If you haven’t yet read “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini, read it. (You can borrow mine.) Then come with me to see the movie on December 15. You can view the trailer here. It looks like the director/producer/whatever watched way too much Lord of the Rings (in fact, I’m pretty sure they lifted a couple of generic scenes straight from LOTR), but the book is very good. I think I’ve even convinced the spouse to come see it with me.

What the hell is the government doing with my money? I just read a news article from which I have excerpted the following (and which was updated 8 minutes after I took the quote, so it’s a bit different now:
“A federal oversight agency said today that the cost of things like housing employees, processing paperwork and providing security has consumed as much as 55 percent of the entire budget for some reconstruction projects in Iraq, vastly reducing the amount of money available for actual construction.
In fact, according to a report by the agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, those administrative and overhead costs, as they are known, may be claiming an even larger share of the money ? but the government does not keep proper track of how the $18.4 billion of American taxpayer-financed reconstruction money approved by Congress two years ago is being spent. Administration and overhead costs rarely claim more than a few percent of the budget for comparable construction projects in the United States.”

The government used $18.4 billion and doesn’t know what it did with it? I have to keep track of my checkbook and the government damn well better keep track of its; after all it is my money in the US government account.

KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root a.k.a. Halliburton a.k.a. Dick Cheney) had the worst record of overhead to actual work spending: overhead costs ate 10% more of their money than any other contractor.

So, what would you do with $18.4 billion? Or at the very least, what would you do with $10.12 billion?55 percent of the money taxpayers paid our government for reconstruction that did absolutely nothing for reconstruction? My google search indicates that I could buy Nvidia for roughly $10 billion, or I could buy YouTube six times over at Google’s purchase price of $1.65 billion. Someone claims that universal schooling could be done for $10 billion, though I have no idea what universal schooling means.

I think I would probably max out my 401k, IRA, pay off my house, then perhaps buy a small country: Bermuda’s GDP is $4.5 billion according to the CIA factbook. Hmmm, that sounds pretty good, I think I’ll buy Bermuda with half the money that Dick and George wasted on overhead SO FAR for Iraq reconstruction.

I’m going to go balance my checking account now in hopes of regaining calm and balance in my life.

Oxfam now has a gift-giving section on its website that lets someone purchase the value of an item, say a cow, as a gift for someone. So I could buy a water jug ($18) or plant 50 trees ($30) or?my favorite so far?invest in a fair trade coffee cooperative ($50). When you buy an item, Oxfam sends a postcard to your “recipient” telling them what gift you purchased and then the cow or trees or whatever goes to people who need them. I tried unsuccessfully to find a program like this last Christmas, where someone could give in your name or could pay on a website for a project that you support. Rather, there were so many different types of program that I was overwhelmed and couldn’t stick at the research to find one I was interested in. This, however, I really like.

If you have never been there, you should immediately open a new window in your browser and go to bankrate.com The site recently published its Savings Guide 2006, which I recommend everyone read, even if only half the articles are somewhat interesting to you. Bankrate is currently my favorite financial website. You can read personal finance columns, browse commentary on the latest Fed funds rate raise/meeting, and crunch many happy numbers in the calculators section.

I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now, but learning about finances makes me happy, giddy, invigorated. And though some people will think I’m weird, I look forward to seeing the bank statement come in the mail so that I can balance it and run fresh numbers into the appropriate budget spreadsheet (and bore the spouse with the latest details). I learned recently that there are actually people called Daily Money Managers who do such things for a living, or rather, they balance other people’s checkbooks and tell them when their bills are due, etc. I’m very much intrigued by this career idea though I get much enjoyment out of my current daily work.

Ah, yes, a point, I’m sure I had one here somewhere. I like saving money: for me, to watch the numbers grow, for saving’s sake, for retirement. Statistically improbable as it is, there are other ex-librarians who went to my alma mater who married spouses who share the same name and shared a major who also enjoy saving money for retirement. Or so I am told.

So if you’re interested in learning about saving?the wonder of compounding interest?let me bore you sometime. Or go to bankrate.com and read about it.

Bank of America came out with a Keep the Change initiative forever ago (so maybe it was actually a year or so ago) and splashed it all over the website: free money, please, have free money. I said, “Sign me up. I like free money.” Oh, but I live in Washington, and since BofA customers who live in Washington and Idaho were apparently inferior to the rest of BofA’s customers, I couldn’t actually participate in the free money party. Now, frickin’ forever later, when I have become so disgruntled that I don’t use our BofA account, guess what? Washington customers have been upgraded: we’re now as special as every other customer. I could actually use the Keep the Change program that stuffs the rounded up portion of every purchase dollar into my savings account and that BofA matches for the first three months up to $250. Too late, too bad, yucky sucky corporation. Did I mention that BofA sucks? [For further discussion that will I'm sure put you to sleep, ask me for other examples of how nobody at BofA knows what anyone else is doing and how the local branches have absolutely no power because they have to sit in the same 20-minute hold line that consumers do. I will drone on and you can take a nap.]

The spouse received double bonus points tonight for accompanying me in the cold to watch my cousin play soccer at the tournament. Said spouse also explained what was happening because a) I’m not very good at understanding what’s happening in a sports game and b) I couldn’t see a thing because a group of rowdy, annoying, teenage boys posted themselves directly to my right and kept creeping over in front of me. When I asked said boys to move a bit so that I could actually see, they grumbingly complied . . . for about two minutes, then they moved in front of me again. I gave up and watched the game via spouse’s commentary. The good news: my cousin’s team won the game.