Archive for the ‘Credit & Spending’ Category:
The wife’s busy with the kids this summer and doesn’t have much time to chime in to these discussions. Hopefully we will get back to it in a few months when they return to school.
Updates on previous blogs:
We are still busy at work with our basement project. We have had our share of financial conversations as we approach some of the higher ticket items in finishing this project: furniture, electronics (tv / surround sound), and various items needed to make the room liveable. The one problem with any home improvement project is that it tends to expand. Finishing the basement has now turned into possibly repainting the entire main floor, which then turned into buying some new furniture for our living room and moving the older stuff into the basement, etc. It can expand the budget considerably. I am the type that I get an idea and a budget in mind and it is very hard for me to divert from that. The thought of more expenditures causes panic attacks. Hope on the other hand would prefer just to get it all done even if it is a little higher than what was budgeted. That is what makes a marriage is finding a happy medium and ways to compromise. (I call it compromise, but she normally gets her way in the end).
I have gotten a few comments that I haven’t been on my usual rantings about the wife’s spending. Honestly, I can’t complain about anything lately. She has been doing a great job of seeking out bargains. Just this week she told me about the special “icee” deals at the Sonic restaurants. Her and the kids all got a treat for a total of like $3. Then when we went out for dinner it was buy one get one free at the local Asian place. Grand total was $11 for both of us. I can’t complain about that.
I guess I could rant about seeing another “build a bear” stuffed animal in the house. I think my daughter now has 42 of those things. Even if she did have a coupon for them, I mean seriously how many stuffed animals does a kid need. Okay and there was the quick Disney trip we surprised the kids with back in May. This has nothing to do with the wife, but jeeze it seems like you need to take out a mortgage to get into Disney for a couple of days.
Since the wife isn’t providing any material for me to write about, I will have to revert to back to personal finance stuff. Check back soon!
I don’t know about you but I have seen a lot more writings about ways to economize and cut costs lately. Is this just a passing fad or is it here to stay? It seems as consumers throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s we had become a binge buying nation. Was it in fact that the standard of living had improved so much that a big house, new cars and inflated lifestyles were the norm? Or was it a momentary lapse of sanity that caused things to get a bit out of whack? Loans were cheap and easy to get. You could buy a house with little money down and then turn around and take out a home equity loan to fill it up full of big screen tv’s and such, and it seemed as if everyone was doing it.
I have falling victim to some of these consumer flaws as well, but luckily I have such a buyers remorse on big ticket purchases that it doesn’t occur to often. Couple that with reinventing my business 8 years ago and again 4 years ago and you learn to live somewhat frugally until things improve.
It will be interesting to see if we as a society are truly seeing a shift in consumer attitudes or if it is a temporary phenomenon. With tighter lending standards for the foreseeable future and tighter job markets what we are seeing may in fact be a longer term cultural shift. I guess it lasts until the next bull market and then the wild spending will commence again!
The wife is starting to make fun of my newfound hobby. So I figured I would air it out here on the blog. It’s not really a hobby but more of an addiction of sorts. It’s……Craigslist.com …..
I will admit I have become a craigslist addict. It all started when I decided to get rid of a few household items that were piling up in the garage: old set of golf cart tires, small bookcase and then we sold our treadmill. After I sold a few items on Craigslist I started searching for stuff that I could use in my basement finishing project. So I bought a set of custom shelves from a cabinet maker. I got them for well below what the custom order would have cost and so that began my evening addiction of searching Craigslist.com.
My next project has been the possible move of my office. In planning this I started searching for used office furniture. Well this led to a trip to Nashville to pick up a great deal on a couple of really nice office desks. It then led me across town to purchase some filing cabinets (once again a great deal).
My latest craigslist purchase was 4 five gallon containers of stone/concrete sealer. I was in need of some sealer for brick patio that is looking a bit worn down along with a slate tile that I recently put down in the basement. If you have ever purchased sealer you know this stuff can run as high as $50 for a gallon, so when I found 20 gallons for $200 I knew I hit paydirt. Don’t ask me what I will use 20 gallons of sealer on. Hopefully, the stuff stays good for quite awhile!
Craigslist is definitely a great tool for those looking for a deal. It’s only drawback is that it can also be addicting as well.
By now anyone reading the blog knows that I like a deal. I consider it somewhat of a challenge to find what I am looking for at a deep discount. Hope and I have used this as a sort of game between the spouses. We each see who can score the best savings. Sometimes it is using coupons or sometimes simply snapping up a bargain on closeout.
The difference between us of course is she is a shopper. She will go and browse the stores like many females until she finds something interesting. I on the other hand am more of the hunter type. I have to know specifically what I am looking for and then I start the search. This is why Hope absolutely hates shopping with me. Case in point is a recent evening out we had some time to kill and were at a local mall. I mentioned needing a few dress shirts, so we hopped over to Macy’s. After finding what I needed (on the discount rack of course) we were heading out. She then mentioned that I needed new jeans……..
Guys I don’t know if you have been to a mall lately, but it isn’t just Levi 501’s anymore. There must have been 50 brands and 500 different choices. She had decided that I needed something a little more hip. I looked around for a few minutes and then felt that shopping anxiety kick in. Have you ever had that? I mean just to many choices, it was complete overload for me.
I don’t know why it can’t be simpler in the guys section of clothing stores. If they would limit the selection so that you don’t get analysis paralysis, they would increase their sells. I don’t think it was just me. I truly believe I saw at least 5 other guys run screaming out of the store gasping for air. Needless to say I did not buy any new jeans. That will have to be another day when I am specifically looking for jeans….
The purpose of this blog from the outset was to add a bit of humor to the world of personal finance. I figured what better way to do that than offer up a real world view of what it is like to be married to a financial planner. I have no problem poking fun at myself and the posts are sort of a tongue and cheek way of showing that no one is perfect. The ultimate objective is to hopefully share that all couples approach money differently but that compromises can be made.
Statistically, money issues rank among the highest reasons for friction in a marriage. As a financial planner I see it every day and in this recession it is getting worse.
The take away from this blog should always be that spouses will not agree on every financial issue, but we hope that by having a laugh at our expense will enable you to figure out a way to compromise on money issues in your relationship.
now back to the rants!….she wants to take the kids to Disney over spring break, the one time of year I hate to travel. The crowds, the inflated hotel rates, etc. Did I mention the crowds? I really hate crowds……..
Since the holiday’s I really haven’t had a lot to rant about, especially with the wife’s spending. She did slip in that chair she bought online back in January that I caught on the Amex bill, but she swore that was the last purchase for the basement project for awhile.
Actually I have to give her kudos over the past few months. I think I am rubbing off on her. She takes her coupons with her to the grocery, makes sure we have our free kids meal coupon before dining at the neighborhood restaurant and today she is getting a load of old kid’s clothes and toys ready for the consignment sale. If this keeps up I may have to change the image on the blog!
On a completely unrelated note: For those interested, the March e-newsletter discussing IRA’s has been sent this week. It can be found at www.theadvisoryfirm.net/afnews.html
I get asked quite often about budgets. Most of the time the questions revolve around “How much should we budget for a certain area”. It’s a tough question to answer and I generally try to tip toe around it. Everyone is different in their spending habits so it is hard to come up with a generic budget that fits. That is one of the main reasons I created myVizer.com. Anytime someone asks how they compare to another planning client, I just refer them over to the website and let them see for themselves. (it shows your percentages vs. the average percentage for other users)
Recently though I stumbled upon an interesting article in Kiplingers magazine that gives folks a basic budget. The title of the article was “how to divvy up your paycheck”. Here is the breakdown:
- 30% Housing (mortgage/rent/insurance/prop tax)
- 15% Food (groceries/dining out)
- 10% debt
- 10% utilities/household
- 10% transportation (loan, gas, maintenance, auto ins)
- 10% savings
- 5% clothing
- 5% entertainment
- 5% miscellaneous
It’s not a bad benchmark to follow. It’s not perfect, but not bad.
Out of curiosity, I will have to get the wife to see how she thinks we compare to those numbers!
For those following along with the basement finishing project you will know that this has been a painful experience for me. Both in terms of my back and my wallet. The Amex bill arrived and I knew that it was going to be painful. I need time to digest these things. All the items we had purchased in December including the hard wood floors were on this months statement. Toss in the holidays and this one really hurt. So mistakenly I am thinking we are going to slow down the basement project so that I can pay off what we have done so far. Well the wife had a different idea. Hope had decided that getting the kids play room and a guest room completed was priority number one. So I started looking for ways to pinch pennies which brings me to this weeks blog post about Ikea.
You see the original plan was a nice wall of built-in shelving in the kids room. Well after all that was spent on the wood floors there was no way I was going to shell out the cash for custom built shelves. I turned Hope loose on a project to slim down the cost. She went online and put together a wall of shelving units from Pottery Barn and presented me with a configuration that was about a 1/3rd less than the custom. Being my miserly self, I said we still needed to cut that in half. Having just watched a home show on TV, I mentioned to her to try Ikea.
I have a real love / hate relationship with the Ikea store. Back in 95, Hope and I spent half a year in Sweden (the birthplace for Ikea stores) and came to enjoy strolling through the store thinking how cool it would be to outfit our hip urban home with all there cool furniture. Flash forward about 12 years and Ikea opens a store here in Atlanta. If you have never been to an Ikea store it is a totally different retail experience. They are like an upscale WalMart for home furnishings. Maybe that isn’t the best description but their furnishings are low in price and very appealing. Everything is very efficient, the trick is that you have to assemble everything yourself. So the part I like about Ikea is that you can get really decent home goods at very affordable prices. The part that drives me crazy is the fact that you need half a day to get through the store! You see the store is layed out like a maze and you must stroll through all the “show” rooms and departments and see everything, almost like a living catalog. Along the way you write down the isle number where a product is located and after you spend 2 days strolling through their showroom you are dumped out into the warehouse area. From here you find your boxes, load them on your cart and proceed to checkout.
It’s a unique experience that everyone should try, just make sure you have several hours to kill.
So in the end I purchased 3 different shelving units that took me about 3 hours to assemble, but cost less than 1/3rd what the original built-in’s would have cost me. So while I hated spending the money I took some comfort in knowing we created a good looking wall of shelves for quite a bit less than we planned.
So, Hope had been on me for months to get her an iPhone. I finally broke down and got her one for Christmas. I was really dreading the purchase of this trendy device. Why, you may ask? Well because I am frugal and practical! These phones cost a fortune but worse than that is the additional monthly charges on your cell phone bill.
For the last couple of years she has been using the phone you get for free when you sign up for 2 year plan with the provider. I thought that was sufficient, I mean the phone is for calling folks right?
Well she said she wanted to check her emails remotely and listen to her iTunes without her ipod. In the end she always wins, but I try to put up a good fight anyway.
To me these things are the biggest time wasters ever. Well maybe second only to Facebook. Really, with all the “apps” you can waste hours playing with the silly phone. I can undertand email, especially for business use. All the other stuff just seems like fluff to me.
MISER TIP: I finally rationalized the purchase by buying stock in a little microcap tech company that does what? Sells apps for smart phones!
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