Am I the only one who just noticed that it’s Wednesday? The holiday week with the free day is completely screwing me up.
Just to make this a relevant post:
Spend less!
Save more!
Invest!
Wee!
Delayed Gratification, Take II
How much would you pay for a kiss from the world’s sexiest celebrity?
That was the focus of a recent study that I can’t find today. There is no celebrity waiting in the wings to deliver the drool, and the study doesn’t name which celebrity it is. That’s an exercise for the reader.
This was a study into how we value nice things.
The fascinating part of the study is that people would be willing to pay more to get the kiss in 3 days than they would to get the tongue slipped immediately.
Anticipation adds value.
Instant gratification actually causes us to devalue the object of our desire.
This goes well beyond “Will you respect me in the morning?”
The last time I talked about delayed gratification, it was in the context of my kids. That still holds true. Kids don’t value the things that are handed to them.
The surprising–and disturbing–bit is that adults don’t, either. If I run out to the store to buy an iPad the first day I see one, I won’t care about it nearly as much as if I spend a week or two agonizing over the decision.
The delay alone adds to the perceived value. The agony turns the perceived value into gold.
If I spend a month searching for the perfect car, the thrill of the successful hunt adds less value than the time it took to do the hunting.
Here’s my frugal tip for today: Delay your purchases. While it may not actually save you any money, you will feel like you got a much better deal if you wait a few days for something you really want.
Braces
Grr!
Monday, I brought Punk #1 to the orthodontist. He’s got an underbite and some crooked teeth, but I didn’t realize how off it was until I saw the pictures they took. Some of the closeups could be inspiration for a Halloween mask.
It look like he started with a small underbite that made his teeth line up wrong, which–as they grew–accentuate the wrong. Now, it’s very, very wrong.
Next week he goes in to get his top teeth done.
At a cost of $5800.
If we pay up-front, they’ll knock 5% off, bringing it down to $5500. That covers everything, all of the follow-ups, broken hardware, every stage the whole way through. If we pay monthly, it will be $1450 down and $200 per month (interest free) for almost 2 years.
Almost six grand.
Fortunately, we knew this was coming, so we’ve been saving for this for a few years.
Unfortunately, we’ve only been saving $50-100 a month. We can’t wait much longer. With an underbite, you have more options if you do the work before the kid is done growing. I’d really like to avoid jaw surgery for him, so we have to make things happen.
Our braces account has $3100 in it. My HSA account has $875. That’s from my last job, so that’s as big as it gets. That leaves us almost exactly $1500 short.
I hate the idea of touching our emergency fund, although it does have enough money in it.
We’ve also got some money tucked away in an account leftover from my mother-in-law dying last year. I think that’s where we’re going to come up with the difference.
How else could we save money?
We could shop around, but this isn’t something I want to give to the lowest bidder. I want to do it right, and I know several people who have had braces put on by this office, either by this orthodontist or her father.
I asked about a cash discount and got turned down.
That’s it. Next week, I burn $5500. Hope the kid eventually appreciates it.
Anna Chapman and Edward Snowden: How to afford a long-distance romance?
Recently Russian spy Anna Chapman tweeted a proposal to fellow spy Edward Snowden, as in a marriage proposal. News reports covering the Internet event report that Chapman would not reveal whether she was serious but asked reporters to use their imaginations. So it is yet to be seen whether there will be spy marriage ahead for the two notorious leakers. What is true, however, is that no nuptials can take place at the moment, even if Anna Chapman were serious and Edward Snowden. That is because the United States has revoked Snowden’s U.S. passport, and marriage ceremonies cannot take place in the airport where Snowden is trying to buy time. So how can Chapman and Snowden afford a long-distance relationship? Follow this quick guide of tips for helping the spies survive what could be a long road ahead!
Finding Deals
Anna Chapman has the most mobility right now, so she should be looking out for cheap flights to where Snowden is hiding out. A long-distance relationship can be expensive, so that is why finding deals on air travel is key. She can drop into the airport for a quick rendevouz. Why not?
Saving Money
These two potential spy lovers and super team need to save their money at every turn. Hiding out in secrete is costly, so they should create a special account that they both can add to for getaway and meeting expenses. Meeting at the airport is going to get old after a while, so they need to find a safe space where they can enjoy one another and sustain their relationship. Long-distance relationships are known for their difficulty because a couple spend so much time trying to reconnect every time they see one another.
Pick Your Fights
Long-distance relationships have little room for petty fighting. You see each other so infrequently that you have to cherish the time you have together. Instead of talking spy business, Anna Chapman and Edward Snowden should make sure they are focusing on each other by getting to know each other and focusing on the small things that make them happy together. Petty fighting will destroy a long-distance relationship. Chapman and Snowden should part each meeting feeling good about the other instead of feeling frustrated.
Kiss and Makeup
The key to long-distance relationships is always to kiss and makeup before leaving. No matter what the spies face together or apart, they cannot let their professions and media scrutiny come between them. Instead, they need to focus on their love and passion. Make sure to share a passionate kiss before leaving each meeting so that the memory of love and admiration is fresh on the mind. With a little effort in the romance department, Chapman and Snowden will be well on their way to creating harmony in their relationship. Moving from shallow levels to more deeper levels, however, is going to take time.
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Walking Dead: Would You Be Ready for the Apocalypse?
Would you be ready for the apocalypse? The Walking Dead asks that question every week. There is a great deal of human intrigue in the show, but the show is always asking you, the viewer, if you would be ready to deal with an apocalypse on that order. The idea goes much farther than dealing with zombies. Truly, zombies are the easy part of the apocalypse.
Lost People
We live in a world where we are very connected. You know people from all over the world, and it the entire world has been overrun by an apocalypse at once, all the people you are connected to around the world are effectively gone. There is no chance you will ever see them again. The people on the show deal with those ideas every day. There are so many people they miss that they never go to to say goodbye to.
Insecurity
The one thing that the apocalypse creates is insecurity. You will have no idea what is going to happen the next morning. You never know when someone in your crew is going to be bitten or killed. You have no idea when you will run into other humans you cannot trust. There is not a safe place on Earth. Even if you lock down a house, there is no way to know for sure that zombies would not get in.
Violence
The Walking Dead graphically depicts the violence that is necessary to kill zombies. You would have to “kill” thousands of people who have become zombies. You can see their wedding rings. You can see them in their uniforms, and you know that they used to be somebody. However, you have to end them in order to save yourself. Many of us believe we could do that, but we need to think twice before we assume we could be that violent.
Order
The lack of order in the world is the thing that would break most of us. We can reconcile loss, but that loss is hard to reconcile when there is no order in the world. There is not one authority on the planet that is still operating. How would you be able to resolve problems without such a structure?
On the show, all these problems are handled violently. Murdering violent people is all part of the job if you want to stay alive. It is one thing to kill a zombie that is no longer a person, but it is something else to kill a real person who is simply a thieving criminal.
You might think that you would do just fine when you are watching The Walking Dead, but you would not know unless it happened in real life. The zombie apocalypse is not all fun and games. At its heart is a tense human emotion called loss that we would all have to confront head on.
My Mortgage is Smaller Than My Credit Card Balance
It’s been one heck of a spring summer for my family, financially speaking, and it turned out to be a bit more than we had budgeted for.
Here’s what we’ve done on top of our regular spending, so far:
- Remodeled both of our bathrooms(at the same time!) ($6000-ish)
- Summer camp for two kids ($500)
- Swimming lessons for three kids ($350)
- Replaced the entire air conditioning system in my car ($1600)
- Finished paying for our current round of ballroom dancing lessons($400)
- New mattress on our bed($1200)
- My wife is off work for the summer. Part time and sporadic hours when it’s not the school year.
Taken in reverse order…
Mattress
The wire frame on our mattress broke. I wish that was a complement to my prowess, but nothing was happening when it snapped. Sleeping with a jagged piece of steel poking you sucks, to say the least.
Dancing
Ballroom dancing is something my wife and I both enjoy, and it’s good exercise, so we decided to keep it up. We are officially in training for competition-level dancing, but now that our favorite place to dance is closed, we may not continue. The lessons are paid for through next spring, though.
Air conditioner
My A/C system “grenaded”. Basically, the insides decided to disintegrate and go flowing through the rest of the system, mucking it all up. And making the car undriveable. On the plus side, this hard-to-find leak I’ve been ignoring in favor of annual $75 A/C recharges is fixed, now.
Swimming, not dying
My youngest kids have never had swimming lessons and my oldest isn’t a strong swimmer. Helping my kids not drown is a good thing.
Camp
We put the down payment on camp back in February, then promptly forgot about paying for the rest of it until the deadline hit. I paused while typing this to add it to my budget so I don’t forget for next year.
The remodel
We had, at one point, $9500 set aside for the remodel, but I raided that account a few times if we went over on our monthly spending. Then, when we got the estimate, we neglected to include one of the subtotals together when we agreed to it, so the job cost more than I was expecting from the start. We still got a great price, though.
Until the tub surround didn’t come in a color we liked and could get in less than 6 weeks. So, we upgraded to porcelain tile.
And the ceiling started peeling.
And we decided to get nice fixtures, so it would be a bathroom we loved enough to demonstrate physically, for years to come.
And we noticed the basement bathroom floor tiles were loose.
So much money just poured out of my credit card.
At the moment, we have approximately $8,000 on our credit cards. That’s the highest balance we’ve carried in years. This month was the first time I’ve paid interest on a credit card since August 2012.
What’s our plan for the credit cards?
- I get a $500 bonus every month. Getting this bonus is almost entirely under my control.
- We gave our renters(two of our closest friends) a good introductory rent until their current lease expires. Their rent triples at the end of the month.
- I stopped paying double mortgage payments.
- We have some money in our emergency fund.
- We should have about $1000 left in the remodel account when the job is finished.
That’s $1500 as an immediate payment, plus about $2300 per month on top of our normal spending to pay off the cards.
That means we’ll be down to about $4300 in two weeks. When my wife gets her first full paycheck at the end of September, we’ll have the cards paid off.
Then comes the challenge of catching back up on the mortgage. Until yesterday, we were projected to pay off our house on December 1. Our current balance is $4660, with a mandatory monthly payment of $470.58. That’s about 10 months of payments. We were making an extra $520 interest payment each month, which brought it down to the December payoff date. For the next 3 months, we’re only going to be paying roughly the minimum, which means we’ll have to pay a bit over triple for November and December to be done with it this year.
I think we can do it.
How do we avoid this in the future?
With our renters paying full rent now, our goal is to pretend Linda isn’t getting paid when her work picks up again in September. We want to save or invest everything she makes, on top of the current savings. Not all of that will be long-term, and not all of it will be spendable. That saving will include things like braces for the younger kids, vacations that are more than just long weekends, and maxing out both of our retirement accounts.
That should still let us pad out our emergency fund to 4 months of expenses by spring, which is a pretty good cushion for us.
I hope. I haven’t done the math.
