- @Elle_CM Natalie's raid looked like it was filmed with a strobe light. Lame CGI in reply to Elle_CM #
- I want to get a toto portable bidet and a roomba. Combine them and I'll have outsourced some of the least tasteful parts of my day. #
- RT @freefrombroke: RT @moneybeagle: New Blog Post: Money Hacks Carnival #115 http://goo.gl/fb/AqhWf #
- TED.com: The neurons that shaped civilization. http://su.pr/2Qv4Ay #
- Last night, fell in the driveway: twisted ankle and skinned knee. Today, fell down the stairs: bruise makes sitting hurt. Bad morning. #
- RT @FrugalDad: And to moms, please be more selective about the creeps you let around your child. Takes a special guy to be a dad to another' #
- First Rule of Blogging: Don't let real life get in the way. Epic fail 2 Fridays in a row. But the garage sale is going well. #
Welcome to Unemployment
Last week, I was let go from my job. The reasons are unimportant.
http://gty.im/167334756
So now, I am unemployed right before Christmas.
And my renters are moving out at the end of the month.
Normally, this should be a time for panic, but strangely, it’s not.
It actually came with a feeling of relief. Again, the reasons are unimportant.
But still, my predictable income has suddenly become unpredictable.
It is times like this that I’m glad I’ve spent the last 5 years crushing my debt. I currently have about $1000 on a credit card from my monthly expenses and around $10,000 on my mortgage.
That’s it. There’s no soul-destroying credit card debt. No car payment.
Trimming down to the not-painful-but-not-barebones basics puts my monthly nut at $3300. Leaving a bit of comfort and savings in place, that jumps to $4000.
Our income from my wife’s job and the renter in our home comes to about $1600 per month. That’s $1700 per month that we’re off from the basics and $2400 we’re off from a comfortable level.
However, I expect to have our rental house rented by the end of the year. There are some repairs we have to make after the current tenants leave. That will bring in a minimum of $1200 per month, hopefully $1500. That closes the gap to $500-1200.
Now, aside from the biggest benefit of killing out debt(no monthly payments!), we’ve also been saving about 20% of our income outside of our retirement accounts. We have enough to bridge that gap for 25-60 months. Unemployment will also provide enough to cover the difference for about 6 months. That means without doing any side work…sitting on my butt playing video games…I could cover my bill comfortably for two and a half years. If I cut down to bare minimum expenses, I can stretch that to nearly 7 years.
That’s why I don’t drive a new car or wear expensive clothes. That’s why I don’t vacation on my credit cards. That’s why my kids don’t have the latest, greatest video game systems and we don’t have a big screen TV.
It’s because we chose to prioritize our financial security over pure luxuries. We chose to sacrifice optional things now so we wouldn’t have to sacrifice things like food if life took a surprise turn down a bad road.
Now, before anybody reads this and understands it as “Jason’s taking a decade off”, in the week I’ve been unemployed, I’ve had 2 phone interviews, and a request for another. One of those has turned into a tentative job offer already. I expect to remain unemployed for less than a month.
Horseback Riding Lessons
For the past couple of years, my daughters have been riding in horse shows with a local saddle club. We’ve been lucky in that my wife’s cousin has let us borrow her horse for the shows, so costs have been minimal.
Unfortunately, that horse isn’t available this year. We knew that a few months ago, so the plan was to take a year off from the shows and focus on lessons, to get the girls some real skills. We found a great instructor at a stable about 30 miles from our house. Since we live less than two miles from the border of the biggest city in the state, that’s a comparatively short drive.
We pay her $200 per month for 1 lesson per week for both girls. They each get 30-45 minutes on the horse during each lesson.
Now that show season has started, the plan seems to have changed. The girls will be riding a different borrowed pony tomorrow. The shows cost about $50 for registration, lunch, and gas. Our club has 1 show per month, but my wife has assured me they’ll only be hitting three shows this season and limiting the number of events to keep the cost down.
The direct costs aren’t too bad, but there’s a problem with keeping-up-with-the-Joneses accessorizing. Vests and boots and helmets and belts and shirts, oh my.
I’d guess our costs for the summer will be $300 per month.
One thing we’ve been considering is buying a pony. We can get an older pony for around $500-1000. Older is good because they are calmer and slower. Boarding the thing will cost another $200 per month. We’ve been slowly accumulating the stuff to own a horse, so I’m guessing the “OMG, he let me buy a horse, now I need X” shopping bill will come to around $1500, but I’ll figure $2000 to be safe. We already have a trailer, a saddle, blankets, buddy-straps, combs, brushes, buckets, rakes, shovels, and I-bought-this-but-I-will-just-put-it-in-the-pile-of-horse-stuff-so-Jason-will-never-notice stuff. We’re certainly close to being ready to buy.
(FYI: If you’re starting from scratch, don’t think you’re going to get into horse ownership for less than $10,000 the first year, and that’s being a very efficient price-shopper.)
So we’re looking at $5400 for a horse, gear, and boarding the first year. If we cancel the lessons, by spring we’d have $2000 of that saved and most of the rest can be bought over time.
On the other hand, if we go that route, we’ll never save enough to buy the hobby farm we’re looking for.
Decisions, decisions. I should just buy a new motorcycle. Within a year, I win financially.
Homeschooling for Free with Khan Academy
If you are a parent who is planning to home school your children or if you are already involved in homeschooling and seeking additional resources, using Khan Academy online is highly recommended regardless of the type of material you are trying to teach or learn. Learning with Khan Academy is possible for students of all ages as well as individuals who are simply seeking new methods of learning without having to pay for the education.
What is Khan Academy?
Khan Academy is a free online resource for anyone interested in learning new material in a wide range of subjects. Whether you are a parent who is planning on homeschooling your children or if you simply have an avid interest in science, mathematics or even art history, using Khan Academy can ultimately give you the knowledge you need for any reason.
Khan Academy operates as a non-profit organization and offers all courses and materials absolutely free of charge. Using Khan Academy is ideal if you are actively seeking out new lesson plans for your own children but you are stumped for ideas and material yourself.
Courses Available From Khan Academy
When you sign up for Khan Academy you can immediately dive into various lessons depending on what you want to learn. Whether you are seeking out assignments in math, science, humanities or even economics and finance, there are plenty of courses in different areas of education. You can also learn all about computer programming and various levels of specific subjects based on whether you are teaching your children or looking to learn something new for yourself.
Why Learning Online From Home Works
Learning online from home is a way for you to incorporate well-developed lessons into your everyday homeschooling lesson plans at any time. When you choose to use an online community such as Khan Academy there are also no deadlines or restrictions on the lessons you want to teach or learn more about yourself.
You can also hand pick specific lessons to help with individualizing each one of your children’s educational outline and plans. Depending on the age of your children and their own interests you can choose from a variety of lessons for beginners and those seeking more advanced work.
Teaching your children new material with the use of the online Khan Academy is a way for you to ensure they are truly understanding the lessons before moving on. Additionally, using Khan Academy is ideal if you are seeking educational content that is sourced, referenced and completely free of charge. Khan Academy lessons and content is and always will be free as this is one of the main missions of the academy itself.
Knowing the benefits of using Khan Academy and how it can help you or your children grow educationally is a way to truly take advantage of the services and lessons being offered. Using Khan Academy when homeschooling brings expansive lessons into the home regardless of your own knowledge and areas of expertise when you begin to teach your children.
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30 Day Project – July
My 30 Day Project for the month of July is to write. Every day.
Originally, it was going to be specifically to write fiction every day, but I’ve decided to change the rules.
I am going to write at least 500 words every day. That isn’t much, just a page or so. It may be fiction, it may be blog posts, it be other articles. Heck, it may even be an epic Facebook update! Some of the writing will be posted here, some will be submitted elsewhere, hopefully for pay. Some of it will live on in my personal archives, for cyber-archeologists of the future to one day uncover and use to determine that we all trying to build a jetpack that is cleverly disguised as a Hannah Montana moped. All of the writing will be original. There will be no rewritten or spun articles.
My tools? Clay tablets and a heavy stylus. Err….my computer for most of it, pen and paper for some of it, my blackberry for anything that strikes me while I left the good tools at home.
Why am I doing this?
I want to be a better writer. I’ve always had things to say and stories to share. I’ve rarely had the discipline to actually share them. I want to build that discipline, even though I’ve already missed two days this month.
I also want to develop my personal style–my voice–in a way that can only happen with experience. You get better at writing by writing, not reading about writing or thinking about writing. Putting pen to paper is the only way to improve your style and develop your voice.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
Work at Home Scams
The idea of working from home is certainly appealing. You get to set your own hours, sleep in some days, and be there when the kids get home from school. You can be there when the packages get delivered and let the dog out before it’s too late. Who doesn’t see the attraction?
Unfortunately, when something is so enticing, there will always be predators looking to take advantage of the dreams of others. They dangle the “be your own boss” bait and reel in the people who their wishes overrule their judgment.
The ads are hard to resist. “Make $2800 per month without leaving your home!” or “Stuff envelopes in your home for $1 per envelopes.” I cases like these, the old saw tends to hold true: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Common work-at-home scams include:
Medical Billing
For only $499.99, you can purchase a “business opportunity”. A lot of medical bill is actually done on paper so there is very real market for medical billing and processing. Unfortunately for the respondents to these ads, the vast majority of this market is already taken by large companies with huge marketing budgets. Finding enough customer to generate enough revenue to recover your investment is almost impossible, but you’ll never see that in an ad.
Envelope Stuffing
You answer an ad in the paper, sending $29.95 for a packet that will instruct you in the fine art of stuffing envelopes for $1 each. When you get the information, you find out it is a letter instructing you to place an ad in the papers stating “Stuff Envelopes for $1 Each. $29.95 for Information.” This forces you to become the scammer, just to recover your costs. Bad you.
Assembly or Craft Work
This one actually sounds like a business. You invest in–for example–a sign-making machine for $1500. The selling company promises to buy a quota of signs from you each month. After you buy the equipment and materials you spend countless hours making the product only to find out that either a) the company has disappeared or b) their undefined “Quality Standards” has rejected the work. Nothing is ever up to standards.
That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate opportunities to make money at home. Bob at Christian Personal Finance recently listed 24 legitimate home-based businesses, including blogging, eBay selling, wedding planning, car mechanic, and mobile oil changes.
Are you exploring any home-based business opportunities?