Everybody Loves Your Money

It’s week four of the weight loss contest.  If you recall, I’m having somewhat of a contest with my brother in law where we set a target to lose 17 pounds each at the rate of a pound a week.  If either of us weighs more than we did the previous week, we have to pay the other person $10.  At the end of the contest (in Nov) if either of us isn’t at our goal, we have to pay the other $10 per pound that we are off.

I’m disappointed to tell you that I had to pay my brother in law $10 last week.  It’s a long story but is filled with many mouth stuffing incidents.  You see, they had a party out at the lake.  I drank too much and ate too much after being good all week.  That was all it took to pop my weight back up prior to the weigh in.  During the party I actually found myself thinking, "This is so much fun, it’s worth the $10".  Talk about terrible.

Besides that one "slip up", I’m actually doing well.  We are keeping a spreadsheet with the weekly weigh in numbers and I have charted those out so that we can follow our progress along a trend line (goal vs actual).  I was above the line once (when I had to pay my brother in law) but I’m now tracking on the line and should be able to keep myself below it from here on out.

Psychologically it was quite painful to pay the $10 to my brother in law.  It wasn’t because of the money, but was more because I had gone in to this with the goal of not paying him anything.  I underestimated how strong the temptation to eat and drink would be.  I suppose it’s a good lesson for me and I’m hoping to use that week as a reminder of why I need to keep on track.  I’m still much happier to pay my brother in law for slipping up than to pay a weight loss company every week.

With the price of everything going up, I’ve been very conscious of our energy use both in our cars, and in our home.

I’ve always been one of those people that turns lights off anywhere that they aren’t necessary.  We have been very good about only using lights in the rooms that we are in over the years.  Having a five year old running around the house makes that a bit of a challenge but we have been pretty successful in reinforcing that she should turn off the lights when she leaves a room.  I still have to keep an eye out, but overall we do a very good job of keeping the lights off.

This year we have decided to try to minimize the use of our central air conditioning.  This is the first house we’ve had air conditioning in and somehow we always managed to live through the heat before living here, so why not try to suck it up a bit in this house?  The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t get THAT hot in the Pacific Northwest.  We’ll have a few months of 70-90 degree weather but there will be plenty of cooler days mixed in.  So far this year we have only used the air conditioning two times.  On the two days that we did use it, the temperature got up to 90 degrees and the house was about 80 degrees.  The humidity level is higher here than many other parts of the country (excluding the south) so 90 is significant.  On those two days we worked to get the temperature down to about 73 degrees and ended up pretty comfortable when we went to sleep that night.

In the past our average bill in the dead of summer has been about $200.  Our goal this year is to cut that in half.  We’ll do this by creating cross drafts in the house in the morning and in the evening as it cools off and will also use fans.  We have a ceiling fan in our bedroom which really helps a LOT.  Our daughter does not have a fan but we have a floor fan that we point down the hall to cool her room down.  Just like with cutting our gas consumption in the cars, all it takes is a little bit of effort and awareness to make an impact.

Do you have any ideas for cutting electricity use in your home?

I am a huge fan of Google GrandCentral.  What is it?  GrandCentral gives you a phone number in the area of your choosing.  You can give that number out and route calls to any other phone.  When someone calls our GrandCentral number I have it ring our home, our cel phones and my laptop (Skype).  By using this number, our friends and family can reach us wherever we are.  If we happen to be at the lake, the calls come in on our laptop via Skype.  If we are out and about, we take the call on our cel phone.  If we answer it on the laptop and want to transfer the call to our cel phone, no problem.

An even better feature is the ability to make long distance calls via GrandCentral for no cost.  I have uploaded all of my contacts for home and work to the online address book. If I want to make a long distance call, I simply bring up that contact on the website and click the "call" button.  Instantaneously my home phone rings and when I pick up I can hear the phone ringing on the other end.  The person answers and we can talk as long as we like for FREE.  I’ve found myself using this feature for work a lot.  When I’m working in my home office and need to call someone out of my local calling area, I simply add them to GrandCentral (very quickly) and then push "call".

I’m anxious to see what new features they come out with next.  It’s hard to believe this service will last forever because I know they are paying the connection fees for all of those long distance calls.  I can only assume that they will be putting ads on the site etc to bring in revenue.

I’m also interested to check out the "Magic jack" product.  It’s not related to Google but I’ve been hearing a lot about it.  It sounds like it gives you the ability to use any phone to make long distance calls anywhere in the country for free.  You simply buy a little usb device that’s about the size of a matchbook and plug it in to the computer.  There is a standard phone jack (RJ11) on the end of that little device that you can plug any regular phone in to.  It’s that easy.  You simply pick up the phone and dial.  It costs $39.95 to buy the device and pay for the first year of service and then it’s $19.95 per year after that.  Wow.  That’s cheap.

Has anyone been using the Magic Jack?

I should also thank Jonathon at MyMoneyBlog for turning me on to Grandcentral and telling me how to get on the beta!!!

About 6 months or so ago my neighbor told me that he wanted to get rid of a weight set that was taking up space in his garage.  He had purchased this about 9 months before that and had probably paid in the neighborhood of $600-700 for everything.  I asked him how much he wanted for it and he said, "Oh, just give me $200 for it".  I did and thought it was a pretty good deal.  Back to the present.  I’ve decided to get rid of it since I haven’t been using it much.  I listed the package on Craigslist for $295 and people came out of the woodwork to buy it.  It should be sold by the end of the day today.  (Someone is coming to get it at 3:00 today after the previous buyer fell through).  My first thought was that I priced it too cheap but I’m happy to get rid of it and turn a nice profit.

That brings me to my question.  Should I feel guilty for "flipping" this weight set and making almost a $100 profit?  Should I consider splitting the profit with my neighbor?  Or should I just think, "He got it out of his garage and was happy to get $200 for it so I should consider us even".

What would you do?

Update: I told him what I got for it but didn’t offer to split it. He commented that he would have probably given it away in the first place just to get it out of the garage.

Something that has always interested me is people’s connection to "stuff".  Don’t get me wrong.  I have the same issues as everyone else.  If I’ve paid money for something, I feel a strange obligation to keep it for as long as I’m breathing.  Lately I’ve really been trying to call myself to the carpet when I think I need to keep something indefinitely.  What I need to remember is that you really don’t buy anything in life.  Everything is pretty much rented.  I mean, you can’t take it with you when you die, right?

Exhibit A:

When I was 18 years old I wanted a new home stereo.  It couldn’t be just any home stereo either.  It had to be LOUD.  Looking back, as I’m typing this, I realize that my approach to money has been with me a lot longer than I thought.  A frugal person probably would have looked at a new home stereo as a frivolous purchase so I guess I can’t say I was frugal.  I can say that, no matter how stupid a purchase I wanted to make, I always made sure I was buying it at the very best possible price.  In the case of the stereo it meant a trip to the Bon Marche scratch and dent outlet.  I was able to find a very nice Mitsubishi home stereo for about half the price as a comparable new one.  That still equated to $500.

Almost 19 years later I finally parted ways with that stereo.  I realize now that I should have gotten rid of that stereo years ago.  I hadn’t used it in at least 6 years but I still didn’t want to get rid of it because at one time I paid a lot of money for it.  Until last weekend I didn’t measure the intangible costs of keeping it.  Frankly it was showing it’s age, I wasn’t using it, and it was taking up valuable space in one of our rooms.  (If you recall, home stereos from 19 years ago were all about BIG speakers and a large rack of gear).  I’m happy to say, it’s gone.  I gave it away to a neighbor on Sunday.  The deal was, whether he wanted all the components or not, he had to take the whole enchilada if he wanted to take any of it.  He took it all and kept 3 pieces total and then took the rest to a second hand store and donated it.  It’s really kind of humorous.  I found myself touting all the features and benefits of owning that stereo even though it is long past it’s prime.  The emotional attachment to that dusty old stereo was quite apparent to anyone that happened to be listening as we hauled it down the street.

Have you found yourself keeping something for no other reason than you spent your hard earned money on it years and years ago?

Update:

Holy smokes. JD at Get Rich Slowly turned me on to this article about getting down to owning just 100 things.  And here I was feeling an emotional attachment to a crappy old stereo.  Well worth the read.

Gosh.  There are lots of money events happening around our house these days.  For starters, my wife bought me a gas weed eater for Father’s day.  It turned out to be used (someone had bought it from Home Depot, used it, and then returned it).  I decided that I didn’t want someone else’s potential problem and would much rather put the funds toward a new desktop computer instead so we returned it.

Like I mentioned, we also bought a new Dell desktop PC this week.  We are still waiting for it to arrive.  I have been using my existing desktop computer for over 4 years and it’s really starting to slow me down.  I was able to utilize my employee discount program through my company and got it for $469.  That dwarfs any of the deals on Fatwallet these days so I know it’s a good value.  I can’t wait for it to show up so that I can get it all configured.  I didn’t buy a new monitor since the two that I have now (I’m a dual screen user and can’t ever go back to one) are still in perfectly good shape.

We are also selling a weight set that we’ve had in the garage for about 9 months.  I bought the set from my neighbor last year for $200.  That was a screaming deal, which is why I bought it.  I’ve used it a bit but am really not getting my money’s worth out of it.  I put it up on Craigslist for $295 and have already gotten 2 calls on it.  I expect to make about a $75 profit once it sells.  I’ll use that cash to cover a portion of the cost of the new Dell.  The only reason that I bought the weight set at the time was because I knew it was a great price.  I figured I’d see how much I use it and if I didn’t (which I didn’t), I’d just sell it for a small profit.  I’ve got someone coming tomorrow to pick it up so I think that’s going to work out.

Other than that, it has been a pretty quiet and relaxing weekend here.  We spent some time down at Lake Washington today and then had an amazing dinner on the barbeque tonight.  It was very nice to spend the day with my wife and daughter.  It was a nice sunny day and a wonderful time all around.  If every day was like today, I’d be one blessed individual.

I hope you had a happy father’s day if you are a father, or just one heck of a Sunday if you aren’t!

Let me start by saying that my household seems to have incredibly bad luck with cameras.  My wife and I have been married for over 10 years and in that time have lost or broke every single camera we’ve owned.  Before the unlucky pattern was uncovered we invested in some moderately priced cameras.  I still remember the fancy Sony digital camera that we purchased for $375 + tax.  We reasoned that it was not a bad price if you averaged the cost across 4 years and considered all the amazing memories we would capture with it.  Less than a year later the camera was dead.  My wife dropped it at just the right angle and killed the flash in it.  The camera still worked for outdoor shots but we couldn’t convince our families to host all of their events outside, especially in the dead of winter. 

After that unfortunate camera event, I was not all that interested in spending another $400.  My approach to camera buying immediately changed from buying a camera for the long term to buying a camera for the short term.  My wallet was still stinging from the first purchase so I decided to embrace a new strategy.  Buy the cheapest name brand camera I could find.  I scoured the online discount sites and lurked on Fatwallet for weeks.  Finally I saw just the post.  Office Depot had a clearance price on a Sony low end digital camera.  It was a 3.2 megapixel camera and had a 1.5 inch screen.  I wasn’t going to win any photography awards with it, but it certainly was good enough to capture the day to day happenings in our life.  I rushed down to Office Depot and got one.  After all the discounts the total cost was $77.  I smiled all the way home.  (Come to think of it, I should have taken a picture of my smiling face).  Every time I took that camera out I felt a sense of satisfaction that I had slayed the high cost digital camera dragons.  The pictures weren’t great, but they were good enough to develop in the standard 4X6 format and if you were careful you could even take a clear picture.  Forget about the action shots because the shutter wasn’t fast enough to capture the moment.  That wasn’t really a problem at our house though because we are all a little slow……  About 9 months after we got that camera it disappeared.  We looked all over the house for it.  We checked the couch cushions, under the seat in the cars, behind the wash machine, you get the idea.  I was disgusted.  While it wasn’t a $400 camera, it was still $77 of our hard earned money.  It was time to go without for awhile……..

Fast forward about 9 months.  Day after day we were missing capturing wonderful moments with our young daughter.  There were no pictures of her Halloween costume.  We missed Easter pictures that year and thank goodness someone brought a camera for her birthday party.  Enough was enough.  No matter how frustrated I was at our inability to take care of and keep track of a camera we were going to have to bite the bullet again.  I started the search online.  It wasn’t long before Sony started coming out with new models and all the stores started running clearance specials on the old models.  I reluctantly collected my coupons and bought another one.  It’s amazing how much better the cameras are year after year.  This one was a Sony 5.0 megapixel model.  The LCD screen was 2 inches this time and the shutter speed was MUCH faster than the previous models.  All in all I was happy with it and it only set us back $130 total.

The camera worked great and took pretty good pictures and movies.  We took hundreds and hundreds of pictures with it.  We got great pictures of the lake house construction, our daughter’s birthday party, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years.  Things were going pretty well with our new camera until one day about two weeks ago.  I had half heartedly looked for the camera for a couple days when I asked my wife, "Have you seen the camera?"  "No", she said.  "I haven’t seen it since last week."  Hmmm.  Did I leave it somewhere?  Did we leave it out at the lake?  I checked my bag, the cars, the couch cushions, behind the wash machine.  No luck.  I think I’m going to quit checking those places because all I ever find is dust, pennies and remote controls.  I finally gave up looking for the camera and hoped it would turn up in an obvious place.

A couple days ago I was in my office at the house and I heard my wife say, "Honey, I found the camera!"  Finally.  I knew it would turn up.  I walked out of the office to see my wife coming through the back sliding door.  "Uhhh honey.  Did you find the camera outside?"  I said.  "Yeah, I accidentally left it outside last week when I was taking pictures in the back yard",  she said.  If we lived in California, this probably wouldn’t have been a big deal but we don’t.  We live in Seattle.  Have you heard about our weather up here?  It rained almost the entire week that the camera sat outside.  The LCD screen was all fogged up and the camera was dripping wet.  While it turned on, the screen was foggy and we decided not to push it.  It’s been sitting in the kitchen all week drying out.  I would have tested it by now but we can’t find the battery charger and extra AA batteries.  Maybe I should check the front yard.

I finally jumped on the bandwagon and joined Twitter.  I’m subscribing to a few PF bloggers.  If you are twittering, leave a comment so I can add you! 

You can follow along with me at: http://www.twitter.com/elym

I also have installed a Twitter plug in so that you can see the latest Twitters right here on the website.  (Look over on the right sidebar)

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: