My new word

Shituational.

Yup. That's it. I decided that, for me-for us all, really, the word situational needed to evolve. This is simply what needed to happen. Just like fish evolved to have legs and be able to move about on land, "situational" evolved to have an "H" in order to remove the implied or inferred positive connotation from situations whose outcomes may vary depending on a variety of factors, but never really work out in the speaker's favor when put under a microscope. When you look at it, you think it's your good behavior or hard work or diligence-or, best yet...Karma is paying off.

But if you look at it objectively, it's just luck.

You dodged a bullet, you lucky bastard. I mean, you well-behaved, hard-working, diligent and Karmically-blessed individual.

This evolution in vocabulary came about because a friend of mine mentioned she was hating her Clearwire internet service. Another friend of hers concurred that using Clearwire was the worst mistake of his life, and I (while wishing I had the good fortune of her other friend) disagreed, saying that my experience with Clearwire was a positive one.

Now, to say it is exclusively positive would be generous, I have had a couple of service outages over the last two years and the automatic billing overdrew my account once (not their fault that the bill date fell on a Saturday or Sunday...but likewise, not my fault I have a shit memory, right?) but by and large the experience for me has been far greater than with other internet service providers I have used. The icing on the cake-what tips it to shituational-for this case is cost. Does it really cost $1.50 per day to provide a receiver to catch the signal that Clearwire has beamed randomly throughout the skies of the United States? Because I am paying about $45 a month to receive this service. The answer? Probably not. As a matter of fact, $1.50 is probably more than they paid the poor Chinese bastard for the entire day that he worked the assembly line to manufacture this receiver; a day in which his quota was likely to manufacture a few thousand of these receivers.

Hence, the application of the word shituational. Overall, I have no real complaints-I expect service to be there, it generally is. It is a necessary evil. Realistically, even though I am "happy" with the situation, I'm pretty much still getting screwed.

Like banks, or politics or relationships. These are all other things in your life that are only shituational. They may be working for you now...but they aren't working for 100% of the people now and there is no guarantee that your experience will continue to be positive into the future.

But for an example, let's look at banks.

They provide a place for you to keep and manage your money and you pay them a monthly service fee. What? You have Free Checking? Of course you do. But you're special. the rest of us have a checking account that on average only creates $75 per year in revenue for those poor banks. No wonder they fail. $75 a year is two accidental overdrafts.

Those poor, poor banks.

When I worked at US Bank I heard this sorrowful tale many times.

Then I looked at the poor folks who kept their money at my branch alone. Running hundreds of dollars a month in overdraft fees and I would get grief for refunding a few overdraft fees for a customer on a monthly basis. There was a handful-a handful, we're talking a couple dozen-of accounts that would generate my generate my annual salary alone in their fees out of the 5,000 accounts that were opened at my branch.

Those poor, poor banks.

Let us not forget the "foreign ATM fees" you incur when you cannot find one of the thousands of ATMs your bank operates. $3.00 to gain access to your money because your bank doesn't actually provide the convenience they promise you? Plus many other "convenience fees" you may not even realize. Plus, the bank that owns the ATM you did use, well...they also get a couple bucks, right?

Then there are the backside fees. Fees that you generate simply by conducting business through your bank. You may not ever see these fees, but they are there.

Fees for using your ATM card as a Debit Card at a business. It costs the business around $.25 to accept that payment. Even small businesses run a few hundred of these transactions per day. A business that only runs 200 transactions a day generates $25 in revenue for the bank that they do their business with.

$150 a month.

$1800 a year.

24 times what your measly little checking account earns that poor, poor bank a year just to hold your money safely for you.

Times all of the small businesses you deal with on a daily basis.

Your dry cleaner.

Your neighborhood grocer or convenience store.

Your coffee place.

OMG, these coffee places are the true poor, poor bastards. My Americano costs $2.50, a price I tell the owner is too low. She should charge at least $.10 more, but that's another story. If I use my Debit Card, it costs her 10% of that cup of coffee just to accept my payment. I have actually left the bakery-and my coffee-to cross the street and get cash for my transaction to avoid making her pay this exorbitant fee.

So I will use my Credit Card to help out those small businesses and avoid making the banks money, right?

Nope. 2.5-6% of the transaction goes to the bank just to process it. Then you are generally paying interest, too. Or an annual fee.

And don't even let me get going on using Debit Cards as Credit Cards to earn cash back on the purchases you make.

Ok, I started.

The difference between what a bank earns on a debit transaction versus what they earn on a credit transaction can be HUGE. You can't look at it in terms of your cup of coffee, because that becomes an upside down transaction for the bank if you use your Debit Card as credit-they lose money. But, look at the couple of customers I personally ring up at work daily (this is not a plug for Bed, Bath & Beyond) where customers ask to use their Debit Card as a Credit Card. These are $500 transactions, what would be the cost of that $500 debit transaction? $.25, depending on the agreement a national retailer can wrangle with their bank versus your neighborhood small businesses-so probably less than a dime in reality, but I'm trying to factor out a few of the confusing variables so we'll stick with $.25 here. The cost to BBB for running those two transactions I process as credit? $4-6...and this is only two transactions a day by someone whose primary job function is not to work at a register.

And why does the consumer ask for these transactions to be handled like this? Because the bank gives them 1% of their purchases back annually as a reward for doing that. You get 1% and the bank keeps 1.5-5% of your purchases. This is called spread and it is how banks make their money. Spread also occurs in interest rates, between prime-or what the banks pay the government to buy money-and what they charge you in interest to borrow it from them. For example, the prime rate today is 4%. For some reason (to stimulate growth by reducing the risk banks expose themselves to by lending money to their clients, I'm sure) there is a Federal Discount that banks receive. Today this is 1.25%, so banks are paying 2.75% to buy money. The interest rate-or cost-of a 30 year fixed mortgage today is 6.41%. So the bank is netting 3.66% on a 30 year fixed mortgage that they generate today, or $3.66 for every $100 they lend.

Those poor, poor banks.

And earlier in this post you probably-oh so proudly-thought, "I don't create $75 in annual revenue for my bank because I never bounce checks."

A: Bullshit. Everyone bounces checks, and
B: Sucker. Your money creates thousands of dollars for banks a year on your purchases alone.

Don't even get me started on what I like to call the "It's A Wonderful Life phenomenon". But I'll give you a hint: The bank is not required to keep cash on hand for all monies deposited with them. Of course, they couldn't because of multiple branches...it would be logistically impossible. And catastrophic...remember what happened in IAWL when all the customers crowded the bank and demanded their money? Poor George faced having to close his family business because he didn't have it. Oops. Today, banks don't have to have it. Only a percentage of it. As an organization. What do they do with the rest? Keep it in a master vault the bank owns somewhere, right? Like a really, really secure U-Store It. Sure they don't. They invest it. Maybe not in stocks (Ok, maybe they do, but I don't know that) but by lending it back to other customers instead of buying it from the government. That means their spread just got bigger by 2.75 points, right?

But how can they do that? How can they avoid the IAWLP if they give my money to someone else?

Well,
A: They don't have to tell you that, and
B: The government doesn't require them to keep your money laying around, and
C: Because they provide motivation for you not to ask for it back.

Namely, Savings Accounts. A Passbook Savings Account earns you about 1.5% interest-unless you fall below $300 and then it costs you $3 a month, but that's not the point-and the bank uses that money to help avoid paying 2.75% to buy money from the government to do it's lending business. A net increase on the bank's spread of 1.25 points.

Those poor, poor banks.

So, this is all Chrisenese for describing my new word: shituational. You may never have an issue with your bank. You may think it's truly Free Checking and be happy as a clam with it. But, really, your experience with your bank-which you may even recommend to friends and family, or use to start your youngster's first bank accounts-is only shituational.

Basically, you got lucky. But, remember, luck runs out.

You dodged a bullet. But there are probably around five more bullets in the gun...and just hope it's not a semi-automatic weapon!

Aren't you glad I didn't use politics or relationships as my example?