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Saturday Roundup

Misc

Tron (film)
Image via Wikipedia

I wrote this yesterday.  According the forecast, when this post goes live, I’ll be moving 5-8 inches of snow off of my driveway.

That, or watching TV and thinking about moving snow.

Maybe I’ll just sleep in and wait for spring to melt the snow.

Don’t forget to enter my drawing for a $100 Amazon gift card!   Go here for details.  It ends on the 15th, so don’t wait too long.

Best Posts

Crazy-easy ice cream bread.  How could this possibly be bad?

Tron comes out in 2 weeks.  I’d love to show up on a custom street-legal Troncycle.

Arsenic-based lifeforms are shaking up the way we understand life to work.   I’m of the opinion that life will probably exist almost everywhere that isn’t a completely dead dry rock.  I say that as an expert in…well, nothing related to astrobiology.

Following Erica’s advice is currently making me a few hundred dollars per month, with every sign of growing as time goes on.  I hate to sound like a fanboy, but if she pimps a product, I’m at least going to give it some serious consideration.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

10 Dumb Money Moves was featured in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.

Book Review: The Art of Non-Conformity was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Things You Should Buy Online to Save Money was included in the Festival of Frugality.

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

LRN Timewarp

This is a new feature to share the gift that is me with anyone new to LRN.   This week, I’m going to share some posts from my first week blogging here.

The $10 College Fund.  In the last year, not only have I not changed my mind about the $10 college fund, but I haven’t raised the amount.   The point is to just get started.   I’ve done that.  I’ll raise the amount when my debt is paid off.   We are now up to $166.09.  The numbers are off because I stuck a little bit extra in one month.

In the last year, our dreams haven’t changed.   We haven’t made any direct progress, but indirectly we are doing well.   First things first.  We need to pay the debt off before we look at a hobby farm.

My second day blogging, I wrote about why we handled money so poorly.

2012: The Year the World Ended

Finance, Life, Relationships

December 21st marks the day that Mayan calendar-makers decided was far longer than they needed to waste their time carving

English: Mayan calendar created by a modern cr...
Image via Wikipedia

days into stone.

More importantly, it marks the beginning of the week before my birthday.   No self-respecting civilization would end the world just a week before my birthday.

This is traditionally the time that people look back at the previous year, and make resolutions they don’t intend to keep in the following year.

Who am I to buck tradition?

In 2011, I became a bit of a workaholic.  

This site has taken off a bit.  I’m not about to retire off of the proceeds, but it has turned into a nice little side income.  Thank you for that.

I launched a marketing company.  We do web design/development, social media work, and search engine marketing.   It’s strictly a part-time gig right now, but it’s growing and taking up most of my free evenings and weekends.

I’ve been working 50-60 hours a week at my day job.

The plus side?   I’ve also paid off almost $20,000 of my debt in 2011, bringing my total to $47,535 left.

It’s been a lot of work, but the harder I hustle, the sooner I can stop hustling.

What’s in store for 2012?

On the work front, I plan to cut my weekly load down to 40-45 hours again.  Life it to short to work all of the time.

I want to expand my new company to the point that my day job is optional.   I’m projecting that by spring.   Call it June 1st.

Here, I want to double the size of my audience.    I don’t just want random people popping in, I want to grow an engaged audience.  That means more comments and more discussion.  Expect to see more along those lines.

I’ve also got a couple of products under development.  By year-end, I’d like to have them both released.

On a personal level, my biggest goal is to carve out a regular chunk of time to spend with my wife.  Working all of the time has cut into our quality time together.  I want to find a way to schedule date nights at least twice a month.   It will cost more money, but that’s part of why I’m working so much.

Financially, I want to kill the last of my credit card debt.    That’s down to about $17,000.   We’ll need to keep working at it, but it’s a reachable goal.   That means we still don’t get cable, I still avoid buying books every week, and my kids still have to live with not getting every whim fulfilled.

To recap: I’m going to work smarter, grow my side projects, and make this site better for you.   In the process, I’m going to kill the last of my unsecured debt, and drag my mortgage down to it’s last gasping breaths.

Here’s to the end of the world….

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20 Happy Thoughts

Business, Finance, Life, Misc

Since I’ve been on a bit of a death theme lately, I thought I post something purely happy.

Here it is.  In no particular order, twenty unequivocated things that make me happy.

  1. My three year old has the most beautiful blue/silver/gray eyes I have ever seen.
  2. In the past 32 months, I’ve reduced my total debt load by $42,859.70.  That’s an average reduction of $1,339.37 per month.
  3. My insane work schedule is paying off.  I’m more than halfway to making my day job’s income redundant.
  4. My preteen son is currently showing none of the signs of the horrible rebellion that I put my parents through.
  5. The world hasn’t imploded, exploded, or tilted its axis recently.
  6. My parents did a good job of raising me.
  7. I haven’t touched my overdraft line of credit in more than 2 years.
  8. My wife loves me.
  9. I love her.
  10. Wrestling season starts tomorrow, and Punk ended last season with real promise.
  11. I’ve dropped 12 pounds in the last 16 days.
  12. Bacon is good.
  13. Daughter #1 is starting kindergarten in September and excited about it.
  14. Our cars are paid off.
  15. This site helps me stay motivated to eliminate my debt.
  16. You rock.
  17. I may get out of debt just before the world ends.
  18. The Yakezie Network has helped get this blog to where it is.  If you’ve got a finance blog, join today.  You won’t regret it.
  19. FINCON 2012 is is Denver and I won’t be napping on my motorcycle on the way there, like I did the last time I went to Denver.  It’s not something I recommend, but it makes a neat story.
  20. I have 20 things to be happy about.   That’s a recursive happy-maker right there.

     

 

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Deathbed Regrets

Life, Parenting, Relationships

Missing chocolate chip cookie.
Image via Wikipedia

A friend recently pointed me to an article written by a hospice nurse.  This nurse spent her career working with people who were dying, beyond recovery, and aware of it.   Her job, primarily, was to provide comfort, whether that be physical or emotional.

During her conversations, she found several themes when her patients discussed their regrets and she lists the 5 most common regrets in her article.

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I don’t see this one being an issue for me.   While I did buy in to a standard life template (college, wife, kids, suburbs, office, etc.), I am me.  I am undeniably me.

I’d be delusional to think that I wasn’t a bit…different.   I see things differently than a lot of other people, I react differently, and I’m vocal about it.  That sometimes makes it hard to get close to me.  I doubt anyone who is close to me would argue with that.

I also tend to do things.  Most people talk about doing things, I try to make them happen.   “I wish I were out of debt”, “Honey, I want to start a business”, “Let’s drop 40 pounds this year”, or “I want to build a trebuchet”.   I think I know why my wife gets nervous when I say “I have an idea”.

I may not be running anyone else’s script, but at the end of the day, I’d regret not doing things more than I’d regret trying them.

I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This one is a personal struggle for me.   I’m scared of missing my children grow up.   I hate the idea of looking back and finding my children as adults, with few memories of how they got there.

At the same time, I’ve got a pile of debt I need to get rid of before I can dial back too far.    I could quit my job tomorrow, but that wouldn’t be providing a good life for them.

My worry, and the worry of some people close to me, is that, once the debt is gone, I won’t be able to let go of my extreme work hours, even though I’m working so hard now to be able to work less later.   “Later”, in this case, means a couple of years, not retirement.

I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Ugh.  Feelings.  If this is a standard deathbed regret, I’m screwed.   My loved ones know I love them, but other than that, I’m happy to be in control of myself.

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I do.  It’s not always close contact, but it is contact.

I’m of the opinion that life’s too short to spend time with people you dislike, so some people have been relegated to the past.   My friends, my family, my loved ones are a part of my life, even if it’s occasionally months between emails or years between visits.

I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I think I do pretty well on this front, too.   Happiness is a choice.   I could worry about all of the things that aren’t perfect, or I could enjoy the things I have.  I choose to enjoy what I’ve got, even while trying to improve the rest.

In the words of Denis Leary : “Happiness comes in small doses folks. It’s a cigarette, or a chocolate cookie, or a five second orgasm. That’s it, ok! [You] eat the cookie, you smoke the butt, you go to sleep, you get up in the morning and go to…work, ok!? That is it!”

Happiness isn’t a hobby farm, a new job, or a dream vacation.   Happiness is a date with my wife, or cuddling with my kids to Saturday morning cartoons, or taking my son to the range.

Happiness is the things I’m doing now, not the dreams I’m hoping for someday.

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Can Bad Credit Cost You Your Job?

Business, Finance

Did you know that having a bad credit history could cost you your job? An increasing number of American employers have turned to running credit checks to screen job

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 03: Bill Harris of Brook...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

applicants. Some companies even evaluate existing employees on a regular basis by checking their credit reports. If you have outstanding debts, you might consider getting one of those  credit cards for bad credit to clean up your report before you apply for your dream job.

Not all companies run your credit history when you apply for a position. However, if you’re applying for a job that entails working with money or valuables, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be checking your credit history. Financial institutions, brokerage companies and jewelry manufacturers all run credit checks, as do hotels, accounting firms, human resource departments and government agencies.

Companies run credit checks because they want to hire employees who won’t be tempted to embezzle company funds to pay off large debts. Some companies fear that employees who carry large debt loads are susceptible to blackmail or bribery. The federal government carries this concern even further, indicating that citizens who owe large debts are considered national security risks.

Many companies feel that your credit report gives them a sneak peak at your true character. Having a good credit history indicates that you are a responsible person with excellent character. Having a bad credit history means that you are an unreliable person of poor character. True or not and fairly or not, this is the current belief running throughout company hiring departments.

Unfortunately, you can’t relax about your credit report even after you’ve been hired for a position. Once you’ve given a company written permission to check your credit report, they can recheck it at a later date. Government and financial organizations often run periodic credit checks on all of their employees. Some companies only recheck your credit history if you are up for a promotion. It’s a good idea, therefore, to keep your credit history squeaky clean.

Keep in mind that having a couple of late payments probably won’t kill your chances of employment or promotion. Most employers look for the really big issues, such as high credit card balances, defaulted student loans, repossessions and foreclosures. Some companies also look for charge-offs and consistent late payments as well.

Steps You Can Take

Financial experts suggest checking your credit report before you start your job search. Read your credit report carefully and make sure that all of the information is accurate. If your report contains incorrect details or any unauthorized charges, dispute these errors immediately and have them corrected to raise your credit score.

If you have a host of unpaid bills, find a way to settle those debts to improve your credit history before applying for jobs. Many people turn to credit cards for bad credit consumers. These cards allow you to consolidate all of your debts into a single debt. Just don’t forget to make the payments on this card.

Be upfront with potential employers about any negative marks on your credit history. Just tell them that you have had past issues with your credit and are now working to clear up all of your debt. There’s no need to go into explicit detail.

Once you have a job, be sure that you check your credit report at least every six months to ensure it contains only correct information. Pay all of your creditors on time. Never take out any new lines of credit unless you are absolutely positive that you can pay it back in a timely manner.

 Post by Moneysupermarket

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4 Ways to Change Your Finances for the Better

Finance

Finance is made out to be difficult, but it’s really not.   All financial advice really boils down to 2 sentences: “Spend less than you earn.  Save or invest the rest.”  Everything else is an unnecessary complication, unless you need to be told that commemorative plates aren’t actually an investment.   Unfortunately, we’re all people. (Except for you in the back.  I see you, and you are not people.)  People make mistakes.  People sometimes need things spelled out, or at least explained in a way that makes it seem less intimidating to get started.

With that in mind, here are four steps that will get you out of debt and, over a long enough timeline, make you rich:

1.  Lower your interest rates.  If you’ve got debt, particularly credit card debt, you’re paying too much interest.  It doesn’t matter what the interest rate is, it could be better.    It’s time to pick up the phone and politely ask your credit card company to lower your interest rate.  If they refuse, mention that their competitor is offering you 3% interest on a balance transfer with no transfer fee.    Mention a competitor by name, but don’t worry about a specific offer.   There are always offers being tossed about.

If they won’t lower your rate, find a company who will.   5% on a 10,000 balance is $500 per year.   That’s 3 months of payments for free.

2.  Lower your monthly payments.   Do you have a cable bill? A phone bill?  Any other bills?  Put them in a stack and call them.   Every. Single. One.  Ask if there is any way you can lower your bill.   Can you get put on a new customer promotion?   My electric company offers a saver switch for my air conditioner that will lower my bill by 15% just for giving them the ability to toggle my AC on and off.    When we had that installed, I never noticed it in use.

3.  Save $1000.   When you’ve got no money, every unexpected expense is an emergency.  When you’ve got a little bit socked away, you can ride out the problems without much worry.   $1000 may not be enough to ride out an extended bout of unemployment, but it does a pretty good job of taking the sting out of car repairs.   Do whatever you have to do, but get some money in an emergency fund.  Then, don’t touch it!

4.   Categorize wants and needs.  I want a vacation.  My kid needs braces.  I want a big screen TV.  My gas bill needs to get paid.  I want a new car.   My family needs food.  Are you sensing a theme?  Pay attention to what you spend.  Ask yourself if it’s something you need, or just something you really, really want.   Just the act of categorizing it can make it easier to avoid buying whatever it is.

5.  Use the savings from 1-4 to pay off whatever you owe.  Don’t blow your new-found savings on spinner rims or soap made from rich-people tallow.    Use it to finally get ahead of the game.