Dallas Cowboys’ wide receiver Roy Williams has settled a dispute with ex-girlfriend and former Miss Texas USA Brooke Daniels over a $76,000 engagement ring.
According to court documents, Williams mailed Daniels an overnight package that included the ring and a taped marriage proposal. Daniels refused the marriage request, and Williams filed a civil suit against Daniels on June 30 in order to regain possession of the ring.
Since Williams’ relationship with Daniels was not far enough along for her to feel comfortable accepting his marriage proposal, the price of the engagement ring ended up far exceeding its actual value. In order to protect readers from making the same type of financial mistakes as Williams, I present a list of ten things nobody should ever pay for.
10. DVDs: Most DVDs cost $20. A RedBox rental is $1 per night. You’d have to watch a movie 20 times to justify buying it instead of renting it. With Netflix’s instantly streaming movie service, it’s even harder to justify buying a DVD, especially because so many movies that come out aren’t even very good.
9. CDs: I’m not even going to get into the whole “Are you stealing from the artists by pirating music, or helping them by weakening the record companies?” debate; I’m just going to point out that rarely is every single song on a CD likable, so it makes more sense to use a downloading service to only pay for the songs you actually like.
8. Dressing at restaurants: Seriously? If I order wings and the restaurant charges me for blue cheese dressing to dip my wings in, that is the last time I eat at the restaurant. Dressing is supposed to go with the food. Charging for dressing at a wings place is like charging extra money to put cheese on a pizza.
7. Dogs: They’re expensive enough to provide food and vaccinations for, so why add to their cost by actually paying to obtain them too? This is the 21st century. Go to Craigslist, and respond to one of the 42 bazillion postings from people giving away newborn puppies for free.
6. Cell phones: Between free upgrades every two years and warranties that cover your phone if it breaks before then, you can find a phone that has all the capabilities you want for free. There are plenty of free phones with email and Internet, the money shelled out for iPhones is simply spent to indulge the inner child and play with all the apps.
5. Books: As if libraries already didn’t render buying books an inefficient use of money, Amazon now refunds you fully if you return a Kindle book within a week of buying it. If you know you’ll have time to finish the book in a week, you can treat your Kindle like a library.
4. Anything at a gas station other than gas: Whatever it is you’re considering buying inside a gas station, chances are it’s stale and overpriced. And those hot dogs are probably older than the person ringing up your purchase.
3. Movie theater candy: Those boxes of candy you pay $4 or more for at the movie theater are usually a dollar apiece at a local store. And they fit perfectly in the pocket of your jeans. It’s a no-brainer, really.
2. Sex: If your skills are so weak you have pay to get some action, you deserve whatever oddly-colored sores or warts you wake up with the next morning. By the way, what do Elliot Spitzer and Auburn have in common? They both “pay for play.”
And the number one thing that no one should ever pay for…
Roy Williams: He’s missed 15 starts the past three years, turns 30 this year and has amassed 1,000 receiving yards only one season in his career, but he’s due $9.5 million next season and is likely to be released whenever the lockout ends. With plenty of younger receivers available, teams should avoid the underachieving Williams like a sumo wrestler avoids carrots.
A version of this column is scheduled to be published in The Washington Times, Monday, July 11, 2011.
Follow the Money No. 74: Charlie Chaplin’s suit?
The geopolitical question of the hour: is there a tripwire that will tie together a series of regional crises bringing on another 2007-08 worldwide economic disaster?
Lehman Brothers’ collapse dramatized how enhanced interconnections can tumble through the new world economy with domino effect. But if the world finance mavim know a seminal interrelation of our several bubbling crises, they are not telling us. Meanwhile, the minitheaters percolate:
Europe –There’s growing consensus Greece’s economic collapse is leading to a restructuring of the European Union’s finances with more than 20% of the world’s gross product. Shooting the messenger – the growing attacks on rating agencies which, indeed, are feeding debilitating increases in the cost of debt – doesn’t solve the problem nor do complicated if band-aid solutions. Nor, does it seem likely to this observer, creation of a Eurobond market to absorb growing debt would automatically bring about inspired, problem-solving central European fiscal and monetary direction. [It didn’t with creation of the Euro “common currency”.]
The U.S. – However much the Obama Administration’s stimulus program staved off an even worse crisis – to be argued until the end of the economists’ time, not soon contrary to John Maynard Keynes hopeful prediction the profession would die out – it has run out its string. Public opinion demands curbing deficit spending. But how against pressures of “special interests” [yours’ always are, mine are heaven blessed] is a conundrum taxing the American political system. It‘s a time when parliamentary government – with its ability to bring down a cabinet’s failed strategy instantaneously – is envied. Instead, more than a year’s political mudslinging appears inevitably producing near paralysis. Meanwhile despite widespread denials – including fudging with inventions like “core inflation” – higher prices could couple with stubborn underdemployment/unemployment and an unresolved housing bubble for increasing misery.
China – The cracks, long seen by the few who questioned sustainability of the miracle of “the world’s factory”, are widening. Beijing central planners – despite their rationale only rapid growth could legitimate “Communism with Chinese characteristics” by providing jobs and stability -- have curbed unlimited infrastructure expansion which with now slowing exports was the engine of growth. “Creative accounting” takes on new meaning for government banks hiding “non-performing loans” in new set-aside organs now making their own bad loans. Beijing’s inability to “feed” local Party hacks leads them to “squeeze” workers and farmers in turn leading to growing violence. Inflation, especially food where most Chinese live, grows despite monetary devices borrowed from Western systems largely ineffective on what still is a Soviet skeleton.
Japan – The world’s third largest economic power drifts, mysteriously bereft of political leadership, caricatured in its inability to address the destruction of the earthquake-tsunami with characteristic “Yamato Damishi” [fortitude]. In Japan’s hot, muggy summer, only 19 of 54 reactors are operating in the face of anti-nuclear sentiment. With more to shut down, cutbacks of 15% already haunt large electricity customers and boosts expensive fossil fuel imports. Consumer confidence falls to record lows, ominous for Japan’s rapidly ageing population. Government debt, already the world's highest ratio at 200% of GDP, will rise as Tokyo borrows $100 billion to rebuild and GDP shrinks. Luckily, Tokyo borrows at home at floor-scraping 1.5%. But, Japan, too, has its echo of the American argument: Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano opposes Tokyo selling itself bonds as the Fed and Treasury have done, warning resulting higher finance charges would hit Japanese banks.
But how does it all connect? We saw how Japan’s disaster put a crimp in the manufacturing supply chain from Shanghai to Detroit. But, for example, what call have German and other European banks on their U.S. colleagues if Greece defaults? Japan, which has been lending the world $175 billion annually in investment capital, is out of that business. Nobody wants to talk about the impact on Spain [20% of the EU GDP] if Greece [3% of the EU GDP], followed by Portugal and perhaps Ireland, “goes”. What will that do to Latin America where Spanish banks have invested heavily as the Brazilian boom simultaneously now threatens to go “bust”? Australia’s roaring dollar is already feeling Chinese cutbacks as will all commodities producers, perhaps even the Mideast petrosheikhs.
In one of his serio-comic sequences, Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp starts pulling a thread from his crumpled suit. Before long, his whole miserable costume dissolves. Is there that kind of loose thread here?
sws-07-08-11
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