel of land that they were trying to extract gold from.  I think that it’s funny that nowadays people actually pay money to go on “gold digging” vacations – where they pay to go somewhere to pan or dig for gold.  Shaking a gold pan?  No thank you!  I’d much rather take my vacations at DisneyWorld!  Or maybe relaxing on a beach somewhere.    I just can’t understand the draw to pay money to do that on a vacation; I can’t imagine anyone makes any decent money finding any gold doing that sort of thing!

As for me, I would think that the smarter way to make money digging for precious commodities would be to invest in mining stocks and let someone else take the risks and do the digging while I stay in the comfort of my own home and/or office.  My sponsors seem to think so too! Since the price of oil is bound to continue to climb, coal mining will continue to do well and make money as the world looks for other ways to energize our lifestyles.

Last year when I was laid off for a few months, I started to struggle with paying my credit cards.  I decided to call them and ask them if there was anything that they could do to help for a short while.  That was when I found out who really had the best credit cards.  I don’t care what the other credit card reviews say that are “out there” – you know you’ve got a keeper when the company will help you out for a bit.

Some of the credit card companies immediately closed my accounts (thanks for nothing!) but the Barclay and chase credit cards were more than helpful.  I got a temporary interest rate lowering and smaller monthly payments for six months.  That was all I really needed to make ends meet while I was waiting out the lay-off.  Thankfully the company managed to bring me back to work after only two months, and that nightmare is over.  But it was a good “wake-up” call for being more careful about budgeting my money, just in case I’m laid off again (heaven forbid!)

My favorite style of prescription glasses is the rimless style. I would really love to not have to wear glasses at all, but that simply is not an option. And to be perfectly honest, contact lenses scare me half to death! I can’t even put eye drops in my eyes by myself; I can’t imagine putting contact lenses in my eyes, and then trying to peel them out again! My eyes just water thinking about it!

Much to my dismay, the expense of the glasses that I need to wear have skyrocketed in price.  To the point where I simply did not buy new glasses the last time that I went to the eye doctor and got a new prescription.  In this day and age, who can afford $300 for a pair of new glasses?  I really would love to use the Zenni Optical glasses because they are so reasonably priced, and the styles are great!  And their new website design is terrific!

Sadly they don’t offer the service that I need; putting prism in my glasses.  So I’m just going to have to go on using my old glasses for a few more months until I can scrape up the money to buy glasses with prism in them.