I remember one event with my grandfather when he was still alive that really opened my eyes to the difference in perspective between generations regarding money and responsibility.

My grandfather had spent a few days in the hospital after the flu turned into something more serious ( I can’t remember if it was bronchitis or pneumonia). About a month or so later, he received a bill from the hospital. My mother and I happened to be at his house when he got it in the mail and started grumbling about how he was going to pay this mult-thousand dollar bill.

My mother and I instantly thought there was something wrong because people just don’t get stuck with medical bills that big when they have insurance – especially for a relatively common illness.

Come to find out, the hospital billing department didn’t wait to receive any payments or confirmations from the insurance company and sent a bill to both the company and the patient (my grandfather, in this case)!

This memory was brought back to me this week when my wife received a notice in the mail that her medical bill was about to go into collections!

My first thought was again, something is wrong here because this doesn’t make sense…. It was a bill for over $500 from a medical laboratory company. It was for blood work from a month ago. I knew we weren’t responsible for paying it since the doctor who requested the blood work accepted our insurance plan and my wife and I had no say in what lab processed the blood work. If the lab didn’t accept the insurance provider, then it was the doctor who was going to pay because he’s the one who chose the lab and ordered the blood work!

When I called the lab billing department to clear this nonsense up, I learned that they didn’t find the insurance provider in their computerized system, so they assumed she wasn’t covered and sent her the bill. The provider’s name is an acronym and while the full name was in their system, the acronym was not and they were essentially too lazy to contact anyone about it so they sent us a bill instead.

But this episode brings to light the difference between my generation and that of grandfather. His generation felt obligated to pay the hospital bill – it was simply your responsibility to repay your debts. My generation is much more cynical and untrusting of “the system” and questions every assumption. My first thought in both cases – my grandfather’s hospital bill, and my wife’s lab bill – was that some bureaucrat dropped the ball and I have to clean up the mess.

I know for a fact however that my grandfather’s generation would view my response, at least initially, as irresponsible and representative of a sense of entitlement rather than the skeptical first reaction that it was.

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Is Gen Y Irresponsible, Or Is It A Matter Of Perspective? Copyright © Simple Debt-Free Finance

A Pasco County man was arrested Monday night after he allegedly violated a court’s protective order by sending his soon to be ex-wife requests to ‘friend’ him on Facebook.

HA!

Not only does Facebook make stalking easier, but it also makes violating restraining orders a snap! Something tells me that’s not going to be on any Facebook marketing content anytime soon.

He apparently admitted to “friending” his ex, but lord only know why. I guess it wasn’t a unanimous decision to split. it was also a costly action:

“Bruder was jailed on $5,000 bond.”

By the way, just in case you are on Facebook yourself and hadn’t noticed the pig along the right side of this site,

you can follow Simple Debt-Free Finance on Facebook now. You’ll get updates on posts from this blog and other blogs I read.

Will it change your life?

I won’t lie to you. Yes. It will change your life in ways you never thought possible. “Like” it and all of your wildest dreams will come true.

Just stalk me. Especially if you’re an ex-wife of mine.

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Facebook Can Put You In Jail! Copyright © Simple Debt-Free Finance

Here are the Meme rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

7 things you never knew you didn’t know about me.

1. I’m a classical music fanatic (technically, baroque through classical and into the romantic period), but my first real exposure to classical music didn’t come until 8th grade music class. I vividly remember complaining to my mother at the time that classical music was stupid and old and nobody cared about it anyway. I told her it was music for “old farts”. She basically told me to suck it up and try it. I think her actual words were “you may actually like it.” Anyway, I heard Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and was changed forever. I literally couldn’t get it out of my head! I was still listening to it in my mind through health class, next period. Ever since then, I have had an ever growing appreciation for the genre. I guess that makes me an official “old fart.”

2. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. My day job is in the software field.

3. I’m a total science fiction junky, and have been since childhood. One of my fondest television memories growing up was watching the original Star Trek series reruns with my grandfather.

4. I grew up hardly knowing or seeing my father. In fact the only father figure during the first half of my life was the grandfather I was named after. Since becoming a father myself, my dad and I have reconnected and actually have a great relationship.

5. I never cared much for sports in school, but I am a NY Rangers hockey and NY Giants football fan now.

6. It took 22 years and three children, but I finally understand and appreciate the simple lifestyle of a bygone age as portrayed in The Andy Griffith Show. I used to think it was a show about a bunch of hicks from the sticks. Now, I understand better the things we have lost in our modern lives.

7. I play guitar, but not classical and I’ve never been in a band.

To continue the fun I’m tagging (in no particular order):

Frugal Dad
Money Ning
Think Your Way to Wealth
The Wisdom Journal
Money Grubbing Lawyer
Man Vs. Debt
The Amateur Financier

Tag, You’re it!

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7 things you never knew you didn’t know about me. Copyright © Simple Debt-Free Finance

I got hooked early on by reading people who were writing about their experiences with things that I was also experiencing, things like digging out from credit card debt and car payments to making the most of my 401k.

Then came the great blog explosion. It seemed like 100 new blogs were born every day, and personal finance blogs were no different. I was in heaven for a time with so much to read and learn. Call this my golden age of pf blogs.

Then things changed.

Little by little, I started seeing an overall decline in the length and quality of the posts. Many posts began to be little more than 250 word quotes from other sites, often loaded with links. Then I started noticing things like “Carnivals of Personal Finance” seemingly everywhere I turned. At first, I mistook these as general laziness on the part of the blogger. But then things started to click. Remember that exponential growth I mentioned earlier that led to the golden age?

All of this growth meant increased competition for readers and attention. Then these carnivals began making sense. Giveaways too. Especially when I learned that search engines favor sites with numerous inbound (and outbound) links. What better way to get a large number if links then to offer a free book giveaway, and all you have to do to enter is leave a comment? Other bloggers leave comments so they can link your site to theirs, and it become a mutual link exchange.

I don’t begrudge bloggers who take part in carnivals, or roundups as their close cousins are sometimes called. It’s smart, effective marketing. I just think far too many treat them as simple link gathering exercises and don’t use them to offer any real value. I think giveaways are great and linking to other material on other sites is what makes the Internet the rich medium of information that it is. But this power is not always used for good. Some sites seem to be little more than thinly veiled link farms. Those sites disgust me enough to make me unsubscribe from their blog as they are providing no real content or insight.

Now that I have all of that off my chest, there are still some really good blogs out there that offer meaningful, insightful and interesting thoughts, critiques and opinion. One such blog is MoneyNing.

In the interest of full disclosure, MoneyNing is having a giveaway in which one can enter by mentioning his giveaway post in a post of their own. This is, of course, what I am doing here, but I don’t feel it’s compromising my beliefs as laid out above because MoneyNing is not like those other blogs.

MoneyNing is an insightful, motivational and engaging personal finance blog. And he has some pretty good giveaways too!

Photo by: Andrzej Gdula

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Giveaways, Carnivals and Personal Finance Blogging. Copyright © Simple Debt-Free Finance

They are simple habits, but worth a quick read. I’m actually quite surprised to see some of the comments. Quite frankly, it seemed like a common sense list but there is much more dispute in the comments than I would have expected. Still, it does give a 15 second overview of the differences in how the poor and the wealthy think of money.

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Do You Have What it Takes to be Prosperous? Copyright © Simple Debt-Free Finance