Am I the only one who just noticed that it’s Wednesday? The holiday week with the free day is completely screwing me up.
Just to make this a relevant post:
Spend less!
Save more!
Invest!
Wee!
Carnivals
I’ve been a bit of a slacker when it comes to posting the carnivals I’ve been included in. This is me playing catch-up.
Live Real, Now was included in five carnivals last week:
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by Steadfast Finances
- Totally Money Carnival #54 hosted by 20’s Finance
- Carnival of Personal Finance #347 hosted by One Cent at a Time
- Canadian Finance Carnival #74 hosted by the Canadian Finance Blog
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #19 hosted by Newlyweds on a Budget
Prior to last week, I was included in:
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Amateur Financier
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie hosted by Young Adult Finances
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie hosted by My University Money
- Totally Money Carnival hosted by Family Money Values
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by Prairie Eco-Thrifter
- Festival of Frugality hosted by Magical Penny
- Totally Money Carnival at Help Me to Save
Thanks to all of the hosts for including my posts and my apologies for not posting the links sooner. If I missed you, please let me know.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
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You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great week!
Debanking
I’m overbanked.
The National Bank, Oamaru, built 1871: a prostyle Palladian portico on a neoclassical facade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)I’ve mentioned that before.
I won’t give up my herd of CapitalOne 360 accounts. I use those to track my savings goals, all 17 of them. I can’t drop my business accounts, my kids’ savings accounts, or the personal accounts that I actually use to spend money.
I do, however, need to simplify a bit.
Last month, I went through the hassle of transferring my 401k from two jobs ago and my IRA from my last job. Now, I’m down to just two retirement accounts. One is for my current job, and the other is a self-managed IRA with Sharebuilder.
Two down.
A few months ago, I went to yet another bank to close an account. My last job offered crappy health insurance, but balanced it out with an HSA. It complicated things, but the actual costs came to almost the same as the previous plan that didn’t have a high deductible. When I left, my HSA just sat there.
Last year, my oldest got braces, so I cleaned out the HSA ahead of time so we could pay up front and save 5% without paying interest.
Another one down.
That’s three accounts down out of 34.
Thirty-four?
Crap. That’s retirement accounts, business accounts, and personal accounts for two adults and three kids.
Bank 1 has the checking account we use, plus two savings accounts, one of which is where we store the rent money until we take a payday.
Bank 2 has a checking account, 16 savings accounts, and stock-trading account, a CD, and two IRAs for my wife and I.
Bank 3 has a checking account, and savings account for each of two businesses I own, a spare set of personal accounts, a savings account for each of the kids, and a checking account for my teenager.
Bank 4 holds nothing but my current 401k.
The only thing I can simplify without sacrificing my organizational jungle is to combine the personal accounts from bank 1 and 3. The problem is that Bank 1 has all of my bill pay information and there is still an account open for my mother-in-law’s estate. We keep that open just in case we find any other checks we need to cash. Bank 3 has my business accounts tied to my personal account and is the bank that my business partner uses, so that’s convenient to move money around.
I may be stuck.
Yakezie Beta Chapter Search
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In an effort to promote the crap out of the Yakezie Beta Chapter, I’ve created a search specific to us. This will make it easy to find Beta Challengers to promote.
The current list in the search is:
Live Real, Now
http://www.YourSmartMoneyMoves.com
http://meinmillions.blogspot.com/
http://www.rentingoutrooms.com
http://www.yesiamcheap.com
http://SimpleVesting.com
http://untildebtdouspart.blogspot.com/
http://www.blondeandbalanced.com
http://jamesfowlkes.com/
http://www.mightybargainhunter.com
http://www.beatingtheindex.com
http://www.thepassiveincomeearner.com
http://www.prairieecothrifter.com
http://sustainablepersonalfinance.com/
http://www.toddswanderings.com
More will be added as I have time to dig through the forums. If you’re a Beta Challenger and don’t see your name, leave a comment below and I’ll get you added ASAP.
10 Things to do on a Cheap Vacation.
This summer, my family took a six-day cheap vacation. Technically, it was a “stay-cation”, but I hate that word. Our goal was a fun time, on a budget, for 3 kids–one, two, and nine–without driving the adults nuts. Obviously, if you’re not herding small children, some of these choices may not be for you.
- Zoo. In St. Paul, there is a free zoo that is more fun than the paid zoo in the area. There’s a small amusement park, a playground, lots of picnic benches, and even animals. We packed a cooler full of food and drinks and hauled the kids to Como Zoo for a day. If there isn’t a free zoo near you, find a local petting zoo. They are good for a few hours.
- Go Antiquing. Make sure you stay on a budget. It can be more fun to feel the history in antique stores than to feel the fleeting thrill of an off-budget purchase. This isn’t much fun for small children.
- Children’s Museums. We have access to a “Museum Adventure Pass”. We used one to go to The Works Museum, which is a hands-on science exhibit not far from our home. It wasn’t busy and the kids had a blast. Most metropolitan areas have a wide variety of childre-friendly museums.
- Municipal Pool. We spent an afternoon at the city pool. Aside from gas, this was one of the most expensive events for our vacation. Residents get a discount, but it was still $30. I discovered that my two-year-old loves big waterslides. She comes out of them with a death-grip on the inner tube and a huge smile on her face. It was a double tube and she sat in my lap.
- Game Day. Spend a day with the TV off and games on the table. Make some snacks and prepare for some of the best quality time you can have as a family.
- Picnic. Pack a lunch and go somewhere quiet. Go to the park. Go to the country. Grab a bench on a sidewalk somewhere. Just have a leisurely lunch and take the opportunity to connect with your family.
- Hike. Find a trail somewhere and just walk. I’ve found that it easy to have deep or sometimes even awkward conversations while walking. You may find out things you never would have guessed.
- Visit Family. Hotel on the go? My parents live more than 2 hours away, so they are always thrilled to have us visit with the grandchildren. Be nice, bring some food to help out.
- Bike. The final day of our vacation, my wife and I left the kids in daycare and kept the day to ourselves. We had breakfast in a nice little cafe. We went antiquing. Then we went out to the park where we were married, had a picnic lunch and went for a bike ride together. It was our anniversary.
- Apple Orchard. Around here, they are everywhere. Pick-you-own apples, a petting zoo, pony rides. If you go in the fall, there is usually a corn maze. You can by real apple cider and any number of baked goods.
- University Exhibits. Check your local colleges, especially the public universities. Most of them have a PR program to maintain public interest and funding. Even the private schools will usually have fund-raisers for some programs. We recently attended the raptor show at the University of Minnesota for free with our Adventure Pass.
Vacations don’t have to be expensive to be fun. Counting gas, food, and the occasional souvenir, we took a 6 day cheap vacation packed with activities for well under $400, possibly even under $300.
How do you save money on a vacation?
Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnivals XCV.
Make a Budget
- Image by r.lovewell via Flickr
In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template. If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all. I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.
This is the master index of my budget planning resources. As I develop more, this will grow.
Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system. The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy. We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.
Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills. These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month. Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true. You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking. You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.
Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills. That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis. I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed. I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios. If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.
Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule. Sometimes, they are never actually due. We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things. A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun. You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.
Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2. Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills. For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount. For almost 2 years, it was granted. Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled. 100% discounts help us save more.
Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3. These bills are harder to reduce. Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?
Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4. Notice a pattern, yet?
Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1. Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.
So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?
