- 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
My Financial Life
My financial life right now is boooring.
And that’s a good thing.
When I started this site I was $90,000 in debt, and considering bankruptcy. I’d just started on the Dave Ramsey plan and was looking for every possible way to scrape up any extra money I could.
Now, the debt is nearly gone.
- I’m looking at the last $8000 on my mortgage. I have enough in savings to pay it off today, without draining my savings completely dry.
- My IRA gets maxed out every year, and this year, my wife’s will be, too.
- We save or invest about 30% of our income.
- My credit score according to CreditKarma.com is 826.
Our credit card is almost paid off every month. There’s occasionally some overlap between our auto-payment and our charges. And sometimes the budgeted auto-payment doesn’t match the reality of our spending and I don’t notice for a week or two. Except for the end of last year, but that’s a post for another day.
The short version is: We’re doing well, and we’re nearing the end of our financial problems.
Our scheduled mortgage over-payments will have it completely paid off in October. Then we are debt-free and can hopefully manage to live the rest of our lives without paying interest on money that isn’t earning us more than we are paying. For example, I’m willing to take out a mortgage to buy another rental property, but I’m going to wait to do that until our current mortgage is paid and we have a substantial down payment ready.
No debt.
I’m not kidding when I say it’s been a long 6 years of fighting our debt. Counting a car loan we got and paid early, we’ve paid more than $110,000 of debt in six years.
I’ve run side businesses, aggressively negotiated raises, and left companies(voluntarily and otherwise) for better pay & benefits.
I’ve watched friends and family take vacations around the world.
I’ve turned my kids down for so many things that I would love to buy them, but couldn’t because being financially secure is a much higher priority than spoiling children. Try explaining that to a 6 year old.
And now, the debt-ridden part of our financial journey is almost over. Finally.
So what’s next?
I have no idea. I’d like to travel more. Linda and the girls want us to move to a hobby farm and get horses. We want more rental properties.
Whatever “next” is, it will be done from a position of strength that won’t destroy our financial world or put out futures at risk.
How You’re Finding Me
Every once in a while, I like to dig through Google Analytics and see how people are finding this site. Some of the search terms are interesting.
“father of three” mid life crisis
Here’s a free piece of advice. As a father of three, you don’t get to have a mid-life crisis. It’s not allowed. Rather, it’s allowed, but you aren’t allowed to act on it. At a minimum, until your children are out of the house, you need to man up and provide all of the support you possibly can. No sports cars you can’t afford and no 22 year old hardbodies. Be there for your kids.
“payday loans” which accepts guest posts
Payday loan marketing. Just go away. You aren’t running a guest post here.
“slow carb” hungry all the time
You’re doing it wrong. If you are hungry, eat more bacon. Or beans. Beans fill you up longer.
$1000000 business idea
Ideas are the easy part. Execution makes you a millionaire.
articles on why appearance shouldn’t matter?
Appearances do matter, and always will. Your appearance is what makes the initial impression when you meet someone new. You don’t have to be a model, but basic grooming and fashion sense is necessary. Take this with a grain of salt. I’ve got a week’s growth of a beard and I wear a different plaid, button-down shirt every day.
are push ups supposed to be hard
Only the first 50. After that, I kind of go on blissed-out autopilot. If you can do 100 pushups, you can probably do 200.
acceptable place to put tattoo
If you wear clothes there, you can put a tattoo there. Visible tattoos are called “job stoppers” for a reason. If you put a tattoo on your face, the only job you qualify for is “drug dealer’s girlfriend”. Or possibly prison janitor.
burning bridges with toxic people
If you must burn bridges, filling them with toxic people first isn’t a bad idea.
candied pork butt
Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it. Interesting side story: while double-checking the rule number, I stumbled across My Little Ponies doing things they never advertise on the box.
cut my wife’s hair
I did this once. Pro tip: In the back, at the bottom, cut small chunks and leave them longer than you think they should be. You can always cut more, but uncutting hair is really hard.
f***** on the roadside by your mechanic
He probably deserves a tip for that.
girls fart for money and girls live farts
See the bit about the pork butt, remove the funny, and…ewww.
how to be a successful debtor
I recommend starting by paying your bills. When the debts are gone, you win. Success!
i ate bacon on slow carb diet
So did everyone else, sweetie. It’s the biggest draw to the slow carb diet.
in memory of pets tattoos
When I get a pet, I get it with the understanding that I’m going to outlive it. The day I bring it home, some small part of me is preparing for the day when I have to dig a hole in my backyard. Tattooing that day? Not gonna happen.
thickening felt behind testicle
Why are you on google? Go to the doctor. Please?
Interesting. Between girls farting and my post about being well-trained, there is a significant amount of fetish traffic coming through here. Maybe I need to explore a new advertising strategy.
Happy Father’s Day: The Benefits of Being a Parent Can’t Be Measured
It’s true that the benefits of a parent cannot be measured or quantified in any meaningful way. It’s hard to put a price on the emotional commitment and special experience of raising a child as a parent, some of which may not even be realized by the parents themselves until afterwards. But it is undeniable that the experience of parenthood is a rewarding and special time in someone’s life.
For one thing, being a parent can you relive your childhood through your child. There are very few experiences in the world that are as intimate and vicarious as a parent who is raising their newborn child into an adult. Your child’s experiences become your experiences, their safety and learning becomes your priorities, and their success, ultimately, become your own success as a parent. You can rediscover the parts of your childhood that you may even have forgot as your child experiences them for the first time.
As a parent, you are also the center of the world for your child. This can be a tremendous source of self-confidence as well as incentive for self-improvement, to know that another human being sees you as their ultimate role model and will grow up in your footsteps. Just imagine the sense of wonder and awe with which you regarded your own parents when you were a child, and apply them to your child. That is the way they will see the world for a long time, with a constant sense of amazement and curiosity. The mundane becomes extraordinary and fantastic to a child, and a parent is part of the magic and the child’s discovery of the world.
In addition, parenting is a rewarding experience because you involved in the creation of a life and the raising of your child with your partner. There is a great amount of pressure, but also a sense of pride as your child’s characteristics and worldview will, in a large part, be derived from your interaction and education of them. All the things that you wish you had done in your childhood, or wish you had experienced or learned about earlier. These are all things that you can teach your child. As a parent, you are your child’s most important friend, teacher and role model. That is a tremendous source of empowerment and responsibility. But the reward you can get out of being a great parent is a new life in the world that you shaped with your words and actions. What you teach them becomes their most important life lessons, and your actions as a role model becomes the standard by which they live the rest of their lives.
So yes, the benefits of being a parent cannot be measured in conventional terms. But these benefits can definitely outweigh any worldly possession or unit of valuation. Parenthood is an emotional, spiritual, intellectual and educational experience that very few other experiences in the world can replace or even come close to imitating.
Thrifty Sucks – The 30 Day Compact
- Image by waving at you via Flickr
During the month of September, we went on a 30-day compact. We decided to avoid buying anything new for 30 days. The plan was, if we needed to buy something, we’d hit a pawn shop, a thrift store, or Craigslist. Obviously, food and consumable hygiene products were exempt from the rules. I’m not going to stink or starve for an experiment like this. Ideally, at the end of the month, our discretionary budget would reflect our extra thriftiness, leaving us a couple of hundred extra dollars at the end of the month.
Great plan.
I found out a few days ago that we actually made it 3 days. Grr. That’s when the credit card bill came. Double-Grr.
All in all, that one slip isn’t a big deal. We also had a few presents we had to buy for a couple of birthdays and one wedding. Also not a big deal, since we have a budget for gifts. It may have been against the rules, but what were we going to do, drink the free beer at the wedding without bringing a gift? How rude.
So we had a few slips. That’s not bad, considering exactly how well “consumer” describes us.
Avoiding retail shopping is a lot harder than it sounds. We have everything we need, so on paper, it should have been simple. We didn’t need anything, so we wouldn’t have to buy anything.
Like I said, great plan.
There were a few books released this month that I have been anxiously awaiting, like Monster Hunter:Vendetta and Chris Guillebeaus’s book, The Art of Non-Conformity. They have both had to wait. In the next few days, I will be buying both of these books. That makes this project very similar to an inverse “Cash for Clunkers” program. Instead of moving spending that would have happened anyway to an arbitrary time-frame, I moved spending out of an arbitrary time-frame, but the spending is still happening.
My wife has an admitted shopping addiction. This project caused a rather…explosive…discussion this week. Not-so-coincidentally, that happened the day we got the credit card bill. Note to self: “What the heck is this?” is not the right way to start a conversation. Oops.
We had 30 days of trying to avoid the retail trap, and kicking ourselves when we slipped. What did we learn?
1. We are big damned consumers. We are so much better than we used to be, but so far off of where we’d like to be.
2. Target is infinitely more convenient that Craigslist. We may pay a small premium for that convenience, but generally, it’s worth it.
3. When you forget to budget for a speeding ticket that needs to be paid 5 months after you received it, it does not matter if you saved some of your discretionary budget by not shopping retail that month.
4. When you open a credit card bill and get upset, be prepared to get clubbed over the head with #3. Repeatedly.
This month, I’m going to do my best to learn a new language. I’m having a hard time deciding which one. Spanish would be most practical. Norwegian would let me read some of the artwork on my Grandma’s wall, but Italian sounds like the most fun.
Nothing like waiting until the last minute.
Why Kelly Rutherford’s bankruptcy should make you more prudent about your finances
Kelly Rutherford is an actress. Not just an actress, but a working actress. She is not a familiar looking extra or an actress who 
frequently guest stars on television, but someone who has appeared as a series regular on multiple high profile shows since the 1990s. She recently ended a six-season run on the CW hit “Gossip Girl.” This all makes the recent revelations of her bankruptcy that much more surprising. How does someone who has made it in an ultra-competitive, well-compensated field end up with over $2 million in debt? There are several lessons that we can learn from Kelly Rutherford’s unfortunate bankruptcy.
1. Divorce not only has an emotional cost, but can also have a steep financial cost The vast majority of Kelly Rutherford’s debt is related to her divorce and custody battle with her ex-husband German businessman Daniel Giersch. The legal battle with her ex-husband has cost her over $1.5 million.If you are considering getting a divorce, be cognizant of the fact that divorce proceedings may end up being expensive. Between attorney fees and court costs, your expenses can quickly ramp up. Try to have an objective assessment of how you expect the divorce proceedings to go. Do you expect the divorce to be amicable or acrimonious? If you have children, do you expect that you and your spouse will battle for custody? Do you have a plan in place to divide the marital assets? The more questions you can answer and plan for before divorce proceedings occur, the better chance you will have of keeping your costs down.
2. Have a plan for paying your taxes
In addition to the $1.5 million in legal fees, Kelly owes $350,000 in income tax for 2012. For the majority of us, paying taxes is simple. Your company automatically takes deductions out of your paycheck that pay for your income tax.
If you are a contractor or self-employed, it’s important to remember that not all the money you earn is yours. Make sure to set aside a certain percentage of each paycheck that you will use to pay your taxes at the end of the year. Try to estimate your expected income and taxes for the year and set up a separate account that you can use to settle your tax bill. If possible, get some guidance from an accountant on how to pay your estimated taxes quarterly.
3. Set up an emergency fund
Kelly works in a profession in which rapid changes in income are quite common. One month you are earning $40,000 per month for being on a hit show, the next month your character is written off the show or the show comes to an end and you no longer have any income coming in. In any field in which income tends to drastically change, it is especially important to set aside an emergency fund to help account for the uncertainty in income stream.
While the majority of us likely have more certainty about how much we expect to earn in the future, it is still important to set aside some funds in an emergency account. Whether you are an actor or an office worker, there is always some uncertainty about the future, and having an emergency account can make it easier to ride the ups and downs as you encounter them.
While Kelly Rutherford’s bankruptcy is sad and alarming, there are lessons we can derive from it to make us all more prudent about our financial future.
