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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If I Became Debt Free…I Would Screw It Up

October 28, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

Melissa over at A Penny Closer sucker punched, err, tagged me again on a meme. ;-) This one started at DebtFREE-Revolution and she asked:

If I Were Debt Free I Would….

As one who cannot handle success very well I am going to take a contrarian approach to this one. Here are the 5 things I would do upon becoming debt free.

  1. I would immediately use my credit card to buy a round of drinks for everyone at the local watering hole.
  2. After stumbling out of the bar at 2am, I would hitch a ride home with a sober stranger.
  3. Said stranger would rob me of my wallet and wedding ring and throw me out of his car and into a snowbank.
  4. I would spend the next week defrosting my toes and getting all my credit card and banking accounts changed.
  5. I would celebrate the arrival of my new credit cards by taking my wife on a luxurious vacation to Hawaii!

I wonder what would happen to my life if I won the lottery?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Free Shipping At Lands End.com

October 27, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

If you are one to get your Christmas shopping done early this free shipping coupon at Lands End.com may be useful. They typically only offer free shipping a couple times a year so I thought I would pass this coupon along.Lands End.com
Free Shipping on your ENTIRE order thru Monday
Coupon Code: See Site For Details
Expiration: 10/29/07

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Random Frugal Thoughts (Help Needed)

October 25, 2007 · Filed Under · 16 Comments 

earlyfall_2007-109.jpgOver 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!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Nothing Better Than A Relaxing Sunday Morning

October 21, 2007 · Filed Under · 2 Comments 

Grab a cup of coffee and check out some of the better reading that I have discovered this past week. It continues to amaze me how many great blogs are out there. My blog reader is getting pretty unruly and I will have to somehow organize it in the future or weed it out a bit. But for now, go check out these great blog posts. Some make you think, some make you laugh, and all make you read. :-)

  • Lynnae from Being Frugal offers some great advice on What to do when you lose your income. She and her husband are going through this right now and her candor and advice are greatly appreciated. I always like blogs that are genuine, and offer real world advice like Being Frugal.
  • David at My Two Dollars offers some great frugal living advice in his post Save Money – Buy A Computer Monitor And Buy A TV At The Same Time. Excellent advice and something I will consider in the future. I always like the 2-in-1 option.
  • Lazy Man and Money posted about one of my favorite topics, beer! He wrote Save Money By Making Your Own Beer, and documents the costs associated with the kit. He got some big accolades on the taste of his concoction. I may have to give this a try as I have been known to drink a cold one on occasion. Sun coming up today is an occasion, right?
  • Tricia at Blogging Away Debt had a post that me smile (pun intended), called What Happens When the Tooth Fairy is in Debt? The tooth fairy in our house typically leaves a silver dollar. Tricia, I am looking forward to your post this December titled ’What Happens When Santa is to Fat To Travel’.
  • J.D. at Get Rich Slowly recently wrote about Learning to Love the Not-So-Big House. In it, he talks about how we as Americans are living in bigger and bigger houses and that comes with a big trade off in terms of costs and maintenance. Do we really need 4 bedrooms when 2 would serve us just fine. I have noticed that many people need the extra bedrooms to hold the crap that they have accumulated over the years. Live within your means.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Fix It Yourself and Save 10% w/ a Home Depot Coupon

October 20, 2007 · Filed Under · Comment 

Yesterday, The Home Depot.com gave me a rare coupon for 10% off your entire online order. I use to work at ‘The Depot’ and wore the orange apron with pride (great way to get the ladies), and while the stores are cavernous and quite easy to get lost in (tip: bring bread crumbs so you can leave a trail out), their website is pretty well organized and easy to navigate. So if you are looking to buy some home decor or have a home improvement project on your to-do list this coupon can help you save a little extra dough. Here are the details:

Home Depot.com
Save 10% OFF your ENTIRE order
Coupon Code: FALLSAVINGS442
Expiration: 10/24/07

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

5 Things I Bought New and Wish I Hadn’t

October 19, 2007 · Filed Under · 14 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!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Next Page »

Bad Behavior has blocked 967 access attempts in the last 7 days.