Wise Money Decisions

I received the following notice:

“Please be advised that most major airlines have increased the change fee on nonrefundable tickets from $100.00 to $150.00 on domestic tickets and from $150.00 to $250.00 on international flights.”

When I have time I’m doing up a table of all major airlines with a link to their change fee.  Much like the baggage check table (which, by the way, needs some updating with the recent changes by most airlines to charge $25 to check a 2nd bag…. update coming soon).

Two weeks ago my family rushed to the airport for an early Saturday morning flight.  We were running a few minutes behind but we weren’t worried.  “There can’t be long lines at the luggage check-in on a Saturday morning,” I thought.

We walked into the terminal and saw at least 50 people in the American Airlines line.  We only had 45 minutes until our flight was scheduled to leave.  There was no way we were getting through that line in time. 

Plan B

I considered my options.  I wondered if I could sneak into the much shorter preferred check-in line. 

It didn’t seem promising since a guy was posted at the entrance to the line saying, “This is for preferred check-in only.”

Plan C

Our next thought was to ask if we could go to the front of the line since we were out of time.  It seems like the airlines used to do this, but I haven’t seen it done much lately.  Plus I hate asking for special treatment. 

Plan D

So we hatched a different plan.  I waited in line while my wife went back outside to see the line for skycap.  The skycap line was short, so we took our luggage outside and got through skycap in 3 minutes. 

We rushed through security (not easy with a 2 year old), rushed to our gate (literally the furthest gate), and found out our flight was delayed 5 hours. 

Nice.

Skycap

Years ago it seemed most airlines didn’t charge for skycap, but a $1/bag tip was expected.  Now it seems the $1/bag is more along the lines of a fee than a tip.  I usually tip on top of the $1. 

American Airlines charges $2 per bag for skycap.  It’s definitely a fee, not a tip.  The sign says so. 

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems I get class action lawsuit notices on a regular basis.  I’m sure you do too. 

Doesn’t it just warm your heart to know the plaintiff bar is out there fighting for our rights on a contingency basis? 

I hardly ever submit a claim form.  It just doesn’t seem worth an hour of my time to preserve my right to a free ear bud. 

But every once in a while there’s an offer I can’t refuse.  I filed a claim form in the Microsoft case (I still haven’t used my voucher).  And I’m filing a claim form in the De Beers class action.

Remember, the deadline to submit a claim in the De Beers case is coming up on May 19th. 

You may be asked to submit a proof of purchase later, but for now you don’t need to include proof of purchase unless you paid more than $10,000. 

Read my previous article on the case for more details.

A recent AP article reported that director workload and pay has been increasing in recent years.  Median director pay has risen to $100,000.  Causes cited by the article include:

• A shortage of good candidates for director positions.
• Fewer directors are serving on multiple boards. 
• Potential for personal liability stemming from corporate law changes made by Sarbanes-Oxley.
• Increased workload.  Average director workload has increased from 150 to 200-225 hours per year.

Note that the first two reasons overlap.  According to the article 19% of board members serve on more than one board.  It doesn’t say what the percentage was previously, but apparently it was greater than 19%. 

The third reason makes a lot of sense.  A director should be compensated for taking on increased risk of personal liability.  While Sarbanes-Oxley has most likely prevented some abuses from occurring, the cost of compliance (including higher pay to directors because of the potential for personal liability) is costly to corporations and, ultimately, shareholders.  Lower shareholder return is the dark side of increased regulation. 

I found the fourth reason very interesting although for different reasons than those for which it was mentioned in the article.  You see, my mind has a funny way of performing mathematical computations without me telling it to.  When it saw the average annual workloads, it automatically did some math to convert them to annual workload equivalents for a full-time job.  Assuming an annual workload of 2400 hours (high for some jobs but about right for my line of work), the average director position is about 8.8% of a full time job.  Multiplying by the median director compensation of $100,000, an average director should earn about $1.1 million if he was able to do director work full time. 

$1.1 million is not a bad year. 

Are any directors trying to make a full time job out of being a director?  No.  It would require serving on 11 boards to be a full-time equivalent job.  As mentioned above, only 19% of board members serve on more than one board.  Out of the 22,000 directors in the report cited in the article, only 300 serve on even four boards. 

While there’s no such thing as a “full time director,” a director hardly needs to work full time to earn a full time salary.  Those 300 directors serving on four boards should earn about $400,000 for 850 hours work (assuming average pay and workload). 

Seems like a decent living to me.