- RT @ScottATaylor: Get a Daily Summary of Your Friends’ Twitter Activity [FREE INVITES] http://bit.ly/4v9o7b #
- Woo! Class is over and the girls are making me cookies. Life is good. #
- RT @susantiner: RT @LenPenzo Tip of the Day: Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. #
- RT @ScottATaylor: Some of the United States’ most surprising statistics http://ff.im/-cPzMD #
- RT @glassyeyes: 39DollarGlasses extends/EXPANDS disc. to $20/pair for the REST OF THE YEAR! http://is.gd/5lvmLThis is big news! Please RT! #
- @LenPenzo @SusanTiner I couldn’t help it. That kicked over the giggle box. in reply to LenPenzo #
- RT @copyblogger: You’ll never get there, because “there” keeps moving. Appreciate where you’re at, right now. #
- Why am I expected to answer the phone, strictly because it’s ringing? #
- RT: @WellHeeledBlog: Carnival of Personal Finance #235: Cinderella Edition http://bit.ly/7p4GNe #
- 10 Things to do on a Cheap Vacation. https://liverealnow.net/aOEW #
- RT this for chance to win $250 @WiseBread http://bit.ly/4t0sDu #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-19
Repair Plans, Appliances, and Rancid Meat…Oh, My!
We recently had our annual barbecue. (For the purists, I am Minnesotan. Barbecue means “cooked over fire”.) Due to massive scheduling conflicts, it was a bit smaller than normal; only about 20 people came. At least 10 other people RSVP-ed that they were going to make it, but didn’t. Grr.
Naturally, we had food for everyone said they would be there and enough for half of the people who didn’t say anything, since Minnesotans don’t RSVP well. That translates to a lot of leftovers. No problem. After all, leftover ribs are hardly a punishment.
Sunday morning, we woke up to find that our refrigerator was happier at room temperature than the standard “cold”. We didn’t know it at the time, but the defrost unit was borked, so the cold air couldn’t circulate from the freezer to the refrigerator. Bye-bye leftovers. Hello, Mr. Repairman. We needed an excuse to clean out the fridge, anyway, but not at the price of my beautifully seared meat! (Sadness strikes.)
Monday evening, the repairman came out, worked for 2 hours and left a functional refrigerator and a $240 invoice in his wake. Thankfully, we are on the appliance repair plan through the gas company. We pay $26.40 per month to cover repairs to our range, water heater, furnace, drier, sewer main, and refrigerator. The first four items are standard, the final two are options that cost extra.
We originally got on the plan for the sewer main. We had a tree whose roots grew into the main and clogged it every year. A backed-up sewer main is a crappy way to wake up. Getting that snaked to the street cost $200 per year. At the time, without the refrigerator, the plan cost about $12 per month. One $200 call-out more than paid for the plan for the year. That was easy math. Now, our 20 year old refrigerator has been repaired twice in the last year, giving us $500 worth of repairs for $316.80. I would like to take this time to thank all of the people with reliable appliances for subsidizing my repairs.
My furnace, drier, and range are all reasonably new and shouldn’t need repairs any time soon, but the refrigerator and sewer main have paid for the plan themselves, several times over.
Should you get a similar plan? If your covered appliances are more than 4-5 years old, I would consider it. If they are more than 10 years old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all. Repairing quality appliances is cheaper than replacing them, especially when the repair cost is paid monthly and subsidized.
Do you use a service plan?
IRA or Powerball?
“When I win the Powerball, I’m going to buy that house and kick him out. I play diligently, so you know it’s going to happen.”
I had a friend say this to me this week. He’s poor–living on about $500 per month–and he was recently evicted from his apartment.
His plans for the future involve taking nearly 20% of his income and burning it playing the lottery. When he found out that I don’t play, he looked at me like I was stupid.
The odds of winning a life-changing amount of money are 1 in 5,153,632.65. That’s for a $1,000,000 prize. The next step down is $10,000, which, while helpful, won’t change many people’s situation for long. One in 5 million. That’s 5 times worse than your odds of being hit by lightning this year. It is, however, 4 times better than your odds of being sainted and 12 times worse than your odds of dating a supermodel.
It’s not going to happen.
Sure, play for fun–because turning cash into valueless slips of paper is a blast–but don’t play the lottery instead of working to improve your future. The lottery is NOT a retirement plan.
Instead, a much more reasonable plan is to date a millionaire. The odds of making that happen are just 215 to 1, and you can do things to improve your chances.
Improving the odds of dating a millionaire:
- Hang out where millionaires go. Yacht clubs, nice restaurants, rehab, that dark corner of their bedroom where the lamp never quite reaches that just looks perfect for a stalker-cam.
- Do what millionaires do. Golf, high-stakes poker, oppress third-world countries, Centrifugal Bumblepuppy.
- Look like millionaire-bait. For my friend, the 50-year-old black man, it might be hard to look like a 23-year-old blonde hardbody, but it’s worth the effort.
- Be nice, be polite, give good h…nevermind.
Seriously, getting a regular job and socking money away every month will give you a far better return on your investment than playing the lottery. Even if you’re saving it in a mayonnaise jar buried in the backyard next to that obnoxious guy who used to live next door, you will be building security and peace of mind. Every month, you will be better prepared for the storm of crap life tends to throw around.
Do you play the lottery? Why or why not?
Negotiating Superstar
Recently my son asked me for some money.
This isn’t rare.
He asks me for money on a regular basis. He’s kind of greedy some days.
This time, however, he asked what he can do to earn some money. Now, since I live in Minnesota and have the dog and we had the sixth snowiest winter ever this year, all my dogs little shoe-bombs have been buried for the last six months. It started snowing in early November and as of this writing, on March 25, I still see two inches of snow covering every thing. Last week, we had a thaw and got to see the grass. We also got to see the dog’s business all over the yard.
I told him that I would give him $10 to clean up the yard. He asked if a friend could help. I said yes. Then he asked if they would have to split the money or if I would be paying them $10 each. I said that I’d be getting the same amount of work done, so they should split the $10.
He didn’t like the plan, so he negotiated his way up to getting seven dollars each. Originally, I was planning to pay $20, but got talked down by a friend. I’d still be willing to pay $20. What I’m trying to do is encourage him to start negotiating. I am a lousy negotiator. I want my kids to have better financial skills than I do. I want them to grow up knowing how to negotiate and being comfortable negotiating. That will make him a better financial adult.
So I encourage him. Sometimes I offer a lowball number and if he gets so upset walks away I ask him why he didn’t give a counter-offer. If he just accepts a number that’s way too low, or if his grandma offers him a shiny nickel to mow her yard, I tell him no. I tell him to reject it and offer something that he feels is more in line with what he would actually be doing.
Now, if I’m going to keep up these lessons I need to work on my negotiating skills too, so this is also a self-improvement game.
How do you teach a kid to negotiate? What resources are out there to teach yourself?
Allowance
This article on the Simple Dollar discusses raising kids to be financially responsible.
My wife and I have a goal to raise our kids to be more financially responsible than we have ever been. We are currently digging out of a financial hole we dug ourselves, which is a situation we hope our children never see.
Sunday Roundup: Balancing Fun and Frugality
Friday was another Yakezie Blog Swap. The topic was: “Balancing Frugality and Fun.”
Here is the list of articles:
Latisha Styles shares her story about going on a shopping diet at Narrow Bridge.
Joe gives us 10 different ways we can have fugal fun in almost any city at Prairie Eco-Thrifter.
The other Joe shares with us his memories of time with his Grandpa growing up and how he taught him to have fun at Mom’s Plans.
Ashley reminds us to spend those dollars where they will give us the most happiness at My Personal Finance Journey.
I shared that making memories is what counts at Financially Consumed.
Denise tells us that any kind of fun is possible with a little planning, determination, and work at Money Cone.
Money Cone shares with us how they have become a latte sipping frugal Mac user at The Single Saver.
Jacob shares with us 5 different techniques we can use to balance frugality and fun at Money Talks Coaching.
Eric at Narrow Bridge shared 3 ways he’s found to have fun on the frugal at Retire by 40.
Hunter tells us why corporate bankruptcy isn’t fun at all at Live Real Now.
Melissa shares her story of how her family balances frugality and fun atSmart Money Focus.
Eric defines the ultimate frugalite and the ultimate spender over at Financial Success for Young Adults.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked
Selling Your Car was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.
The Evils of a Reverse Mortgage was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.