NINJAs vs. Ninjas: Who Is Cooler and Why?

Ninjas are normally really cool. They are from the mammalian family, they fight MOST, if not ALL, the time, and their sole purpose is to do stuff and kill people (source). Can you say awesome? But some other types of NINJAs are totally lame, don't kill anything, and have absolutely no skills whatsoever. No, you won't find these different types of NINJAs in any epic films and absolutely no one sends their three year old child to the hill country to train to be one. That's because these NINJAs are people who have No Income and No Job (and no) Assests. You definitely don't want to train your child to become one of these!

Here are some helpful hints for setting your kids straight about what type of ninja they should become when they grow up:

1. Real ninjas have discipline and can control things just by thinking about it with their minds. Lame NINJAs can't even wash themselves properly. In order to teach your child to use their brain have them play Sudoku religiously. Once they can complete an evil puzzle in under five minutes you will know that despite their inability to take a shower they probably won't end up as a NINJA.
2. Real ninjas have large skill sets while NINJAs complain about how cable TV costs so much. Train your child to do without the TV by not watching any yourself. Ever. Real ninjas absorb huge amounts of information by eating the world's supply of floppy disks.
   
3. Ninjas are flexible and can vanish from the face of the earth in an instant. NINJAs can't seem to evade collection agencies or get out from under heavy burdens of debt. It is important that children don't overstretch themselves, but kids are so stinking flexible to begin with it shouldn't take too much effort on your part to keep them that way.
   
4. Ninjas don't need stuff to be happy or even to live. NINJAs always seem to be wanting more and more stuff and have no way to keep up with their wants. To ensure that you child doesn't think the world revolves around them, have them play with wholesome wood toys and start learning a trade at age 5 - like they used to do a 1,000 years ago. You have to do things old-like if you want your kids to be ninja like.

This is intended to be more of a primer than an exhaustive list on how to train your child to be a ninja. If you were to only follow these tips you'll at least save your child from being a NINJA, and that is definitely worth it.

Rounding Out My Reading

Its been nice getting back into the posting and reading swing and I've dipped my finger into more than one pie this week. Here are some of the things I've found interesting around the financial web sites on the internet:

An article over at the Financial Blogger got me thinking about how I fall into the trap of working harder. When I think about having a child and the costs associated with that it almost always ends up with me thinking that I will need to get second job somewhere. That is definitely not ideal since I know that you can become quite sleep deprived with a newborn and working two jobs would probably pretty near wipe me off the face of earth. I am sure people have done it before, but I think working smarter will probably be the better choice for me.

Madame X over at My Open Wallet asked the question, "What if You Contribute Too Much to a Roth IRA?" Her post was pretty informative and let me know about Publication 590. I don't expect to be close to not being able to contribute to a Roth IRA any time soon, but its good to store away in happy unicorn land for future reference and to feed the unicorns.

Nick over at Punny Money wrote about a sweet contest for people who can make jokes about stupid things like taxes. I think I have about three jokes for my video, but no matter how slow I say them they just can't seem to fill the three minute time limit. Stupid quick jokes making me miss out on winning a million pennies.

Budgets give me the warm tingly sensations all over my body, but moneychallenge seems to think that some people think 'budget' is a dirty word. Abudgetloversayswhaaa? It's true though, some people just don't know what budgets are for. If that is you, do one of them clickity-clickities on the linkity-linkity and practice Jedi mind tricks. This is not the cup of Starbucks you are looking for ...

Pet Monkeys - The Financial Considerations

Image Taken From Whiplash Rides

I have always wanted to own a monkey. They are are ridiculously awesome and having one as a pet would be even more awesome. I recently saw some videos about a sheep dog riding cowboy monkey named Whiplash that got me pretty pumped about the idea again. Since this is a blog about money, I wanted to see how owning a monkey would affect the bottom line of my family. We will taking a look at our cash flow as well as what affect it might have on our budget.

Purchase Price:
Did you know that you can buy a monkey on the internet? I didn't either until the all powerful Google told that you could. After a quick trip over to the Primate Store I discovered that you can purchase a monkey at the rock bottom price of $1,200 - but that was for a Fat Tailed Dwarf Lemur, a minuscule monkey that looks like it has little training potential. But it also seems to have little pooh throwing potential, so I guess that is okay. I guess if I had a choice between a Yorkshire Terrier and Fat Tailed Dwarf Lemur I would definitely take the Lemur. The highest price I saw at the primate store was $9,800 for a baby Female Miniature Crested Celebes Ape. I'll split the difference and figure that a quality, trainable monkey would cost me $5,500.

Running Total: $(5,500)

Monkey Maintenance:
From what I have read, it may be difficult to find someone to take care of your monkey. Since a monkey it about 10 times better than a dog, I figure that a monkey will run about 8.5 times the price of a dog's vet bill and food expense considering the coolness factor of inflation. That would up my monkey bill between $2,550 and $4,250 a year. Since monkeys can live 15-20 years that would bring the expenses of owning a monkey up by about $59,500, give or take several thousand.

Running Total: $(65,000)

Time Lost to Cleaning and Cage Maintenance:
Monkeys are really, really, really dirty. It takes time to clean a cage and I doubt you'll be able to teach a monkey the wonders of indoor plumbing. Unless you already regularly clean stinky, dirty animals this could be a full time maintenance mess. Using the same coolness factor of inflation I figure it will take 8.5 times more work to clean up after a monkey than it does a dog. That means it takes 2 hours a week worth of cleaning. That is about $30 dollars worth of time a week given my current wage. That is an additional $1,560 a year for a total of $27,300 for the life of the monkey, not taking into account the increasing value of my time.

Running Total: $(92,300)

Legal Fees:
Monkeys can be dangerous. Once they reach sexual maturity they can become aggressive and pound for pound are very strong. It is also very possible for humans to get diseases from monkeys. That could turn Junior's birthday party into a hepatitis B party - I love party favors. I'll figure that nothing terrible happens, but I have to pay a lawyer for 2 hours just to cover my butt. It would probably be a San Diego County lawyer because they would be close to home, one of the key components of finding a quality lawyer. Price paid: $300.

Running Total: $(92,600)

Monkey Revenue and the Intangibles:
The only reason you have a monkey as a pet is to train it to do cool things. These cool things can also earn you money, if you know how to crack the competitive birthday party/rodeo market. Lets assume that my monkey isn't smart enough to be a public spectacle until he is 5 years old and I put him out to stud for the last two years of his life. That leaves me about 10 years of use out of the monkey. Then lets say that I earn $125 per birthday gig, speaking engagement, rodeo, or old west reenactment. I would only have to do one event a week for a ten year period in order to recuperate all of my monkey expenses - and that doesn't even include all the paid sex my monkey will be having with other monkeys.

There are also the intangibles of owning a monkey. You probably couldn't put a price on what it would do for my family. My house would be the house that all my kids' friends would want to hang out at simply because we had a monkey. They would have the best show and tell presentations this side of the Reformation, making them at least the second most popular person at their school. Until they were in the fifth grade they could always scare bullies by telling them that they would bring their pet monkey to school to whip their butt if they didn't stop. I mean I could make about 50 Priceless commercials just off the top of my head if I wanted to. You can't put a dollar amount on intangibles, but I am going to any way - $100,000.

Running Total: ~$100,000

Summary:

Clearly owning a monkey is not only a strong personal and family move, but it is also a sound financial investment. You will earn $100,000 worth of money and enjoyment out of your monkey if you play your cards right.

Another thing to consider is finding an affordable pet insurance company to help defray some of the expenses that taking car of a monkey can entail. There are many different types of pet insurance, but finding the right one to help you defray the costs of pet ownership is can really be a big deal with owning a monkey.

Chances are you are going to want to have two types of pet insurance when owning a monkey - pet medical insurance and pet life insurance. This will help you handle any unexpected costs if your monkey were to come down with any serious or human threatening disease as well as make it possible for you to be reimbursed for the loss of your beloved working animal. The income that can receive with a monkey is really very large so insuring that you can keep the monkey gravy train going is very, very important.

Action Points:
Buy a monkey once I have a place to keep one and sufficient funds to care for it.

Useful Monkey Links:
The Perils of Keeping Monkeys as Pets
MONKEY VS. SEA MONKEY: WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Frugal Frustrations

This past weekend has provided some serious blogging material - we saw a foreclosure, filed our taxes, and we ran into some serious frugal frustrations. Our frugal frustrations all began earlier in the week when my wife failed to take full advantage of a certain CVS deal involving free hair care products. She didn't know that you could use coupons for buy one get one free (BOGO) items so the freeness that she had read about alluded her. She had also had a small mental error in taking advantage of the sweet Vons catalina (*snicker*) currently available through some NASCAR promotion they are running these days. For those that don't know what a catalina is, my wife tells me that it is like a $x off your next receipt type thing. Now her blunder was thinking that the catalina was dependent upon the price of the items rather than the number, so instead of getting the sweet $20 catalina we got a $5 one.

We went into Sunday with some big plans to remedy the situation and milk these loss leaders for all they were worth. My wife had built a rather excellent spread sheet for our trip to Vons that had us buying 25 items and earning about $2 when you consider the cost of the items and the sweet catalina. She also had organized the coupons for the free hair care products that we don't really need but would absolutely love to have for free. The short story is that we didn't get any hair products for free and we bought about $18 worth of stuff without getting no catalina. Bummer.

The Long Story
Our first stop was CVS and my wife was picking up some items from the latest ad on her CVS card while I was to buy the free hair products on my card. We picked up our items in about 5 minutes because we knew exactly what we were going to get. I got in line first, fully expecting to not have to pay anything. My CVS card, then the items, then the coupons were scanned and I stood looking at the register dumbfounded - I owed over $4. Whaaaat? I stood stunned, like a frog blinded by a flashlight and about to be skewered by a fork. My wife stepped up with a similarly dumbfounded expression and asked what was happening. As the two of them exchanged words and the cashier got out this weeks ad to check something the line behind us grew from no people to about 5. We were holding up the line. After about 3 minutes of discussion with the cashier we decided we didn't want the items and I apologized for the mix up. It took about 2 more minutes for the cashier to undo our transaction and return our coupons. I was at the cash register for about as long as it took us to find our items and bring them to the register.

This minor set back was quite the blow to my wife. She really wants to be frugal with our money and stuff like that makes her feel stupid. She isn't stupid, but as was pointed out earlier by Deamiter, our brains suck.

Already dejected, we made our way over to Vons. We followed our list to the T. We only got items that fit with the promotion and we really stocked up on beans. When we got to the register I was loading our items onto the belt and felt like we were one item short. I informed my wife who dashed back to the beans isle to pick one more can for that coveted catalina. While my wife is gone getting an additional can all our items get scanned and I stand looking at the register and it rings up to around $45, a far cry from the $18 we were expecting to pay! Upon my wife's arrival I realize that we have coupons so I handed those over. Disaster averted - these bring our total down to $25 bucks (we bought milk in addition to our catalina items). I swipe my card and our receipt prints, but no catalina - NO CATALINA! My wife is disgusted. She swears off all this frugal shopping crap and resigns herself to eating fruits and vegetables from Henry's . Crappy cheap catalina of lies.

Lessons Learned
Talk about frustrating. But here are some of the simple things that I think we learned from this little failure in frugality:

1. You won't know why unless you ask - the biggest question we had is why didn't it work? I don't know, but we certainly won't figure it out by getting frustrated. We should have asked questions but we didn't.
   
2. Don't feel like a thief - one of the things we felt like is that we were caught stealing. We weren't, we just missed a deal.
   
3. Don't feel like an idiot - most of the time you're not an idiot, you just made a mistake. Sometimes you are an idiot, but most of the time you are not.
   
4. Don't give up - one series of setbacks doesn't a life make.
5. Yoda is really wise - he says cool stuff like, "Named must your fear be before banish it you can."

Cute Kids and Star Wars

This has nothing to do with personal finance, other than that Star Wars is really an allegory about American spurning the gold standard. But it is really cute ...



I found this little gem doing some research over at Twenty Sided for a future series I am planning. Stay tuned.

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes - I Love Taxes

Well, thats not exactly true - I just love getting a refund! This weekend I did my Federal and State Income Tax Return and my wife and I will be getting over $1,000 back of our hard earned cash back. That is going to be a nice little boost to our $10,000 savings goal. Which made me realize that I didn't post anything about how much progress we made last month on meeting any of our goals. I didn't even do any tracking of them! Luckily this can easily be be remedied. Expect the usual update on our financial health as well as some new information on the progress toward our goals sometime around the beginning of next month.

Foreclosures Are Not Cheap

This weekend my wife and I made our way over to my father's house to help him out with some yard work. On our way there we saw a sign for an open house on a foreclosure. Drunk with HGTV madness we decided that we would stop by and check out the property - you never know how low the price could be. So after doing some work around his house we made a short walk up the street and around the corner to this 3 bedroom, 2 bath home. Parked outside was a beat-up, white Astro van with no rear windows. There was a heavy layer of cigarette ash which dusting the pavement just below the drivers window. The inside of the van contained the littered fragments of a life spent drinking beverages from a 7-11 and eating food fit for a Rat King.

Now my dad lives in a fairly nice part of town so seeing an Astro van in that condition sent my mind athinking. I haven't seen an Astro van in the neighborhood since my next door neighbor got one when minivans were becoming all the rage with suburban families. They hadn't come up with the Soccer-Mom moniker yet, but my mom and her friends were the proto Soccer-Moms. They even had this neighborhood watch which had them prowling the streets to stop all that crime that went down on our street. But they didn't catch me put stickers on every houses doorbell and peephole on the last night of summer before 5th grade started. Take that Prairie Dog Prowlers!

Back on point, the Astro van tipped me off that the house was probably the domicile version of the jalopy that so gracefully sat parked out front. Upon entering the house initially surprise by the wide entry hallway, the nice hardwood-like flooring, and the spacious family room. It kind of looked nice. But then my eyes began to focus and the warm greeting from the agent who greeted us at the door began to wear off. The house was a mess. Every wall had a major hole in it about the size of a human head. The only thing that made all the holes (there were like seven million) inside the house look small was the massive whole in the back yard that was filled with a pleasantly drinkable brown sludge. The carpets in the bedrooms were in disrepair, light fixtures were missing, so was the water heater, so was the closet in the master bedroom, and so was the entire master bathroom. It looked like someone went ballistic on the house once they realized that the bank was coming to take it all away. Poor chap.

Before we got the house I told my wife that we'd buy the house if it was around $100,000. It wasn't even in the ball park. The bank was asking a modest $440,000 for this 1,200 square foot gem. 'Rageous, simply 'rageous.

While this little venture didn't net us a house, it did get us talking about houses and our future. Living in San Diego right now given my massive salary and our deep desire to have children just doesn't seem possible in the long term. So we have set the ball rolling in our minds for getting out of Dodge. It probably won't happen in the next year, but it could in the next two to three. I think I'd want to get some real job skills before we go and some more money in the savings, but overall I think we have a good shot at making a big move work well. We may have a tyke sucklin' by then, but it still seems doable to me. Maybe we could even move somewhere where our rent/mortgage wouldn't be 43% of our income. I do believe in fairies, I do, I do ...

Rounding Out My Reading: Quotes Edition

The past few weeks have been slow blogging for me as well as a slow reading - so this weeks edition of what I've been reading doesn't have that many links to it. So here we go:

Deamiter over at handling finances posted and good article on why I (meaning me, Steward) am so stupid. Deamiter didn't have it out for me per se, but he sure nailed me on just about every failure that he mentions in this article about why our brains fail us. I am poor at evaluating probability and risk (just look at my Centsports bets), I live for the now, and I am always jumping to things. That is why I need to build spreadsheets, numbers can't lie to me.

Shana over at Smart Easy Money wrote about things she wished she learned earlier. It is some good advice - and I'm not the only one that thinks so. The article got featured on MSN's Money Blog but I found it first. So ha! to you MSN's Money Blog with all your traffic generating potential for new and small blogs. Shana won't get any traffic from me but at least I'm ... we'll maybe I'm not as good as you MSN's Money Blog but thats okay. Read Shana's article and learn why you should budget, answer your emails, be a little nosy, and get on Facebook.

And finally, I liked this post over My Two Dollars because it reminded me of Fight Club. My Two Dollars writes,

You are not your stuff. You are not what you own, how much money you have, the size of your house, your flat screen TV or your new car.

I'm not sure why, but it vividly brought back memories of people

stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. [They were wearing] leather clothes that will last [them] the rest of [their] lives. [Others were climbing] the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower ... And when [I looked around, I saw] tiny figures pounding corn, [and] laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

Just remember,

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your ... khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Carnivals and News:
Thanks to The Financial Blogger who hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance that included my article about calculating a paycheck for a new pay schedule. This article actually has been getting me some search engine traffic thanks to people like The Digerati Life and Monroe on a Budget who linked to the article as well. Can you say awesome?

More Quotes Inspired By Bloggers:
The Great Money Challenge reminded me about this quote with her post on courage. If you are the first to guess what it's from I'll write you a haiku or a really, really short story about you. Here it is:

Girl: Your majesty, if you were king, you wouldn't be afraid of anything?
King: Not nobody. Not nohow.
Squeaky Man: Not even a rhinoceros?
King: Imposerous!
Girl: How about a hippopotamus?
King: Why, I'd thrash him from top to bottomus.
Girl: Supposing you met an elephant?
King: I'd knot him up in cellophant.
Dork: What if it were a brontosaurus?
King: I'd show him who was king of the forest.

I'm Back: Vacation Thoughts, House Hunting, and the Joys of Free Vacations

My vacation was a smashing success for anyone interested - and I got to take home some pretty amazing spoils. It's good to be king. It was also the only vacation I have had in recent memory where I actually felt rested and relaxed when it was over - can I get a w00t? We mostly laid low and did some minor hanging out with my wife's family, which always involves a LOT of picture taking and some minor yard work. I'm not the biggest fan of lots of picture but it sure can be fun to walk away with a beautiful woman ...
Vacation also gave me a chance to do some thinking about my job. My current job isn't very fun, fulfilling, or challenging - it could be time for a change. Right now I'm thinking of becoming an accountant (dunt dunt duuuuh!) with a view to being a CPA. This change wouldn't take place for over a year (I majored in History), but it excites me. I took some test at an accountant website-thingy and it said I should be a forensic accountant. I don't know if I will actually go through with the extra schooling to crack into this field, but it may fit better with some of my skill sets and how I like to manage and watch things grow. My wife checked out an accounting book for me so I can check out what all it entails at a very basic level. I've also started perusing the internet for as much information as I can find on the topic. If there are any accounting peoples out there who would be willing to fill me in on some of the ups and downs, ins and outs of accounting as a profession as well as any tips on being one I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

Another thing we did on our vacation was drive around and look at houses. It was predictably boring. We didn't even go into any houses. All we did was just drive around and see what neighborhoods had houses for sale and see if there was any literature about the houses available, which there wasn't. We did stop at one house and peer through the open windows, but that was nothing special. I did learn a few things though:

1. Growing up in suburbia has spoiled me to the "charm" of small houses. I much preferred the houses we saw on larger lots of land that had porches or columns or even a second story. We probably couldn't afford a house like that right now but I still preferred them nonetheless.
2. Housing is way cheaper where my wife's parents live. I mean it is really cheap. Just today they sent us a listing of a 3 bedroom, 1 bath for $50,400. A simple Google revealed this comparable listing here in San Diego for a whopping $219,000. That's 335% more.
3. Having your own spot of land is really appealing.

And finally, vacations that are free really rock. I hope we were weren't guilty of being children who take, and take, and take ... but it sure was nice to travel for free (parents had unused vouchers), lodge for free (we slept above the garage), eat for free, get a hair cut for free (just my wife), and buy clothes for free (again, just my wife). I think it was especially nice for my wife who actually got to go shopping and buy stuff with her mom and sister. I simply can't provide that type of company. When all was said and done we probably received at least $1,500 in parent subsidies for the weekend. Their actual cost was significantly less than that, but it saved us a ton! Thank you generously subsidizing parents-in-law!

I'm On Vacation!

I haven't been posting at my normal clip this week because I have either been getting ready for a small vacation or have been on a small vacation to visit my wife's family. They live on the opposite coast so we don't really get out to see them that much, but when we do it is always a lot of fun. We even got out here on the cheap (free!) because they had some flight vouchers that were about to expire that they couldn't find a use for. I am so thankful that we both have parents that are so generous.

While we are here my wife is super excited to go house hunting. If we had cable she would be glued to HGTV watching all those house-flipping shows that were the single reason for the housing melt-down, the single reason. I don't think I really like the idea of looking at houses that we aren't really thinking of buying, but I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe I think it will be boring. Maybe I think my wife is trying to get us to move out here (which wouldn't be bad at all, but if done in an underhanded way would make me feel underhandeded). Maybe I'm afraid to leave the house because I accidentally stumbled upon a secret ninja lair while searching for leprechauns while I was in the 4th grade. I don't really know ... the label just doesn't say.

Either way, I'm sure I'll have something to post about sometime next week when we get back. Maybe, just maybe, the incentive to write something interesting or fun will keep me awake and attentive - maybe.

Calculating a Paycheck for a New Pay Schedule

A little while ago I wrote a post about how I almost lost control of my bowels when I got my first paycheck on a new pay schedule. It was about a $100 less than I had expected and it was going to destroy our financial plans for the year. Fortunately, I didn't really make a mistake - it was just an administrative solution to help my company's employees transition better to the new pay schedule that I had forgotten about. Let's rehash the lessons I learned after getting my last paycheck:

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.

The first lesson was a no brainer and I thought the only good lesson I actually learned. The second was just ridiculous arrogance that was more about being funny than about portraying reality. But then I get my most recent paycheck and lo and behold, the predictions that I made on the spreadsheet were 0.002% off of what actually occurred. That is pretty good ... and proof that I never really make a mistake when using a spreadsheet.

Let's examine my methods for new pay schedule calculating success:

1. Create a spreadsheet - you'll never not make a mistake if you don't make a spreadsheet.
2. Divide all the money that was taken from your paycheck into two categories: pre-tax deductions and taxes - you can label these as I have done in the image below or in the categories you will actually see on your pay stub. I think mine might be a little bit more useful linguistically.
3. Determine what your taxable income is - you do this by subtracting all your pre-tax deductions from your gross pay. I like entering the deductions as negative numbers so that way I can use the handy sum function on Excel and OpenOffice.
4. Determine what percentage of your taxable income goes to each of the specific taxes mentioned on your pay stub. One of my assumptions in calculating my new paycheck is was that my tax rate would stay relatively untouched. This was because my pre-tax deduction changes were not very significant and my annual salary was remaining the same. If you are seeing a substantial increase in the amount deducted before taxes or a substantial increase in pay using your old percentages will only be a good starting place. In the case of the pre-tax deduction increase your tax percentage may decrease while in the case of the pay increase your portion going to Uncle Sam and friends will increase.
5. Create a copy of this spreadsheet for your new information. I like to just open a tab on my spreadsheet and use the 'paste special' option. You can do this by right clicking (sorry Mac users) on the cell that you want to be your first cell and choosing the 'paste special' option. From there I pick the 'values' button and you will get something that looks like this:
6. Calculate how much your gross pay will be on the new schedule. If you are a salaried employee, like myself, the simplest thing to do is find out how much you get paid annually and go from there. You will divide your annually salary by 12 if you are going to be paid monthly, by 24 if semi-monthly, and by 26 if bi-weekly. This will be your new Gross Pay amount.
   
7. Add any changes to your pre-tax deductions. Mine changed because I started carrying my wife on my insurance. It also changed because my yearly premiums now come out in 26 chunks rather than the 24 that it previously did. Chances are if you are changing your pay schedule your deduction amounts will change.
8. Re-insert all your sum functions and delete your old tax numbers. This will set the stage for figuring out your new take home pay.
9. Insert this equation into your various post-tax deduction cells - % tax * taxable income. This will end up looking something like "=E34*C29". Advanced info: I like to add a $ on the to the taxable income reference (turns C29 into C$29) because I can utilize the fill command to its highest potential. Simply highlight the cell that contains your equation and all the cells that you want to have the same equation in it and press ctrl+d and presto! you got all your equations. My finished product looked like this:
10. See your new take home pay and plan accordingly. This process got me within 0.002% accuracy and I hope it works out for you.
    

There are plenty of payroll calculators out there but I found them hard to use and even harder to understand. I mean who knows what their tax bracket is? Or how much they have in pre-tax deductions off the top of their head? When it comes to DIY, spreadsheets are king.

I Think You're Excellent

My Good Cents gave my lil' ol' 'log an 'llent! And I love 'l's! Her 'log is better than 'llent - it is supendiferificest. She is like a survey, CVS, freebie, change finding fiend so if you like learning about free or cheap stuff you will definitely want to subscribe to her feed. If she hadn't already been tagged at excellent she would definitely have been on my list.

Part of the noblesse oblige of getting labeled as 'llent is to pass the buck along to 10 other 'logs that you think are 'llent too. Here we go, lets dance, to the moon, to pay the rent, on the freeway, with a bike, eating cheese, if you please:

Me vs. Debt is 'llent. An interesting blog about another young whippersnapper like me. She writes smart and has mucho skills.

The Great Money Challenge is 'llent. She wrote a post about how to live on minimum wage even thought she makes much more. That could be seriously heroic, like Robespierre was, if wielded for the right reasons.

The Honest Dollar is 'llent. She writes a very informative blog. I would learn a lot if I could actually read.

brip blap is 'llent. I like how brip can start conversations on his blog and get people engaged past the post. But I think I like blap better, he sounds smooth and comforting and I need that after a long day of being awesome.

My Open Wallet is 'llent. My inspiration (other than my blogging wife) to begin this blog. I like her format, and her honesty.

Clever Dude is 'llent. He's clever, he's a dude - he's super .... I can't believe he gave up buffets for lent. For not being that serious of a Catholic he sure gave up something pretty life changing. It's a good thing that traditionally you can take a break from lent on the Sabbath - I just hope that he is taking full advantage of that clerical oversight.

Punny Money is 'llent. He makes me cry with his sensitivity, compassion, and warm heart. Reading his blog is like watching Brian's Song and Hoosiers at the same time, but not. It's like magical or something.

The Digerati Life is 'llent. This blog is hyper-informative in a readable, listable, and picture-able way. If you don't dig the Dig' then you haven't read it yet.

My Dollar Plan is 'llent. This lady has got be to filthy rich. She has a quarter million arbitrage strategy and a credit limit of $1,000,000 - that's a lot of zero's. I don't really know if I will ever see that type of money or be able to do some of the things that she does, but she writes well and her blog is interesting to read - and she gives some good advice too.

Most of the people on this list don't need me to tell them that they are 'llent because I am sure they already know it. And I am sure you don't need me to tell you that they are 'llent because you probably already know that already too.

Investment Strategy Update - One Month

One month ago today I wrote about how I would invest $2,500 if I had the money right then. I figured it would be fun to do some periodic updates on how my money would be doing in the hope that I might actually learn something about how the market works. Who knows, I might even learn something about how I could respond to fluctuations in the market without having to risk a single penny. That would be useful information indeed.

When I wrote my original post, I actually said I would probably choose between one of two choices: Washington Mutual (WM) and the T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (TRAMX). For the sake of the experiment I will act as though I invested $2,500 in each of them. This may give me an idea of how a riskier mutual fund may compare to a riskier stock. It's also just cool to think I have $5,000 of 'extra' money.

Washington Mutual (WM)
Buy Date: 1/9/2008
Buy Price: $12.34           Shares: 185.74
Month High: $21.92           Month Low: $10.73
Closing: $18.06
Growth: 46.35%


As I am sure you can tell by this chart, I would have loved to be in Wamu this month. I was checking the price of the stock several times a day, especially through last week when it grew 31.76%! I think if I had actually invested the money I would have set some sort of sell point based upon a percentage increase goal, like 75% or 80%, and would have sold my position once it hit that mark on the short term. Then I would have set a buy price at something lower than what I would have to pay in taxes for the capital gains I acquired. As far as I know, the tax on capital gains is the same as on income so I would have probably pegged this amount at 15-25% of whatever my sell price would have been. Using this scheme I would have set a sell order at $21.65. If it had gotten picked up at that price I would have bought again once the stock hit somewhere between $16.23 and $18.40. Given the way things look in the market I might have chosen the smaller number, helping me keep more of those precious capital gains. The whole scheme would have been a gamble, but I think I might have taken it.

T. Rowe Price Africa & Middle East Fund (TRAMX)
Buy Date: 1/9/2008
Buy Price: $13.46           Shares: 202.59
Month High: $13.58           Month Low: $11.18
Growth: -6.69%


I can't believe that this fund actually lost money this month. I was thinking that over the long term TRAMX had the bigger potential for growth so that may still pan out. After all, one month is not very long term. I have no idea why this fund lost so much value so I won't even offer any speculation about it, not even the rumor that Chuck Norris is about to create a competing fund that will totally kick TRAMX in the rear called CHUCKX. I will definitely be investing in CHUCKX once it gets underway, even if I don't really have the money for it.

Lessons Learned
I would have been going crazy if I had bought into Wamu. I felt like I was the best stock investor ever (even though it was my first "pick") and that I could do no wrong. I even toyed with the idea of forking over the money to buy into it even though it would have been a terrible decision - we simply don't have the money for that level of risk right now. I also learned that I would have checked the value of the stock way too much. Way too much ... I think the biggest thing I need to learn is patience and discipline when it comes to investing. I will have to develop clear goals and strategies in order to get my emotions out and my head into it. I don't think I could handle the risk otherwise.

Rounding Out My Reading

Here are some of the things I have been reading around the web:

I've Paid For This Twice Already ... posted a good article about maximizing MyPoints rewards. It is a pretty good article for working your way around the MyPoints arena but the wisdom and logic she uses to find out the best strategy for the rewards available are universal and apply to almost any rewards program you could ever find yourself in. They are also good strategies for finding bargains and deals in just about everything from food, to electronics, to pet monkeys. The pet monkey market is particularly cut-throat and confusing so these topics will help me out a lot.

Web-Dosh had clued me in to CentSports.com with post a about his favorite money makers. You can bet on sporting events for free ... without any risk of losing your money. You only start off with $0.10, but turning that into $10 (the minimum payout) only takes 8 consecutive successful bets where you bet all you got and double your money. I'm not sure how likely I am to win 8 consecutive bets, but who cares - its free money for everybody!

Consumerism Commentary mentions some different ways to store an emergency fund. I have been thinking about putting some of our emergency fund into a Roth IRA as well, but since I have read articles both by the Flexo and Me vs. Debt (who just decided to us her Roth IRA as an emergency fund) I think I won't feel so brilliant anymore for coming up with the idea a few weeks ago. Apparently, more brilliant-er people thought it up way before and somehow I stole it with my crazy ESPN. I see sports people ...

Brip Blap hosted the Carnival of Financial Goals where he included an article by Lazy Man that caught my attention. I think I like reading about people in their early years earning a substantial alternate income and having a net worth in the hundreds of thousands. While I don't work in a job that will get me any where near a 6 figure salary any time soon (like Lazy Man did), it still helps me feel like its possible to build enough alternate income to kick the work habit and really be productive.

My Good Cents posted an article that linked to some neat tips about shopping at Target. It sounds like my wife and I may have to go to Target on Tuesdays for all the cheap canned foods. We recently found some oh so soft toilet paper on clearance there so I am excited to expand the number of luxury items we can buy on the cheap.

The Digerati Life got me think about how dollar averaging works because it is a way to take advantage of dips in the market while minimizing risk. It may not hold the highest potential for maximum returns, but it really seems like the safest, easiest, and least time consuming way to manage the fluctuations in a market.

Carnivals I participated in:
Carnival of Cash Back & Rewards
The Superbowl of Personal Finance
Ethics, Values and Personal Finance - Super Wednesday Girls Scout Cookie Edition

Articles Feature in Carnivals This Week:
Did I Make the Right Credit Card Choice?
What Would You Do With A Penny?
Ethiopia, Equality, and the Principle of Fairness

Note: I am really interested in the Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance. I will probably be picking a few of the articles that really stick out to me and writing responses/how-they-make-me-feel posts about them before the next carnival gets posted next month.

Why Being Lazy Lost Me $10: Mail In Your Stinking Mail-In Rebates Already!

The other day I realized that I went out and lost me $10 by being a lazy man. I bought my wife this scrap booking software for Christmas because it was the one that she wanted, and it was on sale, and it had a mail-in rebate. I felt so proud of myself about the whole thing. I had gotten a bargain and had bought it while Santa was still visible in the night sky (not really, I bought it two days before Christmas Eve - but I really did procrastinate some for reasons outlined here). The day of Christmas, after we had opened all our beloved goodies, I went on the old Compy 386 and went straight to the rebate site. I printed the forms, filled out the registration card, and got the receipt in a place where I could easily find it. I even got the box ready. But since it was the day of Christmas my wife really hadn't gotten a chance to check out the software to see if it was right for her and if it worked properly I didn't remove the UPC code just in case. Instead, I stored my well-organized, rebate-getting information in a common place for future use.

Fast forward ahead 42 days and I found myself looking at the rebate forms for the 30th time and deciding that I am just going to do it. I peruse the rebate instructions and find that I had to send in my rebate request within 30 days of the purchase. Zut! I just wasted $10 bucks. But this has taught me two very important lesson:

Lesson #1: Fill out and mail in rebate stuff before the deadline. Don't be lazy and do it now.

Lesson #2: Know when the deadline is and actually keep tabs on it. The present may not always be the best time to do something, but sometimes the present is the only time to do something. Think about it.

If only I had learned these earlier I would be $10 richer in 6-8 weeks. Life goes on and my lessons have been learned.

Special Note: Scrap booking. What an interesting combination of words. What does 'booking' mean here? Going at a great pace? Departing quickly? Registering for some future activity? Entering a charge, like the police? I just don't get it. I mean I get the scrap part - you find scraps of this or scraps of that and you make it into some sort of art. I guess because you normally make a book of sorts (really an album) that it get the name of 'booking' but I think another combination of words may actually be a better description. How about 'Scrap Savings Because You Think It Looks Pretty' or 'Collecting Old Stuff Because I Think It's Cool' or 'Trash Utilizing for Decorating'? These are by far more accurate linguistically if you ask me.

Giving Is Better Than Receiving

I was pretty excited about getting the chance to take my wife out this past Thursday for San Diego's Restaurant Week. We haven't gone out to eat at a really nice place since my wife's birthday so it would have been a pretty nice treat. We wanted to share this with some friends of ours who haven't gone out to eat at a really nice restaurant in probably longer than we have. They have two kids, a 3 year old and a 6 month old, and just haven't been able to take each other out with all their obligations and budget. So we invited them along on Monday evening, thinking how fun it would be to spend some time with our friends and treat them to a fancy dinner. Being childless right now ourselves, we weren't really thinking that they might not want to take their kids with them - silly unchilded married people. They quickly informed us of their need for a sitter and let us know they'd have to get back to us.

On Tuesday we come to find out that their regular (free) babysitter, a sister-in-law, isn't able to watch the kids for them. They probably weren't going to be able to go out to the dinner. That was not going to happen. You see, by this time it really sounded better to my wife and I to treat our friends to a fancy dinner than it did to go out to one ourselves. We offered to be the babysitters and to treat them to a night on the town. They said they'd get back to us.

Enter Wednesday. Our friends informed us that they wanted us to go on without them, leaving them along the proverbial Oregon Trail to cheaper than usual fancy food. I had left far to many tombstones along that hallowed ground to let our friends become another pair of casualties to the snake bites of tight budgets and the broken wheel of unavailable babysitters. Not that night, not on my watch. So I pressed the issue to see the real reason why our friends were declining our offer. They danced around the issue a little bit, but it boiled down to them feeling a bad about "pushing us out" of going to a nice dinner. Pffff. Lame excuse. It's better to give than to receive and I wasn't about to get pushed out of getting something really good by giving to our friends. Eventually, after some eloquent waxing, they finally accepted.

So my Thursday night was not spent eating some dangerous dessert or macking on some juicy ribs. Instead, I got to practice being a parent when your tired from a days work. I got to play Candy Land and build forts. I got to bless my friends. I think my Thursday night was pretty good.

January Budget: How Did We Do?

Pretty good, given our circumstances. Here are the numbers:


As you can see, we were significantly over budget in our Gas (82%) and Misc (73%) line items, but generally within budget in every other category. Mad props need to go out to my wife who did a stellar job in getting two grown adults through an entire month on an average of $2.31 per day per person. That's about $0.77 cents per meal *insert googly eyes*. Can she get a what-what? Most of the reason for us ending over budget this month was due to the fact that we lost a car and I was forced to shell out money for a bus fair and next month's bus pass. Together these these two expenses ended up costing us $128.50 - ouch! I may end up getting a steep discount on my monthly pass rate next month because of a company hook up a relative of mine gets. We could realize some significant savings in this category over the course of the year that could really help us reach some of our larger financial goals. When all is said and done we ended up 3.2% over budget.

Side Note: This month I also set caps on some of our Regular Expense Savings categories. Once we hit our limit in these accounts any extra money that would be diverted to these savings vehicles will be added to our savings goals. I did this in an effort to help us overcome the gap between our goals and what we expect to be able to save over the course of the year.

Net Worth For January 2008 - Ninja Pirate Edition

Our Net Worth to end January 2008 is $21,488, an increase in net worth by 5.53% over last month. We saw a 7% reduction in our retirement funds, but this was offset by an increase in cash from saving our salaries as well as a decrease in our outstanding credit card debt (which we pay off in full every month). If we were to continue to grow by the same monetary value each month for the rest of the year we would fall somewhere around $7,000 short of our year's net worth goal. If we grew at the same rate of growth we would only fall $1,200 away from our goal.

Either way, my wife and I can only control so much as we seek to gain a strong financial foothold in our marriage. What we can control is how much we plan to spend. So we have developed a flexible budget that has some give to it but also meets our needs. It pushes us to be better care-takers of the money in our possession. That is about all that we can control. We can't control the bends in the market. We can't control the price of gas (which has finally dropped to under $3.00!). We can't control what goes on sale and when. In fact, there is way more out there that we can't control than what we can, but I feel good about not being in control.

If I were completely in control I'd probably end up becoming a pirate ninja who can magically leap from peak to peak in the market - timing everything correctly and growing my portfolio by 1000000% for every second of active trading. Then I would transform all trees into stationary magical meat machines that you can walk up to and get racks of lamb, bbq pork ribs without any of the fat but all of the juicy goodness, and bacon. Water would become clean and drinkable from the gutter, removing the need for wasteful drinking fountains and bottled water. After completing these simple tasks, I would set out on the adventure of all adventures: I would seek the last of the castrati. His angelic voice starves cancer cells, cures neurological disease, and makes the internet obsolete. The quest would be treacherous and I would need all the clean gutter water and magical meat machines I just created. More on this quest later.