Carnival Roundups: The Weaponized Syphilis Edition

September 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

Last weekend, I was in Denver for the Financial Blogger Conference. Last week, I had a sore throat that got worse each day until my tonsils started touching on Friday. I could barely talk, so I went to the doctor, then to bed.

It apparently wasn’t strep throat, but beyond that, it could be anything from motaba to weaponized syphilis*.

This is one of those occasions when I’m happy to be living in the future, where a quick trip to the clinic can knock out what would have been hopeless and fatal and few hundred years ago. Antibiotics and a day spent in bed watching super hero movies made me better. That beats bloodletting any day.

Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:

Yakezie Carnival: FINCON Edition hosted by Finance Product Reviews

Carnival of Money Pros hosted by My University Money

Carnival of Retirement #36 hosted by Making Sense of Cents

Carnival of Personal Finance #377 hosted by Money Life and More

Yakezie Carnival: Labor Day Edition hosted by Stock Trend Investing

Yakezie Carnival: The Best of Summer Edition hosted by On Target Coach

Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Simple Finance Blog

Carnival of Retirement #34 hosted by My Family Finances

Lifestyle Carnival #17 hosted by The Free Financial Advisor

Yakezie Carnival: Dog Days of Summer Edition hosted by Frugal Portland

Carnival of Money Pros: Back to School Edition hosted by See Debt Run

Nerdy Finance #7 hosted by Nerd Wallet

Yakezie Carnival hosted by The College Investor

Yakezie Carnival – Rescue Edition hosted by See Debt Run

Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #45 hosted by My University Money

Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Aaron Hung

Carnival of Retirement #32 hosted by Young Family Finance

Thanks for including my posts.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

* Weaponized Syphilis

This involves giving each of the syphilis spirochetes an M16 and a Manifest Destiny indoctrination before releasing them into the wild. The transport mechanism (the “insertion method”) remains as fun as ever.

Have a great weekend!

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Life, Misc Tagged With: , ,
1 comment

A Problem With Life Insurance

August 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s pretty common for someone to buy a life insurance policy and make a minor child or grandchild the beneficiary.

English: $10,000 life insurance policy for Pre...

English: $10,000 life insurance policy for President James A. Garfield, the twentieth President of the United States. Discovered in a family scrap album dating from the late 1800′s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bad idea.

The reasoning is usually something along the lines of making sure the money goes with the kid, no matter where he ends up, but that money is mostly worthless until the kids grows up. With the UGMA/UTMA (Universal Gift/Transfer to Minors Act) laws, depending on your state, it can be nearly impossible to access that money or use it for the support of the child.

  1. For example, in Minnesota, I would have to go through the following steps:
  2. Complete a Petition for Appointment of Guardian and Conservator with a $322 filing fee and request it be reviewed without a hearing.
  3. Notify any interested parties.
  4. Consent to and pay for a background study.
  5. Establish a custodial account at the bank and maintain separate accounting for the money.

That’s just to access the money. As a conservator, I’d be able to use the money for “support, maintenance, and education”, but that does not include investing in a 529 college fund. I could theoretically invest in ultra-conservative growth funds, but if the investments shrink, I could be on the hook for the difference. I’d be a “conservator”, charged with conserving the asset.

After all of that, when the kid turns 18 (or 21 depending on the setup), the money is his to do with as he pleases.

Have you ever met an 18 year old who made really good decisions about money? I had a friend who had a settlement trust pay her a lump sum at 18, 21, and 25. Each time, she bought a new car and partied with her friends for a month before the money was gone. That was nearly $100,000 down the drain.

It’s a much better idea to visit an attorney and set up a trust. Make the trust the beneficiary of your life insurance policies. Then, define who will be the trustee under what circumstances. That way, you can make sure your kids and grandkids can actually be supported by your money.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Finance Tagged With: , , , ,
No comments yet

Changing Circumstances

August 3, 2012 By 4 Comments

When I started this blog in 2009, I was broke and in debt to my eyeballs. It began as a way to publicly hold myself accountable and vent my need to talk about my money problems.

Those needs are changing for me because my circumstances are changing.

When my mother-in-law died, she left us a big physical mess in her house, but the financial picture is coming out nicely. Even though the details and paperwork have been horribly scattered and difficult to piece together, the end result is significant.

I have 2 side businesses that are not generating enough money to quit my day job, but should be by this time next year.

Right now, I have just under $17,000 in credit card debt. By Monday, it will be $3500. By December, it will be gone.

We’ll be dropping $15-20,000 into modernizing the house we’ve inherited, but then we should be able to rent it out for a net profit of $800 per month.

We paid off the inherited car last night. We haven’t decided if we’ll keep it or sell it.

All told-by the end of the year-we’ll have no debt except our primary mortgage and the additional income stream of a rental property. By the end of next year, our mortgage may be gone.

That’s a significantly different place than the one I started in 3 years ago.

What’s it mean for Live Real, Now?

It’s hard to talk about paying off debt every day when you don’t have debt. I imagine I will post more about making money and increasing the top line rather than shrinking debt and reducing the bottom line.

What’s next? I’m not sure, but I do know that I won’t be going away. You’re stuck with me. What would you like to see?

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Finance, Life Tagged With: , ,
4 comments

Handling a Windfall

July 27, 2012 By 8 Comments

What would you do if you were handed $10,000 tomorrow? $20,000?

The easy default answer-if you spend time in the personal finance world-is to pay off debt and save the rest.

But is that the right answer?

When my mother-in-law died, we inherited a little bit of money, a house that hasn’t been updated since the 60s, and a new-ish car that still has an active loan.

We also have about $16,000 in credit card debt and a small mortgage.

The Dave Ramsey answer would be to pay off the card at all costs and worry about the inherited house later, but that seems off. If we modernize the house and fix the things that are broken, we have a mortgage-free rental property. Our local rental market is strong; we should be able to clear $800 per month after expenses.

Is the right answer to pay off our card and scrape to get the house ready or should we fix up the house and use that new income to pay off the card?

My wife has also inherited an IRA that-due to its status as a Beneficiary IRA and the fact that there have been disbursements-has to be drained within 5 years. It’s not huge. After taxes, it’s about the size of the car loan. Should we make the $200/month payments, or cash out the temporary IRA and make the car loan go away immediately? Should we cash out the IRA and open one for my wife?

Although the cause was sad, these are good problems to have. If we manage this right, we’ll be more financially stable than we would have been for decades, otherwise.

I want your opinion, please.

2 questions:

1. House or credit card?

2. What would you do with a $10,000 IRA that has to be cashed out over the next 5 years?

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Finance Tagged With: , , , , ,
8 comments
«Previous Page
Next Page»