|
|
|
July 8, 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! I received the following email from a reader, Mitch, and thought it would be a nice reminder to pass on:
I was plunging through the depths of my desk and file cabinet today, looking for some misplaced work documents. I took this as a chance to winnow things down a bit. For instance, I had note pads in filed in there that only had three pages used; so I pulled those pages, stapled them together, and then put the pad where I could use it again later. In all, I pulled eight pads out of my files! I even found some extra Scotch tape and Post-It notes in the back of a drawer, so I’m all stocked up on office supplies for awhile.
At the bottom of a drawer (that had not seen the light of day for about 3-4 years), I found two old gift cards. One for Barnes & Noble and one for Office Depot. I tossed them into the garbage pile and moved on to continue my search/cleaning.
As I was about to throw everything away, I decided, “What the heck, I’ll check those cards to see if there’s a few bucks left on them.” So, I flipped ‘em over and called the number on the back, fully expecting them to be bone-dry, and got a very pleasant surprise: The Barnes & Noble card has $20 USD on it! Yee-Haw! A quick call to Office Depot revealed that card had expired, but what the heck: I’ve got $20 USD that I didn’t know I had.
Not a bad pay-off for a 1-minute phone call.
I don’t know how many times a few minutes of my time has saved me heartache, time, or money. This seemed like a good reminder to pass on. Calling about a card balance, calling to compare auto insurance premiums, or even calling your cable company to ask for a discount seems to give solid returns on time investments.
Have you ever saved or made money by just taking a little time to do something? Can you think of any other examples that any of us could use?
July 7, 2010, at 6:00 am
The following is a guest post from Engineer Your Finances. If you enjoy this, you may also want to check out Financial Lessons From Engineering and Financial Lessons from Running, which follow this theme. I also enjoy posts by Fin Engr like Don’t Be Fooled By Sneaky Labeling!.
Making the connections can be a lot of fun, and the more adventures we have in life – the more overlapping themes we’ll notice. The funniest part is, you’ll be surprised at where they pop up!
During a random thought session (i.e. waiting around for public transit), I was pondering my career history and future. A few simple keywords set off an explosion of brainwaves and, before I knew it, parallels to dating were drawn.
A lot of the story is still unwritten, but I would guess most people will find similarities, and hopefully contribute even more!
First Love
Ahhh – remember those puppy love feelings? That first quick peck, bravely holding hands, and the thought “this is the one”. When we first start out, whether in our career or in love, we don’t know what quite to expect, so we cherish every moment. We’re idealistic, naïve, and content.
We may consider everything the company does as undeniable.
If someone was fired, then it was for good reason right?
We may think the company has our best intentions at heart.
If we work long hours, the company will take care of us right?
While its not impossible for careers to jump from First Love to True Love, eventually most of us realize “there’s more out there”. Probably some older, wiser employee educated us on the cruel, self-serving world of business and grand illusions of retirement send-offs faded away.
Before moving on, there’s an important point to think about. Not many people realize, but initially we are all trapped by convenience.
How many people’s first relationship was long distance? Or how many dated someone from another school? Good chance we all started out dating someone within biking distance of our school or house.
Thinking of career fairs at college, would it be realistic to think we’ll find our True Love company among the 100 or so there? Especially when there are 100s of 1,000s out there!? And what about our criteria for selection – name brand & salary? What about something more substantial, like company ethics or employee satisfaction?
Heartbreak
After our First Love, we’re hot stuff right? The bars been set and now it’s time to reach higher. For whatever reason, there always seems to be this feeling of “doing better” – especially when we’re young.
The world is our oyster as they say. We think we’re experienced, think we know what we’re after, and reach for the sky. Who cares about the substance mentioned above. Let’s get the hottest, flashiest person/job out there!
In cases like this, we typically make concessions. We’re more willing to overlook faults because this is what we dreamed – and we want those dreams to match reality.
If we lie about our expertise, we’ll get the project and I’ll be flying 1st class for the next year. If we don’t, there may be negative repercussions on next month’s review.
Unfortunately, the reality eventually catches up with our dreams and we’re left with Heartbreak. And now we’re at a critical fork – do we maintain our fantasy, ignoring the reality or adjust our expectations and move on?
Rebound
Instead of introversion and reflection, there’s this need to fill the void with whatever comes our way. Not quite your First Love, but better than your Heartbreak – the Rebound person/job is a peculiar thing.
We know the person/job isn’t forever, we’re only biding time until that “something better” comes along. We’ll most likely think about the good times from our First Love and what went wrong with our Heartbreak. We vow to never make the same mistakes.
Hopefully, no matter how long it lasts – we’re still learning from the experience and gaining more valuable knowledge.
True Love
If you’ve made it this far, I’ll take a stab and say most are agreeing with the similarities. But True Love is the summit not all of us have reached yet – I know I haven’t. We maintain the belief that after all these ups and downs, “the one” is out there waiting for us. It could be that we already have “the one” and don’t know it.
What makes this stage so special is we regain those feelings from our First Love, but at a much deeper level. The reality from Heartbreak helped us grow beyond superficial interests.
This stage could be described by piecing together the best parts of the earlier stages: First Love, Heartbreak, & Rebound. Each step provided us with a necessary experience, and we take the information gathered along the way to help us grow. We end up learning more about ourselves in the process, and eventually find exactly what we’re looking for.
Crystal’s Questions:
What’s your take on this? What stage are you in with your career?
July 6, 2010, at 6:00 am
The following is a guest post from Funny about Money.
My friend Doris was my mother’s age. A sturdy little Irish-American Midwesterner, she had a heritage of Irish, German, and Yankee home cookin’. One of the favorites she passed down to her kids and younger friends was this really delicious, old-fashioned potato salad.
Doris’s Potato Salad
- 8 red potatoes, boiled until just soft, peeled and chopped into chunks
- 6 eggs, hard-boiled
- 1 tsp yellow mustard
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1/2 cup mayo [for starters]
- 1 cucumber, seeded, and sliced thin along bias
- 1 stalk celery, slice thin along bias
- 1/4 cup yellow onion, chopped
- 2 or 3 radishes, sliced thin
Remove yolks from the hard-boiled eggs. Crush the yolks in a mixing bowl. Slice the egg whites thin and in separate bowl, add them to the potato chunks. Add the mayo, mustard and sugar with crushed egg yolks and mix until the mixture is smooth. Combine the dressing with the potato chunks. Add cucumber, celery and radishes and toss into the salad. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add more mayo, if needed, to coat the potato mixture. Toss thoroughly. Chill and serve.
If desired, you can zing this up a bit with a spoonful of capers, or combine sour cream or high-quality plain yogurt with the mayonnaise.
Related articles at Funny about Money:
The Ultimate Church Potluck Dish
Buying Futures at the Supermarket: Groceries as Investment
How the Crockpot Scalloped Potatoes Worked Out
Crystal’s Questions:
Do you have any frugal recipes you’d like to share? How about super easy ones for a non-cook like me?
July 5, 2010, at 6:00 am
For anyone new to BFS, I post a net worth update at the beginning of every month in order to keep myself motivated and to involve BFS readers. Please feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or even post your net worths too. I am a particpant-motivated blogger, so please jump on in.
I calculate our net worth as listed below. I don’t include the value of our possessions, I round down to the nearest hundred for assets, and I round up to the nearest hundred for liabilities. I also don’t include my husband’s pension account since I’m too lazy to keep up with it and it shouldn’t actually matter until he retires.
Assets
1. Cash – $13,500 (we paid off $4000 of the car loan, paid $500 for the rest of the cruise, and paid $2600 for dental work)
2. Stocks – $15,800
3. Retirement – $32,600
4. Home – $130,000
5. Cars – $16,000
Liabilities
1. Home – $71,600
2. Car – $4,600 (We made an extra $4000 principal payment in mid-June and our regular payment at the end of the month as usual)
Total Net Worth = $131,700 instead of $135,500
Increase/Decrease = Down $3800 from last month 
It sucks to go down again but we only have one grad school payment to go and $4600 on the car. As soon as Mr. BFS has a contract for next year, we’ll use the rest of our emergency fund to pay off the car completely. With any luck, we don’t have any more $2600 expenses pop up.
I base the value of our home on two things: comparables selling in our neighborhood and the estimated appraisal by Chase Home Value Estimator. I will always estimate low.
I base the value of our cars on Kelley Blue Book’s Private Party Value of our vehicles in “Good” condition truncated down to the nearest $1000. For example, if my car is valued at $4600, I’d calculate that as $4000.
Please feel free to visit the archive to see our past net worths.
July 4, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 103,238. Now it is 97,347! WE DID IT!!!
The original goal was to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010 and you helped me blow that out of the water in 2 months! Then we were shooting for 100,000 by July 4th instead!!! YAY!!! WE REALLY DID IT!!!
I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would have been impossible without all of you. Thank you all so much!!!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here. 
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added. I copied the list originally in early March and updated it in mid-June. Please let me know if you are still missing. Thanks!
July 3, 2010, at 6:00 am
My Favorite Posts this Week
Since I’m on vacation and didn’t get to read any great posts this week, here’s a list of posts that I thought were just plain fun!
Guest Posts on BFS
Due to my week long vacation and probable post-vacation loopiness, I was going a little crazy trying to get enough posts scheduled to cover this week and next week. I would like to sincerely thank everybody who helped me out!!! They really came through for me and made vacation preparations SOOO much easier! These are the awesome people who covered this week:
If you would like to submit a guest post to BFS, please shoot me an idea or the actual post. I’d also appreciate a one or two sentence introduction for the piece. I’ll get back to you quickly and will give you as much advance notice as possible on its posting date.
Other Info
- Daniel at Sweating the Big Stuff is giving away $50 in cash to anybody who can give him some encouragement to pay off his student loan! Check it out here by midnight tonight!
- Brad at Enemy of Debt is hosting a fund-raiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters. He’s selling the “I’m Debt Free” game and giving 100% of his commission until August 7th to Big Brothers Big Sisters!
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 2, 2010, at 6:00 am
I thought this would be fitting since I’m actually on a cruise when this is scheduled to post!
Cruises are awesome. Whether you like exploring different activities in the ports or just enjoy being pampered on the high seas, cruising would be for you. I personally can’t get enough of the never-ending food and pampering, but you can’t possibly be surprised.
Here’s a synopsis of the 5 day cruise we went on last year:
Day One
We were forced to leave 6 hours later than planned due to an engine problem the ship had on the way in, so my husband and I were supremely crabby. Carnival gave us $30 total to make up for it, but I was not appeased after waiting in lines and on the floor for more than 4 hours.
Dinner made all of that annoyance and frustration go away. If you decide to eat in the dining rooms in the evening, it’s like going to a super fancy restaurant but being able to try whatever you want. I swear, hubby and I tried new and different things every night. I had never had goat cheese before and I found out that I really enjoy it! The after dinner show was fun too.
Then we hit the casino for an hour or so. We won $60 that first night off the quarter video poker machines, but lost it in the next five days. At least we broke even over all.
Day Two
I woke up to play trivia games and then hubby and I played Putt-Putt on the top deck. We had a buffet breakfast and hamburgers for lunch. We explored the ship, looked at the overpriced shops, and filled in the day with all sorts of ship-planned activities. Dinner was extravagant again and the after dinner show was okay. We played in the free slot machine tournament later that night. We didn’t win but it was a lot of free fun anyway.
Day Three
The ship docked in Progresso, Mexico early in the morning, but hubby and I slept in. We woke up, enjoyed the late buffet breakfast, and wandered off the ship right after lunch. We spend a couple of hours browsing the souvenir shops and I bargained my little heart out.
We ended up with gifts for everyone on our list for less than $30 including a few little figurines for me. My husband even found a stone chess set that he just had to have, so I asked him to wait outside on the bench since I didn’t want them to see his enthusiasm. He agreed really quickly since he hates haggling. They wanted $75, so I put two 20′s in my pocket and walked back in. I asked the lady if they’d accept $40 and pulled the 20′s out. She politely refused, said the manager would be upset, and countered with $60. I politely declined, said I was only willing to pay $40 but that’s okay, and walked out of the store. She tapped me on my shoulder while I was walking down the little street and said the manager said it would be okay.
I know I only saved $35 but I felt empowered! It wasn’t until we made it back on the ship with the heavy set that we realized it wouldn’t fit in our luggage. I made plans to buy a bag for it at the next port, Cozumel.
Day Four
We actually woke up early enough to go to the formal dining room for breakfast while the ship docked at Cozumel. Once we were finished, we got off the boat and caught a $10 taxi to Chankanaab Park. It cost about $50 to get in and $3 for each set of snorkel gear, but it was amazing! You walk right into the ocean and are immediately surrounded by fish. The further out you go, the less fish you see, but I did get a pretty great picture of a 3 foot long Barracuda! Scared the bejeezus out of me…
After snorkeling we grabbed a quick lunch and browsed around the shops to find a bag for the chess set. We found the perfect bag that could even be reused for our board games when we got home, but they wanted $30. I offered $15, they countered with $25, and we ended up settling at $19. Woot! I love haggling! It also made for a great souvenir since it has “Cozumel” emblazoned on the side.
We also picked up some sidewalk art for $25 – I think it is amazing what some people can do with lids and spray paint.
That night we again had an awesome dinner and I even made it onto the stage for a game show-like trivia contest. I came in second by one question…oh well, it was fun!
Afterwards we discovered a late night comedy show and stayed for karaoke. That was my first real experience with karaoke and it was awesome! There were a few really talented people that made the whole thing a lot of fun!
Day Five
We had been to an artwork preview earlier in the cruise and this was the day of the art auction. Hubby and I had already decided on three pieces and then saw a set of Krasnyansky prints that he really loved. The colors were amazing so I agreed. Overall, we spent $800-$900 on 7 different pieces of art and then spent another $700-$800 when we got home to have them all professionally framed. I know, my frugal heart screamed in pain, but at least it all looks absolutely fabulous!
That night was another awesome dining experience and the best evening show ever. Our cruise director broke out his violin and fiddle…there is something special about a man who can play superb classical music and nail Charlie Daniels “Devil Went Down to Georgia” in the same half hour! It was an experience of a lifetime just to see it.
After that show, we went back to karaoke night and then polished off the evening dancing to 60′s and 70′s music at one of the on-board clubs. It was fantastic since my husband and I can’t dance and didn’t care!
We disembarked the next morning and had been craving another cruise all year. We are currently on a 7 day cruise that I’ll tell you all about in a few weeks!
Cost
The total cost of the 5 day cruise broke down like this:
- Cruise, Drinks, and Tips – about $1500
- Moneysupermarket cheap travel insurance – included in cruise cost next time, used the travel insurance offered through my agent
- Snorkeling in Cozumel including the gear and taxi – $66
- Souvenirs – about $100
- Art – $850
- Framing – $800
Overall, a cruise is an awesome value…especially if you skip spending a bunch on art. We have promised each other to limit any purchases this trip to $300 or less. I’ll tell you if that worked out.
Have you been on a cruise? If so, what did you like or dislike about it? If not, do you have any future plans to try it out?
|
|
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.
|
http://www.budgetinginthefunstuff.com/check-before-you-trash/ http://www.budgetinginthefunstuff.com/check-before-you-trash/trackback/
