- RT @ScottATaylor: Get a Daily Summary of Your Friends’ Twitter Activity [FREE INVITES] http://bit.ly/4v9o7b #
- Woo! Class is over and the girls are making me cookies. Life is good. #
- RT @susantiner: RT @LenPenzo Tip of the Day: Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. #
- RT @ScottATaylor: Some of the United States’ most surprising statistics http://ff.im/-cPzMD #
- RT @glassyeyes: 39DollarGlasses extends/EXPANDS disc. to $20/pair for the REST OF THE YEAR! http://is.gd/5lvmLThis is big news! Please RT! #
- @LenPenzo @SusanTiner I couldn’t help it. That kicked over the giggle box. in reply to LenPenzo #
- RT @copyblogger: You’ll never get there, because “there” keeps moving. Appreciate where you’re at, right now. #
- Why am I expected to answer the phone, strictly because it’s ringing? #
- RT: @WellHeeledBlog: Carnival of Personal Finance #235: Cinderella Edition http://bit.ly/7p4GNe #
- 10 Things to do on a Cheap Vacation. https://liverealnow.net/aOEW #
- RT this for chance to win $250 @WiseBread http://bit.ly/4t0sDu #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-19
How to Cut Costs on Legal Fees
Occasionally, life goes truly pear-shaped and you’re forced to enter the legal system.
Even if you’re not embroiled in a tawdry, tabloid-fodder divorce, there are still legal issues that everyone needs to address, without exception.
The problem? Or rather, one of many, if you’re having legal problems?
Lawyers are expensive.
Before I go any further:
- If you are having criminal court issues, get a lawyer. Get the best possible lawyer. Really. The cost does not compare to a lifetime in jail, or even 10 years. If you’re facing jail, get the best dang attorney you can find.
- I am not only not an attorney, but I’ve never even played one on TV. I have driven past a law school a couple of times, but never stopped in. I do know several attorney, carry the business cards of a couple and have a couple on my speed dial, just in case. If any of them thought I was giving legal advice, I’d be in trouble. To reiterate: I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice.
- Don’t do a prenuptual agreement at home. A prenup will almost always be found unenforceable if both parties don’t have an attorney.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Lawyers are expensive, but there are ways to mitigate that.
There a couple of things you can handle yourself.
Small claims court, also known as conciliation court. Typical cases in conciliation court include cases involving sums under $7500(varies by state) that involve unpaid debts or wages, claims by tenants to get a security deposit, claims by landlords for property damage, or claims about possession or ownership of property. Fees and procedures vary by state, but generally cost less than $100 to file. The procedures for your state can be found by googling “small claims court” and the name of your state.
Small worker’s compensation cases can be handled yourself, if they don’t involve a demotion or termination related to the injury.
Apartment and car leases are usually simple and straightforward. Read them carefully, but you probably won’t need a lawyer.
You can probably handle your own estate planning and will writing with some decent software. I love Quicken Willmaker. It walked me through a detailed will that takes care of my kids, and gave me advice on financing their futures in the horrible event that I am tragically killed before my wonderousness can fully permeate the world. It also contains forms for promissory notes, bills of sale, health care directives and more. If you have extensive property, I’d still seek an attorney’s advice, but I’d bring the Willmaker will with me to save some time and money.
Purchase agreements. A few years ago, I sold a truck to a friend and accepted payments. I made a promissory note and payment schedule. When he quit paying or calling me, that paperwork was enough to get the state to accept the repossession when I took the truck back.
A simple no-fault divorce is actually pretty painless, on the scale of divorce pain. Again, the procedures vary heavily by state.
Other resources for finding legal information free or cheap include www.legalzoom.com and www.nolo.com.
Have you had to do any of your own legal work? How did it work out?
3 Ways to Keep Your Finances Organized
I have 16 personal savings accounts, 3 personal checking accounts, 2 business checking accounts, and 2 business savings accounts. That’s 23 traditional bank accounts, spread across 3 banks. Just talking about that gives my wife a headache.
Every account has a reason. Three of the savings accounts exist just to make the matching checking accounts free. One of the checking accounts handles all of my regular spending that isn’t put on my rewards card. 14 of the savings accounts are CapitalOne 360 accounts that have specific goals attached. A couple of the accounts were opened to boost the sales numbers for a friend who is a banker. Really, it’s almost too much to keep track of. One credit card, 5 checking accounts, 18 savings account, all on 4 websites.
Sometimes, when you extend your bank accounts this far, it gets easy to let it all slip away and lose track of where your money is going. How do I keep track of it all?
1. Simplify
Whoa, you say? Simplify? I don’t simplify the number of accounts I have, I simplify the tracking, or specifically, the need to track.
Twice a month, I have an automated transfer that moves a chunk of money from my main checking account to C1360. I have a series of transfers set up there that move that money around to each of my savings goals. I move $100 to the vacation account, $75 to the braces account, and $10 to the college fund, among all of the other transfers. Doing that eliminates any need to keep track of the transfers, since it is all automated.
Using the same rules, I make every possible payment happen automatically, so I don’t have to worry about paying the gas bill or sending a check to the insurance company.
Simple.
2. Complicate
As you saw in the opening sentence of this post, I also complicate the hell out of my accounts. On the surface, it would seem like that would make it harder to keep track, but in reality, the opposite is true. I have 14 savings accounts at C1360, each for a specific savings goal, like paying my property taxes or going to the to Financial Blogger Conference in October. I can log in to my account and tell at a glance exactly how much money I have for each of my goals. In the account nickname, I include how much each goal is for, so I can easily see if I am on track.
3. Quicken
Everything I do gets set up in Quicken. This makes it easy to track how much actual money I have available. Since I’ve moved my daily expenses to a credit card, I only have about a dozen entries to worry about when I balance my checkbook at the end of the month. At that time, any excess funds get dropped into my debt snowball.
This may all leave me with a needlessly complicated system, but it’s a system that grew slowly to meet my needs and it is working well for me. I spend about 2 hours a month tracking my finances, and can–at any time–tell at a glance exactly how my finances look.
How do you keep your finance organized? Have you tried any unique savings strategies?
Slow Carb Diet: How to Avoid Going Bat-**** Crazy
I received an email recently, asking “what kinds of things are you eating so that you don’t go bat-**** crazy?”
First, some background.
On January 2, 2011, I started Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb Diet and, as of 2/18/2011, I have lost 30 pounds. The first 11 or so were water weight, but I’ve still been losing 4-5 pounds per week. This diet has a few—but only a few—rules.
- Eat nothing white. That means no sugar(including fructose), no flour, no potatoes, no rice(even brown), and no milk(or any dairy). Beer is white.
- Breakfast is high-protein.
- Cheat day once a week. On cheat day, there are no rules after breakfast.
- Meals should consist of 40% protein, 30% vegetables and 30% legumes(beans or lentils).
- If you get hungry between meals, you didn’t eat enough at the last meal.
That’s it. The rules are simple and don’t require that I refer back to the book for anything.
Here is a typical day for me on this diet:
For breakfast most mornings, I have 3 eggs and 2-3 sausage links. I bought brown-and-serve sausages so this takes 10 minutes to cook in the morning.
On the way to work, I have a diet soda if we have any in the house. If not, I skip it. I like pop, but I’ve broken my caffeine addiction completely.
For lunch, I will either have leftovers from the night before or some stir-fry with beans and whatever protein is convenient. I’ve been keeping pre-cooked brats(wurst, not kid) or polish sausages as a convenience food.
Several times a week, I make some stir-fry. I use a basic, flexible recipe.
- Chop whatever vegetables are on hand. We usually have onions, broccoli, a variety of peppers, and mushrooms. If I have celery, asparagus, or almost any other vegetable. Lettuce works poorly in a stir-fry.
- Put some oil in a hot pan. I prefer sesame oil, but I’m not picky. I’ll use whatever oil we have on hand.
- Cook the vegetables, stirring constantly. Cook them in the order of how long they take to cook. Onions are usually first. Celery tends to be last.. While they are cooking, I sometimes sprinkle ginger powder over the top.
- If you are getting sick of eating beans, toss them into the stir-fry, cooked. They mash and disintegrate, giving you the benefit and some flavor, without the mouth-feel.
- When the vegetables are cooked to your satisfaction, put them in a bowl. They will keep in the refrigerator for a few days.
I tend to cook the meat separately, as that lets me vary the meal more. I’ll make some chicken or steak ready to toss in the stir-fry before I re-heat it.
I vary the seasonings, vegetables, and oil to get different flavors I rarely make the same stir-fry twice. The real trick to keeping the food satisfying is to experiment with seasonings. They make a huge difference between bland and yummy. Seasonings can make or break a meal all by themselves.
If I don’t have any stir-fry or leftovers, I’ll bring some salad and a polish sausage. Most salad dressing is sugar-based, so I either go light on the dressing, or use balsamic vinegar. I try to avoid doing this more than once every couple of weeks. It’s boring and doesn’t taste that great. It’s okay, but that’s all.
I try to always have cooked beans or lentils in the refrigerator. They provide a significant part of my calorie intake. Beans are kind of a necessity. Vegetables taste better, but are a low-calorie, bulky food. You can’t stay full all day on nothing but lettuce. Beans get old. I’ll usually toss a few spoonfuls of salsa to change the taste. When I cook lentils, sometimes, I’ll cook it in beef broth with fried onions and garlic to make a tasty change.
For dinner, I have whatever vegetables we are cooking for the kids, a scoop of beans, and a protein that usually isn’t cooked for the family.
The protein source varies based on whatever was on sale when we went grocery shopping. It can be steak, chicken, or anything else. This week, we bought 16 chicken drumsticks. We spread them out on a cookie sheet and seasoned them 3 different ways, just for variety. Some got garlic salt, some got Italian seasoning, and some got a Greek rub. After an hour in a 350 degree oven, we had a delicious meal.
If I feel a need for a snack, or a craving for sweets, I just take a spoonful of peanut butter. It helps.
Exercise
I’m not doing any major form of exercise. I wanted to test the diet on its own merits, first. What I am doing is some timed exercises shortly before and 90 minutes after I eat, when I remember. The exercises are resistance-based and 60-90 seconds in duration. The purpose is to crank up my metabolism before the food gets introduced into my body, and then keep it up and running for a while afterward.
I use a mid-level elastic rehab strap, doubled-over twice. I do 75 chest extensions about 5 minutes before I eat. Most days, I forget to do them again 90 minutes later. There are any number of other exercises that would work, including air squats or push-ups.
Supplements
I am not your doctor. In fact, I am not a doctor in any capacity. Similarly, I am not a nutritionist, a dietitian, or even a board-certified snake-oil salesman. I have no qualifications here, in any way, shape or form. Follow this at your own risk.
I take 5 supplements.
Policosanal. This is an herbal supplement that is supposed to help with cholesterol, which is a helpful thing to do when you are on a low-carb, high-protein diet. More importantly, a side effect is weight loss. Hurray for helpful side effects!
Alpha-lipoic Acid(ALA). This is an antioxidant that helps your body produce vitamins C and E. It is also supposed to inhibit triglyceride and fat storage. To quote from the book, “ALA helps you store the carbohydrates you ea in your liver as opposed to in fat.”
Decaffeinated Green Tea Extract. This inhibits your body’s ability to store carbs as fat and it accelerates fat cell death. The second bit means it should help prevent the rebounding so many dieters experience.
Garlic Extract. This assists with cholesterol management and the inhibition of fat regain.
B Complex. I take a B complex vitamin with vitamin C. The B vitamins help balance out some of the things the rest of the supplement regimen does to cellular metabolism while giving your overall metabolism a boost.
I take the whole mess in the morning and again before bed. Shortly before lunch and dinner, I take the ALA, green tea extract and garlic extract.
Ice
As a pure body-hack, I ice my upper back every night. I have an ice-pack sheet that I place on my upper back for 30-45 minutes each night before bed. This lowers my core body temperature, forcing my body to work harder to maintain 98.6 degrees. That burns calories. An additional benefit: getting cold makes you tired, which helps with my chronic insomnia.
This combination of factors has resulted in my losing an average of .7 pounds per day, without meaningful exercise. It’s a violation of a number traditional dieting principles, but it’s working. Is everything I’m doing necessary? Useful? Possibly not. Over the next few months, I’m going to be experimenting with dropping individual pieces of the plan, to see if my rate of loss drops for any of it.
For now, it’s working, and doing so at a rate I like. Dieting usually sucks, because the results are so slow. This is much more satisfying.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-24
- Watching Gamers:Dorkness Rising #
- Charisma? Weee! #
- Tweeting a dork movie? I'm a bit of a geek. #
- We just met and the first thing you do, after boinking a stranger in the presence of the king, is to murder a peasant? #
- Every movie needs a PvN interlude. #
- Everything's better with pirates. #
- Waffles? Recognize. #
- The Spatula of Purity shall scramble the eggs of your malfeasance. #
- Checkout clerks licking their fingers to separate bags or count change is gross. #
- Watching Sparkles the Vampire, Part 2: Bella's Moodswing. #twilight #
- @penfed was a waste of money. $20 down the drain to join, wouldn't give a worthwhile limit, so I can't transfer a balance. #
- @JAlanGrey It's pretty lame. The first one was ok. This one didn't improve on the original. in reply to JAlanGrey #
- RT @tferriss: Are you taking snake oil? Beautiful data visualization of scientific evidence for popular supplements: http://ping.fm/pqaDi #
- Don't need more shelves, more storage, more organization. Just need less stuff. #
- @BeatingBroke is hosting the Festival of Frugality #226 http://su.pr/80Osvn #
- RT @tferriss: Cool. RT @cjbruce link directly to a time in a YouTube video by adding #t 2m50s to end of the URL (change the time). #
- RT @tferriss: From learning shorthand to fast mental math – The Mentat Wiki: http://ping.fm/fFbhJ #
- RT @wisebread: How rich are you? Check out this list (It may shock you!!!) http://www.globalrichlist.com/ #
- RT @tferriss: RT @aysegul_c free alternative to RosettS: livemocha.com for classes, forvo.com for pronunc., lang8.com for writing correction #
- Childish isn't an insult. http://su.pr/ABUziY #
- Canceled the Dish tonight. #
Net Worth Update
It’ s been 8 months since I’ve done a net worth update. That’s not 8 months since I’ve shared, it’s been 8 months since I’ve bothered to check for myself. Let’s see how I’ve done.
This is where I was sitting in January:
Assets
- House: $255,400. Estimated market value according to the county tax assessor.
- Cars: $23,445. Kelly Blue Book suggested retail value for both of our vehicles and my motorcycle.
- Checking accounts: $2,974. I have accounts spread across three banks.
- Savings accounts: $4,779. I have savings accounts spread across a few banks. This does not include my kids’ accounts, even though they are in my name. This includes every savings goal I have at the moment.
- CDs: $1,095. I consider this a part of my emergency fund.
- IRAs: $11,172
- Total: $298,865
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $33,978
- Car loan: $1,226. This will be paid off this month.
- Credit card: $23,524. This is the next target of my debt snowball.
- Total: $58,728
Overall: $240,137
Here is my current status:
Assets
- House: $252,900 (-2500 ) Estimated market value according to the county tax assessor. If I lost $2500 in value this year, why are my property taxes up?
- Cars: $19,740 (-3705) Kelly Blue Book suggested retail value for both of our vehicles and my motorcycle.
- Checking accounts: $1,342 (-1632) I have accounts spread across three banks. I don’t keep much operating cash here, so this fluctuates based on how far away my next paycheck is.
- Savings accounts: $5,481 (+1156) I have savings accounts spread across a few banks. This does not include my kids’ accounts, even though they are in my name. This includes every savings goal I have at the moment. When I hit some of the goals, I will stop saving for them and redirect the money elsewhere.
- CDs: $1,101 (+6) I consider this a part of my emergency fund.
- IRAs: $10,838 (-334) I lost $1500 recently. I wonder how that happened? Also, my company stopped the IRA program and I have procrastinated the heck out of setting one up independently. Bad, Jason.
- Total: $291,402 (-7463)
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $31,118 (-2860)
- Car loan: $0. (-1226) Woo!
- Credit card: $20,967 (-2557) This is the current target of my debt snowball. It hasn’t gone down as much as I would have liked, due to $4000 in vision therapy bills.
- Total: $52,085 (-6643)
Overall: $239,317 (-820)
My big hits were obviously my house–whose value is subject to bureaucratic whimsy–and my rapidly depreciating cars. $4000 to a vision therapist didn’t help, either.
My debt goal is to have that credit card paid off by next August. $21k in a year on top of my mortgage isn’t crazy, is it? Since 4/15/2009, I’ve paid down $37,947.06. That is not the total of payments made, but the difference in total balances over that last 28 months. That means I’m reducing my total debt by an average of $1355 every month.
My savings goal is to boost that by at least $2500 over the next few months.
My immediate goal is to get an IRA rolling. I’m kicking myself right now for ignoring it for as long as I have.