DH & I also have several cards with no balance on them. We will be applying for a mortgage soon, so I asked my banker this question. He told me to cancel the majority of the cards, but to keep either a couple with fairly low limits or one card with a pretty decent limit. He said that banks like to see someone have $30,000-$40,000 worth open credit on cards (depending on your income). He says that lets them know that you have a source of available money that you can access quickly. He said they don't like to see huge amounts of open credit because that shows the potential for a problem. We pulled our own credit reports & they said that the amount of unused credit we have may actually be hurting our score. We have only a tiny fraction owed but a lot of open credit. Another thing my banker & the credit report mentioned was the ratio of how much you owe to the amount of open credit. Example: If you owe $5,000 & have two cards with a total credit limit of $20,000, cancelling one card that has a $10,000 limit can actually hurt you. Instead of having a balance that equals one quarter of your available credit, you will now owe an amt. equal to half of your available credit. If you want to cancel, make sure you write a letter to the credit card company & keep it & proof that you mailed it on file. Make sure to request that they note in your file that the card was cancelled at your request. Having a lender cancel your card can hurt your credit score. If you won't be applying for a loan any time soon, you can just leave them & they will drop off of your credit report after a few years.

Either you trust yourself to handle money/credit responsibly, or you don't. It's hard to develop that self-discipline of not buying something just because you want it. That feeling of instant gratification is alluring and addictive, and some folks can't step away from it. Many do it by reducing the temptation to begin with, which is what cutting up cards does. Some tips on traveling abroad: - Find out how much your card charges in transaction fees on foreign purchases. Capital One, for example, doesn't charge any extra fees. There are others; if you are doing a lot of overseas travel, apply for one. - Make sure whatever card you use has the new CHIP AND PIN technology. Most US cards only use Chip and Signature tech, which is very outmoded by global standards. Both American Express and Diners Club use CaP tech, but one traveler reported having to wait two hours in line at ORLY because almost an entire planeload of US travelers were queued up to use the only train ticket window with a human teller. The automated ticket kiosk only took exact change or a CaP card. The traveler said he couldn't even get his airline, Air France, to change a 20-Euro note. From a Liz Pulliam Weston/MSN Money article last year: "....It's not that your credit cards are useless overseas. Most merchants and travel providers in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Canada -- the areas that have adopted the smart-card technology -- still accept U.S. credit cards, says Odysseas Papadimitriou, who travels to Europe a few times a year and is the chief executive of credit card comparison site Card Hub. But U.S. cards, which rely on older magnetic-strip technology, simply won't work in machines that require users to punch in a personal identification number, or PIN, that's matched against a computer chip embedded in the card. U.S. debit cards won't work in these machines either, because they lack the all-important chip. You could find yourself: • Trapped in a parking lot that relies on automated kiosks to exit. • Unable to buy gas at a pay-at-the-pump station. • Prevented from buying bus, subway or rail tickets. • Stopped at toll booths that require chip-and-PIN cards. Some travelers report they've also encountered problems with clerks who don't know how to process a swipe-card transaction or merchants who refuse to accept U.S. cards, believing they're less secure. Such problems seem to be more common as time passes and fewer people are familiar with the older technology, especially in Europe, said Dan Ray, the editor-in-chief of CreditCards.com. "The odds are greater now that you'll have some trouble," Ray said. "Europeans are less likely to have the machinery or the people who are eager to process your card." Your debit card will work in overseas ATMs, but you may want to shorten your PIN if it's longer than four digits. Many foreign ATMs don't accept longer PINs. Also, foreign ATM keypads often don't have letters. If the only way you remember your PIN is by typing in a word into the keypad (say your password is 9-6-7-3, but you remember it by typing in the corresponding letters W-O-R-D), you should memorize the digits before you go." ========== HTH!

Martin Weiss has been writing about the coming credit crisis for years. He pretty much nailed it last April when he warned readers about what has turned out to be one of the largest ponzi schemes in the world. Its a shame that no one else was willing to say 'the emperor isn't wearing any clothes'. Distortions, Deceptions and Outright Lies by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. April 7, 2008 Beware. The greatest threat to your financial future is not the danger you see or the beast you know. It stems from all those realities that you don't see or don't know. This great uncertainty is not your fault. Quite the contrary, I lay the blame squarely on ... 1. Washington's distortions of its most vital economic data ... 2. Wall Street's deceptive evaluations of most of your investments, and ... 3. The outright lies that officials of both Washington and Wall Street tell you on a daily basis to cover their tracks or protect their turf. Take Friday's news, for example. If you thought that the surge in the U.S. unemployment rate to 5.1% was a shock, consider John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics. First, Williams points out that the total job loss the government reported on Friday wasn't just 80,000. It was 147,000. Reason: The previous two months of job losses had been greatly understated, forcing the government to revise them by a combined 67,000. Second, he argues that these huge revisions are no accident. They are the consequence of the government's continuing misuse of seasonal adjustments. "If the process were honest," he writes in his Flash Update issued to paid subscribers on Friday, "the differences would go in both directions. Instead, the differences almost always suggest that the seasonal factors are being used to overstate the current month's relative payroll level, as seen last month and the month before." Third, his analysis shows that the job numbers have a built-in bias based on a model that makes assumptions about birth and death rates. Without those distortions, he calculates there would have been additional job losses of 135,000 in February and 142,000 in March. Fourth and most important, as you probably know, the government excludes "discouraged workers" from its count of the unemployed; and the definition of "discouraged" is highly questionable" anyone who has not looked for a job in just the past four weeks! His conclusion: The true unemployment rate in America is not 5.1%. It's 13%, or over two and a half times worse than officially reported. The government's distortions of other critical data are no less egregious, says Williams. Annual Consumer Inflation Inflation: The government reports that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is essentially the same as it was two decades ago: It was approximately 4% in 1987, and it's near 4% right now. But without the cumulative affect of a series of questionable adjustments made in recent decades, Williams calculates that the CPI has actually risen to almost 12%, or about three times higher than the official figures. Economic growth: The government reports that, except for a brief interlude in the early 2000s, the U.S. economy has escaped recession throughout this decade, growing by 2% to 4% each year. But Williams shows how, without the government's distortions of the GDP data, the opposite would be true: Except for brief interludes of mediocre growth in 2000 and 2004, the economy has been stuck in a recession throughout the entire decade. These are vital stats that could make or break your financial future. To the degree that the shadow government stats are closer to the truth than the official versions, it means that ... * The value of your bonds is overstated because of a national complacency regarding consumer price inflation ... * The value of your stocks is overstated because of false optimism regarding the nation's employment and economic growth. And perhaps most dangerous of all ... * Trillions of dollars in derivatives �" predicated on the true value of assets like stocks and bonds �" could be even shakier than often feared. This alone should be more than enough to send thousands of officials into the confessional and give millions of investors sleepless nights. But the unfortunate reality is that ... On Top of Washington's Data Distortions, Wall Street Adds an Equally Dangerous Layer of Investor Deceptions First, most of the derivatives owned by commercial banks, investment banks and so-called "non-bank banks" are kept off their balance sheets. This means that ... The actual value and stability of the nation's largest and most important institutions are largely unknown" and probably greatly overstated. Second, with only the rarest of exceptions, the hundreds of thousands of bond ratings issued by Fitch, Moody's, and Standard and Poor's are uniformly bought and paid for by the very same companies that are being rated. As I've written here many times, the result is that ... There is a built-in bias in the entire system, causing inflated ratings, delayed downgrades and the continuing deception of millions of investors. Third, brokers and brokerage firms, despite a clear self-interest to keep their clients in the stock market, are routinely allowed to play the role of "objective" advisers and managers. The result is that ... Investors are almost universally encouraged to buy when they should be holding and to hold when they should be selling. Despite a plethora of guidelines, rules and laws created to encourage fairness, the very structure of the system continually promotes unfairness. Lies, Lies, Lies In this environment, the unrelenting pressure even the mandate to transform well-meaning public officials into chronic liars is undeniable, and the examples are many: * High-ranking government officials in the 1970s who swore the S&Ls were safe, even as thousands of thrifts were failing all around them. * FDIC and Federal Reserve officials in the 1980s who vehemently denied the threat to commercial banks, even as the bank failure rate surged to the highest since the Great Depression. * State insurance regulators in the 1990s who swore to the safety of annuities and life insurance policies, even as six million policyholders were being trapped in failed companies. * Major Wall Street firms of the early 2000s that consistently affirmed "hold" and "buy" ratings for the shares of hundreds of companies that were going bankrupt. (For our detailed study documenting these extreme deceptions, see our white paper, Crisis of Confidence on Wall Street.) * Auditing firms like Arthur Andersen, KPMG, and Deloitte and Touche that facilitated or even encouraged accounting distortions and cover-ups. (For the details, see our white paper submitted to the U.S. Senate.) Today, the names and places may have changed. But the systemic deceptions have not. This leaves you just two choices: Believe them and risk almost everything. Or strike out on an independent path to safety, protection and the potential for very substantial profits. Good luck and God bless! Martin A link that might be useful: www.moneyandmarkets.com/issues.aspx? Distortions-Deceptions-and-Outright-Lies-1640

Amy, That's a lot of rain. I know you'd share if you could. It is so discouraging to see the rain do everything in its power to avoid us. I knew the time would come when we'd be paying for all that rain we got in 2015 and the first half of 2016, and I believe it now is time to pay the piper. If I'd had as much rain as you, I'd definitely be spraying the fungicide. It is a whole lot easier to nip those issues in the bud early than to try to control them after they're widespread. Rebecca, I'm glad the Creole plant wasn't damaged. Tomato cages do provide a lot of protection and that's one of the things I like about them---the Florida Weave cannot and does not protect tomato plants as well as cages do. Michelle, I've seen those watering cans like that and think they are so pretty. Maybe the rain gods think your watering can is an homage to them so they've reciprocated by coming over and dumping rain on your plants. Usually, we can make it rain by painting the house. I think that's a lot of work though just to inspire rain to fall. Oh, and we just painted the house in, I think, 2014 or 2015, so it is too soon to paint it again (for which I am grateful). There are other ways to make it rain.....pour concrete, wash all the cars, clean all the exterior windows (especially the second story ones), etc. It will rain again eventually. Until then I am going to be grumpy. It is hard enough, as all of you know, to keep plants happy in June, July and August even if rain is falling. Without rain, it is nearly impossible, no matter how much you water. We have had a couple of young hens go broody. We let each of them set on a handful of eggs because they were so determined. It was sort of a waste of eggs---but at least we have two happy hens. Each hen hatched out one chick and then promptly abandoned the rest of the eggs. First-time mama hens sometimes do this---like they are so proud they hatched out a single egg that they forget there's 6 or 8 other eggs still sitting in the nest. So, we have a tiny new black chick and a tiny new white chick, both in the brooder together under a heat lamp to keep them warm enough, and their mothers are free-ranging with the rest of the flock today. There's nothing like th cheep-cheep-cheep of a little chick to start out the day right. Dawn