A few weeks ago I went to FedEx Kinkos and had them laminate maps of both the North and South Islands of New Zealand. I then ordered some alcohol based pens so I could write on the Map and not have to worry about smudging the ink. The cool thing about these pens is that I can write on the map, while it’s raining, wet, hot, w/e and the ink dries immediately and will not smudge. So when I got the pens I ordered off Ebay, I busted out the map and started to look at the best routes for my trip. The first side I was exploring was the North Island.

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This is just a quick rant here! This morning I saw a charge on my account for $139.99 from something called Buyers Advantage. I have never signed up for anything like this, nor was I aware of what this was. SO naturally, I’m a little upset and want to know just what the hell this is. I do some Googling for “Buyers Advantage charged me $139.99″ and I find hundreds of pages where people are asking the same exact question I was… “What the hell is this charge?” So feeling a little better that I wasn’t alone, I started to read some of the post and saw that a good amount of these users bought a tool called Pedi-Paws, a dog nail filer. We were sent an $8 dollar check from the company thanking us for the purchase and a “Rebate” check. What was written in, very fine-small details, that is if you cash or deposit this check, you are “opting” in for this buyers advantage program in which they will bill you $139.99 per year. (continue reading…)

My trip is approaching fast and I have started to figure out what my final pay is going to be. I have a 145 hours of vacation pay on my stub, and then I’ll clock in 115 hours of work for my last pay stub which is a 2 week period, and then that last week I work. I was doing some calculations and it was seeming I was going to get a fairly large couple of checks when I left. But, always preparing for the worst, I’m only counting on $2,500 from my Vacation pay, even though I have almost 4 weeks of pay on there. 4 weeks of pay, after taxes, would normally be about $3,500. But because Uncle Sam wants more and more of our money and find ways to tax you as much as possible, my vacation pay is going to be looked at as a Bonus. So that means they are going to tax it at 42.75%. This isn’t a bonus, why in the hell tax it as such? If I was just taking two weeks off, I would get normal tax, but because I worked and didn’t take a vacation, they, as in the Government, is going to penalize me for it? (continue reading…)