I was reading an announcement on Hulu regarding the departure of Comedy Central’s offerings from the website. This means two of my favorite shows that I watch regularly (The Daily Show and the Colbert Report) will be unavailable on Hulu. This is a huge disappointment to me and most likely a mistake on Comedy Central’s part.

Normally I don’t watch either show live because of their late night time slots. Therefore I use the subscribe feature on Hulu to have new episodes automatically added to a queue which I can watch at my convenience. Comedy Central’s website offers nowhere near the functionaly that Hulu offered. It’s a lot more inconvenient to catch up on these two shows.

Sadly to say this will probably mean I won’t be able to watch these two shows as often as I would prefer. I wonder if Comedy Central measures the amount of viewers of their shows on Hulu vs viewers through their own official website. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a huge drop off in online viewers. Note that the streamed episodes on Hulu included commercials just like regular TV.

Last year the government passed laws that reformed the credit card industry. I’ve been recieving tons of notices regarding the change a ton of credit cards and I’ll detail some of the important changes I find worth discussing below.

A few restrictions include over-the-limit fees and the marketing of credit cards to adults under 21 particularly on college campuses. I guess the days of getting a free t-shirt for a credit card application are over which was a horrible deal anyway. Credit cards can not be issued to individuals under 21 unless they have an adult co-signer or have proof of income to repay the debt. I’m glad this didn’t come to pass earlier as I got my first credit card at 19 and have been using credit more than responsibly. I guess at 18 you’re old enough to vote and enlist in the military but you can’t purchase alcohol or sign up for credit cards on your own.

Any payments above the minimum payment due will be applied to higher interest rate balances first. In the past credit card companies would offer plenty of promotional 0% balance transfer offers in the hopes that a percentage of the cardholders would not repay the funds by the end of the promotional date or put regular purchases on the card that would accrue interest. I guess the days of plentiful cheap 0% money are over now that most card issuers have less incentive to offer them.

You won’t be charged for spending over your credit limit unless you authorize it, 45 day notice before interest rate hikes and more. I never understood why the credit card companies thought they could pull off letting consumers be able to charge over their credit limit and then charging them a hefty fee for it while calling it a “service”. I don’t particularly care about the interest rate provisions because I never carry a balance unless it’s beneficial for me to do so.

Most of this legislation basically protects consumers from themselves. A great deal of consumers in this country are devoid of any financial common sense and hence the support for these regulations. People cry foul when the credit card companies make money off terms specifically defined in their terms and conditions.

Laws like these generally do benefit more people than they hurt.The people who dont’ bother to read the fine print or practice responsibility with their finances outnumber the fiscally responsible individuals greatly. I fall into the minority in these laws don’t help me in any way whatsoever because I’ve been part of the responsible crowd.

I recently completed a personal finance class which opened my eyes to why so many Americans are in such bad shape financially. I found the class to be rather easy because I’m a financial geek on my own time (if you couldn’t tell) but a surprising number of other students were clueless in regards to the subject.

It does and doesn’t surprise me at the same time that there are people out there that fail to grasp the simple concepts of how things like credit cards work. There are multiple reasons for this in that some people just don’t care or they inherited bad financial skills from their parents. It’s not surprising to have a college graduate land a decent paying job and yet lives paycheck to paycheck due to horrible financial habits.

This class was optional and therefore that means most people will never partake in any sort of education related to finance in their lives. Personal finance should be mandatory because it would reduce a great number of problems related to personal finances in our country. The basic course I took goes through the fundamental concepts of various financial instruments such as CDs, investment accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, etc.

2009 has been a big year for me. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve traveled to a bunch of places, found a wonderful girl, changed colleges, etc.

First off, my finances are shot. I’m not in debt but I’m exactly sitting pretty like I was at the start of the year. This wasn’t due to poor decisions or anything but this year I decided to do a lot of traveling and that’s where the majority of my money has gone.

Back in February I visited Vietnam, Singapore, and then Bali. In March I went to the Dominican Republic with a bunch of friends for spring break. In June I went out to Los Angeles which included a mini road trip out to Las Vegas. In August I went back to Vietnam with two friends and it was even more enjoyable than the February trip. Last week I went back to Las Vegas with my girlfriend and a big group of people. Kinda strange how I ended up in two places twice this year although I didn’t exactly plan it out that way.

Now onto Kiva which I still feel passionate about but have scaled down my lending considerably this year. In my 2008 update I think I ended the year with 1,008 loans. It looks like for 2009 I’m going to end the year with 1,126 loans which means I only funded another 118 this year. My portfolio was hit with 37 defaults and with the total amount lost being $479.08. My default rate is however only 1.53% which is still lower 1.87% average default rate.

Although I’m worse off financially after the conclusion of 2009 I can confidentially say I’m a lot happier than I was in 2008.

One of my sisters Kat asked me a very interesting question before…

“When do you think you’ll make your first million?”

I didn’t think much of it at the time and said “Hopefully by 30″ or something along that line.

Thinking into this deeper… this question implies that my sister has somewhat confidence in my ability to amass wealth. I’m pretty sure my father didn’t attain his first million until well into his 40s. However he had significant disadvantages (never finished high school, refugee from a war-torn country, etc. etc.). However his advantage was that he had the drive and street smarts. He was hungry and had 4 kids to feed. He was backed into a corner and had to make it.

To attain a million by age 30 I’d have to earn a total of $980,000 over a period of 9 years. That’s an average earning of $108,888.88 per year. That million dollar mark seems a little out of reach. A million dollars won’t buy what it can today but it’ll still be a significant sum of money.

Which brings me to another point. It really annoys me when someone says a million dollars is not that much money. In most cases the person has a negative net worth so it’s ironic that they make that comment. Yes a million dollars today isn’t what it use to be but a person can still retire on it.

If you received a million dollars today you could invest in 5% tax-free municpal bonds for an annual income of $50,000. Since it’s tax-free it’s equivalent to a $70,000 annual salary which is taxed. The income is higher than the median average income and if you can’t retire off that then I don’t know what to say.