Ariel Rubin is a multi-disciplinary artist working mediums including photography, multi-media, music and writing. Her photographs and writing have been included in publications including the Magenta Foundation’s book, Flash Forward 2006, Inscribed Magazine and The Globe and Mail. In 2006 Ariel co-founded the independent arts publication, it’ll happen, which she continues to co-edit, write and create.

http://itllhappenzine.blogspot.com

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Be alert when you buy a netbook.

RecessionGirl has been straight-up obsessed with netbooks and is the proud new parent of the HP 10.2 inch 1030 Atom.  The sticker price: $349.99.  Cheap and functional technology makes everyone want to shake their booty and dance with joy at the thought of a bargain.  But before you get stoked on your new mini-top, I just want to send a shout-out and warn ya on some of the financial fine print. Here’s what you need to know:

Microsoft Office costs $150 bucks and is sold separately.  Due to the antitrust action filed against Microsoft in 1998, it is illegal for the netbooks to be sold preloaded with the popular and recognized software.  I strongly recommend opting for ‘Open Office’ a FREE software application fully compatible with Microsoft Office that you can download in a few minutes http://www.openofficedownload.org/ver1a/index.php?se=AffID-210&affid=210&googleid=1041572243.

FYI, almost all netbooks come equipped with the ancient, arcane and just plane silly ‘Microsoft Works’.  It’s an abomination of software that is NOT compatible with MS Office for whatever bizarre reason; a cruel party joke that only Microsoft employees understand, but it’s easily overlooked when you’re jonesin for a netbook and focusing on the internet capabilities in the show room.  Stay focused and alert on your netbook test drive.  Recognize.

Here are some other costs that are thrown atcha:
(Prices vary depending on retailer, but are ball-park)

$59                  Standard 2 year warrante.
$129                2 year accident coverage warante.
$60                  Replacement battery (if you don’t rock the standard warrantee and you bust it).
$50                  1G upgrade.
$32.99             The cute little netbook carrying case.
$12.99             The not so cute little netbook carrying case.
8.625%            Big-ass New York State sales tax.

If I had opted for all of the bells and whistles strongly suggested by my sales person, my $349.99 laptop would have been about $800.

***Beware of the new commercial advertising the HP netbooks for $199.  HP and Verizon linked up on that deal and you will end up purchasing what amounts to what I call a ‘netberry’.  In addition to the sticker price for the netbook, you will be forking out roughly $40-$50 a month (depending on what kind of taxes, surcharges and other crap they tag on) because you’ve engaged in a binding 2-year contract with Verizon which is supplying you with 3G capability.  Great if you plan on traveling to Timbuktu or outer Mongolia and need to get a signal in a remote locale, but if you’re hitting Starbucks, your university library and other mainstream laplounges etc., it’s a ridiculously overpriced package, making your $200 purchase in the neighborhood of $1400 before taxes.  That price excludes requisite warantees and software.  Don’t get caught in the Net rifraf.  Keep it economical.  Keep it real.

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Be alert when you buy a netbook.

For those of you unfamiliar with my economic Guru, here’s the ridiculously brief skinny: Nouriel Roubini is an NYU professor of economics and the chairman of RGE Monitor. He was one of the only predominant economists of our time to publicly discuss -on the record- the dangers of the financial practices that eventually led to our current credit crisis. He has been nicknamed Dr. Doom for his Nostradamus-like financial forecasting, but ya gotta give him props for his realism. He’s not an investor-puppet or a talking-head so you’ll find his comments less cheerleaderesque than your average financial spin-doctor. If I can just borrow a quick phrase that Renee Zellweger said to Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire, “Nouriel. You complete me.”

 

 

www.arielrubin.com

 

 

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Go incognito.

 

Part of maintaining wealth (or your attempt at accruing it) involves protecting it from thieves.  While most credit card companies are generally quick to respond to fraudulent charges by crediting your account within the calendar month they receive the affidavit highlighting specific false charges; the hassle, headache and panic of someone running around with your numbers is no picnic.

 

Rest assured. Virtual credit cards are here.  RecessionGirl has just experimented with two online purchases via the virtual credit card.  Dang.  It was so simple. And fun. Try it. You’ll like it.

 

Citibank has a nice system that takes you through James Bond style security prompts and then, complete with ‘Mission Impossible’ sound effects, punches up numbers on a one-use, temporary, virtual credit card.  You’ll have to generate digits for each online purchase, but it’s a small price to pay for a hackless online-shop.

 

Also, as far as I can tell, the virtual card numbers are very objectcentric.  Meaning it’s great for online tangibles you might purchase on ebay, itunes or amazon.  But if you’re seeking reservations for a vacation, renting a car etc., it seems there are some road-blocks installed to protect companies from getting the bait-and-switch.  Overall, the virtual card gets RecessionGirl’s two thumbs up. 

 

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Go incognito.

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Camp.

 

You’re young.  You’re broke.  You want to hug trees and sleep under the stars.  Onward, five-borough-nature-loving-soldiers.  This is RecessionGirl’s camping edition.  Complete with campsites that are no more than 2 hours outside of Manhattan.  There’s a good hodgepodge of campgrounds below from beachside to mountainside; Strong Island to the Catskills.  All you need is a few dollars and a dream. 

 

You also might want to do a pedestrian drive-by the newly opened Eastern Mountain Sports in SoHo on Broadway and Prince. I personally find most of  their equipment overpriced, but if you’re in a rush or just need to experience your product first-hand then they are great.  The quality is comparable to REI for all of you West Coast transplants.  If you want a cheaper alternative, I highly recommend www.backcountry.com.  Now, lets get our camp on:

 

http://blackbearcampground.com/

 

http://www.dutchesscountycampground.com/

 

http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=52

 

http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=57

 

http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=153

 

http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=48

(***Hither Hills is one of the busiest and most beautiful campgrounds in the United States of America and typically books 9 months in advance.  You can call periodically to see if there are cancellations, but for peak season, mark your calendar in October for July reservations, or just try your luck and show up around 11:00am when folks are checking out sometimes miracles happen).

 

For more New York State camping options further away, check the link below.  Consider the finger lakes for wine tasting and a chance meeting with the Amish who heavily populate several counties upstate:

 

http://nysparks.state.ny.us/

 

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Camp.

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Stoop it stupid.

 

One of the most fun ways to generate semi-passive income for yourself is to have a stoop-sale.  It can put money in your pocket, introduce you to some neighborhood friends and best of all off-load all of the no longer useful things that have accumulated in your life.  While a stoop-sale is pretty self explanatory, there are some details that shouldn’t be overlooked:

 

-Weed through the crap.  Nobody wants your Aunt Matilda’s terrycloth bathrobe she gave you as a hand-me-down when you were twelve.  Bag the stuff you know won’t sell and call City Opera Thrift Store for a pick up: 212-684-5344, http://www.yelp.com/biz/city-opera-thrift-shop-new-york.  They will come to your door and haul the stuff away.  Take the itemized form they give you and use it to deduct $500 in charitable donations on your next tax return.  You will not red flag the IRS for donations $500 and under.  If you claim more, it’s at your own risk.

 

-Use price stickers.  You can get a package of yellow circle stickers at Right Aid for $2.49.  After several (mostly unsuccessful) stoop sales, I’ve learned a bit about stoop-sale customers.  They don’t necessarily want to talk to you.  They just want to get a good deal.  The sticker lets them know upfront if they should drop cash or where they can start negotiating from.

 

-Be sorta organized.  The best sale I ever had included a garment rack, a $5 bin, $3 bin and $1 bin.  The jewelry was all $1 and in its own container.  The books and DVD’s were uniformly priced.

 

-Don’t get greedy.  This is a stoop sale, not a vintage flea market.  This is an alternative to throwing things away or donating them to charity.  Consider almost any monetary offer a miracle that someone is actually interested in your old stuff.  Unless you’ve got some fancy things that you know will get a hot dollar on eBay, reduce your expectations for funding your new laptop with the profits of your stoop-sale.

 

-Coordinate pricing with time of day.  You can try your luck by pricing items according to how much time is left to your sale.  For example, if you start your sale at 9:00am and are selling your blue jeans at $11, drop the price by half at 1:00pm if they haven’t sold.  You’ll find that people tend to buy multiple items if they think stuff is ‘sooo cheap’.  They sorta get ‘the fever’ for your $5 dollar jeans and then get a book and DVD to boot.  The fun never stops.

 

Be bold.  Be cheap.  Stoop it Stupid.

 

 

 

RecessionGirl is a former employee of a boutique asset management firm/auction house and wants to share her inside information.  As most of you are all too well aware, the housing bubble has burst.  There are over a million foreclosures in America every 20 seconds.  That’s a straight-up lie, but there are an awful lot of them.  This article will help position you to get the best value for a foreclosed home through auction.

 

When houses are foreclosed upon they go to auction at the county courthouse before being returned to the banks.  But, not so fast.  Don’t go to that auction.  It’s a common misconception that you will get a ‘great deal’ at a courthouse auction.  However, that’s what insiders refer to as an ‘early auction’.  It would behoove you to do a little bit of research and catch an asset management firm auction, instead, where the real deals live.

 

If the foreclosed house does not sell at the initial courthouse auction, it goes to the bank.  Banks, especially in this market, do not want to hold a house on their books as the bank is responsible for the carrying costs involved (aka taxes).  They literally loose money by holding onto homes.  Banks are in the business of making money.  They don’t want to invest in carrying costs for the thousands of homes that are on their bank sheets.  

 

Most banks holding homes consider the three month mark critical. Pay attention. 90 days is the winning number.  It is highly advantageous for the bank to get rid of the property at this point as the home becomes an extremely toxic-asset, especially when compounded with the other homes on the bank sheets. The empty house might turn into a crystal-meth lab or a crack den (no joke) after being vacant for so long, making it a super hard sell for the bank and most likely a reduced revenue sale.  That’s when banks get into the wheeling and dealing of REO’s.  The bigger, better and more connected banks understand that they do not have the manpower or advertising leverage to conduct fire auctions to rapidly expedite the sale of the parcels they are carrying.  They turn to financial asset management firms/auction houses to manage the marketing and follow through to sale.

 

Why would the asset management firm auction be a better (cheaper) deal than the initial court house auction?  What’s the changing variable? Simple: Time. The advantage of the asset management auction is that it is occurring 3 months after it has been on the bank roll with 1 auction at the courthouse already conducted.  If the bank doesn’t accept the final bid through an asset management auction (the second auction), it goes back to the bank.  Costing the bank money, maintaining it’s toxicity.  Potentially turning the home into a crack den as the home continues to be vacant, which potentially makes the house next door that the bank also owns of lower value.  The asset management auction is a bit of a ‘last call’ for the bank to dispose of a home.  

 

Banks are typically slow to come to terms with market value as they flirt with insolvency on prices that are between a quarter and half of their 2006 values. In this particular market most banks are in complete denial, but they should not be able to keep it up.  Stay tuned for legislation, executive orders, extra TARP and the ‘bad bank’ to see how long banks can play hide-and-go-seek with home values.  This is no guarantee that a bank will accept your final bid through an asset management auction, but you are more likely to get the price you want on post-bid negotiation.

 

But don’t get too excited.  Banks are not stupid.  They haven’t started ‘dumping’ homes on financial asset management firms or REO specialists.  Do some research.  Watch the clock and trust your instincts.  For sure there is a deal out there for you, but RecessionGirl would hold out till May or June.  Check the links below to get started:

New York’s Premiere Auction House/Financial Asset Management Firm

http://www.gramercyauctions.com/

Other Auction Firms

http://www.williamsauction.com/

http://www.houseauctioncompany.com/index.php

 

 

 

http://www.josephszymanski.com/