- I tried to avoid it. I really did, but I’m still getting a much bigger refund than anticipated. #
- Did 100 pushups this morning–in 1 set. New goal: Perfect form by the end of the month. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: Carnival of Personal Finance is live 🙂 DOLLAR DOODLE theme: http://tinyurl.com/ykldt7q (haha…) #
- Hosting my first carnival tomorrow. Up too late tonight. #
- Woot! My boy won his wreslting match! Proud daddy. #
- The Get Home Card is a prepaid emergency transportation card. http://su.pr/329U6L #
- Real hourly wage calculator. http://su.pr/1jV4W6 #
- Took my envelope budget out in cash, including a stack of $2s. That shouldn’t fluster the bank teller. #
Failed Side Hustle: Scrapping
Last week, the washing machine in our rental house died. It was older than I am, so this wasn’t really a surprise. It was one of just two appliances we didn’t replace before we moved the renters in.
My wife–bargain shopper that she is–found a replacement on Craigslist. We got it in, then left the dead washing machine next to the replacement, as a warning to any other appliance that thinks it can shirk its assigned work.
This morning, we went over to pull the corpse of our washing machine out of the basement.
Now, I am an out-of-shape desk jockey, my wife is considerably weaker than I am, and a 40 year old washing machine weighs more than 200 pounds.
In the basement.
I’m Superman. Although at one point, I did trade 10 years of the useful life of my right knee in exchange for not letting that thing tumble down the stairs on top of me.
What do you do with a dead washing machine?We could have the garbage company pick it up for $25. Or we could leave it on the curb and wait for some stinking scrapper to take it.
Or…we could join the dark side and scrap it ourselves.
For the uninitiated, scrappers are the people who drive around looking for fence-posts to steal out of other people’s yards, or cut the catalytic converters out of cars parked at park-and-ride bus stops, or steal all of the copper pipes out of your house while your on vacation. Sometimes, they get scrap metal from legitimate sources, I’ve heard.
We decided to go the legitimate route and take the washing machine to the scrap metal dealer in the next town over.
It was pretty easy. We pulled in with the washer in the trailer. A guy on a forklift pulled up and took it, then handed us a receipt to bring to the cashier. She paid us in cash, and we were on our way.
$7.50 richer.
200 pounds of steel, and we made less than $10.
There are people who pay their bills by recycling scrap metal, but I have no idea how. Driving around looking for things to scrap would seem to burn more gas than you’d make turning it in.
Some people scour Craigslist looking for metal things in the free section.
Some people have an arrangement with mechanics to remove their garbage car parts.
Some people are only looking to supplement their government handout checks enough to pay for cigarettes.
Us? We’re going to leave scrapping to the scavengers.
$1500 Luxury
I’ve got some expensive habits. Not like Charlie Sheen snorting $2500 of blow of a hooker’s boobs, but still expensive.
My latest one is dancing lessons. Linda surprised me on one of weekly date nights a few months ago. She found a Groupon for the dancing studio we used before we got married. It was $69 for a month of unlimited group lessons.
When the month was up, we signed on for their beginner cycle of lessons, which cost another $400.
And now we’re starting the Social Foundation program.
Social Foundation is a series of classes that teach some advanced moves, but also to teach dancers how to lead and follow properly and how to dance socially and look respectable on a dance floor in any number of situations. Leading and following are important because every single dance move out there has specific cues that tell your partner what’s coming next. If she doesn’t know, you both look clumsy.
So we chose the four dances we’re going to learn better and signed up. We’re going to learn the Rumba, Waltz, Tango, and Swing. We’re already pretty good at Rumba and Swing, but we’re going to get better. Personally, I’m hoping to also figure out how to use the Tango on an open dance floor without crashing into people. That way, we can pretend to be Gomez and Morticia, my heroes.
Now, the thing is, dance lessons aren’t cheap. They cost about $100 per hour, where an hour is defined as 45 minutes. We’re rolling the last half of our beginner lessons into our social foundation lessons and paying $1400.
Ouch.
They gave us the option of financing it over 3-4 months, but I didn’t want to pay an extra $200 for the privilege. I think we’ll be tapping the vacation fund to pay for the lessons.
Why am I willing to pay this much?
Dancing is one of the very few things Linda and I both enjoy. We’re pretty good at it, it’s great exercise, it’s fun, and (shhh!) it counts as foreplay. It also doesn’t hurt to have the sidelines of the dance floor lined with people watching us dance, wishing they could do what we’re doing…or wishing their husbands were willing to learn how to dance. This also isn’t just something we’re doing at the studio. We are out on a dance floor dancing to a live band almost every week. That usually comes with about $25 in cover charges and drinks.
Fun, exercise, have sex, and inspire jealousy. That’s a winning combination. And finding things to do that we both love to do is difficult and easily worth the $2000 we’ve paid the dance studio this year.
5 Ways to Make Shopping Quickly a Breeze
Shopping is a major time sink. Between the travel, the traffic, and the checkout lines, the actual shopping almost seems
pleasant. Almost. Here’s my super-secret ninja plan to reduce the unpleasant time wasted while giving away my money in exchange for the privilege of not scooping manure straight from the source onto my crops to get both my burgers and my salads.
First, The List. I’m not going to tell you to use a list. You know that already. My secret? Organize your list by department. Divide the list into sections. Make sure it has a produce section, a meat section, a baking section, and any other section you will be visiting. Don’t leave the department until that section of the list is complete. That will eliminate chasing back and forth for things you forgot, which is a huge timesaver.
Shop where you know. When you are in a hurry or stressed by crabby kids, don’t go check out a new store. You won’t enjoy it with the kids in tow, AND you’ll be tempted to buy more, since you will encounter more as you explore the store trying to find what you need. Go somewhere you know. That will eliminate any hunter/gatherer-style shopping. If you know where you need to go, you’ll get through the shopping trip much faster.
Skip the bad aisles. I resist temptation best by avoiding it. In the store, I avoid it by skipping entire aisles of stuff. If there’s nothing I need in an aisle, don’t go there. Why tempt myself with that many more choices? I’m sure I can find something I’d like to bring home in almost any section of almost any store. So I avoid the unnecessary sections.
Shop at the right time. Don’t go on Saturday afternoon when every other 9-to-5er is free to run errands. If you absolutely must shop on the weekend, either go late–I prefer 3am–or go right at lunchtime when everyone is stopping to feed the hungry children. Me? I’ll either feed them first or fill them up on samples at the grocery store.
Use less, eat less. You’ll need to buy less that way. If you eat smaller portions, or learn how to cook with a versatile mix of staples, you’ll need to buy less, either through lower consumption or lower variety. I’m not saying eat boring, just get creative with the basics. I know a couple of different ways to cooks rice and beans, without getting bored. When you add the perfect-food-makers, like bacon, it’s easy to keep meals interesting.
How do you reduce wasted time shopping?
How to make room for a paying lodger
- Image via Wikipedia
A spare room in your home is an opportunity to boost your income. Imagine how much extra cash you could make by offering that space to a rent-paying tenant. You can start getting things ready by creating the necessary space right now. Our guest blogger, Big Yellow Self Storage, shows you how in these five simple steps.
1. What needs to go? Take a good look around your spare room (and the rest of your home, while you’re at it). Decide what you’re happy to part company with and what you want to find a storage solution for.
2. Sell, donate or trash. For anything with a monetary value, get selling. Try online auctions, your local classified ads, boot sales(ed. That’s a flea market or swap meet for those in the U.S.) – anything that offers a cheap and quick way to raise cash. Alternatively, give your unwanted but perfectly serviceable items to charity. As a last resort, put them out with the trash or take them to a recycling centre.
3. Decide what sort of storage solution you need. For those items that you’re not getting rid of, you’ll need some form of storage facility. And, depending on what those items are, this could be a garden shed, a loft, a garage or a unit at a secure, temperature-controlled storage site.
4. Prepare your items to go into storage. Flat pack self assembly furniture and keep the fixings close by in a small bag. Coat wood and metal with varnish and rust protector respectively. Keep mattresses in bags available at DIY stores. (Change the bag every year). Use a wardrobe to store clothes, shoes, bags and bed linen – its small footprint will give you loads of hanging, stacking and shelving space. Be aware that books can get really heavy. Use lots of small boxes instead of fewer large ones and list their contents on the visible sides.
5. Get ready to welcome your lodger! All that remains now is to prepare and advertise your spare room – and start earning money!
For further information about storing just about anything and to find out more about storage options, visit Big Yellow for Self Storage.
Annual Fees: Scam or Service?
Annual fees. For a lot of people, this is the worst possible thing about a credit card. That’s understandable, since paying interest is voluntary. If you don’t want to pay it, you just need to pay off your balance within the grace period. Annual fees, on the other hand, get paid, whether you want to or not, if the are a part of your credit card.
When I was 18, I applied for a credit card that raised an undying hatred of Providian in my heart. I was dumb and didn’t read the agreement before applying. When I got the card, I read the paperwork and nearly made a mess of myself. It had a $200 activation fee, a $100 annual fee, a $500 limit, a 24% interest rate, no grace period, and a anthropomorphic contempt for all things financially responsible.
Yes, you read that right. The day you activate the card, you are 3/5 maxed and accruing interest at rates that would make a loan shark blush like my grandma is a strip club. Instead of activating, I cancelled the card and ran away crying. It was a mistake but didn’t cost me anything.
In exchange for all of that, I got…nothing. The card offered no services of any kind in exchange for the annual fee.
On the other hand, I have a card with an annual fee right now. It’s $59 per year, but it offers value in exchange.
This card’s basic offering is a 2% travel rewards plan. With most of our spending on this card, we’ve managed to accumulate $400 of rewards, so far, counting the 25,000 bonus miles for signing up.
In addition, it offers 24 hour travel and roadside assistance. The roadside assistance itself will pay for the fee, because I think I’ll be canceling my AAA account after 16 years. The card’s plan isn’t as nice, but I haven’t been using the AAA emergency services for the past few years, anyway.
It extends the warranty on anything I buy. It includes car rental insurance and concierge service. Concierge service is sweet. Need reservations for dinner? Call the card. Need a tub of nacho cheese? Call the card. Need a pizza? Well, call Zappos.com.
All in all, the card is paying for itself a couple of different ways, so in this case, the annual fee is definitely worth it. I guess there’s a serious difference between Capital One Venture and Providan Screwyou.
How do you feel about annual fees? Love ’em, hate ’em, have a card with one?
