Money Reasons

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Archive for June, 2010

Daughter Injured, Almost A Costly Emergency Room Visit

June 15th, 2010

My daughter was riding on her Razor Scooter down a big hill when she took a very bad spill. A neighbor carried her to the house, and when I came downstairs (because of the crying), she was a bloody mess (literally).

I hate when my kids stub their toes let alone are bleeding in multiple places! When my kids are injured, I go in an extreme panic mode and always want to fly off to the hospital. I’m not quite as bad as I was when my son was a toddler, but it’s still there to some degree.

Luckily, my wife is a little more calm than I am (although she said she felt sick to her stomach too, seeing my daughter so badly hurt). My daughter had very bad scrapes from hitting the concrete with her knees (her left one looked more like half of a red ball replaced her knee… it was so bad), elbow, fingers, lip and forehead.

Her left front tooth socket was even bleeding! I got a flashlight and checked to make sure her jaw and gums weren’t damaged, then relaxed a bit more once I determined it wasn’t that bad. I then check her knee and elbow, the elbow was fine, and she was able to walk, so we chalked it up to just bad scraps.

So the problem in these scenarios is that we shouldn’t overreact! Even though your child may be screaming bloody murder, they might be better than they appear and sound!

Just a quick check on your injured child could save you from an expensive hospital visit. I have a friends wife who runs the kids to the emergency room even for colds with a moderately high fever. This is why health insurance is so high!

-MR

17 comments »

Posted in Kids

Tags: costly emergency room injured daughter

The Joneses Are Moving To A Larger House

June 14th, 2010

The great neighbor that lived across the street is moving. Basically, they are moving to a richer neighborhood (he’s an attorney and his wife is a nurse).

They bring in more income than we do… probably at least double the amount…

So just for some background information, their house is probably worth about $220,000 to $250,000 which in our city is a pretty decent house. They are moving to a house that is in the range of $400,000 to $500,000.

I think it’s a bad move, here’s why:

They are only moving about 1 mile from where they live now.
The Elementary School their kids will go to will be a worse one that they are currently at (more crowded, and a bit rougher).
Based on who much they put into the house across the street, I’d say they are losing about $10,000 to $20,000 in enhancements and upgrades.
The economy isn’t that great, anything is still possible.
They need to start to build their non-retirement financial assets. I know they have a lot of credit card debt.
They would have had their original house paid off in another 5 years.
Their real estate taxes will increase by double (so it will be $6,000 a year).
They’ll gut and refinish the new house like they did with the old one. I’m not even going to guess how much that will cost.
They oldest kid is 14 and I don’t believe they have started saying for college yet for her.

So basically they are going to pay more that what it appears for this new house. At least they did get to take advantage of the fed tax credits for moving!

What do you think of such a move? To me it seems like a pretty large expense!

-MR

21 comments »

Posted in Expenses, Family

Tags: joneses moving lifestyle inflation moving neighbor

Money Reasons Weekly Cache 2010, June 13 Drive

June 13th, 2010

Money Reasons Weekly Cache 2010, June 13

Weekly Thoughts:

This week we went to our local Drive-In Theater! The drive in experience was great (as usually), but the movie was just so-so… Life is often like that, sometimes you have to make the best of an experience even when it’s not perfect! My kids still enjoyed the movie, and if they are happy, I’m happy!

My Favorite Reads of the Week:

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: Fit in a Fun Friday – Ghost Stories – I liked this post because of the great potential for having a sleep over with old friends! I think Crystal is on to a great idea!

Early Retirement Extreme: The frugal challenge – Jacob is going a frugal challenge! This is the challenge to take! Much can be learned from Jacob’s site.

Sweating the Big Stuff: Surviving the Rags to Get to the Riches – Interesting information about the jobs that stars did before they become rich and famous, also very good tip on staying positive and inspirational.

Little House In The Valley: Who are the Real “Joneses?” – Little House finished the book “The Millionaire Next Door” and gives her revies. But even more importantly, LH explains where the saying “Keeping Up the the Joneses” comes from. I learned something new for that day!!!

Engineer your Finances: Fraud Prevention in Under 5 Minutes – This is some great inforamation and I recommend all my readers to check it out!

Ultimate Money Blog: What can you Compost? a List of Compostables – Truly a great list of compostables, there are even a few surprises in the list!!!

Wealth Pilgrim: IRA Beneficiary Rules You Need To Know But Don’t – Definitely something that everybody should know! In addition, perhaps even review your 401K beneficiaries too (I’m not sure if that applies or not, but you should play it safe!).

Free From Broke: When You Save Are You Really Saving? – This post actually got me to realize that the commercial media really does brainwash us into thinking we are saving money on purchases. People say they save money on an item, but “Saving Money” means putting it in the bank, so who can saving be spending?

Well Heeled Blog: 5 Little Habits Now That Can Save You Big Money Later – These are some great tips! My grandfather violated 2 of the (sunscreen and smoke), and later got both skin and lung cancer! So not only will it save you money, it may save your life! She also has: Sushi: An Expensive Culinary Habit – What can I say! I love spicy Sushi!

Financial Samurai & The Amateur Financier: In the post “Only The Poor or Super Rich Say, “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”“, Sam convinced me that: Money really can happiness, and Roger with “Can Money Not Really Buy Happiness” add a lot of value and reference links to back Sam’s idea. Both are great reads! Start with Sam’s post first to discover what go the wheel rolling on the evolution of this point, then check out Roger’s post for more great info!

My Favorite Post from Money Reasons This Week:

The Rich Employee at McDonalds – I blog about Clark Kent, and his unusual attitude towards working at McDonalds. I also talk about this unforseen benefits!

Carnivals that I’m in:

Deliver Away Debt’s 600 Money Tips!

Closing Thoughts:

This week was full of things I learned, the biggest being the origins of the saying “Keeping up with the Joneses”! Learning new things (even simple ones) always makes for a good week!

I’m going to conclude this day by watching “The Majestic” staring Jim Carey! It’s a pretty good movie.

-MR

6 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: Money Cache The Joneses

My Movie Secret Frugal Weapon

June 12th, 2010

Do you really want to see this movie?

Bad Movie

I hate to waste my time and money on movies that suck! When I was a teenager, there were a few movies that I looked forwards to seeing, spent the money for the movie and popcorn, only to walk out after the first 10 minutes (“The Barbarian Brothers” is a prime example). Back then, I was defenseless against such movies and ofter got crushed with disappointment!

Today, life is different because of my secret weapon (drumroll …) IMDB.com, yep that’s right the website IMBD.com - ”Internet Movie Database” is my secret weapon to combat movies that suck, whether they are new original sucky movies or lesser quality remakes of the older movies.

It has saved me from re-made movies like “When Day The Earth Stood Still” and “The Pink Panther” etc…

So how does it work, you might ask?

Well it’s really simple, just type the movie that your thinking of seeing, and it will pop up facts about it and a ranking from 1 to 10 on how people like you and I feel about the movie. This is one example where the we (the masses) rule!

The one drawback (an one I consider worth taking) is that often times it’s best to wait at least a week after the movie has been released before going to see it. That way, the movie has a more accurate rating!

So what prompted me to write this? My kids want to see “The Karate Kid” remake, but it only has a present rating of 4.6 (as a comparison, the sucky movie “The Barbarian Brother” is rated at 4.1)?

The older version of “The Karate Kid” has almost a 7.0 rating! So why are we going to see a much lower quality version of the film instead of just borrowing the original from the library and watching that version instead?… The kids and wife, that’s why!

Since my wife and kids want to go, we’re going to an old fashion drive-in theater that is close by (cool experience with a decent movie). So here we go to watch a sucky remake instead of borrowing the original and watching an decent film. The best feature of the original was the chemistry between Daniel-san and Myagi. Shoot they don’t even have Myagi in the remake… instead the character is Jackie Chan playing Mr. Hans (or something like that)? Shoot, what made the original a good film was the portray of those two characters, not another action film…

Thanks for listening to my rant! Now you know one of my favorite weapons to combat wasting money and time on bad movies.

Do you have any secret frugal weapons?

-MR

Update: Okay, I’m back from the Drive-In, and as I expected the story wasn’t as good as the original. I think the rating is pretty accurate, it might float up to closert to a 5.0… The acting was just okay, and some scenes didn’t really transition well… The original “The Karate Kid” was definitely better…

8 comments »

Posted in Entertainment

Tags: avoiding bad movies secret frugal weapon

Is It Easier To Be Financially Successful In California?

June 11th, 2010

While reading a post called “East Coast Living – Is It Really That Bad?” at the ever popular pf (personal finance) blog site: Financial Samurai, Sam pretends to try and justify the reasons that people would choose to live on the East Coast instead of the West Coast (and in particular San Fran), all the while really identifying why the West Coast is a superior place to live.

Like most articles Sam writes, it was a cleverly controversial piece and is designed to make you think hard about the reasons you do live anywhere else other than California (or the West Coast). While reading it, my mind wandered like it sometimes does… and I started thinking perhaps the Sunshine state really does have a financial advantage over the other states on the East Coast (and the midwestern states too for that matter).

Advantages of the perfect weather in California (in particular San Francisco):

More sunlight during winter months which may induce a more pleasant state of being. There has been studies that promote the idea that winter blahs are caused by the reduced sunlight, which leads to a form of temporary depression.
They have less rainy days, so the residents can be more active and get more done.
Reduced heating and cooling utility bills, since they have perfect weather.
A consistent temperature! Since San Francisco has the optimal weather, logic would dictate that the people living there would also be operating optimally.

Or maybe I’m wrong, perhaps this environment is so pleasant that the perfect state of being is a distraction with all of the great things to be done in such a perfect, consistent climate? Perhaps it’s easy to forgo doing work and instead go out and enjoy the endless supply of perfect days?

Since California has the most millionaires of all the states, I’d would say that the theory that the perfect weather aids in your financial success might be plausible! Or is it a spurious correlation?

Without the seasons, I wonder if time seems to slip by more quickly for those living in a perfect climate? I hope it’s not like you move to Cali when you are in your 20s, and then the next day your are in your 60s and retired? Maybe life isn’t as fulfilling without a bit of hardships (or nasty weather) to overcome? Or perhaps people work harder to create their own challenges?

Does this make sense or am I way out in left field?

-MR

19 comments »

Posted in Environment

Tags: california millionaire state perfect weather