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Financial Pet Peeve: Fees To Receive Paper Bank Statements

Today’s post is written by Tim of Faith and Finance. It was written for a blog swap run by the Yakezie personal finance blog network to answer the question “What is your biggest financial pet peeve?“

Chances are, you’ve probably received a few notices from your bank or investment company about receiving e-statements. I’m all for getting less mail, and having online access to my statements is a really nice feature. In fact, most of my statements are online now.

So why is it a pet peeve if I LIKE viewing statements online? Here’s why: If you don’t get the online version of your statements, many places will charge you for the paper statement. My bank (which will go unnamed) pulled this very move. If you want to receive paper statements you had to pay a few dollars each year for the ‘service.’ Now I understand that printing statements costs money, but what bothers me the most is that the bank continues to send junk mail even though I opted in to the e-statements.

It seems a little impolite to say “You have to stop using paper…but we’ll keep sending you stuff you don’t want in the mail.” Each time they send me something in the mail promoting a new product or those goofy cash advance checks, I think about how much money they’re NOT saving.

***Ok ok, I’ll stop ranting. That’s what happens when you’re challenged to write about a pet peeve…you get a little excited. 🙂

Solutions to the problem

I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to complain about something, you should be willing to suggest alternatives, so here’s what I’d do differently if I were the banks.

1. Don’t punish for paper statements, incentivize for online statements

If you want to connect with people online and save money in the long run, provide an incentive to make the shift to online statements. Money and interest rates talk, so maybe provide $5 plus access to a higher paying certificate only available for our online banking members.

2. Consolidate the message.

If people want to get paper statements still, don’t charge them – instead, use the statement envelope to promote your products. The envelope is already paid for, so why not use it for marketing purposes. Now I know they’ll say, “people don’t read statement stuffers.” To that I’d say, “what makes you think they’d read a dedicated mailer then?”

Those are my two cents. Has anyone thought the same thing? How do you feel about paper statements vs. online statements?

[Jason’s note: There is a fee that irritates me a lot more than paying to get a paper statement. I hate “online access” fees. Those are the fee where you get charged for other people doing less. They are usually called convenience fees or, in the case of government, technology fees.]

Living the XBox Life on an Atari Income

Finance

: Image via Wikipedia

At some point, everyone has “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” Over the last 25 years, we’ve even been peddled the “you can have it all” myth from every direction, including the media and the government.

The truth is simple: you cannot have it all. You can have anything, but you can’t have everything. In order to have one thing, you have to give up something else. It’s a law of nature. If you have $5, you can either get a burger or an overpriced cup of coffee, but not both.

“But wait!” you shout, rudely interrupting the narrator, “I have a credit card. I can have both!”

Wrong.

And stop interrupting me.

If you have $5 and borrow $5 to get some coffee to go with your burger, you will eventually have to pay that money back with interest. You will have to give up a future-burger AND a flavor shot in your overpriced coffee.

Everything you buy needs to be paid for, some day.

If you have an Atari income, but insist on living the XBox life, you will wake up one day, buried in bills, forced to live the Commodore-64 life out of sheer desperation.

There is a solution.

Don’t get all XBox-y until you are making XBox money. That way, you’ll never have to worry about going broke tomorrow paying for the fun you had yesterday.

Even when you have an XBox income, ideally you’ll restrict yourself to living a Gamecube life, so you’ll be able to put some money aside to support future-you instead of constantly having to worry about your next paycheck.

Quit Smoking: My First Frugal Move…Ever

Finance, Life

: Image via Wikipedia

It’s nearly the 5 year anniversary of my last cigarette, so I though I’d bring this post back to the front page.

A bit over three years ago, we found out that my wife was pregnant with baby #3. When we decided to have #2, it took us two years of trying. Naturally, we assumed we’d have the same issues with #3. Imagine our surprise when it only took 2 weeks. At that point, we were getting ready to celebrate brat #2’s first birthday.

That mean’s 2 kids under 2. Two kids in diapers. Three kids in daycare. Baby formula again.

We weren’t making ends meet with two kids, how were we going to manage three? I dropped my pack-or-two-a-day smoking habit.

But, I’ve gone over that before.

This post is about how I actually quit.

Some Facts About Me

I don’t do things by halves; I tend to do things all the way or not at all. For years, my wife would ask me to cut back, to just smoke a little less, but that never worked. If I had cigarettes, I smoked them. I always had cigarettes. When I eat, I eat. I’ve never managed smaller portions. I used to drink a case of soda each week, just because it was there. Moderation has never been my friend.

As a corollary, I don’t cheat. At anything. Ever. Because of the above fact about myself. I don’t moderate myself when I give myself rules either. If I draw a line, I obsessively avoid crossing it.

The problem comes when I try to give myself a “gray area” rule. “Smoke less” always leaves room for “just one more”, which easily leads to “I only cut out one cigarette yesterday, so what’s the use?” I had to be done.

After smoking for fifteen years–more than a pack a day for at least 12 of those–that’s an intimidating thought.

The Plan

The first thing I did was set a day to quit. I chose the day after my Halloween party. Before that would have been setting myself up for failure. Booze, food, and long conversations in a smoking-friendly environment were just 3 of my many triggers. I always smoked more at my parties, so the day after, I didn’t feel up to smoking much, anyway. I’d just ride that wave of “I don’t feel like it” to to holy city of “I quit”.

I didn’t quit smoking the next day, I just quit buying cigarettes. That left me half a pack to curb my cravings.

I also knew that nicotine cravings are about the most distracting thing I’ve ever had to deal with. That doesn’t make for a productive computer programmer, so I bought a box of the generic patch that Target carries. I started with Phase 2, because I wasn’t interested in prolonging the process. I just didn’t want to spend my work days thinking about smoking instead of designing software. I needed something to take the edge off, without actually smoking.

My plan was to have the patch at work, so I’d be able to work and to stretch those last 10 cigarettes out, as long as possible.

The Result

It worked. The pack lasted 4 days, I think. I smoked during my commute and after dinner. I used the patch only when the cravings got to the point that I couldn’t concentrate. After a week, I stopped using it at all. A few days later, I had a particularly stressful day and cheated. I took 3 puffs of that cigarette and threw it away, because it tasted like crap and I wasn’t enjoying it. That’s when I knew I was successfully done smoking. It was a 10 day variation of “cold turkey”. More than 3 years later, I have an occasional cigar, but never due to a craving. The day I experience a nicotine craving is the day I burn my humidor.

That’s how I quite smoking, strictly to try to get my finances in line. That has saved me at least $10,000 over the last 3 years.

Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings

Finance

Today’s post is written by Mike Collins of http://savingmoneytoday.net as part of the Yakezie Blog Swap in which bloggers were asked to share their best day to day money saving tip.

Do you buy lunch at work every day? Have you ever actually sat down and added up how much money you’re spending?

I did once…and I almost fell out of my chair when I saw how much I was spending!

Back in the day I used to buy lunch at the office almost every single day. It certainly didn’t seem like I was spending much. A chef salad here, a cheese steak and fries there. But every day I was spending about 7 dollars and change. That’s $35 a week, which adds up to a whopping $1820 over the course of a year!

I started thinking about all the things I could do with that extra $1820, like paying off some of our debt, increasing my 401k contributions(ed: but staying with your 401k contribution limits, of course!), picking out a new big-screen tv, or enjoying an extended family vacation at Walley World.

I immediately starting bringing my lunch to work 4 days a week (I do treat myself once a week) and I’ve been saving money ever since.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It costs money to bring lunch from home too right?

Yes, of course it does…but nowhere near as much as eating out every day. Let’s do some basic math to prove the point. Say you swing by the grocery store to buy some ham and cheese so you can make sandwiches for the week. You pick up a half pound of ham for $3 and a half pound of cheese for $2. A loaf of bread on sale runs you another $2. That means you just spent $7 for a week’s worth of lunches. Even if you only bring lunch 4 days a week you’ve still saved yourself $21. That’s over $1000 a year!

And here’s a tip to save even more: If you have extra food from dinner, just bring the leftovers for lunch the next day. We always try to make just a little bit extra so I can have free lunch the next day.

So the next time you’re sitting around complaining that you don’t have enough money for so and so, think about how much money you are spending every day on lunch, or coffee, or cigarettes, etc. You might just find that you have plenty of money after all if you just shift your priorities a bit.

Sunday Roundup: Spent weekend

Misc

The problem with running a training class for a side hustle is that it sucks up half of my weekend, whenever I hold a class. I like my weekends. Unfortunately for downtime, I like extra money more.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to do 100 perfect push-ups in a single set. I’m recording each session in a spreadsheet. I am currently up to 50 in a set and 175 in a session, spread across 5 sets. This week, my elbow started hurting, so I took 2 and a half days off.

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 38 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 2 pound since last week.

Total Inches: I have lost 22.5 inches in the same time frame, down 1.5 inches since last week. My biceps, which are part of this measurement, have grown half an inch each since I started doing push-ups twice a day.

Best Posts

My mother-in-law hates dandelions, with a passion that just isn’t sane. I want to make her a meal that consists of nothing but dandelions.

When I got my first RSA SecureID card, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. If you’ve never had one, it gives you a rotating password that changes every 30 seconds, so nobody can guess you password for long. It was neat, and, apparently, not that secure.

The idea of a tortoise on wheels makes me smile.

I’d like to try to make yogurt. I can try whatever flavors I like. Poptart-and-broccoli yogurt just sounds….

I work really hard to save money on vacations, and this post is full of good ideas to help me do that.

eBay is making changes to their fee structure that will make it a lot cheaper to sell things. I’m guessing the back-the-customer-no-matter-what-at-the-expense-of-the-seller’s-getting-scammed policy was costing them some money.

The big box stores are pushing for Amazon to collect sales tax on all sales, in opposition to a Supreme Court ruling on the topic. It won’t make a difference in sales. Amazon will still be cheaper. And I’ll get a Canadian mail drop.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?

I talked about teaching my kids the joy of delayed gratification. Interestingly, my son has since decided he doesn’t want an XBox 360, because the buy-in is too high, with having to buy games and controllers to match the console. We’ve also changed his allowance to savings ratio. Now, 25% of everything he makes hits his bank account. The rest is his to do with as he sees fit.

Last year at this time, it was scam week here. I wrote a post on debt scams and another on disaster scams.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Money Problems: Boosting Your Income was included in the Totally Money Carnival.

Living in Debt: How I Sacrificed My Future was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

My post on spendthrift whiners was hosted on Faith and Finance. In return, I hosted his post on paper statement fees.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Yakezie Blog Swap

Jacob hosted the Yakezie Blog Swap, which is a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic and sharing the posts with each other. Here is his list of the participants this round.

He wrote about 3 of my financial pet peeves (spending too much money on drinks, financing expensive furniture, and active investing strategies) on Narrow Bridge Finance.

Robert from The College Investor wrote about how people making mistakes with their 401k accounts is a big “no-no” at Thousandaire.

Narrow Bridge Finance posted about how people not taking responsibility for their financial actions infuriates him on My Personal Finance Journey.

Prairie Eco-Thrifter posted about how sales tax is her biggest financial pet peeve at 101 Centavos.

101 Centavos posted about how wasting food makes his blood pressure rise at Prairie Eco-Thrifter.

LaTisha D Styles writes about how greedy banks upset her at Retire by 40.

Retire by 40 wrote about how bigger is not necessarily better at FSYA Online.

Bucksome Boomer writes about how advertisers that hide the real price of a product is maddening at The Single Saver.

The Single Saver wrote about parents who do not teach their children financial responsibility at Bucksome Boomer.

Kevin from Thousandaire writes about people having misconceptions about Roth IRA’s at The College Investor.

Time from Faith and Finance vents about financial institutions charging to send paper account statements, but still send out a plethora of paper junk mail at Live Real Now.

Jason from Live Real Now politely rants about how aggravating it is to see people whine about their less-than-ideal financial situations, yet do nothing about it, at Faith and Finance.

Money Sanity vents about people complaining about paying overdraft and bank fees, while at the same time, having no idea how much credit card debt they have or their checking account balance at The Saved Quarter

The Saved Quarter writes about people who are financially irresponsible and want to complain about how broke they are while showing off the new things they bought at Money Sanity

Barb Friedberg talks about how investment advisors that get paid to sell products (more salesman than investment advisors in my book) upset her at Happy Simple Living

Happy Simple Living writes about how companies and people that exploit others aggravate her at Barb Friedberg Personal Finance.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

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Have a great week!

Make a Budget

Finance

: Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template. If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all. I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources. As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system. The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy. We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills. These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month. Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true. You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking. You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills. That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis. I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed. I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios. If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule. Sometimes, they are never actually due. We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things. A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun. You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2. Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills. For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount. For almost 2 years, it was granted. Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled. 100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3. These bills are harder to reduce. Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4. Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1. Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?