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Do 1 Thing

: Image by Sailing “Footprints: Real to Reel” (Ronn ashore) via Flickr

I’m lazy.

Really, I am. When I get home from work, I want nothing more than to plop down on the couch, dial up a movie and ignore the world for a few hours. I need some downtime to relax.

While I am keeping the couch from flying away, my wife gets home, makes dinner, does the dishes, changes the cat litter and maybe vacuums the floor. Once dinner is cooking, she usually throws in a load of laundry. Three kids is a great way to guarantee a lot of laundry needs to get washed.

I have just two things to say about that:

It makes me feel really lazy.
I love you, honey!

I’ve never considered it a problem because I work my butt off on the weekend. My wife isn’t happy with the arrangement because I tend to do next to nothing during the week. I think it’s a good balance. I’m productive on the weekend, she’s productive during the week. Unfortunately, my habitual laziness has caused a bit of tension. We’ve had a few “discussions” about that balance. It’s obviously not working.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new. When I get home from work I’ve been doing just 1 thing. I do one thing per day. One day, I fold laundry, another day I do the dishes. Some days, I pick a room to organize. It’s never very much, but it’s always something that needs to be done and, possibly most important, it looks like I’m doing more so my wife feels less abandoned to the housework. I’m not actually doing more, but it gets spread out over the week, so it looks like more. Slowly, surely, all of the work is getting done.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working. More is getting done, my wife feels like I’m helping out more and I get more time on the weekends to pursue whatever I feel like pursuing. It’s a win for each of us.

How do you balance relaxation and a shared workload?

Thug-cenomics

Finance

Recently, a friend of mine told me about a friend of his who was attacked by a flash mob. This was a negative flash mob, not the fun kind.

She was walking down the street with her phone in her hand when around a dozen thugs surrounded her, knocked her down, and stole her phone before running off.

With me being the person I am with the hobbies and side-hustles I have, certain things came to mind.

This is why standard capacity magazines should never be outlawed. Sometimes, a six-shot revolver just isn’t enough.
Before anyone complains about #1, when you are beaten to the ground by a pack of violent thugs, the length of your life is up to them, not you. They are the problem.
Walking down the street while talking on your cell phone is not the best way to stay aware of your surroundings. Would she have been able to get away if she had been paying more attention to the thugs on the corner than her conversation? I have no idea, but it’s certain that talking on a cell phone is a distraction.
Walking down the street with an expensive gadget in your hand is asking for trouble.
What were these thugs thinking? Even a $500 cell phone turns into a $50 mp3 player the moment the victim gets to a real phone to call the cell phone company. That’s a generous $50 payout. With 12 people, that’s means everyone gets $4.10 as their share. The federal poverty level is just under $12,000 per year, which means they would have to do this 8 times a day, just to get to barely enough money to survive.
In Minnesota, this is, at a minimum, 3rd degree assault, which carries a possible 5 year sentence and $10,000 fine. That’s 8 public attempts to throw away 5 years of their lives, every day. How can they consider this a good risk.

It was pointed out to me that this thuggery is probably made possible by direct government sponsorship, in the form of welfare checks, so this is probably just a way to pass the time. Somebody should tell those brutes that welfare checks stop when you’re in prison.

So I’m considering launching a basic economics class for thugs and street rats. I want to teach them how to do a risk assessment by comparing the level of loot to the possible outcomes of getting caught.

Possible test questions include:

I could stab that guy for the $10 in his wallet, but if I get caught, I’m facing 40 years in prison. Should I do it?
My flash mob makes $50 per phone we steal from defenseless women. Would my buddies rat me out to avoid 5 years of hard time, and do I consider that worth $4?
Meth makes the faces of my customers dissolve from the inside before killing them. Is it possible to build a sustainable business based on slowly killing my customers? What marketing skills do I need to develop to replace the natural attrition of poisoning my customers?
Meth labs explode. Is it better to hire my own junkies, or should I outsource that risk and take a smaller profit margin?
This is a shall issue carry permit state. There are nearly 100,000 carry permit holders here. That’s 1.87% of the total population and 2.6% of the adult population. Statistically, how many people can my friends and I jump before getting justifiably shot? Is that number times the $4 profit considered a good return on investment? What would the ROI have to be to make this a worthwhile career choice?

Anybody know any violent thugs willing to beta test my new class offering?

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.

When my mother-in-law died, we went through all of her accounts and paid off anything she owed.

The Discover card she’d carried since the 80s–a card that had my wife listed as an authorized user–had a balance of about $700. We paid that off with the money in her savings account. They cashed out the accumulated points as gift cards and closed the account.

A few months ago, we decided it was time to buy an SUV, to fit our family’s needs. We financed it, to give us a chance to take advantage of a killer deal while waiting for the state to process the title transfer on an inherited car we have since sold.

Getting good terms was never a worry. Both of us had scores bordering on 800. Since our plan was to pay off the entire loan within a few months, we asked for whatever term came with the lowest interest rate.

Then the credit department came back and said that my wife’s credit was poor. I chalked it up to a temporary blip caused by closing the oldest account on her credit report and financed without her. No big deal.

Since we decided to rent our my mother-in-law’s house, we’ve discussed picking up more rental properties. That’s a post for another time, but last week, we went to get pre-approved for a mortgage. During the process, the mortgage officer asked me if my wife had any outstanding debt that could be ignored if we financed without her.

Weird.

A few days ago, we got the credit check letter from the bank. Her credit score? 668.

What the heck?

I immediately pulled her free annual credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which is something I usually do 2-3 times per year, but had neglected for 2012.

There are currently two negatives on her report.

One is a 30 day late payment on a store card in 2007. That’s not a 120 point hit.

The other is an $8 charge-off to Discover. As an authorized user. On an account that was paid.

Crap.

We called Discover to get them to correct the reporting and got told they don’t have it listed as a charge-off. They did agree to send a letter to us saying that, but said they couldn’t fix anything with the credit bureaus.

Once we get that letter, it’s dispute time.