- I tried to avoid it. I really did, but I’m still getting a much bigger refund than anticipated. #
- Did 100 pushups this morning–in 1 set. New goal: Perfect form by the end of the month. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: Carnival of Personal Finance is live 🙂 DOLLAR DOODLE theme: http://tinyurl.com/ykldt7q (haha…) #
- Hosting my first carnival tomorrow. Up too late tonight. #
- Woot! My boy won his wreslting match! Proud daddy. #
- The Get Home Card is a prepaid emergency transportation card. http://su.pr/329U6L #
- Real hourly wage calculator. http://su.pr/1jV4W6 #
- Took my envelope budget out in cash, including a stack of $2s. That shouldn’t fluster the bank teller. #
Net Worth Update – January 2014
This may be the most boring type of post I write, but it’s important to me to track my net worth so I can see my progress. We are sliding smoothly from debt payoff mode to wealth building mode.
Our highlights right now are nothing to speak of. We did let our credit card grow a little bit over the last couple of months, but paid it off completely at the end of December. It grew mostly as a matter of not paying attention while we were doing our holiday shopping and dealing with some car repairs.
That’s it. We haven’t remodeled our bathrooms yet, but we have the money sitting in a savings account, waiting for the contractor. We haven’t bought a pony yet, but we did decide that a hobby farm wouldn’t be the right move for us. We’ll be boarding the pony instead of moving, at least for the foreseeable future.
Our net worth is up $13,000 since September. Our savings are up and our retirement accounts are down because there are two inherited IRAs that we need to slowly cash out and convert to regular IRAs.
Effen Carpets, Effen Pets
We’ve got pets. Lots of pets.
- 4 cats
- 3 kids
- 2 pythons
- 1 dog
- 1 hamster
And yours truly.
I count, I make a good mess.
Pets have hair. Well, except for the python and the horrible abominations of mis-evolved Chinese food known as bald cats.
Pet hair gets every-damn-where.
A few weeks ago, we watched our friend’s dogs for a few days.
Those things pee. Not in the backyard like good dogs, but on the girls’ bedroom carpet.
I hate pee.
Not my own, of course.
I really, really hate animal pee in my house.
So we got the carpets cleaned. Linda told me it would be a bit more than normal, since we were going to get the air ducts cleaned at the same time. I was fine with that. Animal hair gets everywhere, and in the ducts, it makes the furnace and air conditioner work poorly.
Then, I got an email alert from Capital One.
Seven hundred freaking dollars!
That’s about $400 more than I was expecting.
Not flipping thrilled! <—-Understatement.
Thankfully, we have money tucked aside for crap like this, but if stuff keeps coming up, we’re going to be hosed.
How to Die Well
Most people don’t die quickly.
As much as I would rather die suddenly–while putting a smile on my wife’s face–the odds are that I will spend my last hours or days in a hospital, unable to make the decisions about my care.
Will I be doing my vegetable impression after a car accident, or be left unable to speak during a botched Viagra implanantation in my 90s? I don’t know.
There is one thing I know about the end of my life. I do not want to linger for months, blind and deaf, on a feeding tube. I don’t want my family to spend the last few months of my life secretly ashamed of hoping for my burden to end. I’d like my end to be quick enough that the emotions they are feeling aren’t a sad combination of guilt and relief, just sadness at my passing and happiness at having had me.
That’s the legacy I’d like.
The problem is making my wishes known. If I’m lying in a hospital bed, asking to be allowed to die, they’ll consider me suicidal instead of rationally considering my request. If I’m completely incapacitated, I won’t even be able to ask.
I can certainly make my wishes known beforehand, but how will my family be able to communicate my desires to the doctors in charge and how will they convince the doctor that they aren’t just after my currently imaginary millions?
That’s where a living will comes in. A living will, also know as an advanced directive, is simply a formal document that explicitly states what you want to happen to you if you are too out of it to make your wishes known.
Aging With Dignity has put together an advanced directive called Five Wishes that meets the legal requirements for an advanced directive in 42 states.
The Five Wishes are:
1. Who is going to make decisions for you, if you can’t? For me, the obvious choice is my wife. She appears to like me enough to want me around and love me enough to do what needs to be done, even if it’s difficult. On the chance that we end up in the same car accidents, matching vegetables on a shelf, I’ve nominated my father for the unpleasantness. I don’t think I’ve told him that, yet.
2. What kind of treatment do you want, or want to refuse? When my Grandpa was going, he made sure to have a Do Not Resuscitate order on file with the nursing home, the clinic, and the hospital. He knew it was his time and didn’t want to drag it out.
3. How comfortable do you want to be? Do you want to be kept out of pain, at all costs, even if it means being drugged into oblivion most of the day? Do you want a feeding tube, or would you rather only receive food and fluids if you are capable of taking them by mouth?
4. How do you want to be treated? Do you want to be allowed to die at home? Do you want people to pray at your bedside, or keep their religious views to yourself? Some people want to be left alone, while others are terrified of dying alone. This wish also covers grooming. Personally, if I soil myself, I’d like to get cleaned up as soon as possible. I’ll have enough to deal with without smelling bad, too.
5. What do you want your family to know? This includes any funeral requests you have and whether you’d like to be cremated, buried, or both, but also goes beyond them. Do you want your family to know that you love them? You can also take this section to ask feuding family members to make peace or ask them to remember your better days, instead of the miserable few at the end.
The last 3 wishes are unique to the Five Wishes document, but they are excellent things to include. The most important part of advanced directive is the advanced part. You have the right to want whatever works for you, but your wishes don’t matter if nobody knows about them.
How about you? Do you have a living will? Does your family know what you want to have happen if the worst happens?
13 Things to Know About Sweepstakes, Giveaways, Lotteries, and Contests
I don’t know why, but it seems like this time of year breeds sweepstakes, drawings, and giveaways. Maybe it’s to cash in on the people who are afraid to pay for the holidays, maybe it’s because, at the end of the year, people are realizing how much money they didn’t make this year, or maybe I’m only noticing now because I just ran a giveaway to celebrate my 1 year anniversary. Whatever the reason, there are a lot of giveaways going on this month and, because a certain segment of the population sucks, there are a number of scam sweepstakes going on, too.
Knowing some basic facts about sweepstakes–legal and otherwise–can help you stay safe and avoid wasting your time and money. Here are 13 things you should know:
- Foreign sweepstakes are always scams. You didn’t win the Spanish lottery. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
- Sweepstakes winners are always chosen at random. If there’s something you can do to influence your chances, it’s not a sweepstakes.
- Contests involve some skill, whether it’s captioning a photo, answering a trivia question, or showing up in a bikini. It is legal to charge a fee to enter a contest.
- Lotteries cost money and must be random. There are almost no cases where a lottery is legally run by a private enterprise. The government has reserved this privilege for themselves.
- Since a prize, chosen at random for a consideration is the definition of a lottery, there is nothing you can do to influence the results of a legal sweepstakes, aside from not entering. Buying a product will not help.
- Odds suck. You are not likely to win, unless you enter a giveaway at a small-ish blog. Sweepstakes and lotteries are required to disclose the odds of winning, generally, 1 in a gazillion.
- Businesses(and blogs!) hold giveaways or sweepstakes to draw attention to themselves. It’s marketing and advertising, every time. Companies do not give out thousands of dollars in prizes because they like you.
- I give our prizes because I like you. And I want the attention. It’s marketing, advertising, and gratitude.
- If you have to pay to get a random chance to win something, it’s a lottery. If it’s not run by the government, it’s almost definitely an illegal lottery. Sweepstakes are free.
- Sometimes the entry solicitations look official. They are not. The companies do that to get more people to open their envelopes. It is illegal to misrepresent themselves as a government agency.
- Always read the fine print. There are a lot of things that can be included in the fine print to make it less attractive, like the right to sell your contact information, or your soul. Try getting that back after a long weekend.
- If you don’t want to receive sweepstakes garbage in the mail, write to the company soliciting you. The Federal Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act requires them to remove you from their mailing list within 60 days.
- If you want to get rid of all of the junk mail, write to the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, Post Office Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512 and they will remove you from the lists of their members for 5 years.
It is possible to make money with sweepstakes, but the odds are low. Personally, I think it’s a waste of time. Do you invest in the sweepstakes hobby?
Swamp Finance
I wrote this post was as a guest post a year ago, to answer the question, “What is the best financial advice or tool you have found or been given?”
Once upon a time, there was a young man–an arrogant man barely out of childhood–who thought he new more than anyone he had ever known, trusted, or respected. In his arrogance, he left his family and friends behind to enter the wilderness in search of a long lost teacher.
He found the teacher. He even managed to convince the teacher to accept him as his pupil.
However, he didn’t change his ways. He insolently ignored the fundamental lessons, assuming he already understood them. When he was rebuked by his teacher, his only defense was to whine that he was “trying”.
“Do or do not. There is no ‘try’,” replied Yoda.
These words of wisdom represent one of the most fundamental rules of personal finance, or even life, itself. If the best you have to offer is a half-hearted “try”, you will never succeed.
When my wife and I decided that it was time for our debt to die the death of a sad specter of self-loathing hiding in a cave, we went at it with a relish that would have launched a poor astromech droid to the freakin’ moon!
We never said we’d give it a shot for a month and see how it went. We knew that we either needed to succeed or we’d have to file bankruptcy. We didn’t try, we did it. Rather, we are doing it. Friends told us it was impossible to live without credit; that we were foolish to try. They were right, so we didn’t try.
Similarly, when it was time to get started on a college fund instead of hanging our hopes on scholarships, we just did it. Sure, we started the fund with just $10, and it is only growing by $10 per month, but it’s there and it’s growing. When we get our debt paid off, we’ll see exactly how close we can get to giving our kids a self-funded full ride to college.
When it comes time to get the things done that you know need to be done, the trick is to do it. Don’t make excuses. Don’t “try” to find time. Just make it happen. Cut up your credit cards, make your budget, or sell the stuff you don’t need. Whatever it is, do it.
There is no try. There is only DO!