Everybody Loves Your Money

And the fees just keep on rising……..

This is a brief article that points out that ATM fees and bounced check fees continue to rise.  The average charge for using an ATM that you don’t hold an account at is $1.64.  For those people who get charged by their own bank as well, it could put you over $3 to get your own money out of the bank.  And let’s not forget that this is the cheapest method for the banks to give you your money as well.  (ATM’s are far cheaper than you visiting one of their tellers)

It also points out that bouncing a check at the average bank is going to cost you a record $27.40.  They do suggest using overdraft protection, but watch out for that too.  Some banks charge you if you use overdraft protection.

All this just reinforces my belief that everyone should use credit unions.  They are a “not for profit” entity and their fees and rates are MUCH better than commercial banks.  Think you can’t join a credit union?  Think again.  They have credit unions that cover pretty much everyone now.  The rules have been relaxed so that most credit unions will allow new members if you are simply a resident in a particular area.

http://www.kirotv.com/money/10188473/detail.html

It’s times like this that I wish I was rich.  Heck, I don’t even need to be filthy rich.  Just average rich would be outstanding.  I’ve heard people say that rich people just have a different set of problems.  Well, I’m ready to try those out for awhile.  If I could just find a way to work my way in to that economic demographic.

Lately we’ve been really anguishing over our daughter being in daycare.  She’s only been in there about 2 months or so, but I can tell you that they haven’t been our favorite 2 months.  Between the extra driving to drop her off and pick her up, the endless colds/sicknesses she’s had since we put her in there and the crappy care she’s received at the daycare, we are really taking a hard look at whether it’s worth it.

We originally put her in daycare and had my wife go back to work so that we would have the cash to finish the lake house that we bought a couple months ago.  We really didn’t want to take on any extra debt to finish it so the only real solution we could come up with was having my wife work.  Having the extra money has made a huge difference in our ability to work on the house.  We have roofed it, built the deck, installed garage doors and a bunch of other stuff.  All this has been done with cash.  It’s a great feeling to see the place come together and see our debt (money we borrowed to buy the place) go down.  Since we don’t have any other debt other than our mortgage/equity line debt, it hasn’t been a problem paying for the second house on one salary.  We just needed her money to buy the materials.

Well, all that is in question now.  We are considering having my wife stay home and we’ll just take a lot longer finishing the place.  Now that the roof is on, we really just need to get the siding done and we can slow waaaay down.

Through all of this, I find myself wanting to thank my daughter a whole bunch.  She has been such a good sport about it all.  She has had to adjust to being in a daycare, deal with being sick almost continually, and her whole routine has been turned completely upside down.  I don’t think she has smiled any less than she did before though.  She has taken it like a champ.

So, as you can see.  It’s been kind of a stressful experience at our house.  The next few weeks should be interesting as we explore other options.

I’ve  been a little absent from the blogging over the last couple weeks.  It’s not because I want to be.  We just have a ton going on right now.  The most significant event over the past few days is that my dad is in the hospital.  He’s been in there since last Thursday.  Just when the prognosis seems to get better, something else happens and he has a bit of a setback.  I’m still a little in the dark as to whether he’s at the brink of death, or just in the middle of a complicated hassle.

Before my dad ended up in the hospital he bought a boat.  (Last Monday).  He has been messing around with a 1965 Larson and it has pretty much broken down every time he takes it out on the lake.  I’ve personally towed it back to the dock twice.  He has always wanted a boat and this old clunker wasn’t filling his desires.  So, he finally got frustrated, cashed in $10K from his 401k and bought this boat.  Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to hear that he cashed in his paltry 401k to buy it.  He’s 67 so he didn’t pay a penalty, but he will pay the std taxes on it.

It’s kind of funny how your perspective can change overnight.  One night I was thinking how I wished he hadn’t bought the boat, and the next day I was just hoping that he would be able to drive it on the lake at least once.  He had big plans to take the boat out to the lake and try it out this weekend.  That was before he ended up at the hospital on Thursday.  Suddenly I find myself hoping that he’ll get the chance to drive his boat.  How ironic would it be that he finally gets the boat that he has been wanting for MANY years and he never actually gets to drive it.  I told him that once he gets home he can sit in the drivers seat, we’ll start the engine and I’ll stand in front of the boat in the driveway and splash water over the windshield.  Too bad we can’t figure out a way to rock the boat back and forth in the driveway.  I’m sure that would enhance the experience……….

I’ve often noticed that children mimic their parents in many, many ways.  I have to really be careful because my three year old daughter repeats almost everything I say.  I’m still not sure how we are going to get her to stop saying “fart”.  Of course, I slipped up and said it months ago, and she has never forgotten it.  Every few days, I have to correct her and tell her that she can call it a “toot”, or “gas” or “windy pop” (apparently they say that in England because I’ve heard my wife’s family say that more than a few times, especially when my father in law is around.)

Anyway, most of us also realize that the mimicking happens in non-verbal ways too.  That’s one of the big reasons that I try to continually reinforce that just because we have a little money, doesn’t mean we need to spend a little money.  My daughter is only 3, but I know that she’s sucking up all that happens around her.  As she gets older, we will both continue to practice good money management, and also reinforce the key points to her so that she learns them.  My daughter keeps asking for the “Dora game”.  It’s an electronic toy that is themed after Dora the Explorer.  She saw it at Costco a few weeks ago and has probably asked if we can buy it at least 15 times.  We previously told her that we didn’t have enough money to buy the game (It costs about $80).  Just as she mimics other things we say, now she says, “We don’t have enough money to buy the Dora game”.  She doesn’t really understand it at her age, but over time, I think she’ll become more and more aware that we have to show restraint when it comes to buying things.

So, if a child mimicking her parents is so common, it must help explain why adults tend to live their lives in similiar ways to their parents.  I found myself living my financial life in a very similiar way to my parents in my early twenties.  I earned it, I spent it.  Luckily I had a few things happen in my life that caused me to reevaluate that approach.  Most importantly, I learned about compound interest and the rule of 72 when I was 19 years old)  Now I earn it and don’t spend all of it.  It’s helped my family stay on solid financial grounds.  Breaking out of the mold, so to speak, isn’t easy.  I’ve found myself tempted to revert to the “early learned” ways of my parents many, many times.  I think it must have something to do with the fact that if you’ve seen something done, you know it can be done and it feels comfortable.  For example,  my parent’s bought a piece of land and built a family cabin on it.  It’s one of their great financial moves in their later lives.  After seeing them do this and helping all along the way, the process of building a place myself seemed like much less of a hurdle.  It’s a big part of why I ended up buying the partially finished cabin recently.  I’ve been through most of the hoops already, while helping my parents.  Had they not done it first, I probably would have never attempted it.

I think you can have the same experience if you have a mentor that you trust and that is in the place that you want to be.  It all comes down to making your comfort zone bigger.  No one likes to work outside their comfort zone, so the only way to accomplish bigger and better things is to increase the size of your comfort zone.  I guess we each do that in little ways.  I enlarged my comfort zone by watching my parents and other people that I respect and trust.  Now, I just need to translate that larger comfort zone in to more opportunities.

I watched a show this weekend that highlighted 7 lottery winners.  These lottery winners were a bit unusual because they actually still had a little of their money left.  Their jackpots ranged from 2.4 million all the way up to 91 million.

The show highlighted how many of these people had been extremely down on their luck before they won.  One was living in a hotel, while another was living in a run down house that he couldn’t afford to fix up.  I believe he was living on 300 a month.

I found a lot of the show rather disappointing.  The majority of the show was dedicated to each person walking around their house highlighting all the material things they had bought.  One man spent hundreds of thousands on statues, while another gave a lot of it away.

The only thing that I heard on the hour long show that stuck with me was one man saying that he only spent the interest that his money was making.  I’m sure that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it was nice to hear him say that he recognized that by keeping most of his money, he could use it as a tool to generate income to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life.

One other thing that I found interesting was how good each of them said they felt when they helped others.  You could see their eyes light up as they recalled different times that they were able to use a little of their money to help someone out.  It obviously meant a lot to them.