Everybody Loves Your Money

It’s week three of the new schedule at our house.  Things have been going well, but I’ve been expecting that sooner or later I’d need to take a sick day to stay home with our daughter.  Today was the day.

It just doesn’t make sense for my wife to stay home with her at this point.  She is only “temping” and doesn’t get any paid sick leave or vacation.  If she was to stay home, we would lose out on a day’s pay.  When you consider we are also paying for daycare (they don’t give $$ off for a missed day), it gets rather expensive.  Since I’ve got great benefits and don’t use much sick time, I opted to stay home.  The reality is that I’ve stayed caught up on email, etc while I’ve been home so it will make going back tomorrow much easier.

The rugrat is taking a nap now, so I’m just taking it easy and spending a little time on PF blogs.  Maybe I’ll pick up a new trick or tidbit of information that will help us with our finances.

It’s really too bad that I had to take down our net worth information.  It has been steadily rising and we are much farther along than I ever thought we’d be at the age of 35.  We have long since passed the average net worth of all age groups and are trying to stay in the top 10% of net worth for our specific age group.  That was easy to do when we were below 33.  Now that we’ve aged a bit, it’s going to be much harder to stay in the top 10% because the age range goes all the way up to near age 40.  There are plenty of 40 year olds that make us look like materialistic debt laden nuts.  Oh well.  This isn’t a contest, but it is still fun to track where we are, relative to others in our age group.

Has anyone found a current net worth ranking?  (I’m curious to see data on net worth by age group)

I confess that I have shamelessly grabbed these links from a Fatwallet forum, but they are funny enough, that I wanted to put them all together.  Just a little humor to make going back to work today a little bit better:

SNL Financial Advice

SNL Don’t buy things you cannot afford

Financial Services company getting online a little late

They are pretty humorous.  I especially like “Don’t buy things you cannot afford”.

Well, since I just love free stuff, I decided to try out Windows Live Writer.  I’ve grown rather tired of editing my posts in the Wordpress window so this might be a very positive change.

On another completely unrelated note, I’ve been busting my — working on the cabin.  It is a TON of work, but we are making slow and steady process.  Half the roof is done and we should have the deck and the other half of the roof done in about 3 weeks.  We also got the doors on so that it is more secure.

My wife is enjoying her job.  She has been doing it for two weeks, and although the first week was tough with the transition, things are going well now.

Here’s a great opinion article from the Seattle Times.  Just one person’s perspective on the lifelong fight to not try to keep up with the Jones’.  Those damn Jones’.

A Nagging Compulsion to be Left Behind

Now not only can you compare what you have with your neighbors, but also with people all over the world.  I can’t say I’m too excited about this new site:

http://www.zebo.com/

Here’s an article that talks about the efforts that are underway to protect some of the lowest income members of our society.  Around 10 million people opted to pay extra to get a “refund-anticipation loan” so that they could get access to their tax refunds early.  Many of these people just don’t understand enough about money to realize how screwed they are getting:

Challenges mount against refund-anticipation loans

The first week of both my wife and I working has ended.  (okay, it ended on Friday but I’m just getting to blogging).  It was a rough week.  As expected, it was a hard transition for my wife, after having been home for 3 years.  Our daughter has also had some struggles getting used to daycare, but by the end of the week, it was much better.  We have read a lot about the transition and we know that the first few weeks will be challenging.

My wife is doing well at her temporary job.  The hope is that they might offer her a full time job at some point in the future.  Luckily, both my wife and daughter get benefits through my employer so we really only need the paycheck from her job.

I’ve had a lot more responsibility at home.  Cooking, cleaning etc are now much more “shared” than they were when my wife was home each day.  I’ve made it a goal to have most of the chores done before she gets home so that she can spend the time with our daughter.  (I am working an earlier shift so that I can pick our daughter up earlier in the day).  So, that’s part of the reason that I haven’t had time to do much blogging.  Between the extra chores at home, and then spending the weekends working on the cabin, I’m struggling to find enough hours in the day.  Hopefully I’ll hit my stride this week and will be able to spend a bit more time on the blog.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other blogs to check out via: http://www.pfblogs.org .

I just returned from a couple days in Las Vegas with some friends.  We had a good time, but I can’t say the gambling was all that hot.  I pretty much saw my money take a one way trip while I was there.  I think I’d feel a little better about it if they’d tell me which employee I supported, or name a brick after me.  I was foolish and spent most of my time on slot machines.  Yeah, I know, they aren’t a very good way to gamble down there.  The one time I played blackjack, I did make $20 of it back.  All in all, I ended up spending about $275 on the trip, not including the hotel/airfare costs.

While we were flying back, I was intrigued by the fact that the flight attendants were pushing the Alaska airlines credit card.  I’ve experienced this before but found the “sell” a little stronger this time.  Amazingly, a couple people seemed very interested and filled out some forms.  I suppose I should expect credit card applications to start showing up in churches next.

One of the things I like to do while in Vegas is watch the high rollers.  I really didn’t see too many people betting large amounts of money while I was there.  I think the maximum bet I saw on Blackjack was only about $200 per hand.  More than I would gamble, but nowhere near the $10,000 per hand that I have seen in the past.  I wonder where all the “Whales” were.  Maybe it was because we went midweek.  I’m sure many of the high rollers were tending to their investments, or working at their jobs.

Anyway, it sure feels nice to be home.  Now we are headed off to a lakefront cabin that our family rented to celebrate my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary.  I can’t wait until Monday so that I can go back to work and rest……..

As it turns out, we are all frugal when it comes to the kind of toilet paper we buy?  Don’t believe me?  Then check out this article.  Apparently the ultra rich buy special toilet paper.  I have got to take the time to become ultra rich.

Ultra rich toilet paper link

As if that article wasn’t entertaining enough for you, I thought the first comment under the article was hilarious.  This guy has got a system to keep his toilet paper cost to a minimum:

“Wanna know what I use???… Do Ya ???… Huh???…

I usually Eat at the Burger Joints for lack of some place to Cook for myself these days…

Well I ask for Extra Napkins when Hitting the Drive Through so I can wipe My Face with one of them when the Catsup starts running down My Cheek and then I have a few left to Wipe My Butt Later When the Greasy Burger decides to Leave My Body…

If I do go inside and and pick up my order I usually grab atleast a weeks worth of Napkins in case I can’t even make it out of the place and I have to *Hit The Can* before I make it to the Door… ”

I wonder if I should have titled this, “Wiping Your Way to Savings”?