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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?

How You’re Finding Me

Misc

Every once in a while, I like to dig through Google Analytics and see how people are finding this site. Some of the search terms are interesting.

“father of three” mid life crisis

Here’s a free piece of advice. As a father of three, you don’t get to have a mid-life crisis. It’s not allowed. Rather, it’s allowed, but you aren’t allowed to act on it. At a minimum, until your children are out of the house, you need to man up and provide all of the support you possibly can. No sports cars you can’t afford and no 22 year old hardbodies. Be there for your kids.

“payday loans” which accepts guest posts

Payday loan marketing. Just go away. You aren’t running a guest post here.

“slow carb” hungry all the time

You’re doing it wrong. If you are hungry, eat more bacon. Or beans. Beans fill you up longer.

$1000000 business idea

Ideas are the easy part. Execution makes you a millionaire.

articles on why appearance shouldn’t matter?

Appearances do matter, and always will. Your appearance is what makes the initial impression when you meet someone new. You don’t have to be a model, but basic grooming and fashion sense is necessary. Take this with a grain of salt. I’ve got a week’s growth of a beard and I wear a different plaid, button-down shirt every day.

are push ups supposed to be hard

Only the first 50. After that, I kind of go on blissed-out autopilot. If you can do 100 pushups, you can probably do 200.

acceptable place to put tattoo

If you wear clothes there, you can put a tattoo there. Visible tattoos are called “job stoppers” for a reason. If you put a tattoo on your face, the only job you qualify for is “drug dealer’s girlfriend”. Or possibly prison janitor.

burning bridges with toxic people

If you must burn bridges, filling them with toxic people first isn’t a bad idea.

candied pork butt

Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it. Interesting side story: while double-checking the rule number, I stumbled across My Little Ponies doing things they never advertise on the box.

cut my wife’s hair

I did this once. Pro tip: In the back, at the bottom, cut small chunks and leave them longer than you think they should be. You can always cut more, but uncutting hair is really hard.

f***** on the roadside by your mechanic

He probably deserves a tip for that.

girls fart for money and girls live farts

See the bit about the pork butt, remove the funny, and…ewww.

how to be a successful debtor

I recommend starting by paying your bills. When the debts are gone, you win. Success!

i ate bacon on slow carb diet

So did everyone else, sweetie. It’s the biggest draw to the slow carb diet.

in memory of pets tattoos

When I get a pet, I get it with the understanding that I’m going to outlive it. The day I bring it home, some small part of me is preparing for the day when I have to dig a hole in my backyard. Tattooing that day? Not gonna happen.

thickening felt behind testicle

Why are you on google? Go to the doctor. Please?

Interesting. Between girls farting and my post about being well-trained, there is a significant amount of fetish traffic coming through here. Maybe I need to explore a new advertising strategy.

Your Budget is Worthless

Finance

When you realize that you’ve buried yourself in debt and decide to get out from under that terrible burden, the first thing you’ve got to do is build a budget because, without that, you’ve got no way to know how much money you have or need. After you’ve got a budget, you’ll start spending according to whatever it says. Hopefully, you’ll stay on budget, but what happens when an emergency does come up? What do you do when your car dies? When you suddenly find out your kids needs vision therapy? How do you manage when your job suddenly gets shipped off to East De Moines?

Your budget isn’t going to help you meet those expenses. Most people don’t have enough money in their bank account to make it all the way to the next payday, let alone enough to keep the lights on and food on the table. How can you possibly hope to deal with even the little things that come up?

You whip out your emergency fund.

The problem with a budget is that it does a poor job of accounting for the unexpected. That’s where an emergency fund comes in. An emergency fund is money that you have set aside in an available-but-not-too-accessible account. Its sole purpose is to give you a line of defense when life rears up and kicks you in the butt. Without an emergency fund, everything that comes unexpectedly is automatically an emergency. With an emergency fund, the things that come up are merely minor setbacks. Without an emergency fund, your budget is nothing but a good intention waiting to get shattered by the next thing that comes along. With an emergency fund, you are managing money. Without it, it’s managing you.

How much money do you need in an emergency fund?

Every “expert” has their own opinion on this. Dave Ramsey recommends $1000 to start. Suze Orman says 8 months. The average time spent looking for work after losing your job is 24.5 weeks(roughly 6 months), so I recommend 7 months of expenses. That’s enough to carry you through an average bout of unemployment and a little more, but that’s not a goal for your first steps toward financial perfection. To start with, get $1000 in a savings account. That’s enough to manage most run-of-the-mill emergencies, without unduly delaying the rest of your debt repayment and savings goals.

How do you build an emergency fund?

Let’s not kid ourselves, $1000 is a lot of money when can barely make it from one check to the next. Unfortunately, this vital first step can’t get ignored. If you really work at it, you should be able to come up with $1000 in a month or so. Here are some ideas on how to manage that:

Cut. Drop every possible expense. If you drop cable, your cell phone, Netflix, and a weekly dinner out, you will already be saving $400 that month. You’d be almost halfway there.
Sell. How much stuff do you have that you don’t need, want, or use? I’d be willing to be there’s more than you realize. Last spring, I had a garage sale that brought in about $1300. Everything we sold was just crap we don’t use any more. We sold candles and candle-holders, DVDs, books, clothes, toys, electronics, games, and anything else we could find. I spent a month going through every room in my house to find my inventory. Craigslist is a good way to sell just one or two things at a time.
Work. Have you thought about delivering pizza or working weekends in a gas station? If you have some technical or writing ability, you could pick up some part time work on oDesk or eLance. Your opportunities are only limited by what you are willing to do.

Stop at a grand?

Dave Ramsey’s advice is to get your fund up to $1000 and then leave it alone until your debt is paid off. Screw that. I’ve got money going into my fund every month. It’s only $25 per month, but over the last two years, it has almost doubled my fund. Don’t dedicate so much money that you can’t meet your other goals, but don’t be afraid to keep some money flowing in .

Using the fund?

When can you pull the money out? That is entirely up to you. I have ju st two points to make about withdrawing from your emergency fund:

Don’t keep the money in an easy-to-access account. If your fund is in the savings account that serves as your overdraft protection account, it’s too easy to spend it, and it will go away. I keep it in my INGDirect account. I don’t use the checking account for anything in person, so I don’t carry the card. If I want to spend that money, it will take 2-3 days to transfer into my main bank account.
Never decide to spend the money on the spur of the moment. There are very few major financial decisions that can’t wait until morning to be answered. Sleep on it. If it’s still necessary tomorrow, you can spend it without guilt.

An emergency fund makes your life easier and your budget possible when the unexpectable happens. Don’t forget to fund yours.

How much money do you keep in your emergency fund? What would it take to get you to spend it?

Overbanked

Finance

Last week, when I mentioned that I lost my phone, there was some interest in my self-insurance warranty plan.

Post Office Savings history — Image by brizzle born and bred via Flickr

The truth is, that’s just one of 14 savings accounts I keep. I find it’s simpler to keep track of my savings goals by moving the money to separate accounts than to track everything in a spreadsheet. This lets me tell how I’m doing at a glance.

I have one account each at two major traditional banks. These savings accounts exist to provide a target for an automatic transfer that eliminates fees on the associated checking accounts. Whenever much money accumulates here, I sweep it out and throw it at my credit card.

I also have 12 accounts at INGDirect. I chose ING because they are extremely convenient and, at least at the time, had a competitive interest rate. Different countries have different banking options.

Here are the rest my accounts:

Emergency fund. I deposit $25 every month. I also keep part of my emergency fund in a CD that’s also at ING.
Property tax fund. Every month, I deposit a bit more than a twelfth of my annual property tax bill. When the time comes to pay, I just transfer the money from my account to the tax assessor. It works well.
College fund. Yes, this is a straight savings account. Right now, I’m focused on debt, not college. When my debt is gone I’ll ramp this up. I started this just to get started. From here, it’s a few seconds of work to increase the amount I contribute, which is currently $10 per month.
Warranty fund. Instead of buying warranties, or going into a panic when something breaks, I deposit $50 into this account every month. When something breaks, I take the money out of this account(assuming I have enough) and use it to replace or repair whatever is missing. $50 isn’t a lot to contribute, if you have things breaking every week. I go several months without touching this money, and it’s always been enough to cover what we need.
Vacation fund. This is pure fun money. I sock away a bit out of every check, and occasionally when other money comes in. Then, we plan our vacation around how much money we have here and how many points we have saved on our credit card. Vacations seem like a luxury when we’ve got debt, but I work so much and miss so much of my kids, day to day, that I consider this a necessity. It’s a week of downtime with my family, doing something they will remember. It’s worth it, several times over.
Braces fund. So far, we know that two of our kids are going to end up in braces. One of them will probably be this year. We had more in this account, but stole some to cover our vision therapy bill. When our insurance reimbursement finally comes back, that will go straight into this account.
Camera fund. My wife really wants a prosumer-level camera, so I started an account to save for it. If we go over budget, this is the first account we raid, since this is purely a luxury.
Personal goal accounts. We each have a goal account set up for things that don’t affect the family. As a practical matter, I save to go to FINCON and a hunting trip with my Dad and my brother, while my wife saves for a couple of scrapbooking retreats each year. These accounts are funded solely from extra money and don’t have an automatic deposit.
Car fund. This started as a car repair fund, with a $50 deposit each month. When my car was finally paid off last year, I took half of my car payment and redirected it into this account, to help us pay cash for our next car. Last month, I stole some money from this account to play stockbroker. It wasn’t a lot of money, but I’ve gotten a 25% return over the last 6 weeks.
Internet. This is just a convenient account to catch money that gets paid from things like my Amazon affiliate account.
Held for tax. The name should be self-explanatory. When I get paid from any of my side hustles, I set aside about 25% to cover any tax bill I may be missing. After I file my taxes, I shoot any leftover money out to my other savings goals or my credit card, as appropriate.

I also have a couple of monthly line items in Quicken that I haven’t broken into separate accounts, just to provide an overdraft buffer, like our gift budget.

That’s proof that I am over-banked. How about you? How do you track your savings goals?

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to set up a WordPress site. I’m going to show you exactly what settings, plugins, and themes I use. I’m not going to get into writing posts today. That will be next time.

I use WordPress because it makes it easy to develop good-looking sites quickly. You don’t have to know html or any programming. I will be walking through the exact process using Hostgator, but most hosting plans use CPanel, so the instructions will be close. If not, just follow WordPress’s 5 minute installation guide.

Installing WordPress

Assuming you can follow along with me, log in to your hosting account and find the section of your control panel labeled “Software/Service”. Click “Fantastico De Luxe”.

On the Fantastico screen, click WordPress, then “New Installation”.

On the next screen, select your domain name, then enter all of the details: admin username, password, site name, and site description. If you’ll remember, I bought the domain http://www.masterweddingplanning.net. I chose the site name of “Master Wedding Planning” and a description of “Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding”.

Click “install”, then “finish installation”. The final screen will contain a link to the admin page, in this case, masterweddingplanning.net/wp-admin. Go there and log in.

Configuring WordPress

After you log in, if there is a message at the top of the screen telling you to update, do so. Keeping your site updated is the best way to avoid getting hacked. Click “Please update now” then “Update automatically”. Don’t worry about backing up, yet. We haven’t done anything worth saving.

Next, click “Settings” on the left. Under General Settings, put the www in the WordPress and site URLs. Click save, then log back in.

Click Posts, then Categories. Under “Add New Category”, create one called “Misc” and click save.

Click Appearance. This brings you to the themes page. Click “Install Themes” and search for one you like. I normally use Headway, but before I bought that, I used SimpleX almost exclusively. Your goal is to have a simple theme that’s easy to maintain and easy to read. Bells and whistles are a distraction.

Click “Install”, “Install now”, and “Activate”. You now have a very basic WordPress site.

Plugins

A plugin is an independent piece of software to make independent bits of WordPress magic happen. To install the perfect set of plugins, click Plugins on the left. Delete “Hello Dolly”, then click “Add new”.

In the search box, enter “plugin central” and click “Search plugins”. Plugin Central should be the first plugin in the list, so click “install”, then “ok”, then “activate plugin”. Congratulations, you’ve just installed your first plugin.

Now, on the left, you’ll see “Plugin Central” under Plugins. Click it. In the Easy Plugin Installation box, copy and paste the following:

 All in One SEO Pack
 Contact Form 7
 WordPress Database Backup
 SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
 WP Super Cache
 Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
 date exclusion seo
 WP Policies
 Pretty Link Lite
 google xml sitemaps
 Jetpack by WordPress.com

Click “install”.

On the left, click “Installed Plugins”. On the next screen, click the box next to “Plugins”, then select “Activate” from the dropdown and click apply.

Still under Plugins, click “Akismet Configuration”. Enter your API key and hit “update options”. You probably don’t have one, so click “get your key”.

Tools

The only tool I worry about is the backup. It’s super-easy to set up. Click “Tools”, then “Backup”.

Scroll down to “Schedule Backups”, select weekly, make sure it’s set to a good email address and click “Schedule Backup”. I only save weekly because we won’t be adding daily content. Weekly is safe enough, without filling up your email inbox.

Settings

There are a lot of settings we’re going to set. This is going to make the site more usable and help the search engines find your site. We’re going to go right down the list. If you see a section that I don’t mention, it’s because the defaults are good enough.

Writing

Set the Default Post Category to “Misc”.

Visit this page and copy the entire list into “Update Service” box. This will make the site ping a few dozen services every time you publish a post. It’s a fast way to get each post indexed by Google.

Click “Save Changes”.

Discussion

Uncheck everything under “Email me whenever…” and hit save. This lets people submit comments, without actually posting the comments or emailing me when they do so. Every once in a while, I go manually approve the comments, but I don’t make it a priority.

Permalinks

Select “Custom structure” and enter this: /%postname%/

Click save.

All in One SEO

Set the status to “Enabled”, then fill out the site title and description. Keep the description to about 160 characters. This is what builds the blurb that shows up by the link when you site shows up in Google’s results.

Check the boxes for “Use categories for META keywords” and “Use noindex for tag archives”.

Click “Update Options”.

Date Exlusion SEO

Check the boxes to remove each of the dates and set the alt text to “purpose” or something. This will suppress the date so your posts won’t look obsolete.

SEO Search Terms 2

This plugin reinforces the searches that bring people to your site. It’s kind of neat. Skip the registration, accept the defaults and hit save.

WP Policies

Scroll to the bottom and click import. We’ll come back to this.

WP Super Cache

Select “Caching On” and hit save.

JetPack

Across the top of the screen should be a giant banner telling you to connect to WordPress.com and set up Jetpack. You’ll need an account on WordPress.com, so go there and set one up. After authorizing the site, you’ll be brought back to the Jetpack configuration screen. Click “Configure” under “WordPress.com Stats”. Take the defaults and hit save.

Contact

On the contact configuration page, copy the code in the top section. You’ll need this in a moment.

Pages

Now, we going to create a couple of static pages. On the left, click “Pages”, then “Add new”.

Name the first page “Contact” and put the contact form code in the body of the page. Hit publish.

Menus

Under Appearance, click “Menu”. Enter a menu name and hit save.

Then, under “Pages”, click the box next to “Contact”, “Disclaimer”, and any other policies you’d like to display. Hit save.

Widgets

Also under Appearance, click “Widgets”. This is where you’ll select what will display in the sidebar. All you have to do is drag the boxes you want from the middle of the page to the widget bar on the right. I recommend Text, Search, Recent Posts, Popular Search Terms and Tag Cloud. In the text box, just put some placeholder text in it, like “Product will go here”. We’ll address this next time.

Posts

We’re not going to worry about getting posts in place, yet. That will be the next installment. However, the steps in the next installment could take 2 weeks to implement, and we want Google to start paying attention now. To make that happen, we need to get a little bit of content in place. This won’t be permanent content. It’s only there so Google has something to see when it comes crawling.

To get this temporary, yet legal content, I use eZineArticles. Just go search for something in your niche that doesn’t look too spammy.

Then, click “Posts”, then delete the “Hello World” post. Click “Add new”. Copy the eZine article, being sure to include the author box at the bottom, and hit publish.

To see your changes, you may have to go to Settings, then WP Cache and delete the cache so your site will refresh.

Congratulations! You now have a niche blog with content. It’s not ready to make you any money, yet, but it is ready for Google to start paying attention. In the next installment, I’ll show you how I get real unique content and set it up so Google keeps coming back to show me the love.

Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances

Welcome to the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series consists of 30 things you can do, each in one setting, to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

Day 1: Setting Goals

To start with, we look at 3 questions:

What is your financial goal?
Why?
How can you get there?

Day 2: What’s Going Out?

On day 2, you’re going to find out what you are spending. For most people, this will be a bit of a surprise.

Day 3: What’s Coming In?

For day 3, you’re going to examine exactly how much money you bring in each month and think about how you can make more.

Day 4: Making A Budget

On day 4, you’ll build a basic budget. This doesn’t have to be intimidating.

Day 5: Boosting Your Income

This is the day we really dig into ways to make more money, whether that means getting a raise or finding work on the side. Nothing beats more income for balancing your budget and getting out of debt.

Day 6: Reducing Expenses

Second only to more income, reducing expenses is the best way to save money.

Day 7: Paying Off Debt

If you’ve got debt, you are in interest-slavery. Make that go away!

Day 8: Insurance

On day 8, you’re going to look at the insurance you have and the insurance you need.

Day 9: Health Insurance

On day 9, you’ll spend some time learning about your health insurance options and how to examine what you’ve already got.

Day 10: Debt Insurance

Debt insurance is insurance you pay for that will pay your lender in the event of your death, dismemberment, disfigurement, disembowelment, or unemployment.

The rest is yet to come. Check back often!