Search Results for “travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/anchor-price-your-salary” — Page 6

Selling Your Car

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

Daytrading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

Business

For the past 6 weeks, I’ve been playing with Bitcoin and Litecoin.

The bitcoin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can hear you from across the internet. You’re asking, “What the hell is Bitcoin?”

I’m glad you asked. It’s a cryptocurrency.

And now you know as much as you did before.

Cryptocurrencies are anonymous internet-based money. You spend it just like money, though granted, there are fewer places that accept cryptocurrency.

The big name in cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. In second place, trying to play silver to Bitcoin’s gold, is Litecoin.

So what do I mean by “playing with” Bitcoin and Litecoin?

I’ve been daytrading, which is generally a horrible idea…when you’re doing it with stocks. Daytrading is gambling. It’s the art of doing short-term flips on a stock. You buy it today to sell tomorrow, hoping it goes up. With stocks, I play a long game. I buy and hold. I buy a stock that I believe has long-term value, and I hold it for months or years.

That’s not the game I play with BTC and LTC. I play a short game, rarely longer than a week. When the coins are at a low price, I buy, then I immediately sell when they price is higher. When it’s high, I short the coin, essentially selling coins I don’t own to trade back when the dollar-price is lower. When I’m paying attention, I make money as the coins go up and I make money when the coins go down.

Why is this a good strategy for cryptocoins?

Because they are extremely volatile. As I’m writing this, Litecoin has had a 10% swing today, from $4.03 at midnight, to a current price of $4.16, with a peak of $4.36. On Thursday, it was floating around $4.60 all day. In the last 30 days, it’s been as high as $8.65 and as low as $3.18. Go back to May and the low is $1.29.

Traditional wisdom says that volatile investments are bad. In traditional investments, that’s true. But when a stock is this volatile, nearly every bet is a good one, as long as you’re patient. If I buy LTC at $4.20 and it drops to $3.90, that’s bad. I lost money. But, if I wait a couple of days, it’s almost definitely going to climb back up. Except for large-scale sell-offs, it’s usually going to bounce 10% in a given day. You can buy in the dips and sell at the peaks all day long, turning 5-10% profits with each time. If you’re brave or stupid, you can short at the peaks and make 5-10% on every downturn, too.

For example, today started at $4.03. Buy. Today’s peak was at 7:15AM at $4.36. When the graphs start swinging down, sell short. Two hours later, it bottomed out at $4.20 for a 4% return. Then, buy while it’s low. Ninety minutes later, it was at $4.31, another 3% return. Short it again, then close the position at 7PM for $4.13.

Let’s walk through this.

Buy $10 worth of Litecoin at midnight, sell at 7:15AM. You have $10.81.

Turn around and short the same amount until 9AM. You have $11.22.

Buy that same amount to sell at 10:30AM. You have $11.51.

Short it again before closing out at 7PM and going to bed. You have 12.01. That’s almost a 12% return in 12 hours, assuming you guessed all of the major swings right. If you guessed some wrong, you’d just have to wait until the next time it swung your way, and it will. Did I do that well? No. I bought in at $4.008 yesterday and sold today-once-for $4.32. I will not complain at an 8% return over 12 hours.

The only exception to that is during major buying and selling streaks. On July 5th, a major buying run started. By July 8th, the price was run up to $8.65. A huge sell-off happened then, dropping the price to $4.36 on July 9th.

If you bought at $8.65 you’d be hosed.

The lesson there is, don’t buy at the peak. I’ve had a number of trades that could have been huge scores if I would have held onto them longer, but I’m a wimp. I sell as soon as I’ve gotten enough money to make me smile, then I refuse to regret the decision. That also prevents me from holding on to my positions too long. I avoid all of the crashes that way. That giant buy-in happened while I was on vacation, so I wasn’t paying attention. When I’m not paying attention, I leave my money in US dollars, so there’s no risk…and also no reward.

Also, an important caveat: while I am learning the cryptocurrency ropes, I’m playing with a non-critical amount of money. I put $75 into the exchange in June. Not enough to cry over losing, but enough I can play with all of the different investment options. As I said, I’m a wimp, although a 30% return in 7 weeks is pretty sweet.

Next up, I’ll show you how to get started investing/gambling with Bitcoin.

Money Problems – Day 7: Paying Off Debt

Finance

Today, I am continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

On this, Day 7, we’re going to talk about paying off debt.

Until you pay off your debts, you are living with an anchor around your neck, keeping you from doing the things you love. Take a look at the amount you are paying to your debt-holders each month. How could you better use that money, now? A vacation, private school for your kids, a reliable car?

If you’ve got a ton of debt, the real cost is in missed opportunities. For example, with my son’s vision therapy being poorly covered by our insurance plan, we are planning a much smaller vacation this summer–a “staycation”–instead of a trip to the Black Hills. If we didn’t have a debt payment to worry about, we’d have a much larger savings and would have been able to absorb the cost without canceling other plans. The way it is, our poor planning and reliance on debt over the last 10 years have cost us the opportunity to go somewhere new.

The only way to regain the ability to take advantage of future opportunities is to get out of debt, which tends to be an intimidating thought. When we started on our journey out of debt, we were buried 6 figures deep, with a credit card balance that matched our mortgage. It looked like an impossible obstacle, but we’ve been making it happen. The secret is to make a plan and stick with it. Pick some kind of plan, and follow it until you are done. Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged.

What kind of plan should you pick? That’s a personal choice. What motivates you? Do you want to see quick progress or do you like seeing the effects of efficient, long-term planning? These are the most common options:

Debt Snowball

Popularized by Dave Ramsey, this is the plan with the greatest emotional effect. It’s bad math, but that doesn’t matter, if the people using it are motivated to keep at it long enough to get out of debt.

To prepare your debt snowball, take all of your debts–no matter how small–and arrange them in order of balance. Ignore the interest rate. You’re going to pay the minimum payment on each of your debts, except for the smallest balance. That one will get every spare cent you can throw at it. When the smallest debt is paid off, that payment and every spare cent you were throwing at it(your “snowball”) will go to the next smallest debt. As the smallest debts are paid off, your snowball will grow and each subsequent debt will be paid off faster that you will initially think possible. You will build up a momentum that will shrink your debts quickly.

This is the plan I am using.

Debt Avalanche

A debt avalanche is the most efficient repayment plan. It is the plan that will, in the long-term, involve paying the least amount of interest. It’s a good thing. The downside is that it may not come with the “easy wins” that you get with the debt snowball. It is the best math; you’ll get out of debt fastest using this plan, but it’s not the most emotionally motivating.

To set this one up, you’ll take all of your bills–again–and line them up, but this time, you’ll do it strictly by interest rate. You’re going to make every minimum payment, then you’ll focus on paying the bill with the highest interest rate, first, with every available penny.

DOLP

This is the plan promoted by David Bach. It stands for Done On Last Payment. With this plan, you’ll pay the minimum payment on each debt, except for bill that is scheduled to be paid off first. You calculate this by dividing the balance of each debt by the minimum payment. This gives you an estimate of the number of months it will take to pay off each debt.

This system is less efficient than the debt avalanche–by strict math–but is better than the snowball. It give you “quick wins” faster than the snowball, but will cost a bit more than the avalanche. It’s a compromise between the two, blending the emotional satisfaction of the snowball with the better math of the avalanche.

Snowflaking

For each of these plans, you can give them a little steroid injection by snowflaking. Snowflaking is the art of making some extra cash, and throwing it straight at your debt. If you hold a yard sale, use the proceeds to make an extra debt payment. Sell some movies at the pawn shop? Make an extra car payment. Every little payment you make means fewer dollars wasted on interest.

Paying interest means you are paying for everything you buy…again. Do whatever it takes to make debt go away, and you will find yourself able to take advantage of more opportunities and spend more time doing the things you want to do. Life will be less stressful and rainbows will follow you through your day. Unicorns will guard your home and leprechauns will chase away evil-doers. The sun will always shine and stoplights will never show red. Getting out of debt is powerful stuff.

Your task today is to pick a debt plan, and get on it. Whichever plan works best for you is the right one. Organize your bills, pick one to focus on, and go to it.

Assuming you are in debt, how are you paying it off?

Budgeting Sucks

Finance

Budgeting kind of sucks.

Filling out a budgeting spreadsheet, putting in all of your expenses, listing all of your income, tracking all of your spending. Yuck.

Balancing the fact that you may have $200 to spare, but if your gas bill is a bit lower one month then you have a some more money, but if your electric bill’s a little bit high, then you have a little bit less. It’s too much work.

Here’s the new plan:

I just opened up a new credit card. This credit card’s got a fairly high limit, not that I care since I’m never going to come close to the limit. It’s got an okay interest rate, not that I care–it’s going to be paid off every month. It also has a good travel rewards plan, so our family vacations can, to a large extent, be paid for.

Now, with this card, I’m taking all of my regular bills, and setting them up to be automatically paid by the credit card. It’ll get automatically charged every month. I won’t have to think about it. Once a month, I’ll just log on and pay off the card. All I have to do is make sure the balance stays under my monthly budgeted amount. I already know what I have to be paying each month, so, no problem.

This will make it easier to budget and track my actual spending. It’ll even make it easier to balance my checkbook, since right now, I’m logging into my bank account a couple of times a month to compare it to Quicken. Any budget helper is nice.

After this plan takes effect, my bank account will only have any ATM withdrawals that I need to make–which shouldn’t happen more than once or twice a month–and my checks to day care. There should be just six manual transactions every month plus all of my miscellaneous transfers to and from INGDirect, which should also be minimal– there should only be two of those each month.

This will simplify everything while at the same time giving me the maximum amount of travel rewards I’ve been able to find. Hopefully, it will work as well as I think it will.

5 Ways to Help Your Friends Stay Out of Debt

Finance, Life

There’s a saying that you are the average of your 5 closest friends. Take a look at the people you hold dearest. Combined, they are you. If they are all in debt, chances are, so are you.

As a corollary, you are a part of your friends. If you become more financially responsible, it will rub off on the people who care about you.

Given these two rules, one way to improve yourself is to help those around you improve themselves. If your influence convinces your friends to move closer to your ideal, it will be easier, almost effortless to move closer to it, yourself.

It sound manipulative, but if you are manipulating your friends, you are doing it wrong. Don’t try to force or trick your friends, just be honest and sincere in your efforts to help. Nobody wants to be in debt. This is you being nice.

1. Suggest cheap activities.

While it is okay to splurge occasionally, don’t be afraid to suggest less expensive activities. If someone suggests going to a movie, mention the dollar theater. If they want to go out for dinner, offer to host a potluck. Trip to the casino? Game night at your house. There are almost always cheaper ways to have fun. As long as you are spending time with the people you love, you’ll have a good time. Do you really need to drop $100 to do that?

2. Don’t flaunt your toys.

If you buy an iPod and immediately run to show it off, you are going to trigger a case of “keeping up with the Joneses”. If your friends spend all of their time around people who are constantly buying expensive toys, buying expensive toys becomes normalized in their minds. Debt becomes the norm. Then extreme debt. Don’t reinforce the destructive debt cycle by showing off the expensive trophies of excessive, unnecessary consumerism.

3. Point out opportunities to save.

This is a fine line to walk. If mention how much money your friend is wasting on 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mochas with extra white mocha and caramel every single morning, you’re going to get annoying fast. In fact, you are already annoying me, so knock it off. On the other hand, if Caribou is having a sale on the 13 shot monstrosity, speak up. Nobody is going to complain about getting a $15 coffee for less than $10.

4. Give them a side hustle.

If you’ve got a friend who’s into landscaping and you’ve got a neighbor who needs a landscaper, make the connection! If you know a web designer and a business in need of a website, get them together. Do what you can to match the needs of the people around with each other. They will all appreciate it, and everyone will be better off. Be the guy who helps everyone connect with the people they need.

5. Be encouraging.

Put another way, don’t be a dick. Nobody likes being nagged. Nobody likes being told they are doing everything wrong. Be encouraging, not mean.

If you can do all of that, it’s natural that your friends will start acting the way you want yourself to act. The less they want to waste on a trip into debt, the less tempted you will be to do the same.

Best of Money Carnival #87, the Gold Rush Edition

Misc

: Image via Wikipedia

Welcome to the Best of Money Carnival #87, the Gold Rush Edition.

On January 24th, 1848, gold was discovered in Coloma, California by construction overseer James W. Marshall. The following year, one hundred thousand people moved to California to either strike it rich, or profit from those who were trying to strike it rich. The gold rush began 163 years ago today.

10. N.W. Journey presents Business use of Home Deduction posted at Networth Journey and says, “How to deduct your business home expenses.”

Some people recommend stockpiling gold so you’ll have something of value to spend after society as we know it collapses. Does anyone know how to make change from a gold bar for a loaf of bread?

9. Darwin presents Present Value of Money Explained – MBA Monday posted at Darwin’s Money and says, “One of the most important financial concepts is also one of the most misunderstood. Make sure you understand the Present value of Money – with these real life examples. It will save you thousands!”

In 1854, a 195 pound gold nugget was found at Carson Hill in California. It was valued at $43,534. That would be worth $3,160,357.20 today.

8. RJ Weiss presents What Your Optimal Income? posted at Gen Y Wealth and says, “An exercise to find your optimal income level.”

Q: Which weighs more: a pound of feathers, or a pound of gold? A: A pound of feathers. Gold is weighed using Troy Weight, which only has 12 ounces per pound.

7. BWL presents How To Select A Financial Advisor posted at Christian Personal Finance and says, “Find out how to select the best financial adviser for you.”

Until the onset of modern electronics, which use gold because it doesn’t corrode or tarnish, gold had no practical value of its own. Its entire value resided in the fact that it was pretty and relatively scarce.

6. Miss T presents 10 Ways to $ave Energy Comfortably | Prairie EcoThrifter.com posted at Prairie Eco-Thrifter and says, “How great is it to save money and the planet at the same time?!”

Q: Which weighs more: a ounce of feathers, or a ounce of gold? A: A ounce of gold. Troy Weight has fewer ounces that avoirdupois, but each ounce weighs more. There are 31.1 grams in a Troy ounce, but only 28.4 grams in a standard ounce.

5. Craig Ford presents Employers Look at Credit Reports | Ludicrous or Smart Business? posted at Money Help For Christians and says, “Should employers be able to see your credit report?”

Outside of collectible or government-issued coins, gold is priced according to it’s spot price, which fluctuates constantly. Dealers will generally pay a percentage under spot when buying gold, then sell for a percentage over spot. Always know the spot price of gold before you agree to buy or sell any.

4. MoneyNing presents Tax Time: Do I Have to Report that Income? posted at Money Ning and says, “Did you receive any income last year? Do you really have to report everything?”

Gold is the 58th most rare natural element, out of 92.

3. Silicon Valley Blogger presents I Just Lost My Job! How I’m Downsizing My Household Expenses posted at The Digerati Life and says, “I share my story of job loss and what ideas I have for paring down my expenses in order to cope with this loss of income. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to find a new job!”

Only 20% of the gold from the Gold Rush deposits has been reclaimed. The rest is still out there.

2. The Financial Blogger presents 5 Reasons Why You Need A Partner In Your Business posted at The Financial Blogger and says, “A post outlining the benefits of a business partner.”

As of the end of 2009, more than 160,000 tons of gold have been mined, most of which was done in the latter half of the 20th century.

And the winner is…

1. Amanda L Grossman presents Frugal Lessons from People Who Survived the Great Depression posted at Frugal Confessions – Frugal Living and says, “Have you ever met someone who was alive during the Great Depression? They are changed people. The Great Depression left a great impression on their thoughts, their styles, and their habits. I am fascinated by this time period, and researched the question of what frugal habits these people developed to survive.”

I’d like to thank everyone who participated. Next week’s host is PT Money, so don’t forget to submit your entry!

Search Results for: travel-expenses-why-i-splurge/anchor-price-your-salary