Nevertheless, people show up in droves.  I saw people camped out in tents in a Best Buy parking lot.  For the spenders among us, it is their Super Bowl. What does that say about them? Is this considered a sensible frugal activity? Or are these folks simply caught up in the marketing hype? I think the latter. They have been told that shopping at 4:00 AM is “fun.” So to them, it must be, whether they like it or not.

I’m not the only one who is disappointed in the increasing scope of the Black Friday National Holiday. Target is receiving push-back on its “open at midnight” plan, including from at least one employee.

This is Target’s lame response:

By opening at midnight, we are making it easier than ever to deliver on our guests’ wants and needs.

Really? Then why doesn’t Target have killer deals and open at midnight every Friday?   Was a petition filed by thousands of “guests” demanding – needing – midnight shopping privileges ON THANKSGIVING?

Sad.

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Wait – it gets worse when you read the specifics: Banks and credit unions received $30.8 billion in overdraft fees in just the first 6 months of 2011.

That’s $30.8 BILLION!

How can people complain about government excess when they are wasting so much of their own money writing bad checks?  Will nothing cure them of personal finance stupidity?

I suppose that some of these folks have surrendered their credit cards (or had them taken away) and feel good that they aren’t using them.

Instead, they now write checks (or make ATM withdrawals) against insufficient funds as a way to obtain “credit.”

This is one of the worst forms of  ”stupid tax.”  Part of it is fee gouging by the banks, of course. But lack of personal accountability is the primary cause.

The feds will try to intervene but anything short of forcing the banks to close the accounts of serial overdrafters is doomed to failure.

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There are a few college professors who (a) know how to teach and (b) have knowledge to impart that has value outside the ivy walls. Based on the performance of the academics whom Obama recruited to guide our economy, most economics profs are not part of the “few.”

Helping to support my argument is a professor from the University of Texas. His idea is to extend special legal protections to ugly people.

Yes, being ugly is a “disability.”

I’m sure there is data available to back-up his argument that ugly people don’t make as much money as the beautiful people.

But do you think that is true if we exclude movie stars, pole dancers, and supermodels from the survey?

This is just another professor with too much time on his hands because he only teaches 8 hours/week.

I want to see the economic data on stupid people. Surely the colossally stupid are worse off as a class than the merely ugly. Isn’t that why we have blond jokes?

I don’t like involving lawyers in this “give me money because I’m ugly” business.  With so many lawyers looking for work, those of us who thought we were just homely or unkempt would be demoted in a hurry.

Perhaps we should create a compensation fund for graduating high school seniors. If they are ugly, we give them a $25,000 bonus to help them overcome their appearance disability. If they are stupid, we give them $50,000. If they are both, we give them the maximum “you are ugly and stupid” graduation bonus of $100,000. We should probably delay payment after announcing that bonus because some of the ugly and stupid could become professional athletes.

The learned professor questions how we would determine who qualifies as “ugly.” That would be easy using my graduation bonus plan.  Just ask the cheerleaders.  However, it would be a conflict of interest for cheerleaders to also determine who qualifies for the stupid bonus. I’m thinking chess club for that task.

If you want to learn more about the genius ideas from the bored professor, here is the link. Do Ugly People Deserve Legal Protection? Economics Prof Offers Reasons for ADA Extension.

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As a result, we experienced the S&P credit downgrade and continued general fear about the future of our economy. These have combined to sink the markets again.  People still won’t spend and businesses still won’t hire because they know nothing has been fixed.

That’s our new Republican party, now infected with tea party disease.  The dominant symptom seems to be lost ability to think independently.

No I don’t want more taxes. However, the damage done to our personal balance sheets by tea party intransigence far exceeds what would be caused by higher marginal tax rates.

Don’t people realize this?  Is the tea party view of the wealth forest that obscured by a fixation on tax trees.  Is it so important that you bring Obama to his knees that you destroy billions in personal wealth in the process?

Why didn’t the Republicans dig in their heels when Bush was President and spending like crazy?

The Democrats deserve some blame for building a wall around entitlement programs. But I believe that wall would have been breached if the Republicans had put new revenues on the table in return.

We need economic leadership and statesmanship. I don’t see any.

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Instead, they want students to think like the clueless survey respondents mentioned in this article who think that student loan debt is no big deal.

Wait, let me be more accurate with a quote from the article:

The more college loans and credit-card debt that young adults 18 to 27 have, the higher their self-esteem — and the more control they feel they have over their lives. They tend to view debt positively, rather than as a burden.

This attitude is beyond sad. It’s pathetic.  These goofball students – when they graduate – will learn too late that debt is a big deal.

My first advice to parents of grad school wannabees is to make sure your kids understand that if they insist on going to grad school (thus further delaying their entry into a productive economic life), they will be on their own financially. This is critical because if you are like most baby boomers, you are woefully lacking in the retirement savings department.

My second piece of advice for parents and kids alike is to understand that you do not have to incur debt to attend a professional school. I know, because I made it through law school without borrowing a penny and without any help from my parents. How did I do this? I prepared. I knew that I had to. My parents were very generous and paid my way through undergraduate school. This was such a blessing. However, I still remember a brief conversation I had with my father during my senior year of college. I mentioned that I was considering taking a fifth year to earn a Master of Engineering degree. He calmly said “that’s nice but you will have to finance that yourself.” I appreciated his directness. He was right not to take on more financial burden on my behalf. After all, he had three more kids behind me!

So my plan for financing law school was simple. First, I targeted an in-state public school with reasonable tuition. I worked in a full-time engineering job for four years and saved enough money to pay for three years of tuition and my basic living expenses. (Yes, it can be done because I did it.) Third, after my first year of law school, I took on a part-time law clerking job at a local law firm. I kept this job for  most of law school, including summers. Fourth, I did well enough in school to earn an appointment as a legal writing instructor, which was also a paying gig.

Now as a matter of full disclosure, I married Mrs. ToughMoneyLove during my first year of law school. She was gainfully employed so we were able to upgrade our standard of living based on her income. Her contributions to our family income were a windfall to my DIY grad school finance plan.

So don’t concede any more territory to the student loan racketeers. If you need to get grad school out of your system by actually attending, pay for it yourself.

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The most significant outcome from the “everyone goes to college” battle cry is an enormous increase in our collective student loan debt. It is approaching a trillion dollars and now exceeds our national credit card debt.

Here is an interesting statistic: Fifty years ago only 48% of high school graduates went to college. In 2009, that percentage reached an all time high of 70%.  This does not mean that they are graduating. It just means that they are attending for a while, having some fun, and borrowing in the process.  A smaller percentage actually finish.

A recent article from the New York Magazine covers the issue very nicely. If you still have pre-college age kids, you must read it and think about it. I like this quote as a teaser:

American colleges have transformed from rigorous scholarly communities into corporate-minded youth resorts, where some presidents command salaries of more than $1 million and competition centers on outdoing one another in acquiring high-end amenities (duplex-apartment dormitories, $70 million gyms).

The article and the resources it cites makes the case that U.S. colleges are under-performing and overcharging. A double Amen from Mr. ToughMoneyLove.

Yes I know about the statistics demonstrating the different lifetime earnings between those who have a college degree and those who do not. But those statistics are only correlations. I submit that the earnings differences in most cases can be attributed to the motivational and energy levels of the students, not to the degrees conferred.

When I tell you that our youngest son last week graduated from college, you may call me a hypocrite. Here is my defense: (1) He graduated with no student loan debt ;and (2) He used his college experience to focus on a career path. I will add that one of our older sons started but has not finished college. It will not bother me if he never goes back. When he first left, I felt differently. However, he has since developed unique skills that cannot be acquired in any college. He is now marketing those skills in his own small business. That’s what I want for him and for each of our sons: Skills that are valued and ownership of their own business based on those skills.

Here is a link to the must-read article: How the Notion That a College Degree Is Essentially Worthless Has Become One of the Year’s Most Fashionable Ideas

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