My wife loves Christmas music. I love Christmas music. The difference is that she likes it about 3 months earlier than I do. Starting on Halloween, if not sooner, the sounds of Bing Crosby and Charlie Brown’s Christmas album fill my living room. For some reason, it feels like eating dinner for breakfast; as if there is some unspoken moral code that prohibits it. But we put that in our wedding vows so I can’t complain (just kidding).
My point is that for some of us, sometimes it is hard to think about Christmas early, especially when it comes to buying presents. Usually I wait until the last 2 weeks and frantically put everything together - it feels so natural. However, that is usually the recipe that leads to people a) putting themselves in debt from big spending and lack of budgeting, or b) all of a sudden they find they don’t have the money to buy anyone else anything.
Technically, now is the best time to start shopping for Christmas; picking out a gift here and a gift there and being pleasantly surprised by how much you have left in the bank when the holidays actually roll around.
So will I change my habits? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about…
If you eat a hamburger that someone behind the counter of a fast food restaurant spit in, sure, ignorance is bliss. But when you get taken advantage of and ripped off when buying a good or service you know nothing about, ignorance is not bliss.
I recently went to a major retailer to buy a new 23″ HP monitor. When checking out, I was relentlessly offered “extra protection” for “not that much more” because “you know how technology fails”. My response? I told them I was buying HP and wouldn’t be needing “extra protection”, but if I ever bought another brand from them I would be sure to get it. Same thing when I was generously offered a $2000 extended warranty on my Scion. I told them “sorry, Toyotas/Scions rarely break down so I won’t be needing it.” They still pressed. Maybe they have never seen the movie “Tommy Boy” where Chris Farley eloquently explains that essentially, guarantees, extra protection, warranties, etc are all basically labeling a product as worthless. It’s like saying “hey, when it breaks (because it will), come back and we will give you another one that will break”.
Granted not ALL coverage plans are bad news, but too often I see people that don’t know what pixels, drive trains, power supplies, etc are and so they buy out of fear that this “thing” they know nothing about will break. Ignorance with consumer products can end up costing a lot.
Personal philosophy: 99% of the time I pass on the insurance, warranty, etc, knowing that all the money I will save over the years will far exceed the amount I will have to spend on the item or two that breaks down once in a blue moon.
When it comes to life, happiness, and money, there are two extremes: the Donald Trump approach and the Mother Teresa approach. The below quotes do a nice job summing it up:
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” -Jane Austen
“All you need is love.” -John Lennon
What do you think? Right in the middle? More towards one than the other? All I know is that one of them smiles and one of them doesn’t…
So, at any given time we have a variety of “ideas” in our pipeline here at the credit union. Sometimes they make it through to reality, sometimes not. One thing we are playing with right now is the idea of a new checking account that is a little different than your run of the mill checking.
Essentially, it’s another free checking account with an above average interest rate. The hitch is that all of the interest paid on the account would go directly to the charity of your choice (with some parameters around which charities qualify). In addition, every time you swiped your debit card we would donate a little more to that charity (can you imagine how much would get paid out if everyone used this??) Bottom line: you get a free checking, and a charity gets paid for it.
So my two question are: 1) Do you like the idea? and 2) Would you personally use it?
I feel like ever since I picked up a diseased street rat and gently stroked it thinking it was a lost baby chinchilla nothing interesting has happened to me…that is until I remembered…
One of my close guy friends is the ultimate bachelor. For instance, he went MONTHS without anything (seriously, ANYTHING) in his kitchen except for an old bag of baby carrots in the fridge until his girlfriend finally brought over some old cups to drink tap water from. By the way, her charitable visit was the first time the bathroom had ever even seen hand soap either. Speaking of the bathroom…
Unfortunately, at the end of 2008 my free spirited bachelor friend was laid off due to the economy forcing his employer to downsize. Partially because of his new need to save money, and partially due to not checking the mail, his gas ended up getting turned off, leaving him with less monthly expenses and personal hygiene than ever before. But alas, my friend is a crafty one and came up with a solution: A popcorn bowl. How did that solve his problems? Since his gas was off, he would microwave several small bowls of water, combine them in the glorious popcorn bowl, and Ta Da! Occasional sponge bath here we come. (The picture I posted is the actual bowl in his bathroom).
The moral of the story? It has been 6 months, my friend has had a new job for a while now, and he still hasn’t turned the gas on. Whether he formed an attachment to the bowl, is forgetful, or just wants to keep saving money from that bill, only he knows. One thing is for sure; it is amazing at how people can adapt to less than “ideal” situations. Remember, for 99% of mankind’s history people didn’t have showers, deodorant, electricity, cars, phones, or Twinkies and they somehow managed to survive. Are there any things you can “get used to” that could save money?
Sorry to kick the dead horse, but this post is one more reminder that time = money, except this time there is something tangible that is easy, quick, and free that you can do to save yourself a lot of time. It’s called “RSS” and if you aren’t using it now, you hopefully will be soon. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” (when you see the orange icon like the one to the left on a webpage, it means that page has an RSS feed you can subscribe to). It sounds techy and advanced, but it’s not. In a nutshell, having an RSS feed set up means that instead of checking every single website and blog you follow for new information, you can subscribe to that site and your RSS feed will bring new content on those web pages to YOU as soon as they are published. Some benefits are:
- You save tons of time from surfing, checking sites for updates, and sorting through information.
- You can consume WAY more information, in WAY less time.
- It’s the coolest thing since sliced bread.
It can be hard to explain (even though it’s easy to do) and I won’t dive into how to set it up, but this short video does an excellent job of explaining it.
Every once in a while you see or hear something that stops and makes you think…maybe even cracks your paradigm a little. I just had one of those of those moments watching a car commercial none-the-less. In the commercial, the narrator says “…when wealth is measured in time, and not money.” Now unless he is some sort of obsessive watch collector, I think there is something to think about there.
Do you ever stop to question what it is you REALLY want? Maybe it’s to climb to the top of a company, or Mount Everest, to have a huge house and host people all the time, or a small, simple house with a low monthly payment. Maybe it’s a dozen kids and a community of family, or maybe you just want to travel the world someday with your spouse and no kids. Whatever it is that you ultimately want, it is up to you to realize it and chase after it. I say this because sometimes we wake up mid way through life (I am not there yet but have seen it) and realize that each day we get up and go to work to make money to pay for all the stuff we buy when we aren’t at work (because we “deserve” it for working) and it turns into an endless cycle. Our “wealth” stops being time, or people, or chasing desires, and turns into “stuff”. Remember how cool car phones used to be and how much they cost? Not anymore. Stuff dies. Companies intentionally produce things with short life cycles so you will have to buy yet another and another (what number iPod are you on?)
What does “wealth” mean to you? Just food for thought.
I am writing this post standing up. Why? Because it hurts to sit down. You see, I have recently been dominated by the P90X; one of the million exercise infomercial products that I would normally mock and laugh at.
However, unlike a magic electro-belt that you plug into the wall until it supposedly vibrates you into shape, the P90X actually makes you want to die from exhaustion. The short of it is, it’s a DVD set of 12 workouts, each an hour long, that you rotate through on a schedule that keeps it 1) lively instead of repetitive, and 2) is better for your muscles than doing the same thing over and over.
Are you wondering how much I got ripped off? It is $120 + $20 shipping online, but I only paid $100 on Craigslist. Sound like a lot for some workout DVDs? Maybe. But it is still less than 2 months of gym membership payments; at least that’s my perspective.
So by doing the P90X I am saving 3 things: money on gym fees and the gas to get there, the time of going to and from the gym, and humiliation from showing off my wussy pasty body to a bunch of strangers grunting in a sweat box.
The P90X. Think about it.
PS: That’s NOT me in the picture, in case you were wondering…
I think by this point in time pretty much everyone know that if you shop around you can find things cheaper online. However, what a lot of people still don’t know is there are a slew of websites dedicated specifically to the best of the best when it comes to deals. You can find these sites by googling “one deal at a time”. The reason they are so cheap is because they typically find the best deals among older, overstocked, and warehouse merchandise and sell it one item at a time.
Below are three of the top “one deal a day” sites. I have seen some amazing stuff out there and have friends who have gotten some killer deals as well (one friend got a brand name ski backpack for $16 off steepandcheap.com).
Check them out; you never know what you will find.
This week, I want to do something a little different. Instead of encouraging people to save money, I want to encourage people to spend money (only if you have the cash on hand and it makes sense of course).
There are several things that keep humans alive, which are at the top of our spending priority list: food, water, and shelter. An iPhone won’t do much for you if you are starving to death and sleeping outside in the snow.
However, there are 2 other “necessities” that, in my opinion, should be labeled as purchase priorities: Shoes and a mattress.
You might be cheap in other areas of your life, or look for ways to cut costs with other purchases (which is great), but buying a nice mattress and a good set of shoes should be essential. When you breakdown your life, you realize that you will spend 1/3 of it lying in bed (8 hrs out of a 24 hr day). The other 2/3rds, if you are not sitting somewhere, you are walking. Not to mention that good shoes can last up to a year and a mattress up to 10 or 20.
So treat yourself nice and spend the extra money when it comes to shoes and a quality mattress, your body will appreciate it. (Note: I am not referring to $200 high heels that actually hurt your body).