Posts tagged J.D

9 Sneaky Expenses That Eat Away at Your Income

Jan 11th

Posted by Finance in investing

2 comments

This article is by staff writer Adam Baker. Baker is a founding member of Untemplater.com, a new multi-author blog focusing on personal finance, entrepreneurship, and life design for people in their 20’s and 30’s.

Few concepts have had as great an impact on my family’s financial decision-making as learning how to calculate our real hourly wage. The concept was introduced by (or at least popularized by) the amazing book, Your Money or Your Life. This book has had a dramatic influence over our financial turn-around (just as it did for J.D.).

The authors focus early in the book on ensuring that readers are aware of the true costs associated with their jobs and incomes — including accounting for the time we spend on activities that are often forgotten.

Note: J.D. has written a couple of in-depth articles on the notion of “real hourly wage”. If the idea is new to you, check out How to compute your real hourly wage and Beyond “real hourly wage”: How much time does Stuff actually cost?

When Courtney and I first sat down to figure out just how many different expenses were associated with our income opportunities, it was an eye-opening experience. It unveiled a new layer of consciousness towards both our work and our spending. In one case we shifted from, “I make $42,000 per year” to “That really only results in $22,000 net after all expenses are considered.”

The hardest part of figuring your real hourly wage is accounting for those sneaky costs (in both time and money) that eat away at your income streams. Your Money or Your Life does a great job of listing sample expenses, from which we adapted a customized list that I still keep updated to compare opportunities.

Here are the adjusted categories we use to figure our own real hourly wages:

  • Time - Alright, so this seems like a generic way to kick things off, but stay with me. For each of the other categories on this list we immediately asked ourselves, “What’s the extra time associated with this?” While this isn’t a monetary cost itself, putting Time at the top of our list was a reminder to remember to always take this into consideration.
  • Taxes – Taxes come next on our list because they’re easy to remember. It’s common for people to think of “take-home pay” or “how much after tax” when thinking about income. If you’re an employee in the U.S., this usually means federal, state, and local (in some places) income taxes, as well as social security and medicare. These numbers are easy to find on paystubs.
  • Foundation expenses – This was what Courtney and I called anything that wasn’t complete tangible (as in the later categories), but that was required for our work. Courtney had her teaching license fees, union dues, and education conferences. I had my share of real-estate certifications, union dues, broker fees, and sales training. We also included childcare expenses, and more recent visa fees in this category.
  • Commuting/Transportation – This was the next most tangible category for us to consider. The key is to estimate what percentage of vehicle use is for commuting purposes. You can then apply this to gas, oil, maintenance, insurance, parking, and tolls. Your Money or Your Life also suggests counting traffic tickets, vehicle depreciation, and lease/interest payments. Even if you don’t drive, you’ll likely have some public or alternative transportation costs in here.
  • Tangible work materials – These were usually physical items that we had to buy and maintain. Out of college, I worked in a factory where I had to purchase ear-plugs and safety glasses (although I was given hardhat). Some people have to provide their own tools, office supplies,  or teaching materials. This also includes our fancy cell phones that we justify as “for work,” briefcases, laptops, and other gear/gadgets.
  • Clothing – We broke this into two sub-categories.  First, there are jobs that require uniforms, special shoes, and/or a certain type of specific non-uniform dress (like the Italian restaurant I where I waited tables). On the other hand are the jobs where we buy professional clothes out of a desire to meet a social standard. Think suits and ties, fancy blouses, and trips to the dry cleaners. If you wouldn’t regularly wear it on your days off, it should be included.
  • Grooming - We used this to include products like make-up, fancy cologne, special haircuts, and jewelry/accessories. Again, it’s important to only include that which you don’t use or wear regularly outside work.
  • Food/Drink – This is self-explanatory, but contains eating out, snacks throughout the day, and even food purchased after work hours if it’s because you “had too hard of a day at work” to cook dinner. I noticed a lot of my increase in food costs was from eating out for “business” meetings and every Friday when the whole office would go out together. Work-related coffee habits can wrack up some damage fast, too (trust me I know).
  • Stress – As we began the list, we end it with a general category. The authors of Your Money or Your Life spend a lot of time covering the idea that any time/money that is invested as part of a release, escape, or an unwinding from work should be counted against your income. Some people release through video games or television, while others end up splurging on larger items like spontaneous vacations or larger toys to get away from work. The book even suggests counting increased sick time as a result of stress-related illness!

Look, I know this is a lot to think about. But this exercise isn’t meant to discourage. Just the opposite! Remember, there are usually other benefits to your income, as well. This post only features one side of the coin.

However, figuring your real hourly wage is an awesome tool when trying to compare two income opportunities that aren’t similar to begin with. It may help encourage you to start a part-time business or may simply remind you of just how beneficial your current employment really is.

If you haven’t ran your own numbers, I’d strongly recommend it.  It worked wonders for us!

What sneaky expenses have you caught eating away at your income?

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Reader Story: How I Cut 16 Years from My Mortgage in Just One Hour

Jan 10th

Posted by Finance in investing

2 comments

This guest post from Caitlin of ClutterCubed (a blog about ridding clutter from your life) is part of a new feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Every Sunday will include a reader story (in the new “reader stories” category). Some will be general “how I did X” stories, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success.

Back in September, one hour of my time cut 16 years off my mortgage! It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, but I can honestly (and sadly!) say I probably wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for Get Rich Slowly.

However, this is less of a tale of ringing triumph, and more of a story that shows how financially clueless I was, while you all point and laugh how even people who make financial missteps can put themselves back on the right track.

My shiny new mortgage
In mid-2008, my husband and I bought a shiny new house and acquired a shiny new 40-year mortgage. That’s right: a 40-year mortgage. It’s embarrassing to admit now, but the banks we talked to assured us that 40 years was “the new normal” for first-time home buyers like ourselves.

This was, of course, right before the crash and the economic downturn, so at the time our 5.5% mortgage rate looked pretty spiffy. As first-time buyers, we could have gotten away with a 0% down payment, but over the years we’d saved enough for a 7% down payment (thanks in part to a small inheritance my husband received). We felt smart. We felt like we were doing the right thing, like we were ahead of the game.

Unfortunately, as we later learned, there’s a big difference between feeling like you’re ahead, and actually being ahead. We didn’t know about the trick of planning mortgage payments before you have to start making them, so we hadn’t been putting away “a mortgage payment” every month prior to moving in. We also had no emergency fund to speak of.

J.D.’s note: Suze Orman calls the game of planning mortgage payments before you have to start making them “playing house before buying a house”. I think it’s an awesome idea: Before you take on a mortgage, spend at least six months setting aside enough to simulate your mortgage. If you can’t do it, you’re not ready to buy.

By the numbers
We had, at least, planned our housing costs so that they wouldn’t be more than 28% of our gross income. I don’t remember where we got that number, since at the time we did not really read any personal finance books or blogs. I think we just pulled 30% out of Google, as a financial rule of thumb, and then aimed for a bit less than that.

Because of little things like that, we thought we were doing great, but looking back there are a lot of things I wish we had done differently. (I wish I’d started learning about personal finance before buying a house, for one thing!)

Properly taxes were included in our mortgage payments, and they’d been over-estimated to avoid needing to make a big payment once our house was reassessed this year (since the last time it had been assessed was in 2007, when it was still a dirt lot).

This September our mortgage payment came out automatically as usual, but we were really worried when $180 less than normal was taken from the account. I panicked and called the bank, thinking it was perhaps a mistake, and there would somehow be consequences for not making a full payment. The bank assured me everything was okay, and it was just that our property taxes had gone down after a reassessment, so our payment had been adjusted.

A profitable hour
The Old Me would have celebrated having an “extra” $180/month to spend. The New Me, the one that reads Get Rich Slowly and other personal finance blogs and books and is actively trying to improve my financial situation, immediately booked an appointment with the bank. My husband and I agreed that, since we’d been paying our mortgage all year without any problems, we should keep paying the same amount.

At the appointment, we not only bumped our payment back up to what it had been (paying an additional $180 on every payment, or an additional $2160/year), we also switched to a biweekly payment plan, with payments equal to half our monthly payment, so that we would be making an additional full payment (plus an additional $180 on that payment) every year.

In that one hour appointment, we watched our projected mortgage end date shrink down to 23 years. One hour of our time saved us 16 years of payments and interest.

It still boggles my mind.

All it cost us was an hour of our time. Well, an hour of our time and $45 for a one-time payment to make the switch possible. I’m not too thrilled about the $45, but I’m not upset about it, either.

Action beats inaction
I’ve read it dozens of times on PF blogs: overpay your mortgage, make an extra payment each year. Blah, blah, blah. Even seeing the occasional calculated example didn’t really drive it home for me. It always felt like I couldn’t be like “those people” — the ones with enough extra money to do fancy things like prepay a mortgage. I was afraid of screwing up, of doing it wrong. However, like J.D. says, action beats inaction, and in this case, he’s 100% correct!

I say thank you, J.D., for having this blog and inspiring me to get off my butt about my personal finances. Without you, I might not have had the drive to make that appointment with the bank that saved me 16 years. Without your blog and your readers, I may have known intellectually what I should have done, but it would probably have seemed out of reach.

I might have been content with my “found” $180/month. I might have handled it responsibly, and used it to pay off debt at least, but I know I wouldn’t have switched to biweekly payments. It seemed like such a hassle. It seemed like such a pain to set up. It felt like it couldn’t possibly be worth my time and energy to shuffle around my schedule, get my husband home from work early and go talk to the bank. Even though I “knew” it was worth it, I didn’t actually believe it until it happened. It was worth it! I had such an amazing feeling as I left the bank!

Have you had such a big payoff from investing a little bit of your time? Can you beat knocking 16 years off the mortgage in one measly little hour? Let us know in the comments!

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

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Money Crashers $5,800 Giveaway With Special $500 Wise Bread Prize

Jan 6th

Posted by Finance in investing

4 comments

By Will Chen

Happy New Year Wise Bread readers!

To celebrate 2010, Money Crashers, Wise Bread, and virtually the whole personal finance blogosphere have teamed up for a giant giveaway!

We’re talking about $5,800+ in total prizes including $1,635 in cash, $855 in gift cards, 2 Amazon Kindles, a bunch of Apple iPod mp3 players, and a whole library of popular finance books/software.  There will be over 100 winners.  And the pot is still growing.

How to Enter

1.  Read about the contest details on Money Crashers and wow yourself by browsing through the incredible list of prizes.

2.  Sign up for the Money Crashers contest mailing list (a required step to participate) – form shown on the contest page.

3.  Follow us on Twitter @wisebread for an extra 15 entries for the contest! (more details below).

4. Perform various other actions to gain even more entries for the contest (e.g. follow @MoneyCrashers on Twitter, join the Money Crashers Facebook fan page, sign up for their RSS feed, etc.)

Contest runs from January 4 – 31, 2010 with a random draw on February 3.  There will be over 100 winners in total.  No purchase necessary; void where prohibited.  You must be a legal US resident over 18 to participate.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment on Money Crasher’s official contest thread. See official contest rules (pdf link) for details.

Special Entries for Wise Bread

Wise Bread contributed $500 to the prize pool.  Follow the directions in the section above, then follow us on Twitter @wisebread and get:

  • 5 extra entries for the $500 Wise Bread prize.
  • 10 extra entries for the overall drawings for over $5,800+ worth of prizes.

Take part in the Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash today!

Sample of Prizes

Here is a very small sample of the prizes being given away (remember, this contest has over 100 winners).  Check out Money Crashers for the full list.

 

3 $100 Cash Prizes ($300 Total) from Money Crashers

$500 Cash from Wise Bread

$250 Cash from Tiner Financial and Financial Organizing

$60 Cash from The Digerati Life & The Smarter Wallet

$50 Cash from Consumerism Commentary

Amazon Kindle from J.D. of Get Rich Slowly ($259 value)

Amazon Kindle from Generation X Finance ($259 value)

5 $50 Smarty Pig Gift Cards ($250 Total) from Smarty Pig

10 copies of Quicken Premier 2010 from the Intuit Personal Finance Group & Mint.com ($90 value each)

 

$50 Amazon Gift Card from Bargaineering

About Money Crashers

This incredible contest is put together by Money Crashers, a site dedicated to providing useful tips and reviews on topics like like budgeting, saving money, college & careers, credit & debt, and investing. Think of it as your “Guide to Financial Fitness.”

The 11 Indispensable Principles of a Money Crasher are:

1. Always spend less than you make.
2. Do not believe in money myths.
3. Get out of debt and stay out of debt.
4. Save money for the unexpected.
5. Student loans are not the only answer. Be resourceful and open-minded.
6. Find creative ways to boost your income.
7. Invest for the long-term and keep it simple.
8. Educate yourself about real estate, cars, and financial products.
9. Avoid scams and financial predators.
10. If you have a spouse or partner, this person is on your team!
11. If you achieve financial success, give back.  It helps others and feels great.

Permalink | Comments | Will Chen's blog | Channel: Giveaways

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The Other Side of the Frugality Fence

Jan 6th

Posted by Finance in Dollar

1 comment

In a recent post at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. defined the “basic law of frugality” as this: “Decide what’s important to you. Give yourself permission to spend on these things. Pinch pennies on everything else.” That’s a pretty spot-on definition, in my opinion.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that it speaks to the problems that both overspenders and cheapskates have.

Overspenders?
In most situations, it is easily possible for a person to spend substantially less than they earn. So what causes a person to spend more than they earn?

The answer is hidden in that phrase. Overspenders stretch their definition of what’s important to them to cover a lot of things.

I’ll use myself as an example. Back in my overspending days, there were a lot of optional things in my life that I defined as being important enough to throw my money at. I went golfing a lot. I bought gadgets by the truckload. I bought more video games than I could ever possibly play. I bought carts full of books.

The end result was twofold. First, I often didn’t have time to actually enjoy all of the stuff I had bought. Second, because of all of the spending, my life was in a rough place.

My definition of what was important in my life was skewed. I had elevated too many things to the threshold of “permission to spend freely.” Because of that, I spent much more than I needed to spend, but I had too many things in my life to actually thoroughly enjoy the things I was spending money on.

The solution? Cut back. Ask yourself what things you most enjoy doing and toss the rest of it. Look for ways of minimizing the costs of the things you do enjoy.

Frugality is often said to be miserable because you have to give up so much. In reality, frugality means not giving up the things that are actually important to you. The trick is stepping back, looking at your life, and figuring out what things are important and what things are not.

Cheapskates?
On the other side of the coin are cheapskates, a role that I’ve almost fallen into a time or two over the past few years.

Cheapskates apply principles of penny-pinching to every aspect of their life, even the important ones. Although they have financial stability in their lives, they do it at the expense of other elements of their life that could add a great deal of value.

Here’s an example from my own life. I love to read books. I read several books a month beyond what I review on The Simple Dollar.

For the better part of a year, I refused to buy a single book. Instead, I just reserved books that interested me at my local library and patiently waited for them.

Several titles came out that I was eagerly anticipating. I was able to read some of them fairly quickly (within three months) of their release. Others? I’m still waiting.

Even more noteworthy is that at least two of the books I checked out and read during that period were books that I strongly fell in love with and wanted to read again (and I was quite sure I would read them many times in the future, as I love returning to books that really make me think).

But I was cheap. I didn’t buy these books. I resolved to just check them out at the library when they became available again.

One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at home, having just finished a book. I looked at my unread books and realized that the book I most wanted to read wasn’t there – a book I had read before and returned to the library after thoroughly enjoying it. The library didn’t have it, either. I checked on Amazon and realized I could have the book for just $7. And I talked myself out of buying it.

That’s when I realized I was being a cheapskate. I was avoiding spending $7 on something that I knew would give me many hours of enjoyment now and quite a few hours of enjoyment later on, plus it would be a book that I could recommend to friends and loan to them while they loaned me books as well. To not spend $7 on something I cared so deeply about – and it was a $7 I could easily afford – was pure cheapness.

It’s okay to spend money on things that are truly important to you. In fact, it’s good, because spending money specifically on things truly important in your life directly raises your quality of life much more than any other way you could spend your money.

Reading is important to me, so I’m no longer afraid to spend money on it. Yes, if I see a book I want to read, I’ll check to see if the library has it and read it from them first. Yes, I use PaperBackSwap religiously. But if those outlets don’t connect me with a book I’m passionate about, I’m no longer scared to go to the bookstore and pick up that book that I want. Doing so raises my quality of life quite a lot.

The Winners Are in the Middle
The best place to be is at that place between the overspenders and the cheapskates. People who know what’s truly important to them and aren’t afraid to spend money on it enjoy a higher quality of life than people who spend themselves into debt (adding a lot of stress and challenge to their lives) and people who never spend a dime (missing out on things that they truly value in life).

What are your central values? What’s really, truly important to you? Give yourself some permission to spend in those areas without worry – but then lock down the ship in the other areas of your life.



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Ask the Readers: Do You Buy Christmas Gifts For Your Spouse?

Jan 6th

Posted by Finance in investing

4 comments

This article is by staff writer Adam Baker. Baker recently listed the Top 10 Money Movies of the Decade.

At this point, I hope you’ve done most of your Christmas shopping (and/or making). Only the brave or the foolish have yet to form a holiday shopping plan of attack. *looks around* Alright, so I have a minor confession to make: Courtney and I don’t buy gifts for each other.

To put it more bluntly, we just ignore the issue. We vaguely talked about it (albeit a couple years ago now), but somewhere in the mix we started assuming that we wouldn’t exchange them.

If I remember correctly, we actually did exchange at least a little something before our daughter was born. We never were big purchasers, though. I’d say we might have exchanged one or two small gifts at most during the dating years. These days, it seems as if every year we have a new excuse to skip exchanging (and certainly purchasing) presents.

Take this year for example. We’ll be spending Christmas backpacking around the South Island of New Zealand. Over the couple days around Christmas, we’re splurging for a bit more expensive lodging than normal to have internet access (for family back home mostly). We’ve decided this will be our gift.

Last year, we were saving for our big trip and decided to not exchange or buy gifts for each other. The year before that, we were getting ready for the baby. Before that it was the wedding. My point is not to give you my life story (although it does seem a little busy now that I write it), but to show how it was so easy for us to fall into a routine.

And it’s not necessarily all bad. But I’d be lying to say there wasn’t part of me that wishes we had a slightly different policy for Christmas gifts. It would be cool to see what Courtney would get me if left to her own brainstorming. And I’m sure she’d be eager to see what I’d come up with.

I guess we want to make certain we don’t buy into the consumerism hype. We’re trying to keep our possessions extremely minimal and light while traveling, but that doesn’t automatically exclude everything from our wishlists.

A couple options I thought up for our married-life Christmas approach:

  • Keep things the same. Keep focusing on the our project type of mentality. Focus on doing something special together like an event or activity, but that is mutually planned (and thus has no surprise).
  • Exchange gifts without any restrictions. We know people who fall into this category. Each spouse is trusted to spend or alternatively get creative in whatever way they see fit. There’s no similar budget set ahead of time or planning out of the gifts at all. This would be particularly hard for us to do as we have 100% joint finances and wouldn’t consider changing that.
  • Exchange specific pre-planned gifts. A lot of people we know fall into this category, as well. They buy each other gifts, but in reality each spouse actually picks out their own. That seems kind of lame to me, especially when it’s between two spouses. It’s basically just allocating more splurge money for yourself. That’s fine, but its not really what we are looking for.
  • Exchange gifts under budget restrictions. This seems like the most realistic option for us. We already define a set amount for ‘blow’ money each month. By increasing this slightly for Christmas and purchasing our gifts in cash (if possible), we could still have surprises even with joint finances. We could set the restrictions low if we wanted to focus on being creative to save money.

I’m not afraid to admit that a bit of consumerism would be a little refreshing for us. Actually, exchanging a reasonable gift (probably just a single decent one) wouldn’t be the end of the world — and it might add a little enjoyment to the process.

Obviously, we wouldn’t want to fall off the other side of the wagon and go crazy at the local mall. (Although this seems unlikely given our borderline scroogish history.)

Even if we decided to continue to forgo spending money or even exchanging gifts at all, I’d like to become a little bit more targeted with our approach. Maybe we could pay for a babysitter and spend the evening volunteering in some way together. At the very least we could look back and say, we did XYZ for Christmas two years ago.  That seems better than we were saving up for our trip or we bought some bedding for the crib.

Who knows…maybe I’m just suffering from a bit of the consumerism fever this year around. What do you think? What system do you and your significant other employ for swapping Christmas gifts? Do you have any creative ideas we can adopt?

J.D.’s note: I’m going to make an embarrassing public confession. I’m the lamest husband ever when it comes to gifts. I want to give Kris something thoughtful and nice — but I don’t. This year, especially, I’m the king of lameness. Kris ordered matching luggage for us. I’m paying for half. That’s our Christmas gift exchange. I feel like I need some sort of intervention, so I’m eager to hear your advice for Adam in the comments.

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Suze Orman Jumps Aboard the “Pay With Cash” Bandwagon

Jan 6th

Posted by Finance in investing

1 comment

This article is by staff writer Adam Baker. Baker recently listed the Top 10 Money Movies of the Decade.

For years now, Dave Ramsey has recommended ditching credit cards and paying with cash. (Specifically, Ramsey advocates the use of an envelope budgeting system.) In fact, this anti-credit card stance is one of the biggest problems critics have with his philosophy; they often point out that “responsible” credit card use would yield a higher credit score.

But it looks like Dave Ramsey has some new company in the Cash Only camp. According to a recent MSN Smart Spending article, money guru Suze Orman is the latest proponent of paying for purchases with cash:

On her Saturday night show on CNBC, she asked viewers to join her in a Back to Cash movement. “Let’s go back to the good old days,” she said. “Let’s go back to the times when you literally paid cash for everything. That’s right. Cash. Stop using your credit cards altogether.”

Here’s Suze’s brief call-out on video courtesy of CNBC:

Why the change of heart for Orman?
Orman’s new movement is apparently in response to the increase of aggressive tactics by the credit-card industry.

As the deadline for the new credit-card legislation draws closer, credit-card companies are looking for ways to make up for the projected loss in revenue. This includes steps like drastically increasing the interest rate on even cardholders who’ve always paid on time, and continuing to close accounts of select consumers with low balances or periods of inactivity.

For example, my mother has had several cards close her account after only a couple months of inactivity, despite the fact she’s been a long-time member customer. Recently, I’ve also fielded calls from two close friends who’ve had rate increases without any default. (In one of these cases, my friend called for a decrease and they actually responded with an increase!)

Apparently, the changes have hit close to Orman, as well. I didn’t catch her announcement over the weekend, but the same MSN Smart Spending article points out that she used her own show director’s wife as an example. Citibank had recently sent her a letter raising her rate to 29.9%, despite the fact she’d never missed a payment.

Why we chose to live without credit cards
It’s been almost two years since Courtney and I made the decision to ditch our credit cards for purchases. Last December, we finally paid off and canceled the last one.

In order to make the decision, we employed the Ben Franklin method: We simply created a list of the advantages and disadvantages.

Our list of advantages for cash over credit:

Our list of disadvantages for cash over credit:

  • Less convenient than swiping
  • More work to track
  • More risk for physical loss
  • Harder to build credit history
  • Forgo reward programs
  • Select employers & insurance providers use credit scores

There may be a couple that we left off, but these were the ones that we considered for our choice. Honestly, at the time, the avoid unexpected fees and changes of services didn’t carry much weight for us. Now, though, the volatility of the credit-card companies has turned it into a great side benefit.

In the end, we selected the increased consciousness in our budgeting and spending, combined with a simpler financial structure. It beat out the convenience and rewards associated with credit card use by a little bit.

The point isn’t to rehash the credit card vs. cash debate. We’ve been there, done that. Each person’s situation is different, and there are responsible users on both sides. Or as J.D. would say, do what works for you.

However, I’m interested to hear if, like Orman, recent events have changed your perspective. Have the recent strategies of the credit-card companies changed your feelings toward using credit or cash for your purchases?

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