- @Elle_CM Natalie's raid looked like it was filmed with a strobe light. Lame CGI in reply to Elle_CM #
- I want to get a toto portable bidet and a roomba. Combine them and I'll have outsourced some of the least tasteful parts of my day. #
- RT @freefrombroke: RT @moneybeagle: New Blog Post: Money Hacks Carnival #115 http://goo.gl/fb/AqhWf #
- TED.com: The neurons that shaped civilization. http://su.pr/2Qv4Ay #
- Last night, fell in the driveway: twisted ankle and skinned knee. Today, fell down the stairs: bruise makes sitting hurt. Bad morning. #
- RT @FrugalDad: And to moms, please be more selective about the creeps you let around your child. Takes a special guy to be a dad to another' #
- First Rule of Blogging: Don't let real life get in the way. Epic fail 2 Fridays in a row. But the garage sale is going well. #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-03
- I miss electricity. #
- @prosperousfool Do you still need a dropbox referral? in reply to prosperousfool #
- @prosperousfool Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE1Mjk2OTU5 in reply to prosperousfool #
- Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: Electricity is the bee's knees, the wasp's nipples and lots of other insect erogenous zones. #
- @prosperousfool Throw in a Truecrypt partition and the PortableApps launcher and it gets really neat. in reply to prosperousfool #
- @prosperousfool Universal accessibility. I put an encrypted partition on it so any receipts or credit card info or login info would be safe in reply to prosperousfool #
- RT @untemplater: RT @jenny_blake: Deep thought of the day: "How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." -Wayne Dyer #quote #
- @FARNOOSH So what's happening to the one good show on SOAPNet? in reply to FARNOOSH #
- RT @flexo: RT @mainstr: 1 million Americans have been swindled in an elaborate credit card scam and they may not know http://bit.ly/cr8DNK #
How come my back hurts?
My favorite book series is the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. It’s a good sword-and-sorcery, good-versus-evil fantasy.
But I’m not here to talk about that series. Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.
There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving. Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work. That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way. Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.
So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward. This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.
This is the conversation that follows:
Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”
“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”
If it was luck, how come my back hurts?
Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.”
I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job. I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.
By fell into, I mean:
- I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
- I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
- When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job. The first one is the hardest.
- I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
- I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
- I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach. He happened to move to the company I’m with.
- I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
- He offered me a job.
That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck. How come my back hurts?
I have a friend on disability. He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals. He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop. He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies. And he complains about his bad luck.
His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically. His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.
I have another friend who made some bad decisions young. Some years ago, he decided that was over. He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble. When the bubble popped, so did his business. Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.
He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal. His coworkers whined about it. He’s so lucky. If it was luck, why does his back hurt?
We make our own luck.
If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead. When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.
When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29
- 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 #
Single Income Family
Effective next week, we are officially a single-income family.
If you can count all of my side-hustles as “single income”.
This week, my wife did the paperwork for her final week of state-sponsored unemployment. She also applied for the federal extension, but that’s not automatic.
In a nutshell, this reduces our monthly income by $1340.
What does that mean for us?
1. Our truck, which I was hoping to have paid off by March(3 months ago), still has about 7 regular-sized payments left. Instead of making double payments, we’re now making the schedule amount. The reason for the payoff delay is another post entirely. Savings: $400. In a pinch, we could stop making payments for almost 3 years due to how much we’ve already paid.
2. The riding lessons I use to spoil my girls are cut in half. Instead of weekly lessons, we’re going bi-weekly. Savings: $100. In a pinch, this could go away completely.
3. We had a conversation that included, “Honey, when I complain that you bought more than our weekly budget of food in one trip, I’m not being a dick. Here’s how much money we have.” That conversation appears to have been productive.
4. No vacation this year. We let our spending jump a couple of times this year, so last week, I dropped most of our vacation fund to make up for it. The expense of being matron-of-honor at a wedding will be an upcoming post, too.
[Edit]
5. My wife is working at our daycare provider 2 days per week in exchange for daycare discounts. Financially, this isn’t perfect, but it cuts the cost and gets the girls out of the house. I work from home and have a hard time keeping them out of the office.
6. We are considering long-term stay-at-home status for my wife.
[End Edit]
Right now, our budget says we make $100 more than we spend. That includes all of our savings goals, and setting aside money for some luxuries like our Halloween party. We’re not hurting–which makes me happy–but we do have to watch our expenses in a way that has just become mandatory.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to have renters. Between our roommate here and the renters in the house we fixed up last year, we’re adding about $1000 to our income. Rent is keeping us cash-flow positive.
Repair Plans, Appliances, and Rancid Meat…Oh, My!
- Image via Wikipedia
We recently had our annual barbecue. (For the purists, I am Minnesotan. Barbecue means “cooked over fire”.) Due to massive scheduling conflicts, it was a bit smaller than normal; only about 20 people came. At least 10 other people RSVP-ed that they were going to make it, but didn’t. Grr.
Naturally, we had food for everyone said they would be there and enough for half of the people who didn’t say anything, since Minnesotans don’t RSVP well. That translates to a lot of leftovers. No problem. After all, leftover ribs are hardly a punishment.
Sunday morning, we woke up to find that our refrigerator was happier at room temperature than the standard “cold”. We didn’t know it at the time, but the defrost unit was borked, so the cold air couldn’t circulate from the freezer to the refrigerator. Bye-bye leftovers. Hello, Mr. Repairman. We needed an excuse to clean out the fridge, anyway, but not at the price of my beautifully seared meat! (Sadness strikes.)
Monday evening, the repairman came out, worked for 2 hours and left a functional refrigerator and a $240 invoice in his wake. Thankfully, we are on the appliance repair plan through the gas company. We pay $26.40 per month to cover repairs to our range, water heater, furnace, drier, sewer main, and refrigerator. The first four items are standard, the final two are options that cost extra.
We originally got on the plan for the sewer main. We had a tree whose roots grew into the main and clogged it every year. A backed-up sewer main is a crappy way to wake up. Getting that snaked to the street cost $200 per year. At the time, without the refrigerator, the plan cost about $12 per month. One $200 call-out more than paid for the plan for the year. That was easy math. Now, our 20 year old refrigerator has been repaired twice in the last year, giving us $500 worth of repairs for $316.80. I would like to take this time to thank all of the people with reliable appliances for subsidizing my repairs.
My furnace, drier, and range are all reasonably new and shouldn’t need repairs any time soon, but the refrigerator and sewer main have paid for the plan themselves, several times over.
Should you get a similar plan? If your covered appliances are more than 4-5 years old, I would consider it. If they are more than 10 years old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all. Repairing quality appliances is cheaper than replacing them, especially when the repair cost is paid monthly and subsidized.
Do you use a service plan?
