Free: Zecco

Alternate Dimension Andy (ADA):

As I mentioned before, Skeletor is being beaten out by brokerages that do not charge $25 per trade:

• Scottrade charges $7.00 per online trade.
  
• Charles Schwab charges $12.95 per online trade.
  
• TradeKing charges $4.95 per online trade.
  
• ShareBuilder charges from $4.00 to $15.95, and may have a subscription fee involved.
  
• Zecco charges $0.00 per online trade.

Hm. Typo? No. Zecco actually charges zero dollars and zero cents for an online trade. There are restrictions, natch, but for someone like you or me, it will almost always be $0.00. They make their money with ads and margin interest (which I'll talk about in a future post).

ADA, there's way more to it than just how much these brokerages charge per online trade. You have to do your own research and a cost-benefit analysis and all that. I'll give you some of what I came up with when I was doing research:

• Scottrade has a decent user interface and lots of products: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.. $7.00 is not steep, but you can definitely do better.
  
• Charles Schwab is expensive, but if you're doing well, it may be worth it. The fact that you can do all your banking and all your investing from the same site is a bonus. It's also a very usable site, considering how powerful it is.
  
• Trade King gives me warm fuzzies. It's a very simple site with almost as many investment vehicles as Charlie. It's much less expensive than Schwab. It has a beautifully sparse UI, which makes this self-proclaimed usability expert all tingly.
  
• Sharebuilder's monthly subscriptions are, in my mind, bullshit. For my taste, they also charge a bit too much for commissions.
  
• Zecco has been described in the media as "The MySpace of online brokerages." Considering the horrible user interface and overwhelming ads, I would say that that is a spot-on assessment. The blogs suffer from a problem I've talked about before. What bothers me the most is that there is that they only offer stock and options trades online; if you want to buy a mutual fund, you have to send them something in the mail.
  But no-commission trades? Huge deal.
  

So, if all you want to do is trade stocks, I invite you to try Zecco. I have a feeling that if they grow, they will clean up their user interface and offer more investment choices. In the meantime, if you want to take advantage of other investment options, I think TradeKing is the way to go.

May you piss off Skeletor in all investments you make.

Free: Bankrate

Alternate Dimension Andy (ADA):

There's another website in the tubal internets that I want to tell you about. It's called Bankrate.com. What is it? Well duh, it's a website that lets you look up bank rates and shit.

If you want to know where to get the best rate for a 1-year CD, check out Bankrate. Want to know what an average mortgage payment is for someone with your credit rating buying a $200,000 house? Bankrate. Want to know how much term life insurance should cost you? Bankrate.

Think about this: there are a whole bunch of banks and insurance companies out there that make money by charging interest, fees, monthly payments, etc. A lot of them get away with murder. If you take the first mortgage you're offered, you could end up paying many hundreds of dollars more per month, for instance.

Now, zag with me and think about it like this: pretend you'd never bought a banana in your life. Also, pretend that there are two grocery stores within a block of your house. So, you walk into one grocery store and see that bananas are on sale for $550 a bunch. You'd have to be crazy to buy them at that price, but even if you didn't know that was a terrible price, you'd be crazy not to go to the other grocery store and compare prices, since you're spending so much money.

In this day of interwebal communications, doesn't it only make sense that you should shop around before you spend hundreds of dollars? You know, just to make sure that shit is on the up and up? That's what Bankrate is all about. Of course, if you're a fucking moron, you can just stick with the first offer that comes your way.

Also, they have whole bunches of articles about personal finance, written by people who (unlike me) have a fucking clue as to what they're talking about. Imagine that!

Hope you love it. Cowabunga, over and out.

About the Free Monologues

Actors:

From now on, I will not be writing new monologues, except upon request. If you want me to write you a custom-made, never-before-been-used monologue, please contact me; just leave a comment under this topic. Otherwise, all monologues posted hereafter will be either old or guest-written.

Free: Yodlee

Alternate Dimension Andy (ADA):

Lemme tell you about something that will eff you up for life. There's this website called Yodlee, and it's truly, rockin' awesome.

Yodlee puts all of your online financial shit in one place. Online services you can manage via Yodlee:

• Checking accounts
  
• Savings accounts
• Credit cards
• Bills
• Brokerage accounts
• Retirement accounts
• Insurance
• Loans
  

Basically, if it's about your money, and if it has a website, Yodlee will aggregate it and put it all on one page for you.

While that is an amazingly impressive start, Yodlee does much more than just let you look at all your accounts:

• If you can pay your bills online, you can pay then via Yodlee. You pick the checking account from which you wish to pay, and Yodlee manages the rest for you.
  
• Yodlee automatically sets up a calendar telling you when all your payments are due.
• Yodlee knows what you're spending money on, and can generate a spending report. Without you entering any information (except in rare cases), Yodlee will know that you spent 25% of your income on rent, 12% on pet supplies, and 5.3% on gas.
  
• In tandem with the spending report feature, Yodlee will let you set up a budget and track your ability to stick to it. If you know you only want to spend 60% of your income on pets, Yodlee will give you an honest approximation of how much you're spending at Petco and other pet supply stores.
  
• Even though you probably don't want to know the numbers, Yodlee can tell you what your net worth is (minus things like the value of your cars and home).
  
• Yodlee is also a webmail aggregator. You can check Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo! mail directly from the Yodlee site.
• Yodlee will send you email reminders. You can set it up to send you an email when you go over budget on pet supplies, when a bill is due, and when your bank accounts have large transactions.
  
• Even if Yodlee hasn't already integrated one of your billing accounts -- a student loan, for instance -- you can still track the student loan via Yodlee. You just tell Yodlee what your balance is and when payment is due and Yodlee does the rest.

Okay, you are probably not geeking out as hard as I am right now, but there is one more aspect of Yodlee that I think might sway you:

• Yodlee is free to use.

So here's my recommendation to you, ADA: Sign up for Yodlee. Start checking your Yahoo, GMail and/or Hotmail accounts from Yodlee. Make it a habit to give a shit about your personal finances; make caring as automatic as checking your email.

Monologue: Bedfellows

by Andrew M. Kasper
Originally written for Matt Olsen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

SETH: Honey, I'm home earl-- WHOA! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yikes. Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you, sweetheart. Who's this? Sorry, I'll let you two get dressed. Hi, I'm Seth. Nice to meet you. I didn't mean to startle you, hon. I'm sorry. Wow. Pretty amazing. I guess I never thought of how I'd react to something like this, but now that it's happening right here in front of me... wow. I'm surprised to say that I'm not angry or anything. Not that I'd expect myself to be; I've never been the jealous type. But this, I mean this is... wow. Look at me going on. I'm sorry. Rude of me. Can I get you anything to drink? No? You, hon? No? Was that weird? That was weird. And now I'm staring. And now I'm talking about staring. My God, talk about making an awkward situation worse. Am I right? Tell you what. I won't even look at you. I'll just stare at the ceiling. Sound good? Honey, funniest thing happened at work today. Tim was asking about contracts for the 2006 fiscal year, but John Raimer thought he was talking about 2005. So, they got into this-- you know what? Not a very funny story. Funny, though. I thought things were going fine with us. You and me, I mean. Not you. I've never met you. Really did think things were fine. We never fight. I guess we haven't had sex in a while. Makes sense now. All right. Going to the kitchen. Last call for drinks! No one? I might stay at a hotel tonight, honey. Just seems like that's the sort of thing you do in a situation like this. I'll see you later, I guess. It was nice to meet you, Miss.

Monologue: Angry People Talking About God III

by Andrew M. Kasper
Originally written for Matt Salmela
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

LEON: Homework problems? Psh. You have nothing to worry about; God made this place too goddamn big. Today, I was learning about tying knots and stuff -- you know, for when you’re sailing -- and I started thinking, “What the hell does this matter?” I mean, how important can something be? Then, I started thinking about what the most important thing ever would be: the end of mankind, probably. The end of the world. Like, if a bunch of bombs went off and everyone died. Or if the earth got cracked into a billion pieces by an asteroid. Hey, that’s not even one piece for every person who would be killed. Holy hell. And even if that were the case, even if it were the end of humanity, so what? People have only been around for a few seconds on the clock of All Time. And that’s assuming that even the most conservative estimates of how old the universe is are even close to true. I mean, life has only even been around for a few minutes, unless it started up earlier on some other planet, in which case, maybe a few more minutes than we thought. As far as we know, though, only a few minutes. If we all died, what would it matter? It would just be one of nine known planets near one of millions of known stars in one of billions of galaxies in the hugest place ever. How meaningless would it be to the universe -- to God, the only being who really matters -- if we all died? It would be like Ted Turner dropping a penny. Not even that. It wouldn’t even register as a fart, cosmically. What I’m saying is, cosmically, no one gives a good goddamn about you or your homework, and it doesn’t pay to worry about it.

Monologue: Angry People Talking About God II

by Andrew M. Kasper
Originally written for Matt Salmela
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

LUCAS: Call it bigotry all you want, you little puss; I call it the truth. They really are money-hungry, deceptive, evil. It’s just a fact. Plain, simple fact. Don’t hate me for it. It’s just how they are; hate them. They’re the ones raising the interest on your loan. You’re paying them for your house and your car… Listen, just forget it. I can’t believe you’re pussing out like this. You don’t even have to do anything that bad. We’re not even going to hurt anyone. Break some windows. It’s like when you hit a foul ball through the neighbor’s window; you saying Mr. Winslow is worse than a Jew? You’ll smash his window? Fine, but if you tell anyone, you’re dead. And when you die and get to Heaven, God’s gonna say, “What’s the matter with you, you little puss?”

Monologue: Angry People Talking About God I

by Andrew M. Kasper
Originally written for Matt Salmela
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.

NILS: Where are you going to go? To look for God? If you see him, tell him I said, “Up yours.” Get back here. I can tell you something about God: he doesn’t love you the way I do. If he did, he would put a roof over you head; he would make love to you; he would at least show up every once in a while. If you want to leave me, fine: your loss. But if you want to leave me for God, I can tell you that you’re never even going to find where he lives because the asshole doesn’t exist. Figment, that’s it. People need the idea for comfort or an excuse to go to war or a reason to hate brown people. He’s not even real. I’m real. Stay here. You can stay here and put up with my ‘harsh reality,’ get some love and attention, have someone to care about, or you can go look for God and fail miserably. I know what I’d choose.

Free Monologues

Alternate Dimension Andy, I'd like to save you a few bucks; save you a few minutes of your time.

I'm cleaning off my old hard drive, and I've found a few of the old monologues I wrote. I'll start posting them here so that you and other starving actors can use 'em. Some are for women, so be sure to share them with your alternate dimension actor girlfriend. None of 'em are particularly great, in my opinion, but hey, they're free! What did you expect? Hopefully, these'll be useful to you and to people who don't have the time to run to the library or don't have the money to purchase monologue books or scripts.

Some notes about these monologues:

• Free monologues will be tagged with "free" and "monologue," plus a gender tag: "male," "female" or "gender-neutral." Should make it easy for you to find them.
• The opinions of the characters speaking the monologues do not necessarily reflect my own beliefs.
• If you have monologues that I've written that aren't posted here, I'd appreciate you send 'em my way so I can share 'em with the other starving actors.
• Any actors other than Alternate Dimension Andy who are in need of monologues can request them here. Just send me an email or post a comment in this thread.