- RT @ScottATaylor: The Guys on "Pickers" should just follow the "Hoarders" teams around- perfect mashup #
- PI/PNK test: http://su.pr/2umNRQ #
- RT @punchdebt: When I get married this will be my marital slogan "Unity through Nudity" #
- http://su.pr/79idLn #
- RT @jeffrosecfp: Wow! RT @DanielLiterary:Stats show 80% of Americns want to write a book yet only 57% have read at least 1 bk in the last yr #
- @jeffrosecfp That's because everyone thinks their lives are unique and interesting. in reply to jeffrosecfp #
- @CarrieCheap Congrats! #CPA in reply to CarrieCheap #
- @prosperousfool I subscribe to my own feed in google reader. Auto backup for in between routine backups. Saved me when I got hacked. in reply to prosperousfool #
- @SuzeOrmanShow No more benefits? I bet the real unemployment rate goes down shortly thereafter. in reply to SuzeOrmanShow #
- Losing power really make me appreciate living in the future. #
Saturday Roundup
I wrote this yesterday. According the forecast, when this post goes live, I’ll be moving 5-8 inches of snow off of my driveway.
That, or watching TV and thinking about moving snow.
Maybe I’ll just sleep in and wait for spring to melt the snow.
Don’t forget to enter my drawing for a $100 Amazon gift card! Go here for details. It ends on the 15th, so don’t wait too long.
Best Posts
Crazy-easy ice cream bread. How could this possibly be bad?
Tron comes out in 2 weeks. I’d love to show up on a custom street-legal Troncycle.
Arsenic-based lifeforms are shaking up the way we understand life to work. I’m of the opinion that life will probably exist almost everywhere that isn’t a completely dead dry rock. I say that as an expert in…well, nothing related to astrobiology.
Following Erica’s advice is currently making me a few hundred dollars per month, with every sign of growing as time goes on. I hate to sound like a fanboy, but if she pimps a product, I’m at least going to give it some serious consideration.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked
10 Dumb Money Moves was featured in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.
Book Review: The Art of Non-Conformity was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Things You Should Buy Online to Save Money was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
LRN Timewarp
This is a new feature to share the gift that is me with anyone new to LRN. This week, I’m going to share some posts from my first week blogging here.
The $10 College Fund. In the last year, not only have I not changed my mind about the $10 college fund, but I haven’t raised the amount. The point is to just get started. I’ve done that. I’ll raise the amount when my debt is paid off. We are now up to $166.09. The numbers are off because I stuck a little bit extra in one month.
In the last year, our dreams haven’t changed. We haven’t made any direct progress, but indirectly we are doing well. First things first. We need to pay the debt off before we look at a hobby farm.
My second day blogging, I wrote about why we handled money so poorly.
2012: The Year the World Ended
December 21st marks the day that Mayan calendar-makers decided was far longer than they needed to waste their time carving
days into stone.
More importantly, it marks the beginning of the week before my birthday. No self-respecting civilization would end the world just a week before my birthday.
This is traditionally the time that people look back at the previous year, and make resolutions they don’t intend to keep in the following year.
Who am I to buck tradition?
In 2011, I became a bit of a workaholic.
This site has taken off a bit. I’m not about to retire off of the proceeds, but it has turned into a nice little side income. Thank you for that.
I launched a marketing company. We do web design/development, social media work, and search engine marketing. It’s strictly a part-time gig right now, but it’s growing and taking up most of my free evenings and weekends.
I’ve been working 50-60 hours a week at my day job.
The plus side? I’ve also paid off almost $20,000 of my debt in 2011, bringing my total to $47,535 left.
It’s been a lot of work, but the harder I hustle, the sooner I can stop hustling.
What’s in store for 2012?
On the work front, I plan to cut my weekly load down to 40-45 hours again. Life it to short to work all of the time.
I want to expand my new company to the point that my day job is optional. I’m projecting that by spring. Call it June 1st.
Here, I want to double the size of my audience. I don’t just want random people popping in, I want to grow an engaged audience. That means more comments and more discussion. Expect to see more along those lines.
I’ve also got a couple of products under development. By year-end, I’d like to have them both released.
On a personal level, my biggest goal is to carve out a regular chunk of time to spend with my wife. Working all of the time has cut into our quality time together. I want to find a way to schedule date nights at least twice a month. It will cost more money, but that’s part of why I’m working so much.
Financially, I want to kill the last of my credit card debt. That’s down to about $17,000. We’ll need to keep working at it, but it’s a reachable goal. That means we still don’t get cable, I still avoid buying books every week, and my kids still have to live with not getting every whim fulfilled.
To recap: I’m going to work smarter, grow my side projects, and make this site better for you. In the process, I’m going to kill the last of my unsecured debt, and drag my mortgage down to it’s last gasping breaths.
Here’s to the end of the world….
20 Happy Thoughts
Since I’ve been on a bit of a death theme lately, I thought I post something purely happy.
Here it is. In no particular order, twenty unequivocated things that make me happy.
- My three year old has the most beautiful blue/silver/gray eyes I have ever seen.
- In the past 32 months, I’ve reduced my total debt load by $42,859.70. That’s an average reduction of $1,339.37 per month.
- My insane work schedule is paying off. I’m more than halfway to making my day job’s income redundant.
- My preteen son is currently showing none of the signs of the horrible rebellion that I put my parents through.
- The world hasn’t imploded, exploded, or tilted its axis recently.
- My parents did a good job of raising me.
- I haven’t touched my overdraft line of credit in more than 2 years.
- My wife loves me.
- I love her.
- Wrestling season starts tomorrow, and Punk ended last season with real promise.
- I’ve dropped 12 pounds in the last 16 days.
- Bacon is good.
- Daughter #1 is starting kindergarten in September and excited about it.
- Our cars are paid off.
- This site helps me stay motivated to eliminate my debt.
- You rock.
- I may get out of debt just before the world ends.
- The Yakezie Network has helped get this blog to where it is. If you’ve got a finance blog, join today. You won’t regret it.
- FINCON 2012 is is Denver and I won’t be napping on my motorcycle on the way there, like I did the last time I went to Denver. It’s not something I recommend, but it makes a neat story.
- I have 20 things to be happy about. That’s a recursive happy-maker right there.
Insurance
On Tuesday, a potential customer took my business partner and I out for sushi.
The sushi bar was fun. There was a little canal going around the bar. The canal had little boats. The boats had little plates. The plates had sushi. Lots and lots of sushi. When you wanted something, you just reached out and took it.
Yum.
My only complaint with the place is the width of the chairs. If you’re going to use narrow chairs, you really shouldn’t choose chairs with armrests.
Between the narrow chairs, the armrests, and my fat butt, my cell phone got knocked off of my belt.
Crap.
I normally check my money clip, car keys, pocket knife, and cell phone every time I stand up, but didn’t this time.
I noticed it was missing 15 miles later.
Of course, when I called, no one answered my phone.
The restaurant hadn’t seen my phone.
When we went back to retrace our steps, my phone was nowhere to be found. Some busboy got a nice tip that night.
Now, I don’t carry insurance on my cell phone. I still have every cell phone I’ve ever owned, in working condition. Well, minus one, now. At $5/month, that has saved me more than $1000 over the years.
Of course, it’s a bit painful this week.
Thankfully, I sock a bit of money away every month to cover things that break. It’s my warranty fund. That, combined with a good(hopefully) find on eBay, means that losing my phone, while irritating, isn’t going to break my budget. It won’t actually touch my budget in any way.
On a side note, a parking ramp with a flat, “all night” charge and a lost ticket fee makes me angry.
The High Cost of Keeping Richard Ramirez in Prison
Serial killers in the United States often gain cult status due to their strange courtroom antics and dramatic personalities. Recently deceased death row inmate Richard Ramirez was definitely one of the most famous serial killers of all time before he passed away of liver failure in California’s San Quentin State Prison.
After a dramatic arrest in 1985 in East Los Angeles by residents who recognized Ramirez from photographs displayed all over the news, Ramirez would sit in jail for years while awaiting a trial that finally began in 1989. There would be no more expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles County except for the O.J. Simpson trial that occurred a few years later.
At a cost of $1.8 million dollars, Los Angelinos would pay dearly for the privilege of trying Ramirez in a court of law. Incredibly, however, this massive sum wasn’t the only cost associated with this vicious serial killer. Because he was sentenced to death and due to the incredibly long appeals process associated with death row inmates, Ramirez sat in jail for over two decades without any fear of actually being put to death by the state of California.
Over the past hundred years, the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States has ballooned from a few hundred thousand people to almost 2.5 million prisoners. The most expensive people to incarcerate are death row inmates, who sit in a type of solitary confinement for decades. A moratorium on future executions in California has ensured that inmates like Ramirez have been costing taxpayers millions of dollars for housing and appeals with no likelihood of being put to death.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are around 700 people sitting on death row in California, which require a massive investment of tax dollars. The state’s ongoing budget crisis and inability to balance its budget has put great strain on the prison system to house so many death row inmates at such an incredible cost.
Richard Ramirez’s untimely death at the age of 53 and his decades-long residency within a state prison brings to light a disturbing fact: more inmates die of natural causes while on death row than are actually put to death. Whether support for the death penalty exists or not, the billions of dollars spent by the state to keep inmates on death row has resulted in just 13 executions since the late 1970s.
A study in 2011 that was conducted by a judge and professor in the state suggested that California has spent over $4 billion since the death penalty was reinstituted. Out of those funds spent, at least a billion dollars was used for housing and incarceration of the inmates, including serial killers like Richard Ramirez.
A further study presented by the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008 suggested that keeping the system intact with inmates on death row would cost around $137 million dollars a year. On the other hand, if California was to commute those death sentences to life in prison and abolish the death penalty, the yearly cost would drop to $11.5 million a year.
Offering the families of victims of death penalty-worthy crimes the chance to see a killer or other criminal experience the ultimate punishment may offer some sort of closure. Unfortunately, with the expectation that individuals on death row are more likely to die of natural causes than be put to death in California, the implementation of the death penalty in the state must be reexamined.