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Money Can Buy…

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , , March 16th, 2010 @ 11:48 pm

They say that money can’t buy happiness. Well, I don’t have enough money to say whether that’s true or not. But I’ll tell you what – there are some non-material things that money can buy.

I received an envelope in the mail Monday from the federal government (along with the 2010 census). It looked an awful lot like the bonds that come for the kids around their birthdays, and since my son is having a birthday soon, I didn’t bother to open it.

On Sunday, I looked at our bills. I paid bills, and looked at what was coming due soon, and I felt The Pinch. The seriously it’s going to hurt soon Pinch. The savings is gone, there’s bills and mortgages coming due, and pretty soon, I’ll be robbing Peter to pay Paul Pinch.

It shouldn’t have worked out like that. I should have received a tax credit related to a home purchase about three months ago. I shouldn’t have had to replace my car so soon. We shouldn’t have had plumbing problems and car problems and all that other crap that creeps up.

But we did, and we dealt with it like a lot of other people do – credit cards, savings when we had to, etc.

So suddenly I’m trying to think of all the possible ways we can squeeze more money out of anything. Where can we earn more money? Where can we save money? What can I sell (without selling the house)?

Tonight I opened the mail a full six days earlier than usual, and along with the census I opened that envelope with the bond. I have never been so happy to not see a bond in my life – it was the tax credit money.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What can money buy? Money can buy security. I’ve now got the funds to shore up our emergency fund.

Money can buy a clear mind. I don’t need to stay up late sweating over bills and how to pay them.

I’m calmer now, but I need to think a bit. I need to talk with my hubby and probably a couple other someones to get a really good idea of what goes where right now. I may wait to do anything until I see what’s what in terms of taxes.

I really, really need to get a decent budget. But it’s almost midnight, and I won’t get that done tonight. It’s a battle for another day. Wish me luck.

Adjusting Expectations

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , , March 16th, 2010 @ 2:55 pm

I am home sick from work today. I slept until noon, ate a big lunch (obviously it’s not a stomach illness), and just finished watching The Amazing Race. Having caught up on my favorite feeds, I thought it would be a good time to blog. That subject just jumped into my head as I stretched, and I thought – why is that? But then it occurred to me there was a reason why I’d thought of it.

It’s a fact that some people don’t like, but things change. Families, work places, economies, weather, they’re all examples of things that do not stay the same. And while some things would be great if they always stayed the same and never changed, just the nature of the beast that is one way for several years is to suddenly up and switch the game.

So I should not be surprised that I am currently pondering some serious change coming my way.

It was a slow process. One that I was able to ignore for a while, but that is no longer the case. I have in front of me a situation and  a person. The situation has slowly moved from uncomfortable to one that I am no longer able to ignore. A person I once trusted, I now doubt.

And this is all based on my perceptions of the situation. I don’t know what the other person’s perception is – possibly they don’t realize what is really going on, or perhaps I don’t understand everything they know that causes things to be as they are.

But the fact remains that something needs to change. Either I change how I think, the situation changes, or something else will have to happen. Things cannot remain as they are.

Bye-bye, Vancouver

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Editorial, Financial, Planning Tagged with , February 28th, 2010 @ 10:48 pm

Well, I got to watch the Canada v. USA Gold Medal hockey game today, and loved it. I’m glad that Canada won – they were hosting the games, they should have won. I think if the Olympics had been hosted any other location other than Vancouver, Canada, I would have been all “GO USA!”, but I couldn’t manage it today.

And I don’t think it’s being un-American, as has been suggested. It’s just a game, they’re all NHL players (and even NHL Refs!), and it doesn’t matter that much to me. In the scheme of things, I mean.

But I missed most of the rest of The Games. I didn’t see any Downhill Skiing, nor did I catch any of the really cool looking snowboarding (Downhill Snowboarding?), or the figure skating. I just took a moment to watch some recaps – only about ten minutes worth – and I realize again just how much I missed it.

I want to be in a position, two years from now, to be able to have cable and sit and watch Olympics from the moment they start until the second they finish. To be able to take two weeks off of work, still send the kid’s to daycare, and just veg. Turn up the television and clean in the other rooms when there’s something on I’m not completely in love with.

That would be cool.

So I’ve got some events queued up in another tab, and I’m going to enjoy the things I missed. It won’t be the same, of course. I can see who won already, and I know who crashes and who doesn’t stand a chance. A lot of the fun is gone.

On the other hand, I did finally figure out who that squat little man-figure is supposed to represent, all on my own. Yay, me!

Just When Things Were Looking Down…

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Financial, Planning Tagged with , , February 12th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

So I’ve been hopelessly behind on work projects, and I was even in the process of writing a post about how I don’t like designing websites anymore, when I got started on one of said work projects and pretty much smoked through all but the last 1/2 hour of polishing in the last 2 hours.

I’m supposed to be in bed right now, and surely my husband is worried. (It’s 12:30 a.m. as I write this, and I have to go to work tomorrow.) But was it worth it?

When the project is completed by the other party, I will have earned enough money to pay for 3 months of Internet.

I have gained some motivation, as the project wasn’t as difficult as I had been fearing – which is what kept me from working on it these past two months.

My butt is sore from sitting for so long in the same position.

I’m not completely finished, and I may not be able to get back to the project for the next 24-72 hours.

I think it was worth it.

How I Pay My Bills

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , February 5th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

I was reading my feed reader today, and I came across this post over at Get Rich Slowly. I can’t tell you how much I disagree with it. I was surprised when my first response was oh hell no – usually I don’t get that worked up over someone else’s opinion. Now everyone is entitled to their opinion, and now I need to share mine.

So here’s how I do it. I don’t pay bills as they come in. When I first moved in with my husband in the late 90’s, my method for paying bills was something along the lines of, “Oh shit, I think that bill is due this week!” It didn’t take long (thank goodness) for me to realize that I needed a better plan.

My method now is pretty simple. Once a week on Sunday nights, I hop online. I spend about a 1/2 hour catching up my checkbook, and then open Google Calendar. In there I have every recurring bill listed exactly one week before it’s due. I look at all the bills that have been marked on the calendar since the previous Friday, and pay everything, right then, until the next Friday.

It works like this:

A bill that is due Thursday, February 18th, is marked to be paid on Thursday, February 11th. Since I pay all bills on Sunday, I’ll pay that bill on Sunday, February 7th. It’s not paid the second I get the bill, but it is paid well in advance, each and every month. I can’t recall the last time I had a late fee on anything. If money is tight, I have a little extra time to do a money transfer as well.

Here’s why this works for me:

  1. It takes about 20 minutes to pay my bills.
  2. It’s a regular Sunday thing, and after ten years is now routine.
  3. I know that since I’m paying things that aren’t due for a week, nothing will be late.
  4. If I can’t get online to a particular site, I still have a week to pay – plus I keep all the payment envelopes in case I have to mail something in (3 postal days in transit).

I can’t imagine taking a few minutes every time a bill comes in to pay it. First, that would mean writing a check without completely knowing the status of my checking account – that’s bad. Second, I would have to find five minutes to concentrate with a 4 and 7 year old in the house – not easy, not in my house. And third, what’s the point? Paying bills is not something I want to spend five minutes doing. It’s not something I like spending 20 minutes doing. But by doing it all at once, it ensures I’m in the bill paying mindset. I’m concentrating on numbers, not on what my kid is about to watch on television, or whether someone’s pulling knives out of the drawers in the kitchen.

Now if taking a few minutes every time a bill comes in to pay it works for you, great. The ultimate goal is to get things paid on time, and without any late fees. But if the thought of that just completely overwhelms you, take thirty minutes to collect all your bills and set them up as recurring events in Google Calendar. Keep an eye on things closely for the first month or so, and when you’re sure all your bills are set up correctly, you’re all set. Sit down once a week and get things done, not seven times a week to do a half job of it.

2010, Bring It On

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Financial, Home, Personal Enrichment, Planning Tagged with , , December 21st, 2009 @ 6:00 am

With a little help from the planner and article that Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity published, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do next year. it involves an awful lot of reading, writing, and financial planning, really, with a healthy dash of extra income and healthy lifestyle adjustment. And of it all goes according to plan, it will be one heck of a year.

With this planning, I’m looking at the next year in a way I never have before. I always enjoy making a list of resolutions to get me through the New Year, those that are to begin promptly at midnight on January 1st, and are to be discarded as somehow soiled beyond repair if I don’t strictly adhere to them and execute them perfectly every day. (Can you tell I’ve been watching The Last Samurai? I can!) To put it more direct, if I can’t keep it up, then I give it up.

This time I’m trying to think of things as stepping stones. Yes, I want to do all these things, but they can’t happen all at once. For example, I want to drop a pant size (by when, I haven’t yet decided). To do that, I’ll need to drink less soda and more water, get more exercise and more rest, and stop pigging out so often (calorie control). And I also want to write a 50,000 word novel outside of NaNoWriMo. Well, I hate to admit it, but those two activities, currently and in my world, are mutually exclusive. They do not coexist. Writing is staying up late and not getting enough sleep and drinking to much caffeine to assist in it all. Healthy is sleeping in all my spare time and overdosing on water and making fifteen trips to the bathroom in a day at work.

But if I made drinking more water a habit, say for two months, and that’s all I focused on. Forget the sleep, soda, food, and exercise (or if not forget, at least not focus on exclusively). Concentrate on getting all my water in every day until it is a habit I stop thinking about and simply continue. Then suddenly adding in exercise to the mix isn’t so difficult. And once that’s a habit, I can try working writing into my schedule.

Just an example, but you get the idea.

New Year’s Resolutions in the past have consisted of:

  1. Give up soda
  2. Sleep more
  3. Stop biting nails (got that one several years ago, FWIW)
  4. Write more
  5. Journal every day
  6. Write two novels this year (had that one last year)
  7. Et cetera

That’s a small sample, but perhaps you can see how even trying to remember to do those things all at the same time would be difficult.

I haven’t got it all ironed out yet, and you’ll probably see more of these posts in the next week from me. I’m recreating Chris’ spreadsheet because his wasn’t working for me, and this is an ordeal in itself. Trying to find enough time (and attention) to complete it is still a challenge, but I know I can make it work. All the while I’m competing with website ideas, a secondary business idea, and oh yeah! My family needs my attention too in all of this.

Plus, you know, Christmas.

So we’ll see how it goes. Perhaps it will proceed better than planned.

Planning Your Year

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Editorial, Financial, Personal Enrichment, Planning Tagged with , , December 10th, 2009 @ 6:00 am

planningOkay, for a blog that at one point (not too long ago) was supposed to be purely about planning, I’m not a very good planner. Since then (very recently), this has sort of morphed into a personal essay blog. I feel like I’m driving a college student around that wants to try everything out on their way to figuring out what they really want to do with their life. I’m going to let that be okay for now. Eventually it will become something, and right now I’m content to write whatever pleases me and see how things develop.

But that doesn’t feel like a good planning strategy. Chris Guillebeau has a good planning strategy, and I’m plodding my way through it right now. Here’s what I’ve gotten through my head so far.

Number one – making rigid plans you hate is bad. I have a habit of making rigid plans, and then feeling absolutely miserable when I can’t maintain them. That is a class act way of making oneself more depressed. Not a great way to actually meet your goals.

Number two – New Year’s Resolutions that are not resolute suck. Why make a huge list (as I tend to do) of things that can’t be accomplished? For me, New Year’s Resolutions are no good if you don’t start from January 1st and maintain them continuously for the entire year. “Exercise every day,” is a very easy resolution to break the first time you get sick, or get bored, or get stressed, or simply get too busy. Back to depression, irritation, and more stress. Nice.

Number three – how do you know when you’ve “written more”, “exercised more”, or “given more to charity”? If you can’t measure it, how do you know you’ve met it? Oh yeah, you can’t!

I’m all about this Annual Review, now that I’ve read through both articles by Chris. It’s all I want to do, even though there are many more things that I know I need to get done in these evenings before the end of the year. My hope is that this ritual, done in fits and bursts before January 1st will help me get my other tasks done in the new year.

Know what my first goal is going to be? Setting up a weekly schedule for my evenings so I can get some good habits started.

And then I’m going to try this.

How to Not Throttle Your Car Dealer

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , , , October 26th, 2009 @ 12:13 pm

Shoot Me NowIf you’re searching for a used car right now in the United States, please don’t strangle your car dealer. It’s not his or her fault that there are virtually no cars in your price range ($6K, < 100K miles, < 10 yrs old). It’s the government’s.

I like our government, don’t get me wrong. But the Cash for Clunkers program effectively made the type of car I’m looking for qualify for the Endangered Species list.

If you’ve been living under a rock, here’s what happened. Everyone with a decent-ish car that qualified for the Clunker’s program turned it in to buy a new one. Then the dealerships had to freeze the engines, so those cars can’t be resold. Ever.

E. V. E. R.

And then those folks bought new cars.

And now folks like me in a pinch are only able to buy truly crap cars, worn inside and out, or something with sky-high mileage (like the Jeep Grand Cherokee with 195,000 miles I saw this weekend). It’s nuts. It’s driving me crazy. I need to get a car like TODAY, and it’s so bleeping hard!

So what should you do?

Listen to your dealer when he says that there are a lot of people looking for good used cars. S/he means it. If you go to the lot on Saturday, your car will be gone on Monday.

Be prepared to act fast. I’m finding that the best way to shop right now is to have my CARFAX and Consumer Reports accounts handy and to work the Internet and the phones like they’re going out of style.

Use the Internet to find your car. Search sites like Cars.com and AutoTrader.com, and even your local dealers if you have one in mind, to look up cars that are possibilities. If the VIN number is there, look that puppy up and either eliminate it or keep it on the list.

Then use your phone to confirm it is still on the lot. Especially if you’re using a dealership, their stock moves faster than their Internet can keep up. Call to see if anyone has purchased it, then set up an appointment to see it. Make them call you before the appointment if it sells, and save yourself some frustration.

I’m glad I called before I went to put a deposit on the car that someone else bought. I wasn’t that sold on the car (although I had talked myself into being satisfied – good enough is good enough right now), but it’s still aggravating to know that the search had been over, and now it needs to start again.

Oh well – another day, another 17-digit Vehicle Identification Number.

How to Buy a Car

1 comment By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , , October 24th, 2009 @ 8:00 am

CrunchRight now I’m going through the process of trying to purchase a used car. I have a time limit which is governed by the inspection sticker in my window (which has most likely expired at this point) and the setting of the sun (if it gets any closer to 6 p.m., I’m toast).

This is not easy, especially in the Post Cash For Clunkers era, when the cars in my price range are few and far between. Added on to that fact is that the car that is the most reliable is also the most difficult to find in my price range. I don’t want to waver, as there are other options in my range, but how do you pick the best of the worst?

As I’ve mentioned, my budget is tight, but there are a couple of things that I knew I must pay for, or I would really pay for it later. I have paid for knowledge. Knowledge in the form of Consumer Reports and CARFAX.

For $26 per year you can get a memberhship to ConsumerReports.org. They’ve already gone out and done the last ten years of research for you. They offer price ranges to give you a clue as to where to start negotiating. Consumer Reports will tell you what is your best bet (Toyota, actually – king of icky beige), and what to avoid.

And for another $39.95, you can get unlimited CARFAX reports through CARFAX.com. They’ll give you a history of the car – consider it the Seller’s Disclosure (a required real estate form in PA describing everything about a house to the best knowledge of the seller) of Automobiles.

Kelley Blue Book’s website has also proven invaluable. I’ve been able to run the stats of the cars I’m interested in, see what the Retail Price might average, and compare that to the Consumer Reports number and the online selling price of the dealer. I feel like it’s giving me a clue as to whether I’m about to be hosed, or if I should go in ready to negotiate.

Apart from the $56 spent on online research (which could save me hundreds in future maintenance, but is of course not guaranteed to do so), I’ve also spent some time researching dealerships. This has given me a good feeling about some places, and a skeevy feeling about others. Ultimately, this may not affect where I purchase my car, as I am more interested in the best car from my money, not the sales guy who sells it to me. But all things being equal, I’m going to shop at the place where everybody knows my name…duh duh dah dah duh duhhh! Oh, wait…wrong show.

You get the idea. :)

Last things first, something I actually did in the middle of my process was go to the Better Business Bureau and research the dealers themselves. Because all things are not equal, the place that I was happiest with after visiting actually had the worst grade (B- versus A+ of the other two). Currently I’m not sure how that’s going to affect my purchasing decision – after all, the bottom line here really is dollars. If I buy a more expensive, supposedly more reliable car from the A+ dealer, I could still end up shelling out for repairs in a month or two. Or I could save now and get a less reliable car from the B- dealer, and end up shelling out even more for repairs. Or have no problems whatsoever.

There are no guarantees, but at least I can hedge my bets. No one is going to tell me I’ve wasted my money, here – I didn’t pay for anything I could have otherwise got for free (not all the dealerships offered free CARFAX reports online, and it’s important to me to go in armed, and not have to get a surprise after I’ve already made a decision).

I’ll let you all know how it turns out – I am really, really hoping to have a new car by tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. :)

Shopping for Dealerships

1 comment By Nicki Filed in Financial, Planning Tagged with , October 20th, 2009 @ 8:00 am

Car keysI’m in the market for a used car (I may have mentioned this once or twice), and have been for about a month now. Friday night I wrote about the new motivation I have in my car search.

Oh yes, am I ever motivated.

Before this motivation arrived, I had been doing much of my car searching online. After all, with two kids and a full schedule, it is very hard to find the time to actually go out and visit car lots to pour over 50 to 100 cars with a salesman whose first interest is most likely his commission, and not my best interest.

But searching online for a car is sort of like shopping for the best airplane flight fares with a library and a hard copy card catalog. It’s really hard when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.

I sat across from a very nice gentleman yesterday who was trying to convince me that I could buy the $9,000 car because the payments wouldn’t be much more expensive than the $6,000 I told him was my limit. Even though I told him I would only be financing for a short time – as little as six months, hopefully. Even after (I thought) I made it perfectly clear that the payments didn’t matter because in the end I can only spend $6,000, not $7,000, not $8,000, and certainly not $10,000, regardless of the payment.

And it was then that I realized that I wasn’t shopping for a car just then, I was shopping for a car dealership. My budget is small, but the fact still remains that wherever I go there will be some sort of car that fits my criteria (automatic, < 100,00 miles, 4 doors preferred, not horrific mileage, and within my budget). And if there isn’t one right now at the dealership I feel most comfortable with, there probably will be within a week.

The salesman who told me about the company policy to send “problem child” automobiles, no matter what their worth, to auction rather than patch them up and sell them made me feel good about him and the dealership. The salesman who promised to keep an eye out for something and asked if he could give me a call when something came in scored points (for asking if he could call rather than assuming, and for keeping an eye out).

The one who tried to up-sell me instead of showing me the best, second best, and third and fourth best cars I could get for my money? Not so much. And that really reflects on his dealership and how they do business, in my opinion, and I don’t particularly want to do business with people like that.

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