Live Real, Now

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

Search Results for: slow-carb-diet-how-to-avoid-going-bat-crazy/brown-bagging-your-way-to-savings/INGDirect/contact-me/experiences-v-stuff/Clearing Up Social Debt in 3 Steps/how-to-complain-the-squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease/4-ways-we-keep-wasting-money

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-22

Misc

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29

Misc

Make a Budget

Finance

DSC02103
Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template.  If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all.    I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources.  As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system.   The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy.  We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills.  These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month.  Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true.   You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking.   You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills.  That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis.  I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed.   I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios.  If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule.  Sometimes, they are never actually due.   We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things.  A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun.  You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2.   Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills.   For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount.  For almost 2 years, it was granted.  Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled.   100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3.  These bills are harder to reduce.  Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4.  Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1.   Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

The Magic Toilet

Finance

Funny Toilet #1
Image by tokyofortwo via Flickr

My toilet is saving me $1200.

For a long time, my toilet ran.  It was a nearly steady stream of money slipping down the drain.  I knew that replacing the flapper was a quick job, but it was easy to ignore.  If I wasn’t in the bathroom, I couldn’t hear it.  If I was in the bathroom, I was otherwise occupied.

When I finally got sick of it, I started researching how to fix a running toilet because I had never done it before.  I found the HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter.  It’s the magical push-button, two-stage flusher.   Yes, science fiction has taken over my bathroom.   Or at least my toilet.

I bought the dual-flush converter, which replaces the flusher and the flapper.  It has two buttons, which each use different amounts of water, depending on what you need it to do.   I’m sure there’s a poop joke in there somewhere, but I’m pretending to have too much class to make it.

I also bought the matching fill valve.  This lets you set how much water is allowed into the tank much better than just putting a brick in the tank.   It’s a much faster fill and has a pressure nozzle that lies on the bottom of the tank.  Every time you flush, it cleans the inside of the tank.  Before I put it in, it had been at least 5 years since I had opened the tank.  It was black.  Two weeks later, it was white again.  I wouldn’t want to eat off of it, or drink the water, but it was a definite improvement.

Installation would have been easier if the calcium buildup hadn’t welded the flush handle to the tank.   That’s what reciprocating saws are for, though.  That, and scaring my wife with the idea of replacing the toilet.   Once the handle was off, it took 15 minutes to install.

“Wow”, you say?  “Where’s the $1200”, you say?  We’ve had this setup, which cost $35.42, since June 8th, 2010.   It’s now September.   That’s summer.  We’ve watered both the lawn and the garden and our quarterly water bill has gone down $30, almost paying for the poo-gadget already.   $30 X 4 = $120 per year, or $1200 over 10 years.

Yes, it will take a decade, but my toilet is saving me $1200.

Delayed Gratification, Take II

Finance, Life

English: Zach Galifianakis as Alan from "...
English: Zach Galifianakis as Alan from "The Hangover" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How much would you pay for a kiss from the world’s sexiest celebrity?

That was the focus of a recent study that I can’t find today.   There is no celebrity waiting in the wings to deliver the drool, and the study doesn’t name which celebrity it is.  That’s an exercise for the reader.

This was a study into how we value nice things.

The fascinating part of the study is that people would be willing to pay more to get the kiss in 3 days than they would to get the tongue slipped immediately.

Anticipation adds value.

Instant gratification actually causes us to devalue the object of our desire.

This goes well beyond “Will you respect me in the morning?”

The last time I talked about delayed gratification, it was in the context of my kids.   That still holds true.   Kids don’t value the things that are handed to them.

The surprising–and disturbing–bit is that adults don’t, either.  If I run out to the store to buy an iPad the first day I see one, I won’t care about it nearly as much as if I spend a week or two agonizing over the decision.

The delay alone adds to the perceived value.  The agony turns the perceived value into gold.

If I spend a month searching for the perfect car, the thrill of the successful hunt adds less value than the time it took to do the hunting.

Here’s my frugal tip for today:  Delay your purchases.  While it may not actually save you any money, you will feel like you got a much better deal if you wait a few days for something you really want.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Net Worth Update

Misc

Welcome to the New Year.  2013 is the year we all get flying cars, right?

Here is my net worth update, along with the progress we made over the course of 2012.

As you can see, our net worth contracted by about $11,000.   Part of that difference is due to selling our spare cars and–against my better judgement–taking payments with a lien on one of them.  That is supposed to be paid off within a couple of months.  If not, I’ll play repo man again.

The other part of the difference is in the final preparations for our rental property.   The only things left to do are sanding and polishing the hardwood floors and cleaning the living room carpet.   The final push to get to this point cost some money.   All told, we’re nearly $30,000 into getting the house ready to rent.    For the naysayers who think we should have sold it, we would have spent more getting it ready to sell.

Other than that, we’re not doing poorly.   Our credit card is still being paid off every month and our mortgage is shrinking.  If things continue to go well, we’ll have our truck paid off in a couple of months and the mortgage by mid summer.