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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Don’t Screw Future-You

Finance, Life

A conversation between me and my temporally displaced self.
Future Me: Excuse me, Jason?
Me: Yes?
FMe: <Slap!>
Me: May I ask what that was for?
FMe: Of course.
Me: What was that for, jerk?
FMe: That was payback for all of the hell you have put me through.
Me: What?!?  I’ve never even met you, before.
FMe: Of course you have.  I am future-you, and I’m sick of getting screwed by past-me, that is, you.
Me: Huh?
FMe: Listen close.  You’re not  the sharpest brick in the box and I don’t want to explain this twice.
Me: ???
FMe: A long time ago, when you first met our wife, you were dumb.
Me: I don’t appreciate….
FMe: Shut up.  I was dumb then, too.  Remember?  You…err…we bought a new truck, built an addition on our…err…your…err…whomever’s house, got married in the same year.  On top of many other expensive decisions.  Do your recall?
Me: Yes, I do.  So what?
FMe: If that wasn’t enough, you and your smoking-hot bride are still shopping like you’re rich. You drive a new car.  Your kids wear new clothes.  You’ve got a house full of new furniture.  How did you pay for all of that?
Me: Naturally, I charged it.  Zero payments, zero interest for a year!  Pretty smart, huh?
FMe: What happens in a year?
Me: I don’t know.  I’ve got a full year to figure that out.
FMe: <Slap!>  I’ll tell you what happens!  Future-you, that’s me, gets screwed!   Your raise didn’t come through.  You had a baby. The truck broke down.  Your wife took maternity leave.  A roommate moved out.  You took a loss in the stock market.  You didn’t plan!  You had no savings to cover any of those problems because you were too busy servicing debt to pay for your current life.
Me: How was I to know?
FMe: <Slap!>  Life happens!  You never know what is coming next.  You need to plan and save for what might happen.  Otherwise, you’ll just accumulate more debt to be serviced by yours-truly.  That is not acceptable.
Me:  So?  What are you going to do about it?
FMe: <Slap!>
Me: Really?  Again?
FMe: <Slap!>  I’m struggling to pay your debt. Your son starts college next year, but you’ve left me completely unable to help.  Your daughter wants to get married in a couple of years, but the Father-of-the-Bride can’t afford a tux.  My wife, your beatiful bride, wants a vacation that I can’t afford.   You’ve screwed me, dude.
Me: I’m sorry.  What can I do to fix it?
FMe: Buy me dinner, first.
Me: Huh?!?!?
FMe: Stop the excess spending. Spend less than you make, for a change.  No credit.
Me: None?
FMe: None.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  Only spend what you can afford. Budget.  Pay off those nasty bills.  Don’t leave me hanging.
Me: So, what you’re saying is that, if I don’t have the money, I shouldn’t buy it?
FMe: Exactly.  That’s the path to wealth, freedom, and financial independence.  Live in the real world.
Me: Gee, thanks, Future-Me!  Now I know.
FMe: And knowing is half the battle.

What would your future-you have to say to you?

 

5 Things to Do in the New Year

Finance

Creditcard
Image via Wikipedia

CNN Money has an article up on 5 things to do this year.   After posting a similar article a couple of weeks ago, I thought it’d be interesting to post about someone else’s perspective.

1.  Shop for a no-fee checking account.

If you are paying fees for a checking account, go somewhere else.  There are so many alternatives available that you shouldn’t be throwing money away.   Ally Bank has a great no-fee checking account, as does INGDirect, though ING won’t let you write paper checks against the account.  The same principle applies to credit cards.  If you have a card with an annual fee and you aren’t getting some monster services or rewards to go with it, run away.

2.  Save your raise.

I don’t necessarily agree with this one.  If you are in debt, it’s better to use the raise to pay off that garbage, first.   When I got my last raise, I immediately boosted the automatic payment for my car to use every new penny.   I’ve never had the money available, so I haven’t missed it.  Whatever you do, fight lifestyle inflation.   Just because you have some more money doesn’t mean you need to spend it.   At my last job, I got a substantial raise, so I bought a new car, only to get laid off a few months later.

3.  Go for a checkup

Wealth doesn’t matter if you squander your health.  Go get a physical.   Every disease is easier to treat if you catch it earlier as opposed to later.   Don’t make the mistake of running your body into the ground.  You will regret it later.   Effective this year, most health plans will cover a physical with no copay, co-insurance, or deductible allowed.

4.  Score a better rewards card.

B***-****.   If you’ve still got debt, don’t concentrate on using more of it.  Get that crap paid off.    If you’re out of debt, look into getting a rewards card that aligns with your goals.   If you like to travel, get a card that gives you frequent flier miles.   Otherwise, I’d go with a cash-back rewards card.

5.  Use your vacation days.

37% of Americans don’t take all of the vacation to which they are entitled.  That’s insane!  We work harder and better when we have time to recuperate and relax.   Unfortunately, I usually fall into that unfortunate 37%.    My vacation resets on February 1st, and this will be the first year in a lot of years that I haven’t had to roll it over or even lose some.

What is your financial plan for the new year?

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5 Ways to Save Money by Going Green

Finance

This is a guest post by MoneySuperMarket.

Making changes in your daily life that minimize your impact on the environment is the right way to go green. While most people are happy just to know the environment is being protected, there are other benefits to going green. Pick a few of these five lifestyle changes and enjoy having a little extra cash in your pocket as well.

Eat More Meals At Home

Dining out is a fun family experience, but it takes its toll on your wallet and your neighborhood. Restaurants create millions of tons of trash each year. This tip is to the people who already avoid fast food for health reasons, but cooking with your friends and family is a great way to get closer.

Pick Up A Creative Hobby

Some hobbies require a lot more equipment or materials, therefore creating more waste and using more energy. Creative extracurricular activities use inexpensive or recycled goods instead, requiring fewer trips to the sports goods store. Woodcarving can be practiced with scraps from cabinetmakers, while yarn for knitting can come from old sweaters that are no longer worn.

Cool Off The Hot Water Heater

Each water heater features a small screw or dial that allows you to set the perfect temperature. Millions of people have their heaters set higher than necessary, wasting a lot of electricity each year. You can safely turn the heat down to about 125 degrees Fahrenheit, which could net you some hefty annual savings if it is at 140 or 150 degrees right now. Most people never use water for washing or showering that is higher than 130 when mixed in the tap.

Carpool With Co-workers

Driving back and forth to work puts a lot of wear and tear on your vehicle. Rising gas prices has made it even harder to afford a long daily commute by car. Sharing the responsibility among a group of co-workers or fellow parents at your child’s school can help to spread out the costs and the impact on the environment.

Try Your Hand At Gardening

You don’t have to have a green thumb to grow your favorite herbs in a windowsill pot. Start out easy and try a potted dwarf lime tree or a terracotta planter full of strawberries on the patio. The vegetables you harvest don’t have to contain pesticides. Compare your gardening costs against prices for high-end organic produce at the store. You could save thousands of dollars each year and reduce the damaging effects of large-scale agriculture.

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I Smell a Scam

Finance

I hate scammers. Whether it’s the garage-sale shoplifter, telemarketing “charities” with 99% overhead, 3-card-monte

shell game
shell game (Photo credit: mixatal (Clive Power))

dealers, or the guy who begs Grandma for cash every week, they all need to be strung up.  Since vigilante justice is generally illegal and occasionally immoral, it’s best to just avoid the problems from the start.  Here are some scams to watch out for.

Pyramid Scams – All of the little parties people throw to earn free items at the expense of their friends are pyramid schemes.  Most of those are legitimate money-sinks.  A few, however, exist solely to get their “consultants” to bring in more consultants.  The sales aren’t the actual way to make money.  If you don’t have anyone “downstream” you won’t make any money.  If the focus isn’t on selling an actual product or service, but is instead on bringing in people under you, you have entered the world of pyramid scams. Generally illegal and always immoral.  Don’t sign up and, if you do, don’t ask me to participate.

Advance Fees and Expensive Prizes – If you win a contest and you are expected to send money to claim your prize, it is a scam.  You don’t have to pay sales tax in advance.  You don’t have to pay transfer fees.  Real prizes are delivered free, accompanied by a 1099, because prizes are income.   No prize requires pre-payment. No loan service requires “finder’s fees”.   If it doesn’t sound right, don’t pay it and certainly don’t give your bank information to anyone you can’t verify.

Work at Home – The most common work-at-home job I’ve found is stuffing envelopes.  You see the signs on telephone poles all over the city.  “Make $10/hour stuffing envelopes from the comfort of your own home!  Just send $50 to….”   When you get the instructions, you are told to hand up signs telling people to send you $50 for instructions on how to make $10/hour stuffing envelopes.  Everybody is feeding off of everybody else.

Charity – Never give money to a charity over the phone.  Always take the time to verify where you are sending your money.  Some freak may call to tug on your heartstrings with a sob story, but you don’t have to give them money.  At least ask them to send it in writing so you can do some checking, first.

Phishing – Simply put, don’t click on any link in any email, unless you know where it is going.  If it is a link to a financial institution, go enter the address into the address bar yourself.   If you find yourself on a site you don’t recognize, don’t give them your personal information and don’t ever reuse your usernames and passwords.   If you do, one bad site could get access to everything you do online.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]Foreign Lottery – To be clear, Spain did not just hold a international lottery and randomly draw your email address. No lottery in the world works that way.  If you didn’t enter the lottery while you were in Spain, you aren’t going to win it.   The scam is that you need to provide your bank information, including a number of release forms so the scammers can transfer money to you.  In reality, you are signing over control of your account and will be wiped out.

Nigerian/419 Emails – Ex-Prince WhateverHisNameIs wants your help to get his fortune out of WhereverHeIsFrom.   The New Widow Ima F. Raud has an inheritence that she won’t live long enough to spend.  They’ve both been given your name as a trustworthy person to handle the transactions in exchange for a mere $10 million.   What friends do you have that would make this seem legitimate? Once again, they will get your bank information and take your money.  At a minimum, they will try to get you to pay a few thousand dollars for “Transfer fees”.  Don’t do it.

Overpayment by Wire – I had this one attempted on my last week.  You sell something online.  A potential buyer agrees to purchase the item, sight-unseen.  They’ll send a cashier’s check and, after it clears, one of their agents will pick it up.  Unfortunately, the buyer’s secretary screwed up and added a zero to the check.  Would you mind wiring the overpayment back, minus a small fee for the hassle?  The check is bogus and there is no way to verify it.   You’ll deposit the check and it will be assumed to be real.  The bank will make the funds available well before it comes back as fraud.  You’ll see the available funds and send the money by non-refundable Western Union and some thug in Nigeria gets a new iPhone.

Foreclosure Scams – Some scammers try to prey on the vulnerable because they are, well, vulnerable.   If you are facing foreclosure, be very careful about where you turn for help.   One scam is to get you to sign over your home “temporarily” to clear the title.  That doesn’t work, but you won’t find that out until you are handed an eviction notice and told you still owe the money.

Stranded Friends – You get an email from a friend saying he’s in London/Moscow/Sydney/Wherever, and he’s been mugged.   He’s got nothing and needs $2500 to get home.  Can you help?   Do you really have friends close enough to ask for a $2500 international bailout, but not so close they tell you about the vacation ahead of time? Would they really be too timid to call you collect instead of begging for change to use an internet cafe?

Credit Cards: My Failed Experiment

Finance

Cash
Image by BlatantWorld.com via Flickr

Back in April, we went off the cash plan.

In the two years prior to that, we paid down about $40,ooo in debt by completely forgoing credit cards.    We went on a strict budget and all of our daily expenses–other than gas for the cars–was paid in cash.   The only other exception was anything bought on the internet.  Amazingly enough, Amazon doesn’t take cash.   When that happened, the amount we spent online was taken out of the cash supply and set in a box until we could get it back in the bank.

No other exceptions.

In April, we decided that we had changed our relationship with money and could–judiciously–move back to credit card use, to take advantage of the rewards.    We’d still use the same amount we had budgeted for groceries,  clothes, and everything else.   I set up an automatic payment for the budgeted amount, so we could use the card for our daily spending and the bank would automatically pay it off every month.   What could go wrong?

Ugh.

We are not predisposed to be able to use credit cards well.   It’s just not good for us.   Credit cards  just don’t feel like real money going out.    When we were using cash for everything, we could see when money was running low, and we’d adjust our spending to stretch it out as needed.   With plastic, it just became too easy to keep spending.

For the first couple of months, it was easy to overlook the problem.   We paid my son’s vision therapy on the credit card, to get a discount on the therapy and cash in on the rewards program.    That was around $4,000.  Combined with the regular spending, it took us a couple of months to get it all paid off and current.

This month, we’ve managed to overshoot our monthly budget by $500.    We’re only halfway through the month.

This weekend, we had a fairly unpleasant conversation about money.   In the end, we decided to go back to cash-only.   It works for us, in a way that credit cards don’t.   Credit cards were a failed experiment.  We’re going back to what works.

Have you ever had to switch from cash to credit cards and back?  How did that work out?

Fall From Grace

Finance

When you accumulate a certain level of debt, it feels like you’re wading through an eyeball-deep pool of poo, dancing on your tiptoes just to keep breathing.   Ask me how I really feel.Tip Toe

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m in debt.  We have gone over this before.   The story isn’t one of my proudest, so I’ve never talked much about how it happened.

Our debt was entirely our fault.  We messed up and dug our own poo-pool.   There were no major medical bills, no extended unemployment, just a strong consumer urge and an apparent need for instant gratification.  Delayed gratification wasn’t a skill I’d considered learning.  The idea of it was a thoroughly foreign concept.   Why wait when every store we visited offered no payments/no interest for a year?   We didn’t give much thought to what would happen when the year was up.

We got married young.   We bought our house young.  We started our family young.   We did all of that over the course of two years, well before we were financially ready.   Twenty years old, we had excellent credit and gave our credit reports a workout.   Credit was so easy to get.    By the time I was 22, we had a total credit limit more than twice our annual income.  We fought so hard to keep up with the Joneses.   A new pickup, a remodel on our house.   Within a month of paying off the truck, I got a significant raise and rushed out to buy a new car.

Every penny that hit the table was caught in a net of lifestyle expansion.   I was bouncing on my tiptoes.

Four months into my new car payment, I was laid off.  There’s me, hoping for a snorkel.  A week later, we found out our son was going to be a big brother.   Our pool had developed a tide.

We killed the cable and cut back on everything else and…managed.   Money was tight, but we got by.  I got a new job, but had we learned any lessons?  Of course not.   We got a satellite dish, started shopping the way we always had.  Times were good, and could never be bad.  We had such short memories.

Fast forward a couple of years.   Baby #3 is on the way while baby #2 is still in diapers.   Daycare was about to double.  Daddy started to panic.   I built a rudimentary budget and realized there was no way to make ends meet.   There just wasn’t enough cash coming in to cover expenses.   That’s when I made my first frugal decision:  I quit smoking.  That cut the expenses right to the level of our income.  It was tight, but doable.

There was still one serious problem.    Neither one of us could control our impulse shopping.   For a time, I was getting packages delivered almost every day.  It was never anything expensive, but it was always something.  Little things add up quickly.

Last spring, I realized we couldn’t keep going like that.   I started looking into bankruptcy.   Somehow, we managed to toss ourselves into the deep end of the pool.  We had near-perfect credit and no way to maintain it.

While researching bankruptcy, I found our life preserver.   We put together a budget.   We cut and…it hurt.     It’s taken a year, but every bill we have is finally being tracked.   We have an emergency fund and we are working towards our savings goals.    It hasn’t been an easy year, but we are making progress.    We’ve eliminated 15% of our debt and opened out budget to include some “blow money” and an occasional date night.   We are always looking for ways to decrease our bottom line and increase the top line.   Most important, we are actually working together to keep all of our expenses under control, with no hurt feelings when we remind ourselves to stay on track.

We are finally standing flat-footed, head and shoulders above the poo.

Update:  This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.