Web site gives you chance to reveal stimulus-check plans

Until this week, it's been purely speculation where 130 million Americans will plunk down their not-so-hard-earned stimulus checks.

Pay down bills? New hi-def TV? Vegas vacation? Feed the gas pump?

Economists, government officials and others have been doing plenty of head-scratching in anticipation of just how – or whether – people will spend those $600 or $1,200 checks.

Now there's a place to tell the world exactly where you're spending the windfall.

It's at www.howispentmystimulus.com.

Launched this week, the site is the brainchild of Rudy Adler, a 26-year-old freelance ad copywriter in Brooklyn. In less than 24 hours, as of Tuesday night, the site had toted up 50,000 page views, he said.

"As human beings, we just love stories," said Adler, who spent $1,000 to launch the site. "This allows people to tell their stories and ends the speculation about where (their checks) are going to be spent."

Adler's site is a simple, straightforward concept: Post for the world to see exactly what you're buying with your stimulus money. And provide a photo.

What are Americans saying?

Niki and Dustin in St. Paul, Minn., said their stimulus check will pay the minister and a DJ for their June wedding. They added a postscript to their photo: "Thanks George (Bush)! Can we get another $600 so we can buy a gallon of gas?"

Some get overtly political. Adrienne Pass, a Michigan 23-year-old, posed at the rear bumper of her Ford Focus, which she dubbed a "rolling Paul-itical billboard." She's using her stimulus check to help pay off the loan on her car, which is speckled with "Ron Paul for President" stickers.

Besides the "real" stories, Adler has only one other requirement: a photo of your purchase that includes yourself. Otherwise, he says, the site is "just a photographic collection of sterile consumer products."

The postings so far are anything but sterile. Most are funny, some poignant. Some are both.

Like the vet bill for PeeWee, the 8-month-old pet chihuahua that broke his tiny paw.

More than 130 entries have been posted since the site launched on Monday.

Adler's got them listed by 25 categories, including "Weird." What's included in that one: a Harry Potter costume, $50 worth of lottery tickets, donation to a legal defense fund, and a TV-infomercial-inspired "Pancake Puffs" skillet.

Here's a sliver of what folks say they're spending their rebate checks on:

• Paying the rent.

• New backyard doors from Home Depot.

• An engagement ring.

• A truckload of garden manure.

• A fistful of lottery tickets.

• An elderly couple posing with their pricey prescription pill bottle.

What would inspire people to share tales with strangers about … a government check?

Bonding over "a shared cultural event" like this isn't surprising, said Coye Cheshire, a social scientist in the University of California, Berkeley, School of Information. "A lot of Americans are getting a check. People feel they're part of something that's a shared experience, even if it's fleeting."

Adler says he's had to delete prankster postings – like the one allegedly sent by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The attached photo showed Ashley Dupre, the high-priced call girl who cost him his job.

Another was purportedly submitted by Hillary Clinton, claiming her stimulus check was going into her presidential campaign account.

Adler, who studied entrepreneurship (which he loved) and finance (which he didn't) at the University of Arizona, launched the site with help from a computer programming friend. It has no ads, and he said it's not a money-making enterprise.

He also doesn't expect his Web site to have a very long shelf life.

"It'll live for a brief time," until the checks stop arriving sometime this summer and people stop posting their stories. And then, Adler said, "it'll become a time capsule: 'What I Did With My Economic Stimulus Check, 2008.' "

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Claudia Buck at (916) 321-1968