- Up at 5 two days in a row. Sleepy. #
- May your…year be filled w/ magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you…kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful. @neilhimself #
- Woo! First all-cash grocery trip ever. Felt neat. #
- I accidentally took a 3 hour nap yesterday, so I had a hard time sleeping. 5am is difficult. #
- Wee! Got included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, again. http://su.pr/2AKnDB #
- Son’s wrestling season starts in two days. My next 3 months just got hectic. #
- RT @Moneymonk: A real emergency is something that threatens your survival, not just your desire to be comfortable -David Bach # [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-09
Sunday Roundup: Varsity Punk
I moved this roundup to Sunday to give myself a bit more time to track my weight-loss and push-up goals, since I weigh in on Saturdays. Yesterday, however was super busy. It was all good, but full.
Starting Friday: After work, I rushed my oldest to the B-squad wrestling tournament, where he took first place in his weight bracket. When I got home, I fell asleep almost immediately.
Saturday, we woke up and rushed to the varsity tournament. It was his first time wrestling varsity. Now, he wrestles for a youth league. Participants vary from 3rd to 8th grades. My son is 11, 5′ 7″, and 150 pounds. Guess who he wrestles? Almost exclusively eighth graders. He lost both of his matches, but he put in a great showing. He lasted a round and a half against the top-rated kid in his bracket and managed to get quite a few points.
After that, we rushed home, made dinner for some friends and went to a movie. Red Riding Hood is worth seeing. We got home at 1 and immediately fell asleep. This is the first time I’ve had the computer on at home since Thursday night, other than to check movie times and prices.
30 Day Project Update
This month, I am trying to do 100 perfect push-ups in a single set. I’m recording each session in a spreadsheet. I am currently up to 91 in a set and 261 in a session, spread across 5 sets. I’m expecting to be down in my next session, since I’ve totally slacked off the few days.
Weight Loss Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 40 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 2 pound since last week. I’ve dropped 7 pounds in March, while doing an insane amount of push-ups and packing on a few pounds of muscle.
Total Inches: I have lost 24 inches in the same time frame, down 1.5 inches since last week. I’ve lost 7 inches each off of my waist and hips. It’s time to go clothes shopping, which sucks. I manage to avoid doing that for a year or more at a time, but now, my pants have stopped fitting. When I cinch my belt to where it actually fits, my jeans have pleats.
Best Posts
The recording industry has sued Limewire for damages totaling more than the economic value of…Earth.
Making money line is easier when you’re not bing conned. PT has a list of legit paying survey sites.
I’d love to raise chickens. It’s technically allowed in my city, but only with a permit that the city refuses to issue.
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
I wrote Fall from Grace, a post about how and why I got into debt.
There was also a post on credit repair.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
You’re Gonna Die, Part 1 was included in the Totally Money Carnival.
Getting Out of Debt: The Prime Rule as included in Carnival of Personal Finance.
Financial Pet Peeve: Fees To Receive Paper Bank Statements was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
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Have a great week!
Free Tivo
- Image by Marcin Wichary via Flickr
TV is causing problems in my life.
We watch too much TV. Often, we’re only watching because there’s a crappy show in between two shows we do want to watch. In the winter–during the new seasons–my son has wrestling practice 4 or 5 nights per week, which means I miss the new shows I like. We recently downgraded our service provider, so there’s no functional guide button in the house.
That all makes me sad.
Then I found out that Tivo’s lifetime service is attached to the unit. If you sell a unit with lifetime service, you can transfer the service to the buyer. You can’t, however, transfer the service to a new box. That means that everyone who upgrades and sells their old box is selling the lifetime service with it. If you don’t mind having older equipment, you can pick up a used box with full lifetime service for less than the cost of a new box.
After reading Erica’s method of finding 750 extra hours per year, we decided to give it a shot. We are taking back control of our TV. No more rushing home to catch a new episode. No more mindlessly channel-surfing to kill time between good shows. No more commercials. And a guide! I like having a guide button.
I started shopping. My goal was to get a Series 2 Tivo with full lifetime service for about $100 before shipping. I came close a few times, but always lost the auction, in the end. I wasn’t in a hurry, and I didn’t actually have the money budgeted, so it was good to lose.
Then, a friend found himself in a situation that didn’t work with a Tivo and decided to sell his heavily upgraded, heavily accessorized Tivo HD for $100 + shipping. A quick call to my wife resulted in just one objection: Where were we getting the money? We don’t have an opportunity fund, yet and I needed to take advantage of this quick if we were going to get it.
I decided to make it free.
When I automated all of our bills, I rounded up. If a bill was for $63.50, I paid $64. If a bill wasn’t exactly consistent, I paid enough to cover the higher amount. For example, I didn’t have a text messaging plan on my cell phone until December. Before that, I’d get about a dozen texts each month, so I budgeted for paying for the texts. If I didn’t get the texts, I’d get a credit on my bill. I never lowered the automated payment. All of my bills were set up like that. My insurance company dropped my rates, but I left the payment alone. I slowly started accumulating a credit on a number of bills. My intention was to skip a month when the billed amount got to $0, and apply the money to debt. It was just a mind-game to play with myself to make the debt easier to pay.
I flipped through the bills, looking at the credits. I adjusted the payments to match the bills this month and found more than enough to buy the Tivo. This is a purchase that doesn’t influence my budget in any way. Almost. This unit doesn’t have lifetime service, so I will be paying for the monthly fee, but that’s been more than balanced out by reducing our television service.
This is a recently-high-end model for free, as far as my budget is concerned. I used money that wasn’t even on the table before I went looking for it. It’s like searching the couch cushions for money to catch a movie.
Now, I’ll have control of my TV–with a strong measure of convenience to boot–for $13 per month. The time savings is yet-to-be-determined.
A free Tivo simply because I rounded my bills up when I automated last year. That’s a pain-free opportunity fund.
Update: After I wrote this, I found out that I dropped the ball in budgeting for child-care now that summer is here and my oldest won’t be in school. These costs are going up $350 per month. I spent an hour scavenging the couch cushions of my budget this week. I had to adjust some savings and repayment goals, but I’ve effectively paid for a summer worth of care for my boy the same way. Free.
5 Life Altering Lessons I Learned From My Debt
Several years ago, my wife and I dug ourselves into debt pretty deep. It wasn’t as bad as some, but it was much worse than anybody could actually want. Recognizing the problem as a problem was a life-changing event. From there, I’ve been examining every thing else about my life. As part of that examination, I’ve spent a lot of time really thinking about the ultimate causes of the debt and what it has taken to motivate ourselves to get rid of it.
I’ve realized a few things:
- The things I want right now do not matter. I own around 2000 movies. Up until last spring, every time I went into a store that sold movies, I’d peruse the cheap rack and buy 2-3 moves. I’d watch them all, but the vast majority were only ever watched once or twice. The rest may as well have been rented. I wanted them and I wanted them “right now”, but after watching them once, the value vanished. Most things I’ve bought on a whim lost their value to me shortly after bringing them home. Planned purchases are enjoyable longer.
- The things I care about do not cost money. I cannot buy a kiss from my kids, or a hug from my wife. The school project my son did on his hero(Me!) is absolutely priceless. The TV, the smartphone, a new car, these things are fleeting. Teaching my kids to read or ride a bike, getting beat by a 6 year old at chess, these things will last us all forever. It took $30,000 of unsecured consumer debt to drill that lesson home.
- Instant gratification is easier than security, but not nearly as gratifying. It is incredibly easy to buy what you want when you want it. It is much harder to postpone buying something until you can afford it. Once you build that habit, and see the savings of delayed gratification, it’s worth it. There is a comfort in having a few months worth of expenses in an emergency fund that no amount of knickknacks can match.
- I like getting stuff more than I like having stuff. It’s easy to succumb to the temporary high of a quick purchase. It’s easy to train yourself to crave that high to the point that it’s impossibly to walk out of a store without buying something. I did that. When I cleaned out my entire house this spring, I came to the realization that I don’t need–or even want–most of the things I own. I wanted it once, but once I had it, the infatuation was gone. I didn’t have many problems unloading most of my crap. It felt good to get rid of it.
- Owing money sucks. The borrower is slave to the lender. When our debt exceeded our annual income, we were working 3/4 of the time just to stay afloat. Instead of being able to spend my time and money on the things that matter, I was forced to spend thousands of hours just covering interest and pretending to make progress on my shackles. That’s not how I recommend spending your life. Time is the one thing you have that you can never get back. Don’t waste it on crap like debt.
Have you learned anything from your debt?
Carnival Roundup
I spent this week in my home town with my family: my parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, kids, uncles, aunts, and some cousins from Tennessee that I don’t see often.
In the evenings, after the kids were put to bed, we played Cards Against Humanity: A Party Game For Horrible People.
If you are a horrible, dirty-minded person, with a sense of humor that would make your grandmother blush–and you have friends to match–get this game. Then play it where you can’t wake up the neighbors. Seriously, it’s more fun than a super soaker filled with cat pee.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Write and Get Paid
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by I Am 1 Percent
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #39 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Retirement #26 hosted by Write and Get Paid
Totally Money Carnival #72 hosted by MammaSaver
Festival of Frugality #342 hosted by Help Me to Save
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Simple Finance Blog
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #38 hosted by My University Money
Yakezie Carnival – Summer Vacation Edition hosted by One Cent at a Time
Carnival of Retirement #24 hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Yakezie Carnival – Arachnophobia Edition hosted by See Debt Run
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Broke Professionals
Totally Money Carnival #70 hosted by Young Adult Finances
Yakezie Carnival – Sushi Edition hosted by Free Ticket to Japan
Festival of Frugality #340 hosted by See Debt Run
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Financial Product Reviews
Yakezie Carnival – Birthday Edition hosted by 20’s Finances
Festival of Frugality #339 hosted by The Frugal Toad (My post was chosen as an editor’s pick!)
Thanks for including my posts.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
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 weekend!
10 Tips to Help Parents Stay Out of Debt
People say that when you have a baby, your world gets flipped upside down. That’s not true. Your world gets dropped in a martini shaker and left to the whims of a sadistic bartender with a shaking fetish. Everything changes. That sounds like an exaggeration and nobody believes it until it happens, but it’s true.
When you find out you are about to reproduce, you will experience a phenomenon called “nesting”. Nesting is the idea that, if you take your credit cards and beat them against the curb until they bleed and VISA calls you asking for mercy, you will be transformed into the best parent ever, regardless of what you may actually screw up. It’s the way parents calm their fears by spending money, often on things that aren’t needed.
Q. How do you avoid becoming a debt-ridden, worried mess of an over-protective, over-extended new parent?
A. What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhinoceros?
I can’t help with the rest, but here’s 10 ways you can avoid the debt problems.
- Have a budget. I may have said this before. It’s possible this counts as a recurring theme here. If you don’t have a budget, you aren’t in control of your money. If you aren’t in control, then how do you know where it has gone or where it is supposed to go?
- Budget for baby crap. This will be a recurring expense for years, so get used to it. A friend of mine is on the cusp of having everyone out of diapers for the first time since 1993. Do you think they plan that expense? Diapers.com has $10 off and free shipping on orders over $49. Use code “ LiveReal” during checkout.
- Double the number you have in #2. Seriously. It will cost you more than you think, but it doesn’t have to cost you as much as you fear. It’s far better to have too much budgeted and find yourself with extra money than it is to budget too little and be forced to make up the difference at the feet of Master Card.
- Only take the advice of people you know and trust. Every random jerkface on the street has (usually) well-intentioned advice for new and expecting parents. Ignore them all. If they aren’t your doctor, your mother(assuming she did her job right), or friends with children, they are clueless and their advice should be immediately round-filed. Ditto for parenting magazines. The writers don’t know better than you do. Read the magazines for six months and watch for conflicting advice, not only in the same magazine, but often from the same writer! Don’t add the stress of bad advice from strangers to what is already a stressful time.
- Don’t get every gadget designed to cushion the baby. A wipe warmer is a waste of money. Do you want your baby to be scared of a little chill forever? Cold wipes build character. If that isn’t good enough, hold the wipe in your hand for a few seconds before using it. There are a million other gadgets to keep your little one from ever feeling a moment of discomfort. Don’t waste your cash. It may only be 10 pounds, but it’s tougher than you think.
- Don’t get every gadget designed to cushion the parent. They make ergonomic bottles, braces to hold your arms in the right position to feed, fancy cloths to catch baby vomit. Tough it up. Support your baby yourself. Build some muscle and some character. Use cloth diapers to catch various treasures your little brat will spit up on you. Spending more doesn’t always make it better. The ergonomic bottles that make it easier to feed a baby, make it harder for the baby to hold the bottle. This is actually making your life more difficult.
- Focus on the necessities. Yes, the fancy formula with the pre-digested proteins has a nicer label. It doesn’t make a difference. The generic brand at the warehouse store usually has the exact same ingredients in the exact same ratios as the brand name at the baby store–for half the price. There is nothing special about the blankets in the baby section–except the price. The fancy bottle warmer doesn’t do anything that a cup of warm water on the counter won’t handle. You need: A crib, unless you are doing a family bed; a easy-to-clean mat to change diapers(on the floor works!); and a diaper bag(back-to-school backpacks are more ergonomic and easy to organize than anything in the baby store!). Everything else is a luxury.
- Time counts more than stuff. No matter what else you hear, no matter how old your child gets, time with you counts more than anything else you could do or buy. Be there for your kids and the rest is gravy.
- Brand-name and designer labels are not status symbols. The opinions of the other soccer mommies do not matter. The opinions of the random jerkfaces on the street do not matter. Designer labels do not make you a better parent and are not an indicator of a happy baby.
- Always remember: Babies bounce and have short memories. While I don’t recommend bouncing your baby on the floor, they are surprisingly resilient. They don’t hold grudges, either. There is room to make mistakes without screwing up your kid.
For a hundred thousand years, people raised babies with nothing more than a scrap of hide to alternately chew on or wipe with. You can probably get buy with just a bit more. Relax and enjoy the process of raising your kids. Money doesn’t matter nearly as much as your presence.
