But my aggravation this morning comes from the Bank of America. You see, once upon a time I opened up a credit card account with a group whose name I can’t remember now. Then that group was purchased by a company called MBNA. Then MBNA was purchased by the Bank of America. And thus I have a credit card with the Bank of America. In general, I don’t have many complaints about the Bank of America, but I think in their attempt to do the right thing, they’ve managed to bring me some added aggravation.

Apparently, some Bank of America credit card numbers were compromised the other day and the bank did the right thing by immediately eliminating those account numbers and issuing new ones. However, they didn’t send the new credit cards out until yesterday. Why the delay? Yes, I understand that these cards needed to be printed and shipped (and, hopefully, checked for accuracy along the way). Yet, this delay in sending the new credit cards has left me here on Tuesday morning with a credit card that doesn’t work (the old one with the old number). This wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that I intend to use my credit card this Friday night. And since my official mailing address is in North Jersey while I live in Central Jersey, I am now faced with the problem of getting this credit card into my little hands before Friday night when I have a packed schedule for the rest of the week.

So – like I said earlier – Bank of America did the right thing by having a new credit card issued, but dropped the ball by not sending the replacement card much earlier than yesterday. That’s okay, though. It’s good to know that at least one bank out there is trying to do the right thing by its customers.

Sirius XM closed around 68 cents today. So…for those of us who bought it at 11 cents, that’s not a bad gain, huh?

One of my roommates and I are somewhat “new” to the investing game and while other people are talking about how bad they are losing money, we’re both up over 100% in our portfolios. In fact, as of today my stock portfolio is up over 150%. I think the reason why we’re up so much is – first and foremost – that we bought when the market was low and everyone thought that the world was going to end. When people are dropping the value of stocks based on fear and paranoia, you have to jump in and buy.

However, I think that one of the reasons why we’re both doing so well is that we’re purchasing stocks with which whose products we are familiar with on a personal level. For example, I invest in Sirius XM because I know that they have a quality product (unless you’re one of these people who have the service for Howard Stern alone, then you might be annoyed at the 10 weeks of vacation that he takes every year). But when it comes to commercial-free music and something to listen to during the work day, no one can deny that Sirius XM is a great product.

Anyway, the reason for writing this post is to tell the everyday people out there that they can invest in the stock market and find success.

As a result of a change in our business practices, your Annual Percentage Rate(s) will use a variable rate formula based on the U.S. Prime Rate. If the Prime Rate changes, your APR(s) will vary accordingly.

In other words, my reward for being an excellent credit card borrower with an excellent repayment history and a credit score either at or a few points shy of 800 is to have my fixed rate changed to an adjustable rate. Once I received this notice, I immediately began searching for a new credit card. But while I did find some great choices for a new credit card, I’m going to hold on to this one for the time being. Here are my two justifications.

First, I have a large amount of “reward” points built up on this card. In the past year and a half, I’ve charged about $20,000 on this card and repaid it all within 30 days of using the charge card. That’s pretty damn impressive given some of the consumers in this economy. I don’t want to give up the 20,000 or so reward points that I have so far when I can cash them in for everything from cash to magazine subscriptions to small electronics.

Second, I always pay back my charges within 30 days of making them. Since I don’t really carry a charge as a balance beyond 30 days, I don’t pay finance charges.

Those two points aside, I will probably wind up switching my credit card company in the coming year. My thought process is that as an excellent borrower, I deserve more than this from Bank of America. If they want to treat their best borrowers with such disregard, then I reserve the right to find a new company that will treat me with the respect that my credit history and credit rating deserve.

I made a few bucks buying Bank of America last week and Barnes and Noble in December and January, but the real winner for me has been Sirius XM satellite radio. I bought this stock (a LOT of this stock) when it was ranging between 11 cents and 16 cents. Less than 2,000 shares overall, but still a decent amount. Today the stock closed at 35.7 cents a share so I’m doubling some of my money and tripling some other money. My only regret with this stock is that I didn’t go “all in” when it hit 5 cents a few months ago. Just think, if you invested $1,000 in the stock when it was 5 cents, your share would be worth over $7,000 right now!

Anyway, no point in crying over spilled milk – especially when I’m still up 163% on my initial investment in the company! Ford has also been a winner for both me and one of my roommates who decided to invest in it. And Alcoa (an aluminum making company) has provided more than a 30% increase in the last week.

Now that I’ve dropped GM completely the only negative returns that I have in my portfolio are Martha Stewart Omnimedia and THQ, Inc. Omnimedia is the parent company for all of Martha Stewart’s various subsidiaries (and Emeril Lagasse, too). I think this stock is poised for major growth in the coming 12 – 18 months and buying it right now at $2.31 per share might pay big dividends in the future.

As for THQ, Inc., this is the video game company behind the wildly successful WCW/nWo and WWE video games. They also have the rights for Disney/Pixar video games, too. I think this is another company that has a good long-term earnings potential ahead of it and it’s one that I just bought heavily into (in my world, heavily is a hundred bucks or so!).

Just thought I’d share…and see if anyone has any decent stock tips out there!

Really?

Let’s think about that in real figures for a minute. If America was losing 20,000 jobs each day, that would be 140,000 jobs lost each week. There have absolutely been horrible announcements about new sets of layoffs each week. But if this country was losing 20,000 jobs each day, that would mean that we’re losing 7.3 million jobs each year. Ahem…losing seven million, three hundred thousand jobs each year.

This is clearly not the case. Think about it in terms of real jobs: Wal-Mart employs about 2.1 million people; McDonald’s employs some 400 thousand; Home Depot employs about 330 thousand; Bank of America has around 172 thousand employees; and Macy’s has about 182 thousand people currently employed. Combined, you’re still looking at approximately 3,180,000 workers – less than half of what the woman on the show this morning was fear mongering about.

If you believe what this fear monger believes with respect to America losing jobs, then you might believe that more than double of the equivalent amount of total jobs provided by Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Bank of America, and Macy’s will be gone in a twelve month time period.

The economy is in a rough period right now and it might last for a few more weeks, months, or even years. But when people go around trying to sell fear like this it does nothing to help get the nation’s psyche back where it needs to be.

Anyway, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

But one thing bothers the hell out of me and that’s when credit card companies try to hoodwink students into signing up for their product. Sure, this falls into the parameters of learning about the rules of the game, but it’s cheap. The New York Times covered this last Friday in an article entitled, “Colleges Profit as Banks Market Credit Cards to Students.”

If you clicked over to see the article, then I’m sure you noticed the Bank of America table set up at Michigan State University. Anyone who has been to college has seen a similar setup on their campuses – you have a perky representative behind the table enticing students who are walking by to sign-up for their credit card and in return you get a free t-shirt, a gigantic discount at the bookstore, or some other not-really-needed benefit. When I was in college I once signed up for a credit card because they were giving away free t-shirts…which were two sizes too small for me to wear.

Hundreds of colleges have contracts with lenders. But at a time of rising concern about student debt — and overall consumer debt — the arrangements have sounded alarm bells, and some student groups are starting to push back.

The relationships are reminiscent of those uncovered two years ago between student loan companies and universities. In those, some lenders offered universities an incentive to steer potential borrowers their way.

Here at Michigan State, the editors of the student newspaper wrote this fall that “it doesn’t take a giant leap for someone to ask why the university should encourage responsible spending when it receives a cut of every purchase.”

Good for the student newspaper at Michigan State! Keep probing the issue and asking those questions. For example, if Michigan State has this credit card arrangement with Bank of America whereby it profits when students use credit cards (responsibly or not), then with which organization does the university have a contract to teach students how to use credit responsibly? And what are the metrics for either program? In other words, how much has the university generated from its Bank of America relationship versus how much it has spent on teaching its students how to be responsible economic citizens? I’m sure that with Michigan State being a public university that the students can do some digging and find some of this information. The Times article gives this information:

Michigan State University gets $1.2 million a year but is guaranteed at least $8.4 million over seven years, according to its agreement. The contract calls for a $1 royalty to the university for every new card account that remains open for at least 90 days, $3 for every card whose holder pays an annual fee, and a payment of a half percent of the amount of all retail purchases using the cards.

My guess is that the university has no formal relationship to spend any of those millions of dollars on financial education for its students. What a shame? This stuff bothers me because no matter how level-headed you think a college student might be, there is a greater likelihood of them getting into severe credit card debt because of programs like the one above. When I was in college I rang up some $13,000 in credit card debt before I had to have my Mother bail me out (thanks, Mom ). It was a costly learning experience for me – though I must admit that I’m much better off financially now then I’ve ever been and it is due, in part, to having racked up such a ridiculous credit card debt while in college.

Oh, and how many times can I quote stories from the New York Times? Geez! For their part, the Times has a series called “The Debt Trap” where they look at the relationship between increased consumer spending and the lenders providing the dollars for that relationship. It’s interesting – go take a look!