Tag Archives: money

Staying the Course – A Tale of Money & Things

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When I bought my car, I pulled a Bruce Hornsby, said to myself..There are Gonna Be Some Changes made. For anyone born after 1990, here’s the video.

So some of the changes:

  • Only ate out once this week, lunch and dinner included. Went out with a friend, spent $10.82 for dinner. Feel healthier since I eat salad at least once a day and have a ton less guilt. Do need to go food shopping soon though. Savings: Lunch – $40/wk Dinner – $80/week (some weeks it’s more but being conservative)  = $480/mo combined. Still leaving room to eat out on weekends, or go out occasionally and be frugal. 
  • Using Toll Road sparingly. I use a combination of the George Bush Tollway and Dallas North Tollway to get to work in the morning. It it $1.25 each way, I typically only take it to work in the morning and take the side roads back. Due to less overall traffic I end up losing less than 5 minutes commute time. Savings = 6.25/wk $25/mo
  • Strongly considering getting rid of one of the DVRs. There are 2 of us and 3 tvs. The tv in one of my rooms is only used about once a month. My Chromecast or computer can be used to watch video on it. Savings = $8/mo
  • Spotify – It’s $10/mo and causes me to go over the 5Gb of ‘unlimited’ data usage on my phone every single month without exception. XM Radio subscription in car is good for 3 months. I could sign up online but have read horrible things about SiriusXM’s customer service. It is integrated with my car’s stereo, but not sure I’d rather stream or do FM radio..
  • Cancelled Apple Developer Membership. I’d love to be a developer, but I lack the free time to reach the level of knowledge required to become one. There are also plenty of free courses online that I can use to get familiar with the basics, then reassess. Savings = $99/yr 8.25/mo.

All in all that’s about $530 in savings. Just need to make these changes now, less deliberation, more doing. That’s the Home Depot way. Ok I swear I haven’t lost it..

Talked to my friend who bought a fancy coupe recently. I was literally blown away by what he told me. His car gets 20mpg and his drive to and back from work is 30 miles each way plus an additional 250 miles a week in personal travel. So about 100/wk in gas He pays $100/mo in tolls, car payment is $600/mo. Total overhead (insurance, gas, tolls, car note) for his car is $1600/mo, not including depreciation or maintenance. Already in 3 months he put 10k in mileage on a brand new car.  He tried to trade it in upon realizing what a huge financial mistake he made but would only get half of what it was sold for. I couldn’t offer much words of wisdom and it wasn’t the right time / place for I told you so.

Moral of the story is sometimes people have fancy things but a whole lot of stress to keep those things. I could’ve made a similar decision to get a fancy sports car that wasn’t great on gas and not so practical for carrying passengers. Also my new car purchase didn’t boost my overhead much. Insurance went up $5 for 6 months and my payment is under 10% of my net income.

Suze Orman was right: People First, Then Money, Then Things, Now You Stay Safe. People meaning yourself because at the end of the day you are your biggest supporter or biggest enemy to financial security.

Month 26 Update – $30,610.82

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Broke the $31k barrier. This marks about a third of my original balance which included credit cards and student loans. Hate interest too if you haven’t figured that one out. Over $100 each month of what I pay is taking away from the principal payment…

Wasn’t able to pay as much this month as usual due to a series of different bills. Went to a wedding last month in Tampa. Had an great time staying in St. Petersburg. Great restaurants, perfect weather, hotel was mostly nice. The A/C died the last night we were there and the water pressure in the shower was lacking. Rented a Kia Optima car from Budget. Not a car I would recommend. Throttle very jumpy and handling not very good. It was 109.63 total for 3 days courtesy of my Costco discount and some coupons.  My roundtrip flight and hotel were 667.29 which I incurred in March.

Recently found out that as of August my employer will match my 401k contributions up to 6% of my income. There is some 2% retirement plan investment thing I think I’m enrolled in automatically but haven’t looked at that yet. So I have over $2900 in my 401k and up to $200 in my Roth.

So onto the picture below. Plumbing issues again in the house. The root cause I believe is due to someone flushing down a wipe in the toilet. Last time we had this issue I needed to call a plumber and pay close to $300 for the emergency visit. I hate spending money for no reason so I looked up a video on YouTube how to do it and drove down to my nearby Home Depot. The guy there was very helpful in explaining how to use the machine. After a few mosquito bites and lots of sweat in 90° F weather everything was done. Water flowing, toilet draining and only $50 out of pocket.

 

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After looking at some homes (just past the 2 year anniversary in ours), we decided not to pursue further. Seems like a whole lot of work for a place we aren’t super passionate about moving. Higher taxes, more commute time, less sq footage, difficulties in parking, having to cancel contracts and all that jazz.

Going on a cruise soon, my very first one. Looking forward to the experience. I need a vacation from my vacations. It’s usually been going somewhere for someone else (weddings, family, etc), but less so for us as a couple.

Dealing with Successful People

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I’ve encountered or had communications with some highly successful people in the last 15 years.

  1. Worked for a high profile Internet broadcaster in the late 90s as part of a startup reviewing software which I got to keep but not actually keeping an income. Rights to the name / company were sold for an undisclosed amount off the record (though I believe it to be in excess of $1mil) during the dot.com bubble.
  2. Friends with an engineer at Google who has been there for 7 years. I’m sure he makes over 100k / year.
  3. Friends with another engineer at a well-known international company who is an engineer as well making over 100k/yr.
  4. Worked for a multi-million dollar CEO who presided on the BOD for one of the most well known mobile device companies in the world. Along with him, I worked briefly with the founders of a company that was later purchased by Oracle for an undisclosed amount.
  5. My bf does pretty well, though he has been in the same industry for over 12 years at this point.
  6. I’m friends with the CTO of a big nationally recognized company in Houston. He registered a domain name in the 90s and sold it to a pretty popular music company and got $30k for nothing basically. Also online friends with the CEO of that company.

As the saying goes ‘Your 5 Closest Friends Determine Your Income‘. I’m not sure how much truth there is to that statement. The five closest friends I have in NY:

1. Is in IT makes over 100k/yr.
2. Works at McDonalds as a manager making $9/hr.
3. Works at a cable company making high 30s/yr.
4. Runs his own business is making around 60k/yr pretax.
5. Moved far far away to China, then California to run his own business.

So the real question is what do I need to change in my life to get success closer to what they’ve been able to experience. What strategies would help me get there? I’m back to doing the IT training videos after a hiatus / spell of laziness. On module 1.7 – Connectors and have quite a bunch more to go. Reaching goals can be a bitch sometimes… Or is it? It’s 11:45PM my time. Better go to bed so I’m not a zombie in the morning.

Tolls

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Toll Roads in Dallas.  They chop the length of your commute down by half or more.  The benefits are less gas consumption, feeling happier on one’s way to work and getting to locations on time.  The way lights are timed, you wait a good 3 minutes sometimes before it changes from red to green, a good 10 set of lights to potentially hit.

I have ‘ve paid some occasional thought to how much money I spend on the toll roads in Dallas.   The primary advantage of the tollroad is a much quicker commute.  Typical day I take the tollroad to work and side streets home.  That’s 1.18 a day time 5 days x 4 on average or 23.60 a month.  On top of that I can spend an additional 3-5/wk on tolls each week.  So $20 extra is a 43.60/mo.  I hate to wait, but I also hate to burn money when I don’t have to.  I’m thinking I could plan ahead and leave the house an extra 15 min earlier and save, but I’m not sure I’m that cheap. 😛

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