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Apparently what needs two six-hour classes on the first two Saturdays of spring can be summed up within a couple paragraphs (at least in a couple installments) on a slightly successful somewhat humor associated blog. I am, of course, referring to the first time home buyer class my lender has required me to attend in order to obtain a state subsidized mortgage. I’m not knocking the program as it is meant for first time home buyers. But the elementary view and information this class provides these hopeful and somewhat naive homebuyers is almost worthless. At first I assumed the audience was somewhat knowledgeable in regards to personal finance. I mean, this is a class for people ready to make the biggest purchase of their lives. However, I was seriously surprised when more than a few hands raised to notify the teacher that they didn’t know what a “Credit Score� was. As I sat in the freezing room filled with plastic folding chairs listening to a real estate professional, a home inspector, and a real estate lawyer try to drum up business for themselves instead of educate home buyers, I decided to put down on paper the important lessons and intricacies that may be useful to a somewhat more educated, or simply alive, first time home buyer that I’ve discovered not only during the home buying process but also through my experience as a former loan officer and what I’ve learned while preparing to sit for the Real Estate Licensing exam in Ohio. Today’s topic – Preparing your financials for a Mortgage Preparing for a loan is, I think, the most important part of the process. Hopefully you’ve made some decisions as far as where you’re going to live and what type of house you’re looking for. A little bit of research around these assumptions will help you determine how much of a loan and down payment you’re going to need. Preparing yourself, or more importantly your finances for a loan, may take months or years depending on how far off plan you are. The two most important things that the bank will look at will be your debt-to-income ratio and your credit score (hopefully you know what that is). Your debt-to-income ratio simply is your month debt payments divided your gross income divided. Now for the most part you want to pay off debt in order of the highest interest rate, by the way, if you’re carrying credit card balances, you’re not even ready to begin thinking about buying a home. Work on a budget to get your credit cards closed and make yourself debit-dependent instead of credit-dependent. When evaluating your debt-to-income your bank will mainly look at monthly required payments and then debt balances, but the two measures that matter most are your debt-to-income ratio using only your new house payment, taxes, insurance, and possibly condo fee, and your total debt-to-income ratio including all monthly debt payments and your new house payment, taxes etc… These two ratios should be under or close to 28% and 36% respectively. Now this is where some creative financing takes place. The two determinates you can effect in these equations are your income, which is not as controllable as most of us like, and your current monthly debt payments. Like I said before, normally it’s prudent to pay off your highest interest loans and debts first, but when trying to improve your debt-to-income ratio by reducing your monthly debt payments this may not be true. Consider two student loans, one at 8% and one at 4%. Most people’s first instinct is to payoff the first loan with the 8% interest because the interest is higher. However let’s also assume that the 8% interest loan is amortized over 5 years with a balance of $5,000, and the 4% loan is amortized over two years with a balance of $5,000. The payment on the 8% loan is $101.38 and the 4% loan is 217.12. The lower interest rate loan has a higher payment due to the amortization time. After you’ve decided how much money you’ll need for down payment, closing costs, reserve funds, etc… any extra funds should be applied to your highest monthly payment to balance ratio. In other words, the 8% loans ratio is 101.38/5000, or 2% while the 4% loan is about 4.3%. This will lower your debt-to-income ratio. This theory should be applied to all your debt balances and monthly payments that have the same tax advantages. Notice how I compared two student loans instead of a student loan and a car loan. Normally the student loan will have tax advantages over the auto loan, because you can deduct the student loan interest you pay. This theory may also have negative effects in the future. Essentially in the scenario above you’re sacrificing a loan with a lower rate to afford a better home. If you had paid off the 8% loan instead, you’d pay less interest over time. These are all things that should be considered on an individual basis and they unfortunately don’t fit easily into a widely flexible calculation. Paying off any debt will also improve your credit score. The calculations that determine your FICO score are very complicated and outside of the scope of this writing. What I can tell you is that if your FICO score isn’t above 700 you can expect to pay a higher interest rate or points on your loan than what the market is advertising. Also, with all the problems with the sub-prime market if you’re FICO score is below 600 you may not have a prayer finding financing. Based only on my experience alone, the most diligent efforts to improve a bad credit score can only rise a score by 50 points a year at best. Based on that and your own knowledge of you credit history you should be better able to determine what your timeframe is before you apply for a mortgage. And like everyone says but almost no one ever does, you should check your credit score at least once a year and with all three major reporting agencies. Maybe the most helpful thing to do when you want to start preparing for a mortgage is to play with the numbers. Using something like Excel, list all of your debt balances, payments, terms, etc.. along with your income. Make some quick formulas to automatically calculate your debt-to-income ratio and then run through a few scenarios. Playing with the numbers will give you a better idea of what you need to do to improve your debt-to-income ratio and provide you with a better timeline of when it'll be proper to apply for a loan.

How may we disappoint you today?

I really used to love my credit card company. That's sort of an odd thing - like loving your cable provider or your electricity company. But every time I interacted with MBNA, I came away pleased. Maybe it's because one always expects poor customer service these days, and a good customer service experience ends up being infinitely more satisfying than you could ever imagine. MBNA and I had a wonderful relationship since 1998. I didn't screw them over (I was the very model of a modern credit-having individual) and they didn't screw me over. They sent me cool perks. They gave me great rates. Their Web site was awesome. It was a dream come true. I was faithful to them and not only did I get myself a second card, I recommended my parents to them and got a business account for my business. In 2006 I was informed that MBNA was merging with Bank of America. Now, I'd not heard much about BOA. MBNA was such a huge presence here in Cleveland that I just assumed MBNA would be swallowing up BOA and millions of new customers would enjoy the same wonderful customer service as me and that'd be the end of it. I was sorely mistaken. Bank of America swallowed up MBNA and within a few short months proceeded to spew its glistening guts all over my pristine view of the credit card industry. This is a really fucking long rant about Bank of America and how it sucks. If you are into this sort of thing... First and foremost, Bank of America is a bank. MBNA was more or less a credit card company. Credit card companies are very good at having solid credit card services for credit card holders. Banks, it seems, are very much into charging fees as well as having antiquated services as a holdover from their beginnings in 1902. Bank of America bills this as "being able to serve you better by offering you more options," while someone like me sees this as "great, more ways to try to confuse me into buying services." Since the above really just makes me sound like an old coot who likes to rant about stuff just because changes have occurred, I'll give some specific examples of their suckitude. Then you can decide more easily on how much sympathy I should have. 1. The merger seems to have come as a surprise to the BOA staff. Especially their Online Services staff. I suspect some stuffed shirts at the very top of the chain said "yes, we can do this merger quickly and efficiently with very little planning and have it all running smoothly within a month" while no one bothered to ask the IT guys doing the actual work if it could be possible. Turns out, it wasn't very possible. Just before the merger I had gotten into using Quicken as my "money management software." Quicken has been around a long time. Most good financial institutions are modern enough to let you download your monthly statements in the Quicken format and with the push of a button import all of your data to the software. Companies who are even more savvy let you download the information directly through Quicken without having to visit a Web site. MBNA had this going. BOA, on the other hand, did not have this going. At least not for their newly-acquired MBNA accounts. First, it took a few months for my statements to even show up online. Once they were there, I wanted to get them into Quicken. But there was no Quicken option - even though the site's skeleton help system gave instructions on what non-existent buttons to push to get your statements in this format. Eventually I found a notice saying to please call this number for Quicken support. I called said number. The unusually rude operator at the other end was not really sure what Quicken was (seriously! At the special BOA Quicken number!)...but once she figured it out, she was able to tell me that there was no Quicken support for MBNA customers just yet. Try again soon. Five months later now, still no Quicken support. I have the option of getting my statements in PDF or Text format - both pretty useless for importing into software as specific as Quicken. 2. The Web site is very slow, confusing and buggy. I understand that many Web sites can be slow from time to time, but BOA is slow more often than not. Due to the tremendous amount of information they are trying to pack in there about the 400 other services I could be enrolled in, it's extremely hard to find what you want and everything takes several clicks. As I mentioned above, their help system is atrocious. Clicking "help" brings up a new, poorly-designed framed window with very little information on the subject you are looking for. It has plenty of info on making a new account with their various financial services but that's about it. No search, and it's hard to read. Nowhere on the site can you see your monthly finance charge. You have to download the PDF of the statement to get that info. This info is crucial, of course, for people like me who need to balance their accounts by typing all charges into Quicken (as opposed to downloading them). 3. Their phone system is the epitome of "CAN'T I JUST TALK TO A HUMAN NOW?!" First, it seems that in the merger, all of their phone numbers had changed (once again, no one told the Web guys). So you call a number often to hear a voice saying that you must actually call another number. Once you get the right number, the menus start. The computer's voice is friendly enough but the options and menus are endless. Because they want to know which of these seventeen banking services you are calling about. Credit cards are lumped with loan accounts so you have to listen carefully. Yesterday I called to ask some questions about my business account. First I got the "wrong number" message after calling the number prominently placed on the Web site. Then I went through several menus trying to figure out what kind of account I had (they weren't interested in separating my business status from a regular personal account). Of course they asked for the last 4 digits of my Social Security Number, which my business doesn't have. Finally we (me and the computer voice) established that I needed help with my online account (which I did - more on that later) and I was told I was being connected thusly. Then it hung up on me. 4. The MBNA Business accounts didn't switch over to BOA until March 1 (several months after the initial consumer products were switched). This month I got to experience BOA's Business services for the first time. When I logged on, I was met with a barrage of options and restrictions for Business cardholders (I had also gotten all of this stuff in the mail, which included a heck of a lot of rule changes). I was also gleefully extended the offer of being able to "upgrade" my account to be able to download my statements into QuickBooks (Quicken's business-minded older brother), pay bills online and have some sort of "direct deposit" service for my company. Each service cost an extra $10 per month PLUS a base fee of $10 just for the privilege of being able to pay them $10 more per month. I was actually sort of intrigued by the idea of being able to do direct deposit for my employees (except not at $20/mo. They can drag their asses to the bank themselves.) But there was no info on what this entailed. Was it true direct deposit? The link for "more information" went to a dead page. What I really wanted to do was pay my bill online. Just like I had done with MBNA. Just like I do now with my personal accounts. For free, from my bank account, biggity-bam. Well, BOA was insistent that if I wanted to do this, I needed to open a BOA checking account. That sounded absurd...but the message at the top of the page said I could call this number to get it set up. I figured I could at least get ahold of someone who could tell me what I really needed to do to be able to pay my bill online. The number that they showed was the disconnected one (see above) and the one that ultimately hung up on me. I checked out "Transfer Funds" instead. I mean, I just wanted to transfer funds from my bank to their bank. Well, once again I was prompted to open some other sort of account. Not gonna happen. Finally I went to their Customer Service page in the hopes that I might find another number - that actually was in service - where someone could please tell me how I could pay my bill online. And right there, buried 2/3 of the way down the Customer Service page, was a link to "Pay from another financial institution." I cautiously clicked the link, anticipating another application form, when there it was - A WAY TO PAY MY BILL ONLINE FOR FREE. Put in the amount, routing number and bank account number and you're all set. That was easy. Easy to carry out - not easy to find. Not obvious or convenient. Of course, there's no sort of fancy "save this information" option so I can easily carry this payment scheme out again in the future. But it's there. Also "hidden" on the site is the ability to download statements in QuickBooks or Quicken format (remember, you can't do this for MBNA-to-BOA personal card accounts yet). The very feature that Bank of America ASSURED me would not be available unless I paid them $10/mo for the "upgrade." ----- So my experience with Bank of America has not been pleasant at all. The customer service has been less than stellar, the Web services are blah and the business service has been nothing but a headache. Plans are definitely in the works for kicking BOA to the curb, as far as my business goes. My personal accounts are sort of set there for a while, as my oldest credit card account is through them and it is a very good practice to keep your oldest accounts open in order to establish good credit. But, with no annual fees, there's no reason to keep using them. My choice so far, the card company that LEAST offends me, is CitiBank. I recently got a personal card through them and while I am not nearly as satisfied with Citi as I was with MBNA, they have so far offended me less than BOA. Citi's sites seem to be confusing too, and their rates don't touch what I had with MBNA, but they have some nice perks and a pleasant-enough customer service staff. And I get $25 a pop for everyone I refer to Citi who ends up getting an account - so everyone I referred to MBNA is going to be getting referred to Citi now. If anyone has any suggestions as to what company I should switch to, that'd be helpful (both business and personal). Or, share your credit card horror stories. Or better yet - give me your email address so I can refer you to Citi! ;)

Steve Jobs is right again. In a post on the Apple web site he reacts to calls for Apple to open their Fairplay DRM system to licensing with an interesting (and insightful) proposal:

"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

This has gotten a lot of coverage today, from Business Week to the New York Times. Jobs' post was prompted by a number of European countries examining (and in some cases declaring illegal) the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses with the iTunes music store and the iPod. The system is there to make sure that if you cough up $.99 for a song, you don't spread it around the internet for free. These countries say the effect is to lock customers in to iPods and iTunes so they can't buy another player without forfeiting their music. Jobs' response? He never wanted to have a DRM system in the first place. He would gladly dump the whole thing, and let you buy music anywhere you wanted and use any player you wanted - but it's not up to Apple. Although you might buy your Ben Folds from iTunes, Apple doesn't have any of the rights to that music - the vast majority of the time, the rights are owned by a major record label, with just four labels dominating the market. They require DRM. That said, why wouldn't Apple like the idea of DRM? A naive observer (or record company executive) would say it's good for Apple, too, since it means iPod buyers will use the iTunes store and vice-versa, and it forces people to buy songs instead of pirating them. This is why Steve Jobs has been so successful. He thinks more people will pay for free music than music tied up in the rules and inconvenience of DRM. And he's right. To understand why, you need a little history. Starting in the mid 90s but really picking up around 1997, MP3s started popping up here and there on web sites. At first it seemed like most MP3s were available from fan sites for particular bands or genres, but soon mass-popularity mp3 sites started popping up and getting a lot of traffic. Pretty soon most of them were filled with banner ads and made useless by spam. But no matter, because in 1999 Napster came out, allowing peer-to-peer sharing of music files. Millions of people used Napster to download songs. The record companies, represented by their organization the RIAA, took them to court. Napster, they said, was providing the means for the outright theft of millions of songs, and should be shut down. And it was, in 2001. But here's where Jobs (along with many other commentators who don't have billion-dollar companies behind them) saw something the record companies did not - people were downloading songs without paying, sure, but if you wanted to download music there was no way to pay for it. Clearly there was a demand, and where there is a demand, there is a market, but the labels were not interested in it at all. They said these millions of people were just theives, that no one would ever pay for a download. Nothing useful happened until 2003 when Apple opened the iTunes music store, and Jobs proved them wrong. I don't think it took a singular genius to do so, since a lot of people at the time were all saying the same thing: give us a way to pay for downloads, and we will. But he had the opportunity and the ability to convince record labels to try it out. And it worked. Downloads have not replaced CD sales, but they have been growing very, very quickly considering the labels said they would never work and they still compete with free downloads. Why haven't downloads replaced CD sales? They are different media, and in some ways will always be different - some people like the phsyical object, CDs make a better gift, etc. But a big part of the reason is that downloads are made artificially into an inferior good because of DRM restrictions. Here's an example of how DRM removes value. CDs are generally not restricted, but once in a while a label will try to restrict them in some way. On one of the very rare occasions we were listening to commercial radio, my wife and I heard a song by Kasabian that we liked. We went out and got the CD. The first thing we did after listening to it in the car was put it in my computer to rip the songs to MP3. I spend a lot of time at my desk so I listen to music at my computer more than anywhere else, so I generally rip all my CDs and listen to my large music library. The CD had some copy-protection scheme that caused the tracks to skip and become garbled. Like all DRM, there's a way around it, but the damage was done - I was too lazy to re-rip, and now I don't hear Kasabian tracks when working on projects or surfing the web and they have fallen off my list of bands to look for when buying music. Further, it felt to me personally like an attack on my computer. All my other CDs worked just fine, but this one didn't-taking something that works and making it not work is usually called "breaking it," and it seemed to me that the record label was trying to break my CD and my computer. I've never been one to take pride in having obscure tastes, but this no doubt contributed to my steady loss of interest in buying new mainstream music. Lately I've been sampling (often free) stuff from indies instead. The value of that CD was much, much less to me than others I had purchased because of DRM, and the DRM had the long-term effect of shrinking the music market, if only just a little bit (my personal spending). I spend much of my time as a programmer, and programmers tend to be logical, realistic people. We tend to think things like DRM are ultimately unworkable because we know there is no such thing as a perfectly secure solution. We also get annoyed when it is difficult to move data from one format to another, whether it's because the libraries are buggy or because of purposeful restrictions. We also don't take kindly to the ridiculousness surrounding the enforcement in the legal system - evidence that only works in court because judges don't understand the technology, penalties in the thousands of dollars per song, etc. So maybe I am biased against DRM. But if I could buy songs from iTunes (or wherever) without DRM, and play them on whatever device I want, I would. I don't think I'm the only one. And Jobs has been trying to make this point for a long time. In a Rolling Stone interview from 2003 (thanks to Guillaume Laurent’s tech blog for reminding me of the reference) he explains:

"When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. ... What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it."

Some say this is just a ploy to deflect criticism from Apple to the music industry. It seems to me that if Jobs just wanted to deflect critism, he would just start licensing Fairplay. If he wanted to deflect criticism and maintain a competitive advantage, he would license Fairplay at a high engouh cost that, when coupled witht he demands of music publishers, would make competition with iTunes very difficult. He could decide to to it today and have to first licensee up and running in a week. But that's not the point - the point is expanding the market as a whole. And the best way to do that is to make the product more valuable to the consumer, and one very quick, very easy way to increase the value is to dump the DRM.

...and then there was no one left to speak up for me. Pity the poor citizens of New York City. Their most basic human rights have been stripped away. The freedom to choose has been stripped from them by a big brother who says he knows what's best. Adam Smith, George Washington, and Milton Friedman are spinning in their graves, and the Statue of Liberty sheds a single, rusty tear as she gazes across the at a once free people. No, I'm not talking about illegal domestic wire tapping, or the denial of the First Amendment via remote "free speech zones." We all know that those are required to combat terrorism, and triffling privileges like those are a small cost for combating terrorism. I am talking about a much more important freedom: the right to choose to eat foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, rich with trans fats. "Dear god, say it isn't so!" you shout. "What will they ban next?" Probably baseball and apple pie. But while I would join you in protesting and future attacks on baseball and apple pie, I am afraid I cannot join in your outrage over the trans fat ban, for three reasons: First off, trans fats are really, really bad for us. Consuming them results in much harm and no benefit whatsoever. I'm not going to say anything more about this point, the research is out there. Secondly, a trans fat ban does not really take any choice away from consumers. How can that be? Let's perform a scientific experiment. Walk into a restaurant, sit down to order, and examine the menu. Exercise your right to choose by picking out the food with the most trans fat. Having a hard time? That's okay, ask the waiter or waitress which food has the most trans fat. Still having difficulties? Demand to speak to the manager. See if that helps. Although trans fat content above .5 grams has been required on packaged food labels for almost a year, there is often no way to know the trans fat content in restaurant food. You have no way to choose because to have no basis for making a choice. This is not a case of nanny-state Marxism injecting inefficiency into the free market, this is a small, but very real, market failure--a very common case where one (or both) sides of a transaction do not have the information needed to rationally pursue their own interests. A sufficient amount of transparency a necessary condition for a free market. If lack of information and transparency is the problem, why not simply require labeling in restaurants instead of banning trans fats outright? Quite frankly, holding restaurants (especially sole proprietorships and "mom and pop" shops) to accurate food labeling would be much, much more costly to them than an outright ban. No more chefs deciding today's special on based solely on their skill and artistry - everything would need to be vetted and nutrition calculated. A huge apparatus of state would need to be created for testing and enforcement. I can't see too many libertarians in favor of that. Third, banning partially hydrogenated vegetable oils with make food better, not worse. The truth of the matter is, if they had managed to somehow eliminate trans fats in secret, you would not have even noticed. Trans fats are not used to enhance the flavor of food; the most they can do is effect the texture of foods that have been sitting out for a long time. Restaurants do not use them because they are what consumers demand or prefer - they use them so that they can leave the same oil in the fryer for a longer period of time and sell girl scout cookies baked long ago as if they were fresh. If anything, a ban will result in fresher food. Costs may go up for restaurants, but not by an inordinate amount - Denmark banned trans fats in 2003, yet you can still get McDonald's french fries without taking out a loan. Taste is, of course, very subjective. There are plenty of chefs swearing they cannot do without. But keep this fact in mind: very, very little food made in the 1980s or earlier had anywhere near the amount of trans fat found in foods today. And yet historical records show people living in such ancient times considered their food "yummy" and "delicious." Removing trans fats is in fact a return to cooking "just like mom used to make." Finally, I can't take seriously any argument against the ban founded on "first they said this was bad, now that" cynicism. I know, I know... first they said saturated fats were bad, so you stopped eating butter. Now they say trans fats are bad, so you can't eat margarine anymore. Clearly these "scientists" have lost all credibility and are just toying with the public for their own amusement. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but this is actually a perfect example of how science works. The scientific method is not a way to prove, beyond all doubt, that something is true with a capital 'T.' It is a way to come up with the best explanation given the data available. That best explanation will almost necessarily change over time - first came enough evidence to accept that fatty foods were linked to heart disease. Then, as more information and finer measurements were taken, it was discovered that saturated fats, in particular, a re very bad. Then, after the food industry started replacing saturated fats with trans fats, more and more data because available leading to the conclusion that trans fats are even worse than saturated fats. I am sorry if this is distressing to you. If you want (relatively) unchanging truth, you are more than welcome to turn to the various religions of the world. But keep this in mind: unlike other systems, science and its application have consistently generated real-world results, such as vaccination, air planes, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, rockets, nuclear weapons, and the XBox 360. Perhaps ten years from now we will discover that only trans fats with certain numbers of carbon atoms are really bad, and some are okay. Oh well.

I'm always on the lookout for ways to make my house more energy-efficient. I'm also always buying things online and having them shipped to my house. This leads to a problem - a bevy of boxes, and a plethora of packing peanuts. Boxes can be broken down, folded up, and recycled. What to do about the packing peanuts? Could I kill two birds with one stone, and use them as fill to insulate my attic? The answer is probably not. I trolled around the web looking for someone esle with the same crazy idea and came up relatively short handed. One point I picked up pretty quickly is that they are not really Styrofoam packing peanuts, the are Polystyrene foam. Styrofoam is a trademark that refers to a specific product, and were talking about the wild multicolored mass of packing material I have at my disposal. One blogger confessed he has always had an urge to eat them. I'm not sure how that helps me, but there it is. In an article saying they can be broken down into biodegradable materials, one of the people commenting on his post wondered the same thing I did, but there were no answers. At Ask a Scientist, a web site of the U.S. Department of Energy, a kindred spirit asked about the R-value of packing peanuts and styrofoam, and here I got my most definitive answer:

As a professional civil engineer, I recommend against using packing foam for building purposes in the strongest possible way. This is a DANGEROUS idea. Foam panels sold for insulating buildings are treated with flame retardants while it is likely that foam peanuts are not. Untreated Polystyrene foam is dangerously flammable and produces highly toxic fumes.

So there you have it. I still say "probably not," because the main problem is flammability and it's possible there's an inexpensive flame retardant that could be used. But just dumping them into cheap garbage bags and laying them in the rafters looks like a bad idea. Still, it's not like using polystyrene is unheard of in the building industry. For example, I have found instructions for using peanuts in green roof construction, usually bagged into batts or pillows. Thermasave building panels are made of polystyrene foam sandwiched between two (presumably flame-retardant) concrete boards. At least one interior designer (so, not quite a civil engineer) recommends using the peanuts to insulate basement windows. Many do-it-yourselfers recycle them into projects such as solar water heaters. Of course, those biodegradable packing peanuts made from corn starch are fairly common these days. If I ever have to buy any peanuts, I'll definitely get those, and still save the world on packing peanut at a time. But right now I still have a ton of non-degradable peanuts to deal with. There's a company in England turning them into pencils, rulers, and other school supplies, but they are too far away. I've only found a few other reuse ideas. So my best bets are to keep them around in case I have to do a lot of shipping (though now I'm worried about the fire hazard), or take them to a shipping company like Mailboxes, Etc (now the UPS Store) so that other people can reuse them. I'm not likely to be sending a lot of materials that require packing peanuts for shipping any time soon, so I guess I'll go with the latter. Maybe I'll help someone avoid getting fired.