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Horseback Riding Lessons

Finance, Parenting

For the past couple of years, my daughters have been riding in horse shows with a local saddle club.  We’ve been lucky in that my wife’s cousin has let us borrow her horse for the shows, so costs have been minimal.Bought a Pony

Unfortunately, that horse isn’t available this year.  We knew that a few months ago, so the plan was to take a year off from the shows and focus on lessons, to get the girls some real skills.  We found a great instructor at a stable about 30 miles from our house.  Since we live less than two miles from the border of the biggest city in the state, that’s a comparatively short drive.

We pay her $200 per month for 1 lesson per week for both girls.   They each get 30-45 minutes on the horse during each lesson.

Now that show season has started, the plan seems to have changed.   The girls will be riding a different borrowed pony tomorrow.  The shows cost about $50 for registration, lunch, and gas.  Our club has 1 show per month, but my wife has assured me they’ll only be hitting three shows this season and limiting the number of events to keep the cost down.

The direct costs aren’t too bad, but there’s a problem with keeping-up-with-the-Joneses accessorizing.  Vests and boots and helmets and belts and shirts, oh my.

I’d guess our costs for the summer will be $300 per month.

One thing we’ve been considering is buying a pony.  We can get an older pony for around $500-1000.  Older is good because they are calmer and slower.  Boarding the thing will cost another $200 per month.   We’ve been slowly accumulating the stuff to own a horse, so I’m guessing the “OMG, he let me buy a horse, now I need X” shopping bill will come to around $1500, but I’ll figure $2000 to be safe.   We already have a trailer, a saddle, blankets, buddy-straps, combs, brushes, buckets, rakes, shovels, and I-bought-this-but-I-will-just-put-it-in-the-pile-of-horse-stuff-so-Jason-will-never-notice stuff.  We’re certainly close to being ready to buy.

(FYI: If you’re starting from scratch, don’t think you’re going to get into horse ownership for less than $10,000 the first year, and that’s being a very efficient price-shopper.)

So we’re looking at $5400 for a horse, gear, and boarding the first year.  If we cancel the lessons, by spring we’d have $2000 of that saved and most of the rest can be bought over time.

On the other hand, if we go that route, we’ll never save enough to buy the hobby farm we’re looking for.

Decisions, decisions.  I should just buy a new motorcycle.   Within a year, I win financially.

 

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Side Hustle: The Garage Sale Preparation

Finance

We had a garage sale last week, as a wrap-up to the April 30 Day Project.  We got rained out halfway through the first day of our 3-day sale, but we still managed to clear $1500.  We held the sale in our neighbor’s garage because it had more space and better visibility.

Wednesday night, while carrying boxes over, I missed the step to their property from our driveway and crashed while carrying three boxes.   That’s a twisted ankle and a bleeding knee.  Naturally, while I’m hopping and swearing, everyone is concerned that I’m okay.   The worry-warts.   Anyway, it hurt, so we stopped setting up while we still had a few boxes left in the basement.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]Thursday morning, I decided to show them all.   At 5:30AM, before anybody else is strongly considering the possibility of maybe thinking about getting ready to hit the snooze button, I decided to get the rest of the boxes ready.   They’d all wake up, worried about how I’m feeling, asking if I’m to stiff to carry boxes.  The best way to show them they don’t need to worry would be to have all of the boxes dealt with before they woke up.   So I started.    Up and down the stairs, with a stiff, twisted ankle, gloating to myself about how tough I was…BOOM, down the stairs. I was on my back, sliding down the stairs.    I caught a stair-tread in the small of my back and another on the point of my tailbone.  Mommy?

After I stopped twitching on the floor at the base of the stairs, I managed to get the last of the boxes ready.   Instead of sympathy, I spent the rest of the weekend getting asked if I needed an inflatable doughnut to sit on.  There are places I’d prefer not to have bruised.

Unpacking the boxes made me glad that everything was priced.  We spent 6 weeks going through our entire house–every room, every dresser, every drawer–to eliminate the clutter.   As something went into a box, it got priced, so we didn’t have to do it all at the last minute.  That is the most important time-saving step for a garage sale.   Price it as you pack it. You don’t want to waste hours pricing stuff while tripping over potential customers.

Another preparation tip to do early:  Find tables!   Ask around. You’d be surprised at who has a dozen folding tables collecting dust in his basement.    It’s better to borrow that to rent.    The best price I found was $17.50 to rent an 8′ X 30″ table for a week.   We didn’t have to do that, but we thought we would have to.  I borrowed a few, found a few, and built a few out of sawhorses.

The week before the sale, we placed an ad in the paper. When I placed the ad, the paper called to suggest we change it from running the weekend before to running just the days of the sale.   I agreed, to a point, but their Sunday circulation is miles ahead of the weekday circulation, so why pay to run an ad nobody will see on Thursday?    I ran it Sunday through Tuesday, because I wanted the Sunday ad and we got 3 consecutive days in the price.   Did I actually know better than the paper’s sales-weasel?  Who knows?   I think I made the right decision.

The Sunday before the sale, I posted an ad on Craigslist. Interesting fact: little old ladies use Craiglist to plan their garage-sale adventures.

Two days before the sale, we made signs. Bright pink signs with brighter yellow starbursts. They were all simple. “Mega Sale! 8-5” followed by an arrow and our address. Simple, easy-to-read, and bright. The morning of the sale, after the ibuprofen kicked in, I put the signs up. When you make signs out of paper, always include a crossbar. It rained a lot the first day of the sale, so the signs wilted. The second morning, I went out with some duct tape and crossbars and fixed them all.

The day before the sale, we got cash and change. We had $50 in 1s and 5s and $25 in silver change. No pennies. Nothing was priced to make us need them.

The morning of the sale, we set up two canopy tents in the driveway and pulled the prepared-and-filled table out under them. We finished stacking as much as we could on the tables and called it “open”. There were a few boxes we couldn’t put out due to the rain. We simply ran our of room. At noon, $65 into the sale, we decided enough was enough and shut down–cold, wet, and miserable. Lunch and a nap made the day better.

Later, I’ll discuss the other parts of our successful sale.

Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.

Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.

Black Friday Mayhem

Finance

On Friday, I pepper-sprayed a small crowd of people so I could get a cheap XBox 360.

Black Friday line
Image by tshein via Flickr
Well, I didn’t, but some woman in Los Angeles can truthfully say that today.

On Friday, I slept in a bit, had some breakfast, and played with my kids.   I only shopped at stored whose name ended in “.com”, and didn’t do much of that.

My wife, on the other hand, couldn’t resist the siren call of the sales.   Not that I fought it.

We’ve been planning to replace an old, failing TV for a while.   Friday turned into a good day to pick up a high-definition, widescreen(not a big screen) TV.   The paper said that sale started at 10PM, so my wife got there early enough to get in line and find out the sale actually started at midnight.   She and my brother took turns standing in line while the other shopped.

In my mind, shopping major sales early in the morning with 5000 people who wish they’d have thought of bringing pepper spray is just an example of Hell beta-testing a new level of pain.

At one store, she said the customers were elbowing each other out of the way to get some scrapbooking gadget hanging on a display, so my wife ducked down to grab the extras off of the bottom shelf, reaching between people’s legs to do so.   Certainly smarter than the competition, but still nuts.

She left the house at 9, shopped until about 2, came home to sleep for a couple of hours, then went out to hit the 5AM sales for round 2.    She left with a budget of a few hundred dollars to pick up our new TV, finish our Christmas shopping, a bunch of scrapbooking stuff, and a new winter jacket for one of our brats.

12 hours and $830 later, she was done.

That was just under twice our budget.

That’s like going out for cocktails and waking up in the bathroom of a Tijuana cathouse, covered in ice, with a new social disease and no kidneys.  Sure, you probably had a good time, but was it worth it?

Thankfully, we are at a place where this money is coming out of our debt snowball, not accumulating more debt.

Unfortunately, this is going to cost us a month of our debt repayment plan.

Black Friday just isn’t worth it.  Yes, you can find some huge deals, but you’ve got to fight rude crowds and the risk of buying more than you intended is very real.   Next year, it’s not going to happen at our house.  If my wife insists, she’ll do the shopping with cash.  We can’t afford to do it this way again.

How did your Black Friday go?

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Mastermind – The Best Personality Type

Life

fancy logo/writing for use in MBTI articles
Image via Wikipedia

A few of the best personal finance blogs have decided to post on a theme.  It’s a personality type blog carnival.

After taking the Jung Typology Test, I discovered that I am an INTJ; a Rational Mastermind.  Specifically I am I(78%) N(12%) T(75%) J(44%).

What does that mean, you ask?

It means that I am rare.  Fewer than 3% of the population has my personality type, which is Introvert iNtuition Thinking Judgement, but the intuition is close to Sensing, making me almost an ISTJ, or a Guardian Inspector.

From Wikipedia:

  • I – Introversion preferred to extraversion: INTJs tend to be quiet and reserved. They generally prefer interacting with a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances, and they expend energy in social situations (whereas extraverts gain energy).
  • N – Intuition preferred to sensing: INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities.
  • T – Thinking preferred to feeling: INTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference. When making decisions they generally give more weight to logic than to social considerations.
  • J – Judgment preferred to perception: INTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early. They derive a sense of control through predictability, which to perceptive types may seem limiting.
  • S – Sensing preferred to intuition: ISTJs tend to be more concrete than abstract. They focus their attention on the details rather than the big picture, and on immediate realities rather than future possibilities.

To summarize the personality of a mastermind:  We are big-picture planners.   We see patterns other people miss and use that to solve complex puzzles and problems.   It’s not possible to follow a thought through the head of a mastermind, because thinking comes with a ton of free association.   We may be watching an episode of Spongebob, and something Patrick does will trigger a domino-effect of seemingly unrelated thoughts that will lead a conclusion, out of nowhere.  Often, we aren’t aware of the process.

We don’t do crowds, at least, not often.   Good conversation with good friends is better than a party full of people we barely know.  Crowds are draining.   A quiet night at home is a good night, but that’s not saying we-re shy.   We just don’t enjoy keeping up with small talk and polite chatter.  Get us on a topic we’re passionate about and you won’t shut us up. Get us in a group of people we care about, and we can be the life of the party.

As a group, we are ambitious and deliberate.  We are capable of making firm decisions, confidently.  Confidence is one of the hallmarks of a mastermind, but one I don’t have to the normal extreme.

We are obsessive focused.    When we get set on a problem, we focus in a way that leaves other people stupefied. Time goes away.  The rest of the world fades.  You may have to shout to get our attention.  Sometimes, our minds will drift in the middle of a conversation, and we’ll lose track of who’s saying what.  It’s rude, but that doesn’t change the way we are wired.

We don’t do emotion. We are rational and get frustrated with people who make decisions based on emotion.  This makes it hard to connect with others, but that’s okay, because it’s better to have a few extremely close friends than a crowd of mere acquaintances.   Unfortunately, this can make relationships difficult, too.  The benefit to dating or marrying an INTJ is that we carry our focus into relationships.   We take our relationships seriously.

We are inwardly-focused, so we spend quite a bit of time examining ourselves.  This can lead to a long series of self-improvement projects, but none get taken on as a mere fad.  They are planned and dissected before even being mentioned to others, let alone undertaken.

We take criticism well, but if you can’t back up the critique with facts and reasoning, don’t bother.  Rational, remember?

We are driven by a need to understand. Once we understand, a given project or line of thought may be abandoned.  Until we understand, very little can shake our focus.

Self-promotion is difficult, since we don’t get into the heads of others well.  They should be able to see the obvious benefits without being told, right?

Now, to cross a bit of the ISTJ into the mix.

An Inspector is duty bound and loyal, to an extreme.  They are dependable workhorses.   Under stress, they can get stuck on the things that could go wrong, which would explain why I miss out on the confidence brought by being a mastermind.

To summarize me:

  • I am a planner.
  • I am extremely focused, to the point of obsession.
  • I am driven to learn new things, constantly.  Few of those things are incorporated into my life, long-term.
  • I don’t cheat.  Taxes, games, relationships, etc.
  • I am intensely loyal, but to very few people or causes.  I don’t end relationships quickly or easily.   That said, when it’s time for them to be over, I can break it off with little regret.

Security, improvement, planning, learning, thinking, loyalty, honesty, integrity.

That sounds about right.

 

Now you know a bit about how I tick.  What’s your personality type?

 

 

 

 

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Answer: How Much Term Life Insurance Do I Need to Buy?

Finance

From a question posted here:

Thank you for all your help in my previous question. After meeting with the agent, I’ve decided on term life insurance over whole life. But I am still not sure how much term life I should buy. Should I buy as much as I could afford or some specific amount?

My answer(edited a bit):

That question is far too open-ended.

Are you married?  If yes, are you the primary breadwinner?  Do you have children?  Investments?  Savings?

Here’s my situation:

I am married, with three children.  I have the primary income.

We have a mortgage, a car payment, and some consumer debt.

I added up all of the debt as my base level of term life insurance.  My family will not be burdened with debt if anything happens to me.

To the base level, I added 5 years of my net income.  Without changing a thing, my family will be supported exactly as is for 5 years if I die.   They won’t, however, have the same level of expenses, due to the base level of insurance paying off all debt.   All of my living expenses also evaporate.  For example, there will be one car sold, one less mouth to feed and body to dress, etc.

I figure with the lower expenses and no debt, my insurance will support my family for 10 to 15 years if my wife manages the money right.   If she continues to work, it should last almost forever.

How do you figure the “right” amount of life insurance?[ad name=”inlineright”]