Archive

Archive for March 24th, 2008

New Book: How to Invest in Condominiums

March 24th, 2008

When I went to return my most recent book to the library I decided to pick up a new one while I was there. The one that I chose is called “How to invest in Condominiums,” by Andris Virsneiks. I am only 19 pages into it so far, but I have a good feel for it so far. It appears that it will be fairly informative while keeping at a level that will be easy enough for anyone to understand the basic concepts. The author makes is very clear in the first few pages that investing in condominiums is not a difficult task if done correctly.

The sweet thing about this book is that it is a signed copy. That kind of surprises me for a library copy. Maybe someone was bored and decided to forge his signature into the book. The book was written in 2002, conveniently at the beginning of the real estate boom but I’m sure that the majority of this information can be applicable in any market environment. I also found it interesting that the author did his condominium investing in Seattle, which is the area that I am from.

Reviews, Uncategorized , , , ,

Please don’t…

March 24th, 2008

When going into make a deposit or a withdrawal at your financial institution, there is one thing that I ask that you do not do. Please do not come in with a hat pulled down with large sunglasses. There are a few rational reasons that I make this small request.

First of all, I know the large stunner shades are the cool thing to wear, but seriously. I sometimes have a hard time recognizing my own friends who are wearing these oversized sunglasses. If I find this difficult, how easy do you think it will be for me to properly identify a stranger? Probably not very easy. So please, help me make my job a bit easier so that I don’t have to try and imagine what is behind those bug-eyed shades. As an added bonus, it will probably make the line move a bit faster as well. At least most of the girls don’t wear hats along with their stunner shades.

paris_stunner.jpg

This is a bit of an extreme example, but if you don’t know this person, can you really tell? This picture was taken from the following website.

Guys are actually even worse offenders of these banking no-no’s. Like I said before, when anyone wears sunglasses into a financial institution, it makes it that much harder for us to identify you. It makes it even harder when you come in wearing a baseball hat pulled all the way down to the tops of your glasses. This makes it extremely difficult to identify you. This whole identification complaint is just peanuts compared to the real reason why I don’t like it when guys wear sunglasses and a low hat into the bank.

The bank teller is at the front of the bank and is the only one in the bank with a drawer full of cash. This naturally makes them a prime target for robberies. When someone comes in wearing a low hat and sunglasses into a bank, we automatically assume that you are either a bank robber, or trying to pull some fraudulent transaction past us. Many fraudulent transactions are not caught until days or weeks after the fact and often rely on video evidence to verify the criminal. Hats, glasses and other disguises are often used to hide from the many cameras located inside of a bank. So by you wearing a hat and sunglasses into a bank makes the teller ten times more suspicious of you. This will cause them to examine your transaction much more closely than usual, and will often make them this much more picky and stingy over what you plan on doing.

robber.jpg

Ignore the FBI logo on this guy’s coat, and he looks pretty suspicious to me. Heck, even with the FBI logo he looks pretty suspicious. Imagine how you would feel if you had someone dressed like this (criminal or not) standing in front of you while you have tons of cash sitting right in front of you. Not a very good feeling now is it? This picture was taken from the following site.

So please, for the sake of my sanity, take off at least your sunglasses when you come into your financial institution. It will make us feel a lot safer and will make your transaction run a whole lot smoother.

Personal Finance, Random , , , , , , ,