October 27, 2015

Talking money: a podcast

It’s here!

I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone to do this interview with Jessica, and it’s now here,  live!

Jessica’s made it really easy for you to listen:

October 19, 2015

Oh, the (mundane) things we do

Daily #1GoodMoneyThing had a great run but, as expected, life got hectic so it’s good that I planned to ramp down to more of a weekly thing. Nothing like setting expectations accurately! Still, I got an awful lot done for not trying to do it daily.

Check, check, check:

Updated all my rental property income and expense transactions from the summer.
Submitted FSA claims.
Adapted a TMobile micro sim to match the ATT micro sim size.
Renewed our @MontereyAq membership for another year. Tax deductible and lowers the cost of entry each time we go!
Found an Amex offer for $15 off Chewy.com purchases. Check your card benefits!

Counting pills: Seamus is on a long term medication so I order refills in 6 month increments, 360 pills at a time. His annual bloodwork shows that he needs to be on a lower dose by 25%. 1-800-PetMeds is willing to exchange it for the lower dose but they want to know how many he has left. Damn, I just broke into the new bottle a couple weeks ago. Should have done his bloodwork in August. Better mark the calendar to check it in a year, before his next refill.

Travel budget strategizing: Paying for our upcoming travel in miles and points is a particular point of pride. I’m working furiously on the miles strategy that will put us in great seats on a good summer flight.

Home maintenance: where an ounce of prevention beats paying a plumber and then being traumatized by a stranger’s plumber’s crack.

I scrubbed the guck out of our tub drain, clearing up the build up out to let the water run free again. There was only one strand of hair in the much, incidentally, so I’ve been doing a great job keeping hair from clogging it.

Home maintenance: our dryer doesn’t like to stop when it’s supposed to. It could be the sensor, since the timer zeroes out at the end of the timed cycle, but it just doesn’t stop. I’m assuming the sensor is the thing that tells it to actually stop. More research needed!

Money maintenance: My last Citibank CD with a high interest rate (ha “high”) matured and that money is now being held for our investing portfolio. This drops my minimum account balance. Previously I had the Citibank Account package with a minimum balance of $10K across combined accounts. Since I don’t want to be charged a monthly fee, I’m converting it to the Basic Account package which has a minimum balance of $1500 across all accounts. That only took a solid hour on customer service chat, but better than an hour on the phone, I suppose.

Lots of good thoughts from y’all here

September 18, 2015

Craigslist selling: how our crap becomes someone else’s treasure

If you’d asked me, I would not have believed that we’d unload any of the stuff clogging up our closets and nooks and crannies. It’s perfectly good stuff but none of it is that high-end, high-value stuff that Personal Finance for Beginners exhort you to sell to make some Quick Cash!

This is one money-related bet I would have lost.

All of this sold like it was in high demand:

• Miscellaneous bike gear
• Random auto parts
• Used shoes
• My old rainboots that never quite fit
• My old but in near-new condition sports watch (btw, this was a surprise sale. Maybe a general rule should be to TELL your spouse before you sell stuff out from under them!)
• Still in the box, old navigation system. Ah useless technology gifts.

PiC is the Craigslister in the family. I just collect the proceeds, log them into Mint, for which he calls me Judy Jetson (Please tell me you remember The Jetsons). Harumph! Oh, and also I provide the free service of fretting uselessly while he’s out, every time, as if all Craigslist buyers are serial killers on the hunt for their next hit.

… What? That’s not normal?

ANYWAY. He once walked me through some of his tips and tricks. I’ve never used them because this is his gig and he’s great at it but it’s good stuff nonetheless.

Writing your ad

• Be very clear in your description of the Thing and Thing’s condition. Don’t assume people have seen the Thing before or that they can view the pictures easily.
• Include some pictures taken in good light.
• Include dimensions or sizing if that’s relevant or useful. It’s always useful for furniture items. Not so much for books.
• If you’re open to offers, say so. If the price is firm, say so. Don’t waste your time with hagglers if you’re not willing to move on price and don’t lose opportunities to unload the Thing if you’re willing to accept an offer.
• Always refresh expired ads, a lot of selling is about the timing. Buyers for Thing may pop up 4 weeks after you list the first time, or in one case, 11 months.
• Always state in the ad: Thing is available if this ad is still posted. Remove ad immediately after a confirmed sale.

Making the sale

• We ignore all stupid inquiries: “Is it still available?” for one. “Does the $20 printer come with ink cartridges?” for another. Historically, those inquiries never bear fruit.
• CL buyers in our area are notoriously flaky. Never promise to hold an item for anyone. It’s always first come, first serve, unless it’s a very big ticket item and you’ve already met, haggled and agreed on a price.
• Safety, safety, safety! Please meet in a public place. Don’t do it in the dark if you can avoid that. The one time PiC did a sale after sundown I insisted on dragging my super-pregnant self along to protect him because that made sense.
• If it requires two people to lift and move, make sure you know if your buyer is going to handle that themselves (some bring a friend), or if they expect you to lend a hand (some will ask).

As regular Craigslist buyers ourselves, we do our best to be a positive part of the ecosystem by only making inquiries when we’re serious, paying in cash (duh!), arranging our own pickup, and of course, if the price isn’t firm, we do haggle! Obviously.

It really can be as easy as posting an ad, fielding calls or emails, and then pocketing some hard cash for things you don’t use anymore! Or won’t use, ever. As always, I record our sales in our tracker here so y’all know, it’s possible to make real money even if you have really weird old stuff.

September 11, 2015

Credit card churning: a plan!

or in ye olde Fatwallet lingoe: App-o-Rama! The last time we did this was for a handful of cards at once, in 2013, before our wedding.

We just finished the minimum spend ($3000 in 3 months) for a United mileage card earning a 50K mile bonus but we need at least another 40K miles to book flights for the family so I’ve lined up a second United mileage card with another 50K mile bonus. It’s taking forever to reach us. *taps foot impatiently*

I’ve also decided to make this an actual routine rather than taking it as our trips are dreamed up. My nerves can’t take wondering if we’ll hit the right number of award points or miles in time to book before the awards rooms or flights run out.

Our regular large expenses that can be charged on a card are mapped out in a spreadsheet so that we can line up our cards for churning against our regular, required purchases so we don’t find ourselves “needing” to spend oohhh say $500 just to hit the bonus and find ourselves the proud and chagrined owners of, I don’t know, some ridiculous thing we wanted. Right, that’s not likely but one can get caught up in the chase for awards.

I’d love it if we could charge our property taxes but I’m pretty sure the city or county still charges some silly non-insignificant percentage if you pay by credit card and that narrows our profit margin on the bonus too much to be worth it.

Instead, we have regular auto, property, and life insurance policies that come due in the fall and the spring. In fact, one just came in the mail! Hello, bill. Also food. We eat a lot of food. Food will go a long way to meeting our quota.

Leigh & Mrs. Crackin’ raised excellent points in the comments: look for cards that waive the annual fee for the first year and don’t pay with CC over cash unless the rewards are overwhelmingly profitable.

September 9, 2015

Can we retire in 7 years?

Seeing our net worth climb a little, even after a few months of reduced income, I got really optimistic about possibly hitting some of our goals, like a milestone net worth and maybe being able to target retirement in oh, say, 7 years? I totally pulled that out of thin air, because why not?

This here spreadsheet will tell you why not!

I don’t like what Version 1 tells me, maybe I should go to Version 2!

I played around with J.Money’s early retirement spreadsheet, the simple one, because I just wanted a quick snapshot without messing around with all the detail of version 2.

There’s a lot to be said for reducing your annual expenses. There’s more to be said for putting away more money, though, as I notice reducing our annual expenses by 10,000/year didn’t produce any drop in retirement age, whereas increasing our investments by $5,000/year dropped it by a year.

The assumptions

Income produced: Originally J used an 8% return rate, while I’d rather be more conservative and assume a 7% return.

Annual expenses: If you’re thinking “you need HOW much per year???” Yes, our expenses are high. We pay for the living expenses of 4 adults, 1 child, 1 Seamus, save cash (saving to spend) and save for retirement. Should I drop the expected expenses? I say no. Because even if our own personal expenses drop any substantial amount, we have huge variables: raising LB, or Dad’s eventual failing health, my crappy health. These could cause huge spikes in expenses even should we drop them a good amount. Heck, they could put us over the $90K mark, who knows!

Annual investments: I’m committing us to maxing out a 401(k) and an IRA every year but now that I look at the numbers, I want to add an IRA for PiC too.

Age now: I took an average of our ages. Maybe not the best idea, maybe I should just take one age and go with that.

This doesn’t take into account our rental property but since that income isn’t disposable income yet, that’s fine.

Looks to me like I’m going to have to get creative (or strike it rich through a solid business plan) to hit all our spending and saving and early retirement goals.

ER’s a fantasy in the world I came from where even retirement isn’t certain but it’s a luxury I’m happy to aim for. While I enjoy working, my health is always kicking me in the shins. I want to be around for LB for a long time and am finally conceding that my health improves when less stress and less work sucks up the lion’s share of my energy. So why not make that a goal?