Search Results for “slow-carb-diet-how-to-avoid-going-bat-crazy/quit-smoking-my-first-frugal-move-ever/INGDirect/debt-burnout/4-ways-we-keep-wasting-money/selling-your-home-the-real-estate-agent/money-problems-day-1-setting-goals” — Page 19

Selling Your Car

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

Getting Out of Debt: The Prime Rule

Finance

The American Dream has been perverted. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been cruelly warped to mean

Wipe our Debt (Photo credit: Images_of_Money)

“Toys, free stuff provided at the expense of others, and the ability to buy and do anything I want without regard for the consequences.” To fund this horrible new dream, the people who can’t convince a government program to finance it for them often turn to credit. Credit is the art of putting your future into hock for something that you probably don’t need or want and that won’t work by the time you are finished making payments.

Ick. I’ve chosen not to live my life that way. Every day, more people are waking from the consumerism fog and deciding to reel their lifestyles back in and take control of their lives. They take a look at the world around them, compare it to their check register, and realize that it’s just not sustainable. You can’t survive on credit forever. Eventually, you will realize that there isn’t enough money to continue to buy things today on tomorrow’s paycheck.

What’s the first thing you should do when you decide that a “normal” life—a life in debt—isn’t the way you are going to live your life?

Well, when you find yourself standing in a grave, stop digging. You can’t dig yourself out of a hole and you can’t borrow your way out of debt. If you want to get out of debt, you need to stop using more debt. Period.

It may seem impossible, and the people around you may try to convince you that you are crazy. It is not impossible, just time-consuming. Short of finding an insane amount of money hiding under your front step or a winning lottery ticket blowing across the sidewalk, there are no shortcuts to getting out of debt. It’s just a matter of making the payments and not using more credit.

As far as the haters, screw ‘em. They are brainwashed into thinking their unsustainable and insane lifestyle is not only normal, but necessary. You don’t get life advice in a padded room, and you don’t plan your finances with a debt-addict.

Getting out of debt is a simple process, but that doesn’t make it easy. It only has two real steps: stop using debt, and keep making the payments.

5 Ways to Change the World for the Better

Life

: Image via Wikipedia

We are all stuck on the same planet with each other. There is nothing any of us are going to do to get the option of leaving for long. Do you want to live in a miserable, run-down world, or one that’s happy and filled with kittens and ice cream?

The kind of world you live in is more a function of your state of mind than the place you live, the job you have, or the person you married. Here are a few ways to improve that state of mind.

1. Be kind. Smile at a teller. Let someone merge in front of you in traffic. Drop a dollar in a homeless man’s jar. Have you ever had a lousy day make a total turnaround because of some inconsequential bit of yay? Doing some small act of kindness can make a world of difference in someone’s day. Next time you’re in the drive-through at Caribou, buy coffee for the person behind you. That random bit of love will put a smile on both your faces.

2. Be positive. Don’t complain. So many of us live in a negative world, watching the world go buy through coffin-colored glasses. Have you ever considered going an entire day without making a negative comment? A week? A month? Some of you are shaking your heads right now, thinking it’s impossible. Have you thought about how much happier you would be if you banned the negative crap in your life?

3. Be a good neighbor. We’ve all had the same problems: a neighbor that plays music too loud, too late; the jerk across the street who yells at you for park on the street in front of his house; the guy who’s too busy to mow his lawn; or the crazy cat lady who makes the entire neighborhood smell like a litter box. Don’t be that guy. I’ve had 90% of my neighbors for more than 5 years. If we don’t make accommodations for the people we have to deal with every day, we’re going to be miserable.

4. Learn something new. If you feel good about yourself, you feel better about the world. If you feel better about the world, you’re more likely to do things to improve it. One of the best ways to feel good about yourself is to improve yourself. Take a class, read a book, or find a mentor to teach you. The method doesn’t matter, just do something to learn something you’re interested in.

What are you doing to make your world better?

Don’t Cheap Out

Finance

How do you answer a question like “What are things you never go cheap on and why?”. Think about it – the question cuts with mischievous delight into your personally held biases towards common purchases. Not only does the question force self-reflection, it’s really asking you, “What are you purchasing that you know you can save money on, if only you tossed your biases out the window?”. Devilish indeed!

A little about myself. I’m a software engineer in Silicon Valley (an area of land roughly defined as San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in California), married, no kids, and a home-owner. I also write for (and run) the web site Don’t Quit Your Day Job… when my day job is through for the… um… day.

How to Spend Money You Don’t Really Need To!

I have a confession to make: when it comes to dress shirts, I never go cheap. Dress shirts in general aren’t closely associated with my industry, or California in general – you’re more likely to find college t-shirts and flip flops than dress shirts and cap toe bluchers. However, growing up outside of Boston, Massachusetts, I think I had a fair amount of Puritan formalism instilled in my dress style!

In my closet I have approximately 25 to 30 dress shirts. The most common label you’ll find is Brooks Brothers, followed by Joseph A. Banks (JAB runs yearlong sales, so it’s best to wait for the shirts to be marked down). I’ve got a few shirts from the Jermyn Street shirtmakers. I also have some MTM (made to measure) shirts – the highlight of my wardrobe, but I’m ashamed to admit their cost is in the triple digits after shipping. Wearing one of those also means my wife cracks yuppie jokes all day.

Here’s even more about me: I’m 5’10” and have a 42” chest and a 31” waist. If you know men’s clothing, you know those are silly proportions for buying off the rack clothing, but a 17-32 ‘fits’ me (the shoulders are in the right place). To translate – that shirt has a 17″ neck opening and 32″ sleeves, measured from the middle of the back. Even with a cheaper shirt, I could just pay $12 to my Tailor to bring in the waist and pull up the baggage in the chest area and under the arms. Of course, that’s how I justify the MTM portion of my wardrobe – the stitches are perfect when the shirt is made for your actual proportions. Even the ‘slim’ fits sold in store don’t come close to fitting someone like me.

Justifying An Expensive Habit

If there is anything to be said about the labels I pick – they last. Every MTM shirt I’ve had made for me is still going strong. The Jermyn Street, Brooks Brothers and Joseph A. Banks shirt also last a long time. When I have bought cheap shirts in the past, they rarely last longer than a year – and I am meticulous about hanging the shirts to dry. By that measure, the expensive shirts I wear are only expensive when it comes to initial costs – but by the end of their useful life their cost per wear is much less than the inferior quality shirts. Also, since I’m getting it tailored anyway (like I said, a fixed cost), I want any shirt that I bother tailoring to last as long as physically possible.

Of course, my line of reasoning requires my proportions to stay the same. I do build in a tiny bit of extra room when I get shirts tailored, but a significant shift in weight means a (expensive) new wardrobe.

Where to Economize if You Want Quality Shirts

It’s pretty obvious where you can save money (short of tailoring shirts yourself or finding a cheaper Tailor – I’ve had mixed results with those options). In fact, the most important quote is staring us in the face – “If there is anything to be said about the labels I pick – they last.” Yes, they last long enough that a used shirt isn’t a significant decrease in quality from a new shirt. That means, if you’re like me, you can buy used shirts on eBay, Craigslist, or in a Thrift Store. Wash it well and your Tailor won’t even know the difference!

So, what do you think? I’ve never considered myself part of the frugal crowd so I turn the mic to you: Should I cut out my expensive habit, or did I somehow convince you I’m not burning my money?

PKamp3 is a writer for Don’t Quit Your Day Job… Enlightened Discussion of Personal Finance, Economics, Politics and the Offbeat for the Night and Weekend Crowd. He also loves expensive shirts to the consternation of a certain subset of his readers.

Make Extra Money: A Niche Site Walkthrough

Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction

Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites. When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%. Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete. I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

These three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich. Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition? Those are called “sub-niches”.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

My niches site are all product-promotion sites. I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it. Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

Make Extra Money Part 4: Keyword Research

If you aren’t targeting search terms that people use, you are wasting your time. If you are targeting terms that everybody else is targeting, it will take forever to get to the top of the search results. Spend the extra time now to do proper keyword research. It will save you a ton of time and hassle later. This is time well-spent.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

In this installment, I show you how to pick a domain name and a website host.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

A niche site doesn’t amount to much without, well, a site. In this installment, I show you how I configure a site, from start to finish.

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

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use. This explains the “Why” behind Part 6.

More to come….

Time vs Money Redux

Finance

Saving money is a good thing

Saving time is a good thing.

Somewhere in between, there has to be a balance. It’s possible to spend far too much time to save very little money.

For example, on September 30th, I left for the Financial Blogger’s Conference. Thinking I’d be frugal and save a little money, I told my GPS to avoid the toll roads. According to Google maps, the cheap route should have added 20 minutes to my trip. Coming into Illinois from Wisconsin on the toll roads, it’s easy to spend that much time waiting to pay the toll, since I don’t own an Illinois magic toll-paying box.

Unfortunately, the little smart-a** suction-cupped to my windshield sent mebthrough every construction zone between Wisconsin and Schaumberg, Illinois.

That sucks.

I went through a series of little towns with speed limits that randomly changed from block to block. Road construction had half of the roads down to just one lane. All told, I saved $3.40, judging by the tolls heading home, but the horrible detour cost me well over an hour and a half of time.

I saved $3.40, but lost 90 minutes. That’s not a good return on investment.

Just a month ago, I was ripping into my mother-in-law for wasting half an hour to save 75 cents. Then I have to go and demonstrate how horrible I am at making that save time vs money judgement.

I need to work on that.

What’s the most time you’ve spent to save a small amount of money?

Search Results for: slow-carb-diet-how-to-avoid-going-bat-crazy/quit-smoking-my-first-frugal-move-ever/INGDirect/debt-burnout/4-ways-we-keep-wasting-money/selling-your-home-the-real-estate-agent/money-problems-day-1-setting-goals