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July 31, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! My Favorite Posts this Week
Guest Posts on BFS
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Blog Carnivals that Featured BFS
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Carnival hosts, please email me if BFS is in a carnival you are hosting so I can be sure to add it to the list. Thanks!
Other Info
Fellow bloggers, if you ever need or would like a guest post from BFS, please shoot me an email. I usually have a couple of weeks of posts ready in advance so I could probably help out.
Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as I am!
July 30, 2010, at 6:00 am
Last week I mentioned we went on some shore excursions during our last cruise. Snorkeling was awesome, but so were the underground lazy rivers in Xcaret. Xcaret is a nature preserve and water park in Cancun, Mexico. It has a bunch of stuff to do, but Mr. BFS and I wouldn’t know what to tell you about except for the rivers, since that’s where we spent almost all of our time. 
When they refer to their ”underground” rivers, what it means is that they have river routes you can float through that go through caverns, small canyons, and through tree roots. It’s pretty amazing. We’ve been to a man-made lazy river at Schlitterbahn, but this place makes that look like a kiddie park.
The water is almost perfectly clear and goes from 5 ft deep to 8-9 feet deep throughout the whole river. You are wearing a VERY boyant life jacket the whole time and the river never moves very quickly at all. There are two entrances to different paths of the same general river. One river path took us through caves and caverns while the other took us through small canyons, what looked like a flooded chapel, and finally through a tunnel of mangrove tree roots.
Each path is about 2000 ft long and exits are spread along the route so you can get out if you’d like. If you paddle through at a regular pace, you can easily complete each route within 30 minutes or so. We took about an hour since we were barely paddling at all and just taking in the sights. The water was a slightly chilly 75 degrees, but it felt perfect to us within just a few feet. I’d highly recommend this place for anyone that’s near Cancun at any point.
According to its site, the basic admission fee is $69 per person, but we paid $99 through Carnival Cruises. That did include the rountrip tickets for the 45 minute ferry ride we had to take from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen as well as the 10 minute bus ride from Playa del Carmen to Xcaret. Remember sea-sickness medication for the ferry ride if you have the tendency to get sick at all…it wasn’t a smooth ride. The only other thing we spent money on was a $4.30 nacho and Pepsi combo. If you wanted to eat real food, it was a minimum of $29 per person for a Mexican buffet or restaurant, so I’d suggest eating before you go.
I’d also suggest booking through your cruise line if that’s how you are getting to Mexico since so much can go wrong along the way and I rather not be left behind. Cruise ships will not wait for late passengers unless they booked their excursions through them.
Here’s a little photo montage of Xcaret:
 
 
Have you ever enjoyed a lazy river? If so, where?
July 29, 2010, at 3:00 pm
The following is a guest post from Michael at Forex Traders. If you’d like to see more from Forex Traders, feel free to click the link below.
Emotions makes up a key component of what underlies human behavior and so the psychology of forex trading is important for newer traders to understand when learning forex. Furthermore, emotions can often be experienced, and in some cases considerably magnified, in the course of trading for one’s own account due to the risk of losing money.
In general, fear and greed are by far the most common emotions experienced when trading, but other emotions also frequently arise. Some of the more common emotions which traders experience are described further in the following sections along with the impact they can have on trading performance.
Fear
Fear has the position of being by far the most common of market trading emotions, fear generally permeates most markets and the process trading in general when humans get involved in the process. In particular, the fear of losing money makes up a key element of trading psychology. Nevertheless, once a disciplined trader has identified conditions upon which to trade using their trading plan and they have quantified the risks and rewards in doing so, no real reason exists for them to feel fear even after their position is established.
Greed
Greed often causes significant problems for currency traders, especially when they have the apparent good fortune to be in a winning position. Unfortunately, when traders greedily hold out for that last pip, it can sometimes lead to a winning position turning into a losing one. Another effect of greed can cause overtrading the market and losing track of the money. As the old market saying goes, “Bulls make money and bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered.”
Hope
“Hope is for the terminally ill” goes a well-known market saying. Allowing hope to rule their trading can result in trader becoming completely ineffective in handling their risk while they hope the market reverses. A better use of hope would be hoping to make more money on winning trades, while fearing to give back unrealized profits.
Elation
The feeling of elation when a trader is making money “hand over fist” is akin to a gambler’s feeling when on a prolonged winning streak. While this feeling may be overwhelming to a novice, seasoned traders tend to keep a level head and often stop trading after reaching a high profit level.
Excitement
Trading in an active market, while very exciting for most people, can lead to a number of trading pitfalls. Such pitfalls include: overtrading, riding winners into losses and losing track of positions, all of which can be extremely detrimental to a trading account’s bottom line.
Frustration
The emotion of frustration is commonly experienced when a trader has not had the patience for a particular outcome in the market to manifest and so liquidates shortly after initiating a market position, only to find out that they were ultimately right about the market’s direction. Furthermore, the market will confound even the most seasoned trader from time to time, so this is an emotion frequently felt among traders when they get stopped out on a position, only to then see the market reverse.
Anger
After experiencing frustration, a trader may then be prone to feeling angry because they did not have the patience or deep enough pockets to hold the position before it was liquidated. In many cases, this might have been for a loss which can make the anger even more intense.
July 29, 2010, at 10:35 am
Hey everybody,
Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff has hired me as a staff writer for Wednesday posts! If you haven’t already, you can check out my first post, 10 Money-Saving Home Repairs, right now (I know, I know, shameless plug…). I am so excited though!
I cannot thank all of my readers enough for all your support. Just appreciating my writing makes me feel like a rock star! Thank you.
July 29, 2010, at 6:00 am
The following is a guest post from Adam Gibson, an author of Accrued Interest, a popular financial world blog. You can check out Accrued Interest for the latest on the bond market, treasuries, mortgages and other financial news.
If you’re a veteran or an active duty service member and are considering a home purchase this year, a VA home loan may be the perfect solution to finance that new house. Not only can they be great budgeting tools due to the variety of loan products available and flexibility of the loans, but VA loans have incredibly generous financing terms and a relatively easy qualification process.
VA loan eligibility is relatively straightforward and in order to qualify for a VA loan, veterans, active duty service members, or their families must meet the following criteria.
- Able to provide verification of a minimum of 2 years employment.
- If employed by the present employer less than 2 years:
- Verify prior employment plus present employment covering a total of 2 years, or
- Provide an explanation of why 2 years employment could not be verified.
- A debt to income ratio of less than 41%, including the potential loan. The VA’s debt-to-income ratio is a total of monthly debt payments (housing expense, installment debts, etc.) to gross monthly income, and a ratio of more than 41 percent requires the following factors:
- Sizable down payment
- The existence of equity in refinancing loans
- Little or no increase in shelter expense
- Military benefits
- Satisfactory homeownership experience
- High residual income
- Low debt-to-income ratio
These requirements are substantially less than nearly any other loan product on the market, and even veterans with poor credit history or bankruptcy may qualify for a VA loan. What’s more, while many borrowers with less than average credit scores may have to pay a large interest rate with conventional loan products, the slightly relaxed credit requirements for VA loan eligibility include the ability to qualify for a low interest rate. In fact, VA loan interest rates are generally about one percentage point lower than prime conventional mortgages and are currently around 3-4%.
In the past several years, the government and the loan industry itself has cracked down substantially on loan programs offering no down payment options, interest only loans, balloon payments, and on loans to borrowers with poor credit history, making homeownership difficult for many who have been adversely affected by the poor economy.
The VA loan program, however, has not been affected by these stringent new regulations and still provides a variety of products that can be tailored to your budget and financial goals. The main goal of the program is to ensure that as many veterans and service members as possible can fulfill their dream of owning a home and to that end, the VA offers a low down payment option as well as a zero down payment option. Additionally, closing costs for most VA loans can be rolled into the loan, saving the buyer from paying as much as $8,000 in fees at closing.
There are limits to how much borrowers can receive from a VA loan, but these limits are designed so that all borrowers, regardless of cost of living in their area can afford to purchase a modest starter home. Therefore, the limit is adjusted each year and varies depending on the cost of living in a buyer’s area and on the type of dwelling that’s being purchased with the loan. Single family dwellings have different limits than multi-family units, for instance.
To learn more about VA loans and how they can fit into your budget, visit www.va.gov or your local lender today. Since the VA doesn’t actually execute the loans itself, borrowers receive the loan products from local lenders (making the process that much more convenient) and your lender will have all the information you need on this unique and money saving program.
Questions from Crystal:
Have any of you ever used a VA loan? If so, how did it work out for you?
July 28, 2010, at 6:00 am
As I mentioned about a week ago, Mr. BFS and I paid off his car. Yay!
Well, we made the last payment of $4600 by using our emergency fund. In fact, the entire last $7500 came from that account. I’ve had a couple of people seriously wonder about our mental health since we’ve also had to raid our cash for dental expenses, vet bills, a major vacation, and grad school payments. This means we went from having more than $20,000 in cash to about $4500 in cash in less than 2 months.
Here’s how we justified the risk:
1) Mr. BFS just signed a one year contract with his new school district as a librarian. He’s guaranteed the job for at least one year making more than he does now as long as nothing really awful happens (he’d have to beat a kid or something to be let go before June 2011).
2) My job is stable too. My department has shrunk to TWO people due to transfers out, but we are one of the few departments in the company that bring in more than we cost 100% of the time. As long as our car dealership customers need forms, I’m safe.
3) The $4500 we have left is enough to cover almost a month and a half of normal expenses or 2 months of the bare minimum. Plus, it wouldn’t need to be touched unless we both lose our jobs since we can live off of one of our incomes – granted, we’d live better off of hubby’s than mine.
4) It will take us much less than a year to be back to normal. Since we do live off of one income and only have the $740 a month mortgage debt left, we will be able to sock away the $15,000 in no more than 8 months (probably more like 6-7).
5) The 4.6% interest car loan was a better return on our money to pay off than the 2.15% we were making at Smarty Pig or the 1.1% interest at ING.
6) If we do run into major problems, we have backup – more than $16,000 in stocks, $15,000 in a Roth IRA we could withdraw without any penalties, at least $30,000 in home equity, and if we’re dying from hunger or something, more than $50,000 available on our credit cards (but it would be hard for me to accept 12-13% interest rates).
7) It feels great to only have a mortgage left and we’ll even be able to knock that off faster than originally planned. We were on track to pay off our 2007 mortgage by 2018, but that will probably end up being 2015-2016 at the latest.
Is using an emergency fund to pay off “low interest” debt a good idea for everyone? No. If you are not in a stable job, have major expenses pop up on a regular basis, or have dependents that solely rely on you, I’d suggest you keep at least a solid 6 month emergency fund on hand at all times. It’s safer and smarter.
For us, I think it was a good choice. I promise to keep you updated if this comes back to bite us in the butt somehow.
Have any of you raided your cash to pay off a debt? How did that turn out? Any major successes or horror stories out there?
July 27, 2010, at 6:00 am
I enjoyed the recipes I’ve been trying on BFS, so here’s another great one!
Commenter MikeS was kind enough to send in the following recipe for me to try out, and it was inexpensive, tasty, and by far the easiest recipe I’ve posted about so far!
Mom’s Pineapple Stuffing
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1 cup sugar (I’m estimating that is costs about $0.40 at Kroger)
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1 stick of butter ($0.40 at Kroger)
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4 eggs ($0.40 at Kroger…I’m seeing a pattern, lol)
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5 slices white bread ($0.35 at Walmart)
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1 can (1lb 4oz) crushed pineapples, drained ($1.08 at Walmart)
- Total cost was less than $3.75 or about $0.75 per serving depending on your personal serving size.
1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease ½ quart casserole dish (I used our 8″ x 8″ pan).
2. In a bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
4. Then stir in the pineapple.
5. Break bread slices into pieces, add to the pineapple mixture, and mix well.
6. Transfer the mixture to the casserole dish.
7. Bake for 1 hour (we baked for 75 minutes due to our specific electric oven), remove from oven, and enjoy!
MikeS said this goes really well with ham. I personally ate it by itself 20 minutes out of the oven, then a few hours later as a dessert with my in-laws, and then I ate some of it cold for a lunch dessert the next day. My in-laws loved it and I’m addicted. It tastes like a combo of bread pudding and a pineapple upside down cake to me.
I’d have to say it would be a great side dish for any poultry or pig or even a delicious dessert by itself…I probably just wouldn’t serve it with cow.
Another great side would be my grandma’s sweet potatoes. Or, if you are in a different mood, try some easy Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas! You can find all of my recipes here.
As always, do you have any other recipe suggestions that a new cook like me could pull off – really easy? How does this one sound to you?
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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