Endless Gibberish

If you’re familiar with the Taco Bell $2 bill legend you’ll get the gist of this experiment. Basically a manager at Taco Bell refused to accept a customer’s $2 bill because he thought they didn’t even exist. There are bunch of other cases where people encountered difficulties with using the $2 bill and can be found on the currency recognition glitches page at Snopes.

There was a kid back in high school who didn’t believe the $2 bill existed so it’s totally believable that there are people out there would refuse to accept it. One of the big myths about the $2 bill is that it is a rare bill and therefore when people receive them they don’t spend them and therefore the bills don’t circulate as they should.

If you’re interested in learning more, read about the United States two-dollar bill on Wikipedia.

I got thinking about the $2 bill again because in Singapore they don’t generally use dollar bills but dollar coins. Having done a couple transactions I’ve noticed that the $2 bill can improve efficiency of transactions. This is particularly true since inflation has decreased the buying power of what $1 can buy in the US these days.

Basically my experiment is to go out and spend $2 bills at various places and see if I encounter any difficulties. I went to the bank and they got somebills for the experiment. $2 bills. They come in green straps of $200 (100 bills). The teller told me they have plenty but they keep them in the vault and I just had a short wait while she retrieved them.

There has been stories of people being arrested for using $2 bills (and later released) when the clerks suspect them of being counterfeit. I doubt my experiment will be that exciting and I highly doubt I’ll have any interesting encounters. The $2 bills are perfect for the $1 beer nights at one of the local bars as I generally tip $1 for the $1 beer.

I’ll post a follow up on the results of my experiment when I get around to spending the bills.

I decided not to renew my MyFico.com subscription because I decided to cut some costs and I don’t really need to know my fico score. I actually never needed to know it in the past but I was just curious.

I decided to sign up for the free scoring offered at creditkarma.com. The score Credit Karma offers isn’t necessarily your true score but I’ve found that it does come close enough. The score obtained from CK is generally only 5-10 points off the score that MyFico.com gives me (The CK score is generally higher when it’s off).

So for a rough estimate of what my fico score is, Credit Karma is just fine since it’s free.

link to CreditKarma.com

Last month I embarked on a trip to visit southeast Asia. The first stop on my trip was Vietnam. My parents are originally from Vietnam and I’ve been there several times in the past. Generally my parents spend roughly 5 months of the year there for a variety of reasons including escaping the brutal New England weather and business ventures. I decided to visit my parents spur of the moment and it’d be a chance to get my thoughts together.

The beauty of having visited the countries a number of times in the past two decades is I’ve gotten a chance to see the country develop. One of the biggest changes is the building wealth in the country. 10 years ago you weren’t likely to get run over by a Mercedes crossing the street. Now you’re more likely to dodge the Mercedes in time and get hit by a Ferrari. Years ago, congestion was bad enough with just motorbikes teaming the street, the cars only adds more chaos to the mix.

The luxury cars amid the motorbikes does send a big message too. Despite the massive amount of wealth that’s entered the country, only a relatively small percentage of the population has really benefited. A lot of people were left behind. It still is a third world country. You’ll still see a disproportionate amount of impoverished people and homeless children roaming the streets hawking their wares.

My flight to Vietnam was $1200 roundtrip on EVA Airways on economy. The option to upgrade to “deluxe” (in between business and economy) was $600. I figured that’s 50% more expensive and if I wasn’t going to be 50% more comfortable it really wasn’t worth the month. FYI, alcohol is free on EVA Airways so generally I’ll have a couple vodka tonics and sleep through most of the 20+ hour flight.

Vietnam requires most visitors to obtain a visa in advance which is rather annoying. I wonder if this hurts tourism for spur of the moment visitors who are in neighboring countries who want to hop over and check out the country.