Rounding Out My Reading

Here is some of my Carnival reading from the Carnival of 20-something finance and the Carnival of Personal Finance:

f.f at Feminist Finance posted an article about the financial impact that effective and educated birth control can have on the finances of an individual or family. I think in large part she is dead on in this. I really disagree that abortion is a good form of birth control because I strongly disagree with the idea that we should kill a person to save money or make our lives easier (since I think that an unborn baby is a person). With that said, her article is still interesting if you are interested in thinking about gender, finances, or the impact of your choices on your financial health.

Though I was a little disappointed that this article from Biz Driven Life was more about your ability to handle risk and less about your ability to consume extremely large quantities of food or have a washboard stomach, I still liked how he mentioned "Fiddler on the Roof." I'm off to marry Tevye's eldest, Tzeitel. Not really, I am already married. And Tzeitel isn't really real. But the movie is good, and so is being Jewish. But I'm not Jewish. Nor am I in a movie. I hope I am still good though.

Peter at Plan Your Escape posted at nice little article about how he and his wife organize their finances as a couple. I'm not sure I entirely agree with him on philosophical grounds (I'd probably have to see how his exact system plays out before a final judgment) but I like how his system fosters open communication about their financial life as a couple. I also like how he anticipates some potential changes to his system in case your financial health is not as robust as his is. It even has cool charts.

Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme posted some informative diagrams that explain to all the visual learners out there what cash flows look like at various stages of financial health. The goal would be to be like the last diagram, but still working to do something good for my fellow man - either by earning a wage and giving it away or by focusing my time and effort to personally benefit others. It sure would be great to eat and help others eat too!

Other News:
The Carnival of Cash Back will have its first edition next week on February 4. Amanda over at Me vs. Debt is the creator and first host of this nifty carnival idea. I am certainly going to head on over and check-out some of the great ideas on maximizing rewards programs. If you want to submit an article, you can check out her article or use the hyper link I stole from her.

The articles of mine that got included in various carnivals were:
The Magic of a Bloomin' Onion
A Good Suckiness: Thoughts on the Nature of Work

Being a Massive Mooch

I have to admit that I am a pretty big mooch. Today we had some people from corporate come into the office for meetings with a recently acquired company to have one of those "where-do-we-go-from-here" discussions. In the past, when somebody comes from corporate it can sometimes mean a free lunch. These lunches are always good. I really like them.

I got all excited about the prospect of free lunch as I was introduced to all the new faces from our newest acquisition. I remember thinking, "Boy, it sure would be easier to remember this persons name over a steaming plate of Phad Thai." I didn't really think that, but it sure would have been a lot easier to remember their names if we had been! Instead I was coming back from the bathroom and everyone was already engaged in conversations. Since I'm not really an anybody, I was content for the simple introductions since I will probably never see these people again - but the prospect of eating with them was still taunting me with it's illusive deliciousness. Almost as soon as they were introduced they were off to a secluded place of meeting to hash out strategies to destroy our competitors and leverage that big rock with that newfangled lever thingy that we just invented. I have neither leverage nor a lever to leverage anything, all I wanted was a free lunch.

I felt the hunger hit me at 11:12:13 AM - a full 0:47:47 away from the most probable time that a possible lunch might be announced. I squirmed and I squawked. I drank and I drooled. I hunger and I howled. Nearly a full hour had past and I had used up every trick in the book to take my mind of the hunger - I drank water, listened to music, did something interesting, worked, talked to a co-worker - but still the hunger pressed on. At around 12:30 PM my cubicle neighbor got up and made himself lunch, a casualty to hunger. Then my boss left the office to go get a bite. My spirits began to drop and I felt the hunger creep in anew.

I had to eat something - and here is the point where my moochness really kicks in. Since I had to eat, I quietly took out my peanut butter and honey sandwich from my lunch and proceed to eat it as covertly as I possibly could so that in the off chance that the guys from corporate came by I could quickly stash my sandwich so that it will look like I wasn't eating. While eating my sandwich I actually stashed it twice! Both on false alarms. I still had hope.

That hope was soon dashed when somebody came by and I overheard that the people in the meeting had already eaten. Convinced that freeness was now impossible I made my way to the fridge and got out the rest of my lunch to eat. I am such a stinking mooch.

Really Pricey Food on the (Relatively) Cheap

Twice a year in San Diego we have a nice little thing called Restaurant Week. During the week you can attend any of the participating restaurants and get a three course meal for a flat rate of $30 or $40 depending on the restaurant. Now I am not one to go out to fancy pants restaurants that will probably end up burning over a $100 on a dinner for two, but I absolutely love Restaurant Week. Last year my wife (then fiance), dad, brother, and I went out to Bali Hai on Shelter Island and enjoyed the festivities. I a little foggy on the details of our meal, but I do remember having a lava cake that was absolutely stupendous. It was probably named something outlandish like Mount Get-Out-Of-Its-Path-Before-It-Kilauea-es-You Lava Cake - which is why is was so sinfully good.

Restaurant Week is running in San Diego right now (January 27 - February 1) so don't miss out on this opportunity to take full advantage of the (relatively) cheap goodness at your disposal. My wife and I are definitely planning on trying to go again this year. We haven't decided where yet, but in the next day or two we will doll up and check someplace out. If you want to know which restaurants are participating, the link above has a page that categorizes all the different restaurants by region, price (either $30 or $40), or the plain old alphabetical listing. Be sure to set up a reservation in advance to ensure the best dinning experience - I can imagine that some of these restaurants get pretty crowded. If you can't make it out because you got such late notice on the event don't fret, make plans to hit up the next week scheduled for June 22-27, 2008.

Question: Anyone have any suggestions for a place to check out?

There are some potential drawbacks to going out, like what to do you do with your pets. There is always the option to look for pet sitters in San Diego. That way you can head on out for an evening of fun right after work and not worry about getting home to let the puppies out to pee. It make cost a little extra, but the peace of mind in knowing that you pet is going to be taken care of in a way that you would approve of it pretty important if you ask me.

The Job Dilemma - The Resolution

It has been about three weeks since my wife talked to her boss about cutting back her hours so that she can focus on other things. Our fears about how the boss would react were groundless - everything turned out splendidly. My wife's boss recognized my wife's wishes without any fireworks and an agreement was easily and quickly struck. So starting next week my wife will only need to go into work four days a week for half of the day. Can you say awesome?

This development is going to change up some of our numbers. When I first calculated our 2008 expected income and expenses I anticipated that my wife would work a 20 hour work week instead of the 16 hour week she will be working now. This is changing our expected take home pay by about $1000 over the course of the year (given that she has worked at a full time clip over the course of this month). As a result, our short fall for desired savings goals is now estimated at -$3,830 from -$2,870. I am banking on the proposed economic stimulus package to make up the difference, but aside from that I don't really see how finding and extra $4,000 dollars is any less possible than finding an extra $3,000. I know we will find a way to get it done. Here is the link to the updated post regarding our Annualized Expenses and Income.

Other Posts in this series (in order of appearance):
Jobs, Can't Live With 'em ...
The Job Dilemma - The Numbers
The Job Dilemma - My Wife's Potential Income
The Job Dilemma - The Decision
The Job Dilemma - The Resolution

Why the New Look?

I've changed things up a bit around the old blog because I am an idiot and accidentally made some permanent changes to my template without backing anything up. As a result I have taken the opportunity to change things up, and boy did I make some sweeping changes. NOT! I have simply changed which Rounders template I decided to use on my quest to bend html to my iron will. I even used the same exact blog helper person who put together some really easy for stupid people like me instructions to add a third column to their generic blogger template. I tried using somebody else's instructions but I found I couldn't follow them or they were a little out-dated. If you are interested in checking the person out, the post I used to spruce up this site is here. They have a walk through for just about every blogger template and using the find (cltr+f) feature on Firefox helped me find all the garbledy gook of 'code' that means nothing to me. Firefox > Internet Explorer.

What Would You Do With a Penny?

I read an article over at Clever Dude about how he won't pick up a penny that reminded me of all the money that can be made by simply picking up stuff - especially if you can pick up stuff in massive volumes. Now granted, $550 dollars worth of pennies over a nineteen year period is no promise of great wealth, especially when you consider that accumulating even that paltry sum would require you to find 8 of the sexiest presidents ever every day. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't happen to me - and I look!

So, to a certain extent I can understand how someone might pass up a penny. Yet I also see My Good Cents' point in the fact that money is money is money. Just because $0.01 is 1/100,000,000 of $1 million doesn't mean that pennies are bad or worthless. They are just the smallest step you can take towards that sum. Since I think My Good Cents has the more compelling argument I have found something else to help supplement my random change finding on my goal to $1 million in found money - recycling.

In the glorious state of California we charge people to drink most of their favorite beverages. Monster, Coke, Fanta Orange, all varieties of beer, bottled waters, and certain juices all have a very special tax on them, or at least their containers do. The CRV tax stands for California Redemption Value and it adds on $0.05 to $0.10 for every container you buy. Buy a 24 pack of water - you get $1.20 added to your bill. Buy 5 2-liter bottles of Coke - $0.50. You will never see this money again unless you return the container later. Here is the money making scheme - return other people's containers for them, especially when they choose to leave them on the ground.

Walking by a empty can in California is just like walking past a shinny nickel, it just takes a little effort to get turn that can into a nickel. The state has made this relatively easy by requiring there to be places to redeem your recyclable goods near the places that you purchase them. This amounts to having a recycling outfit near every major supermarket in my area. It does take some time and effort so riches through recycling may not be for everyone.

At its peak in our household, we were finding scores of cans each week and our biweekly trip to the recycling center would net us between $15 and $25. It was like finding 131 pennies a day. What could you do with 131 pennies a day? Well, you could ...

• Cover the costs of sponsoring another child through World Vision and be able to contribute an additional $60 to a birthday or holiday gift
• Buy 21 Invisible Children bracelets and help create jobs and change lives in war torn Uganda
• Provide 2% of the funds needed to build a water gravity system in Sierra Leon through the work of the Africa Well Fund, impacting many people for years to come by giving them access to clean, disease free drinking water

A penny really does matter.

photo by r-z

Rounding Out My Reading

Two of my articles were in carnivals this week. My article on taking advantage of your public library was an editors pick at the Carnival of 20-Something Finances, Haiku Edition over at Dollar Frugal. Brooke's haiku summed up my entire article in 17 syllables. Here's her haiku, it will save you from reading my 395 word article:

Check out some books now
There are free videos too
Learn foreign language

The other article that got included was the one about hard selling telemarketers from India. It got included over at the Carnival of Personal Finance over at Green Panda Treehouse.

Here are some of the articles I found interesting this week:

Tip Diva offers some useful suggestions for eating on a budget. She reminds us not to be wasteful and that things are not always a screamin' deal when they have little voice boxes on them that shout out your deepest and darkest personal secrets until you place them in your cart - like that can of Jiffy peanut butter did the other day. My wife swore she couldn't hear it - I think she was lying.

Change Your Tree reminded me just how brilliant I am for having something like our Regular Expenses Savings as a line item in our budget. His article used a less obtuse name for this category of funds, but I'll make you click on the link to find out what it is. Oh, I'm such a tease!

The Baglady reminds me why I'll probably never be a 'somebody' at a place of employment - because I'd probably use every single one of her Tips for Surviving Meetings even when the meeting is that long, that boring, or that lame. I really need to get my act together ... or do I!

I also liked the article over at fabulous finances that taught me how to play hard ball about a raise ... like that will ever happen. I especially liked the part where I was encouraged to leverage a potential position outside the company to get a bigger raise. It reminded me about how Michael Scott tried to leverage a raise by threatening to withhold sex from his boss. Threats must be a good idea.

A Good Suckiness: Thoughts on the Nature of Work

I personally think that work is a very good thing. When I really think about it, it just seems like humanity is designed to be productive. We are made to make. We are partial to production. Wired for work. And yet there is another fact that seems to stand in stark contrast this - work sucks. It can be boring, annoying, frustrating, unforgiving, time consuming, stressful, draining, and unfulfilling. In other words, work as a concept seems good, but work in practice is lame. Work is the good suckiness.

I mean how many people do you know who would still go into their jobs everyday if they didn't have to make the money to survive, or buy little Timmy braces, or Peggy Sue a Jetta, or Tiberius a legion? I certainly wouldn't. I go do something else that would seem more fun. Only after a long period of initial 'relaxing' - where I'd watch marathon after marathon of Law & Order, Walker Texas Ranger, The Gummy Bears, and Fraggle Rock, relive my childhood by listening to George Harrison's "I Got My Mind Set On You" time after time, and slept like a madman - only then would I probably tire of that pointless existence and start trying to do something that would actually matter.

If I really had my choice, I would just be a dad. I mean that seems like the best 'job' in the entire world to me. You get another chance to love someone unconditionally, and for the most part it is relatively easy to do so. You get to see your child grow into a human being, with a personality all their own. You get to see your child's mind develop and learn how they think and why they think that way. Everything you do can make a positive and lasting impact on the rest of your child's life. It will be such an adventure to be a dad.

But part of being a dad is also about providing for the needs of your family, and in my case I will probably experience the cost of fatherhood as well as the joy. If I do not work, my family will not eat. There are no professional fathers. I won't get paid millions of dollars, or be in any commercials, or make it on any sexiest-man-alive lists by making sure my child's life is filled with love. So I must work at something other than what I'd ideally like to do in order to make what I really want to do a reality. I think I can handle that. Being a good dad is enough motivation to want to work at something I don't see as an ultimate good. In fact, I think it is enough for me to even like the sucky job I have, given enough time.

Here are the things I am trying to consciously think to break past the lameness of labor and help make my work more fulfilling:

1. My family can't eat if I don't earn. I want to express my love for my family by giving of myself for the sake of their well being. My working is ultimately an expression of love for my family - and boy do I love my wife!
   
2. My family can't grow if I don't increase my earning power. It costs money to feed two people. I imagine it costs much more to feed eight. If I can't earn more money then I can't feed more people. I can work hard and develop my marketable skills in order to make myself more useful to my employer, increasing the amount of money they give me.
   
3. Work is good in theory so work on making the theory a reality. There are different things I could do to accomplish this: change jobs, focus on what I like about my job, ask for more tasks doing things that I enjoy, get training on something I like, etc. The most important thing for me right now in this area is probably learning to focus on the aspects of my job I really like and try to grow in the areas that I don't. I think that if I abandon my current job now I will loose a quality opportunity at a quality company to learn about what it means to persevere when things are not always enjoyable.

I'd love to hear anyone else's strategies or ideas for dealing with work. Got comment?

The Magic of a Bloomin' Onion

These flowery, fried onions have more magic to them than the slight burning sensation they leave at the back of my throat - getting one will almost certainly mean something you ordered will be free (hopefully its something sweet with a ridiculously dangerous name)(video). Now that may sound crazy to everyone who has ordered a Bloomin' Onion or one of the many copycat creations and had to actually pay for it and pay for your desert - or even go without desert altogether (gasp!). Rest assured, this has randomly happened to me twice so it must mean I stumbled upon some deep magic indeed.

Here are your magical steps for getting free stuff at a dinner out for two:

1. Only go out to eat if you are going to use a gift card or cash given as a gift, and go out on an 'off night' (i.e. Monday through Thursday). This way you won't have to wait very long or pay very much for your night out with your somebody special.
2. Be very polite. From the time you enter the door to the time you leave the establishment make sure you treat everyone who works there with great respect and gentleness. Sometimes they may not deserve it, but be a good person - it will make you feel better for using cheap magic to get free stuff. Say 'thank you' and acknowledge when people bring you things.
   
3. Only get water to drink. Other stuff may taste better but it will probably be more expensive and less healthy. And besides, ordering water is probably the most important step for getting your free stuff.
4. Take a long time deciding what you want. I come from a family that decided what they wanted on the way to the restaurant, so any time we tell the waitress (are their even waiters anymore?) that we aren't ready to order yet it feels like it is taking a long time to order. Definitely ask her to come back later at least once, but maybe twice just to play it safe. In the mean time talk with your loved one about how handsome you are or what a great companion you are.
5. Order something good, but cheap, and split it if possible. Be sure to order your onion thingy here too. Each time we asked for it first and then ordered our main dishes. One time my wife ordered the onion, the next time I did - so I don't think the magic depends on who orders what. Each time we also ordered a salad with our meal so that must have some tie in to the magic as well.
6. Eat the freebies. Outback offers some pretty good bread with their meals and my wife and I plowed through 2 1/2 loaves by the time our meal was over. It went well with pretty much everything. You can order endless things at different restaurants, like chips, and I recommend doing that if they don't offer the onion.
7. Talk about fun, interesting, or important things while you eat. If you don't laugh together the magic won't work. You want the magic to work, don't you?
8. Tip generously, but fairly. This may sound like an oxymoron, but rewarding those who do really well and punish those who do poorly is compatible with being generous - all you do is give each bad waitress the benefit of the doubt and think about how you would like to be tipped in the given situation. We almost always err on the side of generosity in such circumstances.

By following these 8 surefire steps you will inevitably have your bloomin' onion come out after your main meal - thus ensuring you some freebie. Try the magic for yourself, it is a sure thing!(a)

(a) User experience may vary. Two instances of a given phenomena is not sufficient statistical support for the claims made in this article. In fact, magic is not real in the sense that it is not an ultimate reality. So stay away from magic and pursue more real things. Following these tips may save you money (or gift card balances) and enable you to have fun with your spouse/friend/significant other/child.

Thank You Kind Anonymous One

I feel so thankful right now. A kind, anonymous individual blessed my wife and me today by giving us a gift that is a little more than one week's worth of my take home pay. It came to us in an envelope unmarked expect for our names printed in the default Times New Roman font. When it was handed to us, I new immediately what it was, I just had no idea how much it was. In fact, I decided to wait a little while before even opening the envelope - figuring it was a nice note of thanks and maybe a gift card to Olive Garden or something like that. It was shocking when I opened it and found a simple inscription of blessing and the face of Mr. Frankling looking at me several times over. The feeling of gratitude I had in that moment felt so good. We still don't know who did this, but we have some ideas (all of which could be wrong - we know a lot of really great, really nice people).

But since they blessed us anonymously, and since I can't do this to their face, I wanted to express my gratitude back to them: Thank you for your gift, and may you be rewarded for you generosity and your kindness with gifts beyond anything I can bestow. May you find joy inexpressible and life abudnant. Be filled with a peace that surpasses all understanding. And let the knowledge that you are deeply and truly loved propel you on to great acts of love, and a deep sense of hope, and a rest for you heart.

It's All About the Milk, Baby

Have you ever wonder why a gallon of milk costs 43% more than a gallon of gas? Ever wondered why you just couldn't hold down that gallon of milk you tried to drink in under an hour? Well, I have the answer to those burning questions right here: milk is only the most valuable but not-really-that-valuable commodity on the market. You see, according to some guy there is a direct correlation to the production of butter in Bangladesh and the performance of the S&P 500, or at least there might have been one between 1983 and 1993. For every 1% increase in butter production you saw 2% increase in the S&P 500. Check your Bangladeshi economic figures for yourself if you think I am making this up, or tippity tap those keys and do a little searchity search and you'll find scores of references to this. Known fact it is.

Or you can read this post by a Bangladeshi ex-patriot who returns to Bangladesh only to find no butter there. No butter! As recently as September of 2007! And since then the DOW had dropped -1656.35 (-11.99%), the NASDAQ is down -304.76 (-11.49%), and the S&P 500 has fallen -186.53 (-12.27%). This anecdotal evidence is sure and certain proof that this correlation between milk, butter, and your wallet is a proven fact. Forget an economic stimulus package for America, lets get those people in Bangladesh some butter.

... oh, the joys of data mining. What wonderful things we can do when we search long enough ...

Crappin' My Pants

image: Just Taken Pics'

Today was my first payday since my employer decided to switch from a semi-monthly pay schedule to a bi-weekly one. Being the type of person who wants to figure out new things to anticipate the effect of the change, I built a splediforific spreadsheet that I thought did a reasonable job projecting just how much each paycheck would net me and what the monthly average would be. I was so certain about it, I even used this number in projecting our 2008 expectations and goals. My spreadsheet told me, and it was so.

When I checked my bank account this morning I felt my "knees shake and my hip joints go slack" (a literal English translation of an Ancient Hebrew euphemism for crapping your pants!) - but not to that embarrassing point where I'd have a bus ride of shame home covered in stinky unpleasantness. That type of stuff can stay in the court of Babylonian kings. The source of my near incontinence? The check was for a full $100ish less than I was expecting. Devastating. Budget breaking. Nearly colon cleansing.

I immediately accessed my financial tracking spreadsheets and poured over the numbers. Where had I gone wrong? What was this development going to do to our financial goals? Would I have to get a second job? How could I have done something so stupid? I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure it all out. I think what made it even worse was that I didn't know why my spreadsheet had failed me so miserably. And then I saw it.

Seventy-two never looked so good. I'm not talking about those silver years where I'll enjoy my grandchildren and the nearly limitless productivity potential that being financially independent and jobless will afford me. I'm talking about the number of hours I got paid for during this time period, a whole 8 shy of what I had included in all my calculations and what is going to be on all the rest of my paychecks. I had forgotten that I was informed of this weeks ago by my company and that my last paycheck had a nice bump in it to help us account for the change. I nearly soiled my loins for no good reason.

Lesson learned: pay attention to company communications, they are important once in a while.

Lesson learned: I never really make a mistake when using a spreadsheet. It may seem like I made a mistake, but in the end I will always be right.

Mid January Budget Update: Planes, Trains, and Breakdowns

Since January is the first real month that our budget is being put to the test since we created it in November I decided it might be a good idea to see just how well we are doing with it at the half way point of the month. Here are the raw numbers:

We haven't had to spend anything for household items or toiletries this month but we normally incur costs like those on an irregular basis (i.e. when our stocks of stuff run out and we have decided that our hands just don't do the job like we'd like). Getting free stuff from CVS has helped here too. Also, it has been nice to be able to do our laundry at a relatives house while we enjoy some quality time with them watching Psych. Our gas spending is a little high because I have been categorizing my bus fare under this line item because the bus is now like my car. I am planning on gas being significantly higher this month because not only do I have to pay for my fare for this month, but I will also have to buy my next month's pass this month. Hopefully, we will have a surplus in the other areas to help offset this loss or the long term savings I am hoping for in riding the bus will materialize throughout the course of the year. Our bills are high right now because I include rent there - a rent which by itself represents 42% of our monthly expenses.

Overall our budget numbers look good. Though we only have 28% of our total budget left to spend, that number jumps to 48% when not counting lines associated with rent, regular expense savings, or giving. We might have even arrived somewhere under budget if it wasn't for the car trouble we have been having of late. Silly cars, breakdowns are for dancing.

Taking Advantage of Your Public Library

My change in commuting habits has left me scheming how I can maximize my one hour commute to increasing my knowledge and personal well being. The first place I thought of going was the bastion of free and public knowledge - the interne ... public library. I gave it some thought and came up with a strategy to turn those stacks and stacks of books into money in my pocket, or least money not out of my pocket - both on my commute and beyond.

1. Read free books - this one is so painfully obvious I thought it would completely discredit this list if I didn't include it here. You can check out tons of books at once (something like 50,000,000 at any one time) and even if half of them aren't that good or the information in them is out of date you don't have to worry about all the money you paid for them.
2. Rent movies - the war between Blockbuster and Netflix won't generate anything as generous as what you get from your public library. If a film was wildly popular, won some type of award, contains a cast that has been dead for 20 years, or has a bunch of zany Australians telling you to "Move Your Arms Like Henry" your library probably has it. This is definitely a money saving tip for after the commute as buying/inventing a portable VHS player would probably cost me a pretty penny.
3. Build a respectable CD collection - that is right, you can listen to hours and hours and hours of music from your public library. I'm not sure what the law is on who exactly owns the WAV files on those babies, but I'm sure your iPod doesn't care either way.
4. 한국어를 배우십시요 - Babel Fish tells me this translates into English as "learn Korean," and I think that this is an awesome idea for using your public library to your advantage. My local library has tons of audio/visual material that can teach me anything from Farsi (*drool*) to Japanese to German. I love learning new grammar ... if only I could memorize vocabulary.
5. Get free video games - this one shocked me when I saw it in the media stacks. I could have forgone the $1.95 for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 and checked it out for free at my library. Other games of note: Scrabble and Oregon Trail.

My Hard Selling Indian Friend

Recently, I received a call from some poor, unfortunate, Indian soul on behalf of my credit card company asking me to subscribe to a credit protection service. Like I normally do, I politely listened to his spiel (he is a person after all). It went a little something like this:

"For the low, low price of $11 a month you will finally have someone who will protect you against the dastardly do-evilers that are out to steal your identity. The company will give you access to your credit reports from all three CRAs (Credit Reporting Agency) as well as your actual credit score, and you can access them everyday if you wanted to. They would also provide assistance in sorting out any false activity on your credit report (assistance that my hard selling Indian friend assured me would save me thousands of dollars). You can cancel at any time and get a full refund of the last months fee, and all you have to do is make a phone call. Now let me confirm your mailing address ..."

That is where I had to intrude my comments and tell him kindly that I would not like to subscribe to the service. I didn't want to pay $132 a year of money we don't really have for a service I don't think we need. Needless to say, my hard selling Indian friend wasn't about to lose me. He went on and on about how great the product was and essentially gave me his pitch every time I let him know that I was not interested in the service. Three times we did this dance together before I had to firmly inform him before going into his pitch *again* that I would not like this service.

This got me thinking just how the compensation package for my hard selling Indian friend works. I mean there has to be something driving them to be so persistent with their pleas. I figure that it probably works like this - the company is looking to make an easy buck by preying on fear and by genuinely providing a service to the small percentage of individuals that actually suffer the terrors of severe identity theft. They figure that for every x individuals that they can get to subscribe to their service they will get x-n number of customers who either feel like they really need this service or who forget to cancel it. The vast majority of subscribers don't need it so the company is getting paid for doing nothing, much like my company's Payment Protection program. The company has a high incentive to induce customers to enroll in this service so they either put positive or negative pressure on their Indian call centers to get people enrolled. I would assume that they offer some type of bonus incentives based upon performance, whether it be in the form of faster promotions or some actual cash bonuses for a number of people enrolled, as well as negative incentives, such as firing those individuals who fail to meet certain standards. So my hard selling Indian friend is probably just a product of the work culture in which he lives.

He also got me thinking about what recourse do I have if I become became a victim. I mean, what would I do if I became one of those Citi commercials? I went on a quest of epic proportions and found a few online resources that are long, very extensive, and offer step-by-step instructions in case of identity theft. The Federal Trade Commission has a very good site dedicated to identity theft resources. In addition to telling what needs to be done they provide drafts of cover letters (example) as well as offer an online form to report your identity theft. They provide high quality information in a very accessible way in the clearest possible language. The other site that I found helpful was the the Identity Theft Resource Center. They offer essentially the same information as the Federal Trade Commission, but they have a section for State and Local resources that I found particularly informative, and interactive maps are always cool.

The material I looked at seemed to tell me three things:

1. Having your identity stolen sucks to your asmar, and then some - I hate having to deal with paper work and it seems like having your identity stolen equals mountains of paper work and careful records keeping
2. Get semi-informed now - there is so much information on these sites I can only imagine being a victim and getting discouraged by all the hoops I'll have to jump through to clear my name
   
3. Getting your identity back is not simple, but doable - you'll need persistence, patience, and plenty of bad knock-knock jokes to keep you laughing through the muck

Riding the Bus

Riding the bus yesterday and this morning was a stellar success! I only spent $2.50 each way, got some good exercise, and was reminded of all the great times I had as a college student working summer internships with the City of San Diego. I mostly just used to read books and write all the dreams that I had the night before in a dream journal, but the possibilities are really endless. I made a list in the bus, and felt excited about all the cool things I could do. I could:

1. Read books ... from the library ... for free!
2. Study foreign and dead languages - Arabic and Koine Greek here I come!
3. Spend quality time thinking and talking to my best Friend
4. Write stuff
5. Generally be reflective

All these things I could do without riding the bus, but it really seems like each of them would be easier to do if I was forced to do them because I had to ride the bus. On my way to work this morning I ran the numbers in my head, if I take the bus for the rest of the month it will cost me $77.50 to ride for the rest of the month. A bus pass would only cost me $64. I think I will stick with paying out of pocket for this month until we learn what is going to happen with my wife's job and her car. It seems like a safer bet given that bus passes are non-refundable and my expenses could be lower depending on what happens with things.

My Investment Portfolio

Right now, it is pretty much non-existent. We don't really have any surplus cash that we don't need in the next 3-5 years so pretty much all our cash is sitting tight in an interest bearing account that yields us a (an?) 4.75% APY. It really isn't that much, but at least it is earning us something. When I think about it, it's probably a good thing that I don't have the extra $2,500 that I would want before I start investing - I simply don't know anything about stock picks or the stock market. To prove my point here are the two things I think I would probably do with $2,500 if I had it today:

1. Buy $2,500 worth of Washington Mutual (WM) and expect that in 10 years it will have rebounded to that value that it held in March, 2007 of $40. At prices right now that would turn my $2,500 into nearly $7,700 without including the return on the dividend.
2. Buy into the T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (TRAMX), a fund that has grown over 25% in value since it was created in September. If it grows at the same pace throughout the rest of the year my money will have doubled by next January, and if it simply grows by $10 a year for the next 10 years, my money will have turned into $18,000 - and that includes taking out the ridiculous expense ratio of 1.75%. Can I get a what what?

All this market optimism is making me a little woozy. Apparently I have never heard the word sub prime, or that WaMu is under investigation by the SEC for possibly conniving with a home appraising company to inflate home values, or that they probably have billions upon billions upon billions of dollars that they can no longer spend on commercials with naked old men in them. How are they going to make a comeback without naked old men?!? They might as well declare themselves insolvent right now.

And what if Africa and the Middle East gets locked down in various regional conflicts. Israel and its neighbors don't always seem like the safest places in the world, who knows what will go on with Iraq, the political unrest in Kenya, problems in Sudan, and the potential for regional conflict in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia doesn't really seem like a recipe for long term economic growth. Now most of TRAMX appears to be banking interests in the Arab world, but regional instability is not a good thing for businesses and bombs are really, really, really bad for banks. (Apparently TRAMX may be a good investment according to this article on MSN Money. Maybe I do have an investing gene in there somewhere.)

I need to get some stock-amacation and actually find out how those things called bonds work. Does it have something to do with ropes? Bows? After I do that maybe some no load, low expense ratio mutual funds or EFTs will look a little more attractive - or at least logical - to me. Or maybe a jargon jargon jargon jargon ...

It's Time to Ride the Bus

I think we may be at the beginning of the end for my wife's car. I'm no mechanic, but I think the smoke coming from the engine block and all that oil dripping is probably a pretty bad thing. For the time being I'll be riding the bus and relying on the kindness of friends and strangers until we can get the car into the shop and figure out if the car is even worth repairing.

Once I figured out that my wife's car shouldn't be driven, I jumped on the handy-dandy internet and did a search to check bus schedules that run from my area to the place that I work about 11 miles away. Apparently, www.511sd.com is the place to go for public transportation information in San Diego. It has this cool little feature called the Transit Trip Planner where I can enter my address and the location of my work and it will give me what bus I should take to reach my destination on time. It even shows the price that I will have to pay, so I will know exactly what I should bring.

If I only catch the cheap bus and walk the extra mile and half to work it will only cost me $5 a day instead of $8.50. I think that I'll pocket the extra $3.50 and walk since I still will get to work at about the same time. A monthly pass works out to $64 a month. This may turn out to be a longer term solution depending on how our car situation works out.

My First CVS Experience

Inspired by the likes of My Good Cents and Money Saving Mom my wife and I headed out for a trip to CVS, which apparently stands for "Crazy Values and Sales." I think it once meant "Consumer Value Stores", or at least that is what my dishes tell me (don't believe me, ask them yourself!) ... or was it Wikipedia, I forget. With us we took $150 worth of CVS gift cards we acquired from 6 one time prescriptions purchased for a trip to Ethiopia, coupons cut by my wife as I enjoyed the NFL playoffs, and high hopes that we would be able to milk the CVS gravy train for all its worth.

There was a little bit of anxiety as we entered the store, but lured by the prospects of products purchased parsimoniously we pressed on. We grabbed some shampoo, conditioner, various other hair products, B.O. repellent, that cavity fighting stuff, drugs, tried to get more drugs but didn't, soup, and some Top Romin-esque noodle bowl type thingy. It took us a little while to find everything and we felt like we had to double check every item before we put it into our cart, which took even longer. When we got to the counter my wife and I were shocked as we saw our total jump to over $50 - my wife's "what-is-going-on-here!" face was clearly visible. Then the cashier began to scan our coupons and our total quickly began to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, but not exactly like her. When the coupon induced exodus ended we were left with a bill of just under $12 which was offset by $5 of Extra Bucks printed at the end of our receipt. So we didn't actually break even at our little CVS excursion, but we did learn some valuable lessons about the way CVS works.

1. We learned that you should print coupons even though you think you may not need them. We could have cut our costs even more if we had printed out the $10 off $50 coupon to have cut our bill to under $2. That means CVS would have paid us to do our shopping there!
   
2. We also got a little distracted by the things that we needed/could have used. We lost sight of the prize of keeping the free stuff coming our way by buying 2 shampoos, 2 conditioners, and 2 hair product thingys when we didn't get extra bucks back for all those purchases. Stupid needing stuff.
   
3. We missed certain products because we went so late in the day. By the time we got there all the dish soap we wanted/needed was all gone. We obviously won't change our Sunday mornings so we can get some cheap soap, but I did force my wife to dawdle a little because I wanted to watch the Chargers win.
4. You can stack certain store coupons at CVS. This time we stacked a $3 off $15 and $5 off $30, but we could have done even better.
   
5. Shopping is always more fun when you can do it together. We learned this a long time ago, but this trip was just another example of it and it's always good thing to be reminded of.

(The Punny Money article I mentioned above is a must read. It was so good it made me cry.)

Carnival of Personal Finance 134

The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Mrs. Micah's and contains my article on credit reports, and how ridiculously un-sexy they are. I certainly hope my article wasn't one of the ones that significantly contributed to her Post Carnival Computer Spacing Out Syndrome (PCCSOS) ©*.

*I have no actual, legal copyright of Post Carnival Computer Spacing Out Syndrome, or PCCSOS.

The Job Dilemma - The Decision

My wife and I decided that it will be best for the family if she cuts back on the hours she spends at her job and begins to focus on some other things in order to get ready for an upcoming pregnancy. It was a hard discussion for my wife because she felt guilty about us having to scale back some of our savings goals. She felt like our failure to meet these goals was going to be her fault, and that just made her feel bad. She got over it, thank goodness, and we are jet set on expressing our desire to her boss after my wife's return from vacation today.

I must admit I am a little nervous about the whole thing. The conversation my wife will have have with her boss could go off smashingly and an agreement could be worked out that meets both parties needs. Or it could go terribly wrong, tempers could spark and the small world of my wife's work could go up in a spectacular ball of burning gas, observable from space - and I would have to treat my wife's burns. It is never pleasant to see those I love in discomfort.

We have talked things over and we are at a place where I think my wife will do great, even if her boss erupts - but the potential is always there for some unprovoked badness. I am optimistic, and I really think that we will be able to hurdle this little ordeal without too much discomfort. When all is said and done, whatever the pain we endure, this decision is what we feel like is best for our family and we are going to see it through.

Other Posts in this series (in order of appearance):
Jobs, Can't Live With 'em ...
The Job Dilemma - The Numbers
The Job Dilemma - My Wife's Potential Income
The Job Dilemma - The Decision
The Job Dilemma - The Resolution

Credit Reports Are Not Sexy

I finally decided to check out one of my free credit reports from one of the three credit reporting agencies. It seems to be advice that everybody and their mother seems to give, so I figured I'd give it a whirl and see what it's like.

After avoiding all the fake sites that wanted to get me to pay for what the law demands be free, I made my way over to AnnualCreditReport - the official site for free credit reports. The website was very easy to navigate, and after making sure I was at the right place I was able to quickly find where I needed to go to get my report. I entered all the relevant information, chose which of the three credit agencies I wanted my report from, and was perusing my report in a matter of minutes. The only problem was that the whole process was kind of boringly lame. There was nothing to grab my attention and absolutely nothing that made the site 'sticky,' except for the heavy doses of fear being dished out on just about every thing everywhere. There wasn't even a cool number on the credit report I got from Experian to let me see how I was doing.

I make the following suggestions to AnnaualCreditReport.com to improve their site and generate traffic:

1. Get Chuck Norris to be your spokesman - remove those silly looking "real" people photos and put up the Chuck.
   
2. Include a "Release the Norris" button that unleashes Chuck to track down those evil people who would steal a person's identity.
3. Make videos of what Law and Order (a.k.a. Chuck's right and left legs) do to identity thieves and post them on the website. This will both act as a deterrent to identity thieves the world over and generate enough energy to power everything between Seattle and San Diego from the juvenile giggles and squeals from viewers, like in Monsters Inc.
   
4. Make money by selling the energy. This way you will not have to keep trying to get people to sign up for silly pay services.
5. Vote Pat Paulsen for president.
   

Kids Love Me!

Thanks to Being Frugal for including my post on the Carnival of Financial Goals, and to Sam for spreading the love!

Projected 2008 Annual Income and Annualized Expenses

In preparation for the new year I have put together some conservative estimates to help us get a better understanding of what our financial outlook is for 2008. I've posted the results on the sidebar just below our net worth calculations to be a constant reminder for myself that the road before us is kind of like Interstate 405 - not the easiest or most fun drive, but one that we will complete if we have the patience. Here are the numbers:

Estimated 2008 Income - $33,480 ($32,520)
Estimated 2008 Expenses - $26,350

[Update:1/10/2007] Annualized 2007 Expenses - $28,475

Estimated Surplus - $7,130 ($6,170)
Savings Goal For 2008 - $10,000


Estimated 2008 Income - This number represents what we will take home from my low $30k salaried position and my wife's soon to be part-time gig. It has all taxes, benefits, and 401(k) contributions removed from the number. It does not take into account a potential raise for either my wife or myself and it supposes that our tax withholdings remain the same - despite the fact that I think we are expecting a significant return come late January, early February from the Federal Government. This number will be updated as new information becomes available.

Estimate 2008 Expenses - I have annualized our expenses from April 2007 until December 2007 to give us a picture of what to expect each month. I have tried to include rising gas prices, a new gym membership, and our adjusted short term savings plan in this number to help give us a more realistic picture of our future. I will update this number each month as we test out just how well we can keep our 2008 budget.

Savings Goal - As you can see, we fall about 29% short of our savings goal bases upon these estimates. It will be difficult to make up this difference, but with some hard work, olive oil, and whole lot of Rainman (1988) I think we can pull it off.

[Update:1/10/2008]
2007 Annualized Expenses - This represents all the money we were on pace to spend if we had been married and living together for all of 2007, instead of 9 months. This year's expectation represents a %7.5 decrease in our spending. I did not realize this when first putting together my numbers - we could handle this easily or it could really strain us, I don't really know yet. We haven't even gotten through our first month expenses!

[Update:1/28/2008]
This post discusses the reasons for the changes made to these numbers. New and updated numbers for our Estimated 2008 Income and Estimated Surplus are now represented inside the parenthesis and are in red.

Money and Happyness

The other night I watched The Pursuit of Happyness and it got me thinking about how money relates to that third inalienable right. If you have not seen the film I will sum it up in two sentence - Chris Gardener, a down and out medical supplies salesman, overcomes great financial adversity to become a very wealthy man. The End. One of the implications of the film is that having a fair amount of money, or at least the style and type of life that money can buy, is nearly equivalent to a state of happiness. I say bullshimony.

Seriously, does having money, or at least a moderately to extremely comfortable life with sufficient amount of toys, entertainment, comfort, and care really result in being happy? I don't think it necessarily does. Aren't rich people at times unhappy? And aren't there rich people who we might say are unhappy in general? Yet we could expect a rich person to have all that they need and more. On the other side of the coin, are all people in abject poverty unhappy? I really haven't meet all the people suffering from poverty in the world, but I would think that at least some of them live perfectly happy lives. So this must tell me that there is something else that defines what makes us happy apart from how much food we have, the state of our shelter, or the amount in our Swiss Bank account.

But what exactly is it that makes us happy? Is it a potion bought from a ninja? A special charm held by Chuck Norris, and if he jiggles it over your supine body while you sleep you have seven years of happiness? What do you think?

Net Worth For December 2007

I have updated my net worth over at Net Worth IQ. It grew by an impressive 6% over the course of December, fueled mainly by a Christmas bonus and and extra paycheck that had a little extra on it. My 401(k) has finally moved to its new provider and the numbers there no longer represent an estimate. Right now my 401(k) has less money in it than I have put in, which only kind of stinks. I figure that the loss of about 8% isn't that big of a deal on the measly $1,200 that I have in this account right now. There may also be an alarming phenomena on the report that no-debt junkies may jump down my throat with jackboots on for - it looks like we have $1,200 dollars in debt. Not really so. I just included the balance on our credit card, which we have the money to pay off in full by the due date. I just have it here in the spirit of full disclosure.