Dwolla and Serve

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I’m locked out of American Express’s new “paypal alternative” or whatever they’re calling it, Serve. I forgot my password because they had some arbitrary rules and I think they want me to call to get it unlocked. I really don’t care because I don’t know _anyone_ using it.

And now there’s this thing that BW wrote about, Dwolla, which is actually not unlike similar systems I’ve heard about in the planning phase. The fact that they’ve moved out of planning and into existing is a huge difference, though. Will they move on up? I don’t know. I’m too afraid to just hand over my bank account info.

I think the real first step banks can make to help end this is secured secondary checking accounts. I used Keesler FCU and they actually said there was no way to prevent overdrafting, because they’d just charge me $20 to reject every ACH transfer instead. Sure, I can’t get charged for a $500 overdraft on a phony transfer, but I’ll get hit $20 every time. I just wanted a way to wall off my regular account from the account PayPal could access to prevent fraudulent charges.

I’ll have to see if things have changed since regulations changed last year.

Medicine and expiration

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I like to buy off brand, usually. Apparently I forgot that just now when I bought Mucinex, but I don’t know if there’s an Equate version of Mucinex. File that under “things you realize when you get home”.

But my thoughts on the way home were, “I need to write about this before I forget”. This being medicine expiration. Do people even look when they buy medicine? I know they do when they buy milk. For example, I bought the Equate (walmart brand) version of Zyrtec, but only a 45 count, not 70, because the 70 count expired a year sooner than the 45. I couldn’t see myself taking all 70, or even enough to make it cheaper to buy 70 over 45, before they expired and became less effective. Thus, I spent a little more per pill and went for the smaller amount.

The Mucinex all expires at the same time, so I had to think, will I take enough before then to make it worthwhile? The double pack was $1 less than two of the regular, so it wasn’t that big of a savings. If I didn’t take all but 2 of those before expiration, I’d have ended up wasting money. I look back at how many we have left of the Mucinex previously that did expire, and realize we won’t take them all in time.

That’s the point, when you have to replace medicine, think “how many did I buy before? How many did I have left? Would it benefit me to buy the larger size now, or will so many expire that I’d have saved money per pill but lost money per pill taken?”

That’s all I wanted to say, as a tip on how to decide how much medicine to buy at a time. Don’t be drawn in by the savings per pill without realizing that it doesn’t matter if you don’t take them. Kind of like how you might buy a full gallon of milk, but if you let more than a quart expire, then you would have ended up saving money by just getting a half gallon and buying more when you ran out.