A Las Vegas Loan Center Blog

We all get caught short once in a while, but when the problem becomes chronic, it’s time to take a look at what we are spending and where we are spending it.

This is a short version of a page giving advice on budgets that we posted on our Pioneer Loan Center site.

First: Figure out your monthly income. -WRITE IT DOWN
Next: Figure out your basic monthly expenses. Rent, utilities, gas and food -WRITE THEM DOWN

Start an spending diary, save all your receipts and WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU SPEND, whether it be bus fare, gum, or gasoline.
If you go to the movies, write down not only the cost of the tickets, but the popcorn and cokes, and even that box of jujubes.

The reason I keep harping on writing everything down is that once it’s in black and white you can see the difference between what you tell yourself you spend and what you really spend. –Trust me. There are very few of us who pay attention to our casual spending.

Now that you can see how much you have coming in and how much you have going out, you can begin to do something about stretching your paycheck by cutting back on your expenses.

For more details go to our web page.

Here are a suggestion not on our website:
If you smoke switch to generics (I know they suck, but they’re cheaper) and, if possible, buy your cigarettes on an Indian reservation. –Here in Las Vegas there’s one down on Main Street just north of Bonanza, down the hill on your left.

If you don’t think you can make these suggestions work, call a credit counselor.

Click here for Consumer Credit Counseling, a United Way nonprofit agency.

This time of year business tends to be slow in the middle of the day.

With temps expected to hit as high as 115, I can’t imagine why folks aren’t out and about. –The 115 is weather bureau temp, the real world temp could be closer to 120.

However, if you have to be outside during the day and the heat starts to get to you, the county has opened nine cooling stations around the valley.
(These are intended for the homeless but I can’t imagine them turning anyone away.)

Black Mountain Recreation Center, 599 Greenway Road., Henderson.

Cambridge Recreation Center, 3930 Cambridge St., near Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway.

Dula Gymnasium, 441 E. Bonanza Road., near Las Vegas Boulevard.

Hollywood Recreation Center, 1650 S. Hollywood Blvd., near Charleston Boulevard.

Islamic Society of Nevada, 4730 E. Desert Inn Road, near Boulder Highway.

Pearson Community Center, 1625 W. Carey Ave., near Martin Luther King Boulevard, North Las Vegas.

Valley View Recreation Center, 500 Harris St., Henderson.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 S. McLeod Drive, near Desert Inn.

Walnut Recreation Center, 3075 N. Walnut Road, near East Cheyenne Avenue.

Starbucks dropped T-Mobile and made a deal with AT&T. As of July 1st they offer free wifi at company owned locations. (The free wifi offer does not include most airports, Target stores and Barnes and Noble since those stores are not owned by the company.)

Rather than buying a card, you just log on to their home page, agree to their terms and conditions and start surfing.

However there are some things you should be aware of. Since this is an open network, if you have shares enabled on your laptop anyone else on the network can see them. For instance: If you share a directory or drive at work this is now exposed to the entire world. Check your share setup and make sure that those drives you share at work are either no longer shared while you surf or at least password protected. It’s simplest to just turn sharing off, this way if anything has been automatically shared or you have forgotten something you’re protected.

The next hazard is connecting to work, email or online shopping. An open network allows anybody with a basic sniffer to gather anything you send. Things like credit card numbers, passwords, and account numbers are worth a lot to the bad guys.

A simple precaution to take when accessing the company servers is to use a VPN. –In fact a vpn should be used anytime you connect to a company network from anywhere on the outside of the company.

Another problem that most people are unaware of is that the signal doesn’t stop at the walls like the a/c. Someone can sit in the parking lot and collect your data.

For email I would suggest a G-Mail account. Gmail will allow you to connect via a secure (https) connection and maintain that connection. Whereas services like Yahoo use a secure login but a standard http connection once you are in and checking your mail.

I realize that securing your laptop for use out in the wild is a royal pain, but it’s worth the effort if you don’t want to find yourself with a bill for a ton of iTunes stuff you never downloaded.

Here’s my basic approach:
I select the windows “public network” option when connecting anywhere I don’t control.

I also use the free COMODO firewall on my machine along side AVG free antivirus and Spybot search and destroy.

For my primary browser I use Firefox, with NoScript –blocks random Java, BetterPrivacy –super cookie safeguard, FlashBlock –replaces flash with a symbol you click on if you want it to play and PrivacyChoice TrackerWatcher –allows you to see what companies may be watching what you do on any any given website.

It’s not paranoia. — They are out to get you.

Every year the owners throw two parties. One at Xmas and one on the 4th.

As you can see they hire only the most professional, best trained security guards.

Free food and a pool to escape the heat make for a relaxing day.

Funny

Just something completely different. (This is flash so you can’t view it on your iPad.)

I thought I’d share what we have taken away from buying, pawning and selling cell phones.

The short version: —Effective immediately we no longer take cell phones. Period.

The reason for stopping is the lack of any way, short of a court order, to deactivate a phone that we take in pawn or purchase without the customer’s complete cooperation.

If you are planning to buy a used phone make sure that you have a money back guarantee before you make the purchase in case activation proves impossible.

If you are thinking about selling used phones you need to know the following:

1. You can’t take phones in pawn, because there’s rarely any practical way to get the customer to deactivate the phone once they’ve lost it.

2. Any handset you buy must not have an active account with any wireless service provider.

3. Sprint, Verizon, or Nextel require the customer call with all their account data to release the phone.

4. No wireless provider is going to allow a phone to be deactivated if there is money owed on the account.

5. Phones with the removable chips still have an ESN (Electronic Serial Number), and will alert security if you try a new card in a phone that has been reported lost or stolen.

In other words: We tried, and learned that, for us at least, it’s more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

At Pioneer Loan and Jewelry we have the proper test equipment for diamonds, gold and most precious metals. We also have a GIA certified gemologist on staff.

We have enough experience in a wide variety of other areas to have a degree of comfort in judging value, but we have been forced to stop taking sports memorabilia because of the number of fraudulent items being offered, a depressed market and a lack of expertise in the area.

As an example:
We have a plaque featuring a five pictures of baseball great Ozzie Smith; one of the photographs is signed.

Herein lies the problem: While we don’t believe this plaque is anything but authentic, we have no way of authenticating the signature. –Therefore when we sell the item we can make no representation as to it’s authenticity.

You will find this to be true in almost all buy and sells or pawnshops. So my advice –contrary as it is to what we, as retailers, would like you to do– is to take your time, do some basic research, and only buy what you like.

That way you never pay more than you feel an item is worth at that point in time, and when the market falls on it’s face, like it has recently, you have something you can still enjoy, regardless of cost.

We were just inspected by Metro. –We passed with flying colors, but we found that some things are changing.

For instance: We have been sending a report physically or electronically to Pawn Detail once a week since about 1988. -Now we must send a report daily.

In theory Pawndex, which is an excellent program, should be able to generate the report automatically. –But even if the program can’t, it’s just one more minor nuisance in a world full of minor nuisances all it would mean is that we’ll need to generate a report by hand every day and email it until the program can be modified.

Not that it matters. It seems that Metro is experimenting with Leadsonline. If it interfaces with their system, and isn’t cost prohibitive, in all likelihood it will mean an end to sending by email within the year.

On a different note:
The inspector also said that the new Rolex watches have the serial number laser etched in the case in addition to the number under the band. –We’ll be able to confirm this when we take a new Rolex apart and inspect it. If it turns out to be true it will save us a lot of headaches -at least on new watches- because taking the band off is a royal pain, and we currently pull the back on every high end watch to confirm it’s authenticity.

In the mean time, I’ve been informed that the new Rolex serial numbers are random rather than sequential, so the only way to check the year will be to contact Rolex.

Addendum:
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Pawn Detail is now processing 11,000 transactions a day.

Just a fast note about collectible plates: On the whole they are a bad investment.

This is from the back of a collector’s plate:

Notice the limitation. It’s not how many plates they made, but how many firing days. –In a large operation this translates out to thousands of units.

This being said, these items do maintain some value, but considering that most people with an interest in a series of plates will buy them direct, it’s not a huge value. In fact the real market is in replacement or fillers. –Being china they do get chipped or broken and people do need the occasional plate to fill in a set, and there is always that person who was unaware of a series and now wants to collect them, but only a few collector’s plates that have seriously increased in value.

On the whole, if you’re buying them thinking that they will increase in value, my personal opinion is that you would have as much luck investing in penny stocks.

On the other hand, if you like them and buy them to enjoy, by all means do so. And be sure to check out your local pawnshops and even thrift stores, because you never can tell when you’ll find that overlooked treasure.

In Las Vegas, where southwest architecture with red tile roofs are an everyday sight, this Japanese roof with blue tiles really stands out.

(Click on the photo for a larger image.)

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