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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Saturday Roundup

Misc

Original sequel logo, from the test footage pr...
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Congratulations to Claudia for winning the $100 Amazon gift card.

This week started with my wife getting sick and ended with her passing it on to me.   I hate being sick.

On a positive note, Tron is out this week, and is on IMAX 3D at a theater near me.   I get to share a piece of my childhood with my son this afternoon.

Best Posts

When a guy named Dragon says, “Hold my beer a second,” you know something badass is about to happen.

Michael Moore’s Cuban healthcare lies propaganda is too much even for Cuba.   Apparently, they are afraid the proles would revolt if they saw how good the ruling class has it in comparison to the 150-year-old rat-hole hospital the peasants are forced to use.  But hey, it’s free!

I could think of worse ways to get laws passed than Last Man Standing.   It would at least put a stop to frivolous crap that hurts everyone.

I had an eBay seller try to screw me once.   I had access to a number of skiptracing tools at the time.   When I sent him his phone number, his girlfriend’s phone number, his parents’ phone number, his place of employment, and all of those address, I got my refund the next day.

ChristianPF has a post on buying bulk herbs and spices.  Not all spices can be stored for long, even in the freezer.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I revisit the posts I wrote a year ago.

4 Ways to Flog Your Inner Impulse Shopper was my first bondage-themed post.  I still smile when I re-read it.

My post on cheap birthday parties is something I need to read every year.  The party this fall wasn’t nearly as cheap as it has been in recent years.

And finally, my Grinch post on saving money on Christmas.  My secret:  buy less for fewer people.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

First Steps – Ramsey Was Wrong was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

A Moment of Clarity was included in the Carnival of Money Stories.

Top 7 Reasons To Trade Forex Over Other Financial Instruments was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

13 Things to Know About Sweepstakes, Giveaways, Lotteries, and Contests

Finance

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know why, but it seems like this time of year breeds sweepstakes, drawings, and giveaways.   Maybe it’s to cash in on the people who are afraid to pay for the holidays, maybe it’s because, at the end of the year, people are realizing how much money they didn’t make this year, or maybe I’m only noticing now because I just ran a giveaway to celebrate my 1 year anniversary.   Whatever the reason, there are a lot of giveaways going on this month and, because a certain segment of the population sucks, there are a number of scam sweepstakes going on, too.

Knowing some basic facts about sweepstakes–legal and otherwise–can help you stay safe and avoid wasting your time and money.   Here are 13 things you should know:

  1. Foreign sweepstakes are always scams. You didn’t win the Spanish lottery.   I’m sorry, but it’s true.
  2. Sweepstakes winners are always chosen at random. If there’s something you can do to influence your chances, it’s not a sweepstakes.
  3. Contests involve some skill, whether it’s captioning a photo, answering a trivia question, or showing up in a bikini.   It is legal to charge a fee to enter a contest.
  4. Lotteries cost money and must be random. There are almost no cases where a lottery is legally run by a private enterprise.  The government has reserved this privilege for themselves.
  5. Since a prize, chosen at random for a consideration is the definition of a lottery, there is nothing you can do to influence the results of a legal sweepstakes, aside from not entering.   Buying a product will not help.
  6. Odds suck. You are not likely to win, unless you enter a giveaway at a small-ish blog.  Sweepstakes and lotteries are required to disclose the odds of winning, generally, 1 in a gazillion.
  7. Businesses(and blogs!) hold giveaways or sweepstakes to draw attention to themselves.  It’s marketing and advertising, every time.   Companies do not give out thousands of dollars in prizes because they like you.
  8. I give our prizes because I like you.  And I want the attention.  It’s marketing, advertising, and gratitude.
  9. If you have to pay to get a random chance to win something, it’s a lottery. If it’s not run by the government, it’s almost definitely an illegal lottery.  Sweepstakes are free.
  10. Sometimes the entry solicitations look official. They are not. The companies do that to get more people to open their envelopes.  It is illegal to misrepresent themselves as a government agency.
  11. Always read the fine print.  There are a lot of things that can be included in the fine print to make it less attractive, like the right to sell your contact information, or your soul.  Try getting that back after a long weekend.
  12. If you don’t want to receive sweepstakes garbage in the mail, write to the company soliciting you.   The Federal Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act requires them to remove you from their mailing list within 60 days.
  13. If you want to get rid of all of the junk mail, write to the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, Post Office Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512 and they will remove you from the lists of their members for 5 years.

It is possible to make money with sweepstakes, but the odds are low. Personally, I think it’s a waste of time.  Do you invest in the sweepstakes hobby?

Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings

Finance

Today’s post is written by Mike Collins of http://savingmoneytoday.net as part of the Yakezie Blog Swap in which bloggers were asked to share their best day to day money saving tip.

Do you buy lunch at work every day?  Have you ever actually sat down and added up how much money you’re spending?

I did once
and I almost fell out of my chair when I saw how much I was spending!

Back in the day I used to buy lunch at the office almost every single day.  It certainly didn’t seem like I was spending much.  A chef salad here, a cheese steak and fries there.   But every day I was spending about 7 dollars and change.  That’s $35 a week, which adds up to a whopping $1820 over the course of a year!

I started thinking about all the things I could do with that extra $1820, like paying off some of our debt, increasing my 401k contributions(ed: but staying with your 401k contribution limits, of course!), picking out a new big-screen tv, or enjoying an extended family vacation at Walley World.

I immediately starting bringing my lunch to work 4 days a week (I do treat myself once a week) and I’ve been saving money ever since.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  It costs money to bring lunch from home too right?

Yes, of course it does
but nowhere near as much as eating out every day.  Let’s do some basic math to prove the point.  Say you swing by the grocery store to buy some ham and cheese so you can make sandwiches for the week.  You pick up a half pound of ham for $3 and a half pound of cheese for $2.  A loaf of bread on sale runs you another $2.  That means you just spent $7 for a week’s worth of lunches.  Even if you only bring lunch 4 days a week you’ve still saved yourself $21.  That’s over $1000 a year!

And here’s a tip to save even more:  If you have extra food from dinner, just bring the leftovers for lunch the next day.  We always try to make just a little bit extra so I can have free lunch the next day.

So the next time you’re sitting around complaining that you don’t have enough money for so and so, think about how much money you are spending every day on lunch, or coffee, or cigarettes, etc.  You might just find that you have plenty of money after all if you just shift your priorities a bit.

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Money Problems – Day 3: What’s Coming In?

Finance

Husquarna automower, taken by me 2007-06-02
Image via Wikipedia

Today, I continuing the  series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days.  That’s not my schedule.  Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us.   Instead, it will run roughly once a week.  To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

This is day 3 and today, you are going to take a look at your income.

We are only interested your take-home pay, because that is what you have to base a budget on.  If you base your budget on your gross pay, you’re going to be in trouble when you try to spend the roughly 35% of your check that gets taken for taxes and benefits.

Income is a pretty straight-forward topic.  It is—simply—how much money you make in a month.  If you are like most people, the easiest way to tell how much money you make is to look at your last paycheck.  Then, multiply it by the number of pay periods in a year and divide the total by 12.

Here’s the formula:  Cash x Yearly Pay Periods / 12.  Yay, math!

If you get paid every 2 weeks, multiply your take-home pay by 26, then divide by 12 to figure your monthly pay.   For example, if you make $1000 every two weeks, your annual take-home pay is $26,000.  Divide that by 12 to get your monthly pay of $2166.66.  If you get paid semi-monthly, you’ll take that same $1000 x 24 / 12, for a total of $2000 per month.

Now you know how much you make each month.  Woo!

Is it enough?  Who knows?  We’ll get into that later.  In the meantime, spend some time thinking about ways you can make more money.  Do you have a talent or a hobby that you can turn into cash?

  • If you’re a craftsy type, make stuff and sell it on eBay or Etsy.
  • If you’re a writer, start a blog, sell articles on oDesk, or start writing for paid article directories.  Squidoo has a revenue sharing plan for your articles.
  • Facebook maven?  Start making Pages for companies.  They will pay for it.
  • Are you mechanically inclined?  Watch your local free market sites for lawn mowers and snowblowers that don’t run.  You can fix them up and sell them.
  • If you’re a clean freak, start a home-cleaning service on evenings and weekends.

There are always ways to make some extra money, if you are willing.  Sit down with a friend or loved one and brainstorm what you can do.  Write down anything you can do, you enjoy, or you are good at.  Remember, there are no stupid ideas when you are brainstorming.  The bad ideas will get filtered out later.

How could you make some (more) side cash?

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Getting Out of Debt: The Prime Rule

Finance

The American Dream has been perverted.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been cruelly warped to mean

Wipe our Debt
Wipe our Debt (Photo credit: Images_of_Money)

“Toys, free stuff provided at the expense of others, and the ability to buy and do anything I want without regard for the consequences.”  To fund this horrible new dream, the people who can’t convince a government program to finance it for them often turn to credit.  Credit is the art of putting your future into hock for something that you probably don’t need or want and that won’t work by the time you are finished making payments.

Ick. I’ve chosen not to live my life that way.  Every day, more people are waking from the consumerism fog and deciding to reel their lifestyles back in and take control of their lives.  They take a look at the world around them,  compare it to their check register, and realize that it’s just not sustainable.  You can’t survive on credit forever.  Eventually, you will realize that there isn’t enough money to continue to buy things today on tomorrow’s paycheck.

What’s the first thing you should do when you decide that a “normal” life—a life in debt—isn’t the way you are going to live your life?

Well, when you find yourself standing in a grave, stop digging.   You can’t dig yourself out of a hole and you can’t borrow your way out of debt.   If you want to get out of debt, you need to stop using more debt.  Period.

It may seem impossible, and the people around you may try to convince you that you are crazy.  It is not impossible, just time-consuming.  Short of finding an insane amount of money hiding under your front step or a winning lottery ticket blowing across the sidewalk, there are no shortcuts to getting out of debt.  It’s just a matter of making the payments and not using more credit.

As far as the haters, screw ‘em.   They are brainwashed into thinking their unsustainable and insane lifestyle is not only normal, but necessary.  You don’t get life advice in a padded room, and you don’t plan your finances with a debt-addict.

Getting out of debt is a simple process, but that doesn’t make it easy.  It only has two real steps: stop using debt, and keep making the payments.

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New Debt

Finance

music therapy
Image by emanuela franchini via Flickr

For the first time in 2 years(almost to the day), I am acquiring new debt that I can’t afford to pay off immediately.  On a credit card.

Last Thursday, my son entered vision therapy.  He has what is commonly known as a “lazy eye”, but is more properly called a “wandering eye”.  His eyes don’t always lock on to whatever he is looking at.  Instead, one of his eyes will (occasionally, but not always) drift to the side and shut off.  His brain doesn’t interpret the signals from that eye.

We had two sessions of tests to diagnose the specific problems: $350.

We will have 28 weekly sessions of therapy @ $140 per session:  $3920

There is an equipment fee: $85

That’s a total of $4355 over the next 7 months.

Insurance covers some of it, but the therapist is out-of-network, so it’s “pay first, get reimbursed later from the insurance company”.  If we pay up front, we get 1 session free, bringing the price to $4215, minus insurance.

I have a health savings account that I have been trying to max out to cover this, to make my payments all pre-tax.  I haven’t been able to get enough in there, yet.  In fact, since I don’t have my kids on my insurance, my maximum HSA contribution is $3050.

Since finding out that vision therapy was going to be necessary, I have managed to save $1000 in cash, and about $1500 in my HSA.   That’s $2500 of a $4215 bill, leaving $1715 that I still need to be able to cover.

Here is my plan:

We’re charging the entire $4215 at 11.9% interest on a card with a 2% travel rewards program.  This will give me $84.30 worth of travel rewards good for reimbursing any travel expenses.

I will immediately pay off $1000 from cash savings.

I will also immediately file for an insurance reimbursement, which will cover 80% – $500, or $2972 minus a bit.   Our insurance got a waiver on the pseudo-wonderful healthcare fraud act on the grounds that the plan sucks so bad that it would cost too much to comply with the law.  No joke.  I’m expecting about a $2500 reimbursement, and I have no idea how long that takes.

In 6 weeks, when I have maxed out my HSA contributions for the year, I will file for an HSA reimbursement for about $2500, leaving about $500 to cover some medical costs for the rest of the year.   Vision therapy doesn’t count against my deductible, since my kids are on my wife’s insurance plan.

Starting in June, my debt snowball will no longer be going to max out my HSA and will instead go straight to this card, to finish paying it off as quickly as possible.   That’s $750 per month.

Any money from any side work will also go towards this bill, but I don’t budget for that, because it isn’t reliable money.

 

The projected results:

$3215 on the credit card for 6 weeks @ 11.9% = $50 in interest payments.

After the HSA reimbursement, there will be $715 left to pay, which will be paid off in June for another $10 in interest.

When we get the insurance reimbursement, we’ll replenish the medical bill account, to start getting ready for the kid’s braces next year.  We’ll drop $1500 into that account and use the remaining $1000 as a debt snowball payment.

We’ll end up paying $60 in interest to save $140 in therapy costs, so it’s good math, but I hate the idea of racking up another credit card bill.   I could drop the interest costs a bit by raiding my emergency fund, but that still wouldn’t cover it all, and it would leave me with very little left for an actual emergency.  I could raid the emergency fund for half of its value($700), and reduce the initial interest paid to $25 and the total interest paid to about $40, then use the $1000 leftover from the insurance reimbursement to replace my emergency fund.

 

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