Money Reasons

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Archive for November, 2010

Watching NFL Football, The Best and Worst Value For Your Money

November 15th, 2010

Today, I’d like to talk about the value of being entertained by NFL Football games.

First, I’d like to talk about the value of buy a ticket and going to the actual football game at the stadium!

Attending a NFL football games in a stadium can be incredibly expensive versus the value gained!

What happens if your team loses?
Is it really worth waiting in the traffic driving to and from the game?
Does your stadium vendors take all credit cards? My team’s stadium only takes Visa, but I own mostly MasterCard credit cards…
Do you like to buy small $5.00 plastic cups of beer? I don’t…
Did I mention the cost of the hotdogs? Talk about a monopoly…
At least the crowds are always so courteous and respectful (lol)
Often time, you can only go with a family member or few friends. After all, who else can afford it? I can’t…

If you are younger, perhaps it would be a better experience to just tailgate before and during the game?

Now we’ll consider the best value of the NFL entertainment.

At home Football parties! If these are rotated between your friend’s houses, it can be a great time!
Fantasy football! For some, this will make football very enjoyable (I know I do via this game). Being at home means you can sit on the waiver wire (am I being too obsessive…, perhaps a bit)
This can also be a great family experience. We all root for our home team.
Buying beer, pop and food at home (for a party) is much cheaper than the cost of stadium food!
No long drives home!
You can invite all your friends, and their friends over.
You can root more loudly, and laugh more fully!

So I guess it comes down to how you value your NFL football viewing experience!

It’s definitely worth going to the stadium a few times just to experience the raw enthusiasm and emotions of the crowd.

Everybody has their own individual take on the it, but as a frugal personal finance blogger, I go for what I consider the maximum value! So I usually pass on going to the stadium (unless I can go for free, thanks to richer friends)! Besides, I have a better time at home with friends, where it’s affordable.

Am I missing some additional value to be gained by going to the statium? Please do tell…

Occasionally, we go to the home high school football stadium games where we support our high school team, perhaps that’s enough stadium experience for us.

-MR

11 comments »

Posted in Environment

Tags: cheap entertainment football football value

MR Cache 2010, Nov 14 – Time is Moving Fast

November 14th, 2010

Weekly Thoughts:

All of a sudden, it’s like both of my kids can walk on water! I’m not sure when this happened, but they both raised their game to levels I haven’t seen before!

My daughter who has been creating books from stapling together printer paper can now draw almost as well as I can. Her stories are great too, I’m amazed! Talking to this 6-year-old is quite literally like talking to an adult (very unnerving, but it’s always been that way with her). She’s constantly amazing me!

And my son… He made a goal today in soccer without even trying, or so it seemed. All of a sudden, his wit and cleverness has emerged! He now has much better focus. A great example of this focus, was when he tried to sign up for an online game account. It wouldn’t work, and after 5 minutes I said the site must be down and to try later (effectively giving up for the day). He kept hammering away at it though, and eventually he got his account created correctly.

Kudos to both of them, they are growing up so fast! Yeah, I’m proud!

My Favorite Reads of the Week:

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: Sneaky Pay Cut - BIFS gets a raise from her employer, but her other business expenses (insurance) increase so that she’s actually bringing home less! I think we all know where she is coming from! Read her article, tell her if you sympathise!

Buy Like Buffett: How To Make Money While In College - Sounds like some pretty good ideas! Other than temp agency jobs and student assistant jobs, I didn’t do much innovating while in college. If you are in college, check this out!

Cash Flow Sherpa: Personal Finance, Meet Online Gaming - I usually don’t have a new product release as one of my favorite reads, but this is exciting. The new GreenSherpa product combines financing and gaming (how cool is that!). I always thought their product look great, but now it’s free! Very cool! It sounds like a win-win to me!**

Everyday Tips And Thoughts: My Dream Retirement… - Kris always writes great articles, but this post really show you her abilities as a great writer. I came away from this one wanting to read much, much more. Check out this great post to see if you agree!!!

Free From Broke: Does it Make Sense to Rent Appliances or Furniture? - I usually don’t include giveaway in my lineup, but FFB has what I consider to be a pretty original giveaway! It’s a $50 dollar visa gift certificate sponsered by Rent-A-Center!

Get Rich Slowly: Make More Money: How to Supercharge Your Income - A great collection of how to make more money. A great resource that I’ve personally bookmarked in my browser!

Yakezie: Yakezie Member Post – Financial Samurai - Sam tells his story. In a short period of time, Sam was able to create a popular and growing blog, a world class financial network, and still have a high-caliber job to boot. Sam is the man. See if you agree with me!

Watson Inc.: What Are Your Financial Regrets? - Shawn writes yet another extremely well written article! Please do yourself a favor and go read this revealing article on his financial regrets, I’m sure you’ll find that it’s worth while read!

My most Popular Post from the Week:

This week it was Me Me Me, It’s All About Me, After My Family First! This was a “Who I am” response to the blogger at 7Million7Years.com (who has a pretty cool site overall)…

Closing Thoughts:

**First let me say that I’m not being compensated for the link above to the Greensherpa product. I really do think that it sounds like an exciting product! I actually signed up to try it out! I hope it rocks!

I know that there was some great blogs that I forgot in my lineup, but it’s 2:42am, and I’m tired.

It seems like everything going on around me is starting to pick up momentum. I need to start running faster too!

-MR

16 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: weekly cache

Funny Money Comic 5 – Mr. Penny is Making a List

November 13th, 2010

Previous: Comic 4 – Mr. Penny Learning Finances

Comic Strip Notes:

I’m ready for Christmas to come this year! I’ve even seen a few houses all decked out with Christmas Decorations!

Links to 3 Funny or Interesting Sites:

Grumble Rumblings Of The Untenured: Videos on fixing things - I intended on linking to something funny on Nicole and Maggie”s site, but this article was so darn useful, I had to include it instead! Check it out if you need to fix something that is broke!

Len Penzo: http://www.lenpenzo.com/ - Len’s site is both funny and a very entertaining read. Soak it all in because even his homepage has very funny elements!

MacHall: http://www.machall.com/ - I included this site because of the incredible artist that created this not defunct comic series. It’s still worth going back into the archive and checking out the artwork, then the humor.

Thanks for stopping by!

-MR

14 comments »

Posted in Humor

Tags: comic funny money Mr Penny

Do Movies and TV Shows Affect Your Purchasing Decisions?

November 12th, 2010

When we were kids, we would see some cool product that a commercial was pushing, come on the TV and we would desperately want it! This still works with some adults that were conditioned to respond to those ads, by being spoiled as a child!

Those commercials were very effective, and reminds me of the movie Star Wars, where a Jedi would use a Jedi mind trick! Envision Obi Wan saying “You want to buy the Apple Ipad“!

After a while, clever, witty ads and sheer repetition of those ads, convince us that we really do need whatever they are trying to sell! Perhaps some people think that owning “this or that” will make them a better person, or at least more popular? Perhaps they do get some attention at first, but eventually the novelty wears off.

The question is “Does the temporary attention gained via the high cost of the TV Show/movie product worth it”?

Another slick trick that is used to convince you some product is cool is the inclusion of the product in movies with popular actors and actresses!

Perhaps, if you’re a guy, knowing that Brad Pitt drives a certain car in a movie plants in your mind that you could win a Angela Jolie look-a-like… if you drive such a car?!?

My wife and I laugh at the products that don’t fit the character’s role… you know the product makers have to pay a pretty penny to have their product included in such a blockbuster, especially when the products are nerdy and don’t fit the movie well!

There’s an old saying “There’s a sucker born every minute“… Please don’t be one! Use your common sense before being persuaded into buying such products based on a movie/TV show… No matter what Hannah Montana says…

-MR

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27 comments »

Posted in Entertainment

Tags: jedi mind trick movie tv show

Me Me Me, It’s All About Me, After My Family First!

November 11th, 2010

My entire financial existence just got judged based on one particular post on my blog. The blogger assumed that my whole financial existence was focused on declaring war on debt (perhaps he’s getting me confused with the much larger and well established blogger: Enemy Of Debt, but so be it).

This blogger posted about how I didn’t do investments, such as 401ks, 529s or any other type of investments… HA!

Since 2000, I’ve been contributing to my 401k, and since mid 2008 I bumped it up to the maximum amount (yeah, I jumped in with both feet while the market was at its lowest! I believe the Buffett saying: ”Be fearful when other are greedy and greedy when others are fearful“).

I also have a 529 plan for each kid that I expect to be well over $100,000 for each kid, when they are 18.

I also have a Roth IRA, HSA, and an online brokerage account .

I been a shareholder in various stocks since I was 6 years old, and I’ve made my share of mistakes!

Needless to say, the other blogger at 7million7years took a glance at my post and made a lot of incorrect assumptions about me!

But even with the assumptions corrected, his approach is still drastically different from mine.

His approach is more about becoming a higher level of rich than what I am striving for. Actually, he might already be at this level, I’ve only read a few of his posts on his site, so I can’t really make a solid judgement of his financial being. I applaud him for his efforts but that approach only works for less that 5% of the population (I’m guessing, but I’m also betting that my number is conservative too and the percentage is really closer to less than 2%).

But my approach is different! You see I come from a family of entrepreneurs, but I chose a different path.

After growing up without learning practically anything from my dad (for example, how to catch a ball, riding my bike, batting, swimming.. you name it) since he was always worked 80+ hours per week at his business, I decided I didn’t want my kids to grow up like that!

Since I’ve been an employee for a good chunk of my life, during the times when I’m not at work, was able I teach both of my kids how to ride their bikes, (they learned swimming at the local recreation center), hit the ball with a bat, catch the ball, throw a football, and other sports exercises. I’ve done numerous things with both, and in this respect, I’m light years away from when my dad was at the same point in time.

Yes, my net worth is less than someone like my dad, but my family is happy!

I hope this clears up any confusion about me vs the other blogger’s lacking interpretation of me!

-MR

34 comments »

Posted in Problems

Tags: misguided intrepretation