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Black Friday Eve

Today is Black Friday Eve. It’s the day when people gather around the table and gorge in preparation for the mighty battle to

Black Friday shoppers at Walmart — Ick! Who thinks this is fun?

come on the fields of Wal-Mart.

We won’t be participating this year. My wife got laid off 3 weeks ago and I started a new job on Monday. The new job has a 2 week delay between pay period and pay check, so I won’t see a check until the middle of December.

We aren’t hurting but we are tapping into our savings to bridge the gap to paycheck #1. I just transferred $1200 to cover the gap. With that, the money we have to cover things not in our regular budget is $36. You can’t go too crazy on Black Friday with $36.

That isn’t draining our savings. We took some, but not all of it.

It isn’t raiding our Christmas present fund.

It isn’t taking money out of the braces fund.

Or any other fund.

This isn’t pain and we won’t be tasting poverty for Christmas. We just have to de-prioritize blind consumerism for the holidays.

Instead, we’ll sleep in a bit, then cuddle with a couple of little girls who will want to watch something horrible like Horseland first thing in the morning. We’ll follow that up with a leisurely breakfast, maybe a walk around the neighborhood pond and Thanksgiving-A-Day-Late with my wife’s family.

And a bit of remodeling and repair work on our rental property whenever my Dad can drag himself out of bed and come over.

It will be a good day and shouldn’t cost a cent. That’s what I’m thankful for.

Looking Back: 2012 in Review

Misc

Another year draws to a close while I still feel like it’s March…2002. How does that happen?

Here are the 10 most visited pages on this site over the past year:

Numbers 4 & 8 surprise me a bit, because they are carnival posts. There’s no meat there.

Number 10 is an unfinished series. I will finish that soon.

What else has happened this year?

My financial situation has changed pretty drastically.

My mother-in-law passed away in April, leaving my wife a house, a reasonably well-funded retirement account, and a moderate life insurance policy.
Two of my side hustles have grown to the point where I was close to looking at the end of my day job. One of them is still on the upswing, the other has contracted a bit.
I changed my day job. The new job is mostly a lateral move, but a bit of a backwards step in my career. I’m not managing a team any more and I’m not the senior developer. I have picked up more social media and advertising responsibilities, which is a direction I’ve wanted to go for a while. Combined with a pay raise and moving to an industry I care about, this is a good move.

These changes worked out well with the several years of debt elimination. Now, our credit cards are paid off each month and our mortgage is down to $24,000. The inherited house is almost ready for the renters to move in just one month from now, and we’re considering adding more properties to our financial plan. We did take out a car loan 6 weeks ago, but that was only to take advantage of a deal. We’ve paid off nearly half of the loan and should have the rest paid off in a couple of months.

What’s on tap for 2013?

I’m hoping to carve out more time for me. And my family. I’ve worked almost nonstop in 2012, now I’d like to explore some personal interests and develop some non-commercial hobbies. There are a few commercial projects currently in the works, and a few planned, but I’m going to try to keep those under control this year. My interest vary and don’t always stick for long, so there’s no real measure of success here, but if I can buy an atlatl and learn how to chuck a spear into a target or maybe brew a few batches of beer, I’ll be happy.

I’m also going to spend more time working on my health. Working 60 hour weeks with at least an hour of daily commute time killed most options for exercise. Now that I’m working from home, I’ve been walking a mile or more every day that’s been above 15 degrees. I’m going to restart the slow carb diet tomorrow. It won’t be as complicated this time, because I can eat out of my refrigerator instead of trying to pack a slow carb meal or find one at a restaurant for lunch. I’ll consider this a win if I can drop 60 pounds this year.

What about the blog?

I’ve considered selling this site. Time is always crunched, and I’m no longer paying off debt, but I still need the outlet. I’ll probably keep to the twice-a-week schedule and you can probably expect me to focus more on personal and business development instead of money.

Have a happy new year!

Six Year Loan in 10 Months

Business, Finance

Back in October, I mentioned that we were taking on more debt.

2007 Chevrolet Tahoe photographed in USA. Cate... — 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe photographed in USA. Category:GMT921 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our plan was:

We now have a car loan for $21564. Our plan is to sell the Caliber for $9500 and the F150 for $6800. That will leave $5354. We have a beneficiary IRA that has to be cashed out relatively soon, so we’re planning to do that early in January to push the tax burden to next year, which will end the loan.

How has that worked out?

We made the final payment on the Tahoe today. Our first payment was December 10, 2012. It took us 10 months to pay off six year loan.

We had initially hoped to have it paid off by March. That didn’t happen. Our plan didn’t work, so how did we do it?

Here’s what happened:

We sold the F150 for $6400, cash.

We still haven’t cashed out the IRA.

We sold the Dodge Caliber for $8500, but….

(This is where the story starts.)

While we were fixing up our rental house, we met quite a few repairmen and installers of various expensive doo-dads. Several of them were interested in buying the Caliber. One of them convinced my wife that we should accept payments for it. That’s a mistake we’ve made before, but we decided to make it again.

We wrote up a loan agreement, listed ourselves as the lien holder on the title and sold the guy a car for $1500/month with no interest. It was supposed to be paid off in just a few month, so it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

He made two payments, then disappeared for a while.

When he re-materialized, he told us he’d been in the hospital and had lost his job.

Crap.

When the time came to make his next payment, he told us he was going into the hospital for a couple of weeks, and he’d work something out after.

It’s “that kind” of hospital. The dry kind.

Suddenly, it was May and he was telling us his sister would help make payments because drinking yourself into rehab once a month makes it hard to keep a job.

Stories, excuses, BS.

Finally, we got sick of it. I like helping people, but I despise being lied to.

Repo time.

In Minnesota, if you’ve ever taken action(or not taken action) that would make it appear that you were okay with a modified payment plan contrary to the loan agreement–for example, not taking the car back after the first missed payment–you have to send a “Letter to Cure”, which is a 10-day notice of intent to repo. This gives the customer a chance to make things right.

On day 8, he called us, fresh from rehab, promising his sister would help him out. On day 10, she called. Her business had been broken into and she was working that out, but she’d arrange something with us after the weekend.

Crap, that sounds like more excuses.

Remember, this was already August, and the car was supposed to have been paid in early April. We’re such suckers.

By the middle of the week, she called and said she’d make the payment. My wife and I decided that we’d give her three days, then go take the car. On day 2, she said she was overnighting money.

On day three, we got a check and two postal money orders to cover the balance. $4500.

Today is the 10th day from that deposit. The check has cleared, and payment is off to the bank, killing the loan.

But wait, 4500 + 6400 is only $10,900. That leave $10,664 unaccounted for.

From the beginning, we were making double payments. Instead of paying $425 per month, we paid $850 most months, except when things got a little tight over the summer. The tax refund we got that we weren’t expecting also went to the loan. Every extra dollar got sent to the bank, because we weren’t sure how the car loan drama was going to end.

Taking the cars we sold out of the equation, we still paid off the remaining $10,664 in just 10 months. Interest payments came to about $300, which the buyer of the Caliber says he wants to pay us, but I’m not counting on it.

So again, we are debt free and have just freed up $850 in our monthly budget. Half of that will be getting saved for the next car, and half will go towards our other savings goals.

Net Worth Update

Misc

Time to update my net worth. Here are the highlights:

We paid off the Tahoe we bought last fall, but the value of my Pacifica fell $5,000 since April. That made me sad.

In August, we had $1000 worth of car repairs and $5500 for braces. We had most of the money saved for braces, but had to juggle some savings accounts around to cover it. We didn’t have enough money in our car repair fund to cover the repairs. Between the two, we beat up our credit card a bit more than usual last month. I’m not happy about it, but I’m confident we’ll catch up this month. My current goal is to get that paid off by the end of September. If I do, I should be able to avoid paying any interest on the balance.

All in all, it’s not bad progress. Our assets dropped $171.61, but our liabilities dropped $10,931.13, so our net worth is up $10,000. You won’t catch me complaining about that.

What’s going to happen in the future? We’re going to remodel both of our bathrooms this winter. We’re hoping to buy a pony before spring.

I’m excited to see our budget evolve over the next few months.

My wife is working and my kids are all in school. With the way our schedules work, we’ve pulled the youngest two out of daycare, so that expense is gone. And there are a couple of other things in the works that I’ll be sharing when they are finalized. If things progress the way they are looking, we’re going to spend the winter living off of my income, and saving her’s. That makes me feel like putting on an ant costume and kicking grasshopper’s butt all over town.

Missing Money

Finance

Last week, I checked my credit card account only to discover I was over budget by nearly $1000.

What.

The.

Heck?

It threw me into a bit of a panic. How could we possibly have spent an extra grand without knowing it?

We didn’t buy new furniture. We didn’t buy new computers. We didn’t buy a new car. We didn’t take any trips.

Oh, wait.

I did take a trip. I went to work headquarters for three days. That’s about a $500 mileage allowance, plus three days of restaurant meals.

I forgot to file my expense report.

That’s where my money went.

Somehow, in all of life’s wonderful hustle, I neglected to ask my company for the almost $1000 they owe me. That’s an oversight, for sure.

Luckily, we keep that much padding in our other accounts, so I don’t have to pay interest on that money, but still.

That’s my money and I forgot about it.

I’m so not happy with myself.

What’s worse, is that even though I figured out the problem last week, I still haven’t gotten that expense report filed.

It’s not procrastination, I swear. I’ve just been absentminded and keep forgetting to do it. Right now, I’ve got “EXPENSE REPORT” written on my whiteboard to remind me to file it.

Cuz I’m going to do it tomorrow.

The $10 College Fund

Finance, Parenting

I recently started a college fund for my kids. With my oldest getting ready to turn 10, this was a late start. However, when he was born, we were in no position to set aside anything extra.

At least, we didn’t realize we were at the time.

When our oldest son was born, I was 20 years old. I was working in a factory and hadn’t gone to college myself, yet. That’s a situation that makes it hard to justify a college fund. Financial planning and responsibility was to come at a later date.

So, how much do we have in this shiny new college fund? [Read more…] about The $10 College Fund

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