- RT @ramseyshow: RT @E_C_S_T_E_R_I_: "Stupid has a gravitational pull." -D Ramsey as heard n NPR. I know many who have not escaped its orbit. #
- @BudgetsAreSexy KISS is playing the MINUTE state fair in August. in reply to BudgetsAreSexy #
- 3 year old is "reading" to her sister: Goldilocks, complete with the voices I use. #
- RT @marcandangel: 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills http://bit.ly/b1tseW #
- Babies bounce! https://liverealnow.net/hKmc #
- While trying to pay for dinner recently, I was asked if other businesses accepted my $2 bills. #
- Lol RT @zappos: Art. on front page of USA Today is titled "Twitter Power". I diligently read the first 140 characters. http://bit.ly/9csCIG #
- Sweet! I am the number 1 hit on Ask.com for "I hate birthday parties" #
- RT @FinEngr: Money Hackers Carnival #117 Wedding & Marriage Edition http://bit.ly/cTO4FU #
- Nobody, but nobody walks sexy wearing flipflops. #
- @MonroeOnABudget Sandals are ok. Flipflops ruin a good sway. 🙂 in reply to MonroeOnABudget #
- RT @untemplater: RT @zappos: "Do one thing every day that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt #
Birthday Parties are Evil
This is a post from my archives.
I hate birthday parties. Well, not all birthday parties. Not even most parties. Just the expensive-for-the-sake-of-expensive parties. The bar-raising parties. The status-boosting parties. I’m done.
My son is seven years older than my first daughter. In those seven years, with only one kid, we managed to spoil him regarding birthday parties. Every party was big and there were a lot of presents. That’s an expensive way to run a birthday and it is a lot of stress. We even moved the parties home, but still invited all of our friends and family. It was much too stressful.
A good friend used the pizza and game place, buying tokens for everyone at the party. That’s incredibly expensive. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t afford that for three kids. There’s an element of keeping up with everyone around me, but I just can’t make myself care about that anymore. They aren’t paying my debt or cleaning my house. They don’t get a vote.
My plan this year was to have a sleepover for my son. He had five friends spend the night, playing games and watching movies. They giggled and squealed for eighteen hours, all for the cost of some take-and-bake pizzas and snacks. It was a hit for everyone involved. The other parents got a night off and all of the kids had a blast.
My girls are one and two. We’re done with parties for them, too. They got big parties for their first birthdays. Those are parties for the adults; the kids don’t care. In a few years–even a few months–they won’t remember the party. My older daughter’s birthday will be a trip to the apple orchard, followed by cake and ice cream. She’ll get presents. She’ll get “her day”. She’ll remember that her birthday is special, without costing a lot of money.
We want them to have fun. We want them all to feel special. We also want to manage their expectations and keep the parties from breaking the budget. So far this year, it is working.
How do you run a birthday party on a budget?
Magical Thinking
A few weeks ago, on my way to work, while merging onto the highway, a soccer mommy in an SUV decided that she was going to accelerate to fill the opening I was going to use. Not before I got there, which would have left her in the right, if still a jerk, but as I was moving into the lane.
The entire reasoning was that she could be rude and dangerous under the assumption that I would be more civilized and back down, allowing her to indulge her little fantasy about how the world works. Luckily I saw her speed up, and had time to move out of the way. Physics very nearly taught her an expensive lesson.
This is similar to the people who think they’ll be safe because “nothing has happened before” or think “He won’t hurt me because I;m a good person” when confronted with a mugger.
This is magical thinking. Basing assumptions of other people’s actions on nothing more than your personal hopes and biases. The truth is, your halo does not provide a shield. Your luck at dodging criminals while strolling through bad neighborhoods does not circumvent statistical likelihood and your jerkface attempt to run me into a guard rail had better be backed by the stones to deal with a wreck.
Magical thinking, wishful thinking, and baseless hope are not rational methods of running your life. Criminals hunt for victims who wrap themselves in a smug, yet naïve, superiority. Murphy’s Law is waiting for someone arrogant enough to think that the laws of physics don’t apply when you’re commuting. The only rational means of predicting the behavior of others is to look at the signals they are actually producing.
Someone tentatively trying to squeeze into an opening in traffic is far more likely to submit to your passive aggression than the guy who merges with a turn signal and the gas pedal.
Someone in the park after hours in a hoody is more likely to hurt you than the guy in running shorts.
The guy lurking in the shadows of the parking ramp, refusing to make eye contact is a more likely mugger than the suit trying to find his Lexus.
A million years of evolution have given us an incredible ability to detect danger. A few hundred years of relative peace at the end of a few thousand years of relative civilization have not erased that ability, it has just convinced us to ignore our instincts under the mistaken assumption that all predators live in the jungle.
Fear has survival value. Don’t allow your rational brain to override your lizard brain completely. Let your fear keep you safe.
5 Reasons Your Wealth Isn’t Growing
Wealth is an elusive goal for many people. Everybody wants it, but for many, it’s impossible to reach. Every time they get a bit ahead, something always seems to come up, forcing them to live paycheck-to-paycheck.
What’s happening? Why can’t you gather enough wealth to know where next month’s rent payment is coming from?
1. You spend more than you earn. This is the mystical and magical Golden Rule of personal finance. Every system, every plan, every gimmick boils down to this. If you spend more than you earn, you are digging a hole that keeps getting harder to get out of. Don’t do it. The amount you earn needs to be bigger than the amount you spend.
2. You aren’t investing. If you invest $200 per month at 5% in your 20s, then stop and let interest do the rest,you’ll have as much after 30 years than if you started at 30 and continues to invest every month. Compound interest is very much your friend. The earlier you can start investing, the better.
3. You are investing in the wrong things. Some things are bad investments. Uncle Bob’s annual get-rich-quick scheme is going to be a bad idea every year. That’s not an investment, it’s pity. Another example is gold. Over the last year or so, that seems like a stupid thing to say, but it’s true long-term. Gold isn’t an investment, it’s an inflation hedge. Generally speaking, a given amount of gold represents the same amount of purchasing power all through time. To put it in simpler terms: 100 years ago, an ounce of gold could get you a nice suit and a good dinner. Today, that’s still true.
4. You aren’t saving. If you are spending less than you earn, what are you doing with the excess? Hopefully, you’re investing it, but keeping a stock of cash is a zero-risk savings account is a smart plan. It’s been said that when you don’t have an emergency fund, everything is an emergency. Have a cash reserve gives you the ability to not only deal with all of life’s little kicks to the crotch, but also lets you take advantage of the opportunities that may cross your path. A coworker needs to unload that big screen TV for 10% of what she bought it for? On it. Find a great deal on airfare to your dream destination? Bon voyage. Savings means security and opportunity.
5. You keep your debt. Debt is the biggest drain on wealth. Every penny you have to spend to service your debt(interest) is a penny you can’t save, invest, or otherwise enjoy. Carrying a balance is a fast way to immediately raise the price of everything you purchase, by 5%, 10%, or more. Debt and interest will hold you back financially like nothing else.
When you’ve been able to acquire a bit of wealth, you are better able to weather life’s bumps, dips, and face-flung poo. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that, no matter what happens, you aren’t going to struggle financially.
Net Worth Update
Now that my taxes are done and paid for, I thought it would be nice to update my net worth.
In January, I had:
Assets
- House: $252,900
- Cars: $20,789
- Checking accounts: $3,220
- Savings accounts: $6,254
- CDs: $1,105
- IRAs: $12,001
- Investment Accounts: $1,155
- Total: $297,424
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $29,982
- Credit card: $18,725
- Total: $48,707
Overall: $249,717.00
Here is my current status:
Assets
- House: $240,100 (-12,800) Estimated market value according to the county tax assessor. This will be going down in a few months when the estimates are finalized for the year. I don’t care much about this number. We’re not moving any time soon, so the lower the value, the lower the tax assessment.
- Cars: $15,857 (-4,932) Kelly Blue Book suggested retail value for both of our vehicles and my motorcycle.
- Checking accounts: $4,817 (+1,597) I have accounts spread across three banks. I don’t keep much operating cash here, so this fluctuates based on how far away my next paycheck is.
- Savings accounts: $6,418 (+164) I have savings accounts spread across a few banks. This does not include my kids’ accounts, even though they are in my name. This includes every savings goal I have at the moment. I swept a chunk of this into an IRA to lower my tax bill, which is also why my IRA balance is up as much as it is.
- CDs: $1,107 (+2) I consider this a part of my emergency fund.
- IRAs: $16,398 (+4,397) I have finally started to contribute automatically. It’s only $200 at the moment, but it’s something.
- Investment Accounts: $308 (-847) I pulled most of this out and threw it at a credit card.
- Total: $285,005 (-12,419)
Liabilities
- Mortgage: $28,162 (-1,820)
- Credit card: $16,038 (-2,687) This is the current target of my debt snowball. This has actually grown a bit over the last week. I did a balance transfer that cost $400, but it gives me 0% for a year, versus the 9% I was paying. That will pay for itself in 3 months, while simplifying my payments a bit and saving me almost a thousand dollars in payments this year.
- Total: $44,200 (-4,507)
Overall: $240,805 (-8,912)
Well, I lost some net worth over the last quarter, but it’s still a good report. If I disregard the change in value of my house and cars–two thing I have no control over–my overall total would have gone up almost $9,000.
All in all, it’s been a good year for me, so far, though paying off that credit card by fall is going to be a challenge.
Find the Things That You Love
First, watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_BtmV4JRSc
“It’s not about what you love, it’s about how you love it. There’s going to be a thing in your life that you love, and I don’t know what that’s going to be…it doesn’t matter what that is. The way you love that–and the way you find other people who love it the way you do–is what makes being a nerd awesome. -Wil Wheaton”
In the video, Wil Wheaton gets asked to send a message about being a nerd to an audience members newborn baby, and he does.
Being a nerd isn’t about pocket protectors, or D&D, or chess club. Being a nerd is about finding something you love and loving it no matter what.
My son is obsessed with League of Legends and Minecrack. I don’t get it.
I don’t have to.
My wife and daughters are all horse, all the time. I don’t get it.
I don’t have to.
Growing up, we got our first computer when I was about 7. Thanks to 3-2-1 Contact magazine, I started programming it shortly thereafter.
A few years later, we got a computer that wasn’t Apples green-on-green monstrosity. My first instructions from my parents were “Don’t break it.”
It took me three days. I was 11.
At 14, I got sent to computer camp. Soon after, I was up all night writing code. I remember getting questioned when my dad got up for work. “Have you been on that thing all night?”
He didn’t get it.
He didn’t have to. It was enough that he didn’t stop me.
My obsession–and my parents’ tolerance for it–eventually led to a career that allows me to support my family.
In high school, I discovered roleplaying games.
NERD!
The friends I made there are my friends now, 15 years later. I rent a room to one of the first people I played D&D with. He introduced me to my wife.
My nerdy obsessions have formed the basis of everything I love today.
When you are raising your kids, or shaking your head at something your husband or wife is doing, just be happy that they have found something to love.
Don’t ever tell them they can’t love the things they love, and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t love the things you love.
