- @ScottATaylor Thanks for following me. in reply to ScottATaylor #
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- Dining Out vs Cooking In: http://su.pr/3JsGoG #
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- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-12
Saturday Roundup – The OMG It’s Busy Edition
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Last Saturday, my 3-year-old rode in her second horse show. She got third place out of 4, which is pretty good for her second show.
Halloween is well under way here. Normally, I get everything set up the last weekend of September, but we went out of town that weekend to visit my sick Grandma, so things are behind schedule. Now, I’m trying to finish decorating my yard in the evenings, between work and sunset. That really cuts into blogging time.
Today, my two oldest kids are having a birthday party together. October is a crazy-busy month.
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The best posts of the week:
Every blogger needs a WordPress cheatsheet, right?
$93 of generosity turned into $100,000 of charity. It’s an inspiring story about how the little things add up. What a way to make a difference!
The debt-settlement meany-butt-jerkfaces have to obey an entire new set of laws to keep them from lying to their customers.
I love precious metals. The only gold I own is on my ring finger, but I’ve got a small stack of silver in the house. There’s just something about a gold or silver coin that makes me want to fondle it.
Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:
Last week:
20 Lazy Ways to Save Money was in the Carnival of Money Stories.
3 Reasons You Hate Your Budget was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
The Magic Toilet was included in the Festival of Frugality. I love my magic toilet.
This week:
Halloween Decorations Ain’t Cheap was picked up by the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thrifty Sucks was included in the Carnival of Money Stories.
If I missed anyone, please let me know. Thanks for including me!
Whiners
I have a lot of friends and family in different financial stages in their lives. Some are deeper in debt than I am, others are just starting to dig their own pit, still others have paid off every cent of debt they’ve ever used. That’s okay; as they say, it takes all kinds to make the world go round.
Out of all of those, the only ones who irritate me are the spendthrift whiners. These are the people who spend 28 days a month struggling to make ends meet and complaining about how hard their lives are. They make snide comments about how easy other people have it, and act like they are being cheated out of their birthright whenever anybody does anything fun that they can’t do because they are too broke.
The other two days—or sometimes three—of the month, are payday. These are the days the the spendthrift whiners try to make themselves feel rich for 24 hours, while wondering why you aren’t willing to hit the fancy restaurants and expensive vacations with them. This is the day they will buy a dozen moves, or a new home theater system, or a big screen TV. It’s the day they will drop a non-refundable deposit on an exotic vacation, or shop for a new car. Before they know what’s happening, the money is gone and they are broke again until next payday, condemned to whining about their horrible situation, while their spendthrift-whiner friends and neighbors complain about the injustice of having to go without luxuries while our hypothetical spendthrift whiners have a big screen TV and an exotic vacation to Dubuque booked.
These people give no thought to the future. Their life savings consist of depreciating electronics and a fancy scrapbook. What do they do when life catches them by surprise? They come begging for a loan, or charge the emergency to a credit card while complaining about the cost of interest. Ultimately, everyone who plans ahead and sets some money aside is obviously trying to rip them off, because nobody can actually do well for themselves without being crooked.
They are absolutely convinced that life is too hard to succeed, and they refuse to examine their own behavior to find the cause of their problems.
Until payday.
What’s your biggest financial pet peeve?
This was originally a guest post written for a blog swap run by the Yakezie personal finance blog network to answer the question “What is your biggest financial pet peeve?“ It ran on Faith and Finance.
My Net Worth
I last did a net worth update in August. I don’t worry much about tracking my net worth, but I’d like to know where I sit at the beginning of the year. If I’m going to track it, I’m going to share it.
This is where I was sitting in August:
Assets
- House: $252,900
- Cars: $19,740
- Checking accounts: $1,342
- Savings accounts: $5,481 I
- CDs: $1,101
- IRAs: $10,838
- Total: $291,402
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $31,118
- Car loan: $0. Woo!
- Credit card: $20,967
- Total: $52,085
Overall: $239,317
Here is my current status:
Assets
- House: $252,900 (-0) Estimated market value according to the county tax assessor. This will be going down in a few months when the estimates are finalized for the year. It hasn’t gone down, yet, so I’m not counting the change, yet.
- Cars: $20,789 (+1049) Kelly Blue Book suggested retail value for both of our vehicles and my motorcycle. Wee! Value went up on things I intend to drive into the ground!
- Checking accounts: $3,220 (+1,878) 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: $6,254 (+773) 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: $1,105 (+4) I consider this a part of my emergency fund.
- IRAs: $12,001 (+1,163)
- Investment Accounts: $1,155 (+1155) Occasionally, I run across some stocks that can’t possibly go down. I’ve only been wrong once on this front, but I never risk an amount that would be painful to lose.
- Total: $297,424 (+6022)
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $29,982 (-1136)
- Car loan: $0.
- Credit card: $18,725 (-2242) This is the current target of my debt snowball. This has actually grown a bit over the last week. I did a balance transfer that cost $400, but it gives me 0% for a year, versus the 9% I was paying. That will pay for itself in 3 months, while simplifying my payments a bit and saving me almost a thousand dollars in payments this year.
- Total: $48,707 (-3378)
Overall: $249,717 (+9400)
2011 Totals
- Assets: $297,424 (-1441)
- Liabilities: $48,707 (-10021)
- Overall: $249,717 (+9580)
I had two goals in August: Get an IRA rolling and save an extra $2500.
The IRAs I have are just sitting. I haven’t done anything to boost them, in any way, so hurray for the free $1163!
My savings have only grown my $773, but the $1000 I put in the investment account 3 weeks ago came from my car fund, so it would have been a growth of $1773, which isn’t bad at all.
I would still like to kill that credit card debt by August, which I think is doable. My crazy goal is to get rid of it by the end of May.
On 4/15/2009, I had $90,395 in debt. Today, it’s $48,707, so I’ve paid down $41,688 in just under three years, for an average of $1263 per month. That average is down $92 over the last few months. I blame our insane Christmas.
Overall, we had a good year. Paying off my car loan while paying down $4800 in credit card debt feels good. Now, I need to make 2012 better.
3 Simple Ways Keeping Your Spending Organized
- Image via Wikipedia
On of the biggest problems we had with controlling our finances was knowing where the money went. Have you ever said “Honey, do you realize we spent $900 eating out this month?” I have. The amount we spent on some categories was mind-blowing. Maybe some people don’t see $900 at restaurants, $400 on clothes, or $300 on books and movies as a problem, but I do and it was ridiculous! We’ve dialed back hard on the unnecessary spending and the first step was to understand our spending habits. That was a painful self-examination.
Here’s what we did:
- Have a Budget. This is quite simply the most basic step in organizing your finances. If you don’t have a budget, you don’t have a plan for where your money will go. Without a plan, your money goes on about its business without consulting you. Your money does not like you. It will do its level best to get as far away from you as fast as possible. A good budget is like shackles for your cash. Never underestimate the value of a good pair of shackles.
- Use a Spending Journal. Before we went cash-only, I was a no-cash spender. Every purchase was with my debit card and every receipt went into my wallet. That’s a disorganized, but effective spending journal. When it was time to balance the checkbook, I could look through my receipts and no exactly where the money went. It was nice to have a chance to wave good-bye and send it a postcard as it ran away from home. Other people use a small notebook or even–for the truly cutting-edge–the register that comes in a box of checks. Whatever system you choose, make sure you use it. If you don’t know where your money has gone in the past, how can you plan for the future?
- Use a Ledger. Most people call this the checkbook register. I use Quicken. About once per month, I sit down with any receipts we’ve generated and the list of transactions on the bank website and I balance the checkbook. I note everything we’ve spent, flag everything that has cleared the bank, and make sure all of the numbers match. This gives me a chance to review everything we’ve had incoming and outgoing and address any abnormalities while there is still a chance to get the bank to address problems.
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How do you track your spending?
Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Blacksmithing, or Quality Time With a Teenager
For the past few months, I’ve been taking blacksmithing lessons with my 16 year old son.
It’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while, but my schedule never lined up with the places that teach near me.
Then I forgot about it.
Last year, the History Channel started a new series called Forged In Fire, that made me think about it again. Better, the boy was interested, too.
If you don’t have a teenager, here’s some interesting information that’s almost universal: teenagers suck. You spend a dozen years of your life essentially doing everything for them. Then one day, they have their own interests and want nothing to do with their parents. I get it, it’s good for them to be independent and all, but it sucks for the parent who wants to spend time with the kid.
Enter blacksmithing. I’m interested, the boy’s interested, and I’ve dropped most of my side projects to have more time for my family and myself. Let’s do this.
Class number 1: 5 miles away, teaches Tuesday evenings at the height of rush hour. That’s a 45 minute 5 mile drive. It costs $350 each for an 8 session class, that I’d have to leave work early for and would cut into the kid’s homework.
Class number 2: 15 miles away, teaches full-day classes over eight consecutive Saturdays…for $120 each. That’s awesome. Except they book their entire year’s calendar of classes within 3 days of posting the schedule for the year. When they got my paper registration in the mail(seriously, paper? In 2015?), they called to tell me we were 6th on the waiting list.
Class number 3: 2 hours away. Full day classes on Saturdays. Held every Saturday, so we could come on our schedules. Cost $100, but $200 total for a class as we want them is way more affordable than the $700 up front for class #1. I’m sold.
Four classes into it, I find out that that’s the most classes I can pay for. I’m still welcome to use the facility, but now I have to supply my own charcoal. From here on out, it’s $50 for gas and $20 for charcoal to forge all day…and still get taught. If we pass some tests, we can officially join and sell our creations in the gift shop.
Totally sold.
So now, the boy and I are making the drive once a month. We talk during the drive, we work together on the forge. I love my kid, and I love spending time with him. I love making things, and I love sharing that love with my kids. In a few years, he’ll move out, but he’ll remember this for the rest of his life. It’s worth every cent.
