Search Results for “three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/brown-bagging-your-way-to-savings/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/subscribe-by-email/budget-lesson-part-2/contact-me/future-dreams/money-problems-day-1-setting-goals” — Page 96

Disclosure

I’m not terribly commercial, but I do enjoy making money.

As such, it is safe to assume that any company, entity, corporation, person, place, thing, or other that has a product, service, post, or link has in some way compensated me for said product, service, post or link. That compensation–direct or indirect–may be in the form of money, swag, free trips, gold bullion, smurf collectibles, super-models, or just warm-fuzzies. That list is NOT in order of preferred method of compensation.

To reiterate: If it’s commercial, and it’s here, I’m probably being paid for it.

Selling Your Car

Finance

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

Unlicensed Health “Insurance”

Finance

Gibraltar monkey — Image by Salim Virji via Flickr

Health insurance is–without a doubt–expensive.

As much as I hate the idea of socialized health care, it does have one shiny selling point to counter its absolute immorality: it’s cheap. Assuming, of course, you ignore the higher taxes and skewed supply/demand balance.

Here in the US, we’re free from that burdensome contrivance. Instead, we have health care and health insurance industries that are heavily regulated and ultimately run by people who have A) never held a job outside of government or academia, and B) have no idea how to run either a hospital or a business. That works so much better. Some days, I think our health system would be better run by giving syringes and band-aids to drunken monkeys. The high-level decision making wouldn’t be worse.

Thanks to that mess and the high unemployment rate that somehow hasn’t been remedied by the 27 bazillion imaginary jobs that have been save or created in the last 2 years, some people are hurting. Not the poor. We have so many “safety net” programs that the poor are covered. I’m talking about the “too rich to be considered poor, but too poor to be comfortable”, the middle class.

If are much above the poverty line, you will stop qualifying for some of the affordable programs. The higher above the line you go, the less you qualify for. That makes sense, but the fact that we have so many safety net programs means there is a lot of demand created by all of the people who are getting their health care “free”.

That drives the prices up for the people who actually have to pay for their own care. Yes, even if you have an employer-sponsored plan, you are paying for the health insurance. That insurance is a benefit that is a part of your total compensation. If employers weren’t paying that, they could afford higher wages.

As the price goes up, employers are moving to a high-deductible plans, which puts a squeeze on the employees’ budgets. Employees–you and I, the people who actually have to pay these bills–are looking for ways to save money on the care, so they can actually afford to see a doctor.

In response to that squeeze, some unscrupulous people(#$%#@%! scammers) are capitalizing on the financial pain and selling “health discount plans” which promise extensive discounts for a cheap membership fee. These plans are not insurance. In a best-case scenario, the discount plans will get you a small discount from a tiny network of doctors and clinics. Prescription drug plans are no better. You may get a 60% discount, but only if you use a back-alley pharmacy in Nome, Alaska between the hours of 8 AM and 8:15 AM on January 32nd of odd leap years.

How can you tell it’s a scam?

The scammers will try to sell you on false scarcity. They’ll say the plan is filling up fast and you have to buy now if you want to get in on it. For all major purchases, if you aren’t going to be allowed time to research your options, assume it’s a scam. Good deals won’t evaporate.

They aren’t licensed. Call the Department of Commerce for your state and see if the company is a licensed insurance provider. Pro tip: they aren’t.

They don’t want you to read the plan until after you’ve paid. That’s a flashing, screaming, electro-shock warning sign for anything. Once you’ve given them your money, your options are reduced.

The price is amazingly low. Of course it is. They aren’t actually providing any services, so their overhead is nonexistent. They only have to pay for gas to get to the bank to cash your checks.

Really, the best way to judge if something is a scam is to go with your gut. Does it feel like a scam? Do you feel like you’re getting away with something? Does it sound too good to be true?

To recap: health care/prescription discount plans = bad juju.

Power

Finance, Life

At 8PM Friday night, our power went out.

We had 70 MPH straight-line winds and horizontal rain. Trees came down all over the neighborhood. Two houses down, 3 tree played dominoes, creaming the house, the fence, and two cars.

How did we do?

The skeleton I keep hanging in my tree lost its right shin-bone and we lost power. So did 610,000 other people in the area.

It’s interesting to watch what happens when the power goes out.

I’m assuming every generator in the area sold out. I don’t know, because I already had one. I do know that most of the gas stations near me ran out of gas on Saturday. Most places were out of ice, too. Batteries were hard to scrounge.

The restaurants that either didn’t lose power or had backup generators were raking in money all weekend. Sunday morning, McDonald’s had a line of cars backed up an entire block.

Our power came back on Monday night. 74 hours of living in the dark ages. We had to read books on paper and cook all of our food on the grill.

We did okay. A few years ago, when the power went out for a day, I bought a generator. Saturday morning, I finally had a reason to take it out of the box.

The generator cost me $450. Over the weekend, we put about $40 worth of gas into it. That kept our refrigerator and freezer running, saving at least $5-600 worth of food. Two neighbors filled up our available freezer space, so that’s another $200 worth of food that didn’t die.

That’s a $500 investment to save nearly $800 worth of food.

Pure win.

The generator also allowed us to keep a couple of fans running, which is great when the power goes out when it’s 90 degrees outside. We also fired up the TV and DVD player at night to help the kids settle down for bed. This is one time I was glad to have an older TV, because cheap generators don’t push out a clean electricity that you can safely use to run nice electronics.

We have a couple of backup batteries for our cell phones, so we got to stay in touch with the world. We borrowed an outlet at our rental property to charge the batteries when they died.

We had about 5 gallons of gas on hand, which was convenient, but not enough. I’m going to grow that. A little fuel stabilizer and a couple of 5 gallon gas cans and we can be set for the next time gas runs out.

We cooked everything on the propane grill. I keep two spare propane tanks on hand, but we didn’t use them. Sunday night, my wife made spaghetti on the grill. The hard part was keeping the noodle from falling through. Nah, we threw the cast iron on the grill and cooked away. Had pancakes and bacon made the same way on Sunday.

We had to buy more lanterns. We had two nice big ones, but at one point, we had 9 people in our house. That’s a lot of games, books, and bathroom breaks to coordinate with only two main lights. This weekend did teach our daughters that the emergency flashlights are not toys. Two of them had dead batteries that needed to be replaced.

Going out to dinner Monday evening was a treat. We sat in a building with air-conditioning!

All said, we spent about $250 that we wouldn’t have if the power would have stayed on. That’s $40 for gas, $80 for dinner(you try feeding a family of 5 for less than that at a restaurant that doesn’t have a drive-through) and $130 on new lanterns. The lantern bill caught me by surprise, by a lot, but now we are set for next time.

How would you do without power for three days?

Mariano Rivera: Rags to MLB Riches

Celebrities

English: New York Yankees Pitcher Mariano Rive... — English: New York Yankees Pitcher Mariano Rivera on May 25th, 2008 vs. Seattle Mariners. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mariano Rivera is the most dominant closer in the history of baseball. His cut fastball, or cutter, is considered by many to be the best pitch in the history of the game. He is the all-time saves leader, and he has five World Series rings that he can wear. Of course, he has made millions of dollars over his professional career, which has brought him a long way from his humble roots as the son of a Panamanian fisherman.

Rivera’s journey began in Panama City. He was born on November 29, 1969. His father was a fisherman in the small fishing village of Puerto Caimito. Like almost every boy in Latin America, his earliest athletic experiences were playing soccer. However, he also played baseball as well. The area was so poor that not many people actually owned baseball gloves, bats or balls.

Instead, Rivera and his friends would play games with tree branches for bats. They used milk cartons instead of gloves, and they taped together pieces of old fishing nets to use as balls. Rivera didn’t have his first real leather baseball glove until his dad bought him one at the age of 12.

Rivera liked baseball, but he never thought he would one day make a living at it. Instead, he dreamed of playing soccer professionally like most Latinos. However, he suffered a series of ankle injuries during high school that shattered this dream. He finished school at age 16 and began working on his father’s fishing boat. He had to abandon ship when the boat capsized, and that scared him away from fishing forever.

Soon after that, Rivera started playing on a local amateur baseball team, Panama Oeste. He was the team’s shortstop, and he only started pitching because the team’s normal pitcher was in a slump. His teammates were so impressed with his pitching skills that they convinced the Panama scout for the New York Yankees to give him a tryout. Rivera went to Panama City for a Yankees tryout camp, and the Yankees signed the man who would become one of the greatest players of all-time to a contract worth just $3,000.

When Rivera came to the United States, he did not speak English and was incredibly homesick. Puerto Caimito did not have telephone service at that time, which meant Rivera could only communicate to his family back home by writing long letters.

Rivera made steady progress through the minor leagues, but it was still five years before he was called up to the big leagues. His first few years in the major leagues, Rivera made the minimum salary of $750,000. This is a small figure by American standards, but it is more money than most people in Panama can dream of.

Rivera still goes back to Panama every year. He feels it is a home and that he is a part of it. His riches have never transformed him into a diva. He is one of the most down-to-earth and genuinely friendly players in the game.

Charlie Hunnam and the Success of 50 Shades of Grey

Celebrities

It looks like actor Charlie Hunnam is all set to cash in on the biggest romance novel of the decade. He is set to play the lead role of Christian Grey in the film adaptation of the salacious hit novel 50 Shades of Grey directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.

Charlie Hunnam, with his English good looks and charm, will definitely make the fantasies of so many women into a reality. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1980, Hunnam is already well known in the UK for his portrayal of Nathan Maloney in the television show Queer as Folk. He is also fresh off his recent role in the summer blockbuster Pacific Rim. Now, he will delve into the alternative, sexy, and edgy role of Christian Grey, the hero of the novels written by E.L. James.

With 70 million copies of the BDSM-themed trilogy sold around the world, even the novels themselves are a runaway success. Hunnam himself stands to make quite a bit of money off the film adaptation. If the initial film is a success on the level of Twilight, then Hunnam could easily become an A-list actor in Hollywood, which would boost the amount of money he earns per film. If the novels continue to be adapted into films, then he will be set for at least another few years. Who wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing they were starring in a saucy summer film that would be a guaranteed blockbuster? However, Hunnam didn’t jump straight away to become Christian Grey – he turned down the role at first, but then reconsidered it later. If the buzz surrounding the film means anything, then it’s a good thing that Hunnam changed his mind!

Production work on the film will begin in October 2013, and a release date has been scheduled for August 1st, 2014. With the recent announcement of the lead actors, the excitement is building, and it doesn’t seem like it will die down any time soon. It looks as if 50 Shades of Grey will be a wise career move for Charlie Hunnam as a well as a great way to boost his annual salary.

Search Results for: three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/brown-bagging-your-way-to-savings/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/subscribe-by-email/budget-lesson-part-2/contact-me/future-dreams/money-problems-day-1-setting-goals

Related articles