5 Life Classes To Fix Me

October 30, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

Got tagged by my online coupons buddy, Andrew, over at his blog Everybody Loves Coupons with a meme about going back to school and picking 5 classes to fix my sorry existence. Apparently the rules go like this, “Devise a list of 5-10 courses you would take to fix your life. It’s more fun to be in classes with friends, so include one class from the person who tagged you that you’d also like to take. Tag five.” Since I want to stay accurate to my school days and only do the minimum required, I have picked 5 classes. Here goes nothing.

  1. Tennis 101 - About a month ago I started playing again with a buddy of mine. I quickly remembered why I had given it up. I do grunt a lot which makes me appear better than I actually am. Just ask Monica Seles.
  2. Plumbing 101 - I have 2 left feet and I can’t hold a pipe wrench in either one. I have had some nice little plumbing disasters in my home and could really benefit from a plumbing class.
  3. Winning Contests 101 - I would love to know the secrets behind winning some of these great contests I have noticed around the blogosphere recently. For instance, I saw this really generous guy was giving away a Nintendo Wii on his blog. Dang, he must make a ton of money from his online coupons business! Go check it out, you may win a Wii for yourself.
  4. Nintendo Wii 101 - After I win aforementioned Wii I am going to need some lessons so I can beat my five year old at Wii golf and Wii tennis. I should starting asking around right now on the Kindergarten playground who would be a good mentor for me.
  5. Guitar 101 – My wife bought me a nice Yamaha acoustic guitar for Christmas a couple years ago and I would love to take some lessons so I could actually play something recognizable.

Time to pass this bad boy along to some blogs I enjoy reading. No pressure guys, only if it interests ya.

  • A Penny Closer – Revenge is sweet Melissa.
  • Being Frugal.net – My online neighbor just up I-5.
  • Lords of the Manor – A blog I recently discovered and enjoy with the tagline “Ramblings of the semi-lucid.” Love it!
  • Mrs. Micah – Great blog on finance and life. At only 22, she is wise beyond her years.
  • Moolanomy – Pinyo has a nice personal finance blog and I think would be a good fit for this meme.
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Define Your Goals, The Wealthy Janitor, Part 4

October 26, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

Part 4 – Define Your Goals. My friend, ‘The Wealthy Janitor’, and I, always end of talking about investing and retirement savings as I love to pick his brain about this stuff. He always talks about the importance of defining your goals and what retirement means to you.

Why Define Your Retirement Goals?

He has told me to define what I actually want out of retirement, whether I want to travel a lot or play golf everyday, or just drink coffee and play cards with old buddies. He stresses the importance of this so you can better figure out how much money you may need and when enough is enough. No sense putting off today if your plan for tomorrow is already sufficient. He uses a general rule of thumb that your savings + Social Security and any pension you receive should provide you with at least 70% of your pre-retirement income. This percentage would obviously need to be higher if I planned to travel the world with my wife. And perhaps lower if I planned to generate some income by making things to sell in my wood shop in the garage and not spend money on lavish vacations. You get the point.

I also remember him stressing the difficulty many have figuring out when to retire. You want to be young enough to still do the things you want to do and have enough money to do it, but on the flip side, you don’t want to wait to long and not be physically able to get everything out of retirement. Finding that balance can be a tricky thing.

Check out all of ‘The Wealthy Janitor’ series:

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Random Frugal Thoughts (Help Needed)

October 25, 2007 · Filed Under · 16 Comments 

Over the past 24 hours I have done some staring off into space in search of answers. Frugal answers of course. Here is what I need help with, as the staring off into space has only given me drool spots on my shirt collar.

  • Kill the ants NOW. How can I kill the ants that are coming into our kitchen on a nightly basis. I can’t seem to find where they are coming from. And when I do (and I will dammit), what can I use that won’t cost a lot and is kid friendly (is there such a thing, perhaps a home remedy?)
  • Messy Firewood. My wife gives me the evil eye when I bring in firewood and some sawdust, tiny piece of bark, or some dead insect part falls on her clean tile floor. I try to shake anything off the wood before I bring it in, but without fail, something almost always falls off. Anything I can do to avoid this? Anybody use some type of wood carrier?
  • My rain gutter keeps clogging. Has anybody had any success with those rain gutter, wire mesh, guard thingee, that keeps leaves from clogging your gutters and downspouts? If so, can you make them yourself?
  • How to get stains out? Lastly, anybody have a good tip on getting stains out? My wife is always asking her friends what they use as she is not happy with what she does. She has not gotten any good answers. I believe she currently uses Spray n Wash to fight the battle. Also, do you know if it will take drool stains out of shirt collars?

All suggestions welcomed!!

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Halloween Is Expensive – Trip To The Farm Left My Pockets Empty!

October 23, 2007 · Filed Under · 4 Comments 

So on Sunday my wife and I rounded up our three kids and headed to Hawes Farm, a local harvest farm, pumpkin patch, corn maze, hay ride, $3 bottle of water, $6 pumpkin, kinda place. I knew my wallet was in for a beating when I stepped up to the window to pay and was told each kid was $10 for a child pass which let them do all the games, rides, and unlimited use of the blue portable pit toilets. O.K., so I was willing to go along with the $10 for each kid, heck we only do this once a year. But then I was told that my wife and I had to pay $7.50 each for what they termed “adult spectator fee”. I said to the farm lady behind the plexiglass in my slightly irritated voice, “Let me get this straight, we have to pay $7.50 each so we can watch our kids play?” She replies, “Yes, it is like the county fair where everyone has to pay.”  I think to myself, “well at least at the fair they have exhibits that I find interesting plus deep fried everything!” So what is a Dad suppose to do? My kids are totally jazzed to get in the farm and at this point my 3-year old daughter (the horse fanatic) is drooling at the mouth upon spotting the horse drawn hay ride. So I whip out the credit card and $35 dollars later we are all sporting colorful wristbands and heading for the blue pit toilets. My daughter has a bladder the size of a kernel of corn.

The kids get their “farm on” for a couple hours and it is very pleasant, not very crowded and plenty of fun activities. Tired of country music blaring in our ears, my wife and I decide it is time to head for the pumpkin patch to let the kids each pick out the infamous orange squash. My first mistake was several hours earlier in the car ride when in the excitement of the season, I said, “kids we should get some big old pumpkins to carve this year!” So upon entering the pumpkin patch anything under 50 pounds was immediately scoffed at by my little ones. Finally, I was able to talk them both into pumpkins that were of slightly above average size and that I was reasonably confident I could load into the mini-van without causing a hernia. Again I make the walk of shame to the lady behind the plexiglass window and one by one she weighs my catch and finally proclaims, “That will be $16.25 please.” Turns out we had 56 pounds of squash and at 29 cents a pound….say goodbye to my last crisp twenty dollar bill. I think I will do a post tomorrow on some more affordable Halloween activities!!

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5 Things I Bought New and Wish I Hadn’t

October 19, 2007 · Filed Under · 15 Comments 

My 5 year old son played his first year of tee-ball this past spring and when a kid would swing and miss the coach would yell “do-over, try it again Timmy!”  Boy, I wish I had a few “do-over” cards in my wallet. I would use them to call a do-over on some of my bad buying decision that I made over the past several years. Here are my 5 “do-overs”, all of which had cheaper used alternatives.

  1. My 2004 Chevy 2500 Crew Cab Truck. I love my truck, don’t get me wrong, living on 3 acres I use it all the time to haul firewood, rock, gravel, bark, luggage for a family of 5, you get the point. But if I could do it over, I would have done more research before I bought it. I knew I wanted the Crew Cab with the 4 standard sized doors, it was the only way we could get all of us in the truck with child seats to go anywhere together. But I failed to do my research because little did I know that the following year Chevy was going to come out with the 1500 Crew Cab which cost a lot less than my gas guzzler, plus it got better gas mileage due to the smaller engine. I am sure that I could have found this out and waited another six months for it to hit the dealerships. But I was impulsive and my brain got caught up in the ‘I want it now’ mentality. At the very least I should have researched a used crew cab truck with 20k to 30k miles on it and saved a lot of money that way.
  2. Gold’s Gym Weight Set. This is a no brainer, I bought this set new at Wal-Mart for $139, a few weeks later I saw it at Play It Again Sports for $69, and it was in excellent shape. This really holds true for all sporting goods. You can always get a great deal on used stuff at Play It Again, eBay, Craig’s List, etc.
  3. Apple iPod MP3 Player. If you are interested in getting an iPod, check the Apple Store online because they have some great deals on refurbished iPods that come with the full 1-year manufacturers warranty and are Apple certified. I wish I had done this, I would have saved $50 on my 30GB iPod.
  4. Jeans, any kind of jeans. Why would you ever pay full retail price for a pair of jeans when you can get the more popular, worn in pair, at any thrift store across the country. I noticed the other day at the mall that a store was selling a pair of holy (not religious), faded, worn hems, with paint splattered on them for $49.99. Heck, I can buy a similar pair at Goodwill for $5 and add my own semi-gloss at home….I will never buy new jeans again!
  5. Books, CDs, and DVDs. I was waiting for my connecting flight at the San Francisco airport on Monday and was killing time in the airport music store, the store should have been called Ripoff Tunes. They wanted $19.99 for a music CD! Now I realize it is the airport, but even your discount stores sell new CDs for close to $15. Never again, especially since most CDs only have 1 or 2 songs that I like. Nowadays I just download the songs I want for .99  cents each. I use buy.com, iTunes Store, and Amazon.com. Cheaper alternatives to “new” abound for books and DVDs as well, I will shop at used bookstores and buy used DVDs. Just make sure to check the back of the DVDs for scratches.

Give me your list of stuff that should be bought used instead of new. Furniture, artwork, and home decor also comes to mind. Come on, did you acutally buy that talking fish hanging from your living room wall new!

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My One Money Advice

October 18, 2007 · Filed Under · 7 Comments 

money.jpgI always enjoy reading the blog A Penny Closer, and today I got tagged be the blog owner, Melissa, asking for My One Money Advice. It was a nice little honor that she would consider me. Thanks Melissa! So with no further ado here is ‘My One Money Advice.’

Keep Your Money Green!

When I found myself in credit card debt up to my eyeballs I started using cash as much as possible and only carried one credit with a small credit limit for emergency purposes only. By keeping my money green rather than in the form of plastic it made it much harder to impulse shop and buy things that I could not afford. It was the best money move I ever made! When you pay with cash, you see the cash go bye-bye and it makes a big impact psychologically. It was very hard for me to overspend using this money technique.

Pass It Along

I recently found a few new blogs that are very well done and have some great info that I would enjoy hearing from on their one piece of money advice. They are Sorta Frugal, Swamproot, and Ramblings Of A Redneck Woman. No pressure, only if it interests ya.

NOTE: For some more great money advice, check out the where this MEME all started at Moolanomy.com by Pinyo. Excellent reading!

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Risk Assessment, The Wealthy Janitor, Part 3

October 18, 2007 · Filed Under · 1 Comment 

Wealthy Janitor, Part 3Part 3 – How Much Risk To Assume. Investing in stocks, by nature, carries with it more risk than investing in bonds. When I started investing in my retirement account, I remember asking my friend, “the wealthy janitor”, should I invest my money more in stocks or bonds? I was in my late 20′s, a newbie to the whole investing thing and searching for advice. I came home and immediately wrote down what he said, “Kyle, you should be more invested in stocks because you have a long time until retirement and can take on more risk.” He went on to tell me that as I young person with over 30 years until retirement, I can handle the ups and downs of the stock market since I am invested for the long term and not short term gains.

Cool Trick To Determine Your Diversification

I found a cool trick on CNN Money.com that helps you determine how much of your retirement portfolio should be in stocks and how much should be in bonds. What you do is subtract your age from 120. At 33 years old, my number would be 120-33 = 87. This means I should have 87% of my retirement portfolio in stocks and 13% in bonds. This is a good rule of thumb. Part 4 in a few days!

Check out all of ‘The Wealthy Janitor’ series:

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Gave OnStar the Ax, A Solid Frugal Lifestyle Move?

October 17, 2007 · Filed Under · 5 Comments 

OnStarI was driving home from the Sacramento airport on Monday and decided to cancel my OnStar subscription. I hit the blue button on my rear-view mirror and had my subscription cancelled in under a minute. To OnStar’s credit, they did not give me the 5 minute spiel about what a terrible mistake I was making and how I was going to bleed to death in my truck in some back country ravine in the next month!

The only reason I was tempted to keep OnStar was because I don’t have a cell phone. I know, call me a mountain man, but I always liked not being able to be reached when I was out of my home. But after traveling out of state over the weekend I sure could have used a cell phone on several occasions. My OnStar phone was not doing me a whole lot of good sitting in the Economy Parking Lot at the airport! OnStar was costing me about $16 a month plus minutes which I had to buy separately. So I think I will look into getting a cell phone added to my wife’s Verizon account. She seems to think we can get another cell phone added for around $25 a month. I only want a basic cell phone, don’t need the phone with a camera and internet access that will also wash my car for me.

I consider this a frugal lifestyle move not because I have eliminated the OnStar expense, but because I have taken a closer look at what benefit I am getting from money spent. For me, part of being frugal means getting the most usefulness out of each dollar you spend every month. I rarely used OnStar but felt like it was a good idea in case of emergency. But a cell phone would provide the same benefit plus I can take it everywhere. Then when I don’t want to be reached I can just reach for the power button and turn the dang thing off!

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Make It Automatic, The Wealthy Janitor, Part 2

October 11, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

Wealthy JanitorPart 2 – Save Money Without Thinking About It. My friend, “the wealthy janitor”, is very proud of how he always has a percentage of his paycheck automatically taken out every month to go towards his retirement account. That way, he says, he never has to think about it and it is just taken care of every month. He always tells me, “Kyle, you won’t miss what you never had.” True words of wisdom!

Many companies today allow you to contribute to your 401k plan automatically every month. The money is just deducted from your paycheck and put in your retirement account. This is a great idea! You should definitely take advantage of this service, especially if the company you work for has a matching program. Personally, since I work for myself, I never followed this advice. I just make a yearly lump sum payment into my retirement account. Although, to follow my own advice, I may see if my bank will make an automatic payment every month from my checking account into a high interest online savings account like ING. Part 3 in a few days.

Check out Part 1 of this series:

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Financial Decisions: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

October 10, 2007 · Filed Under · 8 Comments 

Million Dollar BillA $60,000 golf membership, a huge student loan for a degree that was never completed, and expensive brand new cars made the list of bad financial decisions from the M-Network. This is a group of 11 great personal finance blogs, and recently they have been talking about their worst and best financial decisions. Some very interesting reading. It made me ponder my own good and bad money moves over the course of my adulthood. So I decided to put fingers to keys and join in the discussion.

First Off: The Good

Now this one is easy for me. Back in 2002 my business had a great year and when it came tax time my accountant gave my wife and I the advice of opening a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA. The advantages of the SEP was that I could contribute more than I could to a Roth IRA and there were no administrative costs since I was self employed and had no employees. As a matter of fact, I could contribute either $42,000 or 25% of my income before tax, whichever is less. Since I was in a pretty high tax bracket, essentially the government was funding a BIG chunk of my retirement account. It really was a great move, but I remember how hard it was at the time to lock up such a large amount of money in our retirement account. Although I am really glad I did because it has grown by over 25% over the past few years.

Now The Bad & The Ugly

Eeek…this part makes my shutter. Here are the top 5 bad and ugly financial decisions I have made.

  1. I used credit cards like they were going out of style. One purchase really sticks out in my mind, I was a junior in college and bought a Sony CD Discman for $300 on my credit card. I could have had a very nice model for $75. I paid off that stupid Discman for what seemed like forever.
  2. Similar to #1, I was a senior in high school and bought a pair of Z. Cavarrici Jeans for $100 because I thought they would make me look cool!
  3. And for the ugly…I bought a new Chevy Silverado Crew Cab 2500 four years ago when a used 1500 model with 20-30k miles on it would have saved me at least $12,000. I will finally pay it off next year. The new car smell was nice, but not $12,000 nice.

Check Out M-Network’s Posts on This Topic:

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