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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?

Festival of Frugality #287: The Independence Day Edition

Misc

Today, it is my please to host the 287th Festival of Frugality, the Independence Day Edition. Yesterday, was Independence Day in the US. It’s the day we celebrate throwing off the yolk of high-tax, no-rights tyranny and blowing stuff up.

That’s not what this Festival is about. As much as I love this country and enjoyed celebrating, today, the theme is the Independence Day movie.

Coolest ID4 fact, ever: A promotional piece that aired in Spain for this film set off a “War of the Worlds” type of wide spread panic. The promo featured a popular Spanish news anchor and the piece ran as if there really WAS an alien attack to occur on July 4.

Editor’s Picks

The explosion of the Welcome Wagon Helicopters was actually footage of a pyrotechnics accident on set.

Miss T. gives us Seven Reasons to Avoid Penny Auction Sites. She does a great job of explaining the evil that is Penny Auctions, from outright fraud to the rip-off that is the basic business model. Some of these sites make $5000 or more on an iPad auction. They don’t even have to carry an inventory before running an auction.

Independence Day holds the record for most miniature model-work. It beat the previous record by double.

Philip submits Turn Wasted Extra Money Into a Debt Payment. I have a friend who is positive he can’t reduce his monthly expenses at all, while eating out almost every day.

The alien ship “miniature” was 65 feet across.

Boomer presents Financial Support For Your Adult Children. I love my parents. A lot. I couldn’t imagine moving back in with them, and I’m pretty sure they’d feel the same way soon enough. Although, Mom, if you’re reading this, can I have an allowance again?

This was the highest grossing film in 1996.

Suba presents Why you should not use 401k. I’ve never questioned the wisdom of maxing out a 401k. It’s good to see those assumptions challenged and the numbers crunched.

The Best of the Rest

President Whitmore: Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind, that word should have new meaning to all of us. We cannot be consumed by our petty differences anymore. Perhaps it is fate that today is the fourth of July, and we will once again be fighting for our freedom. But not for freedom from tyrrany or oppression or persecution. We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world stood up and declared in one voice that we will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

FMF presents Save Money on Groceries by Shopping on Wednesday posted at Free Money Finance.

Harri Pierce presents Have a second hand summer posted at TotallyMoney.

Daniel presents Top 10 Reasons to Shop Online vs. Shopping In-Store posted at Sweating The Big Stuff.

President Whitmore: It’s a fine line between standing behind a principle and hiding behind one.

Philip Taylor presents The Best Time to Buy posted at PT Money Personal Finance.

Outlaw presents Pay Yourself First and Have Money in the Bank posted at Outlaw Finance.

Crystal presents Frugal Tips for the Pet Dog posted at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff.

Matt presents The Price of Water posted at Stupid Cents.

That’s right! That’s what you get! Look at you! Ship all banged up! Who’s the man? Who’s the man?! Wait until I get another plane! I am going to line up all your friends right beside you! ~ Captain Steven Hiller

Alan presents The Cost of Online Gaming: Free to Play posted at Canadian Finance Blog.

Paula @ AffordAnything.org presents Diets and Debt: Managing Money and Your Weight posted at AffordAnything.org.

Kay Lynn presents Summer Fun for the Frugal Family posted at Bucksome Boomer.

Jacob @ My Personal Finance Journey presents Top 10 Money Saving Tips posted at My Personal Finance Journey.

If you’re so smart, tell me something, how come you go to M.I.T. for 8 years to become a cable repairman?~ Julius Levinson

Glen Craig presents The Cost of Clutter on Your Finances and Life posted at Free From Broke.

Eddie presents 55 Suggestions To Save $1000 posted at Finance Fox.

Darwin presents Are You Better Off Than Your Parents? posted at Darwin’s Money.

Sustainable PF presents Sustainability Tip #179: Loose Cap Lose Gas posted at Sustainable Personal Finance.

WHOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Elvis has left the building! ~ Captain Steven Hiller

I hope you enjoyed the carnival. Please take a moment to subscribe to Live Real, Now.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Business, Finance

This is a follow-up to part 6 of the niche site walkthrough, Setting Up a Niche Site. If you haven’t read that post, this one won’t mean much. Go ahead. Read it. I’ll wait.

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use. In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to explain every choice I recommended last time.

WordPress

WordPress is a site development dream. With the right themes and plugins, you can literally make a WordPress site look, feel, and behave in any way you wish. Even without digging too deep into plugins and premium themes like Headway, you can put together a niche site blog in very little time and know that it’s happening on a robust platform that is actively being improved.

Configuring WordPress

Updates

Keeping your site updated is the single most important thing you can do to avoid getting hacked. Since I haven’t yet figured out how to make hacking a terminal disease, I do the best I can to avoid letting them cause problems. Keeping your site updated is the condom of WordPress.

WWW

This is entirely a personal preference, but, after 20 years of reinforcing habits, most people type “www” by default. WordPress will automatically forward visitors correctly, so this isn’t actually a necessity.

The “Misc” Category

I don’t spend much time worrying about categories when I post, and sometimes I experiment with using external software to post from pools of articles, so I set up a default category. “Misc” is much nicer to see than “Uncategorized”, even if they mean the same thing.

Theme Selection

I like SimpleX because it is uncluttered and easy to navigate. It’s hardly the most powerful theme out there, but it doesn’t pretend to be. If I want more, I use Headway.

Plugins

Plugin Central

Plugin Central is just a plugin installer that lets you install and activate many plugins at once. Even knowing exactly what plugins you want, this easily saves half an hour of setup time.

All in One SEO Pack

SEO is important. In fact, it’s what I base my niche site traffic on. All in One SEO makes it easy to manage the SEO titles that search engines see and the meta descriptions that search engine’s display to visitors when they see your site after a search. Some themes do this themselves, but I still use this plugin.

Meta keywords are all but useless, but not entirely. Google and Bing don’t care, but some networking and sharing sites do.

I “noindex” the tag archives because I don’t want the search engines finding each page twice. Identical pages with different addresses will register as two pages with Google. How does it know which one I consider most important? It doesn’t, so I don’t give it the option of indexing my tag archives.

Contact Form 7

This is just a free and easy contact form. I haven’t found anything better for the price.

WordPress Database Backup

Backups are important. Always back up your data. Do you want to spend 3 weeks building a site, just to have your server crash, killing everything? 5 minutes now will save hours or days of headache later.

SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2

When someone comes to your site from a search engine, this plugin takes the term they searched for and appends it in a list at the end of the post the visitor found. This reinforces your site as a good result for that search term. It also provides a handy list of the most popular search terms people use to find your site.

Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress

I hate spam. If Akismet finds a spam comment being posted, this plugin will give the user a change to enter a CAPTCHA code to post the comment. Even if I turn off comments on a site, I keep this installed in case I ever change my mind. Real comments are good for SEO, so I occasionally test allowing the comments. I won’t waste the time moderating comments on a niche site, so this is a good compromise.

Date Exclusion SEO

If someone comes to a site and sees the last post was two years ago, they’ll leave. I don’t want a post to look like it’s outdated, so I suppress the dates.

Pretty Link Lite

This plugin lets me mask a link and set it to nofollow. Nofollow tells the search engines to discount the value of the link, which removes a spam-site indicator from their algorithms. Masking the link turns a messy affiliate link into a link that looks internal, making it easier for a visitor to click and allowing you to see how often a link is clicked.

Google XML Sitemaps

Making it easy for Google to find your entire site is a good thing. This plugin helps with that.

WP Policies

This plugin provides a long list of site policies, formatted for a WordPress page. The most important one is the disclaimer announcing the fact that your are making money on your site.

WP Super Cache

Super Cache creates a pre-generated copy of your page so the site doesn’t have to hit the database to rebuild it dynamically every time someone visits. It’s all about speed, which affects your search rank.

JetPack

I like using the WordPress.com stats instead of Google Analytics for most of my niche site. I don’t see a need to announce to Google that these 12 sites are owned by me, so I don’t. WordPress.com included their stats plugin in JetPack, then discontinued the standalone plugin, so I use JetPack.

Backup

If I subscribe to my own feed, I get every post in Google Reader. That means I don’t need to make a daily backup of any of my sites. For the amount of changes I make to my niche sites, weekly might still be overkill, but that’s what I do. I get the backups by email so I have a copy somewhere other than the host. I don’t believe in letting anyone control my money but me.

Settings

Discussion

Most comments to niche sites are spam comments, so I hide them without actually turning them off. Sometimes I test letting the comments through, because some niches might have great people that want to post good comments. I haven’t had a lot of luck with that, on my niche sites.

Permalinks

The default permalink structure is absolutely not recommended for search engine purposes. It’s also harder for someone to mention. I don’t put dates in the link for the same reason I hide dates in the posts: I don’t want anything to look outdated.

Menus

I keep the navigation menu simple. It has three purposes:

Link to the page that’s designed to make money.
Link to the pages that show Google and readers it is an active site.
Link to the disclaimer that keeps my butt away from federal fines.

Anything else is wasted space.

Widgets

On my niche sites, I use widgets to help with navigation and to point people to the pages that will make the most money. I haven’t addressed how I do the second part yet, because I haven’t created those pages yet.

Posts

Right now, http://www.masterweddingplanning.net/ has exactly one post, and it’s a duplicated post from eZineArticles. It has served its purpose. This site is fully indexed by Google.

When I get the rest of the content written, I’ll delete that post.

There you have it, the reasons behind every choice I make during site creation. Did I miss anything? Do you have any other questions?

Balance Your Borked Budget

Finance

You’ve got a budget worked out to the penny. You know every dollar that comes in and every dime that you spend. All of your bills are getting paid on time. Then, one day, it all comes crashing down. Your budget is no longer even a reasonable approximation of your cash flow. You’ve got no idea what’s coming in or going out. Bills are piling up and fees are digging you deeper in debt.

What happened? More importantly, how do you get back on track?

The first thing you need to do is identify the problem. What, exactly, went wrong? Did you lose your job or need a surprise botox injection? Your car died or your kid developed a hockey habit? Sports car or shoe sale? Whatever the cause, if you can’t identify it, you can’t deal with it. Some of the possible problems may be things that can get clubbed and buried in the backyard, while other things may be expenses that won’t be going away. If it’s a one-time expense, you can simply refocus your debt repayment to take it into account. If it’s an ongoing expense, you will need to adjust your other expenses, possibly in a drastic manner, to make ends meet. You can’t know which way to go without knowing what caused the problem.

Next, commit to to making it right. Don’t leave it at a mere commitment. Actually commit and actually do it right. Future-you is counting on you to fix the problem before he gets screwed. This is important. Without firm–and real–commitment, nothing else will matter. At best, you will be treading water. At worst, you will drown yourself in unanticipated bills.

Cut everything extra. Every expense–whether it’s your mortgage or your maid–is a rock in your pocket, one hundred miles from shore. How much can you carry and stay afloat? This isn’t the time to keep paying something because you enjoy it. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, it’s got to go. Cut your internet, cancel Netflix, learn to shut off the lights when you aren’t using them. Is the early termination fee less than 6 months of your cable bill, your satellite bill? Cancel it. You can always sign up again later. This is the time to be ruthless.

Is there a way to bring in some extra cash? Can you pick up a second job, or land a freelancing gig? If you’ve suddenly found yourself unemployed, can you spend some time on being a Mechanical Turk? Sell all of the things you don’t use anymore, or, more likely, never should have bought in the first place? Do you have a spare kidney?

Remember, this is a drastic situation calling for drastic measures. Your future is depending on you. Don’t make him come back and kick your butt.

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

Yakezie Carnival: The 93 Edition

Misc

Welcome to the Yakezie Carnival. The Yakezie is a group of the best personal finance blogs on the internet. In short, we rock. Joining the Yakezie is a 6 month challenge involving Alexa ranking and cross-promotion.

These are posts submitted by Yakezie members. Please note, this is the 93 Edition, not the 93rd Edition.

Today is April 3rd, the 93rd day of the year.

93 is a Blum integer. For those of you who don’t know, a Blum integer is, to quote Wikipedia, a natural number n if n = p×q is a semiprime for which p and q are distinct prime numbers congruent to 3 mod 4. Now you know as much as you did before. If you understand that definition, you probably already knew what a Blum integer was. To me, this means a Blum integer is a number that has a definition that I have to copy and paste to even repeat coherently. It exists solely to make math geeks feel smart. I am not a math geek.

On to the carnival!

KrantCents brings us Cash or Credit, a post about the choice between using cash or credit for purchases. We’ve wrestled with this one before. A few months ago, we basically abandoned the cash-only system as inconvenient and too easy to ignore. Right now, we are transitioning to a travel rewards card for all of our regular purchases. I’m going to see how much of my trip to the Financial Blogger Conference I can get for free.

Using thelemic isopsephy, a form of numerology promoted by Aleister Crowley, Will + Love = 93. Crowley once said something to the effect of “Never lie. Just live the kind of life no one will believe.” I love that quote, but I can’t remember where I read it.

Dr. Dean presents 5 Tips Plus A Bonus On Saving Money: Today! and says “Dr Dean’s patients are telling him their costs are rising, despite the feds promise that inflation is under control. 5 tips to save a little money, now (with a fun bonus!)” As a father of 3, the bonus tip needs to be rethought. Long-term costs….

On February 8th, 1993, GM sued NBC for faking crashes that show GM trucks catching fire in car accidents. First, if Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that cars catch fire in every accident, no matter how minor. Second, where’s Toyota’s lawsuit, now?

Jacob at My Personal Finance Journey bring us Are Extended Auto Warranties A Scam? and says “A look at the considerations that should go in to deciding whether or not extended warranties are worth their weight in gold.” I want to call extended auto warranties a scam, but I can’t. When I bought my car, I got the warranty and paid a couple of thousand dollars for it(I don’t remember exactly how much!). For years, it was worthless, but shortly before the warranty expired, I had a couple of problems that needed to be fixed, so I brought it in and asked for a complete inspection to go with the repair. All told, I got close to $5,000 in repairs for that $2,000 warranty and my car drives like new at 7 years old.

On May 10th, 1893, the United States Supreme Court officially declared the tomato to be a vegetable, proving once again that, not only will the government stick its nose into absolutely anything, but it doesn’t feel a need to base its decisions on facts or science. Remember that when you hear any government declaration regarding scientific facts or advances.

Money Reasons bring us Are We All COGs in the Machine Of Life? and says “Break away from the business machine that is using you as a COG spinning doing the owner’s bidding. Why just spin in circles wasting life away? Start your own business or develop some life fulfilling hobbies!” I love the idea of breaking out and doing what you love, whether or not it makes you any money. Life’s too short to hate everything about it.

In Q1, 1793, France declared war on Great Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. Now, they make whine, pastries, and self-righteous politicians. The Earth is also 93 million miles from the sun. Coincidence? I think not.

Evan at My Journey to Millions offers up Important Dates When Investing in Dividend Producing Stocks and says “When you are dealing with dividend paying stocks there are dates whose definitions can be considered a term of art and you should know about including declaration date, ex-dividend date, record date and payment date.” I get lost when dealing with most investments. That’s mostly because, at this point in my financial journey, I don’t care. I’m still working on paying my way out of debt. I’ll worry about the investments later.

93 is located at the 42nd digit of pi. That is obviously significant. I should team up with Thelema to invent some mystical reason to take a paid holiday tomorrow to celebrate the works of Douglas Adams.

Melissa at Mom’s Plan presents How to Accomplish Your Goals Part Two: Write Down a Step-by-Step Timeline and says “Writing down the goal is only one step of the process; directing yourself as to how you will complete the process is just as important.” Having goals turns life into a game. Games are fun, so goals are good.

By contentment, the acquisition of extreme happiness. – 93rd Aphroism Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra

Darwin’s Money brings us Life Settlement Investment – Scam or Legit? and says “Life Settlement Investments – Profiting from Death? Scam? Or legitimate high yield alternative investment? Find out for yourself with the facts here.” Life settlement funds appeal to me in a totally morbid, Running Man kind of way. It’s less disturbing that Treadmill to Bucks.

Finally, 93 is the number of the flight that successfully fought back on 9/11. Never forget.

Extra Money? What Do I Do With Extra Money?

Finance

A couple of months ago, I started a new job. The new job has bonus potential every month, and

getting that bonus is largely under my control. Effectively, if I’m not a total slacker, I’ll get
about $500 every month, but it’s not guaranteed.

We’re also getting a small 4 figure tax refund this year. I wasn’t expecting that at the beginning
of last year, but one of my side hustles has taken a turn down a path I didn’t plan for, which
lowered my tax liability considerably.

Both of these things are money that we can’t plan for, so it’s not in the budget. It is extra
money.

What the heck do you do(responsibly) with extra money? It’s easy to take the money and run to the
spend it someplace fun.

Easy.

And tempting.

Very tempting.

But that wouldn’t be responsible at all.

The Dave Ramsey plan says we should put it on our debt, but our debt is down to just a mortgage,
and that’s down to $9000.

Retirement?

I actually over-contributed to my retirement last year, and had to file a form to get the
overpayment back instead of paying a penalty on that money. My wife’s account isn’t getting maxed,
yet, but she’s also way ahead of me in retirement savings.

So what to do with it?

I added a calculator that let’s me punch in a number and it breaks it out by our optional goals.

It has 6 categories:

Extra mortgage payment: 25%. My goal is to pay off the mortgage completely this year.
Retirement contribution: 25%. I do want to max Linda’s retirement contributions this year.
Emergency fund: 15%. We have an emergency fund, but I want to grow it to 6 months of our expenses.
Family: 15%. This if for whatever family thing we’re planning to do. It could be pushed into a down payment for another rental property, or a vacation, or a camper. We’ll decide this each time we get the extra money.
Jason’s Fun Money: 10%. This is for me to blow on something fun, like a 3D printer.
Linda’s Fun Money: 10%. This if for my wife to blow on something fun, like a present for me.

So, if we get $2500 randomly dropped in our mailbox, we’ll put $625 on the mortgage and a
retirement fund, $375 to the emergency fund and the family fund, and $250 to Linda and I for fun
stuff.

That lets us see progress on a few of our goals, while still rewarding how hard we’ve worked and
how much we’ve done without while becoming financially stable. 65% of it is pure grown-up &
responsible spending. 35% is generally fun, but can be repurposed if necessary.

What do you do with surprise money? Do you blow it or do something responsible with it?