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Walking Dead: Would You Be Ready for the Apocalypse?

Would you be ready for the apocalypse? The Walking Dead asks that question every week. There is a great deal of human intrigue in the show, but the show is always asking you, the viewer, if you would be ready to deal with an apocalypse on that order. The idea goes much farther than dealing with zombies. Truly, zombies are the easy part of the apocalypse.

Lost People

We live in a world where we are very connected. You know people from all over the world, and it the entire world has been overrun by an apocalypse at once, all the people you are connected to around the world are effectively gone. There is no chance you will ever see them again. The people on the show deal with those ideas every day. There are so many people they miss that they never go to to say goodbye to.

Insecurity

The one thing that the apocalypse creates is insecurity. You will have no idea what is going to happen the next morning. You never know when someone in your crew is going to be bitten or killed. You have no idea when you will run into other humans you cannot trust. There is not a safe place on Earth. Even if you lock down a house, there is no way to know for sure that zombies would not get in.

Violence

The Walking Dead graphically depicts the violence that is necessary to kill zombies. You would have to “kill” thousands of people who have become zombies. You can see their wedding rings. You can see them in their uniforms, and you know that they used to be somebody. However, you have to end them in order to save yourself. Many of us believe we could do that, but we need to think twice before we assume we could be that violent.

Order

The lack of order in the world is the thing that would break most of us. We can reconcile loss, but that loss is hard to reconcile when there is no order in the world. There is not one authority on the planet that is still operating. How would you be able to resolve problems without such a structure?

On the show, all these problems are handled violently. Murdering violent people is all part of the job if you want to stay alive. It is one thing to kill a zombie that is no longer a person, but it is something else to kill a real person who is simply a thieving criminal.

You might think that you would do just fine when you are watching The Walking Dead, but you would not know unless it happened in real life. The zombie apocalypse is not all fun and games. At its heart is a tense human emotion called loss that we would all have to confront head on.

John Luke Robertson Gets Engaged: The Benefits of Marrying Young

Celebrities

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, a young Mr. John Luke Robertson is engaged to be married at the ripe age of nineteen. While I’m positive you may be reeling in awe at how anyone could fathom being married at that age, the idea isn’t such a terrible one. The Robertsons have done more than build an outdoorsman’s empire; they’ve set the standard for wholesome values and American family dynamic. Even though I’m sure the two lovebirds won’t be dining on ramen and sharing a ramshackle apartment on the cheap side of town, they have the right idea. Let’s take a moment to explore why marrying young may not be such a bad idea for those of us less waterfowl adept.

In the beginning, there was man. Man loved woman. Woman loved man. They found that they were so completely enamoured with one another that they couldn’t stand the idea of a moment apart and decided, “Hey, let’s spend every moment of or life together, forever.” There they are. Two young, ambitious people with the world ahead of them. Now what?

Likely, college is still looming for the two. Instead of struggling to work through school while paying for housing, they help each other. Two incomes mean half the burden and twice the savings. Instead of going out at night, they stay in studying, bonding, burning cookies and making lasting memories. After four years, that time spent at home has paid off. Instead of tarnishing their unblemished credit by applying for for small loans to stay afloat and likely defaulting, they’ve been paying off credit cards, paying on student loans, and thusly establishing good credit.

Speaking of homes, it’s about time for that. Thanks to the lack of partying and indecision, they left school with great GPA’s, promising careers, and a near perfect credit history. They purchase a home. Likely, a nice home with room to grow and most importantly, equity. Now that they’ve made the leap, the mortgage payment isn’t much more than the rent would have been and they can afford to pay a little extra toward the principle each month. Settling down so early has paid in dividends, via two incomes and ever increasing property value. Our couple has accomplished in five years what would take a single graduate closer to ten or fifteen to obtain.

They may or may not decide to have children. In the event that they do, the kids will have grown and left the nest before our couple has even reached 45. Diligently working and supporting each other, they have continued to save. The house is paid off and the kids are gone. Retired at 50, they own their home outright. They can relax and spend the rest of life enjoying it from a comfy porch swing. There is no struggle or financial burden. They are free, while others their age may still be living paycheck to paycheck and worrying about keeping a roof overhead.

You may still consider the idea of marrying young to be frivolous, but it is likely that at this point in your life you could have been twice as well off had you only settled down with that girl from high school who would have followed you to the end of the Earth. Following your heart may not only make you happy, it can make you stable, self sufficient and and financially secure. They don’t make a duck call for that.

My Financial Life

Finance

My financial life right now is boooring.

And that’s a good thing.

When I started this site I was $90,000 in debt, and considering bankruptcy. I’d just started on the Dave Ramsey plan and was looking for every possible way to scrape up any extra money I could.

Now, the debt is nearly gone.

US interest payments on debt by sector as a fr... — US interest payments on debt by sector as a fraction of GDP 1960-2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m looking at the last $8000 on my mortgage. I have enough in savings to pay it off today, without draining my savings completely dry.
My IRA gets maxed out every year, and this year, my wife’s will be, too.
We save or invest about 30% of our income.
My credit score according to CreditKarma.com is 826.

Our credit card is almost paid off every month. There’s occasionally some overlap between our auto-payment and our charges. And sometimes the budgeted auto-payment doesn’t match the reality of our spending and I don’t notice for a week or two. Except for the end of last year, but that’s a post for another day.

The short version is: We’re doing well, and we’re nearing the end of our financial problems.

Our scheduled mortgage over-payments will have it completely paid off in October. Then we are debt-free and can hopefully manage to live the rest of our lives without paying interest on money that isn’t earning us more than we are paying. For example, I’m willing to take out a mortgage to buy another rental property, but I’m going to wait to do that until our current mortgage is paid and we have a substantial down payment ready.

No debt.

I’m not kidding when I say it’s been a long 6 years of fighting our debt. Counting a car loan we got and paid early, we’ve paid more than $110,000 of debt in six years.

I’ve run side businesses, aggressively negotiated raises, and left companies(voluntarily and otherwise) for better pay & benefits.

I’ve watched friends and family take vacations around the world.

I’ve turned my kids down for so many things that I would love to buy them, but couldn’t because being financially secure is a much higher priority than spoiling children. Try explaining that to a 6 year old.

And now, the debt-ridden part of our financial journey is almost over. Finally.

So what’s next?

I have no idea. I’d like to travel more. Linda and the girls want us to move to a hobby farm and get horses. We want more rental properties.

Whatever “next” is, it will be done from a position of strength that won’t destroy our financial world or put out futures at risk.

My Mortgage is Smaller Than My Credit Card Balance

Finance

It’s been one heck of a spring summer for my family, financially speaking, and it turned out to be a bit more than we had budgeted for.

English: Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed dancing a... — English: Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed dancing a ballroom tango. The couple, dancing for the USA, came third in the World Professional Standard Championship 2009. Photo taken in 2006 by Porfirio Landeros, Kwixite Media, in San Diego, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s what we’ve done on top of our regular spending, so far:

Remodeled both of our bathrooms(at the same time!) ($6000-ish)
Summer camp for two kids ($500)
Swimming lessons for three kids ($350)
Replaced the entire air conditioning system in my car ($1600)
Finished paying for our current round of ballroom dancing lessons($400)
New mattress on our bed($1200)
My wife is off work for the summer. Part time and sporadic hours when it’s not the school year.

Taken in reverse order…

Mattress

The wire frame on our mattress broke. I wish that was a complement to my prowess, but nothing was happening when it snapped. Sleeping with a jagged piece of steel poking you sucks, to say the least.

Dancing

Ballroom dancing is something my wife and I both enjoy, and it’s good exercise, so we decided to keep it up. We are officially in training for competition-level dancing, but now that our favorite place to dance is closed, we may not continue. The lessons are paid for through next spring, though.

Air conditioner

My A/C system “grenaded”. Basically, the insides decided to disintegrate and go flowing through the rest of the system, mucking it all up. And making the car undriveable. On the plus side, this hard-to-find leak I’ve been ignoring in favor of annual $75 A/C recharges is fixed, now.

Swimming, not dying

My youngest kids have never had swimming lessons and my oldest isn’t a strong swimmer. Helping my kids not drown is a good thing.

Camp

We put the down payment on camp back in February, then promptly forgot about paying for the rest of it until the deadline hit. I paused while typing this to add it to my budget so I don’t forget for next year.

The remodel

We had, at one point, $9500 set aside for the remodel, but I raided that account a few times if we went over on our monthly spending. Then, when we got the estimate, we neglected to include one of the subtotals together when we agreed to it, so the job cost more than I was expecting from the start. We still got a great price, though.

Until the tub surround didn’t come in a color we liked and could get in less than 6 weeks. So, we upgraded to porcelain tile.

And the ceiling started peeling.

And we decided to get nice fixtures, so it would be a bathroom we loved enough to demonstrate physically, for years to come.

And we noticed the basement bathroom floor tiles were loose.

So much money just poured out of my credit card.

At the moment, we have approximately $8,000 on our credit cards. That’s the highest balance we’ve carried in years. This month was the first time I’ve paid interest on a credit card since August 2012.

What’s our plan for the credit cards?

I get a $500 bonus every month. Getting this bonus is almost entirely under my control.
We gave our renters(two of our closest friends) a good introductory rent until their current lease expires. Their rent triples at the end of the month.
I stopped paying double mortgage payments.
We have some money in our emergency fund.
We should have about $1000 left in the remodel account when the job is finished.

That’s $1500 as an immediate payment, plus about $2300 per month on top of our normal spending to pay off the cards.

That means we’ll be down to about $4300 in two weeks. When my wife gets her first full paycheck at the end of September, we’ll have the cards paid off.

Then comes the challenge of catching back up on the mortgage. Until yesterday, we were projected to pay off our house on December 1. Our current balance is $4660, with a mandatory monthly payment of $470.58. That’s about 10 months of payments. We were making an extra $520 interest payment each month, which brought it down to the December payoff date. For the next 3 months, we’re only going to be paying roughly the minimum, which means we’ll have to pay a bit over triple for November and December to be done with it this year.

I think we can do it.

How do we avoid this in the future?

With our renters paying full rent now, our goal is to pretend Linda isn’t getting paid when her work picks up again in September. We want to save or invest everything she makes, on top of the current savings. Not all of that will be long-term, and not all of it will be spendable. That saving will include things like braces for the younger kids, vacations that are more than just long weekends, and maxing out both of our retirement accounts.

That should still let us pad out our emergency fund to 4 months of expenses by spring, which is a pretty good cushion for us.

I hope. I haven’t done the math.

Get Age on your Side

Misc

One of the best ways in the early years of your career to provide for your long term future is to have a 401K for your retirement where your employer will match your own contributions up to a certain figure. Your contribution is pre-tax incidentally. Albert Einstein once said that compound interest was the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and it is compound interest that will help even small amounts to grow into a substantial figure on retirement if savings begin in your 20s.

It is worth illustrating this with real figures. A figure of $4,000 a year saved between the ages of 25 and 35 with no further contributions after that will produce a larger final figure at 65 than someone starting at 35 and contributing $4,000 per annum for 30 years. The latter has invested three times as much as well. The factors that decide this are time and compound interest. The whole total of former is working for him or her for 30 years. A fair amount of the second example is only ‘working’ positively for a limited time. Start early!

An Illustration

It is worth looking at examples to see what size of fund is realistic. 8% is not an unreasonable sum to put away on a salary of $40,000 a year, a salary that grows at 2% per annum for 20 years. If the employer pays 3% in addition and growth is a modest 7%, the fund at the end of 20 years would be around $210,000. If you can put 10% in instead, or if you extend the saving period to 30 years the fund rockets to over $500,000! It’s time and compound interest again because in the example over 20 years you will have only put in just under $80,000 yourself to have a fund two and a half times bigger.

A Couple of Observations

Can there be a bigger argument for saving from an early age than that? Surely not! The question is how to manage your money well enough so that you can start to save in the early years of your career. You may well have a student loan to begin to pay off. Probably two of the most important things to do with realisticloans.com, or not to do depending how you look at it are:

Credit Cards. Avoid building up debts by buying things you cannot afford. The interest charged on outstanding balances is penal. If you have a balance, perhaps as a legacy of subsidizing your student life, take out a personal loan to clear it. It is much cheaper in terms of interest rate and repayable in monthly instalments over a fixed term
Resist the temptation of trying to impress with material things. Impress people by who you are and not a new car or the latest fashions.

Expenditure

There is no doubt that you may well have monthly expenditure you did not face before, especially if you have relocated to start work. Such expenditure is unavoidable but you should spend some time on researching whether you are getting the best deals. That applies to a number of significant things such as utilities, insurance and telephone. There are comparison websites that do a good deal of research for you and at least will provide you with a short list to look at further.

The aim is to create a regular surplus that can be transferred out of your checking account when your monthly pay comes in to work positively for you and your future. You will need to apply self-discipline to your finances but you can see from the example of ‘time and compound interest’ what they benefits are for being in control. It really is not much to sacrifice.

There will be times in the years to come when you have big financial decisions to make. Real estate comes to mind immediately and a long term mortgage can reasonably be regarded as positive debt because it should produce good growth over the term you have committed yourself to. With real estate often comes marriage and a family; and all the expense that involves. Yet that responsibility is yet another reason to start young in saving for the future, and your possible dependents.

Net Worth and other stuff

Misc

This was not a good year for our net worth.

Over the summer, we remodeled both of our bathrooms. At the same time.

1 out of 10: Don’t recommend.

We love the bathrooms, but–as with any project–it went over budget. Sucks to be us.

Then, towards the end of the year, we decided to push hard and pay off our mortgage in 2015. Part of doing that meant paying the credit card off slower than we’d like. It wasn’t the best long-term decision, but we’re mortgage-free now.

Those decision, coupled with a small slump in our investment accounts means we are worth $7650 going into 2016 than we were at the start of 2015.

Disappointing.

I’m also disappointed that our credit card discipline slipped last year.

New plan: No debt before tax day. Every cent of Linda’s paycheck, every cent of my monthly bonus checks, and every cent of any extra money we make is going into the remaining credit card debt. My math says that last debt will die on April 1st.

Then we get to talk about what to do with out money when there’s no debt. But never fear, I have a plan. A boring, boring plan.

We’re going to save for college at a rate we should have started 10 years ago.
We’re going to max out both of our retirement plans.
We’re going to take some nicer family vacations.
We’re going to buy a pony.

So not that boring.

And when our kids all decide to become certified sign-spinners, we’ll have a huge nest-egg in the college fund savings account to spend on lottery tickets.

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