The Addison Cafe

One common thread woven throughout history is mankind’s love for music. Every generation has favored different genres and the dance moves to go along with them (unfortunately), and people everywhere of all different backgrounds, cultures, and ages share this love. And then came the invention of the internet (thank you Al Gore), the mp3, and the iPod. And so the addiction began…

This week I wanted to take a minute and give a brief review of the top 3 ways to get and listen to the music you want (iTunes, Amazon mp3, and Pandora), and the cost associated with each of them.

iTunes:  King of the music jungle! Or so they want you to think. While iTunes does have the biggest selection of music to choose from and great navigation, they are also the most expensive of the 3 options. Their music is also protected and won’t play in mp3 players outside of the iPod or iPhone. Although they are slowly taking away the protection, they have a long way to go.

Amazon mp3:  The real only viable competition to iTunes. Their library is a little smaller, but if you listen to mainstream artists you will have nothing to worry about. Also, their navigation and store aren’t as clean as iTunes. However, on the plus side, none of their music is protected, which means you can play it anywhere. It is also better quality than iTunes’ protected songs (same quality as their unprotected ones though), it can download straight to iTunes if you still want to use that for your player, and it is often cheaper (with singles sometimes being offered at $0.89 instead of iTunes $0.99 and albums can be a couple bucks off as well).

Pandora:  Pandora is free internet radio with 3 great features. First, it‘s completely FREE. Second, there are no commercials or interruptions; just constant music.  Third, and best of all, it analyzes the types of songs you likes and plays similar songs. You can create different radio stations according to different styles of music. For instance, if you ask for “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, Pandora will figure out the tempo, beat, pitch, melody, style, instruments, vocals, etc, and cross reference that against a huge database of music to pull songs that sound similar to that one. That way, you will end up hearing the type of music you want from artists you love and maybe from some you haven’t heard of as well. It is hard to explain until you try it, but once you do, it will be love at first sound (Pandora.com). The only downside? It’s radio and you don’t own the music.

All of these methods are cheaper than the “old fashioned” CD, and each has their pros and cons. I personally use all three, depending on what I need. If you haven’t already, give them a shot. Just keep your dance moves to yourself. Enjoy! 

The other night I forfeited 2 hrs of my life by watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Awfulness.  It was over acted, over plotted, and over effected (IMO). Even though I regret watching it, fortunately I don’t have a guilty conscience about how much I spent on it.  I went to Blockbuster to see what they had in stock and noticed that Indiana Jones was available. However, Blockbuster was recently kind enough to jack up their new release prices to 5 bucks.  So I pulled out the new G1 phone (shameless plug, see below post) and quickly did a search of Redbox.com to see if they had the movie in stock, which they did. For those of you that don’t know, Redbox is a relatively new way of getting dvds. It has been around for a year or two now but a lot of people still haven’t heard of it. Essentially, it is like a vending machine full of dvds. Most of them sit outside of a McDonalds, Safeway, Albertsons, etc. The best way to describe what it looks like is…a red box. Fancy that.

Here’s how it works:  All the dvds in the machine are new or recent releases. They are all 1 night rentals. And best of all, they are all only 1 dollar. If you procrastinate returning your dvd, it will charge you 1 dollar a day until you return it or until it has been 25 days, at which point it stops charging you and you get to keep the dvd. So if you manage to return it the next day, you will be saving 4 bucks on every rental compared to Blockbuster (that’s 80% off!). No membership required, no paperwork, no nothin’. Just a new way to rent movies and save some money while you are at it. Enjoy! 

I try to always be on the lookout for ways to save big amounts of money. For instance, if you take the time to shop around, you can usually save money on things like car insurance, clothes, or furniture.  However, there is one eye-gouging expense that I have yet to find a cheap alternative to: the haircut.

For girls, it can cost as much as an extra car payment 4 times a year! Guys are another story. Guys on the other hand, only cost about 20 bucks a year. How does that work? 20 bucks is how much a baseball cap costs. In case you don’t want to want to go the hat route and you are wondering what it might cost, I used to pay 15 dollars per cut (that is the bottom end).  I have since forsaken the barber shop, gathered my courage like a man, and (gulp) let my wife start cutting my hair. Guys, for less than 40 dollars you can pick up a pair of clippers and do it yourself or have your wife or friend do it. If you botch it like the kid in the picture, revert back to plan A (the hat).

Ladies, I understand longer hair is harder to manage and you want to look nice. But is there a cheaper way to do it? I heard in college that Cool Aid can dye hair, will that work? If anyone out there has a money saving secret in regards to hair cutting, I am all ears (pardon the pun).

A quick story regarding haircuts…one of my friends has his wife cut his hair as well. Except that one time she forgot to put the blade guard on and ended up buzzing a strip down to the scalp like the kid in the picture. Rather than shave his whole head, he simply buzzed a symmetrical strip to match on the other side. The moral of the story is that if you decide to do it yourself, you might need a good sense of humor…

While there are plenty of four letter words I could blog about, I thought I would go after one that isn’t normally considered “bad”. In fact, it is almost always considered “good”. We love to talk about it, brag to our friends about it, and as a matter of fact, we even crave it. No, it’s not “Coke” (I’m a Pepsi guy myself). The four letter word I am talking about is “Sale” (shudder).  That simple word has been know to rob people blind, cause conflict in relationships, and create mass hysteria (remember the day after Thanksgiving Sale??).

We all know that sometimes sales can be a great thing, and often times we really do save a lot of money. But like Pavlov’s dog, we are conditioned to drool every time we hear or read the word “sale”.  One of my close friends graciously gives a large percentage of his paycheck every year to so called “great deals”. We don’t stop to think that we still might be paying too much, or that the sale price is barely less than the original price and still includes an outrageous markup.

Make sure to examine whether or not you really are saving money next time you see that four letter word. Just something to think about as we head into the holiday season.

We all have bad days from time to time. Or as it is referred to in the movie “OfficeSpace”, we get a “case of the Mondays”. Whether it’s at work, home, or somewhere else, every once in a while a day turns bad and we have to figure out what we are going to do about it.

Most people have a plan of attack for situations such as these: Starbucks.  Heck, for a lot of us we think, “why wait for a bad day? Why not be pro-active and get Starbucks on the way to work. That would be the responsible thing to do”. And yes, it would be if it makes you a more pleasant person to be around; your family and co-workers will be thanking you. But Starbucks isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for people. Some need a coveted Diet Coke with lime, or pizza for dinner when they get home or lunch at their favorite restaurant. 

The bottom line is that most people have something to rescue them from their woes.  The problem is that our caffeinated band-aid costs us 3 bucks a pop (or whatever your treat costs) and over a course of a year that can add up.  If you are a true addict and have one a day you will spend over a thousand a year. Just for the sake of round numbers, if you take home 50k a year, you are spending 2% of your income on coffee alone.

Now I am not here to judge who spends what on coffee (I too am guilty of bowing down to the corporate monster :::cough::: tall mocha with whip :::cough:::). I am just merely pointing out that our emotional pacifiers can really make a financial dent over time.  What do you “need” in order to have a good day? Is it worth the cost?

WhapWhapWhapWhap…that was the sound my car started making while my wife and I were driving 70mph down the highway last Saturday. I instantly pulled over as visions of repair bills went through my mind. It turns out a 1 inch thick strip of rubber had gotten ripped off my front tire and was hitting the underside of the car ever time the wheel turned. The irony? I was on my way to get NEW TIRES FOR THE CAR. Sweet. Couldn’t make it another 10 miles, could ya car? So I busted out the puke yellow donut from the trunk and feebly attempted to take off the front tire (with the sorry excuse for a tire iron it came with). I do pushups and pull-ups at home, but apparently not enough; I couldn’t budge a single lug nut. Way to be a man in front of the wife; even the dog looked a little let down. So I did 2 things: called AAA and continually checked the mirror hoping a cop would see my hazard lights and stop…

Long story short, since I have been too cheap to buy AAA (it’s not that expensive either), they said they could sign me up as a new member but in the state of California they don’t provide same day service. “Would I still like to open an account right now?” they asked. Uh, NO.

Plan B: I finally saw a cop approaching and….cool, he blew by me at like 80mph. However, he pulled over half a mile down the road at another stranded vehicle and got out to help them. Crossing my fingers that the tire wouldn’t blow, I turned the car on and drove down the shoulder and parked almost blocking him in between me and the other car. After simply asking for help to get my tire off, he looked at me and said, “Uh, there is a tow truck on the way for this other guy, he can probably help you.” Thank you civil servant. After basically explaining that I just needed his help for 1 minute to get the dumb tire off and making it clear “no” wasn’t an acceptable answer, he grunted and said he thought he had something in his trunk that could help me out. I waited expecting to see some super techy tire remover thingy when lo, he pulls out a tire iron. So that was his magical “something” that might be able to help me. The good news is he got the tire off, but he had to literally jump up and down on the tire iron, which semi-restored my masculinity since he wasn’t able to do it with his bare hands either. In the end, I was able to make my tire appointment with 5 minutes to spare (lousy pun) and I didn’t have to pay a tow truck.

The moral of the story: Sometimes in the name of “saving money” it is easy to be a cheapskate and not buy practical necessities (like AAA). Did I mention that was the THIRD time in 7 months that I could have used AAA? Saving money is good, but sometimes it is better to spend it than to take a gamble.

I hate lines. That is why earlier this week I got frustrated when I was in San Francisco and I went to check out the glorious new iPhone. I walked up to the front door of the Mac store but noticed there was a line of 10-15 people leading down the sidewalk. I asked an Apple employee who was standing outside if that line was for the new iPhone. Nope. That line was just to get in the store. He pointed behind me to at least a hundred other people leading the opposite direction and said “that line is for the iPhone”. Two lines. One just to get in the store, the other to pickup the gadget of the decade.

The iPhone is good at a lot of things. Playing music, surfing the web, pretending to slash people with a lightsaber (google “phone saber” and you will see what I mean). It’s also good at taking your money. I will admit that the new price cut to $199 for an iPhone is pretty reasonable, however, AT&T really bleeds you with the monthly costs. For a basic plan with data (internet) it costs 70 bucks a month (that’s just for one person btw; a family plan is a lot more). If you want a more comfortable plan with unlimited weekend minutes it will run you 90 bucks (of course there are taxes and fees so it is actually a little higher than that). An all you can eat iPhone buffet with unlimited everything? $129 per month, vs. the $99 plans offered from other cell phone carriers. 

It comes down to needs vs. wants. We need to communicate with others. We want to pretend we are Luke Skywalker while crankin’ our hip hop from our phone and at the same time surfing YouTube for the latest viral video. 90+ bucks a month is a steep price to pay.

Is it worth it? Could you sacrifice the iPhone and save half of that bill every month? Or do you get one and skip a few meals out but impress all your friends? There we go again…trying to impress the Joneses.

What do you think?

Last week I wrote about blowing money on fast food and feeling good about it. I wanted to follow up and clarify that obviously not everyone is in a position to do that. We all have different incomes, obligations, and circumstances. However, more often than not there is another reason why we don’t have as much money as we would like: The Joneses.

The family down the street, your co-worker, and the person on TV. What do they all have in common? Shiny things…and debt. But we don’t see the debt…just the shiny things. Too much of our money is wasted trying to keep up with the Joneses (whether consciously or unconsciously). A friend of mine was lamenting that he didn’t have a new truck like all the neighbors on his street had. I reminded him that they most likely didn’t own those trucks and even though he drove an older vehicle, he was closer to retirement than they were. (Of course it’s easier said than done…the new iPhone is calling my name…)

Too often we compare ourselves to others; it seems almost impossible not to from time to time. Let’s face it; our culture doesn’t exactly promote contentment. There is a saying: “we spend money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.” How close does that hit home for you? Stop keeping up with the Joneses; you probably don’t like them anyways.

Ever feel guilty from eating fast food? Buying Starbucks? Your morning bagel? (that sounds so good right now…) I have. A lot. But we do it anyways don’t we? Always justifying “well, it’s only a couple bucks”.  Right now you are probably imagining that I am going to turn into your mother and start lecturing you on why you shouldn’t waste your money on fast food. Nothing could be further from the truth. This time I am going to play the little devil on your shoulder, not the angel.

I can’t count the number of times I have been harassed or persecuted by people who point their little finger and accuse me of wasting my money on food. (Know-it-all voice) “did you know that a latte a day for a year = x dollars?” or “did you know if you save your latte money and invest it at x% for x years you will have x dollars?”.  Yes I know. A penny saved is a penny earned. Yadda yadda yadda.

However, I don’t believe you have to save every penny. This is how I stopped feeling the fast food guilt trip (based on the “pay yourself first” principal by David Bach in “The Automatic Millionaire”):

I do first things first. In this order: I pay taxes (no choice on that one), bills, save towards an emergency fund, save towards retirement, and then spend the rest. (note: charity, tithing, and giving are something a lot of people choose to do. Due to the variety of personal preference involved, I left that off my list). Once I know that my responsibilities are taken care of (taxes, bills, savings), I know whatever I have left can basically be spent without thinking twice. Let’s say that after bills and savings you are left with 100 bucks at the end of the month and so you buy 6 McDonalds Happy Meals, 13 mocha frappuccinos with whip, and spend the rest on iTunes. So what? You have peace of mind that you took care of yourself first. Your savings goals are met (keeping in mind you should be setting goals in the first place). No scary “oh no now I can’t pay bills” thoughts going through your head. You are covered.  It is a beautiful thing to enjoy a Big Mac guilt free (except for maybe the calories).

THAT is why I am ok blowing cash on fast food…I pay myself first so I know my future is already taken care of. Do you?

*Note: This is assuming you set healthy savings goals and have self control. Sometimes (like if a car breaks down) it is wise to skip a month of fast food and Starbucks. Use good judgment. More to come on financial hardship next week…