Archive for February, 2010

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My Frugal First Talent Show

February 5th, 2010

In our grade school (kindergartner’s thru 4th graders), we have an annual talent show that I attended for the first time.

Talent Show

What was the reasons I waited until this year?

My 6 year old daughter participated in the event this year!  She was suppose to do a hula hoop show, while a song played for 3 minutes.  So I was expecting a interesting but somewhat mundane hula hoop routine.  I was very surprised when she started out as I expected, but then she started doing jumps and then started moving around (pseudo dancing).  The audience clapped at the jumps, but the dancing and moving around floored everybody (especially me).  I was filming her on a camcorder, and actually had to look at her, messing up the frame for a few seconds. Later, I asked my wife if that was part of the rehearsals they were practicing, and she said no (I think she was surprised too). I was very proud, but really I was more amazed than anything else (this is rare for me)!

After my daughter’s 3 minutes spectacular show, I thought everything else would be lame (and there were a few mediocre performances), but I was pleasantly surprise with most of the acts.  There were two 4th grade girls that nailed the Hannah Montana (most of the girls sang these) songs they performed.  In my opinion, there were 3 standouts (my daughter being one of them of course ;) ).

So why am I posting this?

Yes I’m proud of my daughter, but really this is a great form of entertainment!  It’s free and you are supporting your community in spirit and financially if you buy a bag of popcorn ;)

I got especially lucky, because one of the 4th grade girls did two performance that would have rivaled Hannah Montana herself.  The girl (named Katie) did a performance that was performed so well, that people almost stood up (I know I almost did).

I imagine that not all talent shows were as good as the one I went to last night, but it’s entertaining anyway, and occasionally, you’ll get to see that big diamond shine a little more brightly than the other jewels (nobody was rough last night…).

So this is my frugal tip for some free entertainment.  It only happens a few times a year, so check it out if you get the chance!

You might be amazed by some of the performances…  I know I was!

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Grade Your Work To Help Secure Your Job

February 4th, 2010

One of my goals this year is to “Maximize Who I am“, which basically means I’m going to improve myself in all areas that I think I need to improve upon.

Grade your work performance

So with respect to my employment, I decided to grade my work.  The belief is that the higher my perceived grade is, the more secure my job would be at work.

So I decided to go with a weighted average to derive my “Working Grade”.  I decided to have 5 areas that I would grade myself on then I would calculate my overall working grade.  I decided the 5 areas would be skill (Tech), organizational, communication, social networking, work ethic.

I’m IT (Information Technology) services, so for my job the following weighting for each topic would apply (note you topic may have a different weighting):

        Weighted
Weight     Score Scores
4   Skills (Tech) B 3.5 14
3   Organization C 2.5 7.5
3   Communication C 2.5 7.5
2   Work Ethic B 3.5 7
1   Social Networking D 1.5 1.5
13       37.5
        2.88

 

So based on my calculations using weighted averages, my total score is 2.88. so it’s a little bit higher than average ”middle of the road C”, so let’s say I got a “C+”.  What I really need and want is for that score up to a solid ”B” or “B+”.   After all how wants to be average!

I weighted my skills as being more important , because I work with and on computers.  Next, I ranked Communication and Organization as important but not as much as skills.  Having the idea is important, but communicating the idea in a logical and easily understood manner is also very important.

How do you rate (or grade)  in your self-assessment?

 

Update:

I plan on using the grading technique I mention above to help improve my work presence.  The idea is at week end, to calculate a grade for each of the 5 areas that were identified above.  Over time, while the grade in itself may be worthless at face value,  the focus and attempt at improving the grade should provide me with great benefit.

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Stop Waiting For Magical Moments To Happen

February 3rd, 2010

When I was younger, I use to watch movies and television shows where there was a recurring plot.  The “Plot” was that the nice guy (the underdog) typically suddenly has something horrible wrong happen to him/her, then later, things magically turn out to work for them.  This plot is a very risky move in real life, but I see it happen all the time with some of my friends’ behaviors.  Luckily, I broke myself of that kind of thinking early in college. 

Don't go for broke

The problem is I still know people who still uses this kind of thinking around their finances.  They believe that they can spend money they don’t have accumulating massive level of debt because they know that their personal life movie will end successfully with them being a megamillionaire (move over Buffett and Gates!)

Sometimes it may be possible, but most of the time, it doesn’t work out that way.  The people I know don’t become total failures, but they now live a harder life.  If they lived responsibly earlier and presently, they would be much further along financially then they are today.

Another similar problem is when friends make a financial decision (say to buy a stock) and then put the risk in Divine Intervention’s hands.  I had a work colleague that said he invested his money in the company stock and when it halved he said he would reply on Divine Intervention and that it would be okay  Well, surprise, it’s still down by more than 60% of what it was at the high, and when he said that it was 12 years ago.  Divine Intervention didn’t tell him to put money in that stock, why does he think Divine Intervention would tell him when to pull out of it?  Don’t do this, please!  You are making your own financial decisions, and religion doesn’t have a place in picking stocks!

Do you know of people like my work colleague and did it work out for them?

-D

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Living With Money Tightness From Year to Year

February 2nd, 2010

We don’t live Paycheck to Paycheck except for this time of the year.  I got my checking account balance, and it’s dropped below $3,000… YIKES!!!

What happened???

Year end and new Year expenses puts us in bit of a financial bind every year.  Oh, we have the money in the stock market if we need it, but I hate to cash out stocks to pay for domestic expenses…

The Year end problem is Christmas and 2 December birthdays in my family.  And we have 2 cousins with birthdays at the beginning of January.  This hits us a bit hard, but then there is the new Year expense of car insurance and we the fact that we pre-pay our cable bill.  So the credit card bills for Dec and Jan are usually over an extra $1,000 each!

This is why I’m always excited to do my taxes, I claim zero allowances!  So we get a decent chunk of tax money back, and usually my work bonus hits shortly after.  I may have to do my kids taxes this year too, for something called “Kiddie Tax”.

How can I prevent this?

The best way to prevent this would be to:

  • Pay off the house (Feb!!!)
  • Change my tax allowances so I get more during the year.
  • Change the way my insurance bill is billed to me.
  • Purchase Christmas and December Birthday gifts earlier in the year.

If all goes well, this should be the last year of Year end tightness that we experience.

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Why I'm Not As Frugal When It Comes To Raising My Kids

February 1st, 2010

Trying To Frugally Raising Kids

I consider myself a frugally balanced guy!  If there is a way that I can save a buck, without too much hassle, you can bet I’ll try it.  So I don’t wear expensive clothes.  If you were to see me working around my house, you’d think I didn’t have much money and was just scraping by.  I’m the type of guy that will try to make my things last as long as possible.  Even at the expense of the aesthetics of the possession.

So, you’d think that I’d be just as cheap with my family, trying to get my kids to wear there shoes and clothes as long as possible, but this is not so…  I try to get my kids involved in as many sports or extra activities as possible.  I also like to buy them new shoes whenever theirs gets old or too dirty looking.  I try to encourage my wife to make my kids the most healthy meals as possible too (I may have to start cooking a bit more, for this to happen).  I do make my kids buy their own stuff, since they get an allowance.  If it wasn’t for our kids, we wouldn’t have gone to Disney last year…

So what are the Reasons that I’m “less frugal” when it comes to my kids?

  • They only get to be a kid once!  So I try to make it the best I can for them.
  • My son and daughter’s health is very important to me, so I get new shoes when they need them, and try to make sure they get good nutrition.
  • My kids are exceptionally good kids.  They are both a joy to be around, so I try to cut them some slack.
  • My wife is the hard one on them, so I try to buffer out the strictness, life should be fun.
  • I want my kids to have the opportunities I didn’t have as a kid.
  • It’s a different world then when I was a kid, now kids just have more things…

 This is a very tempting area to let “lifestyle creep” get out of control.  I know as my kids get older they will get more expensive.  I’m already starting to think about starting to save money for a car for each of them.  Not to mention the cost of insurance each car will add.  This will be a battle that I will be fighting with myself on.

 I do know if you plan early (I did this with their college saving accounts; it can become a more manageable task).  The trick is to treat future kid expenses as any regular expense early.  If you are young and just starting your family, sock away money in a fund for child expenses now.  Trusts me, it will come in handy later down the road!

I’m trying to achieve the best balance as possible when it comes to being frugal with my kid’s activies and needs.  Luckily, my kids don’t ask for much :)

-D

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