Search Results for “three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/how-to-complain-the-squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/budget-lesson-part-1/future-dreams/budget4” — Page 59

Say Please

This is a guest post/reader story from a good friend of mine.

Greetings,

As a long time reader of Live Real Now, I’ve enjoyed the advice and the step by step, “I’ve been there” advice from Jason. Sadly, until now I haven’t really taken much of it. It was too much work. It was too hard. But the recent “Future Me” post really struck home so I looked for something that should be easy.

What I found was the concept of “Call and Ask”. I took a look at all of my accounts and utilities to decide which ones I was willing to change, drop, or reduce. The two I came up with were Dish Network and CenturyLink DSL.

My plan was simple:

Look for their introductory offers
Compare to my current price
Call
Ask if existing customers are as important as NEW customers
Finally, be nice!

I started with CenturyLink since I needed to call them for a new modem in anyway. We’ve been with CenturyLink for years and I’ve been paying $34.99 for slow DSL and using it a couple times a week to work from home. Their new customer promotion is $19.99 for the faster service. I’d love to give you my script but I don’t entirely remember what I said. I believe I asked if they would extend the new customer rate to me and for how long. I know I pointed out that I would be out 3-5 days of internet service so now was the time to start trying to lower my bills. The customer service rep was actually pretty cool about it.

“Let me look at your account. We can offer you that rate for 12 months. After that the rate will be $54.99.”

That seems like a short term win for a long term loss, right?

His followup comment was golden: “Call us back in 12 months and see what specials we can offer you then.” So I went into Google Calendars and set myself a reminder 10.5 months from now.

Net effect: $15/month saved.

Next step: Dish Network.

We’re getting the Family Package which is already pretty inexpensive for Dish. Looking around, the new subscriber price was $5 less.

Same plan.

“Hello, I’m a long term subscriber. I see that you’re offering new subscribers the same package for less. Could you extend that offer to me?”

Same response… “Sure, you can have a $5 discount for 6 months.” Again, I set a Google Calendar reminder, this time for 4.5 months out.

Net effect: $20/month saved.

Can this go farther?

I recently purchased 3 pairs of F.O.M work jeans from Duluth Trading Company. Yes, they’re expensive, but they fit and last a long time. I’m not a small guy. (Ed. Welcome to the club!) Anyway, at the time their sale looked good: $10 off each pair when you order 3 or more. Coincidentally, I was down to a single pair after a deer hunting accident. (Don’t tie your jeans into your boots while field dressing a deer. You’ll stretch and then things get a bit breezy.) With $5 shipping, I saved $35 on that order for jeans I needed anyway.

I thought I’d done pretty well.

Fast forward to today where I see 20% off on everything and free shipping. And they’re still offering the $10 off deal I already used. I called Duluth Trading Company, and explained I was VERY happy with their pants and enjoyed the sale but was wondering if they’d please extend the 20% off sale to my prior order since it was so recent.

$23.70 back in my account.

Easy as pie and a polite: “Thank you for offering us the chance to make you happy with the transaction, sir.”

So, 3 nice phone calls, net effect:

Immediate: $23.70 in my pocket
Short term: $30 savings over the next 6 months
Long Term: $180 Savings over the next year
Total Savings: $233.75 for 15 minutes work

Two Reasons to Save And One Reason Not To

Finance, Life

I’m a fan of saving money. I’m not doing as much of it as I’d like, but that’s because I’m focusing on killing my final credit card, first. I postpone saving, knowing that it’s

something that I need to do the moment my credit cards are paid off. It won’t wait any longer than that.

Why do I care so much about saving? It’s because I’m risk-averse. If I can avoid risk, I do, in most situations. I don’t want to risk going hungry if I lose my job, and I don’t want to risk eventually(very eventually!) having to fight the cockroaches for the right to drink my fiber supplements.

There are a couple of excellent reasons to save:

1. Peace of Mind. There is a certain calm that comes from having enough savings to weather a few storms. If your car dies when you’re broke, it’s a tragedy. If it dies when you’ve got some cash saved up, it’s a minor inconvenience. Knowing that the vagaries of fate aren’t going to shatter your life against a cliff is a reward all its own.

2. Cheap nursing homes suck. When I get old, I want to live in a comfortable nursing home. One with extended cable, nice beds, and attractive coeds in charge of the sponge-baths. That’s not too much to ask, but I have to save up for it now. Medicaid doesn’t cover homes like that. Those are strictly a private affair. To make that happen, I need to save and invest now, or I won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors then.

And, of course, there is one shining reason not to save:

1. You’re living your life now. Saving everything you’ve got, to the detriment of your current life, isn’t healthy either. Life is short. Do you really want to be curled up in bed, trying to enjoy a sponge-bath, shivering at the regrets you’ve built by denying yourself everything? I’m certainly not suggesting you waste all of your money on coke, hookers, and video games, but it is important to take the time to build some memories, or your final years will be hollow.

You have to find the right balance between your future and your present. Every moment of your life is important, not just the ones that haven’t happened, yet.

Choosing the Best Term Life Insurance

Finance

This is a guest post.

Term life insurance is arguably the simplest form of life insurance offered by companies today. It is a dramatically different policy than universal or whole life plans. The latter tend to charge policyholders much higher premiums over the lifetime of their policies. However, whole life plans remain in effect for the lifetime of the insured, until death occurs or the policy is cancelled. On the other hand, term life insurance policies last for a fixed length of time, and the periods usually range from five, 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. With a term plan, the premiums you will pay are much lower, and if you pass away during the term of your policy, your beneficiaries will receive a full death benefit from your plan.

Types

Term life insurance generally falls into one of five different categories. Level, decreasing, renewable, return of premium, and convertible are the five kinds of term life insurance policies that companies typically offer their customers. The best method for selecting term life insurance is to consider your amount available to spend along with your age in order to decide which variety is the best fit for you and your family.

If you choose level term insurance, you will get a predetermined dollar amount of coverage for a set length of time. You will enjoy low overhead and you will have peace of mind knowing that your premiums will never fluctuate with the vicissitudes of the market. The predictability of a level term plan is perhaps the greatest feature of this type. Another type of term life insurance is decreasing term life insurance. It is strikingly similar to a level plan, and the only real variation is the amount of money your beneficiaries will receive if you die. With a decreasing term plan, the amount of your death benefit decreases over time. A good reason for choosing decreasing term life insurance is having small children. You know that you need the money more now while they are young, so paying less for life insurance in the short term is a good idea.

A convertible term plan is a hybrid. It lets a policyholder change their existing term life policy into a whole life plan without facing hefty penalties for doing so. Another option, a return of premium term life insurance plan, is very similar to level term plans. The major dividing factor between the two is that a return of premium plan actually gives back all the money paid in premiums to the beneficiaries if the insured dies during the term of the policy. It’s best to pick this plan if you want coverage for your family but you death is highly unlikely to occur during the term of your policy.

How to Qualify?

The uniting thread between most term life plans is that you are required to fill out a formal application first, and then you must pass a physical exam so that you may qualify for life insurance coverage. Additionally, most life insurance plans force you to repeat the exam each time you choose to renew your policy. However, if you choose a type of term life insurance called renewable term life insurance, you are allowed to bypass this stipulation entirely, so you can score some massive savings on premiums you will pay in the future. It’s best to choose this type of term life insurance if you are already older, or if you have health conditions that you expect to get dramatically worse during the term of your plan.

During the medical exam, your physician will take a full and extensive medical history from you. This is so that the insurance company can get a complete and accurate picture of your health in order to assign you the right amount of premium for your plan. Next, the insurance company will consider your motor vehicle record. This is so the insurance company can get a feel for whether you pose a big enough risk on the road to have a high likelihood of an accident that may cause your death and end your policy.

Then, your doctor may ask you other health and lifestyle questions if the life insurance company requires him or her to do so. You will need Attending Physician Statements (APS) that certify your answers and the results of your medical tests were true and accurate to the best of your knowledge. You will also need Medical Information Bureau (MIB) reports for your application as well as corporate documents if you are applying for business coverage. After you have submitted all of these materials, your insurance company should be able to render a decision about whether they will award you a term life insurance policy, as well as how much your annual premiums will cost you.

The Story of Sammy

Business

As I’ve mentioned, we’re cleaning out my mother-in-law’s house. She was a hoarder who passed away a couple of months ago. As of yesterday, we’ve filled two 30-yard dumpsters. For perspective, that’s big enough to park our F150.

I’m not here to talk about that, or the 20 year old can of green beans that burst and ran down my leg on Saturday.

Last month, we put a recliner out on the curb with a free sign. A few minutes later, a couple of guys stopped by and grabbed it.

Last week, one of the guys–I’ll call him Sammy–stopped by and left a note on the windshield of one of our inherited cars, asking about buying it.

Long story short, we sold him two cars. One hadn’t been run in a year or two, and one had been parked for almost 20 years. We signed this titles and let him take the cars while he was still $50 short of the purchase price. This isn’t a story about the cars.

It’s a story about Sammy.

Sammy doesn’t have a lot of money. He’s living off of a monthly check from an old injury, and his fiancee works part-time. They’re living in Section 8 housing, and consistently have more month than money. When he was younger, he made some decisions that make some forms of employment difficult now.

On Friday, Sammy stopped by. He was supposed to give us $50, but said that getting one of the cars running had cost more than expected, and it still had a problem that was keeping it from being safe on the road. He asked about an extension.

No problem.

Then, he looked around my mother-in-law’s overgrown yard and asked if he could help. After we negotiated the price, he asked if he could a) borrow our tools for the work, and b) get a ride Saturday morning.

I am a nice guy.

Saturday, I was planning to pick him up, then drive downtown to pick up a friend who has been living at the Salvation Army since moving to the area. His friend was so excited about the work, he hopped on a bus at 6am and got to Sammy’s house.

When I got there, Sammy also had a teenager he was mentoring. He told me that his dream was to start a lawn-care business with his friend, so they can put kids to work and help them turn into productive citizens. Idle, broke, and bored teenagers are a recipe for disaster. Teenagers who grow into men not believing they have a chance to change their future are worse.

I dropped them off and went to have a chat with my wife.

We’re far from rich but, at the moment, we are fairly flush. We’ve found some cash, and a there is a bit of life insurance money. Most of that will be going into remodeling the house, but we have a bit extra. If we can take a few hundred dollars, and help launch Sammy into a business that will help him, his family, and a circle of kids with few prospects, I think it’s the right thing to do.

When I told Sammy what we were considering, he started to break down. It was a truly emotional experience for him to know that somebody was willing to take a chance on him.

I told him to put together plan. I want to know what it would take for him to get started. Hopefully, he’s serious enough to do that. I’d like to help.

Overworked and Underappreciated

Business

I once worked for a company that was so confused that, not only did I not meet my last immediate supervisor for 6 months, but he didn’t know what I did or who I supported. He was my supervisor on paper for payroll and organizational purposes only.

Does your boss know what you do?

More recently, I was called into my current boss’s office to get scolded for low productivity since I don’t produce as much as the other programmers.

That’s not my favorite thing to do in the afternoon. I’d rather spend the afternoon ~~playing Angry Birds~~ improving our software.

In response, I spent the week logging my time. Before I left on Friday, I sent my boss an email that started out with:

When we spoke on Monday, you compared my productivity unfavorably to the other developers. I don’t think that’s a fair comparison as I do more categories of tasks than the others. I don’t think you realize how many additional responsibilities I’ve taken on over the years.

I continued from there with a summary of each day’s work last week. The short version is that, while being productive, I spend less than half of my time on my primary job function because I’ve slowly taken on a managerial role.

I’m on vacation this week, so it will be a few days before I find out if my email will make a difference.

Now, this scolding was my fault. I know I spend my day doing much more than just writing code. I’ve told my boss that before, but I’ve never made sure he understands the scale of the extra work, and I’ve never proven it with a detailed log.

This was poor personal marketing.

In the future, I have to make sure that I keep him in the loop with a summary of the extra work I do, like the training, product demos, sales calls, and estimates I’m involved in.

We’ll see how well that works.

How would you handle a situation like this? Daily emails? Whining? Kicking a garbage can across the room?

Can I Sell My Lottery Payments for a Lump Sum?

Finance

This is a guest post.

Winning the lottery is everyone’s dream. You hit the lotto, cash in your ticket and kiss all your troubles goodbye, right? Actually, that might not be true. Just look at the number of lottery winners who’ve ended up worse off than they were before they hit it big. There are several problems here. One problem is that people often spend their money unwisely, without learning how to manage it properly. Lottery annuity payments were designed to help with this. However, those annuity payments might not actually be enough to make a significant difference in your life. If that’s the case, you might be wondering if you can sell your payments for a lump sum. The answer is, yes, you can. But there’s a catch. Actually, there are a couple of catches.

Buyers Matter

First, let’s talk about buyers. They’re the ones who’ll be paying you a lump sum for your lottery payments. Now, you can’t expect a buyer to offer the full amount you’re owed from the lottery, but you should be able to expect a significant percentage of the winnings. That’s not the case with many buyers. They recognize your desperation and have no qualms about taking advantage of your situation. That’s not true for all buyers, though. You need to recognize qualified buyers from those better left alone. Obviously, that’s tough to do on your own. Most people have never been in the position of having to sell lottery payments before, and it’s easy to get lost in a world with which you’re not familiar.

Sell Only Part of It

Another important consideration is whether you need to sell all of your lottery winnings or only a percentage of them. You can easily sell just a specific portion of your winnings, enough to cover your immediate needs, and retain the remainder as regular ongoing payments. This ensures that you have the money you need right now, as well as a financial cushion for the future.

Work with a Go-Between

The ideal solution to your quandary is to work with a firm that acts as a go-between. The company will vet and investigate buyers, ensuring that you only have the cream of the crop to choose from. Not only that, but working with a reputable firm will also ensure that you get the highest percentage possible of your winnings, rather than leaving you with a mere pittance.

Of course, not all such firms are the same, and you need to recognize a reputable company. Look for a firm that’s been in business for a number of years – one with an established reputation and a list of satisfied clients. Second, make sure the company doesn’t work for the buyers – the firm should work for you, the seller. This ensures there’s no conflict of interest. A company that works on behalf of the buyer has no incentive to go above and beyond to ensure you get a fair deal. One that works for you certainly does.

Search Results for: three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/budget-lesson-part-3/how-to-complain-the-squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease/travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/budget-lesson-part-1/future-dreams/budget4

Buyers Matter

Sell Only Part of It

Work with a Go-Between