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Archive for the ‘Lemons to Lemonade’ category

Everything Goes Trash Night is Like Bizarro Christmas

April 27th, 2011

Bizarro Santa

Today is almost like a holiday for me! It’s the only day of the year that I do a bizarro twist in my trash routine and actually look forward to taking the trash out!

You see, in my city, once a year the city will pick up anything that doesn’t fix in the trashcan. On this day it’s much like the Bizarro Christmas…

The conversations goes as follows… this toy can go, that toy is broked, goodbye “Mean Green” lawnmower, broken sled, old basketball hoop and broken kite!

It’s a balance, I don’t want to throw everything away, and actually some things were saved by my daughter… Hello old yucky kitchen set that my daughter still wants, hello old but-still-in-decent-shape bike that my son want to give to Goodwill.

Everything Goes Trash night is a busy night for tinkerers! For they play the role of bizarro Santa during this fine reverse Christmas day!

As my wife was sitting in our bedroom, she heard a noisy truck than made such a clatter (the noise woke up my son too). With the TV and lights turned off in both bedrooms, my wife and son in parallel watch as a man in a old red ~~sleigh~~ pickup truck take “Mean Green” (my old broken lawnmower) away.

As I stopped to watch too, I feel guilty knowing that “Mean Green” was pretty busted up and even missing a handle. But that doesn’t stop the tinkerer man, he goes right to work and heaves it onto his truck bed much like Santa does with a bag full of toys as he put them on his red sleigh. The tinkerer didn’t look up and went right to work, shifting his truck to run as it took off with a noisy jerk! I start to wonder if we should have left cookies and milk…

As I’m typing this I can hear the tinkerer’s truck on other stops in the neighborhood. the clanging of other mechanical things onto his truck (which was actually pretty full when he took my lawnmower).

You might think that I’m making fun of this man (the tinkerer), but actually, I think he’s awesome and here’s why:

The tinkerer will try to make something that will work out of the mechanical trash that he collects (but probably not “Mean Green”, because it was very busted up).
The parts that doesn’t work may be recycled as he takes the metal chassis and other pieces of such very broken machines to a metal recycling center. To make money of course!
By salvaging these machines, he is keeping money in the economic system. When the pieces go to the junkyard, these machines/materials leave the economic system. So he is in his own way helping the enconomy. Betcha didn’t see that one coming!
Obviously, the machines he takes partially won’t go to the landfill and this is a very green activity.

So I really like this special day because I get rid of our oddball and large broken trash, but it’s also a very green day with tickerers coming out to save the day!

Bests,

-MR

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Posted in Lemons to Lemonade

Tags: Bizarro Christmas Everything goes trash night trash trash night

5 Ways To Lessen The Duration Of Undesirable Events

January 10th, 2011

Undesirable Events:

As a child, I would dwell on undesirable events such as major tests in college, dentist visits, certain family functions, and so forth. I use to dread the events the very moment I would wake up in the morning, and think negatively about the event for the entire day and sometime into the next day and beyond… So this following advice is for the benefit of someone who still goes through these emotions and for my kids since I’ve noticed that they display some of the same reactions to such undesirable events as I once did.

Drawing out the Duration:

Now that I’m no longer a child, I’ve come to realize that such behavior is both time and thought waste. To dwell on the what ifs and continue to complain about it is a type of opportunity cost, because such efforts are in vain. The are in vain because that’s wasted energy that could be enjoyed doing other things. In stead of enjoying at least a little of the day, I use to go into such a negative spiral that I was miserable for that entire day! Even when the day might have been filled with some great positives, I would take that one small negative and convert my entire day to a negative.

5 ways to Lessen the Duration:

If possible, do the event with speed and effectiveness. To do it slowly and draw it out make the negative event take twice as long! So if you have to do a chore do it quickly and be done with it. As I kid I learned this lesson fairly quickly. The same can be said with homework…
Cap the amount that you let the event affect you. I’ve learned that sometimes I use to make mountains out of mole hills.
If the event is a mindless boring event, use your mind to escape! I’ve been able to think of some great ideas (and even blogging articles) while in such mind-numbing events.
Quickly forget the event. If there is no life lesson (like a dentist appointment visit), forget it as quickly as possible! Why dwell on such a worthless thing to think about (brush your teeth after every meal).
Pepper in some activities before and immediately after the negative event. The activities could be productive activities so that you feel like you accomplished something even though the negative event happened. If you don’t have and productive activities to do, then consider doing cheap positive activities (a walk in the park, a movie and/or dinner, finishing a good book).

View every day as an opportunity to experience or accomplish some positive or at least productive activities.

Readers, we would love to hear if you have any techniques to lessen undesirable events in your life?

-MR

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Posted in Lemons to Lemonade

Tags: lessen bad events negative events opportunity costs

Time To Sell Year End Capital Losses?

December 23rd, 2010

It’s the end of the year and time to consider if it’s wise to sell capital losses from investments or not! I had some stinkers from “The Great Recession” still lingering, so I do have some losses to apply!

Of course, I don’t always get to apply capital losses (luckily) every year because I don’t always have stock losses, but this year I do.

In addition to countering the capital gains I had this year, I decided to use some of my capital losses counter the gains in the earnings I have from blogging. Since my earned income from blogging is low, the capital losses from selling stocks help to reduce my income taxes.

The rules of applying capital losses to earned income is as follows:

Capital losses. Losses on sales of capital assets offset capital gains on a dollar-for-dollar basis. That makes your gains potentially tax-free. Any excess losses can offset as much as $3,000 in other non-capital income. Losses in excess of this $3,000 annual limit in 2005 will be carried forward into your 2006 pot. How much is the $3,000 loss worth at tax time: if you’re in the 25% bracket this year, it’s worth $750. If you’re in the 28% bracket, it’s worth $840. At the top rate of 35%, the deduction trims your taxes by $1,050 — more than a third of the total loss. Check out the article “Sharing your losses with Uncle Sam“ from MSN, that this excerpt was taken from for more details!

So in a nutshell, once your capital losses exceeds your capital gains, you can take up to $3,000 of the losses against other forms of income (earned income in my case this year). If you have capital losses greater than $3,000, you must take that excess loss and apply it to the future year(s). Luckily, I don’t have to carry my loss forward!

So what is a capital gain and a capital loss?
A capital gain is the results when the price of an investment rises above its purchase price when the security is sold (realized gain).

If you bought stock A for $200 and today you sold if from $350, you capital gain is $150. (sell price – investment cost) = capital gain if it’s positive, or capital loss if negative.

The opposite (a capital loss) is if you bought stock B for $100 and today you sold if from $50, you would have a capital loss of -$50. (sell price – investment cost) = capital loss if it’s negative, or capital gain if positive.

So this is my battle plan against the upcoming tax bite, what strategies do you have?

-MR

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Posted in Lemons to Lemonade

Tags: capital losses

Early Thanksgiving Dinner, A New Family Tradition

November 22nd, 2010

A New Thanksgiving Tradition

Every since I’ve been married, our Thanksgiving Dinner would consist of driving to both of our parent’s houses and stuffing ourselves twice. While Thanksgiving dinner was always good when I was single, as a married couple, we always felt bad about leaving so soon to go to the my wife’s parents (that was usually the 2nd stop).

Another thing that really made the experience less enjoyable was the fact that we ate twice as much as we wanted to eat. But to make both sets of our parents happy, we did so anyway.

My sister followed our footsteps, which I thought was crazy since she lived 2 hours away and her husband’s parents lived at least 4 hours away for my parent’s house! But my sister and my brother-in-law continued to do this for the past few years, until…

Along comes Baby:

My sister’s first baby was born in February, and that has made all the difference!

Now for the baby’s sake, my sister doesn’t want to drive 2 hours and then later 4 more hours in one day, so after some discussion, the decision has been made to have Thanksgiving Dinner a week earlier at my parent’s house!

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s house this past weekend, and it was great! We all enjoyed the great meal, and since we weren’t rushed trying to hit two houses, we didn’t leave my parent’s house until 9:00pm.

Games were played, discussions were enjoyed and the baby had plenty of attention! Nobody felt guilty since we spent the entire day there! And instead of having 2 big meal that would later give us indigestion, we enjoy just 1 meal and felt fine after we went home!

If you find yourself in a similar situation, have you considered splitting Thanksgiving dinner up?

We did, and it was great! This is another classic Lemons to Lemonade example.

Thanksgiving is once again an enjoyable holiday for us!!!

-MR

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Tags: Thanksgiving

Family Time – Lemons To Lemonade

September 23rd, 2010

Family Time is worth more than money!

So in this Lemons to Lemonade series, I’m going to cover how to maximize your Family Time with the kids. In particular, I’m going to describe how we turned the sports our kids are in, from Lemons to Lemonade!

First, let me say that Family Time with your kids is worth more than money! It’s something that most of us don’t realize until much later in life, so experience and enjoy it as much as you can. It’s something you can’t buy more of later with money!!!

A friend told my wife that she doesn’t let her kids play sports because she cherishes their family time too much.

This got my wife to think about family time and if sports like soccer was gobbling up too much valuable family time…

She came to the conclusion that it wasn’t and here are the reasons why:

Watching and rooting for you kids in sports is great for the entire family. And it give our kids a confidence boost knowing that the family (including grandparents, aunts and uncles) came out to support them.
We have 2 kids, so while one is out, we interact with the other one. Sometimes, when my son is on the bench for a rotation, we’ll practices soccer stuff with my daughter, and of course vice versa. Often we have a good time because it gets silly . This time is enjoyed by all of us!
The driving time is practically forced time for the kids to interact with us socially. Both my wife and I really enjoy the chats in the car when driving the kids to their games!
We interact with other parents, and they’ll cheer our kids on (and we cheer their kids on too). As a kid, I would think it’s extra exciting hearing non-family members cheer for you!
Many times, we’ll go out to eat after the games, especially on longer, away games. This is a treat for us all, in addition to the extra family time we experience.

So the lemons to lemonade process that we accomplished with the kid’s soccer games is to take an activity that could be considered a chore (Mom’s taxi service, etc), and converted it into an excellent opportunity for quality family time!

Often I find that it only takes a little to change a negative to a positive.

Do you have any lemon to lemonade stories that you would like to share?

-MR

Did you like this kind of story, if so, check out my first in the “Lemon to Lemonade” series: Lemons to Lemonade Series #1 – Long Commute Drives

Also, related to this Lemon to Lemonade series is my guest post on Cash Flow Sherpas called: Saving Money and Time With Audiobooks!

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Posted in Lemons to Lemonade

Tags: family time kid time Lemons to Lemonade soccer soccer time