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- Arrrgh! 3 year old covered in nail polish. And clothes. And carpet. And sister. #
- Crap. 5 sets of 5 pushups. #30dayproject #
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Negotiating Superstar
Recently my son asked me for some money.
This isn’t rare.
He asks me for money on a regular basis. He’s kind of greedy some days.
This time, however, he asked what he can do to earn some money. Now, since I live in Minnesota and have the dog and we had the sixth snowiest winter ever this year, all my dogs little shoe-bombs have been buried for the last six months. It started snowing in early November and as of this writing, on March 25, I still see two inches of snow covering every thing. Last week, we had a thaw and got to see the grass. We also got to see the dog’s business all over the yard.
I told him that I would give him $10 to clean up the yard. He asked if a friend could help. I said yes. Then he asked if they would have to split the money or if I would be paying them $10 each. I said that I’d be getting the same amount of work done, so they should split the $10.
He didn’t like the plan, so he negotiated his way up to getting seven dollars each. Originally, I was planning to pay $20, but got talked down by a friend. I’d still be willing to pay $20. What I’m trying to do is encourage him to start negotiating. I am a lousy negotiator. I want my kids to have better financial skills than I do. I want them to grow up knowing how to negotiate and being comfortable negotiating. That will make him a better financial adult.
So I encourage him. Sometimes I offer a lowball number and if he gets so upset walks away I ask him why he didn’t give a counter-offer. If he just accepts a number that’s way too low, or if his grandma offers him a shiny nickel to mow her yard, I tell him no. I tell him to reject it and offer something that he feels is more in line with what he would actually be doing.
Now, if I’m going to keep up these lessons I need to work on my negotiating skills too, so this is also a self-improvement game.
How do you teach a kid to negotiate? What resources are out there to teach yourself?
My Credit Cards
This announcement is a bit premature, but not everything that’s premature has to end in an evening of disappointment.
At the beginning of the year, I transferred the balance of my last credit card onto two different cards, each with a 0% interest rate. One card got a $4,000 transfer and the other got $13,850. The approximately $415 in fees I paid for the transfer saved me nearly $1500 in interest this year.
The card that got the big balance is the card we use for a lot of our daily spending. On my statement dated 2/18/2012, the balance on the this card was $14,865.23. At the same time, the smaller card had a balance of $3,925.09, for a total of $18,790.32. When I started my debt-murder journey in April 2009, it had peaked at just under $30,000.
When my payments clear later today, that balance will be gone.
That is nearly $19,000 paid down in 8 months.
Now, the inheritance we picked up did accelerate our repayment a bit, but only by a few months.
Starting from $90,394.70 in April 2009, we have paid down $63,746.70, leaving $26,648.00 on our mortgage.
I’m more than a little excited, which–as usual–is the cause for the prematurity.
New goal: pay off the mortgage in 2013.
3 Worst Things About Being Financially Responsible
Everybody talks about all of the wonderful things that happen when you’re saving money and being responsible. I know I do. It’s true, good things do happen. There’s really nothing like the feeling that you’re suddenly not living paycheck to paycheck.
But what about the other side of the coin? What sucks about staying in the black?
1. You have to make choices. When you’re living on credit, you can buy a car, charge an expensive dinner every week, and go on vacation. If you’re not spending real money, then who cares? When you’re living for real, you have to prioritize. Do you buy groceries or video games? Do you buy sexy lingerie or a fancy dinner? Braces or college? You’re given a lot of choices, but you can only pick the ones you can actually afford.
2. You’re no longer the Joneses other people are trying to keep up with. The guy down the street, with the fancy car, big screen TV, and artificially perfect noses on his teenagers? You’re not him, anymore, but that’s okay, because he’s financing his lifestyle 9.9% at a time. Yes, a bit of incoming envy can give you a warm, tingly feeling, but it doesn’t put food on the table.
3. It’s boring. Taking a trip in a fast car and picking up an entourage for a 10-day party is fun. Balancing your checkbook and spending 6 months saving up for your kid’s braces is not. If you’ve been living like a rockstar, rolling back to a responsible standard of living is going to come as a shock, but it’s better than suddenly running out of money and having your world come crashing down around you.
Being responsible comes with a lot of downside, but it’s all superficial. The benefits are real, and long-lasting. What’s the worst thing you’ve had to deal with by being responsible?
The Things That Bring You Here
I’ve been walking though my analytics data. That is the Big Brother software I use to know everything about each one of my dear readers. It’s all part of my master plan to rule the world. Muwahaha!
Some of the results are interesting.
The single most-used search term to find this site is “slow carb diet“, which is great, because I really enjoyed writing that post. I’ve been slacking on the diet lately, but I’m still down more than 30 pounds. I’m currently ranked #3 in Google for this term. If I move up 2 more spots, I’ll outrank Tim Ferriss for his own product. If I aggregated all of the “slow carb” variations, this post probably accounts for more than half of my traffic from Google.
Many of you come here by searching for “how to have a perfect life“. I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that, but it’s going to take work on your part. There are no shortcuts.
“Beat the Check” is another popular search term, but a very bad game to play. It’s almost impossible to win it, since the Check 21 Act of 2004.
It’s interesting that “trained husband” brings a few of you each month. My question: are you shopping, or exploring a new fetish? Don’t be shy.
I’m a bit amazed that “zombie wheels” is something people actually search for, but 140 people hit Google looking for that term every month, and a few of them make it over here.
“How to stretch a meal“, “things you should buy online“, and “unsecured loan advice” are some of the top personal finance terms bringing you all in, though “how to make a bunker” and its variation are popular, too.
“Hoe can you force your wife” is a bit disturbing. Most of the results are naturally for sex. I can’t help but hope that I’ve either really disappointed this visitor, or convinced him that force is a bad idea.
“How much did a pound of gold weigh in 1854?” is a search that makes me giggle. To the best of my knowledge, the troy scale has been used to weigh gold for a lot longer than that.
That was a fun little stroll through my statistics. Hopefully the fact that I used “fetish” and “sex” in a post will draw more crazy search terms.
How did you find me? Inquiring minds want to know, so please tell me in the comments.
One Year Later….
In April of 2009, I told my wife we were either going to straighten out our finances or file bankruptcy. At that time, we had $90,394 in total debt, including $30,000 in credit card debt. It hasn’t been easy, but we are working out way out of that hole. Since then, we have paid down more than $30,000. That’s not $30,000 in payments, but $30,000 less debt. We are now less than $60,000 in debt. We have entirely stopped accumulating more and I don’t remember the last time we carried a new balance on a card or had to use our overdraft protection. Next month, my car will be paid off, 10 months early.
Given my new-found fanaticism, I spent the next 6 months or so evangelizing about our debt repayment. Eventually, I decided to share my thoughts and progress with the world and launched this site on December 1, 2009. Today is my anniversary.
Here we are, 234 posts, 695 comments, and 17, 661 spam later. You all rock. Except the spammers.
To say thank you, I’m giving away a $100 Amazon gift card to some lucky reader. Yes, I rock, too.
There are several ways you can enter the drawing:
1. Subscribe to Live Real, Now, either by RSS or email. If you are already subscribed by email, you are automatically entered. To show me you have subscribed by RSS, there is a contest code in the feed. Just post that in the comments. (1 entry)
2. Follow me on twitter and tweet the following: “@LiveRealNow is giving away $100. Come get some! Follow and RT to enter! http://bit.ly/f1roKM #Giveaway #Yakezie” (1 entry possible per day. Every day you retweet this is another entry!)
3. “Like” LRN on Facebook. This is easy, just click the little ‘like’ button on the left. If you’ve already done that, you have already entered once.(1 entry)
4. Send me an email at Jason <AT> LiveRealNow <DOT> net telling me what you would like to see me write about more (or less!). You can also use the contact form. (1 entry)
I’m closing this down on the 15th. That’s 18 possible entries for $100 you may win early enough to help with some last-minute Christmas shopping.
UPDATE:
And the winner is…Claudia! Congratulations. Email sent.