Pets can be a serious line-item in your yearly budget. A yearly vet physical can set you back anywhere from $30 to hundreds of dollars, depending upon whether the veterinarian finds anything wrong with your fuzzy, feathered, or scaly companion, to say nothing of the unexpected costs that arise when your pet is ill or suffers an accident.

I first became aware of pet insurance when my kitten, Maxwell, got into a scrap and had to have his face drained (sorry, TMI). I never signed up for it, though. It just sounded like a hassle and I wasn’t convinced the benefits would outweigh my assumptions.

In a recent Market Watch article, David Weidner commented that Citibank is attempting to create a new product, the CLX, which acts as insurance against financial collapse.  The product sounds, as Weidner deftly points out, a lot like the Credit Default Swaps that helped cause our current recession.  It involves the same risks and is being endorsed using the same shaky justifications.

The problem with financial products like the CDS or the CLX is, first and foremost, that it is unclear who covers the ‘bet.’ If financial collapse does happen, and Citibank is to make good on their CLXs, what guarantee is there that Citibank will be in a position, post-collapse, to honor its obligations?  And if it isn’t in a position to honor those obligations, who does?  What’s clear after the fallout of the CDS scandal is that the responsibility of paying off the debts of ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions inevitably falls on the American tax payer.

Recently I received a brochure from Capital One’s credit card division that summarizes the changes made on their monthly statements, as a result of the new credit card regulations. All credit card issuers have made similar changes, therefore I thought that a visual representation of the “new credit card statements” would be helpful in showing everyone what to expect.

There are 5 types of changes:

The current Job Bill being debated on Capitol Hill, in its most recent form, holds at its core an incentive to hire people who have gone more than sixty days without a job.  Businesses that hire these workers are allowed to forgo paying their social security taxes throughout 2010.  The extent of this benefit depends both on the employee’s rate of pay and on the length of their employment.  The hope is that this will provide employers incentives to create new jobs.

Whether the bill passes or not, it’s unlikely to do much by way of solving the unemployment problem in this country because it’s built upon a faulty premise: that the reason employers aren’t hiring is because they can’t afford to pay social security taxes—which only amounts to about 6.2% of the employees paycheck.  The truth is that employers hire people because they need the help.  If there is no demand for their products, then they certainly don’t need more people to help them manage their dwindling operations.  To put it plainly, an incentive of 6.2% simply doesn’t address the problem of dried up demand.

As you might have heard, the new credit card law (i.e. the Card ACT) went into effect yesterday. The provisions of the new law that will impact most of us are the ones around interest rates, overlimit fees, payment allocation, and monthly statements.

Here is a quick summary of what you should know so that you can take full advantage of these pro-consumer changes:

Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia Business School professor, Joseph Stiglitz argues in this interview that we are headed for another collapse.  His arguments are sound and should be listened to.

Back in August of 2009, Yian Mui of the Washington Post reported that “sales of bottled water have fallen for the first time in at least five years.” Its meteoric rise to popularity was astonishing: sales of bottled water “swelled 59 percent to $5.1 billion between 2003 to 2008, making it one of the fastest growing beverages.”

So, economically, if you owned shares in a company that sold bottled water, you probably received a tidy return on your investment.

I pay my bills on time, have a cushion in my savings account, and don’t spend-and-burn. I’ve also worked with Card Hub since the beginning of time. So, I can honestly tell you I know that secured credit cards can be a super way to build or repair your credit history, and that I never imagined having one in my wallet, given that I have excellent credit.

This goes to show that one should never say “never.” Citibank has a cute little offer going, one that rewards account holders with a 4.07% annual rate of return, and rewards itself with a new base of no-risk credit card holders.

It is frustrating that American banks, post bailout, are paying out record bonuses given that many of those banks would not be in business if they hadn’t received a handout at the tax payers’ expense.  In response, President Obama is now threatening to heavily tax these bonuses to send the banking industry the message that the American people will not stand for such behavior.  The depiction of these banks in the media and by the government, however, is far too simplified.  Not all banks are the same.  Some banks simply didn’t need the bailout and other banks received aid indirectly when the government bailed out their debtors.

For a company like AIG, the issue is quite clear.  They would have failed had we not bailed them out.  As a result, we now own most of their company.  AIG clearly shouldn’t give their executives a bonus.  Moreover, as shareholders, we have every right to demand that those executives don’t get a bonus.  On the other hand, some banks didn’t need a bailout.  Capital One, for instance, was forced to take the government’s money so as to help stabilize the economic disaster.  Their cooperation helped conceal the real problem areas (i.e. Citibank and Bank of America), thus preventing investors from cutting and running on companies that desperately required the bailout to stay afloat.  Those banks which didn’t need the bailout repaid that money almost immediately and they shouldn’t be penalized.  If anything, they should be rewarded for helping the American economy stay afloat and for having a sustainable business model when, all around them, other giants of their industry were toppling.

I had a fascinating conversation with Mr. Herb Weisbaum, AKA the MSNBC.com ConsumerMan, about the scams we should all be aware of. It was an eye-opening conversation, one that I hope will save you a lot of pain and anguish.

Surprisingly, your credit card account is not on the scammers’ most-wanted list. “Con artists are trying not to use credit cards [in their scams] because the charges can be reversed,” Weisbaum said.

I don’t remember how I first heard of Gilt Group, but its sales model intrigued me: Luxury branded items for sale at deep discounts, but only for a limited time. I received an invitation (yes, you need an invitation to join) on my birthday. I needed new shoes. I signed up.

Gilt’s sales begin at noon EST daily and run for no more than 36 hours. They send a daily email to members — I usually get mine at 11:57 — announcing the brands and items for sale that day. In the few weeks I’ve been a member, they’ve offered goods from Vera Wang Collection, Judith Lieber, Rodanthe, American Apparel (really?), Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Alexander Wang.

More and more American families these days are learning to live within their means.  They’re making trade offs about what they want, what they need, and what they can afford.  They’re trying, during these hard times, to make their dollar stretch as far as possible.  You’ll notice that what they aren’t doing, or at least not in great multitudes, is borrowing against their future so as to maintain their lifestyles.  Sure, the draw to live as one has become accustomed is strong, and likewise, the ability to buy on credit is still a possibility.  Were there no repercussions, were it simply a case of someone saying, “here take this, no strings attached,” we wouldn’t need to make sacrifices so that we can live within our means.  However, when we know that there will be repercussions for our spending, that the credit card bill will come or that the bank will want their money back, we also know that we are going to have to do more with less.

Note, this is not a post about family budgets, but a post about national budgets.  America, like America’s households, needs to learn to get more done on less money.  Just as with those households, it is easy for the country to buy on credit, on the assumption that we can repay at some later date… far too easy in fact.  Very little will stand in the way of our nation going deeper into debt, but just as with a normal household, someone has to eventually pay the bill.  That money is not given to us—it comes with repercussions.  Our President seems to be operating in the same mode as his predecessor:  putting our nation into deeper and deeper debt so as to pay for all the projects that he wants to start or maintain.  Congress raised the federal deficit cap in February of 09, they raised it again this month, and are poised to raise it again next month as part of a larger economic bill, currently before the Senate.  Simply raising the amount of debt the federal government allows itself to accrue is easy enough to do.

In an article printed in The New York Times last November, Andrew Ross Sorkin addressed the issue of corporate governance by exploring the proposed takeover of the British confectioner’s company Cadbury by the American company Kraft.  The article explains that because British Boards of Directors act, essentially, in an advisory capacity, the decision to sell the company is based on the shareholder’s desires.

Since the article was written the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft has been complicated by various developments, but the issues discussed by Sorkin still hold.  Sorkin used the proposed takeover as an opportunity to discuss the differences between the power of corporate governance in England and in America.  In the British system, shareholders have much more control over the future of their investments, while in the American system, much of the control of the company is ceded to a Board of Directors and so takeovers, like that of Cadbury by Kraft, generally require the Board’s blessing to move ahead.

On January 14th, Congress voted to increase the federal deficit cap to $12.4 trillion having  raised it from $12.1 trillion February of last year.  The bill was a concession by Democrats who had planned an attempt to increase the federal deficit cap by $2 trillion in order to prevent having to call another vote before next year’s midterm elections.  Already, Democrats are pushing to increase the deficit cap again by mid-February to prevent the U.S. government from spending more than it is allowed and therefore default on certain obligations.  Because the government tax revenues simply cannot cover the rate of government spending, both the national debt and the interest on that debt continue to grow.  For most Americans, this is cause for concern.

Not for Congress though.  The increase to the deficit cap follows on the heels of  last year’s huge omnibus spending bill signed into law on December 16, 2009 which earmarked $446.8 billion for special projects and increased federal spending by 10 to 12%.  Its the kind of thing that can only make it into legislation in December when lawmakers are in rush to make it to the holiday recess and haven’t had the time to give proper vetting to the measures on the table.  It was a holiday surprise for the average tax-payer and a gift to the numerous special interest groups that, sadly, have influence on our lawmakers.  We may recall that it was just such an omnibus spending bill that legalized Credit Default Swaps.  In 2009, despite the fact that the federal government had reached the limit of money that it could borrow, the omnibus spending bill wrapped together 6 different lesser spending bills and had provisions for over 6,000 back home projects for the lawmakers who sponsored it.