A Truly Stupid Amount of Money
Posted on July 7, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 80 Comments
Well, shucks! Looks like the Scalzi family stimulus check has arrived! And look at the riches our government has poured upon us, to help stimulate the struggling national economy:
Yes, that’s right: six dollars and ten cents. As Athena put it, after I explained the concept of the stimulus checks and the fact that most people who got a check received either $600 as an individual or $1,200 as a couple: “Did they make a typo?” Indeed not! The more money you make, the less Bush Administration economic panic bribe stimulus you need. And apparently the US government had decided that we here at the Scalzi still need something to keep up from freaking out that our economy has gone swirling… just not a whole lot. I’m pretty much of the opinion that once you reach the point where your stimulus check is less than $50, the government should in effect say, “you know what? You’re fine,” but I guess that’s why I’m not president now, isn’t it.
Of course the problem is that getting a six dollar, ten cent stimulus check merely highlights the fact of all the things six dollars and ten cents can’t help me with. It’s at best a fraction of what I need to get anything of any actual use either to me or the economy. It’s one tenth of a gas tank, one half of a DVD, 90% of a movie ticket here in rural Ohio (or half of the same movie ticket in New York), three quarters of a hamburger combo at Steak & Shake, and so on. Hell, it doesn’t even buy a month of online porn. Six dollars and ten cents is a truly stupid amount of money to send as a stimulus; all it does is stimulate in me a reminder of just how wrecked the economy’s gotten under Bush and his pals.
So what do you do with a stupid, frivolous amount of stimulus money? Well, you spend it on something stupid and frivolous, of course!
Bob Barr has about as much chance of being president as I have in getting a tomato plant to spontaneously erupt out of my forehead, but he does have a teeniest bit of a chance of peeling off just enough disgruntled GOPers to be a pain in John McCain’s ass come the general election, which at this point works for me as an ersatz protest vote and the GOP economic stewardship of the country (note that this statement will undoubtedly cause some delusional conservative/Republican to opine in the comments that it will be Obama whom Barr will peel voters off of, not McCain. Dear delusional conservative/Republican commenter: Just because you’re apparently huffing acetone from the inside of a paper bag doesn’t mean the rest of us are). That said, I don’t actually want to spend real money on Bob Barr; I don’t want anyone to get the idea he’s actually my guy, presidentially speaking. I mean, really. Speaking of huffing acetone. For what I want to do here, six dollars and ten cents is almost exactly the right amount to send the dude. So that’s what I sent:
I’d tell Bob Barr to spend that six dollars and ten cents wisely, but then, I didn’t, so who I am I to talk. Let him spend it on gum for all I care. It’s honestly what I think of my particular stimulus check, and the administration whose economic fumbletypeg helped get us to the point where “stimulus checks” somehow seemed like a necessary thing.
Stimulus for porn. That’s a policy position I can get behind.
You spent it, which was their goal.
{Looks around for a $6.10 investment}
State Quarters!
htom:
Yeah, but if it had actually been a useful amount of money, I would have saved it. There’s some irony there.
2nd attempt: Stimulis check for porn. Cant wait to get my hands on it.
My finances were bad enough last year that I got the whole $1200 for me and the Mrs… but there’s something still fishy about the math, regarding my offspring.
Rule #1: No $300 bonus for kids over 16. OK, that rules out both of them being a bonus for me. Does the administration and congress think that kids under 17 need more money than those over 17?
Rule #2: No $600 bonus for yourself if you’re claimed on somebody else’s return. That rules them both out for getting it for themselves.
But seriously, who better to stimulate the economy than teenagers? If my sons got that money, it’d be gone lickety-split, college funds be damned, no debt to pay down.
It’s funny, but the very left-wing government here in British Columbia (Canada) sent all of us a stimulus check too ($100, I think). Only they called it an “climate-action” cheque.
At least you got something. Apparently my household income was just a tad too high to rate even that much. We got goose egg. Zip. Nada. Nuttin’.
I never realized we were rich, given the fact that we have two car payments, are upside down on our home equity thanks to the housing bubble (POP!) (and we didn’t buy high either), and are putting one kid through college and still paying student loans for two others.
I guess we’re the Evil Rich now and shouldn’t complain.
i guess you had to make the correct amount of money. i made too little. and got 300
Young adults aged 17 or more should be working in coal mines, earning their own keep.
And they should get off my lawn!
I think you should have put it in a shoebox somewhere and forgotten about it. Not too many of these will be saved as collector’s items (although it’s tempting, I’m sure, even at $600). Then some day your great-grandchildren would find Grumpa Scalzi’s gilded memory box in the attic and take the cheque and maybe a mysterious strip of preserved, withered bacon to Antiques Roadshow 2089 and get told it’s worth a few thousand American pesos at least. Ironically, this will be equal to exactly six euros and ten cents.
You could have spent it on the gas it would take you to get to the bank and back to deposit the check.
I’m not even sure $6.10 would buy me, say, a paperback science-fiction novel down at the bookstore, not even with my 10% reader reward card.
Wow. Just… yeah. And when you consider the cost of the envelope, gas, and whatever else required to get that check to you, plus your gas cost to take it to the bank, that check probably ended up costing about as much as it’s worth.
But, y’know, I’d have just spent it on the gum.
What I want to know is why the LP presidential campaign team thought it’d be a good idea to have their candidates schlump into stuffy chairs in some stuffy lawyer’s office to shoot the welcome/fundraising video.
Hahaha! Go Barr Go! Get those McCain votes!
I almost feel bad for the libertarians. i agree with some of their ideas, but then they go an nominate a Grade A Chucklehead like Barr and then wonder why this is a two party system.
Still waiting for my “Please like me” money from George W and pals…
I love that they sent this pittance to someone who’s a veritable town crier for the cause of fighting creeping D’oh!ism in the world. Are you sure there wasn’t another piece of paper in the envelope that said something like, “And just keep quiet about this, okay?”
Not to help fight famine somewhere in Africa? Not to help victims of a natural disaster? Not to add a small bit to fund some medical breakthrough against a heretofore incurable disease? You found money on the street, and instead of at least trying to make good use of it, you decided that an empty political jest was the best you could do. Classy!
I hope this is something you never have to explain to your daughter.
So, er, who’s paying for these checks?
Hey, Ilya, when I need your advice on how to spend my money, I’ll be sure to let you know. Until then, please feel free to cram it. Thanks.
Programmers have the concept of elegance. An elegant solution is one that is economical, efficient, and which yet retains some fundamental beauty, a simple, powerful truth.
This solution, sir, is elegant.
Congress decreed that it be based on your likely tax refund. You must not get much refund.
I don’t get one at all. Feel fortunate (but not very fortunate).
I got $900. And, yes, I could really use it for a lot of things. But the whole thing made me so mad (as other people I knew were losing medicare and food stamp benefits at the same time) that I decided that I needed a vacation. To Canada. And thus the $900 was my budget for the trip. With a chunk going to Air Canada and some going for childcare expenses to a high school girl who is saving money to go to college in Europe next semester. The rest will be spent buying food in Canadian restaurants or picking up gifts for my kids in Canadian stores.
Wow Ilya I hope that’s a joke.
Well, there’s one instance where the “Vote Republican” bribe has backfired spectacularly…
Ilya @ #17
In the time that you took to to type your bitchy little hypocritical note, you could have gotten you lazy ass up out of your comfy little office chair and logged off of your computer and went out and EARNED $6.10 and then sent it to whatever charity is eating at your conscience. So cram it from here, too.
(Sorry John, self righteousness just pisses me off to no end)
(This is going to make me sound stupid, but it’s the internet. Who cares.) I didn’t realize the checks were issued on a sliding scale! I haven’t gotten mine yet, and now I am concerned that it might suck. Sadface.
“Cystimulus” sounds like a 19th century medical condition. Something that ought to be poulticed.
So $6.10 isn’t enough to buy online porn. Couldn’t you have at least tried buying a Playboy or something? Dead-tree porn needs love, too!
Erika @26: I thought “Cystimulus” sounded more like something out of a David Cronenberg movie.
I received mine today, I got the whole $600. Yeah, it’s going to debt. Being unemployed for a year is still being paid off.
@ Erika #26. Or at least lanced.
G. Jules @27:
Playboy is still considered porn?
At least Penthouse has all of those “You’ll never believe what happened to me!” true life stories. Ahem.
The sad thing, of course, is that the Feds spent over a million and a quarter dollars just to tell us that there would be a stimulus package, and then they spent over a million and a quarter dollars just to tell us that each of our stimulus checks would be arriving within the specified week — and then in your case, John, it probably cost the Feds somewhere between $80 – $125 just to do the paperwork and cut your $6.10 check. Our tax dollars at work. Well, hell, I guess I’d rather see it spent (wasted!) on American tax-paying citizens than flushed down the Iraqi toilet bowl.
I wonder if you could buy acetone and a paper bag for $6.10…
Stimulus cheques aren’t supposed to help you, they’re supposed to inject a bit of liquidity into the market. If you save them, they don’t work.
That’s the real reason they go disproportionately to low income earners. Not out of any sense of social justice, but because they can be better relied on to spend it rather than save it.
I suspect your reaction is not unique. Give someone who doesn’t need a little extra pocket money an arbitrary small sum, and I suspect they may be more likely to spend a bit frivolously for the next day or so. It probably averages out to more than the amount you give them.
Um … you owe your job to the Republican party? Srsly? Otherwise I’m not sure how you figure that a bunch of lackwits in D.C. have much of anything to do with controlling the entirety of the American economy. Sure W has “control” over appointing the guy who’s hand is on the one monetary lever that anybody ever bothers to frob (Hi, Ben!), but even there the Senate (majority D incidentally) has an “advice and consent” role to play. If an economic downturn is anybody’s fault, it’s everybody’s fault for deciding to be afraid that the world is going to end RIGHT FARKING NOW OMFG BURY THE FINE SILVER IN THE BACKYARD EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!1!
Ahem.
Anyway, the economy is growing albeit at a low rate, and unemployment is at what are by historical terms quite respectable, so put away your Joo Jantas (unless you’re wearing them for comedic effect in which case never mind). The republic has survived much better and much worse administrations.
Huh. We’re poorer than I thought. We got the whole shebang.
Are you sure that wasn’t, say, Athena’s stimulus check? Or your bear/dog’s?
If I had $6.10, I’d buy local sweet corn and maybe a watermelon from a farmers market. That would at least keep the money in our local economy and help my neighbors. But giving to a politician isn’t a bad pan, hey, it’s your money, right?
Did I miss the duck caption award?
Dude, used book store time! Woo hoo! Maybe some Varley, Powers, Ing or Zelazny. You could get a half dozen older titles for that kinda money. Can you honestly say you have all the Pratchett, Pohl, or Poul Anderson that you need?
Being a single girl with a single boyfriend, I am not overly in need of my stimulus cheque. And I would have preferred something like, oh, a universal health care system that will help my parents out since neither of them has health care. Or, you know, policies that would help build up alternatives to our car-driven infrastructure. But since the government was going to send it to me anyway, I spent it on artwork from a local artist (who I know is heading to Comic-con and will no doubt patronise many a struggling artist there, thus passing the stimulus on and on) and IKEA. I have no excuse for why I gave some of our nation’s stimulus money to a giant Swedish corporation.
(As for Ilya’s suggestion about other worthy causes–I do that too. Don’t need a stinkin’ stimulus cheque to do it either. This one could have gone there, but I really did want those paintings and the flat-pack furniture.)
For a while, I ended up with four shares of some random oil company, and got quarterly dividened checks of $0.60. I loved walking in and cashing them. “I’d like five dimes, one nickel and five pennies.”
JJS @ 21 said:
“Congress decreed that it be based on your likely tax refund. You must not get much refund.”
No it’s not. It is based on the “Adjusted Gross Income” reported in your the 2007 tax filing. If the AGI was greater than $75,000, then the check was reduced by (AGI – $75,000) times 5%.
So with a trivial bit of algebra you can calculate John’s reported Adjusted Gross Income.
George
The true story of a full stimulus check of $1200.00
I got it, but then they kept it all as provided by law.
Why, I got laid off in “05 when my job went to Malaysia.
Luckily, I had “Trade Act” protection that allowed me to go back to school.
Unluckily, the money to live on ran out before the 2 years was up and I ended up having to pull out my retirement to pay the bills.
Unluckily, it had extra taxes and penalties when I did that which was tacked onto my Federal Income tax bill.
Unluckily I ended up owing the Equivalent of a new Kia Rio to the Feds. I set up a payment plan since I can’t pay delinquent taxes as fast as Cindy McCain or Al Franken.
SOOO, as “provided by law” They kept my stimulus check to assist paying off my tax bill. That doesn’t mean I can skip any of my scheduled payments though.
I did get an A.S. degree and a National Certification and a great job that allowed me to move back to Seattle, but if I had gotten $6.10… I would have burnt it at the stake.
I guess I’m Stimulated, but not the way they had planned.
Voting for Obama this Fall
joelfinkle@#5:
I have a 17 year old and I got the $300 bonus. You might want to look into why you didn’t.
If they’d have sent me a check for $6.10, though, I’d have probably sent it back with a note telling them to keep it since they clearly need the money more than I do.
My stimulus check, however, was for the full amount I was entitled to, and we spent it screwing over Big Oil–we used the money to buy a woodstove so we don’t have to use oil to heat our house next winter.
No, Bob Barr won’t be pulling any votes from Obama. But Obama has enough problems with disgruntled Hillary supporters and Ralph Nader.
Most secular conservatives (there are still of a few of us out there) aren’t exactly angry about McCain’s presence at the top of the GOP ticket. We are, however, bewildered: Just how did this guy get the nomination? I have yet to meet anyone who will admit to being an enthusiastic McCain supporter.
The best hope for conservative-leaning moderates was Hillary Clinton, but the Obama personality cult swept that one away. (It must have been the Oprah endorsement.)
We must now choose between a poor candidate (John McCain) and a guy whose ex-spiritual adivisor/guru claimed that the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus. John McCain scares me (I fear an ill-conceived invasion of Iran), but so does Obama. I enjoy the Big O’s speeches as much as everyone else, but I can’t quite take him seriously as the leader of the free world.
So where does that leave moderates who don’t like McCain? I for one am not about to wish for another four years of George Bush; but Bill Clinton would look pretty good about now.
I just got mine in today. Yessssssss. It’s going in the savings. Soon the new HD TV will be mine.
Maybe it was all that acetone, but I’ve voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate for many years. I suppose you could say that my vote was taken away from a major party candidate, but since I’ve never voted for a Democrat or Republican for president, I’ve never looked at it that way. Libertarians are a strange bunch, so I hesitate to speculate how it would divide up if we had to vote for one of the big two.
Bob Barr becomes significant if he draws voters from either of the big two parties, or if he loses enough fringe voters to them to make a difference. I think Democrats hate him, and I’d be surprised if he plays Ralph Nader (quit whining Dems, you’ll wake the kids) to the Republicans. Is it possible then that Barr could drive enough Libertarians into the loving arms of the Dems or Repubs? I don’t have a clue, but because of Barr, I won’t be voting Libertarian this year. And for the first time, I will probably vote for a major party which will mean that Bob Barr’s candidacy equals a vote for Obama.
As for stimulating the economy, I would have been happy to have done it, but I was denied the opportunity because I made too little money. Maybe next time.
Man, you are going to get so much Bob Barr / Libertarian spam email for the rest of your life…
That’s all right. I signed up with my spam trap e-mail.
Oh my God, it’s full of stars! It’s sad to think so many asterisks died to supply you with so little stimulus.
I got a letter today from the Feds, saying that I would have got the full $600 from them, but, well, I owed them a bunch of money, so they kept it. (My taxes this year were all screwed up due to my divorce last year and the fact that I was withholding at “married” rates for 2/3 of the year but had to file as “single.”)
Of course, the upside is that now I don’t owe them quite as much money. Which is a plus, I suppose. Anyway, it’s about what I expected would happen.
Oh hey, it’s not just the envelope and postage to get this check to you, it’s the envelope and postage to get the two prior letters to you explaining that you would eventually be getting a check. Because we all need to be told at least twice ahead of time, of course.
I won’t even talk about the amoung of processing time and people-power it took to get that check to you.
Funny you should mention this today John, because I just got my letter saying I’m getting $300 within the next week or so.
But… I already KNOW the U.S. Department of Education is going to snag every last red cent of it, just like they do with my tax refund every year because they weren’t happy with my repayment schedule.
What’s the lesson? For the love of all that is good and right in this country… don’t default on repaying your student loan. The U.S. Department of Education WILL hunt you down and snag every Federal payment owed you, despite the fact you’re repaying the loan every month anyway!
On a lighter note, thank you for contributing YOUR stimulus check to Barr’s election campaign. Here’s hoping he does take enough votes from McCain so that Obama can win.
Ummm … is that about politics?
The gubberment’s math is messed up. I make double what my wife– er, I mean my non-government approved, homosexual life partner– makes, but I got the full “stimulus package” (I love saying that. It sounds so dirty. I started calling the Hitachi MW our “stimulus package”), while my beloved received 30% less.
In any case, we spent both checks in Canada, having our first holiday in years. Strangely, US Customs & Border Patrol was very interested in our departure, and our accompanying chattel, but was not concerned enough to be present for our return.
And, btw, the Canadians remain delightful. Good food, great music, superb beer.
Heh. Apparently the reports that stimulus checks were being used for porn site memberships are wrong. Gawker has the details.
So my uber-liberal friends, why are they the “Bush Administration economic panic bribe(s)” when the current administration does it but when the-second-coming-of-JFK, aka Obama, includes another round of the stimulus checks as part of his economic plan no one says anything?
GPIKE,
probably for the same reason warrantless wiretaps and habeas corpus cancellations are a necessary tool against the terrorists now, but will morph instantly into egregious abuses amounting to impeachable offenses as soon as the next Democrat moves into the Oval Office: partisan blinders.
Both sides make liberal use of those…no pun intended.
I actually have seen polls to the effect that Barr would take Obama votes, but hey. Maybe it was the acetone after all — I don’t remember any acetone, but then, I wouldn’t.
As to Barr himself, I’ve voted for Libertarian presidential candidates before, and if the lack of quality of the L candidate was going to stop me, I wouldn’t have voted for Badnarik (who was basically a loon — yes, even more so than the rest of the big-L Libertarians).
Funny thing, a similar incentive was introduced in France 7 years ago by our then socialist government… Everybody loves negative tax!
My mother has a friend who received a little less than $50, even though she is retired. Apparently they took whatever they estimated she would owe next year and sent her what was left. At the time I heard about this, I hadn’t been stimulated yet, and figured I wouldn’t be getting anything, since we had to pay over $1000 to federal for 2007. Last week, the full two-married-people-with-one-child amount popped up in our bank account, so we rushed that money right into savings to earn a little interest (a very little) before the IRS decides they made a mistake.
Oh wait, that’s right…the IRS never makes mistakes, do they? :D
We got the full two income plus one kid return, which was then given to a large Nipponese manufacturer of electronics, cars, electrics, and (formerly) aircraft. It has a beautiful picture, and I didn’t have to spend anywhere near as much as originally planned, thanks to Dubya!
I remember about 10 years ago our provincial government really drank the tax cut cool-aid. They gave out rather large tax-cuts and essentially financed them by massive cuts to our welfare rates; don’t ask how I feel about massive wealth transfers from the poor to the middle class.
The last tax cut was actually quite small; it worked out to about $250.00 per year. On a per pay-cheque basis it would have worked out to about $10.00 and I guess the government did not think that they could get enough bang out of a $10.00 per paycheque tax cut and so instead they sent it out as a single tax-refund. Being pro-businesss conservatives they decided to call it a “dividend”.
I actually worked out a rough estimate of how much it would have cost the provincial government to send out cheques; it worked out to a about $1.5 million dollars. I also gave my calculations to a friend who did communications work for the official opposition. They ran with it and this turned into a Canadian Press new story.
I felt good.
Cheers
Andrew
P.S. I actually spent the “dividend” on a charitable contribution. However, I do appreciate the snarkiness involved in sending $6.10 to Bob Barr. Furthermore folks like Ilya Burlak @ 17 make me want to retch: it’s my money if I want it spend it on improving the world around me, that’s my business; if I want to spend it on Internet Porn, that’s my business as well.
It’s your money anyway. Instead of keeping more than they deserve (like most previous administrations and congresses have) the accounting has been done and you get what’s yours. Can you believe that there was NO federal income tax until 1913? (Ok, there was one during the Civil War but it was rescinded in 1872.) Can we rescind more taxes, like the taxes on gasoline for example? There now I’m done ranting.
Not trying to be an annoying fussbudget (see #17), but I donated most of my check to my favorite charity (Episcopal Relief & Development) because of the Give It 4 Good campaign…
Well, most of it. I did set a few bucks aside and bought a copy of The Android’s Dream. ;)
It’s interesting to see the President blamed when Congress controls the budget. I hate to bring up pesky things like facts though:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/08/nation/na-stimulus8
You’re right. Dubya can say, wouldn’t it be a nice idea if, but congress gets to say yea or nay, and they don’t actually have to wait for Dubya to come up with ideas. At least that’s the way it normally works.
But presidents get the credit, too, you know. In a way it’s a lot like deities. We tend to blame or praise deities, too, when there’s no reason to think deities have anything to do with what happens. Perhaps it’s just part of human nature to look to the apex of our hierarchies, no matter how clueless it gets up there.
I must say, however, that calling it the Bush Administration Panic Bribe is one-sided. both parties voted for it overwhelmingly.
And the Obamessiah (or is that the Messiabama?) is proposing an additional $1000 for everybody next year. Truly a bipartisan form of political insanity!
I think the older and more successful you get, the more likely you are to get insulted by the IRS/congress/etc.
I have two kids and my wife not-too-long-ago finished medical school and got hired as a doctor after spending 10 years in medical school plus residency/etc…her employer requires her paycheck to be technically “self-employed” so we have to pay an extra 12%+ taxes on it for social security/etc which we’ll never see a dime of because congress will not be able to afford S/S when we retire.
No, we didn’t get a stimulus check this year. Not a dime. We saved up all from January to April to send a check for $25,000 to the IRS. No, the employer doesn’t help with that.
A lot of that was Alternative Minimum Tax which really kills anyone buying a house in San Diego….I don’t care how much you make, if you have to pay $900,000 to get a house in a good school district and you’re not allowed to even deduct alot of mortgage interest or interest on $100K of student loans on your taxes(zero deduction), the tax system is insane.
It’s all designed to keep the bottom 75% of the population roughly happy with how much they pay via dozens of bribes and distract them constantly by how much “congress is helping them”. The stimulus checks was 100% self promotion.
Honestly, if you are a successful married couple living on the coasts, it almost isn’t worth it for both adults to work as the taxes on the 2nd wage earners income are tremendously higher than the first.
Go, Bob, go!
reminds me of solicitations i get . if they have a postage paid envelope, i send them two pennies. i have given to hillary and the republican national committee so far.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that admittedly stupid, $6.10 was a tiny portion of the money that government was kind enough to relieve you off in the first place. The money that you presumably earned honestly. The money that “they” most likely wasted. I don’t see this as some kind of a gift from Uncle Sam. It is a teeny weeny bit of your money that the good uncle begrudgingly returned to you, after grabbing a much larger portion by force. “stimulus” my behind. Don’t grab in the first place, then there would be no need to stimulate.
I am still waiting for my “stimulus”, by the way.
Wow, you must make a pretty penny at this writting gig.
We got around 4 times as much back for our stimulass.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.05140:
You might want to see who sponsored the legislation. Interestingly, no Democrat voted against it in the Senate (where as 16 R’s voted against.) At least 6 Democrats in the House voted against it, along with 28 R’s.
So when it comes to “vote buying” both parties were in on it.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity infliction when it comes to politicians.
I gave almost all my check to a friend who’s been out of work for a year. She bought, hm, botanical substances, and sold for a nice profit; now she has enough money to live on for a while. That’s as libertarian a use as I could manage.
Was the confirmation number 000000004?
Just so you all know, if you owe your state money, or your state thinks you owe them money, the Feds can take it too…seems the state of Georgia thought I underpaid the pitance I owed them this year and they had the Feds send them $1.15 of my stimulus check… which I’m sure cost them way more to process than it was worth. I’m thinking of bugging the state just to make them spend more money to tell me why they thought I owed them $1.15!!
Second…John – ditto on it cost more than $6.10 to process and tell you they were processing your check. Sorry about that. Ouch.
But did you have to encourage Bob Barr?? I live in Georgia, we’ve been trying to discourage him for years.
And as to how I spent my check, all $598.85 of it – well, I’ve been unemployed since about Labor Day of last year, have had only a couple of temp gigs, my unemployment payments were about to run out, and I need to pay utilities and the eye doctor…
Oh, and a copy of “Old Man’s War” with a discount coupon from Borders.
At least Dubya did sign the unemployment extension before the July recess started. Yay! I get to keep a roof over my head for a few more months…
I would have saved all of mine, but then fortunately my daughter broke her arm so instead it went to various doctors and hospitals. Self-employed, and thus self-insured, the total cost of her care was $3 less than our deductible. I’m hoping she will break the other one so we can actually use the insurance.
After reading about your contribution, I feel silly about buying some gum with the $2.35 that we got…
I had to give a cop a “stimulus check” once to get out of jail. It was in Mexico. I think it’s are called “la mordida” there. Why would Bush feel it was appropriate, isn’t he a lame duck anyway?
I used my economic stimulus check to run as a Democrat for local office. So far I’ve spent my money at local business and when I couldn’t do so…at non-local businesses with unions.
This is important!
After reading this, im getting ideas… http://www.gheerotic.com