Financial Alterations

You've got some red on you

2007-02-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

Like a zombie back from the grave here I am. We are sneaking up on a year and 1/2 since I updated this blog here. Pretty sad but things have been hectic.

Unfortunately we did not get out of debt during this last year but we are trying again. I think this is common for a lot of people. They try and try to get out from underneath the debt monster but (like the mafia) it just keeps pulling you back in.

I've been doing some website work lately on the side. Here's one and here's another. So that's a little extra money. Every little bit helps. All of the extra money goes toward debt payoff.

At this point we have about $32,000 in debt. That doesn't count our 2 car payments and our mortgage. So we have a plan to get out from under this in about 3 years. We'll see.

Our first big priority was to stop eating out. Mission accomplished. Not only is it good for our bank account but it's much better for our health.

Out 2nd big priority was to stop spending except for essentials. So far so good. It's nice to look at our current activity on our checking account and see almost no activity except for bill pays.

We also listed out our debts, bills, and other expenditures. We made a simple spreadsheet showing all of that information. This helps us visualize where the money is going and when.

We also created a snowball spreadsheet for our debt. This spreadsheet includes all of our credit card debt, our small loan debt, and our car payments. Once we get this down to one or two debts left we'll add our mortgage to it to see if we can pay it off a little quicker. We have a 30 year note and it would nice to get that down to at least 20 if not 15.

So anyways, I'm back. Not that anyone will notice but it'll make me feel better to keep this small journal of our progress. Wish us luck :)

New Car...finally

2005-11-08T04:45:00.000-08:00

So I have a new car. Finally. It's a Mazda 3 S. And I had just about talked myself into a new car (just because I wanted it so bad) when I found a 2004 that was exactly what I wanted. I mean exactly. Bright Red color? Check. Spoiler? Check. Black leather interior? Check. 6 Disc CD Changer? Check. As good as new? Suprisingly, yes! It looks like a brand new car. Whoever drove it before must have bought it and then stuck it in a garage and barely drove it after that.

I have to heartily recommend edmunds.com. I knew exactly what the car should cost, exactly how much they should give me for my trade in, and then I made the dealer stick to it. Plus I even got them to come down some on the Mazda. It was no Super deal but I think I did the best I've ever done on a car purchase negotiation. Having the pricing information and good research ahead of time makes all the difference in the world. The dealer tried to tell me the car was worth 19,000 and that they had cut that price by $2000. I wasn't buying it (literally). I knew the car was worth 18,100 tops because of edmunds.com. So he came down even more off the 16,900 he was asking. Here's a pic (maybe, if I can get this to work)...

Take Advantage

2005-09-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a business trip in Atlanta. Before I left I signed up for American Airlines reward program. Why didn't I do this before? A couple of business trips and I'll be able to get free tickets to anywhere. That's pretty cool. That means the big vacation trip that I've been trying to plan for my wife and I will be significantly cheaper since I won't have to pay for plane tickets. This has made me start looking into other areas where rewards programs will help me out. Who knows what other free stuff is just waiting for me out there? :)

Katrina

2005-09-04T03:24:00.000-07:00

So my wife and I donated $50 to the Red Cross for Katrina victims. It's all we could really spare right now but hopefully we'll be able to give more next month and the month after. I'm just going to budget it in. I put off buying a new car for a little while because of possible huge gas price increases. Until I see massive increases I'll just donate that money that I would've been using for a new car payment. I'm going to Atlanta this week on business. I hear gas got up to 6 dollars a gallon there. I'm just numb. This whole thing is just mind blowingly sad. Please give what you can.

Donate to the Red Cross here

Cars

2005-08-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hi again. Things are actually going pretty well on the financial front. Yes, we are renting our house but it allowed us to get our kids into the elementary school that we wanted to quickly before school started (side note: they just started kindergarten...can't believe it, where'd the last five years go). We are here until March so we'll see what happens then.
I've been looking at getting a new car as my current 99 Ford Contour is sneaking up on 100,000 miles and it's shows every mile. I drive my cars very hard. I've been torn between a reliable (and pricey) Honda, a reliable but kinda boring Corolla S, or a cool and fun to drive (and I guess kinda reliable) Mazda3. I was all but decided on the Corolla and had been for a while when my wife mentioned how cool looking the Mazda3's were. Then I found this review on Edmunds where they just can't seem to shutup about how awesome the Mazda3 is. It's almost embarassing how much they go on about it. Hmmm....I really really like a cool looking interior and the Mazda3 wins that competition hands down. No contest. Plus I like a car with a lot of get up and go. Mazda3 wins there too. Now I just have to decide if the old bank account can handle another car payment right now. My Contour is paid off and we are only paying on my wife's Toyota van. It's nice. Adding a car payment wouldn't kill us but it would be a definite adjustment...or a financial alteration if you would (yeah, I know..boo).

I'm not dead

2005-06-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, so keeping this page up-to-date lately has been next to impossible. Thank goodness that nobody is really reading this (hi, flexo).
Anyways, we are in the process of moving. We've almost sold our current house (the process is rolling along). It's been bizarre. We had our house on the market for almost a year last year and while we had plenty of lookers we had absolutely zero offers on the house. We put the house back on the market this weekend and by Tuesday we had an offer - and not just an offer but a really good offer. It just blows my mind. So we are getting much more for the house than I would have expected which will make getting our next house that much easier (plus we can pay off some debt at the same time).
We are moving into a rent house for a little while so we can get our kids in the school that we want and save up some more money for a bigger house. Sounds kinda backwards but I think it will work out great. Plus the rent house is basically 2 minutes from my work and 5 minutes from my wife's work so we'll be saving a considerable amount in gas. Things are good and hopefully I'll be able to go home every day for lunch which will save even more money since we won't be eating out.
As of tomorrow I should have a working internet connection at home so the updates will start to flow like...something that flows by next week. Hooray.

The First Step is to Admit You have a problem...

2005-05-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

I like to buy stuff.
I have a hard time not buying stuff.
I have 26,000 dollars in debt because I buy too much stuff.
I wonder what would happen if I chopped up all our credit cards and just used cash and checks. Could we make it on our income? Maybe it's time to find out and get out from under this weight. I find myself actually worrying about it through the day. Did I really need to buy that Coke and candy and chips after lunch? Would that money have been spent if I didn't have a debit card to use? I don't know. I do know that on average I probably buy about $900 worth of junk food on weekdays while at work during the course of the year. I should weigh around 500 pounds - luckily I don't.
Hmmm, I gotta do some thinking on this and see what I can change about how I spend money. I really need to get my wife seriously involved in this. She worked at a bank for like 5 years after all. She's some kind of math wiz and really good with money but I think she's happy with just letting me handle it. Which is weird cause I have serious issues with money spending. To the point of not telling her about large purchases until much later. Yeah, it's bad. It's one of those guilt cycle things. If I had a therapist I'm sure he'd tell me all about it. Anyways,Quicken, here I come!

Bank of America, et. al.

2005-05-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

So I was standing line at my local Bank of America branch today waiting to deposit my rolls of change from my garage sale. I was thinking to myself what a great bank Bank of America is. Their website is just about perfect, their online bill pay has never let me down, their tellers are the nicest I've ever dealt with - the whole setup is just nice to interact with.
Then I read the following on CNN.com:
Bank security breach may be biggest yet

Great, my personal info may have been sold to some jerk at a fake collection agency. I think I may go to storing all my money in a piggy bank under my bed...again.

My Stuff, Your Junk, My Money

2005-05-23T04:59:00.000-07:00

So we had a garage sale saturday. It was us and two other families that live in houses across the street from us. It was absolutely insane! Going in with neighbors that are also having sales is a great way to get more people to show up. It was like a street fair.

I learned a lot, mainly, that peoplea are nuts and will buy anything. Things I thought would sell like crazy, like clothes in almost new condition, didn't sell at all. What did sell? Old ice cube trays, wire coat hangers - just junk. People showed up in droves. It was intense.

When the dust settled and people went home we cleared over $200. Not bad since we were just going to either throw all that stuff away or give it to Goodwill and almost nothing sold for more than 5 bucks. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

Here's some tips for people in Texas that plan on having garage sales. Make sure you have some oscillating fans setup in your garage. We had 3 fans and people seemed to really appreciate it as it did get up to a very humid 95 degrees. Also if you plan on having a garage sale make sure you have plenty of change, makes signs that say no bills larger than $20, and think about putting up No Smoking and All Sales Are Final Signs.

Also I put up a sign that said Garage for Sale (comes with free house) and then had our asking price for the house. It received a bunch of comments and we actually gave one lady a tour of the house. And some other people said they are going to mention the house to friends that are looking for a house in the area. Woot! Double wammy.

More info please...

2005-05-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I got behind on my blog. Sorry.

Looks like we are moving forward on the new house. Talking to our real estate agent today to get things moving. Seems like moving is the right thing to do now.

Looks like homes in our area are in that bubble that everyone keeps yammering on about. Prices are too high for how much house you get. It's good for us selling our house but not so good for us buying a new one.

Also, I'm thinking about switching to MS Money. The reports in Quicken just completely suck. No matter how much I tweak things it never gives me the correct data in the reports. We run into the same thing at my office with our helpdesk software, Track-It!, that is also made by Intuit. Anyone still reading this that has used both Money and Quicken and have an opinion on it either way?

Geek Trek

2005-05-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I last posted. Sorry bout that, I've been very busy.

I'm in Dallas for 2 weeks taking a Microsoft 2003 Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer bootcamp. After two weeks I will be a MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional), MCSA (Microsoft Certified System Administrator), and MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer), - after 2 very long 8AM to 10PM every single day including weekends weeks! In my field that's a good thing. Some people don't like the bootcamps because they churn out "paper' MCSEs; people who have the certification but don't have the history to back it up. I agree. Thankfully, though, I have the skills to back it up (I've been doing this computer stuff for 10 years now). Having the paper will just be a bonus.

Why I'm mentiong this on this page is that, on average, MCSEs see a 12% increase in salary after getting the certification. Pretty cool. I may not reap those benefits at my current job but who knows how long I'll be at my current job :) And it will definitely help me when and if I am looking for a new job down the road.

After this I'd love to get my Cisco certification but that is much much harder. BTW, this bootcamp is over eight thousand dollars for 2 weeks and my employer is paying for every penny. Hooray!

House Hunting Time Again

2005-04-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

As of February we took our home off the market. We'd been trying to sell it for over a year. We had many lookers but no takers. I think it was due to the fact that someone was building newer houses around us that weren't quite as big but were the same price and they were new. Why buy old when you can get new for the same price? And they are nice houses so I don't blame them. And we were probably asking a little too much (which we would have lowered if anyone had bothered to make an offer).

This week I heard from my step dad that he wants to help us out. Quick summary: We live in a small town outside of a city. We want to move to the city. This would allow our kids to stay with my grandparents which would eleminate after school day care costs (which are significant). We'd also save a ton of money in gas since we wouldn't be driving back and forth to town all the time.

My step dad's plan is to pay our rent in a small rent house for up to 15 months while we try to sell our house. We lower the price considerably to get a buyer and then my step dad ponies up a large sum of cash to help with the down payment on a new bigger house in the city. New as in new to us, not neccessarily a new house. This would be pretty awesome. BTW, he's doing this because my grandparents helped him and my mom out in the same way at one point. Good karma and all that.

So right now my wife and I are mulling over the pros and cons. We actually have a huge list of pros and we are struggling to come up with very many cons. The worst that could happen is that we would have to move back into our current house and my stepdad would be out of some cash that he used for paying the rent. Anyways, it's a lot to think about but so far it's looking like we'll do it. We'd need to move on it within the next month or 2 which feels really quick which is why I'm weighing it so heavily.

Also I want a Prius :)

Unexpectedly Expensive

2005-04-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

I was looking forward to a nice increase in available money this August when my twin daughters started Kindergarten. No more day care costs...hooray! All we'd have to pay for is after school care for a couple of hours. Should be fairly cheap compared to an all day daycare that provides hot meals, right? Right?

Nope. While it is cheaper - it's about 61% of what we were paying for full day care - we were having half of the cost of the full day daycare provided by my parents. It was a great help to us. But once they start school that money stops so when it's all said and done we will be paying $1000 more a year than we were before. Ouch! Of course that adds up to only $20 more a week than what we are paying now but, still, that's a thousand bucks a year. I just wince at the interest that I won't be making somewhere on that money.

Guess it's time to really tighten down the budget and grin and bear it. Goodbye fast food, I hardly knew ye.

The Money Funnel

2005-04-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to believe what Richard Bach says in Smart Couples Finish Rich. Mainly that you always make enough money, it's how you spend it that screws you up. So even though I feel like we don't make enough money, I'm trying to believe otherwise.

So to that end I'm really trying to clamp down where our money is going. I've already got a great spreadsheet that tracks our debt payoff plan. So far I've been able to mark out 3 or 4 columns that have been paid off. That's a really great feeling. The problem is that the columns that are left are our biggest debts. That's OK, we're working it down.

The other tab in the spreadsheet shows our monthly expenditures. There are columns for childcare, phone bills, electric bills, eating out, etc. I have a grand total for each month and then all months are averaged for a specific bill. Then those averages are added together. Then I add this to the amount we are paying to pay off debt. When this is subtracted from how much we make in a month it should show how much we could put aside for savings. It ain't much. Guess we need to cut back how much we spend in certain categories (mainly eating out I think).

Bright Idea

2005-04-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

I had this bright idea (hooray for bad puns!) to replace all the incandescent light bulbs in my house with fluorescent bulbs. It would save a decent amount of money per year on electricity (I've seen numbers of upwards of $100) but I didn't realize one important fact. Fluorescent light bulbs are really really expensive!! Compared to a regular old light bulb, fluorescent light bulbs can be upwards of 3 to 4 times more expensive. Ouch!

I decided to go for it anyways but only buy a few bulbs at a time (a couple or 3 a week). I have 42 bulbs to replace in my house so it's going to take a few months. Hopefully in the long run it will be worth it since they use less electricity, are generally brighter (sometimes unbelievably brighter which is cool), don't give give off but about 1/10th of the heat that a regular bulb gives off so they are safer, and have about 1000 times the life expectancy of a regular bulb which will equate to buying way less light bulbs over the lifetime of our house.

I've also done a review of all the bills I receive and made sure that I'm only getting what I need and only paying for what I need. By doing this I was able to reduce our monthly phone bill by about $15 a month and reduce our car insurance by about 20$ a month. I recommend it even if you think you have what you need.

Juggling...always juggling

2005-04-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

I juggled some bills around (ok, I moved my phone bill from paying on Friday to paying next Monday). Guess we aren't doing as bad as I had feared. Looks like the checking account won't go below 300 or so and then my wife gets paid on Friday.

Unfortunately, they don't do direct deposit and so it probably won't officially go in until Monday night. Anyways, when all is said and done I just hope that this month is better than last month.

According to Quicken there were 3 days last month where we had a negative balance. We didn't - it's just the way that Quicken counts Automated Bill Pay entries. My bank doesn't pay them till night of the day I assign them to which is basically the next morning whereas Quicken counts them for that exact day. I want to be able to look back on April and see nothing but positive balances. Here's hoping.

Reading material

2005-04-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

I went to the bookstore today at lunch to look in their personal finance section for a couple of books. I wanted "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" and "The Four Pillars of Investing" among some others. Of course, living in a small city with only one bookstore has it's disadvantages and I came face to face with them today. None of the books were there.
No problem, I thought. I'll just look for the next fiction book I wanted to read ("broken angels" by Richard K. Morgan). Nope, didn't have that either. Ugh, sometimes it sucks living in a small city.
I know they have one of those books at the library so it's not that bad, I might be able to get it there. And then, of course, there's always Amazon.com.
The good news about none of the books being there was that I didn't spend any money. I went out looking to buy at least one book and some floormats for my car. I came back with nothing but I still had money in my checking account. Actually, now that I think about it I'm glad I wasn't able to find anything. I need to get my spending in check like I said yesterday.

Filing System Complete

2005-04-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

I do have some good news. I finished our filing system!! I used a modified version of the system that David Bach recommends in Smart Couples Finish Rich. It's nice having one place (that's not on the computer) to look at anything that has to do with our financial alterations.

My wife had a question just a few minutes ago and I was able to open a file draw and find what I needed immediately. Very nice.

BTW, I do recommend David Bach's Smart Couples Finish Rich. The opening is a little hokey and kind of preachy but after Chapter 2 he gets into some real meat and potatoes stuff that has come in real handy. He does a real down-to-earth explanation of certain things that have just flown over my head before.

Another quick recommendation (boy, these blog things sure are addictive): Personal Finance for Dummies. This books is really awesome. They talk about taxes, debt, insurance, retirement - basically if it has to do with your financial health it's in there. Great reference for those of just starting to get things under control.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid Money

2005-04-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

Like I said in my original post, I have a problem with money - as in I spend too much of it. I wouldn't be in the debt situation I'm in if I didn't spend money we didn't have.
I thought we were starting to do better this month (light at the end of the tunnel and all that) and now it looks like I've spent too much money this weekend. Just on simple things like flourescent lightbulbs (to save money on the electric bill...ironic isn't it?), groceries, and some other miscellaneous items that could have waited. But it was enough to where now I'll have to be very careful for the next week so we don't go negative on our checking account.

Argh! I hate money!

Guess it's time to take all the credit cards out of my wallet except for my debit card?

My goal for the next two weeks is to not spend money on things that aren't mandatory (bills and groceries would be mandatory, anything else would be discretionary). I realize that should be my goal all the time but baby steps, people, baby steps.

It's a start..

2005-04-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

So here is my attempt to blog. I wanna talk about money and finances and how I don't know enough about either. Hopefully through posting here I can learn more as I spout off about whatever financial topics comes to my attention.

A little background:
I'm currently employed as is my wife. Going by the other financial blogs I've read I don't make nearly as much money as most of the people posting. That's fine, maybe I'll have a different perspective on things than what people are used to seeing. I have a 401(k) but my wife has nothing (that's soon to change). I've recently started an account on ING Direct which I'm very happy with. Basically since I graduated from college I have paid almost no attention to the future as far as finances go. Bad move which I'm trying to rectify. I'm 29 now so I think I still have time to get everything moving in the right direction.

Currently we are living paycheck to paycheck (which sucks). Over the last few weeks I've started getting things under control financially and we are already starting to get out from under some debt and the checking account is staying positive. Like I said, I'm in a different boat than a lot of the people posting.

My main goal over the next year or so will be to get rid of the crushing debt we have right now. We are somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 in the hole due to credit cards and a loan. Good times, good times. More later...