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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Link Roundup

Misc

What has happened to this week?  It’s already Friday afternoon, and I’m short a post today.    Since I skipped the link roundup last week while I was off with family, I’ll do it early this week and cheat you out of a real post today.

Finance links:

I enjoy trying new foods and eating out.  Christian PF provides tips on doing that frugally.

Trent talks about “Family Dinner Night”.  Invite a bunch of friends over to help prep and eat a buffet-style meal.  Good time for everyone on the cheap.

Free Money Finance shares his 14 Money Principles.

MoneyNing shares how to buy school supplies for less.

Miscellaneous links:

Netflix just volunteered to shaft its customers again.  There’s a 28 day wait to get most new releases, now.  If I didn’t have almost 500 movies in my queue, I’d be royally ticked.

Mother Earth News has plans for a smoker/grill/stove/oven.   I’d love to build a brick oven with a grill and smoker.  A complete, wood-fired cooking center would be perfect for my house.

Major kitchen cleaning on Lifehacker.   We’re doing this tomorrow, as part of our April Declutter.

That’s the highlight of my trip around the internet this week.

Disclosure

I’m not terribly commercial, but I do enjoy making money.

As such, it is safe to assume that any company, entity, corporation, person, place, thing, or other that has a product, service, post, or  link has in some way compensated me for said product, service, post or link.  That compensation–direct or indirect–may be in the form of money, swag, free trips, gold bullion, smurf collectibles, super-models, or just warm-fuzzies.  That list is NOT in order of preferred method of compensation.

To reiterate: If it’s commercial, and it’s here, I’m probably being paid for it.

Saturday Roundup: Evil Dead

Misc

Image via Wikipedia

Last night, my wife and I went to see Evil Dead: The Musical.   I’m a die-hard zombie-movie fan, and the Evil Dead Trilogy is among my favorites.   I don’t recognize a difference between Candarian demons and zombies, so it still fits the genre.

The musical beats either of the first two movies, hands down.   I was rolling.  If you are in the Minneapolis area tomorrow, check it out at the Illusion Theater.    If you are elsewhere, watch for it.  It’s entirely worth the time and money.

Best Posts:

Sometimes, shopping can save you money, but don’t let it get out of hand.

I’ve never had food poisoning, but my wife has.  It was unpleasant.

Bacon soda.  Yum.  No further comment.

Bad marketers.  No donut.

Carnivals I’ve been in:

AAA – Save Some Cash was included in the Festival of Frugality.

The Spending Styles of the Rocky Horror Picture Show was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Crack was included in Foodtastic Favorites.

If I missed anyone, please let me know.   Thanks for including me!

Selling Your Car

Finance

English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Pa...

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

 

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Funeral Costs: How to Keep it Inexpensive, Without Being Cheap

Finance, Life

MIAMI - JANUARY 24: A pallbearer for Poitier ...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The average funeral costs $6500.    Many people die with absolutely no savings.   Even if there is life insurance, it takes weeks to get the money, while a funeral is completed within a week.

Funeral homes have an easy sales pitch.  Nobody wants to sully the memory of their loved ones.   The tiniest hint of a guilt trip will have most families upgrading to the silk pillow in a second.   Here’s a secret: Your loved one doesn’t care.  I’m not recommending using garbage bags and a dumpster.   By all means, treat your loved ones with care, but don’t go overboard.

Not everyone is comfortable with cremation, and some religions don’t permit it, but it is probably the least expensive way to process a body.   It costs approximately $1400 to cremate a body and you can get very attractive urns for under $100.  Compare that to a $3500 casket and storage & transportation fees, and–from a strictly monetary standpoint–the choice is clear.

Don’t worry too much about decorating.   Flowers aren’t cheap and florists don’t tend to offer discounts to people who aren’t emotionally prepared to negotiate and who are in a time crunch to find the flowers they need.   Get a few bouquets for a small display around the casket or urn, and let the rest take care of itself.   Many of the guests will bring flowers, so the entrance will soon be decorated for free, and that’s the part that makes the first impression.

Shopping online can save you a lot of money on an urn.  Funeral homes will try to sell you a $500 urn, which may include a 1000% markup.    If you buy online, you will have to pay for overnight shipping, but that’s a small cost compared to the standard markup.  You can also find a huge discount on attractive caskets by shopping outside of the funeral home.   Federal law prohibits funeral homes from requiring that you buy a casket from them or charging you a fee for getting one elsewhere.
This may be the most ghoulish part of this article, but you can dig the grave yourself.   It’s probably not worth it for a full-size casket, but for an urn, you can save hundreds of dollars.   An urn generally only needs to be buried 18 inches deep, as opposed to the 6 feet required for caskets.  Just be sure to check with the cemetery and get the burial location right.  If you think it’s ghoulish to dig the grave, just picture digging it up.  Not fun.
Planning a funeral is never enjoyable, and it’s often expensive.  Nothing you do will make it fun, but it is possible to make it affordable.
Have you had to coordinate a funeral?  Did you take the funeral director’s recommendations, or did you cut some costs?

 

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Priorities

Business

I once saw a sign on the wall in a junkyard that said, “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

Another good one: “If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.”

Once a week, I meet with my boss to discuss my progress for the previous week and my priorities for the coming week.   This is supposed to make sure that my productivity stays in line with the company’s goals.

Great.

Once a day, my boss comes into my office to change my top priority based on whichever account manager has most recently asked for a status update for their customer.

Not so great.

At least twice a week, he asks for a status update on my highest priority items.   Each time, he could mean the items we prioritized in the weekly meeting, or the items he chose to escalate later.   Somehow, getting a new task escalated doesn’t deescalate an existing task.

Everything is a top priority.

To compensate, I’ve been working a few 12 hour days each week, and occasionally coming in on the weekends.

I’m dedicated and still behind.

Prioritizing is treated as an art, or in the case I just mentioned, a juggling act.  It should be considered a science.  It’s usually pretty simple.

  • Is the problem costing you money? +1
  • Is the problem costing your customer money? +2
  • Is the problem going to hurt your reputation? +1
  • Is there a deadline? +1
  • Is it soon? +2
  • Is it urgent? +1
  • Is it important? +2
  • Are there absolutely no real consequences for anyone if it doesn’t get completed? -500

That’s it.    Too many times, we get hung up on urgent-but-not-important items and neglect the important things.

The hard part comes when it’s someone else setting your priorities, particularly when that person doesn’t rate things on urgency, importance, and cost but rather “Who has bitched the loudest recently?”

Can I tell my boss that I’m not going to do things the way he told me too?  No.  A former coworker very recently found out what happens when you do this.

Can I remind him that I’m busting my butt as hard as I can?  Yes, but it will just earn me a request to come in on the weekend, too.

Can I ignore the official priorities part of the time, and work on what I feel is most important to keeping our customers happy?  Yes, but it’s easy to go too far.  “Boss, I ignored what you said, but this customer is happy, now!” won’t score me any points if it happens every week.

Priorities are simple, but not always easy.  How do you balance your priorities?

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