Everybody Loves Your Money

Well, I’ve been anticipating this day for quite awhile. It’s funny how you spend thousands of dollars for a trip, months ahead of time. I’m really glad that the majority of this trip hit the books months ago.

I’m looking forward to exploring England a bit and plan to take some good notes so that I can write about some of my observations, with an emphasis on personal finance there. So, don’t look for any ramblings here for a couple weeks. If I get access to the internet there via some free wifi, I may post a few times!

Hope everyone has a couple good weeks, and I hope that everyone will be talking about how Houston and LA were spared from the devastation of a major hurricane, but I’m thinking that may be a bit optimistic……..

Well, today turned out to be a little bit stressful. It all started about 5:00 am this morning. I got up nice and early so that I could call my wife, who has already gone over to England with our daughter. (left on Monday). At the risk of giving too many details, I hopped on my Vonage line (500 minute second line for $14.99) and called her. Now, let me side track the conversation for a second. It is absolutely amazing to me that my voice can be converted to packets of data, and sent all the way to England in real time with a sound clarity that would make you think my wife was in the next room. All of this for only .03 cents per minute. Try that on a regular phone line. We have, by accident, and it’s well over $1.00 per minute. Better catch up telcos!!

Okay, so back to my original subject. So, I’m sitting in bed talking to my wife on the phone and she tells me, “I’m not feeling very well and I’ve made an appointment to see the doctor here. “Oh crap”, I think. First of all, is she okay? If something is wrong, she is a long way away. So, the conversation continues and we talk for awhile longer. As I hang up the phone, I start thinking of all the scary things it could be. And, if that isn’t bad enough, a thought occurs to me. “Uhhhh, what about our health insurance?” England has a national health care system, that works a lot better (and cheaper) for their citizens than it does for an American who happens to be visiting. I start to imagine all the tests. What if it’s thousands of dollars? What if something bad happens? My wife could be in danger of something serious and as a second kick in the crotch, I could lose everything since my insurance won’t pay all the costs. If something happened to my wife, I’d need every cent I could find in order to care for my daughter and work. Maybe I should have bought life insurance for my wife!?!? What if something terrible happened and I went bankrupt as well?!?

[SLAP] [SLAP] Geez! Snap out of it. She’s not dying. It’s just a doctors appointment because she doesn’t feel well. Easy……. Sorry about that. I’m a sick man.

I was in a meeting all day today that I couldn’t take calls in. Additionally, I was offline all day and didn’t have access to my work email. (laptop had to stay in the bag all day). I have to admit I was worried all day. There is an 8 hour time difference between my wife and I right now, which meant that she knew the results of her doctor visit by about 9:00 PST, but it was 5:00 PST before I was able to get to my email and find out things were fine. Phew. I worry too much. I really need to start drinking more heavily or something. And here’s the capper of the day. The doctor visit was free! Why? My wife is still considered a citizen of the United Kingdom because she was born there.

-Pay yourself first.

-Save as much as you can when you are young.

-It’s okay to have money in the bank.

-Don’t borrow your own money and pay someone else the interest.

-The people that are impressed with what you have today, won’t be impressed when you live on the street during retirement.

-Don’t buy brand new cars.

-Coupons are a good thing.

-Saving $5.00 on a $100 item is exactly the same as saving $5 on a $6 item. It’s $5.

-Compound interest only works if you actually save money.

-Making money while you sleep is far better than making money while you are awake.

-We create the situations we are in.

-Set yourself up for success. No one will do it for you.

-Buy things that appreciate.

-Everyone can join a credit union. Banks suck.

-There are a ton of things in life that are FREE.

-Don’t wait until tomorrow to start saving. Tomorrow is always tomorrow.

-Never pay retail. NEVER.

-Where there’s a deal, there’s a better deal.

-Own your money, don’t let your money own you.

-Most of the people that you think have money, have debt.

-If you don’t ask, the guaranteed answer is no.

Well, it’s finally almost time to get on an airplane and fly for 8 hours to London England. This is probably the biggest adventure I’ve ever gone on in my life. It’s the first time I’ve been out of the country and I have to admit, I’m a little nervous.

This will definitely hurt the finances a bit. Luckily we are taking the hits in phases. We bought and paid for the tickets in March. That was a monthly credit card statement that I wasn’t thrilled to pay off at the end of the month, but the thought of paying interest on any of that money, outweighed the pain.

So, now it’s just a matter of what we spend when we get over there. It will be my wife, two year old daughter, and I. The good news is that, since my wife is from England, we’ll be staying with family while we are there. That is going to be a HUGE savings. I was talking to someone at work and they are also going over and will be paying upwards of $300 per night while they are there. That’s just for a hotel room. So, needless to say, we are happy about the lodging.

My mother in law, (yes the one that currently lives in New Orleans, or at least has a house there. (She hasn’t been to the house since the hurricane.)), is already in England. She’ll be there to help us out with our daughter and our hope is that my wife and I will be able to spend a night or two back in London by ourselves. We’ll be staying on the east coast of England, but we also have relatives back in London that we may be able to stay with. We also have some friends and family up NORTH in the York area, so that’s a possible trip too.

I plan to take some notes about the cost of various things in England. I’m very interested to see what it costs to live there. I’ve heard different stories about England that gives me the impression it’s very expensive to live there. I’m amazed at the amount of taxation they have. I’m not looking forward to short, luke warm showers, and I’m also anticipating the houses to be much smaller. My father in law has said that in order to live like my wife and I do here in the U.S., I’d have to be a neurosurgeon in England to have our home, cars and standard of living. Well, I’m way too dumb to be any kind of surgeon, so I don’t anticipate moving to England. I don’t think I could get used to it.

So, look forward to some interesting posts in early October about what it’s like to live, work, and SAVE money in England. I’m taking the laptop and will blog if I get a chance there, but I get the sense that even WIFI is not easy to find for free there. We’ll see.

If anyone has any advice about “must see” places, or can shed any light on what to expect there, please leave me a post!!

You know something? Unless you are a geologist, meeting your financial goals seems to take FOREVER.

I’m a product of the “NOW” generation.

-I like my meals to be cooked as fast as possible. Microwaves take too long
-I like my news NOW. Newspapers are so “yesterday”
-I don’t like to wait for my food at a restaurant
-My computer always seems too slow, even when it was new
-Inkjet printers? Come on already. Hurry up
-Windows takes too long to “boot up”
-When are they going to invent a teleport?

So, it’s no wonder that saving and investing has been a real struggle for me in the past. I want to have financial security NOW. I don’t want to be OLD when I’ve finally reached my goals. I want to have the money now while I’m young, so that I can enjoy it to the maximum extent possible.

I think that the most interesting part about my personal financial journey is that I’ve stuck to it. The fad hasn’t ended for me. Financial intelligence seems sexier to me today, than it did when I started. Probably a sure sign that I am a complete knob. The fact of the matter is, I’m seeing rewards in being financially intelligent. I’m not worried that I might lose my job tomorrow. I know my wife and daughter will be okay if something happens to me. I can almost smell the clean blue ocean as I imagine some of the exotic locations I’ll be able to visit when I stop working. Cruises? Oh yeah. Summer home? You bet. And all within my means without sacrificing my finances. I guess that’s what keeps me going.

I absolutely love reading “Millionaire in the Making” on CNN Money. I find it very motivating to read how others are doing. The latest article highlights Christopher Ortega and Alicia McDonald. They are a couple that have known each other since high school and they both appear to have similiar money motivations. Here are some highlights:

-Lots of home equity
-Saving lots each month
-Plan to save even more each month
-Pay cash for things
-Pay down college debt. Looks like they wrapped it up in deductible interest debt and are soon to pay it off.

Go check it out:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/25/pf/millionaire/rp_ortega/index.htm

Another article I enjoyed reading was the latest “Ask the Expert”. It’s a 25 year old from my neck of the woods who asks, “How do I retire at 50?”

You can find that article here:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/13/pf/expert/ask_expert/index.htm

I really need to subscribe to this magazine, but I just hate dealing with magazine companies.

I’ve been playing around with listing a collection of personal finance links. You can find them over at: http://myfinancelinks.blogspot.com . I haven’t been terribly consistent about adding links, but it is building a significant listing of personal finance related links. There are 90+ links there now and I’ll keep building. If you have some links that you think might be good to include, there is a link on that page to send them in.

Subjects range from:
Personal Finance
Credit Cards
Home Equity
Retirement Planning and Preparedness
Miscellaneous

Check them out if you have some free time.

Well, I’m just in love with the new Apple Ipod Nano. It is so small, but has so many features. By the time I’m done, it will have cost me about $50 extra to sell my Ipod Mini and upgrade to the Ipod Nano. This has nothing to do with personal finance, other than the fact that I’m blowing my daughter’s inheritance on it. Luckily my daughter isn’t old enough yet to want one herself.

So, I’ve got to tell you about this thing. Here are a few of the features that I think are top notch:

-Holds two gigs of music (I bought the cheaper one) on flash memory. (no spinning hard drive)
-Synchs your Outlook contacts
-Synchs your Outlook calendar
-Has a very nice (small) color screen
-Holds and displays pictures
-Oh yeah, and plays music very nicely too

I’m heading over to England for a vacation in a couple weeks and am looking forward to taking this with me. I’ll also be bringing my laptop so that I can hopefully blog about my experiences there. Should be a good time.