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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?

Christmas for the Destitute

Finance, Parenting

First, my disclaimer: I’m not destitute.

However, I’m trying to spend Christmas acting like I am a pauper.

Why, with small children and beautiful-and-more-than-deserving wife, would I want to deprive my family of a bountiful holiday?

Before we get into the reasons for being a horrible grinch bent on depriving my children of their god-given right to rampant consumerism, let’s look at the Philosophy of Destitution.

The primary reason to pull back and tone it down is basic frugality. Excessive anything is not frugal. I am training my children–and for that matter, my wife and my self–in the finer arts of personal responsibility and frugality. Accumulating debt for a fleeting holiday is insane. If we can’t afford to buy it, we certainly can’t afford to give it. Anything else would be setting a bad example and children learn best by example.

Another piece of the Philosophy of Destitution(when I read this word, I hear a deep, booming voice in my head, like a 30s radio superhero voiceover) is “green”. I consider myself a conservationalist rather than an environmentalist, so don’t read too much into that color. I try to be responsible, instead of destructive and I try to avoid being wasteful. Toys that won’t be played with are wasteful. A garbage can full of packaging for those same toys costs money. It is much cheaper to avoid the landfill here.

Back to “Why”. Why would I be willing to deprive my family?

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

Business, Finance

If you want to make money, help someone get healthy, wealthy or laid.

This section was quick.

Seriously, those 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”. (Side question: Viagra is a sub-niche of which topic?)

Still not enough.

If you’re going to offer a product to help lose weight, does it revolve around diet, exercise, or both? For medical conditions, is it a way to soothe eczema, instructions for a diabetic diet, a cure for boils, or help with acne? Those are micro-niches.

That’s where you want to be. The “make money” niche is far too broad for anyone to effectively compete. The “make money online” sub-niche is still crazy. When you get to the “make money buying and selling websites” micro-niche, you’re in a territory that leaves room for competition, without costing thousands of dollars to get involved.

Remember that: The more narrowly you define your niche market, the easier it is to compete. You can take that too far. The “lose weight by eating nothing but onions, alfalfa, and imitation caramel sauce” micro-niche is probably too narrowly defined to have a market worth pursuing. You need a micro-niche with buyers, preferably a lot of them.

Now the hard part.

How do you find a niche with a lot of potential customers? Big companies pay millions of dollars every year to do that kind of market research.

Naturally, I recommend you spend millions of dollars on market research.

No?

Here’s the part where I make this entire series worth every penny you’ve paid. Times 10.

Steal the research.

My favorite source of niche market research to steal is http://www.dummies.com/. Click the link and notice all of the wonderful niches at the top of the page. Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. spends millions of dollars to know what topics will be good sellers. They’ve been doing this a long time. Trust their work.

Niche Research — Click for full-size image

You don’t have to concentrate on the topics I’ve helpfully highlighted, but they will make it easier for you. Other niches can be profitable, too.

Golf is a great example. Golfers spend money to play the game. You don’t become a golfer without having some discretionary money to spend on it. I’d recommend against consumer electronics. There is a lot of competition for anything popular, and most of that is available for free. If you choose to promote some high-end gear using your Amazon affiliate link, you’re still only looking at a 3% commission.

I like to stick to topics that people “need” an answer for, and can find that answer in ebook form, since I will be promoting a specific product.

With that in mind, pick a topic, then click one of the links to the actual titles for sale. The “best selling titles” links are a gold mine. You can jump straight to the dummies store, if you’d like.

Of the topics above, here’s how I would narrow it down:

1. Business and Careers. The bestsellers here are Quickbooks and home buying. I’m not interested in either topic, so I’ll go into “More titles”. Here, the “urgent” niches look like job hunting and dealing with horrible coworkers. I’m also going to throw “writing copy” into the list because it’s something I have a hard time with.

2. Health and Fitness. My first thought was to do a site on diabetic cooking, but the cooking niche is too competitive. Childhood obesity, detox diets and back pain remedies strike me as worth pursuing. I’m leaning towards back pain, because I have a bad back. When you’ve thrown your back out, you’ve got nothing to do but lie on the couch and look for ways to make the pain stop. That’s urgency.

3. Personal Finance. The topics that look like good bets are foreclosures and bankruptcies. These are topics that can cost thousands of dollars if you get them wrong. I hate to promote a bankruptcy, but some people are out of choices. Foreclosure defense seems like a good choice. Losing your home comes with a sense of urgency, and helping people stay in their home makes me feel good.

4. Relationships and Family. Of these topics, divorce is probably a good seller. Dating advice definitely is. I’m not going to detail either one of those niches here. Divorce is depressing and sex, while fun, isn’t a topic I’m going to get into here. I try to be family friendly, most of the time. Weddings are great topic. Brides are planning to spend money and there’s no shortage of resources to promote.

So, the niches I’ve chosen are:

Back pain
Bankruptcy
Conflict resolution at work
Detox diets
Fat kids
Foreclosure avoidance
Job hunting
Weddings
Writing copy

I won’t be building 9 niche sites in this series. From here, I’m going to explore effective keywords/search terms and good products to support. There’s no guarantee I’ll find a good product with an affiliate program for a niche I’ve chosen that has keywords that are both highly searched and low competition, so I’m giving myself alternatives.

For those of you following along at home, take some time to find 5-10 niches you’d be willing to promote.

The important things to consider are:

1. Does it make me feel dirty to promote it?

2. Will there be customers willing to spend money on it?

3. Will those customers have an urgent need to solve a problem?

I’ve built sites that ignore #3, and they don’t perform nearly as well as those that consider it. When I do niche sites, I promote a specific product. It’s pure affiliate marketing, so customers willing to spend money are necessarily my target audience.

Money Problems – Day 3: What’s Coming In?

Finance

Husquarna automower, taken by me 2007-06-02 — Image via Wikipedia

Today, I continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do 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.

I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

This is day 3 and today, you are going to take a look at your income.

We are only interested your take-home pay, because that is what you have to base a budget on. If you base your budget on your gross pay, you’re going to be in trouble when you try to spend the roughly 35% of your check that gets taken for taxes and benefits.

Income is a pretty straight-forward topic. It is—simply—how much money you make in a month. If you are like most people, the easiest way to tell how much money you make is to look at your last paycheck. Then, multiply it by the number of pay periods in a year and divide the total by 12.

Here’s the formula: Cash x Yearly Pay Periods / 12. Yay, math!

If you get paid every 2 weeks, multiply your take-home pay by 26, then divide by 12 to figure your monthly pay. For example, if you make $1000 every two weeks, your annual take-home pay is $26,000. Divide that by 12 to get your monthly pay of $2166.66. If you get paid semi-monthly, you’ll take that same $1000 x 24 / 12, for a total of $2000 per month.

Now you know how much you make each month. Woo!

Is it enough? Who knows? We’ll get into that later. In the meantime, spend some time thinking about ways you can make more money. Do you have a talent or a hobby that you can turn into cash?

If you’re a craftsy type, make stuff and sell it on eBay or Etsy.
If you’re a writer, start a blog, sell articles on oDesk, or start writing for paid article directories. Squidoo has a revenue sharing plan for your articles.
Facebook maven? Start making Pages for companies. They will pay for it.
Are you mechanically inclined? Watch your local free market sites for lawn mowers and snowblowers that don’t run. You can fix them up and sell them.
If you’re a clean freak, start a home-cleaning service on evenings and weekends.

There are always ways to make some extra money, if you are willing. Sit down with a friend or loved one and brainstorm what you can do. Write down anything you can do, you enjoy, or you are good at. Remember, there are no stupid ideas when you are brainstorming. The bad ideas will get filtered out later.

How could you make some (more) side cash?

Budget Lesson, Part 8

Finance

This is a continuation of the budget series. See these posts for the history of this series.

This time, I’m looking at our discretionary budget. These are the things that don’t have a fixed cost. Any individual item is largely optional, and, ultimately, we don’t track these purchases closely. At the beginning of the month, I pull this money out of the bank in cash, except for 1 category. When the discretionary budget is gone, it’s gone.

Groceries/Dining – At the beginning of the week, we sit down with a meal planner and (Can you guess?) plan our meals. The planner we use has a weekly calendar with a checklist below each day to build the grocery list. At the bottom of the page is another checklist for staples that don’t apply to a specific day’s meal, like milk or snacks. We build the list, then transfer it to another sheet, broken out by grocery department. That keeps me from having to criss-cross the store. I make one lap. When I go to the store, I only bring that week’s grocery budget in cash, so I keep close track of how much is going into the cart. Recently, we’ve gotten so good at making our meals cheaply from scratch that I reduced our monthly food budget by $50. I enjoy good food, so I wouldn’t reduce this budget item if it was a sacrifice in quality. For example, the Rainbow Foods store-brand chips actually taste better than Lay’s for half of the price. We stock up when things are on sale and cook creatively. Sometimes, if time has been too tight to make a meal plan, we eat solely from the pantry for a week, buying nothing but bread and milk. By sticking to the list, and not fearing the store’s brand, we are able to feed our family of 5 1/2 for $450 per month and still eat well.
Discretionary – This is for the random things that come up, and some of the not-so-random. Toiletries, activity fees, admissions, and fund-raisers all come out of this fund. At the end of the month, whatever is left gets tucked into a box and forgotten. When the box gets full, it goes to the bank to be applied to debt. There isn’t a lot to cut here, since this line-item is only $200.
Baby stuff – This category is continually shrinking. Our middle kid is recently potty-trained and our youngest is trying. There is no baby food and no formula, just 1 pack of diapers every month. In 6 months, this category will be eliminated.
Gas/oil – This is the single category that isn’t cash-based. It makes no sense to take the kids out of the car to pay inside, especially in the winter. Also, all of the temptation is inside. It’s much better to spend the money at the pump. There isn’t much we can do to reduce this, at the moment. Our next car won’t be a full-sized pickup, but we are several years from that purchase. We’ve started clipping oil-change coupons to keep this down to the minimum amount possible.
Clothes – We only allocate $15 per month for clothes. In a good month, we don’t spend it. We can’t eliminate it completely, because things do come up. Over the summer, I’m hoping to completely leave it alone to save up for a new(used) winter jacket for our older daughter, who doesn’t get hand-me-downs.
Blow Money – This is the safety valve. It can’t get reduced and still work.

We’ve now addressed out entire budget, including what we can do and have done to keep our costs under control. Looking back, I don’t see too many cuts I’ve missed.

Cooking Poor

Finance

Frugal cooking can be an intimidating concept. It’s easy to turn a meal into a huge expense, but it’s not that hard to trim your grocery budget without sacrificing variety and flavor. It just takes some planning and a few money-saving techniques. We usually feed our family of five, often with guests, for about $100 per week.

Schedule your meals. Find or make a weekly meal planner. I recommend this or this. Cross out the meals you don’t need to worry about due to your schedule that week. If you won’t be home, you don’t have to cook that meal. Fill in the meals in the remaining slots. Keep your schedule in mind. If you get home from work at 5:30 and have to be somewhere by 6:30, dinner needs to be something quick. Also, make sure you include every side dish you will be serving. Now, look at the recipe for each dish in every meal. Write down everything you need to make all of the food you plan to eat that week. While planning your meals, think about how to use your leftovers. If you cook chicken breasts one day, the leftovers can be chicken nuggets the next.

Take inventory. Take your meal plan and a pen while you look through all of your cabinets and your refrigerator. Why buy what you already have? If you already have steaks in the freezer, don’t waste your money buying more. If you have it, cross it off of your meal plan shopping list. Whatever is left is your shopping list. Review it. Is there anything that can be combined or eliminated? Is there a key ingredient for a sauce that’s missing?

Don’t forget the staples. If flour or sugar is on sale, stock up. Anything you use on a regular basis is a staple, buy it when it’s cheap.

Build a shopping list from your meal plan. When you are in the store, stick to your list. It’s hard, but avoid impulse purchases at all costs. Don’t shop hungry, don’t buy things just because they are on sale, and don’t dawdle. Get what you need and get out.

Avoid pre-processed food. We slice and shred our own cheese. Buying the pre-shredded cheese costs an extra $5 and saves just 5 minutes. Don’t buy pre-sliced apples or anything that will only save a few minutes for several dollars of cost.

Every couple of weeks, I cook a large pot of either beans or rice and keep it in the refrigerator. Almost every meal that we cook gets a cup or two of beans or rice added to it. It doesn’t alter the flavor much, but it adds a few extra servings for pennies. It’s a healthy way to stretch any meal on the cheap.

We have a large bowl in the refrigerator filled with mixed greens. We buy whatever salad-like greens are on sale and prepare the large salad all at once. Most meals start with a salad, which makes it easier to fill up without relying on the protein dish, which is generally the most expensive part of a meal. As a dedicated meat-eater, it took some getting used to, but it’s a good meal–cheap and healthy.

Cook enough for at least 3 meals. That will eliminate 2/3 of the work involved in cooking. Plan ahead to make your meals simple and easy.

Freeze the leftovers in usable sizes. Stock up on semi-disposable meal-sized containers. Freeze some in single-serving sizes for work, and others in family-size servings for last minute meals at home. Preparing for last minute meals keeps you from serving garbage or takeout when life gets in the way of your plans.

Avoid wasting leftovers. Wasted food is wasted money.

When you are done cooking meat, take any drippings or scraps and throw them into the slow-cooker along with any vegetable scraps laying around. Cook it overnight, then strain it into an ice cube tray. You now have stock/broth ready to be added to any recipe.

Plan for serial meals. Chicken breast leftover from today’s meal can become chicken nuggets tomorrow, to be shredded into chicken salad the next day.

When there isn’t enough left for a full serving, we put the remains in a resealable bag in the freezer. When we accumulate enough to fill our slow-cooker, we dump in all of the bags with a couple cups of water. I look through the refrigerator for any leftovers that have been overlooked that week or any vegetables getting close to being too old. It all gets cut up and added to the cooker to cook on low all day. I rarely add seasoning because everything going in the pot tastes good. We never get the same meal twice and our “free soup” is never bland.

That’s how we cook cheap, without sacrificing too much time. How do you save money cooking?

This post is a blast from the past. Originally posted here in January 2010.