Archive for November, 2007

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Teens and Personal Finance Interview One: Caity

November 27th, 2007

This is the first of a multi-part series on teens and personal finance.  The first part of the series is interview oriented, later episodes will be focused on answering some of the questions posed in the interviews.  The recording quality isn’t what I’d like due to the fact that I had my MacBook Pro and that was it for recording so there is some background noise.

Questions for listeners and readers:

What is the number one source you would recommend learning about personal finance from?  Blogs, books, videos or mentors?

What is the number one mistake you see over and over from people (and maybe yourself) that keeps people from financial growth?

Download Episode

Requires iTunes or Quicktime.

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Posted in Lesson Learned, Podcast, Teens

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How to Practice Safe Socks

November 27th, 2007

As I was putting on my socks this morning I had a recollection of a conversation I overheard one day when I was traveling through LAX airport. It was a conversation that caught me off guard but one that has stuck with me and now as a frugal blogger is relevant, but funny.

The Setup

I was in a terminal at LAX and I was waiting to get on a flight to head to Reno, NV, which was the closest airport to home at the time. I was sitting there probably tired since that’s usually the way airports make me feel when I saw a tall cowboy hat wearing man and his son walk past us, and then curve around to some seats behind us. I didn’t think much of their sitting there at the time and minded my own business. I try not to eaves drop too much lest I make it a habit or find out things I ought not to know. When you work around confidentiality long enough you begin to learn that knowing the dirt isn’t useful very often because its a liability.

However, I was at once awakened by the sound of the father chewing out his son for taking off his socks and boots. The son was scolded and told to put his socks and boots back on. What happened next is the part that has stuck in my mind over and over replaying to my own private comedy theater: the father scolded the son for putting his socks on the wrong way. Not the wrong foot, not inside out, not on his hands… but the wrong way. You see, there is a frugal way to put your socks on.

The correct method to put your socks on helps preserve the sock, make application to the foot simpler, and saves cowboy daddy hundreds of dollars in socks, I’m sure. To correctly apply the sock you must use your thumbs on the inside of the sock and roll it down into a very short tube in contrast to the long tube of a tube sock. You then put your toes into the small cup that you have created and slowly pull the sock up your leg unrolling the tube as you go. This serves two purposes: 1) It allows you to be a perfectionist about how your sock goes onto your foot and 2) it preserves the elastic bands in the sock so as to allow the sock to give you decades of good service. Assuming that a growing boy, which in this case was the case, wears the same size sock for decades.

I find this amusing, but do you think this is great frugality, normal for you, or super cheap?

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Posted in Funny Money, General

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A Deeper Look At Marriage and Finance Issues: Priorities

November 22nd, 2007

My wife and I have a great marriage. I’m not going to lie: she’s awesome and I’m truly blessed to be married to her. She’s got patience, talent, intelligence and determination. I could list off a long series of qualities she has, but I’ll spare you the reading time because this blog isn’t about how much I love my wife. However, we do have disagreements at times about where our money should go. Not severe disagreements, but disagreements about how our priorities fall. I always find that the resolution doesn’t come from a technique that you can master to get what you want. The resolution that comes comes from a character trait that I have had to cultivate, one that is against every single strain in my pride, but critical to success: humility.

  • Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to admit it when you’re priority is selfish.
  • Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to love your spouse enough to think of your spouse first, or at least as a higher priority than finances!
  • Humility is important because if you have children they need to see that a strong leader is humble and not harsh or dogmatic.
  • Humility is a critical tool when it comes to dealing with conflict.  Own your mistakes.  Apologize for them and move on to resolution of priorities.

There are very few things that I can think of that have been more valuable (with the exception of my faith).  Humble priority setting will help keep your marriage focused on the things that matter, keep things growing, and keep your marriage hat like dynamite.

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Posted in Foundations, Outside the Box

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Cheap Genes

November 21st, 2007

Today I ran into Target to buy some new jeans.  My wife was telling me to wait until Friday for the ‘black’ deals.  However, I needed new jeans and I wasn’t going to be fiddling with my pants (I forgot belts on this trip and I need jeans anyway).  I ran in and looked at the rack and there before my eyes was a sale tag telling me that the jeans were on sale for $14.99 USD.  Awesome!  I got a brand I know for a price I like.

I used to buy my pants at Old Navy but you won’t find the style I like at Old Navy any more.  Apparently in my old age of thirty million I’m out of fashion.  So I bought the low priced jeans that look like I need and fit me due to the last year’s weight loss.  Cheap?  Not really.  Frugal – you betcha.

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Posted in General

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Thoughts from My Journey Across One Third of the United States

November 19th, 2007

Getting up at 2:00 AM, leaving at 3:00 AM and arriving just after 11:00 PM my family and I left Aurora, Colorado and arrived in Plainfield, Indiana in just around Eighteen hours (remember we changed time zones, which accounts for two of the hours missing if you’re a math junky).  That included stops for gas, going to the bathroom and eating with minimal stops for getting directions because we managed to not get lost.  I drove for much of the time and I can say that I had a lot of time to think.

So in my thinking I did some thinking about time, money,determination and consistency.  For example, if I leave Aurora at the same time as another person, but I’m traveling at a different pace and get ahead, but stop to get gas, go to the bathroom, stretch, get some food and generally blow time like I don’t need to arrive at my destination – the person who was behind me can easily catch up.  I’ve not been consistent with my pace and priorities.  If you drive 80 miles an hour (128 kilometers an hour) to ‘get ahead’ but blow your time out, you’ve got things screwed up.  You show preference to speed, but nothing to consistency and lose your advantage.  This would be like a person putting 8,000.00 USD into a retirement fund that is getting a consistent return, but then stopping after two year while another person puts only 4,000 USD yearly into a retirement fund but not stopping  ever.  You have to be consistent and determined.

Other areas that got some thinking was the amount of time I was willing to spend on certain tasks.  As I drove for nearly 14 hours of the 18 hours I thought of things I could have been doing with my time instead of driving.  It also reminded me of things I could have been doing with my time when I wasn’t on the trip.  What is my time worth?  What is my priority for life?  othing revolutionary, but definitely important.

Lastly, we’re in Indiana because of Thankgiving.  We’re thankful for the opportunity to be here.  We’re thankful for all that we have.  What are you thankful for?  What have you learned this year that you’re going to take with you into 2008?

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Posted in General

How Do You Like Your WMMM?

November 14th, 2007

I’ve recently been philosophizing about how I want to make this blog grow into the future.  You know like compounding interest slowly I’ve seen the feed subscription grow, I’ve gotten more comments, and I’ve found that my feed subscriptions have grown as I network with people on Digg, Facebook and on various personal finance (PF) forums.

My initial goal for this site was to have so much information on the site that each day would have a frillion posts about how you would be a better money manager, investor, human being, and of course contributor to the well being of Paris Hilton.  Unfortunately I’ve not generated that much content and Paris Hilton isn’t getting and better.  I do feel like I’ve found my blogging voice in the PF community and that’s good.  I need to bring practical, well written, humorous content to the world wide web.  However, there’s another element that has absolutely floundered since this site started: I had intended to create a podcast and so far I’ve created one episode, interviewed one person and only published one episode and never finished editing the interview.  So, with that in mind please post in the comments:

1) Would you rather a post a day, or only a few posts a week, but posts that are probably of greater length?
2) Would you listen to a podcast?  I have this recording studio and its barely ever used.   I want to create a high quality podcast if I go for it.

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Posted in General

If You Are Employed You’ll Want to Read This Post

November 14th, 2007

Creative Commons http://flickr.com/photos/rightee/4428308/If you have ever managed people then the manager-tools.com podcast series is for you. Why does this relate to money management? Because if you’re looking to get ahead to increase your income then you will need to be a better communicator and more than likely a manager of people as well as finances. The advice on that site is free (with for-money advice also available), the advice is practical, and it is sure to at least begin to prepare you for life in the wide-weird-world of management.

If you’re currently just an employee then you’ll want to listen to this stuff simply to learn how your manager may be trying to communicate to you. Sometimes managers don’t know that they’re doing a bad job of communicating and you may learn from these audio lessons how to help your manager manage better – heck, you may even want to pass them along to your manager.

If you’re a parent these are valuable because they even apply some things to rearing a child. And let me tell you: rears of children should always be managed. If you’re a manager you should listen to these because odds are you’ve never been trained to be a manager, you’ve just been thrown into it. I have recently been chucked in front of the wheels of an oncoming management train myself and this sort of thing is going to be handy.

I would recommend starting at the bottom of the page and working your way up so that you can get a feel for their methodology. Its not difficult to listen to and you’ll want to keep a pencil & paper or a word processor open to take notes. I have a page of notes from one podcast already and am just starting my second. This stuff is dynamite strapped to the body of a dead manager – go ahead and light the fuse… its attached to you.

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Posted in Go Read This, Lesson Learned, Money Management, Outside the Box

Watching the Lobsters Boil While I Row to Set Them Free

November 13th, 2007

Have you ever watched a frog or a lobster boil in water? Me neither. I can’t afford them. But I have seen it on TV, which is like reality, only fake. But fakeness aside I recently watched a woman nearly panic filling out a form. At the UPS Store. Looking for a checkbox or some way to not get on a mailing list. You see she worked in the direct mailing industry. She was so worried that she might get on someone’s list and start getting a flood of mail. The staff tried to re-assure her that the form was for recording who she was in case they needed to contact her to let her know her package was accidentally dropped into a vat of acid and the package was destroyed. No dice. She knew that she was going to get huge amounts of mail because of the UPS store.

Part of the work I do for one client is in the email industry. I don’t worry about spam because the protection the email server offers me is so excellent. It comes in periodically, but I move the message into a spam sniffer and the computer gets smarter and the spammers have to work harder to get around the growing technology that makes the email safer to read, and more useful to read. I’ve grown care free when it comes to giving out my email address because I know that real email will reach me while fake email will flounder in the pits of some trash folder for less than 24 hours and then magically disappear.

The problem with both positions is problematic: we can develop a paranoia as humans and we can also get a little too naive. I need to be slightly more careful with my email address, and people like this woman need to relax and realize that junk mail is not going to end her life, though some tree somewhere gave up its life for the envelope and the paper inside.

As financial managers we need to regularly be watching our finances so that we can be aware of what is going on, we need to plan so that we can grow our resources, and we need to not be checking our bank accounts online every 5 minutes. If you know your direct deposit is going to come in on Friday, check it Friday afternoon to make sure its gone through, but don’t babysit your bank’s site looking for the cash to come in… even if you really need the cash to come in. But don’t just ignore the account Friday – confirm that the transactions are all in place.

Your financial life is not a lobster, but you want to make sure its not in hot water… or leaking like this dingy I’m in right now. Where’s the caulk?

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Posted in Foundations, Funny Money

Follow Up: Credit Score Post Card Shut-Down

November 9th, 2007

For the record shutting down my old Discover Card, which extended my available credit by almost $10,000.00 was one of the better things I could do for my credit score it went up by 33 points simply by closing down the Discover Card.  Yeah for that being good for me in more ways than one!

And now to pay off the rest of them…

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Posted in General

A Sit Down Talk With Grandpa

November 8th, 2007

WARNING!  THIS POST CONTAINS VERY PERSONAL OPINION AND RELIGIOUS CONTENT.  IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT MOVE ALONG.

If there was a super-hero in my life as a kid it was my grandpa Peterman. He’s 83 I believe and he and my grandma are out from California to visit my parents and several grandkids’ families. This morning at breakfast with Grandpa he gave me some advice that was 80+ years in the making: don’t focus on what doesn’t matter. Sure, that sounds so logical and common sense – but how have I (and you, too) applied that advice. How have I managed my time and my life with focus on what matters?  You see, I’m a Christian.  One of those fuddy-duddies that just doesn’t care what popular culture believes, but I haven’t been focusing on what matters in that part of my life and letting that influence every other decision I’ve made – including my finances.

What I’m referring to isn’t about abandoning money for religion.  I’m not talking about, “What would Jesus do?”  I’m talking about total saturation.   What is Jesus doing now in and through me in my life in every moment.  Its about relationship with Christ in finances.  Its about relationship with Christ in my relationship with my wife.  Its about driving with Christ, showering with Christ, and as much as I hate it, its about doing the dishes with Christ.  It isn’t about praying more, fasting more, doing more or being more.  Its about my being at all.

My grandpa used to work at a soda fountain/pharmacy at the corner of 7th and Logan in downtown Denver.  Its now the excellent Benny’s Mexican restaurant.  My grandpa used to work seven days a week, ten hours a day.  For five dollars.  Five.  Dollars.  Seventy hours a week for five dollars.  Sure, he was a young teenager then, but he was still working.  In his own life he has done well financially in various ventures but none of those ventures came without his hard work.  Hard work that he wishes he’d have done with less hours now so that he could have spent them with his family.  Time that he could have spent growing in his walk with the Lord rather than being distracted by deadlines and such.

I have a great admiration for my grandpa’s life achievements but I appreciate his candid, honest discussion of things with me this last week.  He loves me, he loves his family and he loves the Lord.  There is nothing that this blog can possibly teach you about money finances that is more important than to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and to manage your life with that relationship in focus.  I’m motivated to pay off my debt now more than ever, I’m motivated to save to go visit my grandparents at least one more time before they get called home to heaven.  I’m motivated, but not by fear, uncertainty or doubt, but instead by my relationship with Christ.

OK, and the desire to not work for 70 hours for $5.00.

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Posted in Foundations, Taboo & Money (religion, sex, and politics)