Money Reasons

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Archive for February, 2010

MoneyReasons Weekly Cache 2010, Feb 28

February 28th, 2010

Weekly Cache - 2010, Feb 28

Random Thoughts!

Being Debt Free hasn’t had much of a chance to affect me yet!

My sister had a baby, and my wife volunteered to go down and help out for the first week. We didn’t even get to celebrate paying off the house! It’s nice being totally debt free, but now for the hard part, I’ve basked in the sun long enough… the honeymoon is over! I need to develop some new spreadsheets to figure out what I’m going to do. The spreadsheets will probably be similar to the one in my post about ”My Goal/Dividend Funds“, but I’ll need to create a more ellaborate spreadsheet for the task.

Today, I had my first temptation of Lifestyle Creep! Our school system has cutbacks, like all of the schools in our area, and one of the cuts was the traditional 4th grade trip. Well, more involved parents than we are got together, and started trying things to get the money together for the trip. We really wanted our son to have the experience, so we seriously talked about donating $300 to $400 dollars. While that might not seem like much money to some of you, for us to contribute so much was unheard of! Fortunately, we checked with the fundraisers and they said that they thought that they had enough, so we only contributed $100…

I telecommute once a week, and low and behold, the kids had a snow day on that day! I skipped lunch and left work early to have a bit of outdoor fun with them! It was great, I even noticed myself running in the snow with our dog a few times. Lol, what a sight that must have been! I’m glad my wife didn’t see that! The kids went sledding down our driveway, with me at the foot of the driveway just in case. In case of what, I have no idea, the entire time we were sledding, I think I only saw 2 cars slowly creep by… That’s suburbia for you…

My Favorite Top 5 PF Blogger Posts For The Week:

Eliminate The Muda‘s post “Combat the Closing Techniques – The Power Of Suggestions” - Was a very interesting post about the tactics that salesman use much like Jedi Mind tricks (those are my words not the Coaches) to trick unwary customer into buying more that what the needed or initially wanted by playing into the customer’s ego!
Money Honey‘s post “Grass is Greener on the other side“ – Money Honey has some really great articles this week, ranging from her Las Vegas winnings, to knowing a friend of a friend that won a two million dollar house (this beats my close friend that won a $200,000 dollar house)! I liked the Grass post because it was simple and honest, but also wrapped with a deeper and often forgotten lesson inside! I think Financial Samurai‘s friend in Sam’s post called “The Curse Of Making Too Much Money And Not Pursuing Your Dreams” should take heed… but that just my opinion…
Sweating the Big Stuff‘s “Samurai Alexa Ranking Challenge” spreadsheet is now semi-automated! I’m always a sucker for a sexy spreadsheet with some great figures!!! I bet J.Money from BudgetsAreSexy.com has been ogling Daniel-san’s sweet sweet spreadsheet more than once! Dan’s spreadsheet is a Google app based spreadsheet, and honestly the first time I’ve seen the google spreadsheet being used. I have to say, I’m very impressed!
My Journal to Millions‘s post “Picking Dividend Aristocrat Stocks” – is perfecting his google apps spreadsheet skills too so he can picking the best dividend stocks so he can develop the perfect portfolio of Dividend stocks for the future. I didn’t realize that Evan and I were pursuing similar paths until his last few blog entries! After this last market crash, I’ve lost most of my taste for those high beta stocks that I use to passionately follow (well all except maybe BIDU)…
Financial Samurai‘s post “Samurai’s Alexa Ranking Challenge Update: Progress Through Adversity” – While this is an update post, what’s great about it is the evolution of a great idea! Sam (Keiju) is going beyond the initial goal and unselfishly trying to promote all the members of this great group! Click the above link to discover some of Sam’s newest spins around the entire challenge! I’m glad to see the Yakezie Buttons are out there too. I feel that I should beat my first challenge before I put it on my site though. Kind of like Wayne and Garth’s “I’m not worthy” chant… I’m hoping by next month end, I, at least, get down to the 200,000 range… maybe 299,000 (maybe I’m being too optimistic though!)… And hopefully in April go for hitting below $200,000… We’ll see (call me a dreamer)…

My Favorite Post from Money Reasons This Week:

My favorite post from my weekly blogging posts is hands down “I Am Debt Free, My Mortgage Countdown #1 – Equilibrium“! This is a once in a lifetime experience for me (I hope), and surprisingly (at least in my case) a good move. The Financial pundits were saying how sub par this idea was and that I should be putting the money in the stock market, but they aren’t saying that now! Of course, I’m fortunate enough not to live in an area where house prices dropped like stones either! That said, I don’t know if I’d do the same today!!! Interest rates are pretty low right now!!!

Status on other thing’s I’m involved in:

I’m going to learn to program in php and mysql. I usually work with Microsoft products, but I’ve decided to branch out! I made some good progress considering all that is going on around me at the moment! PHP is pretty interesting!
My daughter started indoor soccer; she got floored by an 8 year old that weights twice as much as her. Stupid soccer groups! I don’t know why 6 year old girls are in the same division as 8 year old boys anyway…

Goal #1: 2010 Resolution #1, Losing Weight While Saving Money – I’ve shelved this until next Month.

Conclusion: Another crazy busy week, I got to play Mr. Mom (this is an 80′s movie that is pretty good actually) for most of this week, and overall I enjoyed it! Next week will be more stable, no more last night blog postings (yay)!

-D

4 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: mortgage gone mortgage piad off weekly cache

How Credit Cards Helped Me To Become Debt Free

February 27th, 2010

Do I sound like Bizarro?

Hi I’m Reasons Money, oh wait… that’s Bizarro!

I know, my title doesn’t make sense on the surface, but hear me out!

It’s true, my credit cards helped me get out of debt quicker than if I hadn’t used them!

First, let me set the background. For the last 12 years, I’ve only owned reward credit cards (Sony,Upromise, GM, Citi, Schwab, etc).

Secondly, I almost never (hard to believe huh) carried credit card debt longer than a month. I like to pay my balance in full each month! The only time that I didn’t pay my credit card balance in full was when I bought a computer with a best buy card that had a 0% interest deal (and even with this card I paid it off early).

I only own reward credit cards, and usually ones with pretty decent paybacks percentages!

So how did (and does) that help me pay off my debt any quicker, you might ask?

Well, first I get a discount on my purchases, typically anywhere from 2 to 5%! If you pay with cash, you will incur that additional cost! This is better than I did in the stock market last year! (Laughing, but really crying inside…). This alone make the reward cards a great deal!

You might not think this make a big difference but it does! Instead of saving that money, we used it to help augment our Christmas presents! We have also used it to rewards ourselves for being so frugally minded. Yes, purchasing goods with credit cards is frugal (there, I said it!)

The amounts saved via reward credit cards is like a forced savings plan.

Now, I’m not really Bizarro, and I know that in many ways having Credit Cards for some is like giving a beer to a recovering alcoholic. But if you have the displine or if you create a budget to control your debt, Reward Credit Cards could be used for good instead of evil (another corny superhero cartoon reference).

Credit card are a lot like guns! Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, same with credit cards! Creadit cards on’t get you in debt! People get themselved in debt!

I know what I typed runs against the grains of popular opinions out there!

What do you tkink?

-D

One Caveat: If you are married, your spouse must be frugal and on-board with paying the credit card in full each month for this to work!!! My wife is and it has worked great!

11 comments »

Posted in Entertainment, Ideas, Savings

Tags: Bizarro credit card credit card savings reduce debt

Lemons to Lemonade – Junk Mail Revenge!

February 26th, 2010

Mail, mail everywhere

I use to hate getting junk and snail mail every day.

It’s very rare that a day goes by without us getting some form of mail in our mailbox. It’s possible to contact each mailer of junk mail and request that they stop sending you the junk mail and they have to, but that won’t totally stop it… And besides, there are other type of mail that you get in your mailbox that isn’t junk mail, like various types of bills and banking/checking/investing account statements, etc…

So I decided at the beginning of this year to see if I could put a spin on this mail waste in some way that it might benefit me! Surprisingly, I was able to, especially for the back of the envelopes!

Here are a few of my uses and suggestions:

Use them to jot down ideas for blog topics (my favorite use). They are the perfect scratchpad for brainstorming .
If you use a knife to open them, you can use them for holding coupons (I don’t do this yet, but I would if I did).
During research for investments, jot down the company and ticker, current price, dividend, and date of the stock. Put then in a pile to be reviewed when making investment decisions.
Use the envelopes to keep score when we play games like yahtzee, greed and certain card games!
For the similarly sized envelopes, I keep a few in a small stack in the drawer by the phone and use them to take messages on.
After doing the suggestions above, use the envelopes as part of your garden compost pile, if you do gardening. While it won’t add up to much, it will complete the cycle (as in recycling) and is very green! Make sure you don’t include any envelopes that has a plastic see through window!

The main idea is that the back of the envelopes has a plain white surface, perfect for jotting something down on!

While reusing envelopes may seem small and trite and not worth it, I say “Why not“?

You are doing the environment good by not sending the envelopes directly to the junkyard, and squeezing an extra use out of something that is effectively trash!

Can you think of additional uses for your junk mail (or junk mail envelopes)? If so, please respond! I’m always looking for better ways to use them! Humorous responses are welcome too!

-D

3 comments »

Posted in Environment, Frugality, Lemons to Lemonade

Tags: recycle envelopes reuse envelopes

Hidden Costs of a Relative Having a Baby

February 25th, 2010

Usually, when a relative has a baby, you expect to incur the cost of going to the hospital with a few balloons, flowers and maybe a gift of some baby clothes.

This past weekend, my sister was the proud new mother of a baby girl! This is my sister’s first child so everybody very happy for her and her husband, especially my kids (and my son in particular). Since my sister was a rookie at this, and we were the last in the family to have a child, my wife told my sister that she would be willing to help my sister out. My sister wisely took my wife up on her offer, so off my wife when down to stay the night this week!

So I decided to go over the numbers as a fun exercise to determine what the costs were for my sister having a baby this past Saturday…

Here is what I came up with:


	Balloons	$10.00
	Baby Clothes	$10.00
	Flowers	$20.00
	Travel Gas Money	$97.00
	Eating out kids	$47.00
	Eating out wife?	??




		$184.00

What have I been doing in this process? I’ve taken over the responsibilities of my wife for the week of getting my kids off to school, and running the typically soccer taxi service duties.

How did I do?

Rocky at first (we missed the bus by the tiniest of margins the first day), but since the first day, everything has gone as smooth as ice (literally)! Luckily, my boss being the great guy that he is, let me work the past few days from home!

How are things going?

The last few days has been a wear on my wife, she sounds more and more weak when she calls to check to see how things are flowing up here…

For the kid, it almost like a mini-vacation! I purposely let things go a little slack, and we’ve been playing more games together while my wife has been gone. I honestly think to some degree they are both enjoying this change… I have too, to a degree.

But, I’ll be glad when my wife is back!

Have any of you ever been side swiped by an hidden expense that you don’t anticipate like mine?

-D

5 comments »

Posted in Costs

Tags: hidden cost relative baby side cost of baby

Wealth Tip #4: Invest Money Saved on Food and Other Products

February 24th, 2010

Okay, I have a Confession to make!!!

I don’t clip coupons, nor does my wife (yeah, I know… here I claim to be frugal, and yet I don’t do this very frugal activity)! In my earlier post called 10 Millionaire Lifestyle Secrets, I indentify SmartMoney’s secret #2 “I shop at Walmart” secret! It explains that the $100,000+ income crowd clips coupons. Now as I said, I don’t clip coupons, but… my grandmother did! So I’m going to start out describing the system that she used, then I’m going to describe some more modern techniques.

But before that, today, I also learned that one of the bigger blog sites FreeMoneyFinance‘s spouse clips coupons. The blogger at FreeMoneyFinance fit’s the Secret #2 description very well, and even makes more than that! Click the following link to read his article called: How to Earn $100 an Hour (Or Save $100,000 in Your Lifetime). This FMF article is truly an eye opener and a must read!!!

After using Coupons to save money, calculate how much you saved per month (or week), and pump it from your savings into a brokerage account, bonds or CDs.

Now onto the coupons saving methods both classic and modern!

The classic way, the type of system my grandmother used:

Basically she clipped coupons from the newspaper! Then she had white well worn envelopes with names in the front to them that she would put the coupons into, and they coupons were organized by product name type and date within the envelope. She then put the envelopes in an accordian style folder.

At first she started this process on the dining room table, but during football season, she would setup her small TV in the dining area. She would do coupons while my grandfather would classify old coins and put them in sleeves. She effectively took a negative time consuming activity and made it a positive by doing it while she was enjoying listening (and watching), the football game.

Times are different today!

Back when my grandmother clipped coupons, the Internet didn’t have the bandwidth it does today (anyone remember the 2400 baud modems?). Today it’s possible to do things such as double savings (this is where you can use 2 coupons on the same product. One from the store and 1 from the manufacturer), and print all kinds of coupons from the Internet! Since I’m new to this, I can’t vouch for any of the new techniques, so instead I’ll leave you with a great intro to coupon clipping video:

And for you coupon clipper extremists, here is a video about people that really squeeze the old screaming pennies!