(no subject)

After being stymied by my attempts to get the wheel bearing replaced in Igor, I have taken him to the shop for work. He should be ready to go by the end of the day. If he wasn't a daily driver, or if I had another car that I could use while he was down, I'd wait and look at it more myself. But I was uncomfortable with the work involved without someone with me who knows what they're doing, and I needed it done soonish. As someone on the Neons.org forum wrote (about wheel bearings, as it happens), sometimes your best tool is your check book.

I got a ride with moiracoon to work today, arriving at the building just a little bit after I normally wake up in the morning. I tried three different positions to take a nap, settling on one with my head on a stack of collapsed laptop shipping boxes. Forty minutes or so of sleep helped me get awake enough to start working on my tickets, since I'm the primary grabber-of-new-tickets today. *woofs*

Though my car will be drivable and pretty reliable (hopefully) by the end of the day, I'm still a little concerned about the transmission. I'm thinking that because of that, and the difficulty in meshing schedules to get a ride with other people going, I'm going to pass on the trip to Michigan this weekend. I want to get the transmission looked at before making a three hundred and fifty mile drive. I think instead I should use the weekend to do some more work on the house, and maybe a photo-trip or two. I want to go to the feed mill again, and I want to see the trains in Rochelle.

**FLUFF**

I'm thinking of getting some prescription sunglasses. I had a pair in college that I really liked, but lost. They would be handy to have as summer approaches. I'm due for another pair through my optical insurance at work, and I can get them pretty cheap through Zenni Optical too. (In fact, I may opt out of optical coverage next cycle and just go through Zenni. I think I'd save money.)

I always wanted Windsor frames when I was a kid, but I think that more rectangular ones seem to fit my face better. The only problem with buying frames online is you don't get to try them on and see how they fit and what they look like.

**FLUFF x2***

I'd love to have this car. The air conditioning would be coming right off though. A/C on a 3 cylinder car? *laughs*

http://racine.craigslist.org/cto/1132382025.html

Money

Help me out here, money people.

Say there's a bank, this one for instance, that has a rewards checking account that offers 5.01% APY. They also offer a savings account, but neither it (at a paltry 0.2% APY) nor even their best CDs (at 3.8% APY tied to a six year commitment) return nearly as high a rate.

Even current rates with online high-yield savings accounts, like those at ING Direct or GMAC aren't nearly as high as the interest rate on this checking account.

So why wouldn't one not bother with a savings account or CDs and just keep all liquid assets in the checking account? Is it merely for convenience's sake so that your savings are in a different account and you don't accidentally spend them?

Aren't savings accounts and money market accounts and CDs and such supposed to give you better returns at the expense of slightly reduced accessibility? Instead, it seems to me like they offer reduced accessibility and lower interest rates.

Confused dog is confused. One thing for sure is that, even if I did want to open up some CDs, they'd be for short terms. Rates are so low right now that they're kind of moot, and can only go up as the economy recovers. Is that why this looks kind of weird to me? Will rates on savings accounts and CDs jump up above those on rewards checking accounts with the economy (assuming the economy does jump up) while rates on checking will stay the same? I've been watching the interest rate on my current savings account dropping...dropping...dropping for a year now.

(Hey, and while I'm at it, what do you local (or non-local too, especially if you use a national or regional bank!) folks think of the banks and services that you use? I'm thinking about a new checking account, and moving savings around.)