- RT @mymoneyshrugged: The government breaks your leg, and hands you a crutch saying "see without me, you couldn't walk." #
- @bargainr What weeks do you need a FoF host for? in reply to bargainr #
- Awesome tagline: The coolest you'll look pooping your pants. Yay, @Huggies! #
- A textbook is not the real world. Not all business management professors understand marketing. #
- RT @thegoodhuman: Walden on work "spending best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy (cont) http://tl.gd/2gugo6 #
The Magic Toilet
- 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.
Ditch Cable and Still Enjoy TV
- Image via Wikipedia
Cable is expensive. If you have more than just basic cable, you are probably paying at least $65 per month or more, just for TV. How can you save on television, without stealing cable?
The good news is that, in the internet age, it is possible to fully enjoy TV without having to pay exorbitant fees to the cable company.
Basic Cable
Basic cable generally runs about $15 per month, but it usually comes with a $10 per month discount on internet access if you use cable for that. For $5 per month, you can get all of the local broadcast channels, including the news and weather, which we use in the morning while getting ready for work.
Netflix
We watch movies. We watch lots of movies. Spending $14 per month for an unlimited 2-at-a-time plan is a no-brainer for us. It has also enabled us to scratch the movie itch without resorting to HBO or incessant movie purchases, which used to run $100+ each month. When you include Netflix instant in the equation, which gives us a ton of older movies to choose from at a moment’s notice, we are more than covered for our movie obsession.
Hulu
Hulu.com has a metric crapload of TV shows and movies available for free. They are moving towards a partial pay model, but most of their content will still be free. But, you don’t want to crowd your family around a 15-inch laptop screen to watch something, you say? Fine. We went to our local computer parts store and bought cables and converters to go from the video-out and headphone jacks on the laptop to the inputs on our VCR. That cost about $30 for 2 extension cords and 2 converters. We use the analog outputs, which allows for cheaper converters. The quality after conversion is no worse than watching a movie in the VCR.
TiVo
TiVo comes with a Video-On-Demand(VOD) section, if you connect it to the internet. It’s mostly free, with hundreds of channels to choose from, ranging from trailers to full shows and movies. I have a season pass to TEDTalks, which are always impressive and usually inspirational. There are many more channels to choose from.
Torrent
I’m kidding. I’m not advocate piracy. This is just search-engine bait.
As you can see, it’s entirely possible to save money on cable, without missing out on anything you care about. How do you save money on TV and movies?
More Debt
Even though we just paid off our credit cards in August and have started competing to pay off our mortgage, we opened a new debt account on Monday.
We’ve been shopping for a new(to us) car for a while. Simply put, we’ve outgrown our current vehicles.
As I said last week, these are our needs:
- We have 5 people in our family. My 13-year-old son is bordering on 6 feet tall and shows no sign of not growing.
- Every weekend, we have at least 1 extra kid, sometimes 2.
- We still have a giant(24 foot) boat that we won’t be selling until spring.
- My wife wants to lease a couple of ponies next summer, which will mean a horse trailer to haul them in.
We were looking for a GMC Acadia, which would meet our needs, but after talking to my brother–an Acadia owner–and the dealer, we decided it wouldn’t be the best fit. It would be marginal for towing the horses and the back row of the older models isn’t as roomy as the new one I sat in.
Saturday, we went to test drive an Acadia, which is where we had the conversation with the dealership. We ended up test-driving a Chevy Tahoe instead of the Acadia. With the options and mileage, it bluebooks for $27531, but they were using it as an online price leader and had it priced at $25000. Maybe I missed something, but the thing ran well, handled great, and the engine sounded good. As a way to get people on the lot, it worked.
Our plan was to put $5000 down, and see about trading in our Dodge Caliber and Ford F150. We brought the Caliber with us. Its bluebook value is $9,969. They offered us $5500, so we went home.
Sunday, we decided to sell the car and truck ourselves. We texted the salesman and offered $24,500. He accepted, we got a new truck that will fit our family and our needs.
With taxes, fees, and our down payment, we now have a car loan for $21564. Our plan is to sell the Caliber for $9500 and the F150 for $6800. That will leave $5354. We have a beneficiary IRA that has to be cashed out relatively soon, so we’re planning to do that early in January to push the tax burden to next year, which will end the loan.
Effectively, we’re paying about $300 in interest to give us a chance to move our assets around to take advantage of an SUV meeting our needs for $3000 under blue book. Yes, we could have waited until the assets were ready, but this truck wouldn’t have been there, so we jumped on it.
My Favorite Present
My favorite Christmas present this year was the one I gave to my 13 year old son.
Allow me to walk you through his evening….
First, he opened one of his presents. It was just a small box, about 3 inches by 4. A Japanese puzzle box. Inside the box was a note that read:
Closed off in the smallest room you will find a clue to bring you closer to your prize.
When he checked the cabinet below the sink in our basement bathroom, he found another note that sent him to my business website one a page with a url that contained “the square of my children”. When he eventually figured out that I meant their ages, not their quantity, he found a clue on my website.
This lead him to a section of his Minecraft server. It’s effectively a no-man’s land because he and his friends set off a nuke and turned it into a giant pit. They fall down and die there. Inside the pit was a cave. Inside the cave was a clue. The clue read:
Grandma and Grandpa love you.
What do you do when someone says they love you? You either get scared of the commitment and end a perfectly good relationship, or you say “I love you, too”. When the kid finally called his grandparents to tell them he loves them, they told him to give his parents a kiss.
I’m a jerk.
He came over and gave me a hug and a kiss. I handed him a piece of paper. When he looked at it, he asked if it was supposed to be torn in half. I reminded him that he has two parents, so Mom got a hug and a kiss, too. The resulting clue read:
The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Naturally, this points to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the boy hadn’t read far enough into the book to understand the reference, so he had to hit google. After spending time looking for chapter 42, he finally thought to look at page 42, which had this clue:
My Little Pegasus
Two steps to the right
Two steps forward
Two steps up
This clue started at the My Little Pony I set next to a Pegasus in my daughters’ room. The boy was in dense mode because he had to ask his sister what a Pegasus was. She also had to suggest he open the closet door when one step forward made him bump his nose on it.
For all of that work, he got the Ticket to Ride game. He laughed the entire way through the treasure hunt, then decided he hated the whole process. However, for two nights running, he’s stopped the video games to play his new game with his family.
It’s a present he’ll remember forever.
The Story of Sammy: Complete
This is the complete collection of the Story of Sammy. Sammy is a guy I met after my mother-in-law died in the spring of 2012. My wife and I decided to help him launch a….
Read the stories. It’s better that way.
Part 1, in which we meet Sammy, learn of his dreams and offer to help.
Part 2, in which Sammy jumps into business with both feet, teaching teenagers the value of work.
Part 3, in which Sammy shows us what crackheads and the homeless can accomplish if given the chance.
Part 3.5, in which…holy drama, Sammy!
Part 4, in which I am disappointed.
