cupertino

$2195 / 2br - **2 BA, AC, Grt Neighborhd-FIREPLACE, WD, 17ft.Ceiling, Stream! Granit (cupertino)
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/302651708.html

san jose downtown

$1875 / 2br - 2ba Condo - Cats Pool Dishwasher (san jose downtown)
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/299110636.html
a/c, 2 CAR PARKING
s 3rd at reed

$2000 / 2br - CONDOMINIUM STYLE APARTMENTS IN CENTRAL DOWNTOWN (san jose downtown)
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/300747066.html
1198 square feet
a/c
101 E. San Fernando St.

from
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Financial/Personal_Finance/index.shtml

GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system. Developed under the GPL.

CBB
http://www.sourcefiles.org/Financial/Personal_Finance/
CBB is a free, open-source finance management application. Written in Tcl/Tk and Perl, it is highly OS-independent. It may be used with UNIX, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Windows,and more. With CBB you can keep track of your deposits and withdrawals from your checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, and money markets; generate reports summarizing your current financial state; and graph your net worth and watch it grow. With CBB, you can easily load your existing Quicken accounts. CBB: free personal finance management without all those ads.

The Great Unraveling
March 16, 2007
By Stephen S. Roach | from Beijing

Is the Great Unraveling finally at hand? It’s hard to tell. As bubble begets bubble, the asset-dependent character of the US economy has become more deeply entrenched. A similar self-reinforcing mechanism is at work in driving a still US-centric global economy. Lacking in autonomous support from private consumption, the rest of the world would be lost without the asset-dependent American consumer. All this takes us to a rather disturbing bi-modal endgame – the bursting of the proverbial Big Bubble that brings the whole house of cards down or the inflation of yet another bubble to buy more time.

http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/archive/2007/20070316-Fri.html

Living with the eternal pessimist, makes me look for “the other side” - what will those sharpie think of next that will redirect the economy from the brink one more time. In the past there have been government bail-outs for S&Ls, and option ARMs, negative amortization and liars loans for keeping the housing piggy banks going. Can “they” come up with something that will lead to a graceful degradation rather than the recession / depression disaster that SO sees as inevitable and looming on the horizon?

Usually these things are hard to imagine for fiscally responsible folks like us. Negative amortization - who would have thought of that! Turns out, it has been around forever - an artifact of complex (and legal) corporate lending where caps on interest rates produced the situation where loan repayments did not pay all the principle and interest thereby increasing the remaining balance on the loan until some other condition in the loan agreement was triggered. However, turning this into yet-another means of generating mortgage loans for people who really can’t afford to be buying or refinancing housing - now, that’s what I’m talking about.

Repossessions will be up. Consignment sales of all the stuff that was acquired on credit but never used, may be one way to recoup a little cash, but who has the money to buy that stuff even if it is really cheap? Government employees, of course - they all have great paying jobs and pensions.

There are lots of lawyers and financial services people whose jobs are going to be on the line really soon, so whatever the “next big thing” is, it will require lots of these folks to be involved at significant rates of compensation. What about all those foreclosures that are predicted - that sounds like a growth industry.

What we need now are some other big ticket items where applying creative accounting and/or financing will kick start a new round of economic activity. Joe and Jane get back in the game and the sharpies skim off a lot of money on the transactions. What will they think of next…

Medicare is divided into two parts. The first part of the coverage encompasses in-patient hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health and hospice care. The second part of coverage encompasses almost all the necessary medical services (doctors’ services, laboratory and x-ray services, wheelchairs, etc).

enrollment - 3 months before 65, month turn 65, 3 months after turning 65
or - annual enrollment period

B has additional penalty premium (10%) for years since first eligible

A - hospitalization
B - medical services
C - additional / gap coverage
D - drug

Medicare can be used to cover certain medical-related expenses instead of using your savings to cover those amounts. Medicare provides hospital insurance, for in-patient care and certain follow-up care, and medical insurance coverage for physician services that are not covered under the hospital insurance. Medicare is available to individuals who are age 65 and older. (The age can be younger for individuals who are disabled or have permanent kidney failure.) The medical portion of the insurance is available at a premium and is optional. Therefore, if you are covered under a health plan at work, you may not need the medical portion; or you can compare the cost and features of both and choose the one that is most suitable. The hospital insurance is available at no additional costs to you, as you have already paid for it as part of your social security taxes while you were working. (To learn more about health care, see Fighting The High Costs Of Healthcare.)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/06/healthsavingsaccount.asp

Even if you will not retire at age 65, you may still want to consider signing up for Medicare, as it may cost you more if you sign up later. For additional information on Medicare, see SSA Publication No. 05-10043.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10043.pdf

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/07/tips65plus.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/medicare.asp