Figure your personal finances by tracking junk mail, not junk bonds
By Burton W. Cole
Judging from expert financial analysis — the people who compile junk mail lists — my credit rating has hit an all-time high.
Or maybe it's my sucker rating.
My mail has never been so overstuffed with loan offers or great deals on everything from carpet cleaning to cruises to replacement gutters for my house.
In the last two weeks, I've found in my mailbox four offers for free gourmet meals (after a presentation on investing, of course)a, three charities that know I can send $250, a zoo, fundraisers for three major diseases, a pet club, 27 pre-approved credit cards, two jewelry stores and the Internal Revenue Service.
I suppose that last one doesn't count since it would come no matter how sagging my resources. But the others? What do these guys know that my checkbook isn't telling?
I proposed to Terry with a great big Ring Pop. I got down on one knee, popped the question, then popped the Pop onto her ring finger. Grape, I believe it was. The Ring Pop, not her finger. Far more useful than a diamond. If you're stranded in a snowstorm, you won't get any life-saving nutrition licking a diamond.
Sometimes I suspected Terry would have preferred a diamond. But why cheapen such a magic moment?
Despite my mail, I don't feel wealthy. But mailing list gurus don't send credit offers unless their top-flight spy network personally checked your status and decided you could pay it back. (Always a catch, that.) You may have to give up a needless luxury item, such as groceries, but certainly you can afford their products. In fact, you can't live without them.
Since they know I have it, the extra money MUST be around here somewhere. Maybe under the couch cushions.
I call it "The Junk Mail Quotient Solvency Index." It really is a less complicated way of figuring out your financial standing than hiring accountants.
Why stop with personal finances? The Junk Mail Quotient also could simplify reading the national economy.
The reason the national economy gives off such conflicting and confusing reports is it relies on a formula whereby you multiply the stock index by the rate of inflation, divided by the square root of the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, insert the bond market over pi, subtract what the military spent on toilet seats, calculated algebraically over what Janet Yellen had for breakfast.
These complex computations provide what is technically referred to as a "guesstimate." It's what financial wizards use to determine how much interest you'll be charged on your mortgage. (Hint: More than you have in your wallet. If you still own a wallet.)
Instead, put the national economy on a mailing list. You could tell immediately the state of the economy by how many books it can buy for $1 while getting bonus selections for half price.
"The national economy is solid," the financial newscaster would say, "having received this week 138 credit card loan consolidation applications, 43 line of credit applications, 37 offers for time shares and 122 offers to buy back time shares, and three free estimates for siding and thermal windows for the Lincoln Memorial. The national economy couldn't be reached for comment because it's on a cruise it won in a really neat offer in the mail."
Simple.
And with all the money the Junk Mail Quotient would save taxpayers, some of us might have enough left to actually order something from our mail. Say, another Ring Pop because the last one melted in the rain.
Send offers to Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.