Richer and Better

200 Pounds

2008-09-16T09:36:00.003-06:00

For anyone who's still following this blog, I reached my goal of weighing 200 pounds today. The spurt of weight loss was mostly caused by some sort of sickness. My throat has been too sore to swallow much for the last three days, and for the three days before that I had a high fever and no appetite.

Still, that's 40 pounds lost in 9 1/2 months. That's approximately 38 weeks, so just over a pound a week. That doesn't seem too extreme does it?

Now I just need to hold myself to my new weight till New Years.

--

Financially we're still budgeting and saving. We've kind of hit the planes of persistence, where nothing exciting happens. We're happy to have our finances under control, but that means that I'm not actively learning new things about money. And that means I won't be updating this blog again.

Thanks for reading!

The End

Best Breadmachine White Bread

2008-08-22T12:51:00.002-06:00

We got a bread machine for free from Freecycle a month or so back and have been playing with different recipes. We've finally got it down to the best white bread recipe, but we're still looking for a reliable good whole wheat recipe.

Making your own bread can save money, can be fun (depending on your definition of fun) and can be a lot of work. A bread machine is a good way to reduce the amount of work it takes.

We have a 1 1/2 pound (1.5 lbs.) bread machine, but we make a one pound loaf. We like our bread to be cut right side up, instead of sideways, and our bread pan is vertical...so we just make it shorter.

1 pound basic white bread

3/4 c. warm water
2 tbsp. + 3/4 tsp. vegetable oil
2 1/4 c. all purpose flour
2 tbsp. + 3/4 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast

Add the ingredients in the oder listed to the bread machine pan, then set it to run a basic cycle. As soon as it's done, pop it out and eat it! Let it cool before you put it in a plastic bag or it will get soggy.

The bread this makes is really fluffy and light. It's so fluffy that you need to cut 1 inch slices for it to stay together. This means it's great for eating with dinner or on it's own, or as toast, but not so much for sandwiches (who wants two inches of bread in a sandwich?!).

Sandwich Bread Modification

For sandwich bread, we want something a little denser so we can make thinner slices. When we want sandwich bread, we add 1 tbsp. of Vital Wheat Gluten to the mix, right after adding the flour. The bread still rises to the same size, but it's more firm and can be sliced in about 1/2 inch thick slices.

Other Tips

We mix up the dry ingredients (except the yeast) for 5 batches all at once and store them in plastic containers.

You can use the same recipe with whole wheat flour, but it won't rise as much and will be quite dense (though still tasty). Occasionally with whole wheat flour the loaf will rise up high and then collapse. It's still edible, it just looks funny and is disapointing.

Wells Fargo is Dumb

2008-08-20T13:28:00.004-06:00

I check my on line accounts nearly daily, except for the Wells Fargo account which I check about weekly. We've had poor experiences with Wells Fargo in the past, so we don't actually use the account. We're keeping it open till we get a mortgage though since credit scores include the length of time you've had credit cards open, and our Wells Fargo has several years seniority compared to our other cards.

Today when I went to check my Wells Fargo account, I found an unexpected surprise.

Two new accounts were opened in my name. I was the co-signer, my social security number was tied to them and everything. And the one account had a negative balance.

I was initially concerned about identity theft, but it seemed odd since I don't think we haven't used checks, the credit card or the debit cards associated with this account in a year or more.

I called Wells Fargo of course, and they had no idea what was going on. They did tell me the name of the other person on my account, and where the account was opened. I've driven through the city where the account was opened, it's only an hour or so north of where we live, but we don't really do business with anyone up there. I'd never heard the name of the other person on my account. I was told to go to a local branch, which I dutifully did.

It turns out that when Mrs. A and Mr. X when to open the joint business account, instead of checking Mr. X's ID to see that they'd found the right person, the Wells Fargo banker just searched for Mr. X's name in this state. Now, our names are the same and the state we live in is the same, but that's where the similarities end. Our addresses are different, our Social Security numbers are different, our phone numbers are different, and he's over 30 years older than I.

It took the banker I spoke with 20 minutes and 10 or so phone calls to get everything sorted out.

Although the situation is supposed to be completely resolved now, I'm going to order a credit report in a week or so to see if there are any side effects of this screw up.

Note to self: Wells Fargo still isn't somewhere you want to keep your money.

Freeish TV : MythTV + Miro

2008-08-19T08:25:00.006-06:00

I have posted previously about how we use the internet to watch shows for free. Recently I've been adding polish to that setup by setting up a computer in the living room with MythTV. The computer hooks up to the TV, can be controlled with a Wiimote and is completely free.

What Do We Watch?

Home Videos!

The longer term goal is to get all of our home videos and photos easily accessible. We want our kids favorite movies to be our family movies, which means it needs to be as easy to start "Our Family at the Beach, 2005" as it does Finding Nemo.

We only have a couple of our home videos ripped from VHS so far, but we'll be doing more shortly.

Free Downloads!

We use Miro to subscribe to video podcasts we are interested in. Although they are called a subscriptions, they are all free. Miro has over 2,500 channels covering almost any subject.

If you've looked at video podcasts in the past, you might want to look again. It's not just independent content anymore. We subscribe to shows from Nick Jr., Seasame Street, CNN and PBS to name a few.

All of these shows are automatically downloaded when there are updates, and we can pick which videos to watch when we choose. While Miro doesn't have all the mainstream shows your local cable provider does, Miro does have the advantages of being free, allowing us to choose exactly which programs to subscribe to and allowing us to watch them on our schedule.

I'll post the full list of shows we subscribe to in a comment.

Online Streaming

Most TV companies have already realized that people want to watch shows online. While most won't let you download their shows, nearly all of the popular networks have some way streaming their shows to your computer.

Hulu.com is probably the best known location for watching commercial TV online ondemand. They typically have the last two weeks of a show available for your viewing pleasure. While owned by NBS and News Corp, they carry shows from "
Hulu carries shows from other networks such as Comedy Central, PBS, USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, SPEED Channel, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, E!, G4, Versus and Oxygen." (according to Wikipedia). The Simpsons, House, Psych, The Office...yeah, they're all there.

Cartoon Network's site is less refined, but still usable. We use it to get Powerpuff girls, Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Laboratory.

Both Hulu's and Cartoon Network's sites allow you to make the video player fullscreen. Remember that this is being played on our TV (through the computer). Once we start the show, it's almost exactly the same as watching regular TV...except that there aren't as many ads.

More Features of MythTV

MythTV has some other neat features. It's got a dedicated weather 'channel' where we can see the 1, 3 and 7 day forcasts for our area. A decent built in jukebox with visual effects for playing music, and an image gallery / slideshow program for viewing family photos.

There are lots of other plugins available (Net Phone, TV recording, Recipe manager, Games, more...) which we don't use, but which you might be interested in.

Cost

Getting MythTV up and running smoothly has cost us about $150 so far. Our wireless wasn't fast enough to play the videos, so that required a network upgrade. I wanted to be able to use the Wiimote to control MythTV so we needed a Bluetooth adapter, and the machine doesn't have enough RAM to play high-def videos smoothly (it only had 384M of RAM).

The computer we used was one that we acquired two or three years ago and were using as our 2 year old's kid-computer. He still gets to use it, but now his screen is the TV. Before I ordered the extra parts, I set up MythTV and ran some tests to make sure that the system would be capable of doing the things we wanted it to.

Conclusion

The $150 or so that we spent getting MythTV set up will quickly be recouped compared to the alternative of Cable TV. It will be even more quickly recouped when compared to a full out commercial media center that can do slideshows, be a jukebox etc.

MythTV takes a bit of tinkering to get set up correctly, but if you have the skills and the time, it can be a financially good decision, and a fun one too.

I made $780 an hour yesterday

2008-08-18T09:00:00.001-06:00

Yesterday we got our insurance statements for the dental checkups and fillings we had done last month. With the insurance that we had at the time, preventative work is covered 100%, and we were only going to have to pay $127 for $488 worth of fillings. Except that my two year old's preventative services weren't covered for some reason, and I was going to have to pay the $78 for it.

Instead of sighing and just assuming that it was for some clause in the insurance agreement (as I might have done in times past), I called the insurance company and asked why it wasn't covered. They said that the flouride treatment (preventative work!) had been billed with an incorrect code from the dentist's office. That call took about three minutes to make.

Of course I called the dentist's office next, the checked and sure enough, they had used the wrong code for that service. They agreed to resubmit the insurance claim, and I assume that next month I'll get an insurance statement saying that the fluoride was covered in full. That took another three minutes.

Even though I hate making calls, the 6 minutes spent chasing down the $78 were well worth it. Too bad I can't always make that good of use of my time.

Weight Loss Update -- New Low 206 lbs!

2008-08-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

Background

When I stepped on the scale over Christmas holidays in 2007 I weighed 240 pounds. I decided that I wanted to get to a healthy weight. BMI charts indicate that 200 lbs. is the very top of 'Normal Weight' for my height. My goal is to reach 200 lbs. by New Years Eve, 2008.

206 Pounds!

On both Thursday and Friday last week the scale said '206' when I woke up. During the day I've gone up to about 209 or so with eating (yeah, I still do that) and drinking lots of water (it's been hot).

Squashing my Weight

I attribute the last few pounds I've lost to us having a garden. Not due to me weeding it -- I haven't stuck with my 3 x weekly goal at all -- but because the crook-necked squashes are out of control.

Every 3 or 4 days we can go pick four or five more foot long squashes that are ready to eat. Now, we have absolutely no intentions of becoming vegetarians, but we feel bad letting food go to waste. As a result, we leave the pork chops and burgers in the fridge and have been having squash everything.

In the last two of weeks we've had :

Squash and veggies with noodles (2x)
Squash with rice and beans (2x)
Veggie noodle soup, staring Squash (2x, plus lunches)
Tin foil dinners, staring Squash (ok, there was some meat in this one)
Veggie stir fry, staring squash (2x)

That's nine of our dinners in the last two weeks. Good news though, we've got four and a half more squashes on the counter! If we're lucky, we'll get to pick some more squash by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Our garden hasn't been making just squash of course, tomatoes are starting to come in, green beans are on their second bloom, cucumbers, peppers and corn have also started to make a showing.

Pros and Cons of Working From Home

2008-08-14T00:06:00.006-06:00

I've been working from home for nearly a month now. I've been liking it so far, but it has definitely been an adjustment. In fact, the adjustment process isn't over yet, I don't think.

Here are some things I've learned so far

* I like working from home.
* The length of time I work without a break reflects how deep the problem is I am working on. If it's a tough problem and I get down inside it I might go for 4 hours without getting up. If I have a bunch of short problems, I'll get up between problems.
* I feel an obligation to provide 40 hours worth of work...even if it takes me 50 hours to do that (I'm not as good at the Ruby programming language as I should be).
* I can't work in a cluttered environment. I find myself picking up and organizing periodically throughout the day. I feel incredibly antsy that my desk and office still aren't all tidy.

Here are some pros and cons I've noticed

Pro of working at home

* I can be here to watch the kids if my wife has an exam or something
* I can wear the same clothes three days in a row and no one complains (hey, they're still clean)
* I can set my own hours
* I control the thermostat (my last office was cold!)
* If my 3.5 month old is being cute, I can take a break to see him
* No commute and no gas
* I don't have to remember to bring a snack or lunch. I've got all sorts of good food here at home.
* I can just take off early on Friday and go camping without asking anyone

Con of working at home

* Kids and Spouse often want attention when I'm working
* Personal time and space boundaries are pretty blurry (I'm working to fix that though)
* The computer isn't as much of a 'fun-place' as it has been. When I'm not working I don't feel inclined to blog (have you noticed?), draw or do my own programming
* The fridge and cupboards call my name with tempting snacks and treats
* My 3.5 month old is cute a lot and can distract me
* I have to be responsible enough to get my hours in each day
* If no one else is online, I don't have anyone to ask questions to.
* Projects I do want to do are here distracting me

I'm still feeling my way through this whole working from home thing, so I'm sure I'll learn more. Anyone else out there working from home?

The never ending process of de-cluttering

2008-08-06T08:22:00.002-06:00

Decluttering seems to be a never ending process. I'm not really sure where we get all the *stuff* that we have, but it just keeps piling up.

Bathroom Surplus

Somewhere near the bottom of the list of rooms I thought would have clutter was the bathroom. How much extra bathroom stuff can you possibly have?

For starter we threw out a large grocery bag full of frebee pre-natal vitamins, nasty smelling (think cranberry cinnamon) lotions and various low quality cosmetic bags. We kept both open floss containers, both of the chloraseptic bottles, and all three of our deodorants (three each!).

The extra new toothbrushes were a surprise to find, as was the whole bag of disposable razors. Less surprising were the countless fruity and girly smelling hand lotions that my wife has received as gifts over the years.

Product Rotation

Besides organizing our bathroom supplies better, we've put the smallest and most used containers near the front. We'll be using the small face wash and small lotions before moving on to the big ones. And we're not buying any more chloraseptic until the two we have a gone.

July Budget Blown

2008-08-04T08:20:00.005-06:00

We were terrible with our budget in July, though not quite as bad as the raw numbers below suggest.

Excuses

I'll try to explain a couple of the highest budget overruns here. The biggest reason is that we're pretty new to budgeting and may take a few months to get the hang of it.

Double Rent

We started paying rent electronically in July. Previously we would pay with a check by the fifth, which meant that the payment was processed in the month the rent was for. With electronic processing I wanted to make sure the rent wasn't late and sent August's rent at the end of July....so technically it was spent in July, but it's for August.

Post-tax Babysitting

With my new job we suddenly didn't have the Flexible Spending Account available. Previously whatever we spent on babysitting was taken from that pre-tax account and we didn't include it in the budget.

Last Run On Costco

We decided not to renew our Costco membership next month. We're hopefully moving in January and don't know if there will be a Costco nearby. We decided to buy enough of bulk supplied to last us till January, including 50 lbs of rice and flour, 25 lbs of sugar, lots of diapers and toilet paper.

...

I'll finish this post with charts, percentages and a budget for August tonight after we finish making the budget!

...and We're back!

2008-08-02T20:37:00.004-06:00

This week I put in 58 hours at work. I've rarely reached, much less passed 40 hours on the job before. I realize that 60 hours isn't that many for some people (hi dad!) and that there are many people who work much harder than I do (hi dad!) on a regular basis, but for me, this was a first.

Wednesday to Thursday went like this : Woke up at 5 AM and worked till 7. I took an hour to get my kids ready for the day before the baby sitter came. I then worked from 8 to noon, had a 1/2 hour lunch with my wife and my trainer and then got back to work. After a quick dinner (1/2 hour, maybe) I worked till around 4AM when my eyes started acting funny. At 6:30 Thursday morning I was back in the chair again and worked till 11 or so that night.

Enough excuses. I'll be back to my normal once daily postings again on Monday. Thanks for the patience.

Better : Serving More Willingly

2008-07-26T01:40:00.004-06:00

As I mentioned on Monday, I'm trying to get a project done by August 1st. The company being sold depends on it, and a $5000 bonus for myself and a co-worker depends on it. We've made good progress so far, but still have a ways to go.

Stingy Service

Sunday night my wife and I were talking about becoming better people, and I came to the conclusion that I needed to do more service and better service. It's not that I don't do service, but I usually have to be asked and I usually am running a cost-benefit analysis of my time while doing the service...in other words I'm stingy with it.

Changing My Attitude

In light of that discussion, I tried to have a good attitude on Tuesday and Wednesday nights when I needed to go and do some service instead of working or sleeping.

Tuesday night was a meeting with the leaders of the mens organization at church. I'm the secretary now. We spent an hour an a half discussing how to help different families in the church who are struggling with different issues. The issues range from spiritual doubt to the emotional stress of someone who was driving during an accident which killed her mother and injured several others.

The seriousness of some of the problems discussed and the lack of easy answers makes me all the more grateful for my minor problems of not getting enough sleep so I can get a nice bonus.

On Wednesday I went and helped a friend of mine's mom replace the ceramic lighter in her gas oven and to fix her computer. The repairmen wanted $200 to fix the stove, and $150 or so to look at the computer respectively. It took about two and a half hours, but she really didn't need to be spending her money on fixing those things when I could easily fix them myself.

Service Doesn't Count As Sleep

The down side to service this week has been that I've had to work later and get up earlier to make up for the time. I think I did a good job this week being happy to serve, but happy service doesn't make my four make me feel rested.

Reset Button

It's 2AM Saturday morning and I'm configuring my computer to run tests against the code I've been working on this week. I will likely read this tomorrow or next week and say to my self 'What were you thinking? That doesn't even make sense'.

The point I was trying to make is this : Service can be a sacrifice. Sometimes we need to give up things we want (like sleep) in order to get the things we really want (to be better as serving others). Some people we serve because we are in a position to reach down and try to pull them up. Others we serve because we can help them in a way that they can't help themselves.

Whatever your reason, find a way to serve and don't be stingy with your service.

What Did We Learn?

2008-07-24T07:08:00.002-06:00

My dad made a good point on Tuesday when I was discussing my job situation with him. The company I'm now working for (until it's sold!) essentially did what I had considered doing a month or so ago. That is, they hired me and then disclosed that it wasn't for the long term expected.

It's kind of funny being on the flip side of the equation. The situation isn't exactly the same (I will supposedly have a job at the purchasing company), but it serves to confuse my sentiments further on the issue of telling a company if you're leaving soon or not. So, we'll revisit the arguments once again:

The Real Company Treatment

Here's me last month on companies:

...I don't think for a minute that they are going to worry about me if they need to lay me off. I don't think that company loyalty or employee loyalty is a true principle or a moral obligation.

While I will supposedly have a job, the company didn't tell me about the change until after I had been hired (and after I'd quite my old job to take this one).

The Invisible Hand

The company was acting in its own best interest. They offered a reasonable salary and I failed to ask the appropriate questions. I thought I was acting in my own best interest, but me not doing my due diligence in understanding what I was signing up for is pretty much my own fault.

I'll still get value from the job in the month or so I'm there. The bonus and salary are good for the time. It's just a bit of an adventure right now.

Implications For Interviewers and Interviewees

So, if I were interviewing again with the intention to leave in 6 months, would I disclose that information? Yes, I think I would. I would personally rather be overly honest then appear dishonest. If someone else were to not disclose the same information in an interview though, I wouldn't hold it against them for a second.

I think the lesson I need to learn here is that when interviewing from either side of the table it's important to ask the right questions and be sure that what you are expecting from a situation matches the reality of the same situation.

New Job Turbulance

2008-07-21T18:00:00.002-06:00

Sorry I didn't get anything posted this morning. My new job started today and I wasn't able to get to all the IRA research I wanted to. I did get open a Roth IRA at Fidelity, and I'll post about why I chose them soon.

The New Job

I started my new job today. The company is small, about 8 people. The salary is a step up from what I was making ($59,000/year vs. $52,500) and the work seems enjoyable.

Taking this job made sense for us. It seemed like a career step forward.

Stuff I Wish I'd Known

So, it turns out that a) my friend who I though was going to be my boss is actually training me to be his replacement and b) The company is being sold and I will be one of the assets being transfered to the new company.

It would have been nice to be able to factor those things into the equation when deciding if I should take the job.

Naive Optimism

Despite a sentiment of gee-you-should-have-told-me, I still feel good about deciding to take the job. We prayed about if it was the right thing to do, and we felt that it was. I put my trust in God that He knew these details and that taking this job remains the right thing to have done. It may be the case that I was supposed to take the job, but wouldn't have if I had known all the facts beforehand.

Here are the reasons I'm still naively optimistic :

If me and my friend get everything fixed up by August 1st for the sale, both he and I will get $5000 bonuses when the sale completes (Mid to the end of September)

With the type of product the company has, I have a few guesses on who it might be being sold to, and I wouldn't mind working for any of them. They're places I wouldn't have thought that I could get into very easily.

I'll be having more of an architect position than I thought I would.

As we were programming together today I was able to help spot several errors and make several important optimizations. I thought that I would be pretty rusty in the language we are using, but it looks like things will be just fine.

This looks like fun project to be involved with. It combines several areas which I have been interested at a hobby level, which I don't have professional experience in.

The new company my current boss is starting sounds pretty neat too, and if things don't work out at the company that is buying the current company I think I'd be able to get a job with him at the new place.

Expect Less Posts For The Next Couple Of Weeks

As I said, if we can get a specified set of features working completely by August 1, I'll get a $5000 bonus...so I probably won't be blogging as much till that's done. I'll try to post two or three times this week and next.

Retirement Investing Crash Course : IRAs

2008-07-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

While I can keep my 401(k) where it's at if I want, I still need to set up a retirement account for my new job. This is the start of a three part series on retirement investing.

In this series I will cover

IRAs, what are they and what is the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA

A comparison of the major companies where you can keep your IRA

An overview and comparison of investing styles

Please Note: I am not a trained financial expert. I'm not even an un-trained financial expert. I am a computer programmer who suddenly has a salary and a realization that I need to get my money in order. Please talk to a financial adviser or at least get a second opinion before following any of this information.

What Is an IRA and How Does It Work

Like many people, I knew that IRAs are a good way to save for retirement. Also like many people, I didn't know the details of how they worked, or how to make them work for me.

For the 2008 tax year you can contribute up to $5,000 to your IRA, unless you're making a huge amount of money. If you are making enough to be disqualified from IRA contributions, I'm not really sure why you're reading this...go pay for an financial planner already.

An IRA is an "Individual Retirement Account". You put money in and then choose how to invest it. Where you have your IRA account will determine what you can invest in (eg. Vanguard's options are different than Fidelities, etc.). Some options may include money markets, CDs, Stocks, Bonds, Mutual funds and Index funds.

Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA

Contributions to a traditional IRA are made with pre-tax dollars. You have to pay tax when you pull the money out at retirement. With few exceptions, you cannot take money out of your Traditional IRA until retirement time.

Contributions to a Roth IRA are made with taxed money. You do not have to pay taxes when you pull the money out, including on the earnings. You can take out the amount that you have contributed at any time for any reason without penalty.

Proponents of Traditional IRAs often say that they don't trust the government to keep Roth IRAs tax free until retirement, they would rather get the tax deduction now. Proponents of Roth IRAs will counter than if the government tried this they would need to grandfather in all existing Roth IRAs. I think that the government would simply phase out the Roth IRA program if they decided they wanted to change it...but our government can be an unpredictable beast.

The real guessing you have to do when deciding which IRA to use to maximize your returns is what your tax bracket will be when you retire compared to what it is now.

If you will be in a higher tax bracket when you retire a Roth IRA may save you on taxes. If you are in a higher tax bracket now, then you may want the tax reduction now.

I personally think that when I retire I will be in a higher tax bracket. I think that a combination of inflation and career progression will have me withdrawing more per year when I retire than I am making now.

On Monday, a comparison of some of the major companies which will help you manage your IRA accounts.

Life Without a TV

2008-07-17T08:15:00.003-06:00

When we got married we had a 12 inch Walmart TV, with a built in VCR. That was our TV for three and a half years.

We turned it on one day only to be greeted by the smell of a puff of smoke and to see the screen's final burst of radiant whiteness before giving out forever. Unbeknownst to us, our TV apparently looked suspiciously like a piggy bank, which caused our two year old to shove a handful of change in it. TV's don't like change very much.

It didn't phase us too much though. For most of our married life we've lived as poor college students with too little money or time to spend on a cable subscription. We aren't anti-TV exactly. Two of the apartments we rented included free TV and we enjoy watching shows together (like Hawaii Five-0, The Simpsons and The Office).

The Internet Is My TV

Yesterday I realized something depressing though. The Internet is my TV. I don't mean that we use it to watch TV shows (though we do that too -- that's not the depressing part). What I mean is that I still get to keep up with all the dumb scare news stories, all the most 'important' celebrity gossip and am exposed to (close to) the same amount of advertising as when I had TV growing up.

My main news sites in the past have been : news.google.com, nytimes.com, bbc.co.uk and reuters.com. My entertainment came from Slashdot, Digg, Engadget and Technorati. And there may have been the occasional indulgence in watching just plain stupid stuff over at YouTube.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of cool and worthwhile stuff on all those sites. But although I may not have a TV, I can't join in the moral superiority of the rest of the non-TV watching world.

The Internet, Advertising, and Me

I had though that I had tricked The Internet from attacking me with advertising. After all, I have Ad Block Plus installed and I use Firefox. I don't get pop ups, I can't remember the last time I was asked to punch the monkey, and I don't know the name of any 'single girls in my area' who want to meet me.

Advertising comes in many forms. For the last several years I have been actively seeking out stories, news and articles which pitch, promote and expo things I can buy!

Maybe it's worked too. We bought my wife a Mac and we own a Wii (and a new TV. Christmas present from my Dad).

Do you find yourself seeking out "news" and "updates" on things you would like to buy? Do you think that maybe you're purposefully and willingly exposing yourself advertising, re-enforcing your desire to get those things, under the guise of keeping up to date?

Where Does the Balance Lie?

Here's where I'm stuck. I studied computers and technology in school. I have a solid base in the fundamentals and am currently on top of what's the latest and greatest for a lot of different technology sectors. If I don't keep reading about the coolest latest technology, I will likely end up like so many greybeards in the tech industry -- they know the fundamentals and know what worked well back in their day, but are too far behind to implement new and better solutions.

If I take that view all the way, then I should keep on top of all the technology I can.

On the other hand, keeping up with it all can be draining. I haven't visited Slashdot, Digg or several other tech sites in more than a month. I get sore fore-arms really easily because I'm typing and programming for up to 10 hours a day.

If I do keep up with everything, I will get burned out. Besides getting burned out, I don't have as much time with my family or other hobbies as I'd like.

Dreams of Change

I'm incredibly blessed to have gotten a good education in a field that pays well. I have skills, experience and a network which allow me to get a new job pretty easily. I can make a good living for my family with technology related work. I usually love what I do too. I love to make things work and to fix broken code.

...but...sometimes I resent computers. I hate that I am a slave to system updates and upgrades. To new hardware advances. To security flaws. To power outages. To hacking attempts. To cool new programs that I just have to try out. Mostly though, I hate that I love working on them.

A part of me yearns to break free from them. Something in me wishes I could go weed the garden and plow a field and chase down runaway cows on a dirt bike. I'd have a wood shop in my shed with a lathe, a router, and a table saw. I'd be outside enjoying and working in reality instead of changing the magnetic orientation of particles on a metal disk fabricating a new artificial world online.

Reality and Me

What will I really end up doing? Probably I'll go get an MBA and become a manager somewhere. That'll get me off of the computer and away from the eternal upgrade process. It'll give me a bit of insurance against my RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) which could one day turn into carpal tunnel syndrome. It'll also let me keep feeding and caring for my family; I don't even know how to drive a plow.

Job Transition Process : 401K and Insurance

2008-07-16T07:54:00.004-06:00

Friday is my last day at my current job. Monday I'll start my new work from home job.

With the transition I need to make sure to take care of a couple of important things, namely my 401K and insurance.

UPDATE : Both sections have been updated with their respective resolutions

401K

At my current job I have $1,194.76 worth of funds in my 401K. That isn't enough for them to keep me in it. Sadly I've put in $1312.52 so far and haven't had it open long enough for the company match to have vested yet.

I need to decide if I'm going to roll it to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. Once I know which type I want I'm going to need to choose a company to get it through. That'll be a something to research today. The only thing I know right now is that I don't want to cash it out.

I believe that I have 30 days to get it rolled over.

UPDATE : It turns out that I will be able to keep my 401K right where it's at. I won't be able to make any more deposits though, so I'll still need to open an IRA of some sort for my new job.

Insurance

I should've asked more questions at both jobs. I'm not sure if my current insurance will disappear on Friday when I leave work, or if it'll continue through the month. I would assume that it would stop the moment I stop working for the company.

I won't be filling out the insurance paperwork at my new job till Monday, which means I might need to pick up some basic insurance for a weekend. If that's the case I'll try to find something with a super high deductible, just in case of an emergency.

I would just risk for the two days except that :

1) In 2006 my wife had been without insurance for a week or so. The same day her new insurance started we were in an accident and she broke her toe.

2) My wife is taking a ~500 mile (round trip) car trip this weekend to go to a cousin's wedding and I'm going camping. Both of those activities have a higher than normal chance of accidents occurring.

UPDATE : The insurance here is monthly, so I've got old-work insurance till the last day of July, so that's good. On the down side, I found out that new-work insurance coverage doesn't start until September first.

I looked into the COBRA plan as suggested by chackoc in the comments. COBRA for the four of us was going to be $900+ for the month of August.

We found and bought a one month policy with Assurant Health. My wife used them once before for a few months between coverage and found them easy enough to work with. We got a 100/0 % plan with a $1000 deductible for $220.64 including the $20 setup fee.

That'll cover us if something big happens and we'll be able to handle paying $1000 with our savings if something small happens.

Leftovers for Breakfast : Completely Random Snippets

2008-07-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

I didn't have enough coherent thoughts to make a post on a single subject today, so you get some follow ups on a couple of subjects!

It's time to pay off the Credit Card

The credit card is due next week so I transferred the money to pay it off from ING yesterday. We'll be paying off $1,492.26.

At ING we made $2.29 in interest this month in the sub-account that money came from. There's still almost $400 in the account, so the $2.29 isn't solely from the Credit Card float. The $2.29 doesn't account for interest earned between when I paid off the Credit Card last month and the end of last month. I call it close enough.

We also will be getting $14.92 cash back for this month's charges.

That's $17.21 we wouldn't have if we were going cash based!

The Garden is Still Growing

The first crook-necked squash was big enough to eat. We had it in stir-fry. There are a whole bunch of green tomatoes on the vine. There are several gum ball sized watermelons now, and some fifty-cent piece sized pumpkins.

We planted two types of cucumbers (English types and regular types). One of them has probably close to 100 blossoms in the row, but we're not sure which row is which type.

The Okra, Kohlrabi and newly plated lettuce have sprouted and are growing well.

Learning to Live on A Budget

As of the 11th we'd used up about 2/3 of our budget while being only 1/3 the way through the month. Some of the expenses we'll get back (from the babysitting flex spend account, for example) but some of it is just us learning to live within our budget.

At the start of next month you'll get to hear our reasons and excuses...and our plan to do better.

Freecycle Saves Us Money

Once upon a time we had a bread maker which I had bought a thrift store for $5. We made home made bread for three or four months, decided we were eating too much bread and sold the bread maker for $15.

After the Easy and Cheap Home Made Bread post on Get Rich Slowly yesterday, I decided I wanted to get a bread maker again. My wife agreed as long as we buy and use whole wheat flour instead of the white flour we currently have.

I sent an email out to our local Freecycle list to see if anyone had one they didn't want. Someone responded to my email and all I have to do is drive the 10.1 miles to pick it up. That'll cost less than $5 in gas to get there and back.

With a Sound Financial Base, You Don't Need Many Rules

2008-07-14T09:00:00.001-06:00

At church yesterday we were discussing how the difference between doctrine, principles and rules. I realized that the same concepts applied to personal finance, and present them here for your feedback.

Doctrine -- Doctrine are the final answers on everything. In the finance world this would be the laws and regulations in the finance industry, the details of your credit card contract, etc. There are a lot of points of doctrine.

Principles -- Principles are attitudes and beliefs which guide your actions. They should be built on top of the doctrine. For example, the principle of "Spend less than you earn" is built on top of the doctrines of fiscal responsibility, bankrutpcy and the laws governing reposesion, among other things. There are less principles than doctrine.

Rules -- Rules are the actual implementation of your principles which you follow day to day. Rules are what you need to do to stick to your principles and be in line with the doctrines which you need to follow. Rules might include things like "Only use the Credit Card when I have sufficient funds in my Savings Account" or "Any non-budget purchases need spousal approval" etc.

The point of the lesson at church was that if our doctrinal base is solid we don't need as many guiding principles. If our guiding principles are good we don't need to keep track of as many hard and fast rules.

I think the same thing applies to finance. For me, the less absolute rules I have to keep track of, the better. I also don't want to learn all of the financial regulations that might affect me (there's a reason I didn't major in finance). So, I have some basic financial rules I use in my day to day, and if something seems to fall outside those rules, I can consult my principles and see what I should do.

What financial Principles and Rules do you live by?

Weight Loss Tip : Brush your teeth?

2008-07-11T09:00:00.004-06:00

I'm not quite ready to chalk this one up as a fact, but the timing is interesting at least.

This week I had some cavities filled, and the and the week before I had a dental checkup. In the 10 or so days leading up to the checkup I kept my teeth extra clean and flossed almost daily. Between the checkup and getting the cavities filled I did the same thing, and now since Tuesday when I had them filled I've been brushing more often to keep food from getting stuck on the new fillings.

During this same time period I finally broke through the 215 pounds barrier, which I posted about last Friday, and as of this very moment I weigh 211 pounds.

If the two are by chance related then this is how I would explain it :

I am too lazy to brush my teeth; I would 
rather not eat than eat and then brush.

Are they related? I don't know, probably not. Still, I'm going to try to keep brushing.

-----

Side note:

I hadn't been to the dentist since either 2000 or 2003. I know I went before my mission, because I remember having my wisdom teeth out at that time. I don't remember if I went after my mission, but before I got married...I may have. I know I haven't been since we were married.

I had two small cavities (didn't even need Novocain for them). My wife had one big cavity (almost a root canal, but not quite!) and two small ones.

We went to the dentist mostly because my new employer doesn't have dental insurance, but my old job does. Since the 18th is my last day we figured we might as well use it while we've got it. Talk about good timing!

Jumping On the Garden Band Wagon

2008-07-10T09:00:00.000-06:00

Gardens seem to be a popular trend among personal finance / self improvement bloggers. In my own defense, we've been into gardening since before it was popular. I grew up with a garden, and we've planted one several times since we got married.

Anyways, I thought I'd add a little here about mine. This picture is from a few weeks ago, and things have grown quite a lot since I took the picture, but it should give you an idea of what's happening.

We've got corn, lettuce (several kinds), cucumbers (3 kinds!), crook necked squash, watermellon, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, okra, bush beans, pumpkins and kohlrabi.

We got a bit of a late start this year because we had to get permission to till up the back yard from our landlords, and we didn't think to do that until the snow was gone.

The tomatoes and peppers came from starter packs from Lowes, everything else except the potatoes was from seeds. We had finished planting the seeds and had a little room left. I remembered we had some older potatoes in the fridge, so I sliced them and thre them in the ground, and three of the four chunks turned into plants.

The Kohlrabi and Okra were kind of mistakes. There were a couple of patches where beans, lettuce and carrots hadn't come up. I hated the thought of wasting the space, so we went back to Lowes to see what we could get that would grow quickly. The Okra and Kohlrabi both had "45-60 days" as their time till maturity, so we bought them. I've never eaten a Kohlrabi, and my wife has never had Okra. We added three more tomato plants, more cucumbers and lettuce at the same time.

I spend about 15-20 minutes watering the garden each night. It's kind of nice to just stand outside and not think about anything except the garden. I spend most of my day working on computers and worrying about computer bugs, so escaping to the real world is something of a reprieve.

My goal is to spend 30 minutes 2-3 times a week weeding the garden. It looks like I'm going to have to do that today and tomorrow, because I haven't gotten to it yet this week!

Home Buying : Should I use an agent?

2008-07-08T09:00:00.006-06:00

We're hot in pursuit of a house. We think we know which one we'd like to buy. As we're about to get into buying the house, I'm wondering if we should use a buying agent. Here are the pros and cons as I see them so far. Remember, I am a first time home buyer at the very beginning of the process. I don't know much about it and my current opinions could be bad ones.

Pros of a Buying Agent

Proximity to the house We're 1400 miles away from the houses we're looking at. An agent could look at the house for us, do local paperwork, etc.

Professional References A buying agent would know who to get to do the appraisals. They'll know which appraisers run high and which run low. They'll also know which building inspectors are on the level and which do a shoddy job.

Bargaining They know the market and the business. They may be able to do a better job at knocking down a high price.

Cons of a Buying Agent

They have conflicting interests Since the agent is paid a percentage of the house price they make more money if we spend more money. This removes motivation to help us find a lower priced house, or to bargain hard to get a price lower.

They Do Nothing I Couldn't Do They may know what forms to fill out, but if the selling agent is interested in getting the house sold, they'll make sure I sign everything I need to.

Higher Price The buying agent's pay has to come from somewhere. With the right negotiating it may be possible to have everyone else come out ahead by cutting the buying agent out of the picture.

Higher Price

This is the one I really wanted to talk about.

I called a friend yesterday who works at a real estate company and who has her real estate license. I wanted to get the scoop on buying agents to see if we were going to need one when we go to buy this house.

The quote which made me discredit everything else she said was

...and it doesn't cost you anything because the seller pays the agent fees...

OK, yes, it may be technically true that I will not be the one who writes the check to the agent, but isn't the check paid with money I just barely gave the seller?

One strategy I think we will be trying to use to lower the price is to not use a buying agent. By not using a buying agent we can pay less, the selling agent can take a larger incentive and the seller can keep more. Here's how it works in my mind.

	With Buying Agent	Without Buying Agent
House Price (we pay)	$100,000	$98,000
Selling Agent Commission	3% ($3,000)	3% + $400 as motivation ($3340)
Buying Agent Commission	3% ($3,000)	0% ($0)
Money Left for Seller	$94,000	$94,660

We give the selling agent extra beyond the 3% commission so that he/she stands to gain from the deal. I pay $2,000 less on the house and the seller makes an extra $660. The benefit margins increase for everyone as the price of the house increases of course.

Since the selling agent and the house seller have more than likely already signed a contract stating what the commission is, reaching some sort of arrangement like the one listed above will depend on what their contract says and on their flexibility within the contract. They may be willing to break the contract if they will both come out ahead.

It will also depend on the house seller being smart enough to realize that selling the house for less money still nets him a higher return.

The Seller Agent Takes All (and splits it) Scenario

Removing the buyer agent commission will only work if the seller contract has a separate percentage for the buyer agent to earn. In some cases the selling agent will simply take a higher percentage (like 7 or 8%) and then split that with the buying agent.

In cases like these the seller doesn't have much, if anything, to gain, but I'm hoping that we'll have more power over the selling agent. We could

Tell them that at the current price we would want the buying agent's percentage
Tell them that if we don't get the house reduced by an appropriate amount that we will get a buying agent so that their commission is reduced

Have you used a buyers agent? Should I?

Does anyone here have experience using a buyers agent and think I should? Has anyone not used a buyers agent? How hard is it to do the paperwork on your own? We'll see how well the negotiating goes once we get closer to buying. For now we're still looking, but we're narrowing in on choices and will have to start talking to sellers soon.

New Job : I Am Now Free To Move About the Country

2008-07-08T09:00:00.002-06:00

I got a job offer last Thursday. It's for the position I interviewed for last Tuesday.

The salary is $59,000 a year. That's $6,500 more than my current salary. There are less benefits, namely no 401K, or life or dental insurance. There is health insurance though, which is nice.

The best benefit though is that it's a work at home job. Besides getting an office with a window (my current office is solid walls) this means that when we go to move in January I can take my job with me. It means that even in a new city we'll know what I'll be making before hand.

The work is more up my alley too. Less of a computer-for-computers-sake type product and more of a computers-as-a-tool-to-help-people angle. It's a small (6-8 people) company which gives me more autonomy, which I've been wanting.

Mostly though we're just happy that we'll be able to save more towards our house and that we'll be able to move there more easily when we find one we like.

--

I think we might just go out to eat to celebrate, even though it wasn't in our budget (neither was an extra $6500 a year!).

Reading : The Sun Also Rises

2008-07-07T09:00:00.001-06:00

I just finished Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". Wikipedia says that The Sun Also Rises is considered Hemingway's best novel by a majority of critics. His only other book I've read is The Old Man and The Sea, but I don't remember it being so abjectly boring, slow paced and meandering.

No Plot

I couldn't figure out a plot to this book. It follows the lives of several characters between France and Spain. There is a little bit of a love triangle story, they go to some bull fights, and that's it. No struggles, no triumph over evil, nothing.

It reminded me of this classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoon which says "not having my emotions manipulated is such a weird experience".

My Recomendation

Read something else. At least Old Man and The Sea was shorter. I thought it was more interesting too.

Weight Wait : Slow Progress, but Progress None the Less

2008-07-04T09:00:00.002-06:00

Getting below 215 pounds has been a drudgefully slow experience like trudging through deep snow made ofmolasses. I would get down to 215, then bounce around between the 215 and 220 marks on the scale for a few days, then back down to 215. This has been going on basically for the last month.

It didn't help that we went to visit grandpa-inlaw or that my dad and siblings came into town (and treated us to dinner several times). It didn't help that the frozen lunches I had made to bring to lunch were meat-and-potatoes type meals. And it certainly didn't help that I was doing consulting instead of exercising in the evenings.

Hooray!

That's behind me now though! (I hope!). For the last four or five days I've now been bouncing between 214 and 217. My spreadsheet says that I need to lose 0.5297 pounds per week for the rest of the year to reach my goal. I would rather do better than that so that in November and December I'm not trying to lose weight over the holidays (just trying to maintain it).

Plan : Eat Less, Garden More

Being a highly environmentally conscious person (joke), I've been known to eat the remaining four pieces of sausage just so we don't use a ziplock and put them in the fridge. After I've already had breakfast. Including three pieces of sausage.

My new plan is the same as the old plan. Eat less, exercise more. Here are the specifics:

1) I'll leave half of my lunch in my scooter's trunk. If I really get hungry or stay late, I can go get it. If I don't use it for lunch it I can eat it for dinner.

2) I'll go weed the garden like I should be doing anyways. I should probably weed for 30 minutes two or three times a week to keep them under control. That's more exercise than I'm getting now and as long as I do it near dusk I enjoy being outside.

Weighing Less Is Nice

Weighing about 215 is a nice feeling. I have more energy, my clothes fit better, I probably even get better gas mileage on my scooter. The best thing for me so far though was that when some friends invited us to go to the pool last week I didn't feel embarrassed when I took off my shirt.

Interview Tip : They Know Who You Are

2008-07-03T09:00:00.002-06:00

I had a great job interview today. I don't know if I will get the job, but the interview itself went well. It's for an online company, and would be a work from home position. Working from home would have it's own challenges but at least I would be able to take my job with me when we move in January.

Before the interview the interviewer already knew a ton about me. About the projects I've done, about my family and more. All sorts of things which I never told him and which certainly weren't on my resume.

Also today my wife interviewed a girl to be our baby sitter. With just her first name and Email address, we were able to track down her livejournal site, her facebook page, photos of her on MySpace and her profile on YouTube. Although the interview went well, based on what I've found about her online I don't think we'll be hiring.

How did my interviewer find out so much about me? How did we find out so much about this babysitter?

Digital Archaeology

I sent my resume from my Gmail. My Gmail users name is the same as the handle I use everywhere online. I also have a domain name or two which match that same handle. And one of those pages links to my wife's blog, etc. etc. etc.

In this case it was beneficial. I have done several projects which piqued the interest of my interviewer. There is also quite a lot of material on my website which showcases my programming abilities, but which aren't things I'd bother to put on a resume.

For the babysitter things didn't end up as well. It started the same way. She replied to our Craigslist posting, listing only her first name in the email. We googled her email address and got nothing. By dropping the '@yahoo.com' portion though we got enough leads to find out more about her. She's had 8 siblings, two died of cystic fibrosis. She says she is a Mormon but her pictures and words say she doesn't practice what she says she believes. (Note: Our baby sitter doesn't have to be Mormon, but we'd rather not have a hypocrite).

Shots in the Dark

Sometimes you can hit a dead end and can't find any more information via Google or other search engines. If that's the case it may be time for a couple of shots in the dark to try to locate the individual. Teens and college students can often be found on Facebook or MySpace if you know their name and school. Brazilians can often be found on Orkut, other South Americans on Hi5. Business professionals can sometimes be found on Linked-In (although most of Linked-In is also indexed by Google it seems).

Hiding Your Tracks

Being found online is a mixed blessing. It makes it possible to reunite with old friends and find out about others before meeting them. It also makes you more vulnerable depending on what you've put online.

If you have material online which you don't want a future employer, date or colleague to see, you need to hide your tracks. The best way to hide your tracks is to create a new online identity strictly for business (or nefarious!) purposes. For example instead of artickat9912@hotmail.com I might send my resume in via my new and improved college_alumni99@gmail.com address.

If creating a new identity isn't really an option, or if your name is unique enough that someone could search and find you (eg. not John Smith) then you may need to work to remove or hide the existing bad data.

The first thing to do is to remove pictures which don't portray you in a positive light from social networking sites. Make your profile private while you're at it.

Next, do some research on yourself. Make note of what information you can find about yourself via Google, Altavista, MSN Search, Yahoo, etc. For any site which you do have control over (eg. old forum posts which you can still edit) be sure that the content is what you want seen.

For content which you don't want to show up, it's a bit more difficult. You will likely need to do a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for yourself. You will need to create enough new pages with your name (or handle) on them that Google and other search engines will link to those good pages before the bad ones. You can create good pages for yourself by blogging and posting in forums among other things.

Conclusion

Taking care of what of your data shows up online may help you land that next job interview. Be sure to research the person you're interviewing with if possible. And if you're going to be blogging about your salary and financial situation be sure to use an alias so future employers don't know how much they *really* need to pay you.

Moneythly Report : June / July

2008-07-02T09:00:00.001-06:00

I'm going to start a monthly money report on the state of our finances. Each month I'll post how we did for the month (charts and category breakouts) and post our budget for the upcoming month. In future months I'll post budgeted vs. actual expenses as well.

June Report

The huge recreation fee is where we went to visit my nearing senile Grandpa-in-law. His girlfriend thought that he'd paid for the hotel for us, but we ended up having to pay for it. She had tried to be nice and put us up in the nicest hotel in town too. While we were there they probably gave us that much in camping gear, so it kind of evens out anyways I suppose. It's still a huge chunk of unexpected expenses.

July 1st Assets and Liabilities

Here 'Due' means when it starts charging interest.

Money:
ING Savings: $3891.11
ING Checking: $424.24
Credit Union Savings: $5.00
Credit Union Checking: $123.18
Credit Union Money Market: $0.14
Credit Union CD: $6,082.79
Credit Union Credit Card: -$1,145.14 (Due July 25)
Big Bank Checking: $100.08
Big Bank Credit Card: $0
401K Vested Value: $1,254.30
Student Loan: -$6075 (Due June 2009)
Car Loan: -$15,580 (0% interest. We start payments in November [$380/month]).

July Budget

Green is income or remaining positive balance. Salmon is variable expenses, red is fixed cost expenses.

We should actually save a good deal more than the $390 listed above. We have roughly $900 coming in to our account in the next few days as we cash a check and get the reembursements for child care expenses (via. our flex spending account)

You'll note the $0 on groceries. We are using our grocery gift cards and are planning to not spend any grocery money beyond the gift cards.

Better: Less Clutter

2008-07-01T09:37:00.003-06:00

I've been decluttering my home lately. Most of the things we've gotten rid of we gave away so this definitely falls under the 'Better' umbrella and not 'Richer'.

Between a local used clothing store, Craigslist, Freecycle and an extra bag of garbage we've given away:

* Two broken Mac Plusses
* 20-25 German novels
* Pair of shoes that didn't fit
* A box of firestarters for camping
* Baby front carrier
* 6 or so large boxes which electronics (cameras, computers, etc.) had come in.
* A joystick I only used once
* Two extra diaper bags
* A pile of extra clothes that don't fit
* A book on tape
* Bag of extra baby clothes
* Extra microwave
* Extra toaster
* An extra wireless router, Ethernet cord, and other miscellaneous small electronics
* A tea kettle we've had sitting on our stove for four years (and used only ~6 times)
* An extra DVD/CD burner

That's a lot of extra junk sitting around. Some of it is hard to part with. I know that some day I'll wish I still had the wireless router. When we move we may wish we had the microwave. If our toaster burns out we'll wish we had our backup. My hope is that by giving these things away now, when we need them again someone else will be decluttering their life.

In the four years we have been married we've gone from pretty poor to depending on my parents for support to doing pretty well. During the rougher times we both developed a habit of accumulating things for free when we could (for example from Freecycle) so that we wouldn't have to buy them later. My collection of electronic parts has kept my computer running for far cheaper than buying new ones.

Because of that 'collect it when we can' mentality though we're both somewhat overly attached to our backups. Do I need three wireless routers? No, of course not. Do we need two extra diaper bags? The odds are slim we'll ever use them. We could have tried to sell everything, but we've been blessed with everything we need and more, now it's our turn to share and help others who need it. Also, if we'd waited maybe we would've grown attached again.

(Video: Quartet Reprise sings 'Because I have been given much' on Music and the Spoken Word)

Making Career Decisions

2008-06-30T09:00:00.000-06:00

So far we have been looking at job types in a two dimensional. In our 2d model your job is in the same position on the chart no matter your abilities for the given job type. The 2d model is good for understanding why you are making money, but it doesn't help determine how to make more money. For that we will need to look at the same chart in three dimensions.

We now hove a qualitative quotient rising vertically from each of the job types. In each case the vertical factor represents qualities which increase the attractiveness of your work to those who will be paying you. For example, a professional musician vs. an amateur.

In order to use this model to maximize your profitability we are going to need to find what jobs we are able to do and choose the best selection of to maximize the pros for each job type, while minimizing the cons.

I start by making a list of which skills and abilities I have, some major personal characteristics and things which I can make. I rank each of those abilities based on how much I think someone could potentially pay for each activity.

What I do :

Programming (8)

Wood Working (4)

Network Security (5)

System Administration (7)

What I make :

Informative websites (7)

Cool Program (9)

Wooden kids furniture (5)

Digital drawings (5)

Cooking (2)

Who I am :

College graduate (7)

Son of well respected man in my home town (9.5)

Young conservatively dressing tall man (7)

Yet another personal financial blogger (4)

Eagle Scout (10)

Now I plot them on the chart (either for real, or just in my head).

After listing and ranking my abilities, I add which abilities I would be interested in improving and to what level.

System Administration (9)
Wood Working (8)

Based on my chart I can see that I currently could probably make a cool program and provide something which is in higher demand than my current programming position.

In order to provide a more demanded skill in System Administration I would need to improve my skills a little bit -- maybe take a class, or study online.

To maximize my income right now, I should make a cool program. If I would rather maximize my income by doing system administration, I should improve my skills enough to command a higher salary.

To be good enough with wood working (Which I enjoy), I would need to get a lot better. If my life dream were to support my family as a wood worker then such improvements might be worth their effort. Since that's not my dream, my self improvement time could be better spent elsewhere.

Odds are good that you too will have several skills which will are in higher demand than others. Besides just trying to maximize your income, be sure to also consider that certain skill groups (eg. Programming + System Administration + Network Security) may prove more valuable as a cluster of abilities than a single higher valued skill (eg. Writing a single cool program). Also balance the different positions with the pros and cons discussed in part two in order to find a level of job security and type of job risk you are comfortable with.

Conclusion

This isn't the be-all end-all theory for deciding what to do for work. No model is perfect, and making the most money isn't the most important thing in life. What this model can do though is help you visualize potential areas to improve your income, and help you find ways out of a field you're not enjoying.

Why You're Paid Job Model (Part 2)

2008-06-27T08:56:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I talked about my theory on jobs. Today I'll discus the pros and cons of each of these job types.

Who You Are

Pros:

People find some quality in you which is worth paying you for. It is likely that you enjoy who you are, so work is probably enjoyable on some level as well.

If your are paid for the mental or creative side of who you are, you may be able to continue your job after physical disasters.

There is only one of you (limited supply), so if you are popular enough (high demand) you can charge top dollar just for showing up.

Cons:

It may be hard to break your stereotype if you want to change what you do. Eg. A famous baseball player is going to have a hard time being recognized as a serious CEO. He will always be a baseball player who is also a CEO.

You can only be in one place at one time. This limits how much you can make from speaking arrangements, CEO positions (one at a time probably!), concerts, etc. You may be able to overcome this through What You Make.

If you are paid because you are a famous singer and dancer and suddenly can't sing and dance, you will find yourself out of a job.

People are ficle and may change their minds about who they like.

What You Do

Pros:

If you like what you do and are getting paid for it, that's terrific.

If you are better than average at what you do or poses a skill most people don't (limited supply) that enough people want (high demand!) you may be able to command a larger income.

Depending on your skill you may be able to do extra consulting outside your normal job.

Cons:

Many 'what you do' positions are warm-body positions that don't require any skill. Low level programmers, burger flippers, etc. are all easily replacable.

You can only do one thing at a time. This limits how much Doing you can do. Again, you may be able to overcome this through What You Make.

If your skill is boring you may not feel as fullfilled as you would doing something which would make you less money.

What You Make

Pros:

Factory made items and easily copyable items (eg. software) can be created in whatever quantity needed to meet demand.

If you get paid for Who You Are, you may be able to produce CDs, Videos, Books on Tape or other materials that serve as a proxy of yourself.

If you get paid for What You Do, you may be able to use those same skills to create something which can be replicated and sold (eg. software, art prints, etc.).

If you create something which can be sold again and again (eg. art prints), you can bring in money for a long time after the initial work is done.

Cons:

Custom work and hand-made item production don't scale well.

Anything which depends on the whims of fashion can't be counted on as a long term plan.

If what you make is easily replicatable there will be imitators (excess supply) driving down prices.

On Monday: Using this job model to maximize your income and make career decisions.

Part One : The Why You're Paid Job Model

Why You're Paid Job Model (Part 1)

2008-06-26T09:00:00.002-06:00

This is my job model. There are only three reasons people pay you:

a) Who you are (celebrities, famous speakers, successful CEO, etc.)
b) What you do (Flipping burgers, programming, etc.)
c) What you make (Books, music, programs, etc.)

Any given job can be a mix of the three. Each of these pay-reasons has different benefits and down sides to it. We'll hit the benefits and downsides tomorrow. Today, an explanation and examples of each reason.

Who You Are

If you get paid because of your reputation, looks or past successes then you are paid because of who you are.

Examples of Who You Are Jobs

Paris Hilton - No redeeming qualities whatsoever.
A successful CEO - hired for his name so that investors feel comfortable with the start up company.
Steve Jobs - People hang on his every word because he's Steve Jobs. Any other Apple employee making the same announcements wouldn't draw the same interest.
Programmers - When they're paid because they're famous (eg. Joel Spolsky)

What You Do

If you get paid for showing up, for doing specific tasks or serving people you job includes What You Do elements. Examples of What You Do positions include:

Examples of What You Do Jobs

Garbage men
Programmers -- when programming for pay
Burger Flippers
CEOs who can actually turn around a company
Clowns
Skilled laborers

What You Make

If you are paid for the product, art or other creation of yours, your job is in this category.

Examples of What You Make Jobs

Artists (unless their art sells because they're famous)
Woodworkers
Programmers -- when selling a program they've created
Skilled laborers

Tomorrow I will discuss the pros and cons to each of these three pay-reasons.

Part Two : The Pros and Cons of Each Job Type

Working For A Cause (you don't believe in)

2008-06-25T09:00:00.001-06:00

I've been doing some consulting as a web developer at night to bring in a bit of extra money. One job is paying a pretty generous $25/hour. For a couple of hours a night I don't mind the programming. The dilemma I have is that the work is for a company I don't approve of. It's a MLM company.

They sell some sort of amazing cancer curing, hair restoring, kidney cleansing, life changing beverage (which hasn't had any FDA trials, of course).

I hate MLMs* and I initially resisted doing work for them. Where do I draw the line though? I wouldn't make a website for a brothel or drug dealer at any price. How about for a scummy used car dealer?

There are certain things which are black and white. Any time people get involved though, things turn gray rather quickly. I still have a preference to not do work for MLMs, but I don't think I could get enough jobs working for world saving charities either.

* I realize that they're not technically scams or pyramid schemes. So many of the people doing them though seem to think that they're going to get rich quickly from them. Also, I hate dubious health claims which is what most of the MLMs are about around here.

Financially Stable. Now what?

2008-06-24T09:00:00.000-06:00

As I've become more familiar with personal finance blogs, I've slowly come to realize that I am very blessed. Most of the finance blogs are about getting out of debt and reaching the point where we are now.

Our Credit Cards are paid off

We have money set aside to pay off our student loans before they start charging interest (and it's making interest for us in the mean time).

Our car payment is 0% interest, so there's no rush to pay it off ahead of time.

We have more than $2000 sitting in ING doubling as an emergency fund and a start on a house down payment.

We're putting away 15% of my salary into a 401k

Shoot. We've even got a budget.

Ok. Great! Now what?

Now What?

Well, we want a house, so we're putting more money aside each month for that. We know that we're still spending more than we need or want to and we're trying to trim the fat. That one's a continual process though.

Beyond still saving, I'm not really sure what our next stratigic move is supposed to be. If we had a house it would probably be investing. There are plenty of sites that talk about investing. My problem with that is that we want our money back in 6 or so months for a house down payment -- I don't want to make that short term of investments, I want long term stuff.

In other words I have no idea what the next step is. Maybe it's time to buy a new car (I kid!).

CDs VS. Savings at ING

2008-06-23T10:14:00.003-06:00

I looked at putting the $2000 or so that I've got in my ING savings account into a CD instead, but the ING CDs are only making 3.3% interest vs. the 3.0% interest.

The difference comes out to just a couple of dollars after the six months are up.

Even though part of my philosophy is to keep our money in the highest earning account possible. The other part is 'while keeping it as liquid as needed'. The two to three dollar difference isn't enough of a difference to get paid for the loss of liquidity I would get hit with.

There's also a chance that the savings account interest rate would go up. Several other banks recently upped their savings rate slightly. If ING ups their savings rate to 3.2 or something, the money locked in the CD would be even less beneficial. (Of course, the interest rate could go down too.).

Credit Card Reasons Revisited

2008-06-20T09:00:00.009-06:00

Anonymous Says No To $350

Or, How To Miss Out On $29.20 a Month By Not Using Credit Cards

I recently listed 8 reasons to use a Credit Card which caused someone under the bravery of 'Anonymous' to call my advice crappy.

I understand that Credit Cards can be trouble for some people and I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. I did however take issue with these two segments of his response:

Why not keep the money in a high interest account and transfer it online,free, to your checking account as needed. problem solved
...
Rewards,benefits. Virtually useless. For most people the rewards/benefits do not outweigh the risks with credit cards

Great idea! And if one wasn't using a Credit Card at all, I'd agree. However, I found the line 'Virtually useless' rather suspect. I decided to run an analysis and see for myself (and for you, dear reader) what exactly is the financial benefit of using a Credit Card in the manner I use it.

Remember, our financial plan says to use the Credit Card wherever possible (and to pay it off on time, every time).

My analysis involves the following three scenarios:

Scenarios Under Analysis

Checking Account Only

One 0% interest, $0 fees checking account

Salary goes in, checks come out

Checking Account and a 3% APY Savings Account

Salary goes into Savings

Money is transfer ed over as needed

3% APY Savings Account, 1% Cash Back Credit Card

Salary goes into Savings

All expenses go onto Credit Card

Credit Card is paid off at the end of the month

The Results!

With a monthly salary of $3,013.26 and monthly expenses of $2,187.50 using a 1% cash back credit card and a 3% APY savings account I will make $29.20 more a month than if I were just using a checking account. I will make you $24.96 more a month than if you I were using a checking and savings account (but no Credit Card).

See the whole sheet for a more detailed look including assumptions I made to simplify the calculations.

Table: Monthly Difference Between the Three Scenarios

Blog Sized Excerpt	Checking Only	Checking and Savings	Savings and Credit Card
Vs. Checking Only	$0.00	$4.24	$29.20
Vs. Checking and Savings	-$4.24	$0.00	$24.96
Vs. Savings and Credit	-$29.20	-$24.96	$0.00

A Partial List of Flaws

Not everything can be paid for with a Credit Card.

Expenses aren't actually evenly distributed throughout the month

It is possible to get an interest bearing checking account

Using multiple savings accounts will give you finer grained control over transfers to the checking account

Some people really really really hate credit cards, so this won't work for them

Some limitations may apply to 1% cash back purchases

Carrying a balance even once will wipe out months of returns

Conclusion

I stick with my recommendation to use a Credit Card. I realize that my numbers are rough estimates, but I believe that they are strong enough and close enough to show that there is a clear financial benefit to using a Credit Card.

Using a Credit Card isn't for everyone, and I respect that, but just because they don't work for you doesn't magically make them crappy for everyone.

Comprehensive Financial Planning: Initial Thoughts

2008-06-19T09:00:00.001-06:00

I've been slowly getting up to speed on how money works, on the importance of budgeting and appreciating the principle of compound interest. In this learning process I've realized that there are several expensive milestones which I should be planning for now. As I look at these events, I realize that I need a comprehensive financial plan.

Some Large Financial Milestones

House

Kids College

Sons' Missions

Helping my kids become financially stable

Retirement

Some of these are so near it's scarry (House). Others are so far off it's hard for me to be able to estimate how much I need to save. All of them will require large amounts of money. Some (retirement, college) can get extra help from special types of accounts (529, 401k, IRAs, capital gains vs. earned income taxes) if I plan wisely.

Complicating Financial Factors

There are complicating factors for me to consider when thinking about these financial events. Markets will change, my job will probably change, I don't know how many kids we'll be having.

Side Note : Inheritance assets

On a trip last weekend to visit my grandpa-in-law I was also reminded that there are some people in my life who will be leaving something to me in their wills. My father and grandpa-in-law have potentially large assets, possibly my grandpa too.

Inheritance assets are hard to include in a comprehensive financial plan since there's no way to know when someone is going to die, or how much their assets will be worth when they do.

How To Get Started

I don't know how I'm going to make my comprehensive financial plan. I think that I'm on the right track to create it though. The first steps are to 1) get my day to day financies in order then 2) understand the events I need to be planning for then lastly 3) make educated guesses and estimates about the situation.

In a few weeks you should see an initial revision of my plan. If you have any suggestions before then, I'd love to hear them.

Job Interview Full Disclosure

2008-06-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

Morality, Honesty and Applying For a Job

I have been pretty excited about this new job I'm applying for. I've felt confident that it would be a great fit and that both I and the company stood to gain from me working there.

Then my father in law asked if I felt there was any moral issue in not telling the company that I am planning on moving in January. I hadn't even thought about it before that, but his comments got me thinking.

Big Business

First of all, I've never really liked big business. I don't think for a minute that they are going to worry about me if they need to lay me off. I don't think that company loyalty or employee loyalty is a true principle or a moral obligation.

This is the logic that I use when I decide not to talk about my real future goals at work (move out of state, get a more interesting job). The same logic was what I'd been using in this job application process.

I figured that if they didn't ask, I wouldn't tell them. I don't think any business has the illusion that an employee they hire is going to be around for life. After my father in law's comment, I started considering different factors.

The Invisible Hand

First of all, I thought about Adam Smith's principle of the invisible hand which is summed up by Wikipedia thusly:

...[I]n a free market, an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called “the invisible hand”. ...[E]ach individual maximizing revenue for himself maximizes the total revenue of society as a whole, as this is identical with the sum total of individual revenues.

I was definitely acting in my own self interests -- who wants to hire an employee for only six months? The business was acting in it's own self interests, they were trying to hire the best employee they could get.

Could I Provide the Company Value in 6 Months

I would have worked there for six months. My skill set was very closely aligned with what they were looking for. I believed (and still believe) that I could have been profitable for them within a month or two.

That is, I think that my benefits for the company would have offset the cost of training and of the hiring process within one or two months. Some sites however say that the cost of hiring an employee is 150% of their salary. Obviously I have no way of knowing exactly how much the company would have spent, but I find that number very high for this position.

Job Hopping Is Normal Now

My generation is the slightly maligned job hopping generation. There are many different sources saying that this is a normal practice for younger workers like myself.

Granted, I've only been at my current job for 10 months, and I would be at the new one for 6, but when we move I plan on finding a job to hold for a longer time.

Am I being Selfish? (And is that wrong?)

The wonderful MPR asks if my generation is 'the selfish generation', and you know what? Sometimes I feel like I deserve better. I can't blame businesses for doing what is best for them financially going forward, but when they cut pensions and 'let go' older workers I feel like if they're not going to give me a fair shake, so why should I give them a fair shake?

I think that I don't want a lot. I just want to do something that I can support my family with and which will leave me happy at the end of the day so I can enjoy my time with my kids and wonderful wife at home.

My current job doesn't do that. I feel frustrated, bored and grumpy at the end of the day without enough energy to say "Hey! Let's go to the park and play!", which is what my two year old would really like the most.

In part that's what this whole site is about. A big part of my self improvement is that I'm trying to find out how to support my family and be able to spend better time with them. If that's selfish, then by all means I'm selfish. If that drives me to not disclose to a future employer that I'll only be around for six months, then yes, I am inclined not to tell them that.

Is it Honest?

This is where all my invisible hand job hopping selfishness broke down. After several days of introspection, I decided that

I wouldn't tell a lie to get a job

Telling only part of the truth could be as bad as lying

I would hate to be in the employers position and not have all the cards on the table

If they were planning on laying me off in six months I would want to know

Even if they are a big business, that didn't change the fact that deals should be done honestly

I felt that if I withheld information that was critical to making a good decision on their part, I wouldn't be being 100% honest with them.

*sigh* I really wanted that job. It looked like it could be fun, certainly more fun that where I am now.

I sent an email to the manager I was to interview with last week, explained my situation and said that I felt that I could provide value in the next six months. I also said that I'd be happy to telecommute from new new location if that was acceptable. They sent me back an email saying that they needed someone local and long term.

I am disappointed, and still job searching, but I feel that it's what I had to do to be honest.

Groceries Without the Games

2008-06-17T09:00:00.002-06:00

What's the Grocery Game

If you've been to a couple of personal finance blogs you've probably heard of "The Grocery Store Game". If not, here's a story on it over at Get Rich Slowly. The idea is that you combine coupons in such a way that you get most of your groceries and toiletries for very little cost.

It's Hard Work

Frankly, it seems like a lot of work. You have to go through all the store fliers each week, find the best coupon deals, find the manufacturer's coupons that match with the fliers coupons, etc. Oh. Then you have to drive to each of the different grocery stores and get all those deals, figure out what meals you can make with whatever products you may have been able to get for cheap.

As noted in the comments of the story over at GRS, most of the goods are actually toiletries or unhealthy foods. For me, I don't think it's worth the work.

Saving 14.5% On Groceries With (almost) No Work

As you'll see below, I save 14.5% on groceries before coupons even enter in to the equation. The process I use depends on the store having the two programs I use in place, so my process may not work for you.

Of course, playing the grocery game depends on you having the right big-chain stores in your area anyways, so I think this is a viable alternative for many people who could play the grocery store game.

Full Sheet : http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pFOJsib3bG6Gbi-GWZVFXRA

Here are the factors that let us save 14.5% whenever we get groceries:

Grocery Gift Cards
- Our grocery store sells gift cards which give you a 10% bonus. Eg. Buy a $300 gift card, get a $330 gift card. We bought $1200 of cards five weeks ago.

Buy the Gift Card on your cash-back Credit Card
- We get 1% on our Credit Card purchases. That's $12 back on our $1200 purchase

5% Student Discount Card
- The grocery store has a special student affiliate card which gives you 5% off your purchase beyond the normal affiliate card price. My wife is still a student, so I don't think this is dishonest in the least.

Affiliate Card Price Caveat

The grocery store we go to doesn't always have the best overall prices, however when using the affiliate card the prices are competitive with other stores in the area. For this reason, I do not include the "mark down" that the affiliate card gives us. That mark down is only present because they mark the prices up for anyone who doesn't have the card.

Downsides

1) Be sure that the grocery store you do this at is one that you like, otherwise you get stuck with $1200+ of gift cards locked up in the one store.

2) It's easier to be spendy if you're spending gift-card money than real money.

3) You have to put down a large chunk of money right at the start. If the 10% bonus is going to be an ongoing thing, we will buy the smallest denomination possible, and leave the rest of the money in our ING account to further stretch our grocery money.

Real Life

Between May 9th and June 16th we bought $306.94 worth of groceries for a cost of $265.08. Considering that we had agreed to increase our grocery spending (we did) and decrease our eating out (we did!) we are about where we expected to be for grocery spending for the month.

Other

I have no idea where the extra $41.86 I saved went. Probably into my ING account...

On Hypermiling and Common Sense

2008-06-16T09:00:00.000-06:00

What Is Hypermiling

Hypermiling is a set of techniques which are supposed to increase your fuel efficiency beyond the EPA estimates.

To me it seems like mostly hype around traditionally good driving practices. Eg. Don't accelerate or decelerate quickly, slow when approaching red lights so you don't have to stop, etc.

Some hypermiling proponents recommend dangerous or illegal practices such as drafting, putting the car in neutral on the downhill, or turning off the car at long red lights. These activities are foolishly dangerous or illegal and are part of what turns me off to the hypermiling hype.

The upside to the hypermiling trend is that normal average Joes and Janes are hearing about good driving practices from a fresh angle and some are adopting it. Like say, my wife, for example. Last weekend as we were driving home I noticed that she was making a concerted effort in her driving style. I didn't say anything (critiquing driving skills is asking for trouble), but when we got home she said 'Did you notice I was driving differently?'. Um, yes, that was kind of weird. "I was Hypermiling!", she said.

A few trips later and her efforts are much less concerted, and our MPG has gone up!

The 308 Mile Test Drive

We took a trip this weekend to see my wife's grandpa, who lives 308 miles away (according to Google Maps). Our estimated highway fuel efficiency before the trip was about 32 miles per gallon. On the way to grandpa's, we got 36.5 and on the way back we got 33.5 for an average of 35 miles per gallon. It's downhill overall on the way there, but I think averaging the two makes it fair.

We haven't had enough in-city driving time to recalculate our city MPG, but the higher freeway MPG makes me happy and is saving us money. Ok, so we only saved $6.36 on this trip, but hey, it's a start.

I've updated the MPG calculator to reflect the new highway MPG.

8 Reasons to Keep Your Credit Card

2008-06-13T09:00:00.001-06:00

Are Credit Cards Evil?

Credit Cards catch a lot of flack in the personal finance blog world and deservedly so. Many people have fought or are fighting mountains of credit card debt and feel that credit cards are unsafe.

Brack over at Goliath Debt, David Income is one of those people fighting back from debt. He is working on paying off "$68,000 in credit card debt, student loans, and a car loans". He recently asked if he should Cancel the Card? Or Be Prudent?.

Despite the risks of credit card use I still think they are a great too. I can't imagine having to carry cash or a checkbook everywhere so I am going to assume that the decision is between Credit Cards and Debit Cards. I think that keeping a Credit Card and being prudent with it is the best choice.

Eight Reasons To Use a Credit Card

Liability

The most you can be liable for a stolen credit card is $50 (if you report it correctly). With a debit card the limit is your bank account balance (plus overdraft!). See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/atmcard.shtm

Built in Overdraft Protection

You have $50 left in your bank account and you're getting paid tomorrow. You buy $100 at the grocery store. With a credit card, there's no problem. With a debit card you will very likely have an overdraft charge.

This is assuming that you don't blow your credit limit of course. That kind of use wouldn't be prudent though.

Self control

As you use your CC wisely, you will improve your overall self control. This will benefit you in your financial life and in other areas of your life.

Earn Interest

It's seems silly to me to keep hundreds or thousands of dollars in your checking account when it could be earning money in a high-yield savings account or a money market account.

I put my paycheck into an ING savings account earning 3% APY. I pay off the credit card a few days before it's due. That gives me 25 or so days a month to have $1000 or more extra dollars in my savings account making me money. If that money was in my checking account, I'd make zilch.

Rewards

As I posted a few days ago, I am currently getting 1% cash back with my credit card. I'm not aware of any debit card that offers rewards, but if you are, please tell me!

Credit Score

If you have large loans in your immediate future, you probably want everything in your favor for a lower rate. If keeping even an unused no-annual fee credit card open will keep my credit score higher and make it easier to get a lower interest rate on my mortgage, you can bet I'm going to do it.

Benefits

Some Credit Cards offer benefits like car rental insurance. This can save you money if you use these services anyways.

Emergencies

If you do have an emergency, you will have the Credit Card to fall back on. No, it's not idea and yes you should use your emergency fund first, but debt is better than homelessness, missing meds, or other urgent situations.

Prudence is a Virtue

Essentially what you need to do is treat your Credit Card like a Debit Card. You can even write DEBIT on it with a sharpie if it will help you be responsible.

I come from a town where hunting is quite popular, but there's still a lot of controversy over guns. It seems that feelings among personal finance bloggers are similar, and I take the same position I do on guns:

They are useful tools if you use them right. If you use them incorrectly they are incredibly dangerous. If you or someone in your home can't use them safely, get them out. If everyone who will be using them can be safe with them, then by all means keep them around.

Driving Adds Up

2008-06-12T09:00:00.004-06:00

Driving Cost Estimates

Blah blah blah price of gas blah blah blah. You already've heard all that.

On the Road Again

Our Chevy 2007 Malibu gets roughly 24 MPG city, 30 MPG freeway. Given the cost of gas, the miles per gallon and a couple of quick lookups on Google Maps, I now know how much it's costing us to go places. Like, say, $0.48 to visit the inlaws ($0.24 each way).

I kept separate columns for City and Freeway miles, and we just have to think for ourselves which trip belongs where.

Run the Numbers

This is a stupidly simple spreadsheet, but you might as well see how much you're paying for yourself.

Download it as ODS, XLS

Enter your MPG and local price per gallon. Get your MPG estimate at http://www.mpgbuddy.com/ if you don't know it

Use the dollars per trip to estimate the value of using public transportation, ride sharing, getting a new car, quitting work (just kidding), etc.

View the whole thing online

Next Steps

I have no idea how many times we drive different places. We should start tracking that so we can see if we can cut out trips to the inlaws ($0.48!), to the grocery store ($0.12!), etc.

This week I will also be checking our tire's air pressure and getting those pumped up correctly. We are also working to drive more smoothly to improve our mileage.

Scooter Love?

Lots of people are getting scooters thinking that they're going to save a ton of money. At least for us, this wouldn't have been the case if we'd bought the scooter ourselves. My scooter is a 2006 Honda Helix which was $5,000 new. Since I only drive it in the city, the money saved per mile is $0.07. At that rate, I'll need to incur no other expenses for the scooter (oil, tires, insurance, etc.) and drive 71428.57 miles.

That's not going to happen, and so I don't think I can recommend getting a scooter (at least at this price) in addition to a car.

If we hadn't been given the scooter we would have needed a second car eventually. In the case of buying a scooter instead of a second car, it can make sense.

Don't forget to get a helmet.

Warily Eyeing Credit Card Reward Programs

2008-06-11T09:00:00.003-06:00

Are Credit Card Rewards Programs Worth The Trouble?

Currently we have two credit cards. One we've had since we got married, almost five years ago. The other we got when we switched to the credit union.

The old Visa card is through a large national bank, and is pretty crummy. 24% interest, no rewards. The only reason we haven't closed it is that it's the oldest piece of our credit history. We'll keep it around until our mortgage is secured, then we'll close our account with that bank.

The newer card gets 1% cash back at the end of the year. It's convenient that we can just transfer money from our savings or checking to the credit card account, all in one spot.

Our Spending Habits

Neither of us likes carrying cash. I hate having things in my pockets, and she loses stuff in her purse. As a result, we use our credit card everywhere we can, our debit card where that doesn't work, checks where debit cards aren't accepted and cash as a last resort.

We always pay of the entire balance each month.

Current Rewards Program

I guesstimate that this year we've been spending about $2,200 on our credit card each month. If 1% cash back works the way I'm assuming it does, that means we'll get $264 back at the end of the year (.01*$2200*12).

Other Reward Options

Thinking that I'll get $264 back and knowing my average monthly spending means that I can now start comparing other credit card offers and maximize my rewards. Some cards appear to offer really good deals with reasonable APRs and no annual fees.

Let's pretend for a minute that I really did get 5% back on all purchases (there are a couple of exceptions). Spending the same amount each month would then get me $1320 cash back. (0.05*2200*12).

Is this really how it works? If I use the card responsibly (paid off in full each month!) do I really stand to gain that much in cash back? Does anyone have experience with any of these types of cards?

Other Factors

Our credit union is local. We will be closing our accounts when we move in January. Since we don't like our other credit card or the bank it's through, we'll need to get a new credit card anyways.

The cards I listed all require having 'Excellent' credit. My credit score according to Credit Karma is 811. My wife's is similarly high. That along with a car loan in our name and regularly paid cell phone bills I think might put us in the 'Excellent' category.

I'm not fan of credit card hopping. I don't want to switch or open cards every year in response to good deals, so I don't care much about the introductory bonuses or APY; I want to find the card that will be best in the long run.

I've heard Dave Ramsey's and JD's calls to get rid of credit cards, but that's not how we live. We have both been pretty financially reasonable, even before we had a budget. We treat credit cards like we would guns: useful but dangerous tools that need to be treated with respect.

I'd love to hear other's advice and experience with these or similar cards.

Interview Phase Two, and How I Write A Resume

2008-06-10T09:00:00.008-06:00

>Job Hunt Update: I got an email today that asked if I could come in for round two of interviews next week! I believe that there are only two rounds of interviews, but I suppose we'll see what happens after this one. Since my resume presumably was one of the factors which got me an interview (I had a friend who works there deliver it too), I've decided to share my resume techniques. Maybe they'll be helpful to someone, and maybe someone can help me improve as well.

Resume Writing, My Style

I don't remember the last time I actually sat down to write a resume from scratch. My resume has kind of evolved and grown since I started college. Recently though I did have an opportunity to sit down with my brother Bob and help him with his resume.

Bob is a really smart kid. He got into computers way before I did, speaks fluent Spanish and is very responsible. And if that weren't enough, he just graduated from high school. Bob isn't very wordy though. His emails and essays make Hemmingway look verbose.

Before and After

So, here below is a before and after of his resume. The one of the left is the one he created himself, the one on the right is the one I helped him with.

Here are the differences:

Things Wrong With the First Resume

Duplicate information

Vague, tangentially related objective

Only one work experience entry

List formatting runs together

No spacing between sections

All fonts, except his name, are the same size

One third of the page is blank space

Non-work related interests

No reason why visiting a foreign country is relevant

Soft verbs and interest

Improvements In the Second Resume

Single line address format saves valuable vertical space

Name top and center makes it the most noticable page element

Different fonts for each level of information

Included all past, current and planned education

Each skill or activity line starts with an adjective or, if appropriate, a verb

Name software or other tools you know by name

Title 'Work History' as 'Experience' and include related non-work activities

Include real numbers in job descriptions where the demonstrate added value

For jobs/positions without official titles, use a descriptive title that says what you did

When possible, use verbs with positive connotations in the job title, otherwise use them in your job description

Other Notes

I'm sure there are other considerations that could improve the resume greatly. I'd love to hear your suggestions. One obvious thing would be to tailor it for the specific job you're applying for. In my brother's case, he doesn't have much to work with yet.

In my case, I have more jobs than fit on the resume, since I like to keep it at a single sheet. I include the most relevant jobs and projects I've done, and reword job descriptions to emphasize portions of my responsibilities that could relate to the job I'm applying for.

A good resume is only half of the package for job application; you also need a great cover letter. With the job I'm currently doing interviews for, I found out who I would be interviewing with initially and directed the cover letter to him.

Wii Fit, Gym Membership, Stroller or Something else?

2008-06-09T09:00:00.003-06:00

Weight Weight, Don't Tell Me

I've hit a weight floor it seems. I've gotten down to 215 pounds (From a new-years weight of 240) three times now, and each time I'm back at 220 a few days later. I realize that I should expect fluctuations, but this has been over a three week period, so I'm starting to worry that I'm going to have to change my methods a bit more.

My weight loss plan thus far has mainly been eating less and eating more responsible foods. I have been playing more sports than I did last year, but no one would ever call twice a month a workout plan.

Added to the mix is the fact that my wife is now fully recovered from the baby we had two months ago, and is also wanting to lose weight. We've both agreed that we need to be more active to achieve our goals, the question now is : What form of activity would fit our lifestyles the best?

What would you get?

In an ideal world an exercise purchase would :

Cost very little

Be usable any time day or night

Be something we could do no matter the weather

Be fun

Would let us work around the kids

Help us lose weight

Be something we could do together

Be something we could do outside

The current candidates are : A Wii Fit, A gym membership or a double stroller.

The Wii Fit fits most of those options, but we're afraid we'd get bored, we're not sure if it would actually burn enough calories to make a difference,

A double stroller would let us go running / walking outside, but winter here involves snow and ice, and it rains from time to time too. We're not entirely comfortable walking around our neighborhood at 1:00 AM when we're done with projects either.

A gym membership would be fun, and they'd watch the kids, but a family pass at the local rec. center is $30/month, more than we'd like to be paying.

Compromises

I don't think there is anything that will perfectly fit our needs, and we're ready to compromise. The question is where to compromise. Do we compromise on cost with a gym membershipt? Do we decide we'll get a stroller and use it now through October (when it will get too cold)? Do we get a Wii Fit with the risk that we won't like it or that it won't be effective enough?

What would you do in our situation?

Image from Prognatis' Flickr photo stream

Is It Time to Switch To CFLs?

2008-06-06T09:00:00.005-06:00

I've known for quite a while that CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Bulbs) were cheaper in the long run, but I was ambivalent about the savings, and was under the impression that it wasn't that much of a difference anyways. Now that I'm trying to become more disciplined and save money wherever I can, I decided to do an honest evaluation of the potential savings.

We are likely moving in January, so I wanted the CFLs to pay themselves off before then since I don't know what kind of lighting our yet-to-be-found new house will have.

My plan was to a) analyze the costs and b) stick all the existing incandescent bulbs into a shoebox till we're moving out and take the CFLs with us.

We now have all CFLs, except for the two porch lights which are almost never used and which are difficult to replace anyways. If my estimates and calculations are correct, we should save about $10 a month and recoup our costs in four months.

Below is the spreadsheet I used for my calculations. Please let me know if you see any errors. The in-line view doesn't have quite the whole sheet. Please view it on Google docs or download it to see the full thing.

(Post continues after spreadsheet)

View it, Download it as ODS, Download it as XLS.

As you may have noticed, the longer you leave your lights on the sooner you recoup your costs. The obvious solution is of course to leave your lights on all day long. You'll be saving money before you know it! ;-)

There are some minor issues to switching to CFLs. If you're concerned about the color of your lighting, you may want to buy just a couple of bulbs and try them first. The CFLs, though they claim to be pure white, daylight or whatever do seem to have more of a blueish tinge than the incandescents.

I put the bulbs in our house last night, and due to the color of the glass around the light fixtures, the color temperature change isn't that noticeable, except in the bathroom, where we have a built-in vanity with six bare bulbs surrounding it.

When my two year old walked into the bathroom this morning, he said "We got new walls in the bathroom?", "No" replied my wife. "Somebody painted the walls in the bathroom?" returned my son. The color change isn't bad, but it does exist and may take some getting used to. For $10/month though, I'll do it.

Categorizing My Monthly Spending

2008-06-05T09:00:00.001-06:00

When we used our accounts at Wells Fargo, we could see a categorical breakdown of our expenses, but only for the Credit Card. My current Credit Union doesn't offer this functionality, but I had a driving need to know where my money was going.

Initially I would download the .csv (comma separated values) files, and manually sort them out into categories on a spreadsheet.

Of course, that grew old quickly, and I was forced to search the internet for something better. Coming up empty handed, I wrote my own script to sort out my different expenses into categories.

You run it on the command line like so

./statementToCategories.pl list.csv of.csv account.csv statements.csv

It will ask you how to categorize different expenses, and when it sees them again, it will remember what you entered last time. When it's done, it will ask you what to save the file as, and will create a .csv file with the different categories, and how much was spent in each category. It will also tell you how much you spent in each category in an average month.

With that data you can make charts, make plans and moan about how much you wasted on eating out....

You can find the script here:

http://richerandbetter.blogspot.com/2000/01/statementtocategoriespl.html

The script is in Perl, since that's what I'm comfortable with, and it probably won't work as-is for you, unless your bank/credit union lets you download .csv files with the same format as mine does, and you're running Linux. You are free to edit the script however you want and redistribute it.

I have no idea if the .csv files I download are some banking standard, or if they're just the way my credit union decided to make them.

ING Direct

2008-06-04T09:00:00.000-06:00

I finally set up a savings account at ING Direct today. As you know, part of our plan is to move money to the highest interest rate account it can go in, while being as liquid as it needs to be. We had accrued $2500 in our Money Market account, so it was time to move some of that into a higher interest account.

Since we have to pay rent tomorrow, and we have $318 on the credit card which is due on the 25th, I decided to only put in $1000 into the ING account for starters. In a week or two when rent is paid and we're closer to our next paycheck, I'll transfer another $500 in.

How accessible will our money be? From what I've read, a transfer from ING takes about 5 business days. At my credit union, I can cash in the CD at any time, and I only lose the last 60 days of interest on the CD. So, I'm exchanging urgency in an emergency situation (where I could use my credit card anyways) for lack of penalties really.

Depending how well I like the ING Savings account, I will probably open an Electric Orange checking account as well. We use an average of 5 checks a month. Any of those things which couldn't be paid with a check from ING could be paid with cash, and then we wouldn't have to worry about changing our bank account whenever we move.

Job Interview

2008-06-03T09:00:00.001-06:00

Today I interviewed for the job I mentioned in "What Am I Worth?". Overall the interviews went pretty well. There were three interviewers, one attending via phone. I certainly did better with the in-person interviewers than over the phone.

The company is something of a cube farm company but I'm optimistic that it'll be a good experience, assuming I get the position. I should find out if I get to have the second and final round of interviews within a week.

I ended up asking for $60,000 per year. I choked and didn't play the 'how much could you offer?' game like I should have. I'll try harder when we move in January. My current position is dull enough that I'll take a non-maximum salary to switch positions.

--

Interviews are always fun in a way. I get nervous and a bit queasy, but the task of trying to relate my life experiences to the questions they ask is always an interesting challenge. My resume was prepped to help me this time, as I included several non-work projects I've done in the experience section. In the past I wouldn't have included them since I wasn't paid, I didn't have a manager, and they were relatively short term. They did use technologies tangentially related to this companies offerings though, so it ended up helping.

Estimating Mortgage Payments and How Much House We Could Afford

2008-06-02T09:00:00.003-06:00

Guestimating Housing Costs

Buying a house is somewhat stressful. As I've mentioned, we're trying to move at the end of the year. One approach to our house hunt has been 'how much can we afford?'. We don't want to actually stretch ourselves to the very limit and buy exactly the most house we possibly could, but understanding where we are is going to be financially is important.

Today I'm sharing a spreadsheet I've created which is helping us understand what kind of price range we will be able to afford. I realize that these numbers are a little rough, but we're still months away from buying. The numbers will firm up as we draw closer and know exactly how much I'll be making next year, how much we will have saved up for a down payment etc.

You can download a copy to play with, if you'd like: Download as ODS , Download as XLS

Here's a snippet of the results. See the full spreadsheet here

The Belt :: Visualizing Weight Loss

2008-05-30T09:00:00.000-06:00

I wear the same belt every single day. It's a dark brown belt, and it goes well with jeans and matches my Sunday shoes well enough that my wife doesn't complain. I've been wearing this belt for the past two or three years. Last week when I had to punch a new hole in it, I realized that it tells the story of my weight loss pretty well.

You can see indentations in the belt right before six of the holes. The left most hole is the one I punched last week. That's the under 215 pounds hole. It's the first time I've needed a hole there since I got the belt.

Six holes to the right you can see a faint indentation. That's from when I weighted 240 pounds.

If you were to plot the depth of the indentations, it seems that it would create a bell curve representing my efforts (and lack thereof!) over the years to lose weight. It seems that no matter what I try I always end up back in the 225-230 pound weight range, as witnessed by the two deep middle grooves.

The newest hole is actually a little more snug than I would like it to be. It's not painful and doesn't cut of my circulation, but if I start eating it's tight enough to trigger the loosen-your-belt signals in my brain.

This is intentional in my part of course. My stomach doesn't want to cooperate and tell me when I've had enough until I'm about ready to heave; my waist and belt are more willing to tell me when to quit.

I realize that this isn't a conventional or normal way to help limit eating, but I'm willing to do whatever works to get down to a healthy weight. 200 here I come!

What Does a Pay Stub Look Like?

2008-05-29T09:00:00.001-06:00

How Much Do You Really Get From Your Paycheck?

What does a real world pay stub look like? When I finally started getting real paychecks, I was initially let down. I had very naively divided my salary by 24 pay periods and imagined all the cool stuff I was going to buy.

Reality is a bit of a letdown sometimes. I actually only end up with a little over half of my salary coming to me.

So, without further ado, here's my current pay stub (with certain data blanked out!)

Green is income, red is expenses.

At the top left, Salary is the amount I supposedly get each pay period (every two weeks). It works out to be about $50,000 per year.

At the bottom left is the amount that gets deposited into my bank account every two weeks.

43% of my salary doesn't end up in my pocket!

It would be difficult to argue with the taxes portion of the paycheck, but let's take a closer look at the section titled "Deductions From Gross" and "Non-taxable Company Items".

Deductions from Gross

Deductions from Gross are voluntary amounts I choose to have taken out of my paycheck. As much as it stinks to get that much less cash, there are good reasons to get those amounts removed.

Less Taxes:
These deductions are taken out before taxes are calculated. It appears that the taxes are about 15% of the taxable amount. If this is correct, then I pay about $100 less in taxes each pay period by deducting these amounts from my gross paycheck.

What are these accounts though?

Health Insurance - Employee:
This is a medical 'flex spend' or 'cafeteria plan' expense. We estimated how much we were going to spend on medical costs this year, and are having that amount removed from my pay over the course of the year. This account can be used for dental work, eye doctor visits and glasses, birth and related expenses etc. Since we knew we'd be having a c-section baby this year, we knew at least how much we'd be spending.

FSA:
This Flex Spend Account is for child care. Since I'm at work and my wife is at school, we needed someone to watch our kids for part of the day most days of the week. With this account we can pay for child care from our pre-tax money.

401(k):
We are currently putting in 15% of my gross salary into our 401(k). We'd like to retire well, so we've got to make sacrifices now.

Even though these deductions don't come home with me, two of the three are or will be used by me during this year.

Non-taxable Company Items

This is the section which shows non-salary benefits that the company is providing. It appears that they company is paying $306.07 per pay period for insurance for my family.

They match 100% of my 401(k) contributions, up to 3% of my salary. It's true then that I am not being matched completely with my 401(k) donations, but at least it's something.

Take Home Per Year

In all my excited imagining about how to spend my money, it turns out that I should have been thinking about taking home just less than $30,000 per year instead of the $50,000 gross salary figure.

So, if you just barely landed that dream job with the huge salary, don't make too many plans till you carefully review what you're actually bringing home each month.

Good Books In the Home

2008-05-28T09:00:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid I liked to read. I would read almost anything I could get my hands on from Medical text books to Shakespeare to Alistair MacLean. I would peruse the local library, but most of the books I read were ones I found at home.

I've often wished that my parents would have had more classics on the shelves. The classics that are sited time and time again by professors, by lecturers and by insightful people everywhere.

While I don't yet know if my kids are going to be voracious readers, I've decided that I am going to at least make it possible for them to be if they so choose. In that vein, I've been stopping at the local thrift store every month or so and picking up any classics I come across. They are usually priced $0.50 or $1 for a paperback, $2 to $4 for a hardback. The average price comes out to about $1.00 per book.

JD over at the Get Rich Slowly blog is usually against buying more books than you will actually read, but I see these as an investment. If having lots of good books around increases the chance that my children will enjoy culture and a love reading, I'll make that investment and take the risk.

And just maybe I'll learn to enjoy reading again.

What am I worth?

2008-05-27T09:00:00.001-06:00

The Value of a Soul...(or at least a warm body)

I am currently making $50,000/year. I applied for a new job today and will eventually have to tell them how much I'd like (assuming I get the position). What do I say? I am satisfied with my current salary. 50k is nothing to sneeze at, and with some basic money management skills we should do quite nicely as a family of four on this income.

On the other hand, what if I ask for 60k and get it? I don't want to come across as pretentious, cocky or greedy, but I would like to make as much as I can. An extra $10,000 a year would help nicely with our house buying goal.

Dispair..ity

Today after I had prepped my resume, I asked my colleague on the inside of this company if he would be able to give me a salary range I could expect. Through our conversation I discovered that he is making substantially less than I am currently -- probably in the $40,000 range. His skills are nearly as good as mine in some areas and better in others, and he's probably a harder worker.

He isn't, however, as assertive as I am. I'm not pushy or anything, but I know what I can do and I know what I want. If this company won't give it to me, I am blessed to be in the position that I can walk away from it. I'm not sure that my colleague could pull off the same thing.

If we were sharing salary info, he would know that he is being under paid, and could ask for a raise. On the other hand, if his request for a raise were turned down, and I were hired on at my current salary or higher, there might be a bit of animosity or bitterness between the two of us.

A Tradition of Secrecy

My dad has never told any of us what he makes each year. The closest I came to finding out was when I took the ACT test in high school. It asks for your parent's salary info during the registration, and when my dad said $100k+ I was amazed. To this day I have no idea how much more than that he makes. I expect I'll only find out when I have to handle the will.

I think that his attitude is typical and professional. I'm not completely convinced however that it's the best for everyone involved.

In Praise of Openness

In an open market place I would know what others are making, and I would be able to ask for a salary that isn't too far off the mark from what my peers are making. If I wanted more money than they are making, I would have to argue why I am a better value to the company than the other workers.

On the up side for me, I wouldn't know if I was getting what I am worth.

As an up side for the company, they could offer lower salaries, but then offer more performance bonuses.

In Praise of Closedness

Secretive salaries have many benefits for companies. For one thing, it is harder for competitors to poach employees. The competitor would have to offer enough extra money to be sure to pass the employee's current salary.

Another reason is that some workers aren't going to request enough money for their pay, and the company will get a good deal since the employee doesn't know that they are being undervalued.

Employees not knowing each other's salary provides less opportunities for disgruntlement between them.

Lastly, as a potentially valuable employee I know that I can request a larger salary because I know that they are saving money by not paying my colleague as much as he's worth. (Of course, I'll never know if I'm also getting low balled, just not as badly as him!)

Conclusion?

I'm still undecided about if I would rather have everyone's salaries out in the open.
Perhaps the best solution would be to publicize anonymous statistics so that the data is available, but that individuals won't know who to be bitter with.

Expensive Free Stuff

2008-05-26T09:00:00.002-06:00

Once in a while you'll get hit with a present that costs money. Dogs are the classic example, and jokes abound about the price of 'free puppies'.

I just graduated, and was given a very nice $400 suit from my inlaws. A new suit though meant that I needed shoes that matched, which I didn't own.

So, last week we went and got some new shoes so that I can wear my suit to a job interview I hope to have next week. I ended up buying a pair of Rockport Wingtip shoes. That set us back $90 which we weren't expecting to spend this month.

On the up side, I now look super sharp (losing 20 pounds had an adverse affect on how my old suit fit), and I feel very confident walking into the interview next week. I also have a $380 net gain.

On the down side, a net gain doesn't help me much financially. It's something I wouldn't have bought myself, and it's not something I will ever derive direct financial value from. Granted, if I can get a higher salary at my new job, it will have had an effect, however my old suit may have been up to the task as well.

--

You may question my buying Rockports for $90 when there were other nice looking shoes in the $40-$60 range. The last pair of shoes I bought was a $50 pair of nice leather non-Rockport shoes. They lasted a week before the sole split from the uppers.

My last pair of rockports I got in 9th grade and I still have them and wear them. Even though there's not hope for them for formal use, they've held up superbly and I wear them to work.

Finding a House

2008-05-23T09:00:00.000-06:00

A Newbies Guide to Not Understanding Buying a House

How do you go about buying a house? There's so much data out there that it's difficult to find information.

We would like to move and buy a house in January of next year. As we've started looking at housing, we've realized that there are a ton of things that real estate websites assume you already know. Unfortunately, we don't know them, and we're getting a crash course.

Our problem is made worse by the fact that some thing real estate sites think we should care about, we don't. For example, they want to know exactly what city you want to live in and have finely divided price ranges for searching.

We just want to move to a specific region of the country. Google says the area we would be happy moving to is a roughly 420 mile diameter circle. We're also pretty flexible on price. For the right house on the right lot we'd be happy to pay $300,000, but we've also seen $60,000 houses that we like just fine (in different cities).

These and other factors are making house searching a slightly cumbersome project! Below are some of the issues we've come across while house hunting.

Things We Don't (or didn't) Know

How many square feet do we need? What does 2000 sq. feet mean? How big is that *really*? Some pictures of rooms and houses and their square footages would help us get in the ballpark here.
How big is an acre? This lot has .2 arces. So what? City slickers like us don't uses acres till we're trying to buy land, so we have no notion of how big an acre is!
What are the requirements for a First Time Homebuyer's loan?
First Time Homebuyer programs have different limits on salary and housing cost based on the city or neighborhood the house is located in.
Is it possible to buy a house in a neighborhood with a HOA (Home Owner's Association) and not join. (I hate all the rules...)
How do we find jobs near the houses we like?

Things We Wish We Could Do

Search for homes that would fall under the max first time homebuyer's program values
Show homes in neighborhoods/cities where I would qualify for a first time homebuyer loan
Filter houses by areas with HOAs
Show homes for sale on a map with the local schools, parks and other features highlighted
Find the prices for other similar houses nearby and in other neighborhoods
Have links to the local chamber of commerce or city business listing websites next to houses

There's a lot more, and a general sense of being overwhelmed. I'm sure we'll find our way through the haze, but it'd be nice if there was more digestible information available online.

If any real estate company sees this post, please feel free to implement any and all ideas. I'd love to be your customer if you did.

Time is Money

2008-05-22T09:00:00.003-06:00

Would You Pay $16.67 to See the Latest Simpsons Episode?

I hadn't planned on starting time management posts yet, but today I had an experience that made me say "doh!". Here for your enjoyment is a short story about how I paid $16.67 to watch The Simpsons online.

Hulu is Pretty Cool

We don't currently have a cable or satellite subscription, because we don't really have time to watch TV right now, and that $50 a month should be going towards our house down payment anyways. That doesn't mean we can't watch a lot of our favorite shows though. Hulu.com is a pretty cool site. You can watch all sorts of shows, current and old, as well as movies. We use it to keep up with The Office and a couple of other shows we like.

Consulting Makes For Extra Bucks

I've been doing some programming on the side to help increase our income, and for the job I am working on right now I get $25/hour. There's plenty of work to do, and I got up at 5:00 to get a start on it before heading in to my real job.

After I'd been programming for a couple of hours, I decided to head in early. Then I checked my email, read a few blogs, then decided to see what was new on Hulu.com. In a moment of weakness, my drive to go to work early disappeared...and I watched The Simpsons.

Of course my browser crashed part way through, and so the episode took almost 40 minutes to watch. That's 40 minutes I could have been either at work or doing consulting. 40/60*$25 = $16.67. On my way to work I started thinking about all the time I waste and realized that
I could be bringing home a lot more if I would just buckle down and work.

The Value of Time

How should I be balancing my time then? Different activities have different values of course, and spending all my time on the highest value thing would mean other important things would fall by the wayside.

My family is the most important to me (highest non-financial value). Working at my job makes me the most money (highest financial value). Spending time on either of those pursuits would usually give the highest returns to me (happiness or money). Relaxing is important too of course, but losing $16.67 in opportunity costs just to watch a mediocre episode of the Simpsons just doesn't make logical sense.

Improving My Time ROI

In order to make better use of my time, I've created a schedule for myself. I decided that during the week I will try to be more strict on my time usage, and that the weekends will remain unstructured for the time being.

Each of my time blocks are color coded to reflect why they are important and so I can see if I'm at least trying to live a balanced life.

The Personal Projects entry is orange and green because I have hope that a couple of my personal projects will eventually act as extra streams of income as well.

Tell me what you think about my schedule, and leave any stories you might have about time you've wasted and regretted.

Losing weight and making money

2008-05-21T09:00:00.000-06:00

What do losing weight and managing money have to do with each other?

Well, for starters, unless you're a freegan or a self-sustaining farmer, you're paying for your food.
We recently (March) noticed that we were spending about $500 per month on food. For a family of 4 in a reasonably priced part of the country, this is way more than what is needed.
Both require making and sticking with plans
I have been aware of my increasing weight for several years. Between 2003 and 2008 my pants size increased from a 34 to a 36, and even that was starting to be a bit snug.
Over Christmas holiday (2007) I stepped onto a scale and realized that I was up to 240 pounds. I committed to eat more healthily for the upcoming year, and the first several months of this year that was as firm as my commitment got. I ate less, and ate smaller portions but it wasn't until I also created a spreadsheet to track my progress that I was able to actually control myself and start losing significant weight.
Both are exercises in self discipline
People, or at least me, are lazy. On our own, we will take the path of least resistance for most things. Controlling appetites is difficult weather you're trying to reign in a budget or a waist.

So now I'm down to 215 lbs from 240, and I am on track to reach my goal of 200 well before new years. I think these last 15 pounds are going to be harder than the first 25 though. I'm going to need to find some sort of regular exercise regimen to follow to burn off the fat.

For what it's worth, my weight loss plan thus far was mainly dietary. I now rarely snack late at night (when I'm programming), I try to drink more water, eat less meat and fatty stuff. I did play racquetball occasionally last semester, but 25 pounds worth of it.

Weight loss isn't fun. I hate passing up delicious food in order to become more healthy, but that's the way it is. I am already enjoying more mobility, more endurance and more fulfilling play time with the kids.

Our financial strategy

2008-05-20T09:00:00.002-06:00

Goals
Before figuring out a financial strategy, we had to figure out our goals. Our goals are:

Live within our means
Pay off debts before they cost us interest
Save for a house, and for emergencies

Summary
Here's a high level summary of our specific strategy, based on those goals:

Pay off debts first
Keep money where it will earn as much interest as possible while remaining as accessible as needed
Use a budget to maximize the amount of money we can save

Implementation
And here is our specific implementation, as of May 15, 2008:

When we get a paycheck:

Put tithing and offerings (10% of paycheck + offerings) into checking (we pay with a check)
Pay off the balance on the credit card (also use funds from the Money Market account, if needed)
If it is the start of the month, put $600 for rent into the checking account
If there are any other bills, pay those
Put $100 "we don't accept credit cards" money into checking account
Put remaining money into the Money Market Account

Spending:

Pay with the credit card when possible
Remember that there is only $100 spendable in the checking account
For non-standard expenses (medical, tuition, etc.) which can't be paid with credit card, transfer needed funds from Money Market to checking.

Money Market Surplus:
When more than $500 accumulates in the Money Market account after paying all expenses, transfer that money to a higher yielding (but harder to access) account. We are currently putting our money into CDs, but we have been looking at high yield online accounts, such as ING's.

Results

We earn 1% back on Credit Card purchases
We earn 1.144% on the money sitting in our money market account

1 & 2 together effectively create a 0% loan from the credit card which is paid off each pay period (bi-monthly).

We keep enough money liquid to pay expenses for each two week period. This reproduces the paycheck-to-paycheck feeling we've lived with for so long
Money we don't need immediately goes to higher earning accounts while being protected from our merciless spending

We have been operating with this strategy for the past two months (April, May) and have found it fairly efficient so far. We know how much we have to spend because we can compare our credit card balance to the amount in our money market account.

We will likely modify some of the details going forward, for example we are looking at options to maximize our 'extra' money. CDs aren't giving a very great interest rate right now. We will also consider getting a credit card with better rewards once we determine which one will be the best for us.

I like to eat

2008-05-19T09:00:00.001-06:00

I like to eat. A lot.

My preference is to eat until I'm full, then continually top off for the next couple of hours while hanging out with friends and family. You know, like at thanksgiving time.

That eating style, along with being busy as a student and working full time (no time to excercise) left me at 240 pounds at the end of Christmas break in December 2007.

Recognizing that 240 pounds is too much for a 6 foot 3 inch guy, I looked around to see what I should be weighing, in order to be healthy. I know there are a lot of ways to calculate what's healthy, I ended up deciding to target a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI).

Using the handy calculator at http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/, I found that I need to be below 200 pounds!

New Years being what it is, I decided to try to lose 40 pounds by next new years. That is:

I will weight 200 pounds by December 31, 2008

As a non-specific sub goal, I'd like to be more active and live a more healthy lifestyle. Don't get me wrong, there's little I enjoy more than a good solid meal at a churrascaria, but I don't want to be obese anymore.

Later this week I will outline my weight loss plan, and how it relates to finances.

Background: An overview of our current accounts

2008-05-16T13:29:00.002-06:00

We have several accounts which we use to our benefit. Our main bank is the local credit union. Their service is excellent, and their rates are good. The real benefit for us though is the one-stop web page where we can manage (almost) all our accounts at once.

Our accounts at the credit union, their balances [amount] and the interest they earn (interest%,APY%):

Savings Account [$0], (0.797%, 0.80%)
Money Market Account [$2,308.40], (1.144%/1.15%)
Checking Account [$765.02], (0%,0%)
CD [$6,051.83], (3.057 %3.10 %)
Credit Card [$1,671.80], (11%?)

We also have an account at Wells Fargo. We keep it open only because the credit card there has been open for about three years longer than our other credit card, and we don't want to jeopardize our credit score till we've secured our house loan. Our accounts at Wells Fargo:

Checking Account [$100.08], (0%,0%)
Credit Card [$0],(21%?)

Other money we have includes about $150 in super emergency cash tucked away at home, a couple of savings bonds in our children's names and a plastic pig full of change.

You may have noticed that in the previous post I said we don't carry a balance on our credit card, yet there are over $1500 of charges on it at the moment.

On Tuesday I'll go over our current financial strategy and show you why.

Background: Our life situation

2008-05-16T13:28:00.002-06:00

I believe that money advice and information is more useful if you have a frame of reference when considering the advice. All advice isn't good advice, and not all good advice applies to everyone at the time they hear the advice.

Here's our life situation

I just barely graduated and am working full time.
My wife is getting her MBA.
We have two young kids (both under 3).
We rent an apartment, but are planning on buying a house in the next 18 months.
We have about three years of car payments remaining, at zero percent interest.
We will have to start paying interest on student loans in June 2009. (About $6000 total in loans)
We don't carry a balance on our Credit Cards
My work has a 401(k) plan with matching up to 3% of my salary (Salary: $50,000/yr + bonuses)
My wife and I both have minor money making hobbies (no dependable income, probably a total of several thousand extra dollars a year)
We believe in the law of tithing, and pay 10% of all our income to our church, as well as other offerings from time to time.

We are a deeply religious family, but I will try my hardest not to be a zealot or to push religious views too heavily in this blog. If you are offended by the mentioning of religion in a financial blog, you have several options:

This is the Internet, and you are free to find another site to visit
Realize that not everyone is just like you, and that we can agree on some things and disagree on others
Every time I mention faith, blessings or the likes, do a mental search and replace and say belief and luck instead

I've got friends with all sorts of beliefs including Zoroastrian, Jewish, Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Spiritist, Agnostic, Athiest and more. What we have in common brings us together as friends, what is different provides variety in our lives.

Tomorrow: An overview of our current accounts

statementToCategories.pl

2000-01-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

Well, this is my first financial software, such as it is. I've been using and refining this over the last few months. It *does* work with my credit union, it may or may not work with your institutions downloadable bank statements.

It has only been tested on my own computer, which is a Ubuntu Linux computer. It requires Perl and the File::Basename and Date::Calc modules. It may or may not work on Windows.


#!/usr/bin/perl

#====================================================
#
# statementToCategories.pl
#
# This script will take in a csv formatted bank statement and output two
# csv files. The first file is a list of categories and how much was spent
# in each category. The other is the original csv, with a list of which
# cateogry each line item was categorized as.
#
# If a particular line hasn't been seen before, the script will prompt
# the user to select a category for the line. It saves the categories to
# ~/.finance_categories
#
# The format for the bank statement csv file that the script reads is:
# "Date","Check No.","Description","Debit","Credit"
#
# License and Copyright
# Copyright 2008, Richard Better <richerandbetter@gmail.com>
# This program is Free software. Use it at your own risk. I take
# no responsibility for the results of the use of this software. 
#
# Licensed under the GNU GPL Version 3
# View the full license here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
#
# Enjoy!

#====================================================
# Run more safely. Import needed modules
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Basename;
use Date::Calc qw(Delta_Days);


#====================================================
# Make sure we were passed at least one file
if(scalar @ARGV < 1)
{
   print "\nUSAGE: statementToCategories.pl financialData.csv [financialData.csv ... financialData.csv]\n\n";   
   exit(-1);
}


#====================================================
# Categories we'll be sorting into
# To customize categories, edit this array.
my @cats = (
   'car-gas',
   'car-insurance',
   'car-payments',
   'car-maintenance',
   'cash',
   'clothing',
   'electronics',
   'food-dining',
   'food-groceries',
   'gifts',
   'home-maintenance',
   'home-rent',
   'medical',
   'megamart',
   'recreation',
   'school',
   'util-electric',
   'util-gas',
   'misc',
);

#====================================================
# Setup variables

# Global variables
# Set initial date range
my @mindate = (2050,12,31);
my @maxdate = (1901,1,1);

my %predef = (); # Already defined categories
my %values = (); # A hash of categories and amount spent
my @longdesc = (); # An array which stores the original data, plus it's categorization, so that you can figure out why categories have the values they do
my $predefvalues;
my $outdir;
my $homepath = $ENV{'HOME'};
chomp($homepath);

#====================================================
# Run the script

createOutdir();
prepCategories();
parseFiles();
saveDefs();
writeResults();

#====================================================
# Just functions below

sub createOutdir
{
   # Create the output directory if it doesn't exist
   $outdir = $homepath . '/Finance/';
   mkdir($outdir) unless (-e $outdir);
}

sub prepCategories
{
   # Prepopulate category totals
   foreach(@cats){
   $values{$_} = 0;
   }

# Find existing categories
   $predefvalues = $homepath . "/.finance_categories";

   if (-e "$predefvalues")
   {
 open(FH,"<$predefvalues");
 while(<FH>){
     my @def = split(',',$_);
     chomp($def[1]);
     $predef{$def[0]} = $def[1];
 }
 close(FH);
   }
}

sub parseFiles
{
   # The main loop. It takes one or more files and reads them line by line, processing each and adding their contents to the totals
   foreach(@ARGV){
 my $file = $_;
 print "Processing $file\n";

 die("File $file does not exist\n") unless (-e $file);

 open(COSTS,"<$file");
 while(<COSTS>){

     my $preline = $_;
     $preline =~ s/\"//g;

     my @line = split(',',$preline);
     next if $line[0] =~ m/Date/; # Description line
     checkDates($line[0]); # Find our date range

     next if $line[3] !~ m/-/; # Payments / credits
     next if $line[2] =~ m/Transfer/; # inter-account transfer
     next if $line[2] =~ m/Savings\ Withdrawal/;


     my $amount = $line[3];
     $amount =~ s/-//g;

     my $origPurchase = $line[2];
     my $purchase = cleanupPurchase($line[2]);

     # Flip the value to be positive

     # Autocategorize
     if($predef{$purchase}){
  $values{$predef{$purchase}} += $amount;
  push(@longdesc,"\"" . $predef{$purchase} . "\"," . $preline);
     }
     else
     {
  system 'clear';
  print "Please enter a category number for the following item, then press ENTER:\n\n";

  for(my $i = 0;$i<@cats;$i++){
      print "($i) " . $cats[$i] . "\n";
  }

  print "\n$amount at '$origPurchase', short name is '$purchase' \n";
  print "-----------------------\n";

  # Read in the new category
  my $newcat = <STDIN>;
  $newcat =~ s/^.*[^\d](\d+)[^\d].*$/$1/;
  if($newcat eq '')
  {
      $values{'misc'} += $amount;
      push(@longdesc,"\"misc\"," . $preline);
  }
  else
  {
      $predef{$purchase} = $cats[$newcat];  
      $values{$predef{$purchase}} += $amount;
      push(@longdesc,"\"" . $predef{$purchase} . "\"," . $preline);
  }
     }
 }
 close(COSTS);
   }
}

sub saveDefs
{
   # Write the definitions to a file, so we don't have to re-categorize everything each time
   open(CATS,">$predefvalues");
   foreach(sort keys %predef){
 print CATS $_ . "," . $predef{$_} . "\n";
   }
   close(CATS);
}

sub writeResults
{
   # Write the two results files
   system 'clear';
   print "What do you want the file named?\n";
   my $outfile = <STDIN>;
   chomp($outfile);
   $outfile =~ s/\s+/_/g;

   my $outfiledesc = $outdir . '/' . $outfile . "_desc.csv";
   $outfile = $outdir . '/' . $outfile . ".csv";

   open(OUTPUT,">$outfile");

   my $months = getMonths();

   print OUTPUT "\"Category\"\t\"Total Spent from " . join('/',@mindate) . " to " . join('/',@maxdate) . "\"\t\"Average per 30 day month ($months months total)\"\n"; 

   foreach(sort(keys %values)){
 print OUTPUT "\"$_\"\t\"" . $values{$_} . "\"\t\"". ($values{$_} / $months) ."\"\n";
   }
   close(OUTPUT);

   open(DESC,">$outfiledesc");
   foreach(sort(@longdesc)){
 print DESC $_;
   }
   close(DESC);

   print "Output is a tab separated file at $outfile\n";
}

sub getMonths
{
   # Determine how much of a month is being considered here
   my $days = Delta_Days(@mindate,@maxdate);
   return ($days/30 + 1);
}

sub cleanupPurchase
{
   # Strip un-needed info from the purchase description. This will let more similar names end up the same
   my $purchase = shift;

   $purchase =~ s/\s*Cr\ Crd\ Purchase\  \@\ //g;
   $purchase =~ s/\s*\ \ Trace\ #[0-9]*//g;
   $purchase =~ s/\s*[^\d\s]+\ \S\SUS//g;
   $purchase =~ s/\t/\ /g;
   $purchase =~ s/"/\ /g;
   $purchase =~ s/\s*\ \S\SUS//g;
   $purchase =~ s/\d*//g;
   $purchase =~ s/#//g;
   $purchase =~ s/[\s\@*-]+$//g;
   chomp($purchase);
   return $purchase;
}


sub checkDates
{
   # Check if the current date is a new start or end date, and set the approriate variable if needed
   my $strcurdate = shift;
   my @curdate = split('/',$strcurdate);
   @curdate = ($curdate[2],$curdate[0],$curdate[1]);
   if(Delta_Days(@mindate,@curdate) < 0){
 @mindate = @curdate;
   }
   if(Delta_Days(@maxdate,@curdate) > 0){
 @maxdate = @curdate;
   }
}