Money Reasons

Smart Reasons to Save, Use and Invest Money

Archive for January, 2010

MoneyReasons Weekly Cache – 2010, Jan 31

January 31st, 2010

MoneyReasons Weekly Cache - 2010, Jan 31

Random Thoughts:

My kids are so different with their finances!

My son constantly wants to spend his money to buy things (mainly Star Wars Lego pieces). My daughter is totally frugal at age 6. I asked her why she likes saving so much of her allowance, and she said “I want to save my money in case my family needs it“, needless to say, I was floored hearing this come out of a 5 year old’s mouth (she was 5 when she said this).

I’m just amaze at how different they are…

My Favorite Top 3 PF Blogger Posts For The Week:

MBABriefs.com‘s post ”The definition of FAILURE:” - In a nutshell, this post is about the learning process. Many times we hear about the great things our leaders have done, but what we don’t realize is they failed many times before they perfect their contributions to society. The blog author David does a spectacular job of backing up this post with quality supplemental material that supports his post!
SeeJaneGetRich.com‘s post “Jane & Ideal: First Dinner Party“ - This is a very funny post between Jane the “actual financial blogger” and Jane the “ideal financial blogger”. This is an incredible humorous post about the internal struggle between Jane’s efforts to control cost via being frugal versus doing the dinner party the correct way so that it is enjoyable for her guests. I really enjoyed reading Jane’s new alternative format, plus it’s incredible funny! Jane definitely hit a home run with this post!!!
Eliminatethemuda.com‘s post “Economists – Capitalists or Socialists?” - After reading this post, Greg made me say “oh really” out loud, in the past I always thought of an economist as a 2nd conservative cousins to math professors. But Greg points out that they are actually more liberal than conservative. Click the link to his site and check out his post, it rings true (he also points out some noteworthy considerations!).

My Favorite Post From MoneyReasons This Week:

My favorite post this week is my interpretation of Maslow’s hierachy of needs applied to personal finance via My Financial Pyramid. It’s rough around the edges, but the general base is there…

Goals Status Update:

Well this year (and this month in particular) is off to a bad start for me.

Work has been trying (nuff said…)
I missed my monthly target goal this month of losing 9 lbs.
My stock pick in the ”The Samurai Fund” is down (with the rest of the stock market…)
My lottery ticket (the first and last), didn’t win (really big surprise there hehehe)
Update: my son has pink eye… (poor guy!)

You might think I’ve turned pessimistic for the year, but I haven’t! Hopefully it gets better from here on out.

Goal #1: 2010 Resolution #1, Losing Weight While Saving Money


Date	Weight/lbs.		Loss/Gain

01/02/10	235		0

01/09/10	234		1

01/16/10	232		2

01/23/10	233		-1

01/30/10	232		1

Total Loss for the Month		:	3

As for my other goals (#2,#3)

Not much happening here, I’m starting to organize my work area a bit more. #3 is well on it’s way, it the only goal I’m happy with. I’ll probably remove that one soon. And after I get 2 fully under control, I’ll remove it from this list too.

Next month, February 2010 will be a much more exciting month! My sister’s having a baby and I’ll have my house paid off.

8 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: weekly cache

Stop Drowning in Debt, Start Swimming To Shore

January 30th, 2010

Having too much debt and you feel like you are drowning. I’ve felt like this for the past 10 years, in my opinion, financial progress is like the following analogy:

swimming to shore

When we are younger, it’s like we are riding in a helicopter perhaps 20 to 50 feet above the ocean (living with our parents). Before you know it, we are putting on a wet suit to prepare for the leap out (like college). Once we get our wetsuit on, we jump deep into the cold hard water.

Down, down down we go, further into debt (credit card, auto, home, any debt). You are under water clawing up, trying to get to the surface to breath…

Once you get to the surface you feel sudden relief that you can breathe (you pay off all of your debt). You emerge from a dark potentially cold wet world, into the warm light air. You breathe deeply for a few minutes, relieved to be able to breath again. After a few seconds of happiness, you suddenly realize you are in the middle of the ocean and need to swim to shore of a distant island which could be miles away depending on multiple financial matters.

So you develop a strategy (action plan) to get to that island, taking into account the current and distance (the island being like your financial goals…). You start swimming towards that island a stroke at a time, small but crutial movements toward the island (goal). Some people get luck and their relatives (inheritances, trust funds, etc) come by and give them a boat. Other times (luck), they are only a few yards away from the shoreline. But for the rest of use, we have to swim a long distance (work for a living). Pacing ourselves for the long swim to shore (slow and steady savings).

Where am I currently at in this process?

Next month, I will have emerged from the ocean, gasping for air, happy to be able to breathe again. But unfortunately, the shore line is still very far for me, and I will have to develop a strategy for swimming the distance as quickly as possible without wearing myself out.

I’m happy to be able to breath again (being debt-free), but it’s still a long long way till shore…

-D

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Posted in Goals

Tags: drowning in debt swimming analogy swimming to shore

TV is Wasting Your Life, Modify Your Watching Behaviour

January 29th, 2010

Over my lifetime, I’ve watch many many hours of TV shows, cartoons and bad movies… Today, I’ve decided to write about why TV is a bad form of entertainment, and I’m going to suggest alertnative ideas to do instead.

Trash the TV

Why TV is wasting your life and brainwashing you:

A television show, movie or news program is still 1 (or a few) writers viewpoint and perspective on matters. So as you watch a TV show of the person who created the show, realize that it’s not reality, just an opinion.
Television News (especially political), only present the data that make their case sounds like it’s the only answer. Again, the media is just an opinion of 1 or a few writers. They are brainwashing you with bogus statistics, and false righteousness. All to often, news shows paints a picture of a poor arrested person that really was guilty, but they spin it like the criminal was the victim… This is what I call media sensationalism. Don’t believe it, especially if you don’t know that all the fact. If you do follow blindly, then you are pretty much just a puppet, please don’t be this.
I use to come home and turn on the tv, watching it for hours (or play video games, which isn’t any better, especially the violent ones). Now I have nothing to show for it, except fading memories of shows that nobody wants to remember anyway. I’m definitely not a better person for it.
Watching TV robs you of time that you can spend on creating a hobby, doing charity work, making extra money with side work, hanging with friends, etc… The idea here is that TV is an inferior form of entertainment. The problem it that it’s too easy to just turn the ole B00b tube on.
When you are old and no long able to do young things, you don’t want to look back fondly of the the TV shows you can’t remember… Do you? You need to get out there and do stuff, taking pictures along the way! Make real memories!

Okay, those are my rant points… so now,

My advice and tips for limiting TV watching:

Okay, everybody like a good movie, keyword being a “good” movie! I don’t want to waste the money going to all the movies that come out in the theater! So I wait a week, then go to www.imdb.com and enter the movie title. The beauty of imdb is that movie viewers like you and I go there and rank movies when the come out. Anything less that a 6 rating, I generally pass on. While watching any movie isn’t a great way to optimize you “life” time, watching a crappy movie really bites. Use www.imdb.com!!! They also have a top 250 movies list based off of ratings by people like us!!!
With TV you’re limiting yourself. It’s better do multitask by listening to an audiobooks while you do some type of chore or work. That way, you force your mind to create the characters as you listen to the audibooks, and at the same time get something else accomplished. My father-in-law used this method while he worked his primary job, and today, he’s a very smart, well versed man.
Call me odd, but I can’t understand why anyone would forgo living their life to watch other people live there lives. (the dreaded reality tv…) Please stop this, I know it’s easy to get hooked (yes, I watch a little every now and then while flipping channels), but please go out and play basketball, volleyball, catch, whatever… with friends, brothers, sisters, mom or dad.
If you must watch the b00b tube, limit (budget) your allotted TV watching time per week (this is what I do, I’m still addicted to TV…)
Other things you can do instead of watching tv include,
- Go for a walk, hike, job around the park, neighoorhood, mall, gym, etc.
- Clean something or do some other chores
- Fix something (use google if you don’t know how to fix it)
- Coach you child’s team (if you don’t know how become an assistent coach first, or get a book or video on how to do it)
- Try inventing something in your garage or basement.
- Customize your basement into something cool.
- Form a club that meets weekly (maybe a book, investment or a “I hate TV” club)
- Dabble in music, perhaps learn to play the guitar or piano, or whatever…

The possibilities are endless, we are very fortunate to have the leisure time to be able to do some incredible cool things if we stop watching TV so much.

Create an “Activity Journal” of what you do during the day and write the activities down right before you go to bed. Keep it simple, keep the journal in one spot and jot down what you did. Start out slow and expand your activities. Maybe even grade yourself on how well you believe you maximized your day.

We can all do this, and in the process, live a much better healthier life.

-D

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Posted in Entertainment

Tags: brainwashing TV Live life stop watching TV TV is a waste of time TV kill you and wastes your life TV makes you fat TVless

Going With Paperless Statements, My Struggles Letting Go

January 28th, 2010

I currently get 5 separate monthly statements for 5 different accounts (my standard acct, 2 roths, 2 kids accounts) with my broker (and that number may increase to 6 soon). Each statement is at least 4 separate pages each. So I get 20 pages, plus the paper for the envelope, and any additional add pamphlets that might be included inside the envelope.

I’ve been getting mailed statements ever since I was in high school. I have a complete history of my primary brokerage account statements printed out. I know if I were to get them in electronic format, most likely, I’d print them out at home and put them in their respective notebooks.

So, if I were to go the paperless route as my broker would like me to do, that would mean that I would have to incur the printing costs. I’m just not ready to go that route yet, I don’t see any direct benefit in it for me.

This makes me feel slightly guilty on 2 levels.

I shouldn’t be receiving the printout of the documents, but I feel nice and secure knowing that I have a hard copy… I don’ t know why I feel I need this, but I do.
I’m contributing (in a very small way) to the destruction of trees needlessly. I don’t like knowing this…

So I came up with this compromising solution:

Change all of my brokerage account setup so that I only receive electronic statements.
Have the e-statements setup go a new email account that I’ll setup to receive just brokerage statements
Within the email accounts setup a special folder called Acct_Statements, just to prevent accidental deletions from occurring in the my inbox.
Only print the summarization page of my estatment and put it in my account notebook.

Doing the steps outlined above will still cost me some money, but not much. Plus, I get the privilege of feeling like I make a difference since I’m not using as much paper, thus lessening the need to cut down more trees (in a very very very small way of course…)

So my question is, do you still get statement printouts mailed to you? Or do you have a better solution?

I think I will finish this year still receiving my account statements this way, but in 2011, I may go with the method I described above. Unless someone can provide a better solution…

-D

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Posted in Environment

Tags: e-statments estatements paperless

Bought My First and Last Lottery Ticket

January 27th, 2010

Yep, it’s true! I bought a lottery ticket, the value of the potential prize was multimillions of dollars. This is not a frugal way to get money! In fact, it’s very wasteful.

So why did I do it?

Well, last night I went out to eat and to see a movie (Sherlock Holmes) with both friends from The Three Little Pig post. They were doing well, Pig 1 has been on a few interviews since I last spoke to him.

As we arrived at the theater parking lot, I noticed that both my friends were still in Pig 2′s car on cell phones. Eventually, they came out… Apparently, both friends were calling their significant others to go out and buy a lottery ticket. I found this quite amusing! Instantly, I thought of the three little pig story again…

So we bought our movie ticket to get into the movie, but we had 20 minutes until the movie started. Instead of waiting, we decided to go buy their lottery tickets. We went to a gas station, and both friends bought their tickets. This is when I decided, why not… So, this is when I bought my first and last lottery ticket (that’s not a scratch off one…) I knew it was wasted money, but this was a rare occasion, and I wanted to fit in with the camaraderie!

So, did I win?

Nope, I just check online and it was a waste of money as expected. Next time I won’t buy one, but it was good to be part of the lottery ticket buying club for a few minutes. We talked about what we would do with the money if we won… It was a good little distraction.