Everybody Loves Your Money

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. My handy dandy blogging software (Windows Live Writer) doesn’t like my blog these days. It all stems from the last upgrade of Wordpress that I did. Arrrrgghhh.

Also, please don’t assume that my lack of a blogroll right now means that I don’t want to link to all of my friends and favorite PF blogs. It’s all part of the same issues. I’m working on trying to change the blog to fix the issues and I’m hoping all will be well again. Thanks for your patience!

On a completely separate note, Christmas was great. It was low key and my daughter really had a blast. We didn’t spend nearly as much as most families but we spent enough. Of all the hundreds of dollars in gifts that my daughter received (from us, friends, family etc), her favorite was an inexpensive stuffed animal (puppy). Not that she didn’t enjoy and appreciate the other gifts, but the puppy is what is getting all of the attention.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and have a Happy New Year. Of course if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a lovely non-holiday.

An Indiana man has just purchased a $25,000 Dodge truck with the change he has saved over 13 years. Wow. While I admire his feat of saving that much change over the years and I really admire the fact that he didn’t buy the truck on credit, I have to wonder how much sooner he could have bought that truck if he had simply put that money in any sort of financial institution. Even if he could have made 4% in a savings account, he could have shortened his savings timeline and made some extra money. Had he been even more aggressive with it, I can only imagine how much more money he would have.

Oh well. At least he used his frugal skills to buy the truck for cash instead of credit.

http://www.wlky.com/news/14913765/detail.html

A few weeks ago we decided it was time to upgrade the laptop. My wife wanted a newer laptop and asked if she could have mine and then we could buy a new one for me to use. While I’m always happy to get a new laptop, I really didn’t want to spend the money. As a general rule, I won’t buy any electronics or other non-necessary stuff out of our “general fund”. This blog, along with other streams of income helps me create a bit of a slush fund that I keep in an online account. As we talked it over, we both agreed the slush fund would be the best account to use to pay for this.

There were a few things that brought us to the decision to buy a laptop. My wife’s laptop, which we’ve had for nearly three years, has a tendency to heat up and just shut down. (HP). Over the last year it has gotten worse, even after we bought little plastic feet to prop it up off the desk. Besides the tendency to shut off, it also lacks enough memory and is quite the dog when performing regular tasks such as email and web surfing.

The other thing that helped us decide to buy a new laptop was that we were getting an additional discount off Dell.com due to an employee purchase program promotion. (We don’t work for Dell but Dell sometimes has agreements with major customers to provide discounts to employees of partner companies). Anyway, let’s just say it blew the socks off any Fatwallet deal.

As I configured a potential laptop on Dell.com for the 60th time, (believe me, over the span of three weeks, I must have visited the site about that many times trying to find the best rock bottom deal I could), I noticed that adding additional memory to the configuration really boosted up the price. I did some digging and found out what kind of memory it took and then priced it out on a few sites. What I found shocked me. If I had upgraded the laptop to 4 gigabytes via Dell, it would have cost me an additional $375, and that is only upgrading from the baseline of 2 gigabytes. So, in a sense, I was paying $375 for 2 gigabytes of memory. When I checked at Newegg.com, I found that they sold 2 gigabytes of memory (1 stick) for only $49 and had free shipping. HOLY SMOKES! I couldn’t believe the price difference.

Needless to say, I ended up buying the cheapest memory option that Dell had when I finally purchased the laptop and then ripped both the old memory sticks out and installed (2) 2 gigabyte sticks in the laptop for only $98 for a total savings of $277. Did I mention I love a good deal?

A lot of people dread shopping with kids. I remember the many trips to the store with my mom like it was yesterday. I loved to visit the toy and candy aisle. It didn’t even matter what kind of store it was. If there were toys or candy in the building, I’d find them.

As our daughter has gotten old enough to really desire things, we have often wondered when the onslaught of crying and whining would start. Our daughter has always been very even tempered and never whines or cries but we thought for sure it was just a matter of time.

I’m happy to report that the time hasn’t arrived yet. We went to the store last night to pick up a pair of pants and a shirt for an older man that my daughter’s class is sponsoring for Christmas. I absolutely wanted to take my daughter with me to help her share in the experience of helping others, but it was also a necessity because my wife was teaching piano lessons at the time.

As we were walking in to the store my daughter told me, “Daddy, how about if I take some of my toys in my room and give them to a little girl that doesn’t have any toys?” I was thrilled to hear that. All the conversations we’ve had were paying off. I was a little disappointed when she followed that comment up with, “Daddy, instead of getting a small candy treat, can I get a toy?” Wow. The manipulating has started. Okay, so she wasn’t as concerned with getting her old toys in the hands of a deserving child, rather, she was much more interested in offering up some old toys in hopes she’d soften me up for a new toy.

Unfortunately she didn’t get the result she was after. I told her, “I’m sorry honey, but a small bit of candy is not very expensive, but a toy would be much more expensive and we can’t spend the money on one now”. Of course we could have spent the money on one but we intentionally don’t buy toys when we take her shopping because we don’t want her to develop an expectation. We also don’t buy her many toys between Christmas and her birthday because no child needs THAT many toys. (Believe me, she has plenty)

Her reaction to me saying no was wonderful. She said, “okay”. I was even more surprised when she saw the toy aisle and saw a “High School Musical” toy sitting at eye level on the shelf. She yelled, “Daddy. Look a High School Musical toy. I said, “Oh wow. That’s neat but we need to keep moving.” She turned and headed in my direction without a bit of complaining.

I’m not sure if her behavior is based on the many trips we’ve taken to the store where we’ve set the tone, or whether she just hasn’t hit that stage of really pushing to buy something, but either way, it sure is nice to go to the store with her these days.

Crazy:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316580,00.html

I was going to make some wise crack like, “Well, at least they are telling them that you shouldn’t always use credit cards” but I don’t think that would be appropriate either…….

Not sure who the rocket scientist was that thought up this line of underwear for young girls. Not exactly the best idea.

I’m now going to end this post so that my mind will stop thinking of all the jokes…………

Every time I read a story that surprises me, the first thing I think is, “I wonder if this is another fake internet news story”. The fact that it’s in the Guardian makes me think it might be legit.

Anyway, the story goes that if you use the drive thru at McDonalds at some UK locations and stay longer than 45 minutes, you could be fined up to 125 pounds. If it’s true, I would certainly never go to McDonalds again, just on principle. Sure, there are probably people that abuse the parking there, but to use cameras and take away the human judgement for issuing the fines seems like a very poor business practice.

The Guardian quoted a customer:

“One motorist, Jamie Thomson, told the Guardian of his experience at a McDonald’s near Gatwick: “I ordered a burger, chips, a doughnut, coke and coffee. I sat in my car eating my lunch, and listening to the radio. After eating, I continued to sip my coffee for a time, and ate my doughnut. Then I left. All perfectly normal.” He says he was in his car for about an hour.”

Wow, that’s a lot of food. Maybe if she gets upset about the fine and quits going there, her health will improve too. Make no mistake, I could knock back a burger, fries, a donut and coke in about 10 minutes, but I’m not sure it would be the best thing for my diet………

So, as I read articles like this, I wonder what has happened to the idea that businesses should treat their customers with respect so that they return? Everywhere I look, companies are treating me less like a loyal customer and more like a circus monkey that they are afraid is going to just come in to the joint and wreak havoc.

In an effort to save money, my wife and I will no longer be making left turns. We will now create a map ahead of every trip to minimize the amount of gas we use and the wear and tear on our car.

Okay, maybe it won’t work for us, but it sure did for UPS:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09left-handturn.html

Here’s a post worth reading:
http://www.johnbatdorf.net/blog/WhyDoYouBankWhereYouDo.aspx

John asks the question, Why do you bank where you do? Great question. I wonder what percentage of the people out there would answer, “just because”?

I’m with John 110%. I will only go to a credit union. Why take my money to a place that is trying to make a profit off of me? Of course there are some people that just have no other choice because they live in a town that only has one or two banks and no credit unions. If you do have a credit union in your town, you should really look in to joining. They have loosened up the membership rules so that just about anyone can join any credit union. Check it out!

Ahhh.  The Christmas season.  That special time of year when we all run around like chickens with our heads cut off to find the perfect gifts for our family and friends.  My wife and I spent the weekend trying to do as much of our Christmas shopping as possible.  I am happy to report that we just about finished all the gift buying.  The majority of our time was spent focusing on gifts for our nieces and nephews, with just a little bit more time spent buying gifts for our family gift exchange.

For as long as I can remember, we have always put everyone’s names in a hat at Thanksgiving and then everybody draws one name.  Whomever you draw is the one adult person in the family that you buy a gift for.  This makes perfect sense to me, and since I have been doing this my entire adult life, it just feels right too.  By only buying for one person, it helps everyone save money and keeps Christmas from becoming this massive gift buying orgy.  Of course we also buy presents for people in our immediate family.  I will be buying my wife and gift, and she will be buying me one as well, although we both decided to minimize the dollar amount since we have been spending so heavily finishing the lake house.  This is only for the adults.  All the adults buy gifts for all the nieces and nephews but we tend to keep the dollar amount around $25 or so per child.  Since my younger sister had twins earlier this year the total “niece/nephew” count is up to 8.  Even with a conservative $25 per child, it starts to add up quickly.  The main thing is that, with these limits in place, we will have a “cash only” Christmas again this year.  I feel badly for all those people out there that are spending their way through Christmas, only to have a minimum payment hangover on their credit cards for all of next year.

Anyway, we are happy to report that we are almost done shopping.  We still have a few things to pick up, but we will plan on doing that during the week as we have time.

On another note, my wife has decided to stop teaching piano lessons.  She is finding that it is too much to work all day and then come home to teach piano for an hour a couple days per week.  That will reduce our income by a couple hundred dollars per month, but it should not be a big deal.

I saw this video over on Scott Hanselman’s site. I found it rather humorous.