May 31, 2009
In the past week, interest rates shot up on home mortgages and 10-year Treasury notes as investors looked for signs of inflation on the horizon. But is it too early to worry?
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May 31, 2009
I’m not the only one who has been thinking about the relationship between money and meaning lately. This is a guest post from CJ at WiseMoneyMatters.com, who is trying to live a rich life even as he works to pay down debt.
I love this quote from Dr. Edwin Louis Cole because it gives me a heart check. It helps me understand my motives for doing what I’m doing.
You see, my goals are to become completely debt-free. I’m getting closer and closer to that goal. Within the last few months, I downsized my house, doubled my income, and was able to pay off all of my debts except for the mortgage. So now all I have left is about $100,000 to pay off before I am completely debt-free.
In order to get to those goals, I’m working extra hard. I work a job that has a great schedule: ten hours a day, four days a week. While that’s nice, it’s 45 minutes away, so I get very little time with my wife those four days.
Then I use my three-day weekends to work on side jobs. I’m a D.J. and videographer for weddings. I also work on my blog, WiseMoneyMatters.com. I do everything possible to earn extra money to help pay down debt.
And, of course, I try to be as frugal as possible. My wife and I are on a strict budget. We each get $100 per month for play money (this includes new clothes, eating out, coffee, etc). Groceries are limited to $200 per month. Everything else goes towards bills or savings.
Be careful what you wish for
I’m on the right track toward getting out of debt and becoming rich. I’m doing all of the right things. But why? Why do I want to be debt-free? Why do I want lots of money? I know intellectually that money doesn’t always bring happiness, yet we all strive for more of it, and sometimes at the expense of our own families.
I know too many guys who have built very successful businesses and made large amounts of money and had their family fall apart. I used to be envious of them and what they had. Now I just feel sorry for them.
They wanted riches so bad that it consumed them. They have nice houses and brand-new cars, yet are completely alone. Many celebrities find themselves in similar circumstances.
I hear stories all of the time on personal finance blogs and podcasts about how the drive to get out of debt causes significant conflicts in the home. One spouse goes crazy frugal while the other is a spendthrift. Money-related issues are the leading cause of divorce these days.
What’s the point?
Let’s say I accomplish my goal of becoming completely debt-free. What then? What will I do with all of that extra money? I’ll probably save for retirement. That’s the next logical step, right? But it all just seems so superficial.
I’m spending my whole life working my butt off so I can be lazy the last 10-20 years of my life. Something about that just doesn’t sit right with me.
I want for there to be more purpose in life than just a selfish dream of ultimate laziness. I want to make a difference in this world. I want my life to be meaningful.
My purpose
My wife and I decided to give our money away. If we’ve been blessed this much, I feel it’s important to bless others.
We have set aside 20% of our income just for giving to charity. My wife takes girls from our church youth group out to lunch. She just talks with them and helps them through those tough situations that come up for teenagers. We sponsor a girl in India via Compassion International. We give to Teen Challenge to help teenaged boys with drug addictions. We donate both our time and money because time is as valuable (or more so!) as money. I tutor some of the boys in math every Friday. And, finally, we give to our church and to our community.
We also set aside $100 per month for date nights as my family is of utmost importance to me. We take out my wife’s 11-year-old brother every week. He comes from a broken home where his mother is addicted to drugs and brings new boyfriends home all the time. He needs a little stability.
I can tell you that I find so much more satisfaction seeing people’s lives changed than I do watching my mortgage go down another $1,000. I find I am much wealthier than I can imagine, even if I might not be considered “rich”.
Now don’t get me wrong: We are still saving and planning to pay off our mortgage early. Those things are very important to us. But without a purpose, they don’t really matter.
Don’t let the prospects of tomorrow come at the expense of today.
What’s your purpose?
So I challenge you: What’s your purpose?
If all of your dreams come true and you pay off debt and make millions of dollars, what’s the point? Is it to satisfy your selfish desires? Or are you going to make a difference? Are you going to pursue those riches at the expense of your family? Or will you set boundaries in order to spend time with the kids, and to take your wife on dates?
Why do you want to be rich?
CJ’s article reminds me of another guest post from last December, in which Jeremy M. asked, “What’s your why?”
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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:
May 30, 2009
Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for May 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
What a difference a year makes! Our fruits, berries, and vegetables had a slow start last year (and then were further slowed by a cold, cold June). This May was warm — very warm. Our food crops loved the weather, and they’ve shown explosive growth.
As a reminder, here’s what the garden looked like at the end of April:
And here’s what it looks like now:
First harvest
The sunny weather produced lots of growth. The peas and raspberries and blueberries and fruit trees all look amazing. We’re going to have huge crops. We have a couple of small snow peas on the vine, and the tomatoes are blossoming. But only three crops have yielded fruit through the end of May:
That puts our May harvest at $5.97, which isn’t much, but it is still $5.97 more than we harvested in May last year.
Challenges
Though our garden is going well this year, we’ve experienced some minor annoyances:
These aren’t major problems, obviously — they’re just minor annoyances. We try to take care of our equipment, but there are a few failures every year. Partly because of this, May was an expensive month. (It was also expensive in 2008.) We spent $98.55 on garden supplies, including herbs and vegetable starts.
Summary
I spent zero hours in the garden this month. I did a few quick tasks, but no major work. Kris made up for that. She tells me she spent 15 hours on food-producing activities last month. I’m skeptical. That’s 40% more than our busiest month in 2008 (July). On the other hand, she did do a lot of work out there. (She tells me that just as some GRS readers warned, the horse manure we spread last fall has produced a fine carpet of weeds, which she hoes daily.)
Here’s the monthly summary for May, including comparison data from 2008.
| Month | Time | Cost | Harvest | Month | Time | Cost | Harvest | |
| Jan 09 | 3.0 hrs | $131.15 | — | Jan 08 | 4.0 hrs | $27.30 | — | |
| Feb 09 | 12.0 hrs | $36.67 | $10.00 | Feb 08 | 2.5 hrs | — | — | |
| Mar 09 | 4.0 hrs | $1.00 | $5.00 | Mar 08 | 3.5 hrs | $130.00 | — | |
| Apr 09 | 3.0 hrs | — | — | Apr 08 | 5.5 hrs | $28.51 | — | |
| May 09 | 15.0 hrs | $98.55 | $5.97 | May 08 | 5.5 hrs | $110.89 | — | |
| Total 09 | 32.0 hrs | $197.08 | $20.97 | Total 08 | 21.0 hrs | $296.70 | — |
Final word
This garden project is not a formal experiment. Kris and I are long-time hobby gardeners, and we have set ways that we do things. This year, we’re trying to incorporate some new ideas from GRS readers, but most of the time we’ll do things the way we have for nearly 15 years.
We’re not trying to be 100% organic (though we are mostly organic through our normal practices). Nor are we trying to be 100% frugal. Instead, we’re trying to see just what our garden costs and produces based on our normal habits. We hope the results of this experiment will help us find new ways to economize and to improve our crops.
You can read about my goals for this series in The year-long GRS project: How much does a garden really save?
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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:
May 29, 2009
Executives at major news companies are arriving at the consensus that they will simply have to find a way to charge people who read their articles online. But, as several newspapers have learned, it’s not such a simple sell.
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May 29, 2009
If you believe an error has been made on your credit report, you can dispute it.
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May 29, 2009
If I had my way, the realtors will all be regulated. The financial advisers are regulated, and the accountants are part of the association that governs how they are supposed to conduct business. Why not the realtors as well?
Never mind our 401k and taxable investment accounts. The house is the biggest asset in most American households. Furthermore, not over-leveraging on our home is one of the most beneficial decisions we can make for our finances.
While Emma and I were looking at houses, we have met agents who yelled at us, lied to us, looked down on us and this was during one of the toughest time in California housing history! Can you imagine how it was like during the bubble years?
These people claim to help us find our home, but most of them have no idea how most of the financing options worked nor do they seriously have our interest in mind. Buy buy buy is what they really care about. When they shake our hand, I bet all they see are dollar signs.
True, there is the National Association of Realtors (NAR) but instead of valuing ethics and integrity, this organizing routinely works like a giant advertising agency. We know the benefits of home ownership already. We don’t need more people telling us that “Now is the perfect time to buy” every day of the month and every month of the year, every single year.
Even the compensation structure of realtors are setup so that home buyers are screwed. While a buying agent is supposed to represent the buyer’s interest, the agent makes more money by keeping the transaction price high, not to mention that the number one priority is to create a transaction. What if the buyer wants a better deal? What if the house isn’t a right fit? The realtors are the experts, and should offer advice and be compensated that way.
In order to improve the experience of the American dream, the realtor association should be:
Please do something about all these realtors. We don’t need the stupid advice of “House prices will never go down so stretch to buy the most expensive house you want” ever again.
This is part of the Government Improvement Series, where we discuss on ways that the government can help the U.S. become a better nation every Friday. If you like this article, you may be interested in finding others at the link above.
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Related Articles at Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning:
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May 28, 2009
Susan Boyle
Reports have flooded the news media about what’s being called the “Susan Boyle Meltdown.” According to several sources, Susan Boyle unleashed a tirade of curses at strangers in a hotel lobby in London. The strangers were insulting her, or “trying to wind her up,” as the Brits say.
Sources close to Susan Boyle have said that she has been stressed out since making it into the finals of “Britain’s Got Talent.” However, I don’t know if I’d call chewing out some strangers who were asking for it a “total meltdown,” as many tabloids are calling it.
While it may have done her some good to blow off some steam, it might not have been the best financial decision, and could send her back to a life of needing a loan till payday. Susan Boyle is set to compete in the finals on UK television show “Britain’s Got Talent.” A win would ensure her a future filled with financial stability, fame and success.
However, her reputation as a simple, sweet, humble, middle-aged woman is what got her all of this attention in the first place, along with her amazing voice, of course. If this mishap changes her fans’ views of her, all that cash she could have had her hands on may stay a fantasy forever.
Here is some background on Susan Boyle, in case you missed the story:
Word spread quickly about Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle. She appeared on “Britain’s Got Talent” in April, and she hasn’t left the spotlight since. Shortly after her appearance on the British show, she appeared on CNN’s “American Morning,” and reported that she was “absolutely gobsmacked” by her sudden fame. … click here to read the rest of the article titled "Will Susan Boyle's Meltdown Cost her a Fortune?"
May 28, 2009
Job layoffs, plunging retirement accounts, home foreclosures — the ripples of the recession are affecting us all. Like many Americans, you may have a limited income and no savings. You may have been turned down for credit or own maxed-out credit cards. You may have damaged credit for any number of reasons, including a previous bankruptcy filing. If these are your financial demographics, you are a direct target for payday lenders and you may be trapped in a habit of borrowing between paychecks that you can’t seem to break.
Everyone’s situation is different, but if you’re living from paycheck to paycheck, this much is certain: it’s not easy to make ends meet and payday advances are tempting. Anyone who’s ever applied for an online payday loan is set upon by email messages like these every day: You’re just moments away from cash in your pocket today; Last chance for money before this weekend; Is Payday too far away? Make it happen tomorrow; Claim your cash eligibility by midnight tonight; Get cash with bad or no credit. And the onslaught never ends.
If you’re trapped in a payday loan cycle, you will never begin to regain financial control until you say “no” to the next instant payday loan. This will mean that you will have to scrape by between paychecks. It will mean that you will have to stop paying for unnecessary things like health clubs, lawn maintenance, cable, internet service, and cell phones. … click here to read the rest of the article titled "I Can't Get Out of the Payday-Loan Trap"
May 28, 2009
My grandma once said she saw a ghost. She is also crazy so I don’t know if that is valid. I think that there are ghosts. I don’t know if they are necessarily bad or not. I think that they are probably nice. They probably help people out rather than haunting them. I bet that there can also be ghosts of people who have died that just want to say goodbye to their family and loved ones. I don’t know if ghosts would actually hurt anyone. Maybe if they were evil ghosts they might. All I know is I have never seen one so I don’t know anything about them.
May 28, 2009
Ok, this is totally random, but the other day I was thinking about how I dressed up as a hobo for Halloween when I was a kid. I wore a tweed cap, an old blazer of my dad’s which I think I was allowed to tear up a little, and his old, raggedy boots. I also smeared eye shadow on my face to look like beard stubble, and carried a bandanna on a stick, which I used to stash the candy I collected. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for hobo, you’ll see exactly the look I was going for. Except I also wore a pair of large plastic ears, I guess just to increase the pathos!
Now, a hobo is not exactly just a poor, homeless person. The term has slightly more romantic connotations, as hobos were known for riding railroad cars all over the country, and they had all these cool slang words and code symbols to help each other out. But still… hobos are poor and homeless.
So do kids still think it’s fun to play hobo, or to dress up as one on Halloween? But certainly no kid ever says “hey, I think I’ll be a grungy homeless person for Halloween,” right? Nowadays it seems like they all want to be something far more glamorous, and the life of a poor, itinerant person is no longer romanticized. But I don’t have kids, so I may be wrong… what do you think?
Martin Rogen 