Weather
Well, I am still waiting to make another move towards improving both my networth and my debt. In the mean time, I keep on living… 
One of the rules I gave myself when I made the decision to blog about my finances was to try and remain as anonymous as I possibly could. One of the reason being that I hope that my credit card companies/banks don’t penalize me for being so negatively outspoken. Having said that, I will give a clue as to where I live.
I am an American citizen and I live on an island.
That’s about as much as I am going to say. And the reason for that is so you can get a better feel as to where I am coming from in some of my posts. Case in point is one of my recent posts where I talked bout a $120 fee for depositing an international check in one of the local banks. This could be one of the potential reasons for the $120.00 fee. Although with today’s digital world it still seems outrages.
And it will also make sense now that I will post about the weather and how this is murder on my finances. You see, the hotter it gets the more I use my air conditioner to keep my computers and myself happy in this awful weather—well, awful weather for my finances, not necessarily for the beach bunnies.
The hottest months of the year here are from May to October. This is when I can expect my electric bill to sky rocket just on the air conditioner alone, not to mention the many fans around the house.
I guess this is the reverse of when I lived in the states, where the gas for heating during winter would be the most expensive months. We had more cold months in the states than I have hotter months here on the island.
In any case, I hope you are having a fabulous summer wherever you are!
And don’t forget the longest days are just around the corner, summer solstice, they can start on June 20th and end around July 2nd; depending on where you live!
If I guess Hawaii do I win anything? Regarding what the banks and credit card companies think of me, I could care less. There are tons of PF blogs out there about getting out of debt, managing money, building wealth, in general people starting to ‘get it’, I think they’re too busy trying to get the next debtornation on their hook so the cycle continues.
Bank fees are rough and I paid a few fees when some international charges came into my bank from Jamaica (where my wife and I went for our honeymoon). I get mad when the bank wants the stupid little $1.50-2 charges just for using an ATM. Late fees and overdrafts though I can do something about by making sure I pay on time and keep everything on track to avoid rubber checks.
I have had to resort to the AC because it got hot quickly since its summer now. My gas bill always goes down in the summer but the electric seems to make up the difference, so I never win with the utilities. We had some rate freezes expire in Illinois and in general people here are paying more for power now.