Deal or No Deal is a popular television game show in which the contestant picks a case out of the hundred on stage. That case is theirs to keep and the “Banker” tries to buy that from him or her. Then, as the game progresses, the contestant picks numbered cases to be revealed and removed from the stage. As the game progresses, a large board tracks which cases have been removed and, based on probabilities, the “Banker” offers to buy the contestants case. Normally, the show has only one million dollar case but in an effort to make things exciting, started offering multiple million dollar cases.

In this particular episode, there were 7 million dollar cases. Watch what happens:

The part that boggles my mind was when one of his three friends, perhaps his wife or sister, says - “You came to bust him, and you’ve done it….” I thought she was giving him a reason to stop, but then inexplicably adds “One more time…”

As my wife always tells me, sometimes you have to take a step back and be thankful for and appreciate everything that you have. $603,000 is a lot of coin.

Reader Dave sent in this great SNL skit from several years ago:

At first you laugh, then you realize that for years Americans, politicians included, have been buying stuff they can’t afford. Look up some credit card debt statistics and you’ll be shocked.

To help prepare you for the awesomeness that is Election Day on Tuesday, I think that the next President should, at the very least, win a dance off.

Who do you think is the winner? Statistics has shown that in a head to head dance off, the dance off winner often goes on to win the election 78.5% of the time. That, and 90% of statistics are made up.

Have a great weekend!

The Wallet at the Wall Street Journal has been doing a series videotaping a look into well-known, and not-so-well-known, people’s wallets. They’re all pretty brief videos, the longest at only 2 minutes (most are around 30 seconds), and they give you a personal glimpse into someone’s life that you otherwise wouldn’t have. I’ve embedded two below, after the jump, and linked to the rest they’ve done. They’re fun to watch.

(read full article…)

Muriel Siebert was the first woman to hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the namesake behind SieberNet, a discount broker. If you have three minutes, check out this brief profile of her and experiences getting that seat (here’s the full article).

The video is just a little taste of her personality, the article goes much deeper. Also, personal finance proponents will be interested to read that she also developed a personal finance program back in the day. Definitely worth the watch and read though.

The commentator is none other than Mary Pilon, the blogger behind the Wall Street Journal’s The Wallet blog.

I know this is a personal finance blog and I typically talk about money related subjects like investing (ugh), frugality, budgeting, etc. But let’s be honest, the financial news has been bleak. Bleaker than bleak. The stock market is hurting bad, retail is down with talk of a horrible retail holiday season, the commercial paper market is all but seized, international stock markets are crashing, and pretty much everything related to money sucks. I’ll continue to contribute towards my retirement funds, I won’t pull everything out in a panic, but what that means is that there’s nothing I can or should do in reaction to the turmoil.

So, what should you do instead? If you have to be online, visit some fun websites:
Failblog.org and I Can Has Cheezburger are both wonderful sites. Failblog is a look at the epic fails of the internet and I Can Has Cheezburger is a photoblog collection of lolcats (my 404 page has a picture of a lolcat, how cuuuuute). If you have no idea what those are, visit the sites and enjoy the fun!

Another great site is Funny or Die, a funny video website started by a few guys you might know. Here’s a hilarious video involving Will Farrell and his “landlord:”

Or, if humor isn’t for you, just want some television. Hulu, a partnership between NBC and News Corporation, is a great place to watch full episodes online. That’s how I watched Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, and other wonderful television programs that made me laugh.

If you can’t or shouldn’t do anything about your investments, don’t bother fretting over it. For decades the stock market worked perfectly fine with regular people just checking stock prices in the morning paper. Go check out those lolcats.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post outlining the projected impact of both the Obama and McCain tax plans, as analyzed by The Tax Policy Center. NBC recently produced a two and a half minute piece about the two.

A huge point that the piece makes is that we don’t know how the recent bailouts will affect tax plans going forward. Both plans were introduced in a world where the government didn’t own Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, or an 80% piece of AIG (and not in discussions for a $700B bailout package!). I personally think that the tax cuts proposed by both sides will be impossible and you’ll have a case of George H.W. Bush’s “Read My Lips, No New Taxes” flip.

If you have more than $100,000, there is no reason to keep it all at one bank.

(There is actually one reason, but it’s not a good one. At most banks, the interest rate on jumbo CDs is a little larger than regular CDs but it requires that you open one with at least $100,000 - but that’s a bad reason.)

Here’s one horror story about a woman who kept more than $100,000 at Silver State Bank, the Nevada bank that recently went into FDIC conservatorship, and lost over $20,000 (~$20 million was uninsured in total).

The unfortunate part about this story is that CNN is playing to the crowd’s emotions (not surprisingly) by playing clips of her talking about her wanting to put her money in her mattress and how unfair it is that companies are being bailed out while she’s being screwed (and that last completely irrelevant bit about McCain’s connection to the bank, play up to election season!). It’s just adding fuel to the fire. Don’t be ridiculous though and don’t be stupid, don’t put your money in a mattress (because if you have fire, we will no doubt see you on a clip on CNN about it).

It’s unfortunate that they lost that money (even more unfortunate that her husband’s identity was stolen, because if it was a joint account then it would’ve had coverage up to $200,000) but those are the rules. Had it been before the FDIC was created, she would’ve lost more than $20k.

Two lessons:

• Don’t put more than $100,000 in any one bank unless you’re certain FDIC coverage limits will have your back. There’s absolutely no good reason to.
• Keep up to date on the news about your bank because no bank is immune to this. Prior to the failure, customers withdrew $250 million in the two months before it failed - that’s information you probably want to be aware of.

I just bought a can of Folgers Classic Roast coffee from Costco and saw one of the most amazing marketing lies ever. I can understand companies that make packages smaller. We all know fuel and food is more expensive and we can accept paying more for the same products. We can understand when companies charge the same price but give you less. They don’t tell you it’s the same size, they just hit it with the shrink ray and are done with it.

Until today, no one flat out lied about it.

(For those in no mood to watch a video, Folgers’ new can is 4 oz. less in ground coffee but the company claims it produces more actual cups of coffee in big bold lettering - the one on the left is the new can)

Check out this video (if you’re reading through the RSS, you will have to click on the post to see the video):

Here are a high resolution shot of the two cans (newer and smaller can is on the left). You can see the size clearly labeled at the bottom of the can and the ridiculous assertion that the smaller can produces more coffee. Click the image to get a full size version and see for yourself.

Here’s the full set of Folgers Shrink Ray photos, it includes multiple shots of each can from the front and the back so you can see that the labels flat out lie.

Amazing isn’t it?

Did you know that there’s a floating patch of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? It’s called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it’s the size of Texas. TEXAS. It’s unimaginable… but now you don’t have to because a series on VBS.TV has gone to it and has pictures and videos.

It takes your breath away how disgusting it is and how irresponsible it’s gotten. I know some people don’t recycle on purpose because they see it as consuming more energy than it saves and others don’t bother because it’s a waste of their time. I suppose I can understand that (no not really), it justifies their behavior, but how can you justify letting things get to this? It’s insanity. Recycling, at the very least, keeps this stuff out of the water.

If you watch that little clip all the way through, the scariest part comes at around 2:30 when the guy talks about Bisphenol A (BPA - used in hard plastics) making women infertile… shades of Children of Men.

(The series also went to a lot of other places like Brooklyn, Alberta, and West Virginia.)