4 Mar, 2008
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Yet another reason to avoid giving out those gift cards that everyone seems to love:
Tens of millions of dollars in gift cards and certificates became worthless overnight in the wake of the Sharper Image’s financial plight — and customers holding those cards have little recourse.
Federal law allows a company to stop honoring store gift cards when it files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and that’s exactly what’s happening at San Francisco-based Sharper Image. Sales clerks are telling customers they can no longer accept the plastic cards as payment, and the cards are no longer accepted when customers try to use them online.
Hope you didn’t wait too long to go out and grab your personal foot massager/fancy nose hair trimmer/overpriced adult games early! 
4 Mar, 2008
Ah, another almost two month vacation from this site, but still making progress on killing off our debt. A few medical issues appeared early this year — nothing serious by any means, but I have yet to meet a cheap medical issue — so the debt destruction took a small hit. Nevertheless, $1,500 down, and well out of six-figure-debt-land is a good feeling! 
| |
Dec 31′07 |
Feb 29′07 |
Change |
| EVERYTHING We Owe |
| Credit Card Debts |
| Chase |
$20,193.07 |
$19,562.24 |
($630.83) |
| Other Debts |
| Home Mortgage |
38,853.06 |
38,757.45 |
(95.61) |
| Low Energy Loan |
15,286.46 |
15,043.83 |
(242.63) |
| Line of Credit |
25,672.64 |
25,141.38 |
(531.26) |
| TOTAL Liabilities |
$100,005.23 |
$98,504.90 |
($1,500.33) |
And on a personal note, it’s that time of the year again, and I’ve been as busy with tax season as ever. Our practice does many farm returns, and March 1st (3rd this year because of where the 1st landed) is really more of a deadline for us than April 15th. Which is my way of saying,
‘It sure is nice to see March 4th!‘
Now, it’s time to convince all our small business clients that despite what they may have read via an email from their college roommate or heard from the guy they chatted with at the dry cleaner, no, you cannot write off everything… 
