Live Real, Now

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

Search Results for: three-alternatives-to-a-budget/budget-lesson-part-5/debt-burnout/subscribe-by-email/budget-lesson-part-2/573/budget-lesson-part-3/budget4/payday-loans-suck

8 painless ways to save money

Finance

I saw this list on US News and thought I’d give my take on it.

  1. Get healthy. They are right.  It is cheaper to be healthy…in the long run.   Short-term, eating crap food is cheaper and obesity doesn’t get expensive until you are older.   But remember, long-term planning is important.  I intend to enjoy my old age, so I am working on losing weight and exercising.  Fat and lazy is easy, but it won’t be in 50 years.
  2. Rethink your auto insurance. I don’t have an argument here.  When I established my initial emergency fund, I set my deductibles to match it.  We regularly review our policies to make sure they match what we need.
  3. Improve your credit scores. I don’t know what they were thinking with this one.  If you’ve got lousy credit, it’s hardly painless to improve it.   Digging out of a pit of debt hurts.
  4. Invest on the cheap. This is another one that’s hard to argue with.  Low-fee funds are, by definition, cheaper.  Will you get a better return on a fund with higher fees?  It’s worth checking the historical return to see if the fee is justified.
  5. Think triple play. They recommend bundling your internet, TV, and phone.  It is cheaper, but I don’t recommend it.  I don’t like putting all of my eggs in one basket.  If the cable goes down, or the the power goes out, I’d still like to be able to make a phone call, if I have to.   My landline is independently powered, and I always make sure there is a corded phone plugged in somewhere.  My basic landline only runs $35/month, so a bundle won’t save anything for me, anyway.
  6. Go prepaid with your cell phone. I have a coworker who pays, on average, $5/month for his cell phone.   I use mine far more than he does.  If you don’t talk much and don’t use data or texting, this can work out well for you.
  7. Shop online. I do shop online for a lot.  I even buy my toilet paper online.  For some things, I prefer to shop locally.  When a store owner gets to know you, he can get you some fantastic deals, and give you advice that can save you a ton of money.
  8. Get cash back. I have a couple of decent cash-back credit cards, but I won’t use them.   Until all of our credit card debt is paid, I won’t consider making regular use of any form of credit.  Your mileage may vary, but that’s the condition I had to set on myself to make our debt plan work.

How many of these ideas do you use?

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….

Enhanced by Zemanta

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.

     

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

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.

Enhanced by Zemanta

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.