Telia charging for an encrypted experience

There are few things that annoy me as much as outrageous fees and taxes. Road tolls on old narrow roads, additional "recreation fees" on top of the $250 a night you pay at that resort, and here's another one for you:

My cable provider Telia has the nerve to charge me 500 SEK per year in encryption fees! Yes, they are in fact charging me, the customer, for crippling their own service with encryption making it impossible for me to watch the cable channels on more than one TV at a time. Unless I buy a second decryption card, which will incur other fees, of course.

This is just as ridiculous as having Skatteverket (the Swedish equivalent to the IRS) sending me an invoice together with my tax return to cover the costs of processing it.

P.S. Yes, I know this is a common practice among TV providers, but that doesn't mean it's not outrageous.

Stocks and stuff

DN had an article this weekend on how to invest your money, in stocks or funds. These are only my two cents, but I'd stay far away from funds. My experiences with these two are the following:

Funds:
+ Buy shares for any amount of money, and forget.

- Problem is, you fund agent will also forget. To manage the fund, that is. No matter how "actively" a fund is supposed to be managed, in the real world they usually don't do much trading.

- You'll pay quite a lot, often 1-2% of your total share amount in fees. This will eat up quite a lot of the profit.

- Selling your fund shares is a hell. It often takes two business days, and during that time the rate might have dropped significantly, which could cause you to lose a lot of money. Quite simply, when you press that "sell"-button you have no idea at what rate your shares will be sold.

Stocks:
+ Quite a lot more fun than buying and forgetting those fund shares.

+ No fees except the broker's commission when you buy and sell.

+ You get your dividend usually every year, some times even several times a year.

+ You buy and sell at the price you want, and the transaction is made more or less instantly.

- There is a risk that a company in which you own stocks goes bankrupt, which is why it is important to spread your risks.


If you want to put your savings in a fund, consider the exchange traded XACT funds, Bull or Bear. There's no annual fee, and you trade it just the way you trade stocks.

Apart from that, forget about those funds. Create a nice and diverse portfolio of stocks instead, with a couple of investment companies with different strategies, some "safe" large cap stocks, and a smaller number of underdogs, just to make it a bit more interesting.

Recreation my ass

I don't know about you, but I find few things are as annoying as having to pay fees for every stupid thing you do or don't do. I find mandatory fees on top of something I've already purchased particularly fascinating - and stupid. Unfortunately the Americans have refined this fee-policy into an art form. Where else would you stay at a hotel and be charged a mandatory recreation fee of $15 a day upon check-out??? I mean, what the hell is a recreation fee anyway? A "thank you for letting me borrow a sundeck chair and a towel, and have access to the pool, obviously such a service couldn't be included in the $150 a night room rate"-fee? Why not have a room rate of $165, since this completely insane fee is mandatory anyway - recreation or not?

Add this to the ridiculous additional car hire fees and insurances (that are often not included in your booking price, and need to be paid at the counter when picking up the car), the annoying habit of never including sales tax on the price tags, and of course the fluctuating exchange rate of the dollar, and it all makes planning that US vacation a real pain in the ass.