A few days ago I received a check in the mail that I wasn’t expecting. It was a legitimate check for $9.25 that said it was for rewards from some program. It was from the Traveler’s Advantage program which I believe is associated with Budget Car Rentals. If you looked close, however, in fine print it said that by cashing the check you were enrolling in their program. Then on the back of the check where you would normally endorse it it had more fine print. You were agreeing to enroll in the program for 12 months at a cost of $14.99 per month.

Needless to say, I was not impressed with the tactic that was being used. Even if I had been interested in the program (which I wasn’t) I wouldn’t have signed up for it at that point because of the shady tactic that was being used. I would also venture to say that most people are turned off by marketing that is misleading. They are banking on the fact that at least some percentage of the people they’re sending it to will just cash it without reading the fine print.

This type of thing should serve as a reminder to all of us that we should always read and understand the fine print. These companies aren’t looking out for you financially, but you should be. Don’t fall prey to their deceptions. And if I were you, I wouldn’t sign up for Traveler’s Advantage. How good can the program be if they have to mislead people to get them to sign up for it?

Citigroup has said that its quarterly profit will drop about 60 percent because of the trouble in the subprime market and a weaker consumer business. They have also said however that they expect to return to a normal earnings environment in the fourth quarter.

As could be expected, shares of Citigroup dropped even before the market opened. I’m mentioning this as an example of the day to day news and information that affects the price of stocks. Citigroup is the largest U.S bank by market capitalization and I don’t see them filing bankruptcy any time soon.

I do see this as an opportunity to pick up shares of the company for relatively cheap. The dividend yield alone is over 4 percent. I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear various analysts talk about the stock as a great value say to pick it up while it’s cheap. Thus, the constant up and down of the daily prices. Today will most likely be a down day for Citigroup, but tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

If you see the company as a solid company, you won’t be shaken by one piece of news, and you might even seize the opportunity to buy it on sale. It would be wise to have a list ready of companies you’d like to own so when opportunities like this come along you’re ready for them. You shouldn’t try to time the market, but buying a solid company on a dip isn’t a bad strategy.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the recent rate cut from the Federal Reserve of 0.5 percent. It was obvious that Wall Street loved it as the market experienced a large upswing, but many others are critical of the move and view it as a Wall Street bailout. What does it mean to your average person though?

Within days of the rate cut, I was informed that the rate on my ING DIRECT money market account was being lowered to 4.3% APY from 4.5% APY. This isn’t isolated however, savings and money markets are lowering rates all over the place.

Those with ARM mortgages might benefit as their loans may reset to a lower rate after the introductory period lapses. This is nice for those that bought more house than they realistically could afford, but interestingly enough, longer term rates have actually increased. These longer term rates are what affect the traditional fixed rate mortgages. So it would seem that the financially prudent will once again be paying to bailout the unwise.

Whatever your view is on the recent rate cut, there isn’t much that the average person can do about it. What we have to be able to do is adapt as best we can to the circumstances that we’re given. If interest rates continue to drop for money market accounts, other options can be explored. The stock market usually reacts positively as interest rates fall which could be helped further as people pour more money in as their cash accounts don’t perform as well.

Most people won’t be noticeably affected by what’s going on, but for those of you who pay attention to these sorts of things, you’ll begin to notice ways that you can take advantage of the changes. It also serves as a reminder that our financial plans can’t be static. We must be willing to make changes and adapt to the changing market and financial conditions.

I’m trying something new here on this blog. It’s an ad network that provides contextually relevant ads. You’ll notice that different words and phrases will be linked and double-underlined. Supposedly it will take about two weeks or so to accurately “learn” the site and optimize itself. I’m testing this out as a possible revenue source that will help keep this blog up and running. Hopefully it won’t be too distracting. Feel free to let me know what you think, be it positive or negative, but I’ve decided to try it out for a while.

I just came back from a meeting this evening, and I got to thinking about what was or wasn’t accomplished. It also got me thinking about meetings in general and how useless they are sometimes. These are my thoughts:

1. People love to hear themselves talk. This has been evident in almost every meeting I’ve been a part of. They don’t really care if what they say will add any benefit or value, but because they think they sound intelligent they will say it anyway. Why? Because they like to hear themselves talk.

2. People also like to speak in very broad and general terms. They do this because then they won’t actually have to do anything specific. They may sound very impressive (refer to #1), but they can leave the actual work to someone else. These people also like to philosophize.

3. A meeting is usually called for some specific reason, yet the meeting rarely accomplishes what it set out to do. This is perhaps the most amazing observation I’ve made. Even though the meeting hasn’t really accomplished anything, the participants will walk away feeling like they’ve gotten something done and been productive during the day. And of course they’ve been productive, they’ve been busy all day in meetings, right?

4. If for some reason a meeting has actually accomplished the very thing it set out to do, it will rarely end early. People will find something useless to talk about since they don’t want to go back and actually get some real work done. And the best part about this is that everyone knows what they’re doing, but it will remain unspoken.

Although the tone of this hasn’t exactly been all that positive, you can learn a few things about your personal involvement in meetings. Make sure you’re not one of those people described above. You’ll be so much more productive.

If you’ve been a long time reader of Fiscal Musings, you will have heard me talk about Red Box video rentals. This time I have somewhat of a negative story about them.

Every so often, we rent videos from these DVD vending machines, and we’ve always used promotional codes to get them for free. About a week ago, I noticed that my credit card had been charged for one of these rentals even though the checkout screen had displayed $0.00.

We called their customer service line to have the charge refunded and were met with defensive opposition. I explained the situation but it was immediately discounted as if I were telling a lie. I don’t know about you, but it’s not really worth lying about a single dollar. You may also argue that it’s not worth calling about a dollar charge, but it was more the principle of the thing. Plus, I wanted to find out what happened so that it wouldn’t happen again.

Eventually I got the dollar refunded (or was told that it will be), but the whole experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In my opinion, it would have made better business sense not to argue with a customer over a dollar charge, but to make sure the customer had a good experience and would continue to provide good word-of-mouth advertising. But, it is what it is.

Many of you out there have your own blogs, be it also about business and finance or about another subject you’re passionate about. Because you’ve got this medium already established and provide your readers with quality content and information, you have the potential to earn income.

Text Link Ads is a great service for you to sign up with in order to begin earning money from the blog you’re already publishing. Advertisers will pay to have links put up on your site that will generate traffic. All that’s required of you is a little space in one of your sidebars to put up these links.

So, if you’re looking to earn a little money on the side with your blog, give Text Link Ads a try. All you need to do is sign up with them and follow their instructions. What do you have to lose?