Archive for the ‘Financial’ Category

As some of you may have heard recently, a gentleman by the name of Willis Willis recently found out that the had won $1 million in the Texas Lottery.

Unfortunately, an unscrupulous attendant working the counter at the store where Willis always bought his tickets - and played the same numbers - told Willis he had only won $2. The attendant at some point signed the back of the ticket, went to Austin and claimed the $1 million. He then left the country to go back to his home in Nepal.

The Travis County DA has ruled that Willis is the legal winner. The Texas Lottery is claiming the attendant is the legal winner since they signed and presented the ticket.

Moral to the story: If you invest money in playing the lottery - because after all, someone has to win so it might as well be you - SIGN THE BACK OF YOUR LOTTERY CARD.

If you look at the back of a lottery ticket, it usually has 2 - 3 places where your signature can be signed. Sigh all of them. Sign your name with a big, lovely flourish. Make it as obvious as can be that that ticket belongs to you.

The city collects trash twice a week for most Dallas residents; however, with the new budget being released, the rest of the city is expected to also segue to once a week pick up which will affect 240,000 customers effective October 1.

Far North Dallas and Northwest Dallas are already on this schedule with good results.

Additional benefits is that monthly trash fees will decrease and there is less fuel utilized so that is financially and environmentally good for the city.

From KTVT:

Summertime is a good time for yard sales. But if you are trying to make a few bucks off your unwanted stuff, be careful of whom you are taking money from, because you could be getting ripped off.

After a long weekend, Brandy Smith wrapped up her yard sale Saturday night. She said she sold a lot of her old goods to get some money for a vacation. Friday, Smith had a customer buy a ladder from her.

“We agreed to take a hundred for it. He pulled out a hundred dollar bill and we took one earlier and didn’t think anything of it. went on with the day,” Smith said.

Then, on Saturday morning, Smith pulled out her newspaper and noticed something in the editorial section.

“Someone wrote an editorial saying for the fake $100 bill at my garage sale, shame on you. I kind of laughed it off.”

Smith started thinking about it and decided to take the hundred-dollar bill to her bank. The teller told her it was a fake because even though it passed the pen test, it failed the watermark test. The teller also explained how the bill was made, and why there was an Abraham Lincoln watermark instead of Benjamin Franklin.

“They bleached a five dollar bill and printed a hundred dollar over it. It would easily pass for a true bill unless you knew what water mark to look for,” said Smith.

We found the woman who wrote the article Smith read. Megan Wooten told us she had a bad feeling as soon as she got her hundred dollar bill.

“Gave me a hundred dollar bill. Kind of thought it felt funny, but I was like I don’t know, I don’t want to create a scene,” said Wooten.

Now both women want homeowners to be aware.

Wooten said “I wanted people know there’s someone out there, probably hitting all the garage sales, stealing us blind, it’s not right.”

Remember to look for the watermark. Just hold it up to the light and make sure it’s the right person on the bill.

Well colour us surprised. We keep hearing about this recession that’s been plaguing the U.S. We watch the beautiful people as they fill the patios along McKinney Avenue and West Village to overflowing; we see the many luxury cars, the beauty salons filled with clients, etc. and we try to envision this “recession” thing the media keeps hyping.

Did a recession hit Dallas? No. There were some job losses due to the expected ocassional wave (toss a stone in a still pond theory) but as for the chaos that we keep hearing about, we’ve yet to see any evidence of it.

So on that note, the erstwhile Forbes has proclaimed Dallas as one of the Top 10 cities to be in for the recession recovery. Well, duh. That’s kind of like looking at someone playing in a lake and proclaiming that they are in an excellent position to be wet — doofus, they are ALREADY wet! How can Dallas possibly recover from something it never experienced?

The DART finance and budget committee voted to forward a proposal to raise one-way fares for local bus and train riders just 25 cents, instead of the 50-cent hike staff members had requested earlier this year. Currently, one-way routes cost $1.50.

The full board will vote on the proposal May 12. In addition to the one-way fares, most other prices for DART buses and trains will go up. Monthly local-service passes will jump $15, to $65. TRE commuters could pay up to $7.50 per day rather than $5, depending on how far they ride the line.

Another change? Ten-packs of daily passes that are sold to social service agencies won’t go to $32.50, and instead will stay at $25. (The agencies give the passes for free to clients in need.)

A quarter here, and a quarter there – pretty soon it adds up to about $10 more a month for riders who pay the daily fares for a month’s worth of trips to and from work.

From: Dallas Business Journal

Recession woes aside, several Dallas-Fort Worth area billionaires managed to make their way onto “The World’s Billionaires 2009” list, recently published by Forbes magazine.

Fort Worth resident Alice Walton, 59, daughter of the late Sam Walton, ranked highest on the list among the locals. Walton, who inherited part of the Wal-Mart fortune, ranks 12th on the Forbes list with a net worth of $17.6 billion.

Forbes noted that Wal-Mart remains a strong retailer in down times thanks to a business model that is focused on discount prices. Alice’s sister-in-law Christy, 54, and brother S. Robson Walton, 65, also rank 12th alongside her, while brother Jim Walton, 61, ranks 11th.

Fort Worth is home to another member of the 2009 billionaire list: Robert Bass, 61, who inherited and continues to grow the Bass family fortune. Forbes ranks Bass 110th on the list of 468 billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion. The Bass fortune was grown in the oil industry and through investments.

Another Texan ties Bass for the 110th spot. Self-made billionaire Henry Ross Perot Sr., 78, is worth $4.5 billion. Perot made his fortune after founding Electronic Data Systems in 1962. He sold EDS to General Motors for $2.5 billion and later formed data processing company Perot Systems. Forbes notes that Perot and his son sold natural gas interests under land owned by the Perots’ Hillwood real estate platform on Texas’ Barnett Shale to Quicksilver Resources.

Ray Lee Hunt, 66, ranked 261st on the list with a net worth of $2.5 billion. Hunt is the youngest son of H.L. Hunt, whose fortune grew in the oil and real estate sectors.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, 50, landed in the 296th spot on the list. Cuban has a net worth of $2.3 billion, according to Forbes . He made his money in the Internet industry with the creation and sale of Broadcast.com.

Three more Bass family members followed Cuban on the list: Lee Bass, 52, and Sid Bass, 66, (each ranked 334 with $2 billion apiece) and Edward Bass, 64 (ranked 468, $1.5 billion).

Oilman T. Boone Pickens, 80, also ranked 334th on the list. Forbes says declining energy prices caught him off- guard, causing him to lose $1 billion in energy funds in nine months. Regardless, he still ranks among the world’s billionaires with $2 billion.

Today, Texas Gov. Rick Perry rejected $555 million in federal stimulus money that would expand state unemployment benefits, saying the money would have required the state to keep funding the expanded benefits after the stimulus money ran out.

Perry, an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill, did accept most of the roughly $17 billion slated for Texas in the plan.

But he said the requirements attached to the federal stimulus money would require a change in the state’s definition of unemployment, expanding coverage to more people and placing more of the state’s tax burden on employers.

“During these tough times, Texas employers are working harder than ever to move products to market, make payroll and create jobs,” Perry said at a news conference. “The last thing they need is government burdening them with higher taxes and expanded obligations.”

Perry said such an expansion would counteract the package’s objective of job creation by leading companies to limit hiring and raise prices.

To receive the full amount of stimulus money available, lawmakers would need to adjust the time period used to determine whether people are eligible for benefits.

Texas also is being asked to expand eligibility to include thousands of low-wage workers. Lawmakers have said the change would help part-time employees like single mothers, college students and senior citizens.