- Getting ready to go build a rain gauge at home depot with the kids. #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist." ~ Michael Levine #
- RT @wisebread: Wow! Major food recall that touches so many pantry items. Check your cupboards NOW! http://bit.ly/c5wJh6 #
- Baby just said "coffin" for the first time. #feelingaddams #
- @TheLeanTimes I have an awesome recipe for pizza dough…at home. We make it once per week. I'll share later. in reply to TheLeanTimes #
- RT @bargainr: 9 minute, well-reasoned video on why we should repeal marijuana prohibition by Judge Jim Gray http://bit.ly/cKNYkQ plz watch #
- RT @jdroth: Brilliant post from Trent at The Simple Dollar: http://bit.ly/c6BWMs — All about dreams and why we don't pursue them. #
- Pizza dough: add garlic powder and Ital. Seasoning http://tweetphoto.com/13861829 #
- @TheLeanTimes: Pizza dough: add lots of garlic powder and Ital. Seasoning to this: http://tweetphoto.com/13861829 #
- RT @flexo: "Genesis. Exorcist. Leviathan. Deu… The Right Thing…" #
- @TheLeanTimes Once, for at least 3 hours. Knead it hard and use more garlic powder tha you think you need. 🙂 in reply to TheLeanTimes #
- Google is now hosting Popular Science archives. http://su.pr/1bMs77 #
- RT @wisebread 6 Slick Tools to Save Money on Car Repairs http://bit.ly/cUbjZG #
- @BudgetsAreSexy I filed federal last week, haven't bothered filing state, yet. Guess which one is paying me and which one wants more money. in reply to BudgetsAreSexy #
- RT @ChristianPF is giving away a Lifetime Membership to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University! RT to enter to win… http://su.pr/2lEXIT #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: 4 Reasons To Choose Community College Out Of High School. http://ow.ly/16MoNX #
- RT @hughdeburgh:"When it comes to a happy marriage,sex is cornerstone content.Its what separates spouses from friends." SimpleMarriage.net #
- RT @tferriss: So true. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." – Abraham Lincoln #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them." ~ Frank A. Clark #
Automatic Everything
In an effort to simplify my finances, I’ve automated every bill I have. For years, I resisted, fearing a lack of control over my money. A few months ago, I re-examined the bill paying options on my bank’s website and changed my mind. This is one thing that USBank has done right.
The first thing I did was set a budget. Without a budget, it’s not possible to let your money take care of itself. I did this months before I decided to automate.
All of the bills that offer a budget plan–a plan that averages your payments to avoid fluctuation–went on the plan. It means I do overpay some months, but it also means I get to underpay some months. Most important, I always know what will be due. These bills were scheduled in the bank’s online bill paying system as is, along with the rest of the bills that do not fluctuate.
All of the bills that do fluctuate went in to the bill paying system at their highest level. For example, I don’t pay for text messaging on my cell phone. Some months, I send and receive text messages. I pay my cell phone bill assuming that there will be a few messages. This is slowly building a credit on my account. If I don’t use all of the credit, I will get to skip a month of payments sometime next year.
I keep track of all of this using Quicken. Every one of these bill is in the calendar. They are all scheduled to be entered into the register on the first of the month, to post of the actual day of payment. This lets me see, at a glance, my cash flow for the entire month.
But wait! What about the non-monthly payments, you ask? They are also in Quicken, broken into monthly line items. There’s a “Set aside for property taxes” item, a “Set aside for web host” item, and a few other items.
My time to maintain this has been reduced to comparing the bills to the bill-paying system every other week. At the same time, I consolidate all of the “set asides” so I don’t have 10 property tax entries when one will do.
I know this is an inefficient method of saving money, but my goal isn’t to save money, it’s automating money and removing one layer of stress from my life. It has transformed bill-paying from an hour or two per week to 20 minutes, twice per month and very little stress.
Insane Incentives
Spring is in the air.
At my son’s school, that means it’s time for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests. These are the standardized tests created by the No Child Left Behind Act that determine if a school is doing its job in educating children. If too many kids have lousy scores, the school gets put on the “Adequate Yearly Progress” list and will eventually get penalized financially.
That creates a perverted incentive in the school system. The main metric for a publicly-funded school’s success in Minnesota is the MCA. If a school can churn out illiterate trench-diggers, they will get increased funding as long as the test scores are good.
For a full two weeks before this test, the school effectively shut down the education program to prepare for the MCA test. That’s two weeks of studying for a set of standardized tests that focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’m a fan of schools prioritizing the three Rs over other subjects, but that’s not what they did.
They spent two weeks studying testing strategies, not the material contained in the test.
In science class, they covered essential scientific elements like “Answer all of the easy questions first, so you can go back and spend time on the hard ones later.”
Spanish class covered verb usage similar to “When the time is almost out on the test, answer ‘C’ for all of the hard questions you have left, que?”
They weren’t being educated, they were learning the most effective way to solve a test to gain funding for next year.
For 2 weeks.
That’s not reading practice, or reviewing the parts of speech, or covering the necessary math skills. It’s “This is a #2 pencil. This is a circle. Practice until lunch.”
Is this really what NCLB was trying to accomplish? Standardized tests to measure school proficiency should be a surprise. Let’s randomly send in test proctors to take over a school for a day and see what the kids have actually learned.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-26
- RT @ScottATaylor: The Guys on "Pickers" should just follow the "Hoarders" teams around- perfect mashup #
- PI/PNK test: http://su.pr/2umNRQ #
- RT @punchdebt: When I get married this will be my marital slogan "Unity through Nudity" #
- http://su.pr/79idLn #
- RT @jeffrosecfp: Wow! RT @DanielLiterary:Stats show 80% of Americns want to write a book yet only 57% have read at least 1 bk in the last yr #
- @jeffrosecfp That's because everyone thinks their lives are unique and interesting. in reply to jeffrosecfp #
- @CarrieCheap Congrats! #CPA in reply to CarrieCheap #
- @prosperousfool I subscribe to my own feed in google reader. Auto backup for in between routine backups. Saved me when I got hacked. in reply to prosperousfool #
- @SuzeOrmanShow No more benefits? I bet the real unemployment rate goes down shortly thereafter. in reply to SuzeOrmanShow #
- Losing power really make me appreciate living in the future. #
Best of Money Carnival #68
Today, it is my privilege to host the 68th Best of Money Carnival. I’ve hosted a few carnivals over the last 10 months, but winnowing the choices from 60 to 10 is quite possibly the most difficult I’ve had to do. There were lots of excellent posts this week. Next time, I’ll have to make my job easier by soliciting bribes. I am always on the lookout for a new income stream.
Without further ado, here is the best of the best:
10. Mike Piper presents Do You Have an Investment Backup Plan? posted at Oblivious Investor. What would you do if your investment portfolio suddenly tanks?
9. Tim Chen presents Calm Down, the Poor Are Not Paying for the Rewards of the Rich posted at NerdWallet Blog – Credit Card Watch. I always get a little bit irritated when people accuse the “rich” of only being rich at the expense of the poor. After all, the richest 20% of the U.S. includes household incomes of just $90,000. If you think that’s a lot, remember that $25,000 still puts you in the richest 10% wordwide.
8. FMF presents How to Pick a Great Mutual Fund posted at Free Money Finance. What’s more important, cost or performance?
7. Madison DuPaix presents Marriage Tax Penalty Returns in 2011 posted at My Dollar Plan. This is another example of the flaws in the “tax the rich” policies. When we lose the “tax cuts on the rich”, almost everyone will pay more taxes.
6. Silicon Valley Blogger presents How College Students Can Save Money posted at The Digerati Life. If I knew then what I know now….
5. Kristina presents A DINK Sandwich posted at DINKS Finance. Life gets easier when you can find a simple yet reliable set of rules to cover most situations.
4. freefrombroke presents It’s Still A Good Idea To Buy A House In This Economy posted at Free From Broke. I was lucky enough to buy my house shortly before the bubble grew. If we would have waited, I’d still be renting.
3. PT presents Credit Card Default: 7 Things You Should Know posted at PT Money. If you are working your way into debt, it’s good to know the what’s in store for you.
2. Joe Plemon presents Three New Car Purchases to Steer Away From posted at Personal Finance By The Book. I’m a few months away from my last car payment. Ever. These are more reasons to avoid a new car.
And finally, the best of the best of the best, sir:
1. Craig Ford presents Make Money Blogging | A Guide for Beginners on How to Make Money Online posted at Money Help For Christians. As I was compiling this list, I kept getting distracted here. I’d reread a section, follow the links, and find I had lost an hour. Read this post.
If you want to be included in the next Best of Money Carnival, don’t forget to submit your best post and follow the guidelines. Next week, it will be hosted by Green Panda Treehouse.
What D&D Taught Me About Finance
I admit it: I’m a geek. I’m not a hobby geek who only geeks on the weekends. I’m a full-fledged, licensed and certified geek. I am a geek about so many wondrous things that it’s hard to list them all. My wife knows, my kids know. It’s not much of a secret. One of my many geek qualifications is my sordid history of gaming. Role-playing, tabletop only. If that’s gibberish, it’s okay. Nobody needs to understand my geekitude but me.
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons more than 15 years ago. There were no live chickens or human sacrifice. Just a small group of geeks, proto-geeks, pseudo-geeks, and the occasional nerd playing DnD in a poorly lit room for several hours. We laughed, we cried, we fought evil, saved the world, and raised the stock price of an assortment of caffeinated beverage companies.
As the man said, I told you that, so I could tell you this:
DnD taught me many things. It taught me THAC0 calculation, dice-identification, and the fact that no woman, anywhere, considers tabletop roleplaying to be an alpha-male trait. “I’m a level 73 kinder warrior-mage-thief” is not a pickup line anywhere in the world, even Gen-Con. Remember that. Also remember, the singular of dice is die. If your are talking about one, it’s a die. Get it wrong and I will throw a bag full of dice at you and make you dig out the purple, sparkles-like-a-vampire, 27-sided die from among the hundreds of other dice.
DnD also taught me some surprising things about the world of personal finance, which is not a part of a planar campaign.
All the best toys cost too much. At the current exchange rate of 10 silver pieces(sp) to 1 gold piece(gp), potions of extra healing will drive you into debtor’s prison. Just as a sword of extra-slaying +10 will cost you everything you earned raiding that castle for the last 6 Wednesday evenings, so will a big screen TV set you back a full month’s salary. Don’t risk your life or sell your life’s energy for something fleeting, just because it’s “the best” or the newest gadget, geegaw, or artifact.
Never sell your soul for a castle or a horse. When the Baatezu come to offer you a “no money down, 0% for a year, all-expenses-paid, surrender-your-first-born” deal for a castle or the prettiest horse in the park, take a cue from the former First Lady. Just say no. Spending money today that you have to pay for tomorrow is almost always a bad idea. Don’t spend your soul, spend your savings. Don’t buy something until you can afford it. A Lexus or an Arabian, a mansion or a rambler. Are any of them worth auctioning your future?
Your armor isn’t stronger just because it’s shiny. A suit of Full-Plate of Protection-From-the-Charms-of-Bar-Wenches +5 may look pretty, but it’s not going to help against the orcs, kobolds, or trolls unless, of course, they are wearing skirts and sitting on a bar-stool above a sawdust-covered floor. Does the shiny new iPod really provide a benefit, or is it just a shiny gadget to woo the ladies?
A good sword is necessary to keep your stuff. This is a not a call to self-defense, or mugger, err, orc-slaying–though why that’s ever viewed as a negative is beyond me. You need to be aggressive in defending your loot. Call your credit card companies and demand they turn over the booty, err, lower your rates. Tell your friends to step away from the Diamond Ray of Disappearance, err, expensive outings or you will chop off their heads, err…no wait, that one can stay. I think my friends may be scared of me.
[ad name=”inlineleft”]The promised reward for completing an adventure isn’t the only way to make money. Sure, the local duke(your boss), may be willing to pay you a chest of gems(your salary) for defending the town from the ravages of the Tarrasque(your job), but that isn’t the only way to make money. You could do your job, collect your pay, and go home at night, but why? Don’t forget to pick up the loot along the way. If you spot the shiny penny, grab it, whether it’s abandoned gold, a new idea for a niche-blog, or a chance to turn your leisure hobbies into money. There are thousands of ways to make money outside of your day job. Every one will help your bottom line.
It takes cunning to slay the dragon. When tackling your debt(dragon), wading in swinging your sword may be emotionally satisfying, in the short term, but long term, it’s just a painful method of reminding yourself that you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. Make plans. Have a strategy. Come out a winner. Then, sit down for beer and dragon steak. Goal-less, plan-less attacks fail in the long-term.
Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
