February 12, 2008 - I drove Ellie to work in the morning, then drove myself to work. I had to head back home at lunch time to unlock my house for Kenny to come over and finish up the tile work that he started a few months ago. On the way there I stopped at Office Depot and picked up some supplies for work. On the way back to work I stopped at Harbor Freight to pick up some gloves for work. Then I spent the afternoon driving Ken around. His car broke down and he needed a ride to the dealer to get it fixed and to a few banks to move some money around. There needs to be some easy way to move money. Right now I have 4 checking accounts and 1 savings account, a stock account, 2 retirement accounts, and a Paypal account. I've crafted a way of moving money from one institution to another using Paypal, and it doesn't cost me anything, but the transfer usually takes a few days, sometimes up to a week. If there were some clearing house that you could provide all your bank account numbers to, and they could run a credit check, and then do the withdrawals and deposits for you, either online, over the phone, or at service kiosks, it would be a whole lot easier than running from bank to bank. This new company would be approved to make direct and immediate deposits to banks, and would need financial backing to secure the money it is fronting, and would charge fees to cover its expenses. I feel like this might be somewhat in existence already, either as Western Union or Amscot, or maybe somehow a combination of the two, but rather than preying upon those with no savings and little income, it would cater to those like me who have money, it is just scattered about in too many accounts, and sometimes at the last second you need to move it from one account to another. Anyway, back to my day. It was pouring down rain on the way to pick up Ellie. I guess I won't be out canoeing for a while since it raises the water level and makes it too murky to look for discs. Ellie and I went home, fed the dogs, and then went to Chipotle. They are doing a special deal where if you buy a $10 gift card today, you get a free burrito on Valentines Day. We each bought a gift card so that we would get 2 free burritos, and then stood in line to get our dinner, which we paid for with the newly purchased gift cards. On the way home we stopped at a Pontiac dealership to look at Vibes. Their prices were a little higher than I was looking for, and their selection was less than I was looking for. They did have some Pontiac G6's that interested us. We could get a new one for $15,700 (about $3,000 under sticker price) without any haggling, which meant we could probably get it a little less with a little effort. This might be a good option for us to consider.