Everybody Loves Your Money

It seemed like an appropriate time of year to discuss materialism and how it is, or isn’t tied to your overall happiness.  In the last few decades, it appears that everyone has slowly increased their consumption and developed some expectations about what Christmas means.  The more presents you get, the happier you perceive you will be.  The bigger the gift, the better.  Because you have that little voice in the back of your head telling you, “Oh boy.  I can’t wait to see what I get this year.  I hope it’s going to be good”, you are doomed to be disappointed.  It’s that expectation that is killing your happiness.

Imagine that you woke up one day and your friends and family all gave you small gifts to show their appreciation for you, and to let you know that you were important.  If you had no idea that was coming, you’d be blown away with the acts of generosity.  Part of that is because you didn’t know it was coming and the gesture felt like it was more sincere.

Contrast that with the current approach to Christmas.  There are the reciprocal gifts.  You know, the ones you run out and buy because someone bought you something that was unexpected.  There are the gift competitions.  In these cases it’s really an arms race to see who can buy the better gift.  Careful.  These situations can cause you to spend FAR more than you ever planned.  Let us not forget about the obligatory gifts.  Those are the gifts that you go out and buy because you HAVE to.  Imagine the shock and horror if you showed up to Billy’s house without the obligatory gift.  Why is it obligatory?  Because you have to buy one so that you don’t feel akward.  Too bad you don’t even really like Billy.

Awhile back the New York Times wrote an article about people in Denmark.  They have a much lower expectation that good things will happen to them so when something good does happen, they are far happier that it did.

From the article:

“But on surveys, Danes continually report lower expectations for the year to come, compared with most other nations. And “year after year, they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark,” the paper concludes.”

This theory doesn’t assume you can’t be happy.  I think that it assumes that the secret to happiness is to find the good in the smaller things in life.  If you are always searching for the next big thing to happen to you, you could find yourself living an unhappy life.

My point is not any different than the many other posts you are probably reading about materialism during Christmas.  The bottom line is that we have slowly lost sight of what Christmas really means.  It’s not about standing in line at 4:00am to get a sweet deal.  It\’s not about wearing the mouse out on Cybermonday.  It’s not about charging up hundreds or thousands of dollars on your credit cards.

There is an interesting movie coming out from Morgan Spurlock.  He’s the guy that made the movie, “Supersize Me”.  The movie is called “What Would Jesus Buy?” and looks like it might be pretty entertaining.  Heck, anything that keeps people from spending more than they should during a holiday that has turned in to a gift wrapped orgy, has got to be decent.

I don\’t like shopping.  I don\’t like sales.  I hate the consumer driven holidays and I absolutely hate shopping on Black Friday.  I\’d rather go skinny dipping in the frigid waters of Antarctica.  (And I hate swimming).

So, today was going to be a day like any other Friday.  We were going to head out to the lake house to do some work on it and just take it easy this weekend.  On the way out, we needed to stop by the hardware store to pick up some materials.  While we were there, we noticed that Lowes had a complete kitchen appliance set for $2052 with $600 worth of rebates.  We had purchased all of our appliances from Lowes a couple weeks ago and they were due to be delivered in late December.  After seeing this black friday promotion, we decided to get a refund on the previous purchase and buy these.  That means, instead of paying $1850 for our black kitchen appliances, we were able to get all stainless steel (look) appliances for only $1450.  These are middle of the road appliances and are pretty much what we wanted to begin with but didn\’t want to pay the premium over the price of the black appliances.  Now, rather than be more expensive, they are now $400 cheaper.

Needless to say, we are thrilled.  We purchased:

Refrigerator (25 cu feet) with ice maker: $648

Range/Oven (with glass top): $398

Dishwasher: $253

Above the range microwave: $153

So, while we are pretty much hemhorraging money while we finish the lake house, we are getting deals anywhere we can find them.  A little luck and a lot of investigation has helped us keep the costs down on a few of the items we\’ve had to purchase for the place.  It\’s a great idea to keep your eyes out for items that you know you\’ll need so that you have more time to find a great deal!  As hard as it has been to spend the money on the place, it has been much easier knowing that we are paying cash as we go.  We aren\’t faced with rising debt levels, which will save us a lot money in the long run.  Anyway, that\’s it for now.  We are out at the lake now and are taking it easy this evening after working on the place this afternoon.  Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

From the If you don\’t ask, you won\’t get department:

When we bought the lake house property and structure we used some money from a home equity line of credit that we\’d set up months before.  We didn\’t borrow a ton of money but at the time we locked in the interest rate.  I\’ve read too many horror stories about payments adjusting up as the bank raised the interest rate.  The rate was good at the time but since then the credit union has lowered their interest rate for new HELOC\’s.  For the past couple months it has eaten at me a bit so I decided to make a call to my credit union to ask them to lower the rate.

When I made the call I greeted the customer service rep and told her that I was considering borrowing from another institution to pay this loan off for the sole purpose of obtaining a lower interest rate.  I expressed that I really liked doing business with my credit union and was hoping that they\’d be able to lower my rate.  The customer service rep said that there wasn\’t a direct way to lower the rate on the existing loan but she said she had a creative way of doing it.  She used the existing available line of credit to pay off the loan that I had and said that by doing that, it was creating a new loan which would have a rate that was .5% less than my existing loan.

She worked her magic and I actually watched it all play out via my online banking.  Now I\’ve got a rate that is .5% less than I had at the beginning of the day so that more of my payment will go towards the priniciple and less will go toward interest.

I seriously doubt a commercial \”for profit\” bank would have done this for me…………

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Why didn’t anyone tell me how hard it is to build a house?  We continue to make progress on the lake house.  A lot has happened since the last time I posted about it.  We’ve been hard at work every weekend and have finally gotten to the point that we are ready for flooring and cabinets.  The sheet rock is done, the painting is done and most of the electrical is complete.  I still need to install a few more electrical outlets and covers but I’m close.  Smoke alarms are wired in and functional, and all of the ceiling lighting is done.

As we get closer to being done, the excitement is building.  I’m really looking forward to getting the final occupancy permit and can’t wait to sleep there for the first time.

We are planning on heading back out there the day after Thanksgiving and will spend the weekend working.  We should have the bathroom complete by the end of the weekend, the deck done, and the flooring in the kitchen complete.

I’ve started to do some market comparisons just to get an idea of how much sweat equity we’ve got in the place.  A conservative approach to valuing the place would give me a profit of about $50,000.  Most of the neighbors and people I’ve talked to believe that the place will be worth at least $250,000.  If that’s the case, we will have created about $100,000 in sweat equity.  At this point it really doesn’t matter what it’s worth because we have no intention of selling it.  The one reason I like to spend a little brain power looking at the value is because I’m looking forward to the day that we could potentially sell the lake house and be able to pay off our primary home’s mortgage.  Even the most conservative estimate shows that we could sell the lake house in five years and pay off our primary mortgage.  Knowing that we could do this seems to put my mind at ease a bit.

So, while it’s turning out to be potentially profitable for us (some day), it has still been a ton of sacrifice and hard work.  In order to do this my wife went back to work, my daughter went to preschool all day and we’ve spent pretty much all of our free time working on the cabin.  It’s a great feeling of accomplishment but it has also had a massive impact to our lifestyle.  We are looking forward to the place being completed so that we can use it, but also so we can get our lives back to a bit more of a normal pace.

Here are a couple pictures of the current state:

We decided to participate in the Give 1, Get 1 promotion over at XOGIVING.ORG.  This promotion allows you to buy a laptop for a deserving child in a developing nation, and also receive one for your child.  This wasn’t a hard decision for us for a few reasons: 

-We like to try to do a few charitable things each year

-We really want to instill how important it is to think of others (for our daughter to learn)

-The laptop is an outstanding learning device for any child

-It’s really cool

 So, we wandered on over to http://www.xogiving.org and made the purchase.  One laptop is on it’s way to a child in a developing nation and the other should be on it’s way to our house before Christmas.  This promotion cost us $399 plus a bit of shipping.  For two laptops that will help two children build many different skills, it’s money well spent.  There are only 11 days left in their promotion if you’d like to participate!  $200 of the purchase price is also tax deductible if you are looking for an additional tax deduction

And, because I’m a techy geek, here are the details of the laptops:

• Wifi 802.11 b/g
• 433mhz processor
• 256mb ram
• 1024mb storage
• SD card slot
• integrated video camera
• 7.5″ dual mode LCD screen
• Integrated speaker and sound card
• USB (three ports)
• Mic input
• Headphone output
• Linux operating system

For those of you that know a thing or two about computers, you may be looking at those specs thinking, “Wow, that’s so 1995″.  Well, it is and it isn’t.  Because the laptop uses Linux, the hardware requirements are much lower.  They’ve done a good job of writing open source software to use the system in a very efficient way.  Power management is a TOP priority for them.  The battery they are using is user replaceable and also can be drained and charged up to 2000 times.  The laptop also uses far less power to function so the battery life dwarfs most standard laptops.

The other thing to note is that this was developed for harsh conditions.  It is somewhat ruggedized and can withstand many drops to the ground etc because there are no moving parts.

Software is a completely different topic.  There are a ton of applications on there and they are all targeted at children.  Many of them are built to encourage exploration and discovery and will help with developmental skills as well.  For a complete list, see: http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/software-and-interface.php 

Anyway, please consider jumping on this bandwagon.  The promotion is only good for 11 more days!

Wow.  This woman worked for Taco Bell for 30 years.  She started at $2.85 an hour and ultimately became a store manager.  In the end, she speculates that her high base pay, from being there so long, caused her to be forced out.  Please Lord, give me the skills to avoid working at Taco Bell for 30 years.  Frankly, I admire her work ethic.  Other than that, I’m still shocked to read that someone worked in the fast food industry, at the store level, for 30 years.

Oh, and did I mention she was only robbed twice and only shot once during one of those robberies?

http://www.startribune.com/357/story/1538641.html

Our friends entered a contest for an American Standard new heating and cooling system and have been chosen as one of the 7 finalists.  Their 10 year old daughter drew a picture of their house and their dad, Jeff, wrote a short essay about why they needed a new home cooling/heating and filtration system.  If they win, they receive a $15,000 system for their home.  They could really use it.  The system that they have now is on it’s last leg and winning this contest would be a prayer answered.

If you can take a second to vote for them, I, and they would really appreciate it!!!

Vote for “The Stannard Family”!!!!!!  from Kent, Washington

http://www.americanstandardair.com/Promotions/ComfyColoringContest2007/default.aspx

For all you bloggers out there, if you would consider putting a short post up to tell your readers to vote for my friends, I know that I would be eternally thankful to you!!!!

You know something?  Blogging is a strange existence.  I’m not nearly as connected to many of the other PF blogs out there as some are but I still feel a bit of camaraderie or connection to many of them.  My blog is far less about the numbers than it is about the emotional existence in a world where money makes pretty damn much everything go round.  One of my dreams is to pull the top 100 PF Bloggers together for some sort of convention.  Not really to learn much, but to finally meet many of them and just see who has been typing out all those words.  On one hand I feel almost like a stalker as I feel that tiny bit of excitement to see that Madame X has updated her blog, or that Neville has updated his.  Then there is Jonathon.  While my attention span struggles to keep on task as I read a lot of his informative posts  (he’s ten fold smarter than I am), I still enjoy seeing what’s up with him and I can’t wait to read that he’s finally bought a house.

I’ve long enjoyed reading NCN’s blog.  He’s really been an inspiration to me in general.  I haven’t had to overcome the debt that he has, but just seeing his commitment to bettering his situation for himself and his family has been outstanding to see.

I also really enjoy SavvySaver’s blog.  She’s doing such a great job of living below her means and owning her money as opposed to her money owning her.  She’s got a rental  (I think it’s a 4 plex) and is just my kind of person.  I actually found myself smiling when I read that she had her baby and both were healthy.  I still remember what an incredible joy it was when we had our daughter over 4 years ago and I thought to myself how she and her husband were probably feeling just as happy as my wife and I did when we had our daughter.

Then there is Flexo.  He’s pretty much an online machine.  Between his PF blog and pfblogs.org, I know he’s pretty busy.  He’s done a great job of being one of the few people that make up the core of the PF blog community.

Oh, and where the hell did JD come from?  A couple years ago, I hadn’t even heard of him and now he must have more readers than any other PF blog out there.  Obviously that has to do with the quality of his posts and the sheer amount of information he puts on his blog.  I check my reader daily and it still seems like I’m playing catch up with all of his posts.

These few sites are only a tiny chunk of the PF sites that I have in my Google reader.  It’s been a great couple years and I’ve really enjoyed reading so much about personal finance from the blogs above and all the others in my reader.  As I sit here on a Friday night, I realize it’s great to be a tiny part of something much bigger than me.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go stalk all the other PF blogs out there (oh and maybe I’ll hit perezhilton.com too.  But please don’t tell anyone.  It’s kind of embarrassing to admit I’ve even heard of Perez.  He’s kind of like crack.)