Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes. And sometimes your plan is about as useful as toilet paper.

I should know, I’m a planner.  And the best laid plans … well, you know. I had our family finances all planned out. My husband works full time, I work part time since the kids are in school.  We take two vacations a year.  We would replace our old 1970s kitchen within five years of buying our house.

What screwed that up was this Bush economy. My husband lost his job at Motorola. I had trouble finding work at the payscale I was used to. Our daughter is a prodigy and they tell us she needs to go to a special “genius camp” in North Carolina next summer that costs $8000 for a month ($5000 after a scholarship).

So the question is, can I forget the kitchen until things turn around, and send my daughter to this camp? Her heart is set on it, so we looked into borrowing the $5000.  Forget banks, they’ll take your home away from you if you’re not careful. I found a car title loan company online, Schaumburg Title Loans, that valued our Escalade at worth $7000 in a loan. OK, not in the plan, but we did it. And I’ll do it again if the “plan” calls for it.

By the way Schaumburg is near Des Plaines, Elgin, Hoffman Estates, Rolling Meadows, and Roselle.

Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.

I’m just old enough, a senior at Loyola, to know that one.  And that education started at Lake Park H.S. before that.  I know that money comes, money goes and you’re smart not to spend more than you have.

But at the same time, everyone I know from Roselle where I grew up agrees that you have to borrow money in this life. My tuition would be unaffordable if I had to pay for it now. That’s why I and everyone else takes out student loans. It’s an investment.

I had to take out as different kind of loan reacently, a car title loan. For reasons too complicated to go into, I had to hire a lawyer, and she wanted some money upfront, about $500.  I barely make enough money to buy my food, so that seemed like an impossible amount – but what choice did I have? That’s when car title loans started to make sense to me.  I went to Roselle Title Loans, where they got me money for my old 98 Volvo, and which I can pay back on my schedule.

It was a situation where I definitely was the statue, and I had to go after the pigeons.  The good news is I WON.

By the way Roselle is near Bloomingdale, Hanover Park, Itasca, Medinah, and Wood Dale.

What happens if you confuse your Valium with your birth control pills?
You have 12 kids, but you don’t really care.

I told that joke to my friend Sandeep’s mother, who is an OB-GYN. She didn’t really think it was so funny.

Irony is kinda lacking around here in Medinah. I don’t play golf, but I just don’t see any Caddyshack moments out there at the Medinah Country Club.

So I gotta find a way out of this place. I’ve been going to the College of DuPage for about four semesters, but ran up against certain financial difficulties over the last semester break that threatened even that ticket out of here. I was short $500 in tuition money and didn’t really have a way to find it anywhere. That is, until I looked at my car, a 10 year old beater (actually, it’s Sandeep’s mother’s old Saab that she practically gave me) and I remember hearing about car title loans. I went online to Medinah Title Loans, where I picked up that $500 just in time to enroll for the semester. With my parttime job in Roselle, I am paying off that car title loan in less than a month. No valium required!

By the way Medinah is near Bloomingdale, Roselle, Elk Grove, Itasca, and Hanover Park.

Because I’m a man, when the car isn’t running very well, I will pop the hood and stare at the engine as if I know what I’m looking at. If another man shows up, one of us will say to the other, “I used to be able to fix these things, but now with all these computers and everything, I wouldn’t know where to start.” We will then drink beer.

This is how we live in the Ranchettes part of Itasca, where I was born and raised and now live as an adult in the house I grew up in. For the most part, it’s a happy life.  But the transmission blew on the car a few months ago and I knew I didn’t have the cash to fix it, and that meant I also lacked for money for a down payment on something new. Not good.

But I know the Internet and knew I could at least find some ideas there.  I looked for loans on home equity, which are actually harder today to get than a couple years ago (and my dad holds the title there, so that wouldn’t go over well).  Then I found car title loans, specifically Itasca Title Loans online.  The were able to finance the car repair with the book value of the car.  I got the cash in one day, enough to get the transmission replaced in less than three days.

After that, I sat down and had a beer.

By the way Itasca is near, Medinah, Roselle, Bloomingdale, Bensenville, and Elk Grove.

We have enough youth: how about a fountain of “smart”?

That thought struck me when I was breaking the news to my kids, both in their 20s, that it was time to move out or start paying rent. Both graduated from the College of DuPage with good grades. Both spend hours and hours on their computers. Both eat food like there isn’t an obesity crisis in this country. And neither of them has had a job other than as clerks in video stores.

Then my genius son managed to rack up a bunch of bills on my credit card buying some electronic Wii thing that I don’t really understand. And my brilliant daughter, his partner in crime, also bought some computer stuff that makes me wonder if she’s operating some international computer scam. I ask questions and they blizzard me with techno speak that completely baffles me.

So I presented them both with a total of $2300 in charges that I was not going to cover. I was trying to get them to get their keysters in gear and go find jobs. Guess what they did: they figured out the cars their father gave them when they graduated college (it was in the divorce settlement) could get them car title loans. They showed me how they did it. They went to Hoffman Estates Title Loans and were able to cover those debts with this loan.

I’m not a big one on borrowing money when you don’t have a plan to actually pay it back (to their credit, they’ve both gone back to working part time at Blockbuster while they look for full time work, just to pay off this loan). But I have to hand it to them, they do seem to understand assets and collateral. They should go to work as mortgage bankers.

By the way Hoffman Estates is near Streamwood, Hanover Park, Roselle, Schaumburg, and Bartlett.

My boss at my old job brought in this motivational speaker for the sales staff.  Which is such b.s. because he’d give all the best accounts to his chippie, the blonde he was hot for even though she was only working him for that.

Anyway, during the seminar at the Ramada on North Avenue the speaker was extolling the importance of “following your dreams.” I couldn’t help myself, I just blurted out, “except for that one where you’re naked at work.”  Which I honestly didn’t think was so bad – it definitely was one of as the lighter moments of that day. But I got pink slipped the next week.

This did not come at a good time.  I was getting socked with some medical bills and then the refrigerator went out.  My severance and unemployment weren’t enough to cover everything, and my credit cards were maxed as was my home equity loan.  So I went to the Internet and found Glendale Heights Title Loans, a car title loan company. They are so easy to work with – I was able to get that money in a day, in time to go take advantage of a sale at Abt.

Now, at my new job, I zip the lip in front of the boss.  So much easier this way.

By the way Glendale Heights is near Carol Stream, Roselle, Addison, Glen Ellyn, and Lombard.