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How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

Finance

A U.S. riverboat deploying napalm during the V...
Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever been screwed by a company?  Have they sent you the wrong item, or an empty box, or left your order backordered for so long that you can’t even dispute it with your credit card company any more?

What can you do?

I know you’ve heard the phrase, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”  That means, he whines loudest, gets the most.  The thing is, you have to whine effectively, or you’ll just get round-filed.

Targeting Subsystems On

Who you complain to matters more than what you complain about.  The clerk at your local big-box retailer isn’t going to refund your online purchase.  You need to complain to someone who can make a decision to help you.   First, find the customer service email address.   Next, if you are complaining about a recurring service, find the retention department’s email address.  Finally, find the email address for absolutely everybody Vice-President or above for that company, including the board of directors.   Go to their website, find the email for some PR drone and figure out the format.  First.Last@Company.com or FirstInitial.LastName@Company.com or whatever.   Look up the company in Google Finance and translate everyone’s name into the email format.   You might not have the perfect list, but it should be close.

Target Locked On

Now that you know who you are about to blast, what are you going to say?   A few things to include are:

  • Your contact information.   If they can’t get back to you, they can’t make it up to you.
  • Details of the problem.  Include the date of purchase, date of delivery, and a detailed description of what actually went wrong.
  • Scanned copies of receipts.
  • Any names of anybody you’ve had to deal with, either in the original transaction or when the problem occurred, if you have the names.

Engage!

What to say, what to say?

  • Don’t be abusive.  It’s okay to be angry, and it’s okay to let them know your are angry, but swearing or threatening their lives will–at best–only get you ignored.  Worst case, threats are illegal and they can pass your email along to the police.
  • Stay brief.   It doesn’t matter that your daddy took you to Starbucks to use their free wi-fi when you were just three years old.   Don’t talk about that time the aliens abducted you or how sad you are that they never call like they promised they would.   Keep to the point.   “This is who I am.  This is what happened.  This is what I want you to do about it.”

Send that sucker out.   If you feeling particularly perturbed, send a CC to your state’s Attorney General and any possibly related regulatory agencies.   I tend to save this step for round 2.

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Quit Smoking: My First Frugal Move…Ever

Finance, Life

Lit cigarette
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.

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Make a Budget

Finance

DSC02103
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?

Debt Burnout

Finance

Burnout.
Image by LunaDiRimmel via Flickr

You’ve got a budget.  You’ve got a debt repayment plan.  You’ve been paying off your debt.  You’ve even paid off a few of your smaller debts.  Now you’re staring down the barrel of your big debts: your mortgage, a $30,000 credit card, maybe a car payment.  You’re looking at months of payments with no quick wins; no more watching your debts die every few months.  You’re in the middle of a very long slog.

All of the easy milestones have been reached and the next one is a year or more away.  This is when debt repayment gets hard.  How can you avoid getting burnt out doing the same thing, month after month, with no major visible progress?

1.  Keep your eye on the prize. Try focusing on the end result, while ignoring the time it takes to get there.  Do you have a reward planned for when you pay off your debt?  If not, consider that to be your new shining goal-post.  My wife and I plan on taking an Alaskan cruise when our debt is repaid.

2.  Ignore the prize. If #1 doesn’t work for you, try focusing on just the current month’s progress.  How much did you pay off this month?  Was it more than last month?

3.  Make micro-goals. Try breaking the long slog into bite-sized pieces.  How fast can you pay off the next $1000?  How many months will it take to pay off that TV you bought last year?  Sometimes, meeting a smaller goal can make the whole works feel like it’s going by faster.

4.  Take a snowball vacation. For just one month, take every dollar you would normally apply to your debt–except your required payments–and have some fun with it.  Take a weekend trip, have a fancy dinner, or pick up that video game system you’ve been eying.  Something.  Anything to take your mind off of your repayment plan for a while.   Be careful not to make this a habit or you will never get out of debt.

5.  Start a blog to share your pain.

A debt snowball is a long, intense process.  If you’re not careful, you can burn out and let the whole thing collapse.  How do you avoid burnout?

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Three Alternatives to a Budget

Finance

the envelope system: day one
Image by J. McPherskesen via Flickr

Budgets aren’t for everyone.  For some people, the very idea of trying to track where their money going is painful.  And that’s just the idea of tracking the money.  It gets far worse when you’ve got $10 budgeted for coffee, $12 for fast food, $66.50 for gas, and $0.75 for entertainment.  It’s can be hard to follow a strict budget for long.

If you know you need to track your money, and you also know that a strict, zero-based budget won’t work for you, what can you do?  Luckily, there are alternatives.

1. Hope and Pray. This is otherwise known as the “Call my bank everyday and see how close I am to over-drafting” system.  To fully embrace this system, you need to not only abandon a written–or even organized–budget, but you should also throw your checkbook register in the garbage.   Make sure you’ve got a good overdraft protection account attached to your checking account and let your money take care of itself.  This is the ultimate zen of personal finance.  Don’t stress or worry, just hope for the best.   This system works best if you make more money than Oprah and have modest tastes.  For those of us who have to watch our money a bit to make sure the month outlasts our money, this probably isn’t a great plan.

2. The Envelope System. To implement this system, you do need to create a basic budget so know what you are obligated to pay.  Once you have that done, take a stack of envelopes and label them for each item you have to pay.   Add another envelope for food, another for entertainment, and another for miscellaneous because there is always a miscellaneous.   Divide the money among the envelopes.   Now for the magic. When you have to spend something, take the money out of the appropriate envelope and spend it.  That’s it.  If, however, there isn’t enough money in the right envelope, but you still need to spend the money, you have to take it out of a different envelope and spend less on the category that lost money.

3.  Percentages. This is the simplest of the non-budget budgets.   Take 50% of your money and spend it on necessities, like the mortgage, food,  and utilities.   The next 30% goes to savings and retirement.  The last 20% is for fun or any other thing you want to spend it on.  This naturally works best if you are out of debt, but if not, just make sure most of the 20% fun money goes to repaying debt.   This system works best if your bills are automated and you will need to set up a basic budget first, so you can make sure your necessities come in under 50% of your income.

Not every budget plan will work for everyone, but there are always alternatives that can still help you manage your money.

How do you track your money?

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Saturday Roundup

Life

I’ve spend the last 10 days at home with my two youngest kids.   It’s been a lot of fun.   It’s amazing watching them interact with each other and seeing how their imaginations works.   It’s also been a helpful reminder that, if I don’t turn on the TV, they will happily find something else to do.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit.   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 belly, waist, biceps, and thighs.   Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 11 pounds since January 2nd.  This is crazy.  At least part of this has to be due to the natural swing of up to 5 pounds from day to day, and part of it is due to the fact that I was wearing jeans when I weighed in the first time and cotton pajamas this morning.  From now on, this is going to be the first thing I do on Saturday mornings, so everything is as consistent as possible.  Another factor is that I’ve cut most of the crap out of my diet for a week.  My body has been flushing garbage.  But dang!  11 pounds in a week.  I’m a bit excited.

Total Inches: I have lost 5.5 inches in the same time frame.  This is proof that it’s not just water that I lost, which is where first, dramatic losses usually originate in a diet.

The loss seems a little bit nuts.   Here’s hoping it stays consistent.

Best Posts

Your retirement account shouldn’t be an optional investment.   Do you know how to maximize retirement savings?

I’m a big fan of making extra money.   Money Crashers lists 6 sites to help you rake in the cash, without needing any special skills.

Unclutterer is giving away three Fujitsu Scansnaps.   I want one of these is a way that isn’t quite right.

I’ve been moving to LED lights instead of CFLs for a few years.  CFLs make lousy security lights in Minnesota in the winter.  They take 5 minutes to get to full brightness when it’s cold.  LEDs last forever.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote one year ago.

I posted about the difference between bribes and rewards and the problems inherent in trying to buy good behavior.

Lesson 2 of my budget series went live, detailing my monthly bills.

We made some changes to our budget plans that haven’t worked very well.   Over the course of the last year, every one of these ideas has either been partially or totally abandoned, but it’s working for us.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

3 Things You Need to Know About Homeowner’s Insurance was included in the Festival of Frugality.

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

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That’s all for today.   Have a great weekend!