Electric Venom (as well as I Think Therefore I Blog) will be participating in Blog Action Day 2008, a day on which participating bloggers, podcasters and videocasters collectively exercise their ability to focus global discussion on globally important topic.

In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

The site provides a list of post ideas for those wondering how to fit the topic into the context of their blog and resources for those interested in learning more (though some on the right may find the resources a bit too biased). Once written, you’ll be asked to insert a snippet of code into your post to help organizers locate and promote participating entries. And, of course, there are all sorts of pretty, shiny banners.

I’m in. Are you?

I just saved even more money than I planned.

See, a while back we switched from Southwestern Bell to Time Warner digital phone service. We were sick of picking up our land line phone and receiving an earful of static, or dialing a number only to have it somehow misrouted by Ma Bell. (Yes, that actually happened on a number of occasions.) That wasn’t too big a deal: we both have cell phones and pretty much use them exclusively.

What finally led us to make the change, though, was the realization we were paying over $30 per month just to have the land line that our home security system requires. Meanwhile, as TWC cable customers we were eligible to add Time Warner digital phone to our service plan for just $5 more per month. Hey, we like saving money as much as anyone, and we’ve heard some pretty good reports about their service. So making the switch was a no-brainer.

Or so we thought.

A few days after changing over — while keeping the same number — our home security provider sent out a notice to all of its customers saying they couldn’t guarantee their system would work on digital phone lines. Therefore, their notice read, they can’t be held responsible if the alarm system malfunctions.

Bull.

What the notice failed to explain is that it’s the security company’s choice to keep their system from working reliably for customers with VoIP or digital phone. They just need to install a cellular unit to transmit signal regardless of power-outages. And unlike a landline, which is easily cut by a determined thief, those cell units can’t be easily disabled.

Naturally, I called to ask why they hadn’t explained this to customers, many of whom would be happy to pay a small additional amount because they’d still save more after switching. Their response? They didn’t want to be liable in the event the cellular unit goes out, too. What, like they’d be liable if SW Bell went out?

As it turns out, we made two switches this month: first to Time Warner digital phone and then to another (bigger) security provider who offered the cell unit as part of its package, which costs less per month than our old company charged.

So, thank you, to my old security company. Your resistance to change didn’t just save me the $25 when I switched phone providers, but another $30 when I switched security providers, too. That, sad to say, is the best service you’ve ever done us.

In an effort to rapidly boost our flagging economy, the federal government will be sending out the first stimulus checks four days early. So, for those of you who kited your tax payments, this is probably good news.

For some, well, it’s still a waiting game for those who view such things as “rebates” rather than ploys. If you’re in that group, well, you’re probably praying your check will be here in time to take advantage of the discounts retailers are offering.

And you are the precise reason why the government thinks this is such a good idea.

For others — and this includes the Venomous Household — it feels like a shady back-room deal. We wrote a hefty check to the IRS and now they’re writing one to us a bit later. Oddly enough, the amounts aren’t that different.

That makes our decision about how to spend our stimulus check pretty simple: it’s already spent. We paid it once toward a debt with the IRS and when we get that money back, well, we’ll pay it toward another debt… most likely our highest-interest credit card.

Yes, we’re aware that’s not what the idea was behind the whole thing. But then again, we don’t actually understand the fine economic distinction between receiving money from the IRS after having paid them nearly the same amount and, say, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

Sure, we’d like to spend that money on a nice big HDTV or a family vacation or even a new tile floor for our kitchen. But, really, isn’t that kind of “screw the budget, I want stuff!” thinking what led to the supposed “mortgage crisis” in the first place?

How about you? What will you be spending your money they shouldn’t have made you pay “stimulus check” on?

Until recently, I’d completely stopped listening to television news. I get my news via RSS feeds and the occasional visit to Google News, the beauty of which means that I’ve only had to endure the news that interests me. Has Hillary said something stupid lately? I couldn’t tell you — I don’t pay attention to her if I can help it. Did Obama do something idiotic? I’d never know it — I don’t read much about him these days. For all I know, Libya could become part of Russia and I’d be the last one to find out… if I cared.

Then I bought my new treadmill with the thought of using it while getting a better butt blogging — something I’m determined to do by high summer — and suddenly I’m finding myself listening to television news nearly non-stop.

I remember now why I stopped.

When the media isn’t talking about the number of defaulted home loans they’re talking about the number of number of defaulted credit cards. The housing market is going to hell in a hand-basket. I got that. Didn’t you, oh, about five months ago?

Thing is, until recently I’d thought the problems were limited to the U.S. After all, isn’t that what the media’s preaching: that foreclosures and the “mortgage crisis” are all the result of bad federal regulation? After all, even John McCain is saying calling for legislation designed to help homeowners struggling to make payments to their home loan lenders. Isn’t that proof there’s a problem in our country?

Not so fast.

The housing market is cooling in Canada. Ditto with Scotland and England, too. Heck, even China’s housing market is struggling. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s seeming more of a pandemic — rather than a domestic — issue.

Granted, I’m not an economist. I get bored with numbers (heck, I just got bored typing the word “numbers”), so I can’t profess to understand the intricacies of worldwide financial dependencies. But I do know this: about four years ago VH and I were able to obtain a 4.3% home loan on the nicest house we could afford following the old rule that mortgage payments or rent should be equal to one-fourth of your monthly income. Then we made a 25% down-payment using the funds from the sale of our previous home.

We locked our new mortgage in with fixed payments on a 15-year note and rearranged the rest of our budget accordingly: the mortgage gets paid first, and everything else (aside from my internet connection and hosting fees) goes into the “hope we have enough” pile. Every single month we pay at least $200 extra toward our principle, because we figured that once our home is paid off we’ll have that much more to pay other bills, none of which will pull the roof from over our head simply because we didn’t pay more than the minimum monthly payment.

As a result, we’ve now paid off half of our initial mortgage. That equity, we’ve always figured, is our rainy-day savings: it’s something we can draw on — even if we don’t want to — should life run amok and we really need extra cash.

So, ultimately, I guess I’m saying that I’m having a hard time understanding thinking of the foreclosure crisis as a crisis in the system, as a paradigm for voting, or as something that requires yet more federal involvement. If it’s not limited to our country, and it’s something that people who took the “safe” path of investing in their own homes have managed to avoid, then is it really a crisis?

Or is it just a lack of poor planning on the part of too many people who wanted to live large without having the patience to wait until they could afford to do so?

UPDATE: Meanwhile, as Truthful Lending explains, the feds response to the poor planning entails authorizing the “the quasi-governmental agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to lessen their qualification requirements and allow more homeowners to refinance into conforming loans”, with the result that these agencies take on higher-risk notes so that the gub’ment benefits when those higher-risk borrowers do default. Can you say, “All your houses will belong to Them?” No??? Well, bend over and grab your ankles and see if that doesn’t help your pronunciation, folks.

Want a hot stock tip? Ask me which stock I’m thinking about buying… then buy anything else but that. No, I’m not joking: I now have a 5-year track record of picking hot stocks the instant they lose their momentum.

Men’s Warehouse? I bought stock last March 5 at $42.60. By the end of the day it closed down at $42.23. But I wasn’t going to panic. Oh, no, not me. I have, after all, taken a well-respected stock trading course, although not being a “numbers person” my mind kept wandering. I regularly browse the columns over at Motley Fool and even have a print subscription to The Wall Street Journal… although I tend to use it to line my cat box more often than I actually read it.

But I’ve picked up enough to know that I take a little off the table simply because the market is getting shaky or an otherwise well-performing stock is starting to slide. So I held on to those shares and waited… and waited…and waited for the up-trend. I’m still waiting — for the entire year since I purchased the company’s stock it’s crept steadily downward, closing at $23.09 on Friday.

For a while there, I stood to actually make money with my Microsoft shares. That is, if I’d been paying attention to my portfolio any time prior to the news about Microsoft’s failed bid for Yahoo! Which I wasn’t because, no matter how hard I try, financial news bores the heck out of me.

See, that’s the downside of being the kind of person who mentally shuts down whenever there are too many numbers in front of me. Knowing that the ultimate goal of any good stock trading system is to “buy low, sell high”, I’ll see a headline about how the Dow and NASQAQ fell but the S&P edged up and figure I’d better check it out.

Then I’ll read something like this:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off nearly 100 points earlier before paring those losses to end down 28.77 points, or 0.23%, at 12,348.21. The Nasdaq Composite gave back 10.74 points, or 0.46%, to 2321.80. The S&P 500 spent much of the session in the red before ending higher by 1.13 points, or 0.08%, at 1349.99.

Did your eyes just glaze over? Mine did. Which is why I’ve decided that the only way to truly protect my investments at this point is to sell stocks, regardless of whether I’m doing it at a loss, and stick that money where I just might have a chance of not losing it: my mattress.

I can’t stand the commercials by that Question Mark guy. You know the one I’m talking about, Matthew Lesko, the man who’s made a name for himself hawking his “free money” books, all named with super-hyped titles like You Won’t Get Rich Working For Somebody Else.

Even so, when two o’clock a.m. rolls around and I’m lolling on the sofa because I can’t sleep through VH’s snoring, there’s something about Lesko’s pitch that sounds appealing. Could I really get free cash from the government to start a brewery? Do I get more because I’m a short, left-handed woman working from home?

He makes getting US small business grants sound as easy as 1-2-3. Provided I’m willing to shell out for his book first, of course.

Which I’m not.

But I do like the thought of running my own business. After all, I’ve been telling the IRS for years now that blogging is my business, albeit one that’s been running at a loss until this past year. Could I really qualify for small business grants in addition to tax deductions for my blogs? Why, that’s almost like discovering calorie-free chocolate that makes you lose weight with every bite, or a pill that can keep a mother-in-law quiet.

It’s Xanadu, baby.

To listen to Lesko, one would think that obtaining US business grants is as easy as dialing up the Small Business Administration and telling them where to send the check. But nothing involving the government is ever really easy, is it?

I wound up launching the SBA’s assessment tool that evaluates whether people are really ready and skilled enough to start a small business. Then I found myself getting bored.

Don’t get me wrong: the questions were all about me, and that’s ordinarily one of my favorite subjects. But I’ve never been a fan of filling in little bubbles, even the electronic kind, and so I gave up halfway through, which is probably what I’d wind up doing once I started thinking of blogging as really being a business.

The way I see it, I just saved the U.S. government — and you, my fellow taxpayers — a load of cash.

You’re welcome.