- "The best way to spend your money is to spend it on time, not on stuff." http://su.pr/2tr5iP #
- First bonus by stock options today. Not sure I'm impressed. #
- RT @chrisguillebeau: US border control just walked the train asking "Are you a US citizen?" Native American guy says: "One of the originals" #
- @FARNOOSH My credit score is A measure of my integrity not THE measure. in reply to FARNOOSH #
- I'm listening to a grunge/metal cover of "You are my sunshine" #
- There's something funny about a guy on reality TV whining about how private he is. #LAInk #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-17
- RT @kristinbrianne: Get Talk and Txt Unlimited Cell Svc w/ Free Phone for $10 per month by joining DNA for Free. http://tinyurl.com/yyg5ohn #
- RT: @ChristianPF is giving away an iPod Touch! – RT to enter to win… http://su.pr/2LS3p5 #
- 74 inch armspan and forearms bigger than my biceps. No, I don't button my shirt cuffs. #
- RT @deliverawaydebt Money Hackers Network Carnival #111 – Don't Hassel the Hoff Edition http://bit.ly/9BIAvE #
- @bargainr What would it take to get you to include me in the personal-finance-bloggers list? #
- Working on a Penfed application to transform my worst interest rate into my best. #
- Gave the 1 year old pop rocks for the first time. Big smiles. #
- @Netflix @Wii disc works well and loads fast. Go, go gadget movie! #
Charity is Selfish
I try to give 10% of my income to charity. I don’t succeed every year, but I do try.
I don’t give because I’m generous. I give because I’m selfish.
If you give to charity, you are too.
I’m not talking about people who give to charity strictly for the tax deduction, though that is selfish too. I’m referring specifically to the people who give to charity out of the goodness of their hearts.
If I give a thousand dollars worth of clothes to a homeless shelter, I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I helped people stay warm.
If I send $100 to the Red Cross for whatever terrible disaster happened shortly before I made the donation, it makes me feel good to have contributed to saving those lives.
The put-the-inner-city-kids-on-a-horse thing we do? Makes me happy to get those kids into a positive situation.
Donating blood? Yay, me! I’m saving lives!
While it’s nice to help other people, that’s not the ultimate reason I’m doing it. I do it because it makes me feel good about myself to help other people, particularly people who–for whatever reason–can’t help themselves.
That’s the basis of altruism. It’s not about helping others, it’s about feeling good about helping others.
The truly selfish, the evil dogooders, are the ones who want to raise taxes to give it away as “charity”. They get to feel like they are doing something and helping others while not actually contributing themselves and, at the same time, stealing that warm fuzzy feeling from the people who are providing the money to start with.
Evil.
Charity has to be done at a personal, local level or the benefits to the giver are eliminated while the benefits to the receiver are lessened. Bureaucracy doesn’t create efficiency.
For the record, if it’s taken by force, by tax, it isn’t charity. Charity cannot be forced. Forcing charity is, at best, a fraudulent way for petty politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists to feel they have power over others.
Again, evil.
Vacation, Shmaycation, Staycation?
Last week was our family vacation. This year, we decided to keep it cheap, since we raided our savings a few months ago to cover my son’s vision therapy.
Here’s what we did:
Friday (Yes, I started vacation on a Friday): My wife worked a half day, then we drove to visit my parents, roughly 120 miles north of our house. $110 for gas, round-trip, and $10 for drive-through lunch. $120 total.
Saturday: We went to the county fair and Dairy Queen. $18 for admission. $30 for ride tickets. $35 for food and ice cream. The ride tickets were totally worth it. My son and I discovered that he can handle the fun rides, which thrills me. $83 total.
Sunday: We had a picnic at the bottom of Inspiration Peak, the third highest point in Minnesota, followed by a hike to the top. That evening, my brother, his wife, my wife, and I tricked my parents into babysitting and escaped for several hours of adult time. After a couple of overpriced drinks at a crap restaurant, we went somewhere nicer and cheaper. A nice dinner, a few drinks, and a round of drunken go-karts later, we spent $90 for the evening.
Monday: Back to the go-kart park for the afternoon, and the return drive home in the evening. The go-kart park included 3 rounds of go-karts, mini-golf, and a round of bumper boats. $40.
Tuesday: A hands-on kids museum, a natural history museum that was hosting a portable planetarium, and a teppenyaki restaurant. We used museum passes for the museums, so this cost a total of $160. By far, the most expensive part was the restaurant. The museums cost a combined $30.
Wednesday: We spent the day at the Monster Mall’s indoor theme park, Nickelodean Universe, where we tested my son’s ability to handle the fun rides for $70. Then we ate at the Rainforest Cafe for $116, and we got my wife’s anniversary present, a family portrait at an “old time” photo studio. We chose a 1920s theme. I must say, I look dashing in a zoot suit. $260 total.
Thursday: My wife had to work on Thursday because she was short of vacation time, so I had the brats to myself. We went to a pick-your-own apple orchard where we picked a large bag of apples, a bottle of real, locally-made maple syrup and 3 cookies-on-a-stick. Afterwards, Brat #1 and I went to a Chinese buffet and the comic book store while the women-folk went to a saddle-club meeting. $60 total.
Friday: We had a fried chicken picnic at the largest playground in the area, and otherwise took it easy. $12.
Saturday: On Saturday, my girls rode in a horse show for the saddle club while my wife put in her volunteer work hours. Registration and the food for the potluck ran $40.
Sunday: I had to teach a gun class, so I made money, instead of spending it. My wife and kids played around the house.
Total, our vacation cost us $865, for 10 days of memories. If we would have skipped the restaurants, it would have cost $465, but we wanted those experiences, too. Our vacation fund has $906 in it, so we did all right.
Jobs I’ve Had
I’ve always worked. From the time I was young, I knew that, if I wanted to feed my G.I. Joe addiction, I needed a way to make money.
So I got a job.
I was the only kid in first grade earning a steady paycheck.
In the years since, I’ve had a dozen or so jobs at 10 different companies. The question has been asked, so this post is my answer: these are all of the jobs I’ve ever held.
- Paper route. Starting at age 6, I split a paper route with my brother. Initially, I made about $6 per month, which was enough for 1 G.I. Joe.
- Farm hand. I spent a couple of summers in junior high and high school doing odd farm jobs outside of my home town.
- Dishwasher. Starting in 9th grade, I gave up a study hall to work in the school cafeteria, serving food and washing dishes. It paid minimum wage for 1 hour per school day.
- Construction. For a couple of summers, I worked for my dad’s construction company. He was easily the hardest boss I’ve ever had, which was great preparation for the rest of my working life. The drunk bar owner who didn’t allow his employees a lunch break and got upset if they sat down on a smoke break was nothing by comparison. Thanks, Dad. Every employer since has been astonished by my work ethic, even when I’m having an off day.
- Dishwasher, take 2. Sixteen years old, thumped by the wisdom of “If you want a car, get a job to pay for it.” So I did. It paid a bit over minimum wage and gave me my first “Who the heck is FICA and why is he robbing me?” moment. I eventually got promoted to cook, which came with better pay, worse hours, and more opportunities to flirt with waitresses. It was grand.
- Palletizer. This is a fancy way of saying I stood at the end of a conveyor belt, picked up the 50 pound bags of powder as they came down the line, and stacked them neatly on a pallet. Rinse and repeat. 1500 times per night. By the time I left this job, I had arms that would make Popeye cry.
- Cook, take 2. I held this job at the same time as the palletizer position. I’d work 8 hours stacking pallets, then head to job #2, 5 miles away. My car was broken at the time, so I rode my bike. In the winter. In Minnesota. I was working 14-16 hour days, lifting a total of 75,000 pounds, biking 10 miles per day. I was in great shape and tough. I wasn’t tough enough, though. I could only maintain this schedule for a couple of months.
- Machine operator. During my stint with this company, I’d put a little piece of metal into a great big machine, push a button, then spend 15-20 minutes listening to the great big machine carve the little piece of metal into something worth selling. This was about when I started shopping for books based primarily on thickness. One night, I read The Stand in my spare time. I’d also pass the night by burning scrap magnesium flakes in the parking lot. What can I say? Twelve hour graveyard shifts with 3 hours of actual work are boring. I left a few months after my son was born, because I was missing too much of my family time. I took a 30% pay-cut, before overtime, to be with my wife and kid.
- Debt collector. I worked my way through college by collecting on defaulted student loans. I firmly believe that we should all live up to our obligations and responsibilities, including paying your bills, so I didn’t have a moral dilemma with the work. There are some bad apples, but I don’t see collectors as pariahs.
- Systems Administrator. After I graduated college, I got promoted and spent the rest of my time there managing the collection and auto-dialer software and the hodge-podge of other applications we needed, some of which, I wrote.
- Software engineer. This is where I am now. I’ve written a medium-scale ecommerce application that handles the online sales for quite a few companies, mostly in the B2B arena. The job also includes a large chunk of training, management, and even sales. I don’t particularly enjoy sales, but a programmer geek who can manage other programmers, coordinate with sales & marketing, and talk to customers during a sales demo is a rare bird.
To recap: I’m 32 and I’ve had 1 month out of the last 26 years that didn’t come with a paycheck. I’ve worked for 10 different companies and I start the job before this one when I was 20.
How many jobs have you had? What was the most memorable, or the oddest?
Credit Peril
When my mother-in-law died, we went through all of her accounts and paid off anything she owed.
The Discover card she’d carried since the 80s–a card that had my wife listed as an authorized user–had a balance of about $700. We paid that off with the money in her savings account. They cashed out the accumulated points as gift cards and closed the account.
A few months ago, we decided it was time to buy an SUV, to fit our family’s needs. We financed it, to give us a chance to take advantage of a killer deal while waiting for the state to process the title transfer on an inherited car we have since sold.
Getting good terms was never a worry. Both of us had scores bordering on 800. Since our plan was to pay off the entire loan within a few months, we asked for whatever term came with the lowest interest rate.
Then the credit department came back and said that my wife’s credit was poor. I chalked it up to a temporary blip caused by closing the oldest account on her credit report and financed without her. No big deal.
Since we decided to rent our my mother-in-law’s house, we’ve discussed picking up more rental properties. That’s a post for another time, but last week, we went to get pre-approved for a mortgage. During the process, the mortgage officer asked me if my wife had any outstanding debt that could be ignored if we financed without her.
Weird.
A few days ago, we got the credit check letter from the bank. Her credit score? 668.
What the heck?
I immediately pulled her free annual credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which is something I usually do 2-3 times per year, but had neglected for 2012.
There are currently two negatives on her report.
One is a 30 day late payment on a store card in 2007. That’s not a 120 point hit.
The other is an $8 charge-off to Discover. As an authorized user. On an account that was paid.
Crap.
We called Discover to get them to correct the reporting and got told they don’t have it listed as a charge-off. They did agree to send a letter to us saying that, but said they couldn’t fix anything with the credit bureaus.
Once we get that letter, it’s dispute time.
