- 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. #
Integrity
The true measure of a man’s integrity is not what he will do, but rather what he won’t do.
-Flannery O’Connor
Have you watched a TV lately? Have you noticed that most sitcoms are based entirely on dishonesty? If the characters would stop lying to each other, the premise of most shows would fall apart. How much humor can be found in getting caught in a lie, week after week? If I lived in one of those homes, there would be a divorce happening immediately. There’s no integrity in any of the relationships.
Integrity means no lying, cheating, or stealing. It means you deal with everyone honestly and honorably. You don’t cheat on your wife, or make BS excuses to your kids. You have to make sure you have nothing to feel guilty about and expect the same from the people you deal with. It’s not always easy. If a waitress accidentally forgets to ring up a meal, or a store clerk only rings up one DVD, or the scanner borks itself and give an extra 50% off, you speak up, even if it costs $100. That’s honesty.
Ultimately, what you do during the day, you have to sleep with at night. This includes avoiding responsibilities. Always do what you say, barring forgetfulness, and in that case, make up for it immediately. Don’t break promises, don’t skip out on debts, and don’t get into commitments you have no intention of honoring.
I’ve discovered that the best way to keep your stories straight is to only tell the truth. I don’t have to coordinate an alibi or remember which lie I told to which person if I am honest in all of my dealings. It’s not the easy path. It would be easier to sneak large purchases into the house, or tell my wife I was working late instead of going out for a beer. There are a lot of shortcuts I refuse to take with my life. People act like I’m stupid because I won’t cheat anyone. I enjoy being treated like that, because it means I know who to avoid in the future. If you break promises, lie, cheat, steal, or skip out on your responsibilities, I don’t want to associate with you. Honesty is an important part of my life and relationships. I won’t apologize for that.
What are your core values?
Cheap Vacations
- Image via Wikipedia
Last month, we went on vacation for a week. It was our first debt-free vacation, ever! We had a busy week, full of fun activities and it didn’t break the bank. We saved money on everything we could.
Hotel
We save a lot of money by staying at a casino/hotel that was a 20 minute trip away from our vacation city. This won’t save money if you have a problem with gambling. The only time we went to the casino was to get to the connected restaurant.
We made the hotel even cheaper by arriving on a Sunday and leaving on a Friday, avoiding the weekend rates. That gave us a full 6 day vacation with no rush to pack and 2 days to recover and relax when we were done. We just didn’t see the point of checking out on Saturday, just to head home, when we could check out on Friday, spend the day seeing the sights, then leave late.
Meals
I like good food, but feeding a family of five for a week costs far too much. So we compromised.
We brought milk and cereal to the hotel. Instead of rushing to get out of the hotel for breakfast, we had a leisurely breakfast in our jammies and took our time getting moving. No stress. For our daytrips, we packed sandwiches, juice, and snacks; avoiding the need for lunchtime restaurants. Dinner was our extravagance. Every night, we ate someplace nice. Not fancy, but nice. Our food budget was about $30 for the week, not counting dinner.
Attractions
I had a plan to keep every day fun, without resorting to using an agenda. We were far to flexible to call it an agenda. They just don’t make vacations fun for me. We had one thing planned each morning, one each afternoon, and one each evening. Every day, one of those things was spending a couple of hours in the hotel pool. No stress.
The first thing I did was hit the city’s tourism website for coupons. Yay us!
We tried to group our activities geographically to save on parking. For example, one day we went on a sight-seeing boat tour, then walked over the a retired-ore-freighter-turned-museum and only paid one parking fee, which was actually reimbursed by the tour company.
We also hit a lot of state parks, which was mostly free, except for the daily parking permits.
Some of the museums had gotten together to offer a “3 attractions for the price of 2” deal. This was available to us, but I didn’t find out about it until the end of the week. Luckily, it only cost us a few dollars more to use the other coupons.
When we had some spare time, we did other things, like bowling or catching a matinee. They were just some cheap time-fillers, but still good times.
All in all, we had a great time. Nobody was bored and we didn’t end up broke. A good time was had by all, and I got to teach my son how to play poker.
How do you save money on vacation?
Saturday Roundup – The OMG It’s Busy Edition
- Image via Wikipedia
Last Saturday, my 3-year-old rode in her second horse show. She got third place out of 4, which is pretty good for her second show.
Halloween is well under way here. Normally, I get everything set up the last weekend of September, but we went out of town that weekend to visit my sick Grandma, so things are behind schedule. Now, I’m trying to finish decorating my yard in the evenings, between work and sunset. That really cuts into blogging time.
Today, my two oldest kids are having a birthday party together. October is a crazy-busy month.
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The best posts of the week:
Every blogger needs a WordPress cheatsheet, right?
$93 of generosity turned into $100,000 of charity. It’s an inspiring story about how the little things add up. What a way to make a difference!
The debt-settlement meany-butt-jerkfaces have to obey an entire new set of laws to keep them from lying to their customers.
I love precious metals. The only gold I own is on my ring finger, but I’ve got a small stack of silver in the house. There’s just something about a gold or silver coin that makes me want to fondle it.
Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:
Last week:
20 Lazy Ways to Save Money was in the Carnival of Money Stories.
3 Reasons You Hate Your Budget was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
The Magic Toilet was included in the Festival of Frugality. I love my magic toilet.
This week:
Halloween Decorations Ain’t Cheap was picked up by the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thrifty Sucks was included in the Carnival of Money Stories.
If I missed anyone, please let me know. Thanks for including me!
Sunday Roundup: Yep, It’s Saturday
Yes, it’s Saturday. Tomorrow, I’m hosting the Yakezie Carnival, so I bumped this up a day.
This week has been super relaxing. Wrestling season is over. We’re done with activities for a while.
30 Day Project Update
Last month, I was trying to do 100 perfect push-ups in a single set. I recorded each session in a spreadsheet. I hit my goal on the 28th, 3 days early. Since then, I’ve cut down to just one session per day. I’m now doing 35 slow, deep push-ups every morning. It’s not a goal, or a challenge, just part of a general effort to be healthier.
Weight Loss Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 41 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 1 pound since last week and 8 pounds in March, while doing an insane amount of push-ups and packing on a few pounds of muscle. Seriously, for the last couple of weeks, on the days I haven’t totally slacked off, I’ve been doing 500+ push-ups a day. That’s a lot.
Total Inches: I have lost 23 inches in the same time frame, up 1 inch since last week. That makes me sad, but it seems to be muscle growth, so it’s not too bad.
Best Posts
Mint shows how lazy employees are, on average. Surprisingly, only 2.09 hours are wasted in the average 8 hour day. The rule I’d heard before is that employers expect 2-3 good, solid hours of work our of their employees every day.
Money Crasher has some cheap appetizer recipes. I can’t wait to make the biscuit meatballs.
The Mars Rover died. Tragic.
Get Rich Slowly has a post on emergency preparedness. If I mentioned that I keep enough supplies in my car to live for a week, would that make me a survivalist or just a fun guy?
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
First, I examined the value of exchanging your time to save a bit of money.
Then, I talked about the futility of trying to force your spouse into frugality.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Filing Bankruptcy: Pride or Shame? was an Editor’s Pick in the Totally Money Blog Carnival at Debt Free Divas. Thank you!
Budgeting tips – sticking to your budget was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Saving Money: The Warranty Fund was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
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Have a great week!
Money Problems: Day 11 – Extended Warranties
Today, I am continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
On this, Day 11, we’re going to talk about extended warranties.
You’ve been there. You walk into a big box electronics store to buy a $10 cable for your DVD player and the boy in blue at the register tries to pressure you into spending $4 on an extended warranty in case the cable dies due to too much adult video…or something.
The same nameless blue and yellow store is currently selling a laptop for $349 with a 2 year extended warranty for $89. The sales pitch usually goes something along the line of “These things have a tendency to break. You need a warranty to make it worth purchasing.” Thanks, jerk. You just sent me to a competitor since your sales pitch involves telling me you’re selling garbage.
Seriously, getting an extended warranty on electronics is almost always a bad deal. Yes, almost 30% of laptops fail within three years. Most of those fail in the 3rd year. What’s a 2 year warranty going to do for you then? New laptops generally come with a 1 year warranty from the factory. That leaves you volunteering for a 25% markup in exchange for protecting your device for a year that is not statistically likely to include a laptop failure.
A much better idea is to create a warranty/repair fund. When you buy something and have a warranty offered, turn it down and put that money in a special savings account. That money will get set aside to repair your stuff when it breaks. If you do that with everything you buy, you’ll soon have a fund that can pay for most repairs, without stressing your budget. I’ve got $25 going into my repair fund every month, so I’ll never have to worry about an extended warranty again.
It’s called a self-warranty.
But what about a car warranty you ask?
This is where I differ from most people. I’m a fan of extended warranties on cars, with 2 caveats.
1. Use it. If you car has started shaking, knocking, or almost anything else, bring it in. You have a warranty, so get your dang car fixed. When you’re getting close to the end of your warranty, make up an excuse and get that car into the dealer. “My car’s making an intermittent knocking sound. Can you fix it? While you’re at it, please do your 90,000 point inspection and fix whatever you find.” There’s no reason that you can’t get your car running like new when it kicks over the 70,000 mile mark.
2. Negotiate it. The charge you see is typically twice the dealer’s cost. Let them make some profit, since that’s what makes the world go round, but don’t let them take advantage of you. If they offer you a warranty for $2000, counter with $1200.
If you can get a decent price and are willing to make sure you use the auto warranty, get it.
How do you feel about extended warranties? Please leave a comment below and let me know.
