- @ScottATaylor Thanks for following me. in reply to ScottATaylor #
- RT @ChristianPF: 5 Tips For Dealing With Your Medical Debt http://su.pr/2cxS1e #
- Dining Out vs Cooking In: http://su.pr/3JsGoG #
- RT: @BudgetsAreSexy: Be Proud of Your Emergency Fund! http://tinyurl.com/yhjo88l ($1,000 is better than $0.00) #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-12
Black Friday
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Today being the biggest shopping day of the year, I thought I’d get in the game.
First, instead of helping you spend money, I’m going to help you save it. As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of INGDirect. They make it easy to create savings accounts for specific savings goals and they have a decent interest rate. I’ve never had a problem with any of my accounts.
For Black Friday(through Sunday!), they are offering the following:
- Earn $103. Open Electric Orange November 26th – 28th, and make a total of 7 purchases using your Electric Orange Card or Person2Person Payments (or any combination of the two) within 45 days.
- Open a Kids Savings Account November 26th – 28th and we’ll(ING) put a $25 bonus into your new account.
- Use your Electric Orange Debit MasterCard® at least one time from 8:00 AM ET, November 26th – 7:59 PM ET, November 26th, and you’ll be automatically entered into the 100% Cash Back Giveaway.
- Open a 36-month IRA CD with ING DIRECT November 26th – November 28th and get 2.00% Annual Percentage Yield (APY). Ask them about work at home moms and dads spousal IRA.
- Apply online November 26th – 28th for Easy Orange or the Orange Mortgage or call a Mortgage Specialist at 1-866-327-4599 and get up to $2,000 off closing costs. If your costs are less than $2,000, you pay nothing.
- 25% rebate on Sharebuilder trades that execute today or Monday.
Click here to open an account with the best bank to ever hold my money.
Now, to help you spend some money.
All of my websites are hosted by HostGator. I’ve never had noticeable downtime or any technical problems. The one issue I had that couldn’t be controlled by their interface was fixed by technical support in minutes. Not hours, minutes. They are having an amazing deal today. From 5AM to 9AM CST, all of their products are 80% off. The rest of the day, it’s all 50% off. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to existing customers, but if you are looking for a website host, paying $35 for 3 years of hosting can’t be beat.
Time vs Money
In this corner, weighing in at the only thing you have in this life that you can’t possibly get more of: Time!
And in this corner, weighing in at the thing people think they need to be happy: Money!
Keep it clean. No biting, scratching or hitting your opponents with a chair unless my back is turned. Fight!
Yesterday was Jimmy John’s customer appreciation day. They had subs for $1, but you had to go there in person to get it. At noon, there were more than 50 people standing in line. If it takes 1 minute to make a sandwich, that’s almost an hour in line. To save $5.
Good for Jimmy John’s. They brought thousands of extra people into the restaurant and had a huge line running down the sidewalk. That makes them look great to everyone driving by.
But, the people? Really? Would you work, at any job, for anyone(excluding charitable work) for $5 per hour?
Round 1: Time!
My mother-in-law regularly drive 6 miles out of her way to save 5 cent per gallon on gas. If usually takes 10-15 minutes to get there, if the stoplights behave and traffic is decent. If she arrive with her gas gauge on “E”, she gets to put 15 gallons of gas in her car, for a savings of 75 cents. That’s an effective rate of $2.25 per hour, not counting the gas used to drive there. However, if I ask her to give her $2 to stand in her driveway doing nothing for an hour, she looks at me like I’m nuts!
Round 2: Time!
My wife will occasionally make a shopping list that includes coupons and items spanning three grocery stores. If that were to happen, there would be an extra hour wasted, just traveling between the stores, minimum. Then another hour wasted walking past the items in the first store that were slated to be purchased at the second, or third store. Add another 15 minutes per store to check out, and we’re looking at 2 and a half hours down the tubes to save a possible $20?
No freaking way.
Round 3: Time!
My time is valuable. No matter what I do, or how hard I work, I can never get more than my allotment. Why would I waste it to save a fraction of what I can earn by using it in other ways?
And the winner is….Time!
What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to save a few bucks?
Mariano Rivera: Rags to MLB Riches
Mariano Rivera is the most dominant closer in the history of baseball. His cut fastball, or cutter, is considered by many to be the best pitch in the history of the game. He is the all-time saves leader, and he has five World Series rings that he can wear. Of course, he has made millions of dollars over his professional career, which has brought him a long way from his humble roots as the son of a Panamanian fisherman.
Rivera’s journey began in Panama City. He was born on November 29, 1969. His father was a fisherman in the small fishing village of Puerto Caimito. Like almost every boy in Latin America, his earliest athletic experiences were playing soccer. However, he also played baseball as well. The area was so poor that not many people actually owned baseball gloves, bats or balls.
Instead, Rivera and his friends would play games with tree branches for bats. They used milk cartons instead of gloves, and they taped together pieces of old fishing nets to use as balls. Rivera didn’t have his first real leather baseball glove until his dad bought him one at the age of 12.
Rivera liked baseball, but he never thought he would one day make a living at it. Instead, he dreamed of playing soccer professionally like most Latinos. However, he suffered a series of ankle injuries during high school that shattered this dream. He finished school at age 16 and began working on his father’s fishing boat. He had to abandon ship when the boat capsized, and that scared him away from fishing forever.
Soon after that, Rivera started playing on a local amateur baseball team, Panama Oeste. He was the team’s shortstop, and he only started pitching because the team’s normal pitcher was in a slump. His teammates were so impressed with his pitching skills that they convinced the Panama scout for the New York Yankees to give him a tryout. Rivera went to Panama City for a Yankees tryout camp, and the Yankees signed the man who would become one of the greatest players of all-time to a contract worth just $3,000.
When Rivera came to the United States, he did not speak English and was incredibly homesick. Puerto Caimito did not have telephone service at that time, which meant Rivera could only communicate to his family back home by writing long letters.
Rivera made steady progress through the minor leagues, but it was still five years before he was called up to the big leagues. His first few years in the major leagues, Rivera made the minimum salary of $750,000. This is a small figure by American standards, but it is more money than most people in Panama can dream of.
Rivera still goes back to Panama every year. He feels it is a home and that he is a part of it. His riches have never transformed him into a diva. He is one of the most down-to-earth and genuinely friendly players in the game.
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February 30 Day Project #1: Romantic Gestures
For the month of February, I had two 30 Day Projects: Do 100 pushups in a single set and another, that I haven’t posted. Until now.
The reason I haven’t posted anything about the second project is because it would have ruined it. I set a goal to do something nice for my wife every single day. It’s really a much harder goal than it sounds. Between juggling wrestling practice, crabby kids, the usual winter illnesses and deadlines at work, finding time to arrange for anything special presents a challenge, and I wanted it to be a surprise.
This morning, the last day of the month, I made breakfast in bed. While she was eating, I handed her a letter and set a present on the floor next to the bed. The present was one of our wedding invitations, framed, and the closing of our wedding ceremony in a matching frame.
The letter reads:
Dearest,
As you know, I’ve been working on a series of thirty-day projects. In January, I got up at 5 every day and read to the girls almost every day. If February, my project has been to get to 100 pushups in a single set. Almost.
I worked at that and accomplished it, but it was really a cover project. I love you and wanted a way to express that. So, my main project has been you.
In the first week of the month, we had two snowstorms, do you remember? For each one, I made sure to get your truck cleaned off before you were ready to go to work, with fresh coffee. At the beginning of the week, you got a full 30 minute backrub, with absolutely no hidden motive. At the end of the week, I sent you a letter expressing my feelings. Over the weekend, you had no diapers to do–I think you ended up with one–and I let you sleep in as late as you wanted on Sunday. It was a good first week.
The second week, there was another snowstorm on Monday. Combining that with the grocery shopping kept me from having time to do anything on Monday, but Tuesday, you woke up to a clean truck again. Wednesday, there were flowers. Thursday, dinner. Game night at [friend’s house]? That was planned, by me, 3 weeks in advance. Over the weekend, I watched the kids so you could go to [cousin’s] to relax, and you got breakfast in bed on Sunday. I may have missed a day, but the week was still a success, I think.
The following week, while you were getting ready for bed, you saw me go outside and asked about it. Thankfully, the girls woke up, because I had just put a note in your truck telling you 10 things I love about you. I also took all of the kids to wrestling–twice–to give you some sanity time and gave you another long backrub. This was also the week you got sick, which meant a day in bed for you, instead of me being able to plan something nice.
This week, the last week of the month, I took all of the kids to wrestling again, giving you a chance to take a nice, relaxing bath. Those were originally planned to be two separate nights. Instead, it was combined into one night. I also managed to go shopping to buy the components of the present I am giving you, put the present together, and write this letter. Last night, our date was a part of this, and today, so is breakfast.
My goal has been to do something nice for you, every day. So now, for an entire month, you have been the focus of my dedicated attention, nearly every single day. I’ve felt closer to you, than I have in a while. Have you enjoyed the attention?
Happy Valentine’s Month.
The actual expenses were the flowers, the frames, dinner and a movie, and a buy-in for Texas Hold ‘Em at her cousin’s house. Everything else was done with what we have, gifts of time and energy instead of money.
Total cost: $159 for an entire month of romantic gestures. Money well-spent, for sure.
Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.
Side Hustle: The Garage Sale Preparation
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.
