Pellet Stove or Gas Fireplace?

We're trying to heat the bottom floor of our house more efficiently. I'm not sure which is a better way to go. Initially I thought a gas fireplace, however it was suggested to me on a frugal forum to go with a pellet stove. A family mentioned buying 4 tons of pellets for $1k and it lasting all winter.

Now that sounds like a great deal, however I'm not sure about the feasiblity of either. DH thinks the gas fireplace would be easier to install since we have a gas line for the stove. I concur. He also thinks a pellet stove might not work because it needs air to run so it would deplete the oxygen in our house and would need to vent somewhere, preferably outside. If not it would potentially lead to increased carbon monoxide in the house.

I haven't done much research but the pellet stove and a gas fireplace appear to run about the same price, especially if we get a pellet stove insert for the fireplace. However energy is required to run the pellet stove.

I also am debating between a gas log and a gas fireplace or fireplace insert. The running costs of logs is about $1000, but for a fireplace/insert it is $2500. Pellet stoves start from $1200-$3000 depending also on installation. I guess we'll do more research, but any input would be appreciated.

Best Money savings deal..

I read a blog today asking about your best money deal. Thinking back there for sure was a deal that we ended up stealing the store with.

We used to go to IKEA and shop the as-is department, put things together, fix it up and sell it. Anyway I was going through the rummage when I saw three wardrobes taped together with boxes half attached priced for $1. I stood there motioned to DH and off we went with 3 $1 wardrobes. We sold two of them immediately for $40. Then we kept one for ourself. Now what we do when we buy and sell these things is we look and make sure all the parts are there. Then we go back to IKEA and ask for any missing screws, parts and explain with our receipt (yeah $1 receipt) and ask for the missing parts. Then we "restore" it.

The greatest thing about our wardrobe is when we moved from SD to NEwe sold it for $40. It was really nice wardrobe too. Guess that was our best deal for a $1.

That day we picked up the wardrobes we bought a desk for BIL for $40, that is regular price $200. He still has it and loves its. So we had more than one win that trip.

Do you really save by stockpiling?

I've been contemplating stockpiling more non-perishable stuff I could get cheap or "free" from coupon usage. I wonder however if it is worth it? I mean is it worth stockpiling stuff if you need to live in a bigger home to stockpile?

How do you justify the expense of purchasing or renting a large home/apartment? I ask because if you are stockpiling an entire garage and two spare bedrooms, wouldn't it be cheaper to sell a huge home and just downsize?

Does it not cost more to maintain, heat/cool, other utilities for a larger home than a smaller one? I understand if you have children you need more space than a couple of DINKS, but I wonder if our consumerism isn't driving us to stockpile more than necessary?

I wonder if the meat is good after sitting for 1 year? Is it worth an extra 500 sq ft to save on non-perishables, when you could a house 1 room smaller?

Where do you draw the line between being frugal with stockpiling and being foolish? Remember the saying "penny-wise and pound-foolish?" If it costs more to heat a 2000 sq ft home when you only need 1000 sq ft but would have to shop more and stockpile less who comes out ahead? The person with the smaller mortgage or the couponer?

Carnival of Personal Finance #90

This week it's hosted by mapgirl, it looks like a great carnival. I don't like her website however because it's so frustrating with a little overlapping map on it. I didn't participate this time, but there were many interesting posts.

February 2007 Spending Wrap Up

February we spent on discretionary items such as entertainment, food, eating out, gas, etc. This is not our mortgage or fixed utility bills. We spent $818.06 on everything.

For the month we spent $431.36 on groceries with $88.85 being spent only on soda, thus putting us over the $400 budget. But overall I think we did great on groceries. We also ate out for $153.21/month, way below our $400/month budget amount. I guess we were just trying to be conservative. But honestly $550 is a lot for DINKS to be spending on food to be honest. I guess we should be eating more out of the freezer.

We spent $88.81 on gas for the cars, under our $150/month budgeted amount. I guess this was a great experiement, that I'll be continuing the trend this month to see our spending.

I should be really embarrassed because we spend so much on food.

Coupon shopping part II Update

I keep reading on MSN and other places people saving huge amounts with coupons. Which I can't seem to do. They never pay for shampoo, deoderant, soap, etc.

I'll use a coupon when it's something I buy, but honestly with two people I've written dates on stuff I buy like shampoo, soap, etc and we just don't use a lot. I bought 1 container of laundry detergent 2 years ago and it's still not gone. I bought 1 huge bottle costco electrosol tablets (85) $6 and it lasts 85 weeks, once a week dishwasher runs. I have a bottle of dish liquid soap when we moved 2 years ago and still have the same bottle it's $4.99 at costco. Stuff like that I guess I could save $5 but I mean for 2 years worth of not shopping. Toilet paper, paper towels last us a year or more the giant pack from Costco and it's $15 so I could save $15. But then if I shopped 1 hour every week with coupons, it would cost us far in how much we could be earning than $15. DH could be studying or we could be having fun together. So should we bother looking for coupons and then going to stores for it?

But the problem is I don't think I am the type of person to buy 270 boxes of pasta or 40 cans of beans. How do you store that much stuff? I buy and use till the end. We live with limited space for housing. How do you calculate the extra space needed to store buying a ton of non-perishables? Is that how people got into debt just buying stuff?

I mean part why we didn't get into debt before was 550 sq ft of living for two people made buying stuff hard. And we never overbought or overloaded the fridge/pantry. I mean 270 boxes of free pasta sounds great but where would we put it? Or 40 cans of beans? Or 10 tubes of toothpaste? It would cost us more to have to live in a bigger home than living simply and buying what fits in the smallest space possible. We saved more by living in a 1 bd than moving up into a 2 bd to fit more stuff. And we already lived with stuff like books under the bed, clothes in a dresser, etc. We stored everything we could including built in shelves in the closet and in our outdoor patio closet above the washer and dryer.

So where do you draw the line? Is it really money saving or are you buying and having to store more stuff? And do you buy things you wouldn't normally buy because of a coupon?

February 2007 Net Worth Update

Okay our net worth has been declining since December. Not that it was unexpected because we owed a lot of tuition which I had saved up in cash for and we had to paid. How much tuition? $10k worth and it's been paid for in cash. Yes this is on top of the $8500 in loans we took out this year.

Anyway though our networth this month unfortunately. But part of it was due to the 400 point drop in the stock market earlier this week. I can't say that I'm sold off anything, if anything I am hoping to invest more. Right now in our net worth I probably should be tracking the 0% CC we have with best buy which has $1k due in August. I am considering however just paying it off this coming March to free up cash flow.

Also DH is considering taking classes as at a public school this summer.

CNBC $1 million challenge

Okay readers and friends, let's do this challenge. On March 5th, CNBC is going to launch this build a dream portfolio. I'm going to do it and challenge my DH (if he decides to do it). We're going to go head to head with everyone here and elsewhere. Wanna join?

Send in results in my weekly commentary.

Dow goes running...

Yesterday the Dow dropped 400 points. What are you doing today? Shoveling more money into the market or trying to sell off? I guess because of my age I wish I had more money to invest into the market. Right now I am about to rebalance our portfolio DH's 401k, our Roth IRAs, and a few other things. If we had more money we'd be funneling it into the market.

Do you think this is a start of a "bear" market? Or is this just a correction in the current bull market and an opportunity for some to buy more? The last bear market ended in October 2002 and we've had really great time since then. Many people would say not yet the S and P has been performing 10%+ since then annually.

As a twenty-something, my advice to other twenty-somethings dive into market. We've got a long time until retirement and this should be looked as a golden opportunity. Just remember time and diversification solves most problems. Just don't panic everytime something happens with either really good or really bad.

March Madness

It's not what you think. The march madness involved is 114 bloggers competing for the top blogging spot of most enjoyable article. We submitted our articles to Free Money Finance into a round robin contest to see who wins. I submitted my article on "is life passing me by."

I thought about submitting a different one, but the mood hit for something more personal than fun or amusing. Anyway just thought I'd share.

Why can't we get along?

Why are there people out there who are rabid Dave Ramsey fans and hate everyone who uses a CC? Or they dislike those people paying off debt based on interest rate. Why can't we all just get along? Why not just accept that as long as people are trying to become debt free it doesn't matter what method they use?

Or why not accept that some people can use CC responsible? And instead of saying the people using CC spend more, show scientific studies and data proving this. Just quoting Dave Ramsey, who doesn't have the actually study isn't enough. The study that DR quotes as people spending 17% more on CC, does not appear to exist. I've looked through journals online and in one of the most extensive business libraries. I have no been able to find this study. If some reader should have it, I would love to read it.

I would hope that people who are anti-debt would be supportive to hearing about others experiences. And learning why they do what they do. I find that people who manage their money properly and are financially savvy are very open to listening to debt free people. They do not bash those who are asking questions. Many DR followers I've found will immediately jump on those who "fall off the wagon" or "stop drinking the cool-aid." This makes me wonder why? Because no one is perfect and I wonder how many people in cyberworld are really following the DR plan to a T?

I think it takes more guts to say you make mistakes and be honest than it is to be perfect. To be constantly struggling in life is more realistic. I constantly struggle against wanting to keep up with the Joneses. I want to charge and not pay it off. I want more than what I can afford, but I have to strive everyday to curb these impulses and keep them in check. But blogging about it helps. And being honest about it helps. It's a change in lifestyle, not just a change in behavior for a little while.

Carnival of Personal Finance #89

Very cute and chic Carnival of Personal Finance Ediciton up at Binary Dollar. In this carnival I'm Halle Berry, how cool is that? My article on being a a good condo neighbor is included. Enjoy many great articles.

Monthly Fixed Expenses

I'm pretty shocked by our monthly fixed expenses. The total is $826/month. Of course if we were laid off or something a lot of things could be cut to save a few dollars. But overall part of our problem is we pay quite a lot for heating of our home and a lot for car insurance. We have only liability on a 99 Corolla and a 00 Focus, and our annual insurance is $1762 for two drivers.

I wonder if there is a way to decrease our monthly liabilities? Should we drop the dog insurance? I think DH would have a conniption. I guess we could get rid of Tivo and drop the landline. But I love my Tivo. Currently we're not tight on money but I feel like such a spendthrift.

$180 HOA
$64 Gas(heating)
$172 Electric
$146 Car Insurance
$25 Home Insurance
$62 Dog Insurance
$52 phone, internet
$55 directv
$70 Cell Phone
=$826/month

2/24 February Spending Update

This wek I sort of spent off budget a bit. I spent at Border's $2.95 on a smoothie, last night we bought buns and meatballs for $10.49, and today at Costco we spent $26.31 on corned beef, medicine, broccoli, and bread. We also ate lunch at costco for $3.66 for a hot dog and pizza slice. And we ate dinner at a Chinese place for $46.74.

All in all our current monthly spending is $730.69, with $160.78 going to eating out. I think we had a pretty good month overall. I think our biggest expenditures this month unfortunately was buying a ton of soda. Of course I'll continue tracking our spending next month as well. I'm trying to curb our eating out and groceries as much as possible because we're trying to live on a "budget".

Home Depot 0% CC payoff

Woohoo. I paid off our 0% purchase from home depot yesterday. We had one year 0% interest free on the home depot CC for purchases made for our home 18 months ago. I finally paid it off today, it was due 4/22/07. I always pay it off about a month early to make sure everything is okay.

All we have left is another 0% CC at Best Buy due 8/10/2007. We used it to purchase our computers and washer and dryer about two years ago. It was 2 years 0% so I've been paying it monthly. We had the cash but find it easier just to cash flow it and keep the cash on hand. We did this for the first time in 2002 when we bought our condo in San Diego. This is how we managed at afford our washer/dryer at the time. At that time we didn't have the money saved up. It worked beautifully.

Because of all this CC 0% offers, I wonder if I shouldn't pull money out of our CC and use it to sit in the bank? I'm not sure if I have the stomach for it though, with the number of things that could go wrong. It's a lot more money, and a lot more hassle. Using the 0% interest rate on these two cards haven't ever been a problem. But I wonder if I tried to do what others do if I'd run into trouble? Something to ponder...but for now I'm quite happy with not doing the 0% CC offers and just taking advantage of 0% on purchases.

bad karma...

I really believe in karma and doing good unto others will allow good fortune to run your way. For me I've lost my wallet three times since 2000, and I've always had it returned intact. Great karma right? So I've always returned anything I've found or tried to be honest because of it.

Today DH walks into the parking lot and finds his front right bumper dented, lights cracked and hanging off. Arrgh. This is so frustrating, and yes there was no note. I can't believe someone just hit him and left without a note. This is not the first time this happened. And in a "locked underground" garage.

We're not making a claim, and we may not fix it entirely. This has happened to us multiple times. For some reason people love hitting our cars in parking lots and leaving no note. This has happened to my car in walmart, work, DH at work 2x before, mall, target. I can't believe that someone he works with would be so dishonest. It's so frustrating because this happens to us a lot with our cars.

Being a good condo neighbor

Last month during the extreme cold front that came through NE, the valve on my refrigerator broke and water went pouring into the downstairs unit of our condo. There are three units, two side by side townhouses and 1 basement unit. The basement unit's two bedrooms and living rooms were damaged.

We were gone during this time, and while the heat was set to 50, unfortunately the design our house is poor. The hvac is in the attic and must pump down three stories to heat the bottom floor through only 1 vent. This vent is in the living room/dining room combo and the pipe/valve in the kitchen is exposed to an outer wall, another huge flawed design. Anyway the insurnace did not find us liable, so it is not going on our personal insurance and according to the condo by-laws it is covered by the master condo policy.

So we will not have a claim against our personal insurance. That being said, there is $1k deductible, which the condo association must pay. The question is should DH and I offer to pay the entire deductible because it was our condo? Or should we just allow the association to pay? Second it is not our fault, our neighbors about 3 days later did not have running water in their kitchen (ours was working), because of the cold, and they leave their house at 70.

The main problem is the flawed design of the heating and the kitchen is poorly planned for cold weather.So I know we can pay the money. But we are also worried if we admit to guilt then if something else should happen it can come back to bite us later. And we're very conscientious about our liabilities. Should we just ante up and say it's our fault? Should we not admit guilt but say it was our condo? We're going to mull this over this weekend. The damage was pretty extensive around $60k to repair everything. The floors have to be redone, the basement unit HVAC replaced possible because water went down the floor vents, walls, closets, bed, our floor, wall, etc. So making a claim was necessary we couldn't foot this out of pocket.

American Express Cash Back Rebate

Today I got my American Express Cash back rebate of $36.65 for the year. Which is pretty awesome. This was just for spending money on the CC. I know you'll say that I spent more on the CC rather than cash, which is doubtful. I never pay interest and having been tracking our spending, I don't think we really overspend.

I've looked at our CC statement for the year and we didn't buy anything we didn't need. Did we spend money we shouldn't? Yes but even if we had been on a cash-based system we would have spent it. Why? Because mainly our vice is eating out. And whether we ate out on the CC or in cash we would have gone out to eat. Our thing is that we don't buy stuff like normal people.

People talk about going to the mall, we don't. We don't shop even online. I don't buy stuff, but we enjoy eating out. But I limit that to $400/month both on the CC or cash. I track how much we've gone out to eat and put a stop limit on eating out. So we don't really overspend on CC. I'll put stuff back and say if I want it, I'll come back next week. If you have been reading our spending for the month of february, we bought 1 shirt for DH and the rest has been eating out and groceries.

Thus curbing our spending would not be helped by cash because I unfortunately enjoy good food. Whether in cash or CC, I would buy beer, buy meat, seafood, or cheese. I would go out to eat, in fact this month we've only eaten out $100 which is really low for us. Typically I'd say abou$250 easily but we've been sick and busy. I expect march we'll spend a lot more eating out, for sure because we're taking some friends to dinner.

That being said I'm estatic that I earned $36 from my CC, and in 1 week DH should be getting his rebate check of $47. Which is a great amount considering this is not our primary CC, we mostly use it for costco. Earlier in November I wrote about how much cash back last year we earned and it was a ton.

Too frugal? No bedframe...

Okay I was poked at by Trent over at Stock Market Beat for not buying a bedframe. Now I really want a bedframe, but I am having the most difficult time buying one. And the reasons behind it are not at all financial.

First DH and I have to agree on which set we should buy. Second finding a bedroom set which fits up the stairs. It's so tough because our master is on the third floor of our townhouse and the staircase is so narrow. When we moved in we had to buy a split boxspring for a queen size bed. It just is not feasible to order any set. We ordered two bedroom sets, which when the furniture guys came out to measure didn't fit.

I'm sick of this condo. I hate living somewhere that you are constantly measuring any stupid piece of furniture because it's impossible to fit. When I am able to live large, I want to live in a one story house with french doors to a back yard and a front door large enough to fit any furniture.

Arrgh. Enough whining, I will hopefully get furniture when I find the time to shop more and get something nice.

Carnival of Personal Finance #88

The Carnival of Personal Finance #88 is up a the stock market beat. My post on the latte factor was included as the first post. Trent commented that I'm being extra frugal by not having a bedframe. I guess I need to explain that in a followup post. But anyway enjoy a fun carnival.

Carnival of Money Stories #5

The Carnival of Money Stories #5, a new personal finance carnival about personal stories about finance was up today at Digerati's Life Blog. It included my post about my stupid timeshare. I hope that readership and enjoyment of this carnival grows.

Happy Chinese New Year! Eating out on a holiday

Okay so starts the new year based on the lunar calendar for chinese people. DH and I hate going out on holidays. So for valentine's day we usually go out the weekend before or after. Same thing with chinese new year, instead we'll go out for dim sum tomorrow because it will be less crowded and better service.

I notice that whenever you go out to eat for a holiday, like valentine's day, easter, mother's day, etc the need for a reservation is essential. Also restaurants charge more for their specialies of the day. And the service is absolutely terrible. The wait for a table is often longer than planned and the wait staff is running ragged by the sheer volume and duration of clients.

Though I love eating out and don't mind spending the price, I realized a more than a few year ago it's not worth going out on a holiday. I don't get to enjoy my food because I'm constantly rushed or ignored. The food itself is often sub-par compared to any other normal time And I feel that my money didn't buy me the meal I was expecting in my head.

But anyway, I thought I'd wish me a gong hi fa choi (happy chinese new year) and a happy belated valentine's day.

Real Financial Dreams?

The question for the next festival of under 30 is what are you financial dreams and how do you plan on getting there? I don't really have any financial dreams. I am more a practical planner. I just plan on taking advantage of retirement accounts, saving what I can, while enjoying life.

I think it's hard to have financial dreams because I am pretty content with my life. It might be easier if we made a bit more, but not necessary. Thus contentment in one's life makes it difficult to really dream of more.

2/16 Weekend Spending

Today we spent $6.79 on Papa John's Pizza. I had a gift certificate for $10, so we just paid $6.79 for the cheesesticks and pizza. On Saturday we bought a 24 pack of Sam Adams beer from Costco, and lots of chicken at $1.69/lb at Stop and Shop. On Sunday we bought plywood from Home Depot. On Monday to celebrate chinese New Year we ate out Dim Sum.

2/16 Papa John's $6.79
2/17 Costco $23.19 beer
Costco $107.67
Stop and Shop $23.44
2/18 Russo's $13.68
Home Depot $5.85
2/19 Green Tea $25.00

Thus the spending this far this month is $640.54, with $107.43 going to Eating out.

Reneging on a home purchase

My parents got out of their impulse home purchase! Woohoo! I am soo happy. They were going to purchase a 1 bd condo for $377k, the list price was $389k. They had put in an offer before it was even listed in early January. They were set to close in a few more days, had the home inspection, but decided it was an impulse purchase. I think my nagging made them step back and think a bit more before jumping into buying a condo.

Now the place has been listed on the market for a month and there were no other backup offers. I am hoping that the condo is unable to sell for even $377k and will show my parents that real estate is not easy money. And that it doesn't usually sell for list price. This was a 3% discount because they were buying the condo from the seller and the seller's agent WITHOUT an agent to represent them. So basically they were paying full price of the condo less commission to another agent. Not smart, but luckily they did not go through with the deal.

In today's buyers market I think that it would be crazy to not push harder for more concessions from sellers. I also strongly feel that buying without advice is not a great idea. So my parents have successfully avoided a huge financial mistake...YES!

2/15 Spending Update

My DH only spent $35 for dinner and beers at the hockey game. I had given him $100, but was terribly surprised. It was probably because the guy he went with left in the middle of the second period from feeling ill. So DH didn't want to drink alone. I probbaly shouldn't be so happy about it.

I also went grocery shopping for $13.77 at stop and shop yesterday. I bought some celery, a mousse cake, and bread. Yep I bought bread, though DH likes to make his own. I feel so guilty but we had the loaf so much faster than we usually do. So far our spending has been pretty good this month.

Valentine's Day Plans

Okay I have to figure out today what my DH spent last night. Anyway tonight I thought about going out, but instead we are going to roast a chicken. Which should be great because it is snowing so it could possibly be very tough to go out. I sort of want to eat fondue, so maybe I should call DH to stop at the store and buy some cheese and bread (we ate most of the loaf he made this weekend).

Festival of Frugality #61 is up...

The newest carnival I'm participating in is the Festival of Frugality #61. It includes my article on coupon shopping or not. There are a lot of very money saving articles there. Enjoy.

$200 night out

Since I already set aside the money for DH's night out I'm not couting it in this month's spending expenditure. However if he goes over $200 I am, because he doesn't have more cash than that. What the heck costs $200 for one guy a night?

Try rinkside hockey tickets. His absolutely hometown, grew up with, hockeyteam is coming to town for the only time in about 5 years to play. And someone he works with has season rinkside tickets which are $150/seat, a discount from the regular price of $175 because it's a season ticket. Anyway though, I doubt $50 will be enough for dinner and beers, so I'm guessing an extra $50 which is valentine's day gift early.

So my spending for today will probably be $50. Sure it sounds like a very expensive present/gift, but the truth is my DH is such a frugal guy he deserves a great night now. I hope that he has fun. Anyway I told him to call me to pick him up in case he drinks too much beer, because a DD infraction is $1k out of pocket at least.

Submitting a Tax Abatement

So last week we turned in an abatement of our property taxes. That means we are challenging what the assessed value of our home is. We just feel that it's assessed extremely high comparated to other homes in the area. Part of the problem is that when you purchase a house where we live, often times the taxes haven't kept pace with the sales prices.

So someone who lives in their home for 10-15 years is paying substantially less taxes than someone who just bought. Because the assessor at that point comes out and reassess the home. Our neighbors with single family homes instead of our condos, and are larger with a private yard, are assessed for less money than our condo. Is there homes in poor condition? Nope. And are they larger? Yes.

But the problem is the assessed value of their homes have gone up since they purchased it 10 years ago 3% a year, when prices have actually skyrocketed for 20-30% a year since 1998. So how is that fair?

When I questioned the assessor's office, their answer it's not. But they are underworked and unable to properly boost the assessed value of homes that have been lived in for years. Rather it's easier to reassess newly purchased homes. Thus it's worthwhile filing and abatement to have your assessed value matched up to your neighbors. And that's what we did. I expect an answer within the month.

Carnival of Personal Finance #86

The Carnival of Personal Finance #86 is up at 2millionblog. It is featuring a lot of great article including an article from Jeffrey at savingadvice talking about the lies we tell ourselves. Included in this weeks carnival is my post on the tax break from kids. Enjoy.

2/12 Spending

Because I had to mail a book sold on Half.com, I ended up spending money today. I spend 4.28 at CVS for a bubble folder and valentine's day card. This is DH v-day gift, well actually an extra $50 for the hockey game tomorrow. Also I spen $2.07 on postage mailing the book I sold for $35.

So the running total is $362.55! Not bad for almost half a month. I think I'll be doing this a lot more in an effort to keep out spending to a minimum.

Suze Orman...

Okay I admit to last night watching Suze Orman's TV show on CNBC. It was very amusing and highly entertaining. I think that she uses a lot of simplification on her show and if you are reading this blog you probably shouldn't watch her show. It's really simple. BUT I think it's easy enough to understand for the average person just getting started in investing and understanding debt.

My favorite part of the show is her deciding whether someone calling in can afford to buy the item they want to purchase. They tell Suze what the item is, how much it costs, and how they will finance their purchase. Then she says approve or deny. Last night there were people asking for a cruise (approved), culinary school (approved), dog daycare (denied), a used Audi (denied), and investment property (denied). One of the biggest factors in deciding approval or denial was whether the person had consumer debt (CC or auto loan), any savings, and what their income was.

Overall though the show is extremely simple, I think it is a great tool for beginners. I suggested to my mom to watch the show and start watching it every Saturday night. She has basically just started to grasp what a stock is, mutual fund, and bond. This show I think will get her more interested in personal finance without intimidating her like other shows.

So I guess I'll give Suze a thumbs up for providing the inital steps to personal finance. Or a personal finance for dummies...

2006 Taxes Prep

So I did and off the cuff estimate of our taxes. Because of my stupidity regarding DH's bonus at the end of the year, it appears we will be getting back over $4k from the federal government. Also maybe another $1k from the state. Most people are probably like wow. But me, I'm smacking my head going darn it.

We just gave the government an interest free loan. Granted that a lof of it came from the end of the year bonus taxes taken out, but still. It's really baloney that I did something so done. Anyway, we're still taking it to an accountant. We want to be sure we do the timeshare donation correctly and are able to recoup our donation fully. It's a lot more complicated also with our bonuses this year, but hopefully if nothing major changes next year we'll be doing it ourselves.

We were supposed to go this morning, however due to my DH forgetting his schedule we're not seeing our refund until at least two weeks from now.

2/9-2/11 Weekend Spending

This weekend we didn't spend nearly as much on groceries, although we did spend a substantial amount more in the eating out category. We usually don't eat at applebee's but it was walking distance to our house and we were pretty tired on Friday.

2/9 Gas $21.41 (my car)
Stop and Shop $2.58 (water and butter)
Applebee's $27.28

2/10 Shaw's $13.27 (2L soda, celery, tomatos)

2/11 Asian Market $4.28 (tofu, hot sauce)
Stop and Shop $28.71 (4lbs of sausage, eggs, green beans, water, 3 lbs of onions, broccoli, red peppers, white peaches, and dented box of banana nut muffins).


I think this is sort of indicative of what we normally buy. We try to stay away from processed food, although the sausages are mainly for my DH. He loves them. But overall not a terrible weekend, we spent $97.53 overall for a running total of $356.20 this month. I am hoping to keep it under $1k this month but we'll see.

I'm not sure whether I should count normal bills like the electric, gas, cable, internet, cell phone, etc? Also if I should include our car registrations $62.50 for two cars, or the car insurance. Also if we should count paying the accountant. I am leaning towards not because a lot are fixed expenditures, not easily changed.

Huge stupid tax...timeshare

Yep, years ago we bought a timeshare. Really dumb, probably our dumbest mistake. Very very stupid. Bad idea. Our biggest problem was the annual maintenance fees. I never actually calculated how stupid it was but I am about to here. This is also something stupid we did that we never mentioned to anyone.

First the cost, we bought a timeshare 2003 for $5k for a great week in Daytona Beach. It was Bike Week a motorcycle week. Not a bad idea, but we were never going back to florida to use it. Instead we were just going to trade it in. So that $5k should have gone into my Roth IRA or paid off the house or bought a nicer car. Stupid idiot (me).

Second there were annual maintenance fees of $200. Sure it doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up if you keep it for years. Idiot! Again it's just a reoccuring cost that adds to what you spent to "vacation."

Third, there is a fee for RCI, a timeshare exchange company of $99/year. Sounds like a great idea. But how will you really trade your timeshare in? We did, and it was great, but when you "exchange" your timeshare then you end up needing to pay another fee of $189/exchange. So annually you are out of pocket spending $600 for a hotel room. Yep it's a nice room, but you also spent the $5k upfront costs.

Thus why people have such trouble giving away timeshares. I believe that we spent $5k + (2x300) + (2x100) + 189 = $6000 in all for our timeshare we never used. Great idea. So there was my brilliant vacation plan.

Yep my stupidity now out in the open for me to look at and cry about. It was such a dumb dumb idea. I hope no one in my family reads this because I can't believe how stupid I am. Or how dumb I was.

But I finally got rid of it this year. Buyer's remorse. I couldn't sell it though we tried. Instead we donated it. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Good thing we did it now when our income was much higher and we get better tax break. You can't undo our stupidity, but you can try to stop the money leak.

All in all, would I change a thing? Not really, I need to make a few money mistakes in my life or else I'll never learn anything. But this was one of my more idiotic lessons.

Festival Under 30 Finances Edition 16

Today the Festival of Under 30 Finances is published at the Endless Gibberish. The theme of this festival is if you could turn back time and change things financially would you? My answer NO! Here's my post on if I could turn back time...Enjoy a few insightful posts and many other stories from under 30 bloggers.

Latte factor necessary or fake?

Okay in his recent money magazine article Walter Updegrave writes about not giving up lattes but instead focusing saving on the big ticket itemes. The summary of his article is that you can save $400k easily by doing three things. One, drive cheaper cars, for example a new $21k Honda Accord instead of $30k Acura RL. The lifetime savings will be $180k. Two, send your child to a public university instead of a private university, lifetime savings $164k. And finally save $1k each year on your vacation. The lifetime savings is $122k. All of this will add up to an easy $400k saved over your lifetime.

Do I buy this or do I think it's easier to stop buying coffee everyday? Truth is I think carefully thinking over big purchases more important. Yes it's important not to waste money and perhaps buy less fancy coffee. But that coffee can be paid for in cash if you aren't "house" poor or "Car" poor.

In today's world it seems like people are more very expensive homes and having trouble affording them. This drives the use of CC and HELOC, etc. So how to curb this? Not buy cutting out daily lattes $5 x 365 = $1825/year. Yeah that's not enough. What would really help someone annually is not having a mortgage that is 36% of gross but rather 28%. Or not having a car payment of $500/month. Those items would save THOUSANDS of dollars a year not just $2k at most.

I understand that tracking your money is important. And foolish spending isn't helping the problem. But if a lot of people are already running towards the red with just a house payment and car payment, then tracking every penny doesn't matter if there isn't enough income to cover even bare bones expenses.

What do you think? Is it the latte factor or the overconsumption of expensive big ticket items?

New Debt Free Website

A friend has started a message board for those who follow (either die hard or loosely) Dave Ramsey's plan. Also if you are just looking for a way out of debt or motivation or anything...then use this website "financial peace". http://financialpeace.proboards107.com/index.cgi
By the way I am LivingAlmostLarge there and am back in BS2. Though hopefully the day DH graduates that debt is wiped clean (Cross your fingers for me, I think it will happen).

401k lagtime...real or BS?

Okay I'm really pissed with DH's 401k from his company. They take forever to deposit the money into the account. The last deposit was on 1/17/2007 for the deduction from the 1/5/2007 paycheck. He is paid biweekly, so the 1/19/2007 paycheck has not been deposited, nor has the 4th quarter match from the company. What is going on? Also he got his annual raise/bonus on 2/2/2007 and of course nothing has occurred, though his 401k was deducted out of the bonus for $1500 that should be deposited.

I think this is utterly ridiculous that the company can't get their act together. I am fine with the company taking 2 weeks to input the deduction, but it's over well over two weeks now for the 1/19 paycheck and it's been over a month for the company match since the end of the 4th quarter of 2006.

Is this how all companies work? I think that the company should be paying for this loss of time. I am hoping that it gets posted by the end of February which might make up the shortfall we experienced last month in net worth.

Heat Auditor determines...

Our house is super inefficient! Woohoo! That explains our heating/electric bills.

Okay, so today I had a honeywell heat auditor come out to our house to determine how efficient/inefficient our heating system and house is. He laughed when he saw our house. First of all our furnace is in the attic. Yep it has to pump down hot air through three stories of our townhouse with only 1 vent. Thus why our bottom floor never gets warm. And why it is absolutely necessary to use electric space heaters.

But what do we pay for heat? We use on average to heat our house only 424 therms/year. Low right? Well we also pay $2/therm so about $850/year for heat, not including using electric space heaters. Also because we use keyspan our heating bill will be going up by 40% in March, since they were currently bought out.

Another point our house is cold. Period. We leave it cold because getting it warmer is not possible. How cold? We leave our house to 50 when we are gone, 68 only when we're home, and 62 when we are sleeping. That is cold, most people leave their homes at 72 when home and warmer when gone. But for us getting the third floor to 60 is next to impossible.

Also this winter in the NE has been very mild even compared to last winter. Thus our bills have reflected this by a substantially decreased need for heat. So I expect if we had a terribly cold winter our bills would be double what they are now.

Second our house is entirely electric. Yep, our washer/dryer and water heater is run on electricity. Woohoo. And we have gas in the house, which makes it more unbearable to have an electric water heater. Our electric bills run about $156/month for an average usage of 836 kWh/month. Meaning we pay about 18.6 cent/kWh. The average cost of electricity in the us is 6.66 cent/kWh. Yep we pay 3x that on average.

So overall we pay approximately $300/month all year long for gas and electric on a newly refurbished 1900 sq ft 3bd/2.5ba townhouse. What were his suggestions?

1. Insulate the attic pulldown staircase, $200
2. Caulk flooring
3. Insulate all wall outlets
4. Install gas log in fireplace to heat bottom floor, $4k
5. Heating unit in basement for bottom floor, $40k
6. Install water heater in attic using gas instead of electric
7. install ceiling fan in bottom floor
8. Suggested a different energy efficeint light bulbs
9. More ducts from attic to bottom floor ($20k)

The company offers financing at 3% for 10 years up to $15k to do these renovations to your house. Will we do any? I have no idea, I am guessing we are going to do the caulking and pull down of the attic and insulating the wall outlets. One consideration will be that we may end up installing the gas water heater, which will cost about $500.

Coupon shopping yea or nea?

Do you coupon shop? I've been trying since the beginning of the year to look for coupons online and in the Sunday paper that I would use. We typically spend about $400/month for two people for groceries. This includes all toiletries, household goods and cleaners, etc. Yet rarely do I find the opportunity to use coupons.

So what should I do? The problem is that we don't eat a lot of the foods that are sold using coupons. You are probably think I'm nuts. For example we spent $267 this weekend on groceries. The bulk of which was soda, on sale for 1.99/12 pack. Great price. So I loaded up and bought 42 x 12 packs of soda = $108 including tax, bottle deposit. Yeah I know, but soda is a major vice for DH and I won't have him buying it individually.

The rest we bought a 7 lb ham, half a pound of sliced steak (hot pot), $2 off steak, beef and shrimp balls, 3 crowns of broccoli, cauliflower, 2 heads of lettuce, pack of carrots, 5 bananas, 10 yogurts, 3 lbs of grapes, 5 bags of chips, 1 dip (superbowl stuff), 5 cans of soup, milk, hoisin sauce, peanut oil, and that's it. So I guess I could have looked for coupons for the soup, peanut oil, chips (though it was $10 for the 5 bags and dip). But we don't usually buy chips and the soup is backup for when we don't make lunch.

I guess the point is that we're not huge coupon shoppers. We try an shop sales mostly and eat a lot of fresh, non-processed foods. I notice that a lot of coupons are for processed foods and toiletries. Instead I just load up on toiletries when they go on sale at Costco. Example I bought 8 bottles of dove body wash for $30. Not the small size bottles but the large 24 oz bottles. Same with toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent. Because there is only two of us, we just load up when there is a sale and live with it.

But I'm not sure if maybe coupon shopping could be cheaper. I'd love to try, but DH refuses to eat most of the stuff on sale. As I track my shopping this month, I'll post about coupons I manage to use or not.

Carnival of Personal Finance #86

The Carnival of Personal Finance #86 is up at the Simple Dollar. A lot of great articles this time, beautifully summed up by Trent. My article "is life passing me by part deux" is posted. Hope you enjoy the carnival.

Brown bagging it everyday?

How often do you bring your lunch to work? It's an interesting question. I posted on www.savingsadvice.com and WIR message board. The most common answer is everyday. I guess because most people on financial message boards are very financially savvy. So the population of people polled will not spend a large amount eating out.

That being said, I had a fun laugh this weekend. DH sit in bays of 4 people, so out of the 4 people there is one guy who eats out every day, the other two eat out 3-4x/week, and he's the only one who always brings lunch. He was told on Friday that he's the most disciplined guy they ever meet, he pretty much never goes out to eat lunch and brings something everyday. He's worked there over a year, and before this job, DH pretty much always brought lunch.

Eating out is a luxury for us. I guess both of us grew up with moms who always packed lunch, though they could afford to eat out. Both of our moms thought that what we ate should be monitored as we got older because we'd get fat. When we were kids it was price because they were less affluent, later because it would encourage fast food eating. So to both of us we've never had exposure to not brown bagging it.

I wonder if we'll change as we have kids and earn more money? I don't think so because honestly I gain weight very easily eating out. Even with portion control it's very fattening. Thus for me personally, it's not the cost of eating out, it's the weight gain. I find I don't monitor as closely my calories and I eat a lot more unhealthy food choices eating out. So I guess I'll have to be a brown bagger for life.

I did want to do a poll for people, but was unable to figure out how to embed a poll. But if you'd like to weigh in on how often you bring lunch versus eating out, that would be great.

2/4 Spending

Today we went and bought a few more cases of soda and peanut oil for lunch. The running total is $19.22. The monthly total thus far is $258.67, what I expected because of our loading up on soda this weekend.

Stop and shop 13.25
Stop and shop 5.97

2/3 Spending

Today we spent $166.48. Broken down as:

Russo's 11.51 (groceries)
Stop and Shop 69.14 (18 x 12packs of soda, groceries)
Super 88 26.85 (groceries)
Petco 38.84 (dog food
Post Office 6.76 (mail off book sold)
JMP 8.39 (indian food)
Indonesian Food 4.99

Well we ate out for lunch today. Our first time of the month. It'll be interesting if I can manage to keep our eating out to once or twice a week or less. I have a few free gift cards which I guess count as eating out.

Spending today

Today I spent $72.97. I spent $19.89 on Gas, $52.08 at Stop and Shop, and $1 on a Redbox movie. Unfortunately this will be a budget breaking weekend. Why? Because coke is on sale at Stop and Shop for $1.99/12 pack. Which is a fantastic deal. So we bought a total of 12 - 12 packs. Yeah I know we could have saved a ton today by not drinking soda (4 x $7.77 = $31.08).

But DH takes a can everyday for lunch. It's his major vice. Second he also like to have a can with dinner and usually another one later in the evening. So what's a person to do? And nope he's only a BMI of 19 with excellent health so it's tough to play the overweight card.

Another thing, today someone at work commented that DH is the MOST disciplined person they know. They mentioned he always brings a lunch to work. This has been a habit for us since we've pretty much meet. We've never had a chance to be able to afford to eat out for lunch, and perhaps we should eat out? That'll be tomorrows post.

Want a tax refund??? Have more kids...

Okay, I've known for a long time that we can't afford kids yet. I mean we can, but not comfortably. Anyway this year I realized that with each child if you are married and make less than $110k, you are able to get a $700/per child tax credit. Insane.

Sure it costs more to have kids, but on a message board someone is getting $9k back from the government on top of not paying any taxes. Holy Cow. Here's the woman's post "Yes, you can definately get back more than you pay in.We have 8 children and hubby claims 10 on his W4 so they hardly take out anything and our return (fed. and state) is almost $9000 this year! Rebuilding EF, paying off son's private school tuition for the year, and the van!!!"

I am okay with people not paying taxes, when we pay a lot. However I wonder if it's fair to get back so much when they pay nothing in? It makes me wonder if someone pays no taxes, makes $60k and gets a $9k refund doesn't that mean they are making substantially more than someone who has 1 or no kids making the same? Does it equal out having kids and paying less taxes?

I don't know. I guess it just got me thinking that having kids really isn't as expensive as people think. With these tax credit and incentives, it seems like we're encouraged to have children. But this is all hypothetical. Mainly it's coming because I'm sad at how much in taxes we have to pay. But for what it's worth, it's because we chose to live in a high cost of living area. So I'll accept full responsibility for that, until we are able to chose to live in a cheaper area.

January 2007 Wrap Up

This month has been a bad month for us financially. We ended up decreasing our networth by $4232 or 2.15%. This was mainly due to DH getting the second half of his stafford loan disbursed. This increased our total debt to $8500 in student loans.

Hopefully next month is a better month with a raise, bonus, and tax refund.

Spending more than we earn?

I can't believe that for the second year in a row Americans are spending more than we earn. Our savings rate is at -1% for 2006, shown here in this article. In 2005 the savings rate was a -0.4% also bad. Only two other years has the savings rate been negative in the US, 1932 and 1933, during the Great Depression.

Can you imagine that we as a country are spending more than we're earning? Of course this does have positive effects because it appears that consumer spending is up 0.7% and driving the economy. This helps people in general.

But the truth is that this will hurt us long term. Long term that means people are not saving for retirement, not saving for an emergency. Instead they are spending tomorrows savings today. Betting on having more money when there could be none.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I would love to have higher retirement contribution limits. That would really help us. But that may not be the answer. The answer could lie in automatically enrolling people in 401k and IRA. And making SS private and letting all contributions go back to the people who contributed. I'm not sure because a lot of people will suffer, however as a nation we are a capitalist society, so why is there SS at all?

I mean everyone wants to pay less taxes, have less government intrusion, then why even pay for SS or expect anything in return? It comes down to personal responsibility. If all these americans are crying about taxes and SS, then they should step up and say they want to take of savings by THEMSELVES.

However it appears that as a nation we are incapable of doing so. How else do you explain a negative savings rate?

February Tracking Spending

Okay, I'm spending our tracking for February just to see if we are overspending. We're right now running in the red mainly because of tuition bills. Yeah, I know it's crazy, but we really need to try and buckle down. I already know I need to fill my car up with gas, and I'm going to use CC to track everything. Hopefully I can get DH to eat out of the pantry a lot, but our spending usually occurs on the weekend when we go grocery shopping. I am also doing this because I need to lose again the 30 lbs I lost and gained back last year.

Do I have goals? Lose 5 lbs this month, eat out less than 8 times this month (DH already has an extremely expensive hockey game he's going to, rink side seat), and hopefully no extra dog expenses. I will probably have to track back every few days. This will be eye opening because I know we're not huge spenders, but maybe I can be even more lean than usual. The toughest part is cash, because where we live cash is a used a lot.

Annual Raises???

Okay DH found out last night about his annual raise/bonus. He got the highest rating for the year from the company but no promotion. Probably next year because he's been working only for 1 year. So next year a huge bump up is the likelyhood.

However his annual raise was only 4%! I don't know whether to laugh or cry over his working so damn hard for what? I know he's upset, but hasn't said much because it doesn't feel like the company gave out a lot. This is different from when I worked

First off he got two separate ratings individual/company. He got the higest rating for both and still ended up with a "generous" 4% raise. The rating were 1-4 and he got a 4 = 4% raise. That's apparently high for the company. He seems upset/frustrated and we're not sure what to think. Is this typical? He realizes that at the company people get 2-3% and fired if they get bad ratings. Yep they dump the bottom 10% of people annually, usually people who get 1 ratings.

But then he got a larger than expected annual bonus because the standard was 8% but he got 110% and 120% "extra" performance based compensation. So he ended up with a 11% bonus overall. Plus stock bonus another 4-6% annually, 12% annual signing bonus, so his bonuses are making up a huge chunk of income.

Is this typical? Should he be happy or disappointed? Overall the 4% raise is nothing, because with the annual bonus his income overall comprised of 75% paycheck and 25% bonuses in 2006. Which is nice, but it's frustrating because I don't think we should always count on bonuses. He agrees and wonders how do you budget such stuff?

Can everyone shed some light on how this works? What to think about bonuses and raises? And how to assess the value of such compensation properly.

If you could turn back time financially...

The question for this next festival of under 30 finances is "if you could turn back time financially what would you change."

Thought provoking, but unrealistic. I wouldn't change a thing because everything I did lead me to where I am today, mistakes and all. If I didn't make those mistakes early in life I would be making them later. At 27, to be pretty responsible financially and (in my humble opinion) pretty financially fit, that we did managed well enough to overcome our mistakes.

Have we made mistakes? Yes for sure. I know one was that we should have pulled money from our home equity and invested in my Roth IRA. Why mine? Because DH as a visa holder wasn't eligible until we married to invest for retirement. So I could have saved into a Roth IRA for years 2003 and 2004 or $6k. Of course I had no idea the market would have gone up, but it might have been worth the risk. But do I regret this decision? No, because I don't like the idea of pulling money out of home equity when I didn't have the cash leverage to pay it off. Meaning we were making jointly $42k/annually gross in San Diego. Yes, I think it may have instead driven us into CC debt or student loan hell. So would I change my mind, I'm not sure. Leveraging a home is great when you can accept the risk involved.

Second huge mistake or not...was probably not getting married sooner for the tax purposes and for visa reasons. This is an arguable decision, we were living together for 4 years before marriage, and engaged for 2 years, but we were "saving" for our nice wedding. Also honestly our parents didn't want us getting married any younger than 25 and 27. So was it a mistake? Maybe, but it paid dividends to wait because it bought us the goodwill of our parents and their blessings that we weren't rushing into a mistake.

Another financial mistake which I have mentioned in previous post my best and worse money moves. Bad move was buying a home without being married, enough said. But you learn from experience.

Another huge financial mistake was getting a pet. I wrote about my worse investment ever here. I love my dogs dearly but it was a terrible mistake. Would I change my decision looking back? Heck no, there are some intangibles in life worth more than money.

So that about wraps up my worse financial boo-boos and I wouldn't change a thing. Every decision I made, I did what I thought was best at the time. Consciously it got us where we are today. It made me the person I am, and I like where I'm at and who I am. So NO WAY would I change a single decision. It might make me have a better life, but I am HAPPY the way I am now.

To me that is priceless. The learning experiences, the mistakes have all contributed to my well being.

Carnival of Personal Finance #85

This week the carnival of personal finance #85 is hosted by 5centnickel. My article on keeping up with the Joneses was included.

Sorry for having such a terrible week on blogging, but I went home and attended a funeral, and found myself unable to blog. I will need to address a few topics regarding personal finance later.

why buying a house is stupid...

Got your attention? Well this is a major rant about people who think they will always make money on homes. It's about my parents. I love them dearly but sometimes they can be the dumbest people alive. Super brilliant book smart, savers, but impulsive spendthrifts.

They are moving next month, but are desperate to buy a home. Instead of looking and renting in the new city, they are impulsively trying to buy a "transition home." They think that they can buy a 1 bd condo, because it's cheap and they don't have to sell their other two homes, and if they don't like it sell it in 1 year or rent it out. My mom says she knows they will hate living in a 1 bd because of size, downsizing from a 5 bd/4500 sq ft home to a 600 sq ft/ 1 bd condo?

Can you see the stupidity of rushing to buy? They are buying because they think everyone makes money buy buying homes. They have made money on the two homes they own. However, they don't even know how long it will take to sell their other homes. They will have to take out a mortgage because they can't cash in their equity, whereas if they waited to sell they could choose to pay cash outright. A mortgage is not a bad thing, but I see it as renting whereas having cash in the bank is a different story.

They already know they won't be living there very long so why rush? I have no idea why, everytime I talk with them, they say it's their money which it is. I have lived 20 years in my family home (which my mom despises). She absolutely hated living there but couldn't move because financially it didn't make sense to sell and move. Well, here she is buying another house she's going to HATE. I have to listen to another 20 years of how she didn't get her dream house built for her, when everyone else did! Here's her chance. Of course instead they are impulsively trying to buy a condo in a sliding market.

Not only that...but they want to buy a fourth car. When does it ever stop?

Is life passing me by...part deux

Well earlier in the month I contemplated whether life was passing me by. I thought more, and surprisingly on the Women in Red Message board on MSN found that others were asking the question. When they did and I read through many, many answers, I found another answer within.

That yes life's experiences in my 20s are going by but I'm giving it up for a greater purpose. I am giving it up to have children and be able to stay at home with them if I chose. To provide college for them if I chose. To be able to be secure in affording our home, our cars, our retirement. To be able to raise my children without the stress of worrying over money or debt.

I chose this path, it's different from being able to have a fun, freewheeling life, but I made a conscious decision. I don't know whether this financial sacrifice will be worth it in 30 years, but I am hoping to be so. I am making the best decision possible with information I have in front of at this moment.

So be happy with whatever financial decision you make. It'll have repurcussions to last a lifetime.

Festival Under 30 Finances Edition 15

The question for this festival of under 30 was what would you do with $10k? My answer to this question here.

The summary is it depends on financial circumstances. First off we don't have $10k in student loans, so I wouldn't need it for that. But if I were in debt that much, I would use it to pay off student loans. Only reason why is because all our retirement options are maxed out.

Funeral costs

Who pays for funeral costs? In hawaii they have this thing where you give money "koden" when a person dies to help the family defray the funeral costs. Imagine according to the National Funeral Directors Association the average cost of a funeral as of July 2004 was $6500. I believe it. Plus you have the costs associated with dying in the hospital, which is morbid, but true.

So what if you cancelled your term life insurance or it ran out? Where do your funeral costs come from? I guess this monetary gifts from people who attend the funeral is to help the immediate need for cash. It's possible that many people do not have the cash on hand or are not joint owners on the account for immediate access to the money.

In the case of my family, truth is that my grandmother couldn't afford the funeral costs. They didn't have much money period. Thankfully my mom and her siblings do, so the monetary gifts are a blessing.

I guess if I were to die, I don't have any life insurance so it would be entirely out of pocket. Which I guess my DH would put on our CC and then pay it off as he accessed our cash. Fortunately everything is joint so he could transfer the money out our taxable accounts. If he died I would do the same, but he does have life insurance through work, so I think I would be better off than him.

How do most people plan on paying for funeral costs? What do you think your funeral will costs and is this something people have considered?

Keeping up with the Joneses or not?

Okay, so I enjoy surfing the web and reading personal finance message boards. Some are interesting about investing and saving, while others are cries for help out of debt. A common theme for many people is the idea that enjoying any of life's luxuries is a crime.

A lot of these people are getting out of debt, were previously in debt, or have just finished getting out of debt. They make automatic assumptions about people who use CC or use any money "unwisely."

This is a serious pet peeve of mine, when someone said that "Oh, and there is the personal satisfaction that I'm realizing that even though my friends might have better clothes and manicured nails, spend literally $1000 on christmas and birthdays for thier kids, I have more financial security, and my daughter will benefit from that also. I love my friends but I'm realizing that I'm actually better off than they are."

I called the person on it and asked how do you know the other person's real financial situation? How do you know that the person buying better clothes, nice nails, and spending on gifts cannot afford a $1k Christmas? How do you know the person you think who is keeping up with the Jonese cannot afford to do so?

I guess what bugs me is people making these snap judgements about others. How do you know the person didn't inherit a lot of money? Or makes a lot of money working? How do you know they don't have any bills, no kids, very minimal expeneses? I think that people are quick to assume and judge because they are jealous. They resent that their income doesn't allow them to enjoy "luxuries" in life. But that's because of choices THEY made. They choose to eat out, they choose their careers, they choose their homes/cars.

I'm one of those people who enjoy getting their nails done. In fact I want to have it done today if I have time. Also in the past 18 months gone to China, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, and Hawaii. We also enjoy travelling. To people who don't know us, their snap judgement is "your in debt up to your eyeballs and can't afford it" Truth is yes we can, enough said.

Another common misperception is assuming those who use CC are in debt. If 25% of Americans don't have CC, and 30% pay it off in full, that means the majority of Americans are not in CC debt. However the 45% minority have more than enough to spread it around to be an average of $8k in debt.

But then the DR followers try to quote "but CC spend more." Not really, if you know exactly what your budget is, it doesn't matter how the money is spent. I can tell you what my balance is on any given day and when it's close to my limit I just stop spending. I've lived like that for 10+ years, I doubt it's going to change now.

People who are in CC debt don't have the self realization or control to know that a CC is cash on a card. If you charge it, you have to pay for it later. It shouldn't matter whether you pay in cash now or 30-60 days later. Imagine instead you had a check register and wrote out every single charge against your cash, it's the same principal. Except you can get 1-5% back and it's easier to track every single penny you spend.

My point is that so many people judge others and make these assumptions about whether or not people are keeping up with the Joneses. They never assume that people are able to actually be the Joneses sometimes...

Carnival of Personal Finance #84

Here is the latest edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance #84. My article do I need a will is featured.

Tax help or not?

Okay, I signed up yet again to see a tax guy for help this year. Last year we moved and I felt frustrated reading over the new state tax laws. So we ended up paying someone to file for us. It was $575 last year but he did do our federal and two states. I'm not sure if this is a lot, it's the first time we've used someone. Until now our taxes have been pretty simple so we usually did Turbotax or some online E-file

This year, being stupid, I seriously overpaid our taxes. I think we're due a $5k refund if not more. I am really frustrated because it wasn't our tax guys fault. It was mine and DH's company. I paid taxes all year on his estimated bonus, but didn't realize they withhold extra from the bonus. So I shouldn't have even calculated the bonus at all. Yep, bit stupid tax.

This year I'm wondering if I should also perhaps I should try and save money by doing it ourselves? Do most people do it themselves? I guess we sort of have a lot of with company stock bonuses, home, our investments (DH's stupid stock trading hobby), school tuition, etc.

We have a Stafford subsidized loan, but I got in the mail a receipt saying we paid $128 in interest. So do we claim it though we didn't pay it? The government did. Also do we get to deduct our tuition reimburstment or just want we paid and wasn't reimburst? And how does it work if DH was reimburst after 2006, does it count for 2007?

I am feeling rather frustrated, plus no W-2 have come in and only piece meal of our other 1099s, etc have come in. Do you pay for tax help?

McDonald's brainwashing

So tomorrow we are going to be watching our friend's son. He's four and we're keeping all afternoon and through dinner. This is a huge deal for us, it's only our second time watching a kid and last time it was at least my neice. So if we broke her (which we didn't) it would have been okay. We just feed her ice cream at 4 pm and had her zooming on a sugar high.

Well I think we're going to dinner at McDonald's because we're not really sure what to feed a kid. We haven't eaten at McD's in years, it's gross, but the brainwashing McD's does is amazing. They are able to get kids to believe in them and no other fast food joint. I recall my nephews loving McD's, and my brother hating it. What hold does this company have over the other fast food joints?

Is it the toys? Is it the marketing? It can't be the food, because I think the burgers taste better at Wendy's or Burger King. Although McD's does have the best tasting french fries I think. Maybe it's the atmosphere? The big red haired guy and playground?

Whatever it is, McD's is raking in the dough and has managed through generations to keep capturing the interest of youngster. Personally I had a few birthday parties there as a kid, I think age 4-7, I'm ashamed to admit. But my mom invited my friends, we had happy meals and a playground and it was the best!

I wonder if by the time we have kids we'll be going back to McD's? Much like my brother hating it, yet unable to resist the lure of something fast and easy? I wish I could think up something like McD's and be able to keep reeling in kids for generations.

Make easy money...dog boarding

Since we're going home we have to board both of our dogs at a kennel. They probably wouldn't do well staying at someone's house, not that we known anyone who could watch them for 5 days. But also they need some sort of companionship and walks. So the place we go to is a private house, 1 hour away from where we live, and costs $30/day for two dogs. That is dirt cheap comparatively speaking.

We used to spend $30/day for our 1 dog at places in the metro area or in San Diego. Can you imagine? Most places keep anywhere from 5-20 dogs a day boarding and they charge $30-$50/night! Wow. Also that's just boarding, it doesn't even include doggie daycare.

Dog daycare costs on an average of $20-30/day just for someone to watch your dog play with other dogs in a playgroup. That's right they just watch your dog have fun. Unbelievable! With two dogs it costs me twice as much, however I have to send them because our new rescue dog needs "socialization". Trust me I think it's stupid, yet with his aggression issues and biting, I can't say it's not money well spent.

Well we're talking about stupid waste of money on pets, I also paid a dog behaviorist to come in an examine our newer rescue Bichon. Yep $200 down the toilet to have a guy come in an evalute my dog's psyche. But back to dog boarding..

So I'm thinking to myself I really ought to start a dog boarding/dog daycare business because imagine the money I could be making staying at home all day. And there is a lot less liability issues involved as opposed to watching someone's kid. Not to mention it's a lot less effort and responsiblity.

the $10k question

The question for the festival of under 30 finances is what would you do with $10k if you were 25 years old and had $25k in student loans? Retirement, savings, home down payment, student loans, or college for your child? The rate of return is the same as the interest on the student loan. Also would you answer change if it was $25k instead of $10k?

I guess it's an interesting question. I'm not sure what I would do, because it depends mostly on income and circumstances. But since it's personal, I'll personalize it and say that for us we're DINKS so I'm ruling out college. Second since we have a house with 20% DP, I'm ruling out saving for a house. Third, we save for retirement the maximum allowed in appropriate retirement vehicles, so that's out as well. I guess that leaves me with paying off the student loans.

I like the idea of paying off my student loans because being debt free, except for the mortgage means one less fixed payment and lower need for monthly income. Second, the question said the rate of return is the same as the student loan. So it really is not necessarily beneficial to save it. Also because the rate of return is the same, and the investing would have to be done in a taxable account, any income/dividends would be taxed at my bracket 25% + 5% state tax, so I'd rather pay off my student loan.

Now if I were able to use the money for other options such as paying for our current school etc, then I would might do that. But for now my option would be paying off the student loan.

Would my answer change personally if it were $25k instead of $10k? No, but I'd be a lot happier to get that much more.

My advice to a 25 year old in that situation would be to pay off half $5k to the student loan and $5k to a savings account as an EF. This would prevent the person from having to use CC in case of emergency. Also if the person go $25k, I would still do a half and half pay off so they can save a bit for a house/EF and get faster out of debt.

Do I need a will?

This week obviously I haven't been thinking much about finances or being frugal. I haven't spent money on anything except trying to go home, board the dogs, but I've been contemplating life and my relationship with money a lot.

The question now raised is do DH and I need a will? We're DINKS who really have built our assets together from the scratch. We don't have a lot, and I'm pretty sure that for DH's company life insurance I'm the beneficiary as he is my beneficiary. So the question is do we need a will?

We both feel at this time a will is unnecessary because if the other person dies then the survivor should get everything. However I was thinking that perhaps we need a will to let our parents know our wishes. DH and I know we each want to be cremated and would like our ashes kept to be scattered when the other person settles in a permenant home (not Boston). But also I think we may need a will to allow our parents to understand that DH wants to be kept alive and I prefer to not be kept alive if a vegetable.

I think if my life is not happy and healthy, I don't want to live. But I am not sure if my parents could deal with DH taking me off of life support. By the same token I'm not sure what DH's parents would want. It's funny that your parents, who love you dearly and raise you, would never discuss this with it. The idea of losing a child is the most painful loss. Because it's ingrained that the older personw ill die first.

I guess I'll discuss at least informally DH and I putting our wishes down on paper. Does everyone have a will? Was it put together with the conception of your first child or earlier?

redeeming air miles

Today I redeemed air miles on United to go home to hawaii. It cost 35k miles from Boston to Honolulu and I still needed to buy another interisland ticket. However I was surprised it was so easy to book at such a late date. I guess the airlines relaxes the seat rules when it's 6 days before you have to leave. They just want to fill the plane and don't care at that point how many people are redeeming miles.

As unfortunate a circumstance it is, it appears that going home so abruptly turned into the best use of our miles. The huge problem is that we have a 10 hour layover on the way back from SFO to BOS. So what can I do? I'm determined to try and get on the earlier flight back, so cross your fingers.

This is a huge relief to me. I am able to see my grandfather before his cremation and stay for his service. Finally a chance to use those stupid air miles which I always rack up but never am able to use.

going home

This is a short post to say I'll be flying home to see my grandfather before his cremation and stay for his funeral next week Friday. I think I can go for about $800 per person which is not too bad. I am happy that I think I can make it home.

Carnival of Personal Finance #83

At Young and Broke this week's Carnival of Personal Finance #83. My article on do you need life insurance is posted.

Measuring your life

How do you measure your life? By the money you've saved? The money you've spent? The things you have? Or the time you've spent with your family? Or the effort given to care for your family. What is the measure of a life well lived?

I sit here thinking of my grandfather who passed away last night. How can you measure his life? Financially he would be considered a failure, however he possessed riches abound from his family, enough to make a rich man jealous. I guess how you measure someone's life is determined by what you value.

Right now I think I need to save for the future, be responsible, and raise my children right. But I am sitting here thinking that no matter what I earn or what I save, I hope my relationship with my family flourishes. That I am able to nuture our bonds and connect with them.

It's so tough for me to live here and be so far away. I am so torn between trying to go home and yet needing to stay. How do you qualify what is really important financially and what is really important emotionally? How do you slow down and appreciate life?

Medical Insurance

Well we pay $48 every two weeks for our blue cross/blue shield PPO coverage for DH and myself through his company. Overall deductible in network is Zero, overall coinsurance maximum in network is Zero.

Now to important stuff family planning is $10 copayment, Infertility treatments $10, Labs and X rays is Zero, Maternity Services is Zero, annual Ob/gyn visit is $10 copay, 1 annual eye exam for $10 copay, well baby is zero. Not to shabby, and much more comprehensive than I would expect. Of course nothing matches what we had from DH's grad school where everything was covered no copay, but I think this is pretty generous medical coverage for little money.

The only issue is that we don't often go to the doctor now so we're currently not using our $600/year benefits. It'd probably be cheaper out of pocket, but when we have kids or are trying to have kids I'm sure that will change. Anyway though our medical insurance is about to get a work out because we're going to go for genetic counseling for DH's retinities pigmenosa. I'll post afterwards what it cost us.

Festival Under 30 Finances - 12th edition

Festival of Under #30 Finances, posted at The finance journey. The question of the edition is where do you see yourself in 10 years? See my post fast forwarded 10 years...

Vision Insurance

DH's work provides vision coverage for $120/year per couple. However it only covers up to $115 for contact and $100/year for glasses. In our family I am the only one who needs contacts, and yes I'm looking into Lasik corrective surgery. Unfortunately my vision has been deteriorating still and with pregnancy I'm not sure if I should even get it now. But that's another discussion.

Well the point is that our medical plan covers one eye visit a year with copay so I did that last year, because DH forgot to sign up for vision. Turns out it's not worth the money. It's a hoax and only worth it if two people need coverage. If not we're better off getting the prescription, filling it at Costco, and using a FSA for the tax break. Which is exactly what I did this year. So my contacts will cost us about $80 overall and we don't have to pay for vision.

Sometimes insurance can be such a crock. Tomorrow I'll probably discuss our medical coverage, which is really good coverage for a great price and cover amazing amounts of stuff for pregnancy.

full or partial car insurance?

Well for the past 3 years we've been carrying only liability on our cars. Our cars are a 99 toyota corolla and a 00 ford focus. The savings were substantial because we were under 25 for a chunk of those years, and our rates have been dropping.

However since we've moved to NE it's gone up. When we got here unfortunately we decided to go with liability again. Also unfortunately my DH had three car accidents within a span of 3 months (yeah probably why I don't buy a new car). But seriously I wonder what is the break even point of coverage and should we have been carrying full coverage?

Well where we live it cost approximately $1k more for full coverage and that's with a $1k deductible. In CA it was the same thing, so we dropped it. The cost of either of our cars $4k would be made back in 4 years right? Actually sooner if you consider we'd have to fork over a $1k deductible.

But on another message board someone said they paid for full insurance because they couldn't afford to replace their car. However the difference in full coverage versus liability was a lot less. Mine's high because it's a state run insurance program, so bad drivers like my DH is paid for by good drivers. Thank god he had all his accidents here, not in CA.

I thought about it and decided, I would still wouldn't cover my car if I couldn't afford to replace it, and save the few bucks. Why? Because of that stupid high deductible. If you have to fork over $1k anyway, you could set aside the difference every month into a car fund and buy a cheap used car for $2k probably by the time your car was totalled if not more.

Of course this is all based on the premise that you'll save the difference. I know I'm not saving the difference, but I like not having a deductible. Of course if DH has another accident I'm not fixing his car he can drive it all beat up, if it drives and if not, then he's getting a $1k car period.

10 years fast fowarded

Where do I see myself in 10 years? That's an interesting question, I'll be 37 and DH 39...I hope that we'll both be done with our schooling obviously. And I hope to have at least 2 kids, ideally 4. But financially where do I see us?

I see us living back on the West Coast in a lower cost of living area. Between southern cali and NE, I can't imagine living somewhere else so expensive. I expect to own a single family home finally and two rental properties. Why two? Because we'll probably buy two homes/condos for our parents and they will rent it back from us. Already our parents are trying to get us to hurry and settle in our final location so they can buy something nearby. As an only/youngest and DH the eldest and only married, I guess we're considered extremely responsible young adults.

I also see our income minimally doubling in 10 year probably closer to 3x what we make now. I'll be done with graduate school and DH done with an MBA, so it's not unlikely that our incomes will go up.

I hope to hit a NW of $1 million by 34 (projected), and by 37 and 39 amassing $1.5 million dollars. These projections are based on our current saving rate and funneling all raises into savings. Not sure if that will happen, but it's a good goal. Ambitiously I see us hitting $1 million by 32 and 34.

I also forsee us having college fully funded by then because another mini-goal is $10k in a 529 by the time our children are 1 year old. We've already got $1k set aside for kid #1. Now I've got to get serious about saving.

And since we're day-dreaming...at 37 I'll probably be driving an SUV and minivan, and live in a 3000 sq ft single family home with a yard and a garage, and be materialistic and consumer driven...maybe even a stage mom???

Do you need life insurance?

I'm going to write a few posts about insurance, life, car, home, and umbrella policies. But to start I'll discuss whether I think we need life insurance as DINKS in their 20s with some assets.

I'm constantly fighting internally over my internal desire for life insurance and the fact I don't need it. DH says no way, not until we're pregnant are we getting life insurance. His logic is that he gets 2x his salary from work, and as the breadwinner that amount will more than adequately take care of me. With our assets and his insurance I could live in our house if I choose for at least 5 years. If I die, he can manage the mortgage note solo and our current assets will more than take care of burying me. So his position is that we don't need insurance. My position, it's a really cheap rate and I feel nervous.

Right now we're both below 30, and rate are exceptionally cheap. However, I do acknowledge not having dependents makes it somewhat difficult to justify paying for life insurance. Also I am constantly wavering between 20 and 30 year term life insurance. Experts say long enough for your youngest to be done with high school. But we don't even have kids and we're not sure when they'll come or how many we'll have. So how do I know we'll have enough? But do we really need 30 years? I think we'll be self-insured probably by 20 years from now, so is it necessary to buy the longer term?

Another major issue that prevents me from buying life insurance is that I make very little money, and DH is starting his career (1 year) and the growth potential for both of us is huge. So if we were to buy 10-20x my income it'd be 300-600k. But I'll outstrip that when I graduate, and if we bought 10x DH's income it'd be minimally 1 million. But this really are our lowest earning years so if we buy now will be underinsured in say 5 years? What do we do if our income doubles or triples when we finish school? Suddenly will 500k policy be enough if we make $250k/year?

I guess this is part of the reason I am not currently pushing for life insurance. I feel as though we don't have enough information about our future. We're not sure when we're having kids, we're not sure how much we'll be making, we're not sure how long we'll need it for. I wonder if this is a problem other 20-somethings face when you feel as though your starting out and getting prepared, yet not all the information is in front of you...

Roth IRA...one contribution or many?

People always ask should they contribute one $4k deposit to a Roth IRA or should they contribute $333/monthly? The answer is...you should deposit $4k on January 2nd of the year to get the longest possible time of tax free investing. Because you deposit every year and leave it alone, that will be a form of dollar cost averaging. The idea is that the capital gains are not taxed, unlike leaving the $4k in a Money Market earning income and transferring $333/month. Every month you'd dollar cost average, but you'd also be paying short term capital gains on the interest.

However the reason why investing $333/month is popular is not many people are able to stash aside $4k for a lump sum contribution. Therefore it's better to invest what you can when you, than to not invest at all. I'd rather see someone putting away $500/month into a Roth IRA then trying to save up $4k and never doing it.

Personally I do a lump sum investing in a Roth IRA. However, I just made 2006 contribution in Jan 2007, why? Because of our strange circumstances with bonuses and income, we are on the cusp of being phased out of the Roth IRA income limits. Thus I am not fond of the idea of withdrawing my contribution in March 2007, and paying taxes on any income if we're over the $150k married filing joint limit.

The problem is that the only deduction eligible for deciding what you modified adjusted gross income will be is a 401k contribution. We already max that out last year so I wasn't sure if what our income would be. Last year our income was getting close and this year too. Especially since my DH's annual bonus, raise, and promotion is in February. His signing bonus occurs every december so you can understand how we're never sure what our income looks like until the end.

But I personally like the lump sum contribution, plus by saving it during the year, it acts like an extra cash EF for emergencies. Which I think is great because it gives me more flexibility without having to pull it out of our stocks.

Carnival of Personal Finance #82

This week the carnival of personal finance #82 is hosted by get rich slowly. It's theme is superheros of finance. Check out my post on "Is life passing me by?" It's my meditation on whether it's worth it not being in debt or am I saving for a future that may not happen?

Expensive hobbies

I think as DINKS we have a few expensive hobbies. My DH loves to snowboard and the warm winter is killing him out here in the NE. We bought snowboards last year, at a great price, yet it was pretty expensive $400 a board/boots/bindings package for each of us. Then there is the price of lift tickets, which is pretty expensive as well. So he's researching a weekend trip to go ski somewhere else, maybe home in Canada while I'm wanting to stay home and veg.

Another expensive hobby of his love of video games. Can you believe how much the PS3 costs, or even the Wii? We have one and I'm wondering how parents afford these things? At $250 for the system and $50 a game, I question what sort of money parents make to afford these games? Personally I see these things as targeted to young single men in their 20s and 30s with money to blow. I think the other thing he loves is any electronics he can get his hands on.

My "hobby" is probably watching movies. I enjoy going to watch movies, but right now at $10 I can't justify going to the theaters except if it's something we can't wait to see. Last year we watched I think 3 movies in the theater, Talladega Nights, Borat, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

My other hobby is eating out. I think this probably adds up to his ski trips and video games because if I had more money I'd probably eat out more. As it is, we don't because I'm trying to lose weight. Yep, yet another year where I'm losing weight. Last year I lost 25 lbs and gained it back, so I'm back on the treadmill (literally and metaphorically).

Do you have any expensive hobbies? Is there something cheaper we should pick up? Our together hobby is dogs, but pets, well they are ridiculously expensive. Our older dog has to go again to the Vet Opthamologist for eye surgery this week so I"m guessing about $200 at a minimum. Yeah our dogs run us a nice vacation every year.

quarterly estimated tax payment time

Okay Jan 15th is the last day to make a quarterly estimated tax payment for 2006 without a penalty. Last year I ran our numbers off the cuff, and determined we would owe about $5k to everyone, so what I did was I paid Federal, MA, and CA about $1500 each and hope we'd come in close. We did, we got a small $200 refund from CA and MA, and we owed another $1400 to the Federal. What we probably should have done was estimated payments through the year, but it was too difficult to follow.

This year, I've already run our numbers and because I'm stupid, we'll get a huge refund of I think $4k or more back. Yeah, I know, what the heck? Well the issue came with DH's bonus in December, they didn't tell us they would withhold way more than our bracket of 28%, they held back 40%. So we budgeted to pay the right amount but they overheld. We should have been paying less all year.

Hopefully this coming year we'll be more spot on. These past two years have been hard with the move, buying/selling homes, learning about bonuses, etc. The beauty of having the estimated payment is you can calculate roughly what you think you owe now and pay if you need and you don't have to worry about it the rest of the year. Of course this doesn't work if you don't have the money.

Shopping Sabbatical?

A group of people in SF decided to try go a year without shopping. Jan 3, 2007 marked a year and it was reported here. The group found it very liberating to be anti-consumerism that they are discussing repeating the trial again for 2007. They did however exempt food, toiletries, and other essentials. This new crazy has caught on in other cities around the world, where people have taken it to extremes by dumper diving and sleeping homeless.

Could you do it? I'm pretty sure I could probably do it. We rarely shop and I can count the number of times I've been to a mall this year on one hand (1 at Christmas). I've never gone into a Pier 1, haven't shopped Pottery Barn, and pretty despise shopping. If I go it's usually for a specific purpose, like a birthday gift, something broke, or the one time I went to the mall was for Christmas shopping.

I am perusing my CC statements actually to see what stores I frequented this year. None. I have gone to Walmart and Target on average once every two months, I go more often to Petco/Petsmart. And I do go to Costco every other week. But other than that, I think my greatest consumption is Border's Bookstore, but I rarely buy books, I just sit there and have a coffee because I feel so cheap sitting there reading all day.

I haven't shopped for clothes this past year, although we did buy new laptops because ours broke. However I did go 5 months without one till I found the one I wanted at the right price. All in all, I think I could do the challenge, but I won't. Why?

Because my one luxury was my vacation this year to Asia. I couldn't give up taking a vacation, which buys into consumerism. I didn't over spend and paid cash, but it still would have to go. Plus not eating out once for a whole year would be a challenge. I would lose what little social contact we have out here.

Could you do it? Could you spend absolutely no money this year?

Is life passing me by?

Sometimes I am seriously tempted by something I really want and don't have the money for. I've never charged on a CC and not been able to pay in full, so I haven't had the rush ever of getting something I can't afford. Recently there are moments of weakness where I say, I wish I could go on an expensive ski vacation or trip to Europe. I never went after college to tour Europe as so many people seem to have done. I didn't have the money. Neither did DH. I always wonder how did these people make it?

I've actually asked a lot of my friends who would go for 3 months to 1 year, how did they cover the expenses? Many said parents, some said savings, and more than a few said they just threw it on the CC and worried about it later.

I wonder if I am missing out by not going to Europe now when I'm still young and active? Should I chuck responsibility and throw caution to the wind? I mean I am somewhat borderline compulsive about being prepared financially for everything, so it's tough for me to justify a trip to Europe or even an expensive weekend getaway. And yet at the same time I know I'll only live once.

So I wonder if I'll sit here on this blog 10 years from now regretting not taking the chance to go and experience life; or if I'll instead appreciate the sacrifice of delayed gratification? Instead I'll be happy with a large retirement account, possible early retirement, money in bank, college funded, and lots of home equity?

I already know I chose a home in my early 20s over travelling and having fun. Turned into a good investment, but I think I do regret giving up some of the fun. I also know that by keeping my car instead of trading up saves me a lot of money. But will I regret my ways later? Am I over the line stingy? Should I be experiencing life more? What if there is no later?

Do people in CC debt regret it? Or do you have great memories to recall and experiences you treasure? Did you enjoy life to the fullest? Am I planning for a future I may not have?

Budgeting Systems Review

Okay so I'm about to discuss my experience with Quicken, Microsoft Money, and Excel. So last month right before Christmas holidays I attempted to use Quicken and Microsoft Money. I hated both systems. I couldn't reconcile anything, pretty much everything attempted to get downloaded off of website, but they wouldn't reconcile.

How so? Well the BofA checking would only go back to May, and I just had to pretend it started off with a budget after a set date. Then when I attempted to put in categories for each entry, it worked mostly, until it came to CC payments. Then when I called it a CC payment it wouldn't reconcile with the CC statement. I downloaded the statement, but it would instead show 2 payments instead of reconciling the two accounts. This occurred in both Quicken and Money.

Then I also tried to track our portfolio, however it wouldn't go back far enough to track the buy dates for some stocks. It also wouldn't track all the entries for the 401k purchases.

Another thing is I couldn't reconcile the paychecks breakdown. It was impossible to setup the paychecks because it was variable at the end of the year. So again I found myself stuck using the computer program. I guess I'm not very computer adept.

As far as excel, I have a simple spreadsheet showing due dates of bills and costs. It isn't fancy, and when I pay the bill, I input the confirmation code. Simple? Yes, does it help budgeting? No, but it makes sure I pay all my bills on time.

I may try youneedabudget or an excel spreadsheet. I'll post when I figure it out. What are other's experiences with Quicken/Money.

Net Worth 2006 Wrap-Up

Okay, I'm going to simply wrap up our net worth for the year of 2006. We started 2006 at $147,936 and we ended it at $196,732. We increased our net worth by $48796 or 33%. That sounds pretty impressive for me. I didn't expect to do so well. Plus not all 401k contributions were added by the end of the year by the company so it would be higher if not.

Overall we had a wonderful year. We saved money, went to Japan/Hong Kong, my mom had a successful eye surgery over this Christmas holiday (I went home to help), and we managed to pay cash for most of DH's school tuition.

Carnival of Personal Finance #81

This week at mighty bargain hunter's site is the Carnival of Personal Finances #81. See my post on Living without a Budget. I hope you enjoy this week's carnival.

I'd like to add, I can't believe people are coming and reading my blog.

Happy New Year

Been jet lagged getting home, but this is a short post of Happy New Year to one and all. May your year be healthy, happy, and prosperous for your families!