Saving Savy by a Future Millionaire

Net Worth Update

2009-02-19T18:12:00.001-05:00

I went back to my last published net worth update from July to compare it to my current net worth. In the last seven months my net worth has grown dramatically - primarily due to a $32,000 bonus I received in September (see I told you it was worth waiting to change jobs until after my bonus from the V-town project was released). The remaining increase in my net worth comes from interest earned on my money in the bank and diligent saving.

	Updated 2/8/09	Change from Previous Month	Updated 7/1/08	Change from Previous Update
Total Net Worth	$151,362.09	$1,747.55	$110,872.13	$40,489.96

Net Worth Comprised of
Retirement Savings:	$31,922.01	-$44.48	$29,881.15	$2,040.86
401k	$25,663.54	$415.56	$23,932.15	$1,731.39
Roth IRA	$6,258.47	-$460.04	$5,949.00	$309.47

House Down Payment	$58,634.87	$58,634.87	$57,401.89	$1,232.98

Future Car Savings	$10,286.27	$271.10	5,458.48	$4,827.79

Future Investment Savings	$0.12	-$36,193.68	$5,458.48	-$5,458.36

Investments	$37,416.97	$37,416.97		$37,416.97

Emergency Fund/Money Market:	$12,416.42	$582.82	$11,435.17	$981.25

"Cash"/Checking:	$685.43	-$464.92	$1,236.96	-$551.53

Investing -- So far this is Awsome!

2009-02-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sick. I left work early today because I feel absolutely horrible and went to see the doctor turns out I have bronchitis. Lovely, but at least they gave me some good drugs.

On the positive side this means I have time to give you all an update on how it went with my financial adviser, Bob. The appointment went great, I've already met with Bob about 4 other times exluding the inital time visit where I interviewed him. In our appointments we've discussed everything financial under the sun from my tax advantages with a Roth 401k to which banks to put my house down payments and car fund, he's very patient with me which I love since I'm new to the finacial advisor business and am some what secptiacal every time he gives me advise so I quiz him to death about everything. This quizing and his patients have helped me to feel pretty comfortable with Bob. When I arrived for my appointment we spent a little over an hour reviwing the proposal he'd given me on my last visit about how he wanted to invest my investment money and how he'd mitigate my tax exposure with capital gains. After tons of research I'd already decided this was the direction I wanted to go but I still quizzed him with every question I still had and confirmed with myself that I was still in agreement. I then wrote the largest check I've ever written ($37,000) and handed it to him, signed a million papers and left his office feeling wonderful because I'd taken action and was now an investor --- not just a saver.

So far I have to say that this investing business is awsome...

January 27th I handed over my check for $37,000 to be put in a managed account. In less than two weeks my balance has increased to $37,416.97 which is about the same amount of interst I earned on all this money in a year. Don't worry I'm not getting too excited, I know that the actual dollor value of my investments will fluxate and most likely in the next year and maybe even sometime in the future my balance may even dip below my inital investment. But I'm in it for the long haul and have no intention of withdrawing any of this money for at least 30 more years.

I'm BACK

2009-01-25T11:04:00.003-05:00

I kind of checked out for a little while. Between work and all of the other juggling acts I was trying to do I let this slide but I’ve really missed my chats and rambles about finance so I’ve decided its time to resurrect Future Millionaire. To catch up to today I thought I’d give a well over due update on what’s going on in my life.

Career:

I got two job offers back in August but decided against both of them. One job I didn’t accept because the reputation of the company wasn’t very good around town and the second because for some unknown reason I just wasn’t ready to leave my current company. Before turning down the second offer I did a lot of soul searching and decided that even thought I hated my current assignment I wanted to stay put with my current company. Going on the job search really helped me because it allowed me to feel more empowered, I wasn’t being forced into a role I hated and the project from hell…believe it or not I was choosing it because I did have other options.

Looking back with the economic melt down that’s occurred I even more glad I didn’t take either of the two job offers, both of them were with smaller companies and neither has fared well in the current economy. Not that my current company has not been effective, we have been hit pretty hard and there’s been lay offs that amount to almost 20% of our workforce through out the US in 2008 with probably more to come. But despite that I still feel I’m in a better situation at a company that’s “huge” and at a company that I have a good established reputation. And I’ve accepted/resigned myself to my current assignment because – hey its better than not having a job and I did choose it.

I did achieve my goal for last year of receiving a promotion, I was promoted in September. Yay!

I think my goal for this year will be to just stay gainfully employed.

Finances:

I finally…found a financial adviser and finally acted. I kept dragging my feet for some reason but I decided in October on a guy that my favorite banker, Charlie, recommended and he helped me first with rebalancing my 401k – prior to meeting my adviser, Bob, I had my entire 401k in a target date fund. It was really hard for me to put my trust in someone else to help me make the right decisions. I’m still very shaking on investing, I know how to read morning star and look for decent picks but its still hard for me to just do it which is why I didn’t sign up to put my Roth IRA in his hands until December of this year so starting in 2009 my Roth IRA will be diversified…yay! I’m also very excited about my next step with Bob which is this Tuesday I’m going to his office to write a big $37,000 check to start an actively managed account that’s outside of my maxed out retirement accounts. I’ll have to let you know how it goes.

My one regret with hiring a financial advisor is that I think I pay Bob too much. I pay my advisor a yearly retainer plus now I’m going to be paying him 1.5% to actively manage my non-retirement accounts which will amount to about $1,400. I think I have over paid for his help and will continue to pay more than I should but I’ve decided that I’m okay with that because I finally acted and isn’t it better to pay a little more to gain more than it is to just let everything sit and gain nothing.

My net worth has increased to just shy of $150,000. A lot of that increase is from my regular monthly saving and my bonuses. Don’t get me wrong I was hit by the stock market down turn but fortunately compared to many I’ve only lost about $13,000 because of my fear of investing I kept all but my retirement accounts in the bank. I’ll have to sit down and do a comparison net worth update soon.

Unfortunately, I think this year I won’t have such a significant increase in net worth primarily because I’ll most likely be taking about a 15-20% pay cut this year because I probably won’t be receiving any bonuses with the way the economy is looking. The only good thing about that is that I don’t need the bonuses to live. My bonuses always were stuck straight into savings with maybe a little shaved on the top for a small indulgence.

I’d like to have a net worth goal this year of $175,000 but since the current stock situation will distort my net worth goal in comparison to my savings, especially since I’m going to start investing in the stock market a little more. I think I’d rather have a savings goal for 2009– this just means its going to be harder for me to track but its achievement is 100% in my control. I’m planning this year to again max out my retirement contributions and contribute $21,500 in retirement vehicles, add $3,000 to my new car fund, and contribute at least $2,500 towards my investments – I will increase my investment contributions if I actually receive bonuses this year but I’m doubtful. So in total for 2009 I want to save $27,000.

Personal:

Mr. Be-Mine and I are still going strong, its been nearly two wonderful years. Wow – I can’t believe its only been that long, it feels like he’s always been a big part of my life. In fact, I think he might be the one. Since this is a financial blog, and you don’t want all the gushy girly stuff I’ll stop there.

My brother and I are getting ready to run the ING Half Marathon this March. Opted for the half marathon this year instead of the Marathon because I still don’t have a lot of time due to work and didn’t want to try and squeeze in a super heavy work out schedule, just want to have a fitness goal hard enough to keep me motivated to work out and run every day. One financial thing I’ve been meaning to actually ponder is whether its better to register for these races early like I do to get a price break or if its better to pay full price but save 6+ months of interest on your money. Hmm…sounds like a future post.

I’m still volunteering every week at the Food Bank and donating every month. These are the types of organization that need the help even more now. I even have Mr. Be-Mine going with me to volunteer each week. And one the rare occasions I can’t go because I’m out of town for work, he still goes with out me - that’s my kind of guy.

I’m still living with Fashionista. Our lease is about to expire so we have to renew it before February 9^th in order to stay put. The one nice thing about the current economy is that our rent did not increase like we expected it to after a year. In fact we’re planning to go next weekend to talk to our apartment management company about maybe lowering it some, just to see what happens but we’re both okay with staying put even if they don’t lower rent.

I think that’s about it for updates, let me know if you’re curious about anything else. I’m looking forward to the next post already.

Blogging

2008-07-20T15:11:00.002-04:00

As part of my deep thinking and rejuvenating on the cruise I've made a decision about the blog. Lately its been feeling forced and despite Changing my post schedule my post have still been short and not the quality that I really want to share so I've yet again changed my mind. I'm going to go back to the reason I've

I'm going to blog just for my personal enjoyment and I'm only going to blog when I have the time and when I have something to share. So who knows when my next post will be, maybe some time this week maybe sometime next month, but I can assure you that This Future Millionaire will still be on track financaily and she still wants to share plenty with readers so keep checking back every so often or subscribe to my reader so that you can be sure to find when my next post pops up.

Until then...Happy Personal Finance Thought!

Back from the Cruise and some exciting news to share

2008-07-20T15:01:00.003-04:00

Hey Guys. I'm back from my much needed vacation. I have to say a week of being waited on hand and foot by the cruise line staff sure does help one relax and rejuvenate. I'm happy to say I'm almost back to my normal self before I started working on the Project from hell in April.

Lets see some updates in my life that unfortunately due to the job and life I've not been able to post about. I've had several contacts through the grapevine about potential jobs, I've not really hit the real job market because for one thing I started getting cold feet about changing jobs, I really do love my current company its just that I don't love the current assignment. My second reason is I'm a little worried about changing jobs, going into the unknown. I've only ever really worked for one company (sure I have a variety of miscellaneous , but I'm talking career jobs I've only worked for one company) so who knows what other companies might hold out there. I'm also a little nervous because I've not yet received that promotion and I it has to do with politics, so I'm afraid if I change companies now that I might be further delayed in obtaining a promotion. Lets see the list goes on and on. But despite that I've talked to a few close confidants with in the industry to seek there opinion about what I should do and that's lead to several contacts about potential jobs, none of which I've followed up upon too closely. Well the other day (two weeks ago) out the blue I received a call from a rather small GC that wanted to talk to me about an estimating job. I was curious to know how they received my name and it appears that I have a pretty good reputation with in the business. So yay for that! Anyway I have an interview with them towards the end of next week. So we'll see how it goes, I have a ton of reservations about working for a small GC, changing companies etc etc etc etc but I feel I owe it to myself to check them out so I'm going to at least talk to them, I figure they have to sell me at this point not the other way around.

Wish me luck on the interview.

Vacation

2008-07-12T10:34:00.002-04:00

Hey Y'all. In case you were getting worried about where I was, I'm on a much needed vacation and am on a cruise so my internet access is pretty much non existent unless I want to pay ridiculous rates. I'll be back from my cruise on the 21st and I'll chat with ya then.

Guest Post ---- Your Credit Cards Can Save You Money

2008-07-03T07:14:00.001-04:00

Below is a great post from fellow personal finance blogger Miranda who edits for DestroyDebt.com if you enjoy her post be sure to check out Destroy Debt.

It seems counterintuitive that a personal finance writer would advocate the use of credit cards, but that's what I do -- provided that you can use your credit card responsibly and pay it off every month. Just like so much else in this life, credit cards themselves aren't evil. But using them in a way that is detrimental can result in a great deal of trouble. But if you use them the right way, your credit cards can actually save you money.

Choosing the right rewards

First of all, don't just choose any card with any old rewards program. You need to find a rewards program that works well for you -- offering you the rewards that you will actually use. Compare offers and decide what will benefit you the most. Whether you want travel points, cash or consumer goods, you need to pick a rewards program that will provide you with what you need.

Be warned: Too many different cards, with too many different rewards, can dilute the effectiveness of your rewards program. Instead, choose no more than three that you want to work on.

Create a plan for building credit card rewards that can save you money

Any financial planning tool -- including credit cards -- requires, well, a plan. You need to decide how you are going to amass rewards. However, the key here is to only spend money on things you would buy anyway. Here is an example of how I spend my money, and which credit cards I use to pay for them:

Capital One No Hassle card: All grocery store purchases, gas and recurring bills. Receive miles that I can redeem for airfare or other travel. Last year: Free round trip ticket to New York to visit my husband's family. This year: Free round-trip ticket to Phoenix, AZ to see my grandfather. Planning to use the rest of the points for car rental and for hotel while taking a mini-vacation within the trip to New York.
Upromise card: All online purchases. Percentage of purchases goes into an account that is in turn invested into a tax-preferred 529 college savings plan for our son.
Cash back card: Large consumer purchases. Once the reward is $10, a check is sent. Almost every time we make a large purchase (computer, TV, sofa, etc.) we get a check in the mail. That check immediately goes into our emergency fund -- which is a high yield savings account. It's not the only money we put in there, but it gives the fund a periodic boost.

Retirement is our most important goal, but we find that we can work toward our next most important goals (defraying travel costs to see family and helping our son pay for college) without having to spend extra money.

Warnings when using credit cards in this manner

It is important to take heed. Without a plan, you can quickly fall into the trap of not paying off your credit cards each month, and entering the cycle of debt (and the attendant interest). Here are some things to remember when using credit cards to save you money:

Once you start paying interest, the value of your rewards is eroded and can even be destroyed. So pay off your credit cards each month.
Make sure that you have the money before you buy something. That way you will be able to pay off the credit card at the end of the month.
Be aware that going over you limit or paying late can mean being locked out of your rewards. You won't be able to access them until you are back under your limit, or you've made your payment (and paid your late fees).
Late fees and over the limit fees can erode the value of your rewards.

If you plan carefully and use your credit cards in a constructive manner, you will find that your credit card companies are paying you -- instead of you paying them.

Miranda Marquit edits information on debt consolidation for DestroyDebt.com.

Net Worth Update --- Looks Like the Stock Market Is Starting to Impact Me

2008-07-01T07:02:00.001-04:00

Its July 1st which means that the 4th of July Holiday is right around the corner. It also means its time for me to update my net worth. Below is my new update.

	Updated 7/1/08	Change from Previous Update	Updated 5/30/08
Total Net Worth	$105,413.65	$559.93	$104,853.72

Net Worth Comprised of
Retirement Savings:	$29,881.15	$321.37	$29,559.78
401k	$23,932.15	$361.08	$23,571.07
Roth IRA	$5,949.00	-$39.71	$5,988.71

House Down Payment/CD's:	$57,401.89	$157.06	$57,244.83

Future Car Savings	$5,458.48	$157.76	$5,300.72

Emergency Fund/Money Market:	$11,435.17	$227.89	$11,207.28

"Cash"/Checking:	$1,236.96	-$304.15	$1,541.11

At first I was really concerned that I'd only increase my net worth by less than $560 because that's much less than my typical $2,000. There's two main reasons for this less than normal net worth increase, the first is that my Money Market decreased because I paid for part of my vacation that I'm taking in July the other main reason that my net worth decreased is that despite contributions of over $1700 to my retirement accounts they only increased by $321. I guess the current stock market and economy is finally taking its toll on me.

Monday's Money Funny

2008-06-30T06:19:00.000-04:00

No Monday Funny this week. With the project from Hell and my worse than normal hours (that unfortunately will last the duration of this project) I've not been keeping as abreast of financial news as I like to and sadly didn't open a paper, magazine or website last week.

If you're fortunate enough to keep up with the news give me a shout if you find any good Money Funnies.

Weekend Round Up

2008-06-29T18:30:00.003-04:00

Its been an exciting week around in the PF Bloggers World this past week. A few highlights include:

Living Almost Large explains all about IRA's.
Penelope @ Our Fourpence Worth gave tips on how to Resist the Urge to Slurge.
Master Your Card's Kristy gave a great test to determine if you're smarter than a 5th Grader when it comes to Credit Cards. (I love that TV show!)
Ashley from Wide Open Wallet shared a great story about a play it forward for coupons. Such a great idea.
Girls Just Wanna have Fund's Ginger shared tips on saving money when Vacationing.
And Seb from Pinching Copper wrote another great letter to Mr. Bernake.

Budget

2008-06-25T18:07:00.004-04:00

I recently received a reader request from Allison (shout out to Allison --- Thanks for reading!). She suggested that I share my budget as she felt readers might be interested. So here it goes…in addition to sharing my budget numbers I thought I’d take it a step further and share my philosophy on budgets which is that is has to be stretchy like a rubber band or it will never work.

My monthly budget is $1800, excluding savings and automatic withdraws from my paycheck*. This increases several months a year when I have irregular expenses like car maintenance, vacation, taxes etc. To account for these irregular expenses I save monthly so in reality I still stay with in my budget. My budget line items are pretty simple – I like to keep it easy as can be. Big Expenses include Rent ($620), Charity ($500), Dinning/Entertainment ($230), Utilities ($150), Gas ($100), Groceries/Sundries ($100), Misc-clothing, memberships, gifts etc ($100). Any left over from the month I roll over to my irregular expenses savings in addition to my normal savings.

* My health insurance, flexible spending account, renters insurance, retirement contributions etc is automatically deducted from my paycheck

While my monthly budget is $1800, I don’t hold strictly to my line item budgets. Each month is slightly different for me – one month I might eat out more often but buy less Groceries, another months I might splurge a little big more on gifts (especially around June when I have three birthdays in a row) but I’m so busy at Birthday parties that I don’t drive as much. I don’t beat myself up over this if I go over my targeted line item budget, I simply adjust for it from another category. If you don’t adjust for it then its like you’re on a really strict diet and I don’t know about you but I can never seem to follow those because eventually you just can’t take it anymore and have to splurge so I allow myself that splurging. It also allows you to do last minutes items that aren’t planned for – if my friends are going out and I don’t have to say no just because I’ve reached the $230 limit, I can just “borrow” a little for another category or if I absolutely need some toilet paper but I’ve used up my $100 groceries/sundries budget I can still get the items I need and “borrow” it from gas etc. The only two that I don’t borrow from are Rent because I prefer not to get evicted and I don’t borrow from Charity because I make that a priority. But all the rest are adjustable.

To help ensure that I’m staying on track with my budget, at least once a week I check on my total expenses for the month (excluding the irregular expenses) and calculate how much remaining money I have – this helps me to adjust my spending and help me remember my goal with my budget. I also check on each of my line items to make sure I’m in the ballpark and if I notice a trend over several months I adjust accordingly as well.

That’s my take on budgets --- how do you manage your budget and what does your budget look like?

Carnival of Personal Finance #158

2008-06-24T00:14:00.001-04:00

The Carnival of Personal Finance #158 Hosted by Mrs. Micahis up and running.

There's a tone of great posts by fellow bloggers, but sure to check them out and while you're there check out my article which is post under Assorted Instruments.

Monday's Money Funny - Tipping

2008-06-23T07:07:00.001-04:00

One of the regular features on my blog is "Monday's Money Funny" which are humorous (at least to me) articles/jokes/just about anything that I've discovered over the weekend when I catch up on all my on line reading that spark a need for knowledge. For example the previous Monday Money Funny was about how People that are too Happy to be Rich.

This week's Money Funny is To Tip or Not to Tip from Do the Right Thing advice column on CNN Money.

Below are the highlights. You can check out the full column by clicking here.

Question: I was at standing on a pier recently when my hat blew into the lake. A nice kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, swam out and got it for me. I thanked him appreciatively and also thanked his mother, who was nearby. A friend says a “thank you” wasn’t enough - that I should have given the boy ten bucks, or maybe treated him and his friends to ice cream cones. What do you think?

When should you tip? I know when I'm out with my mom she is always asking me should I give him a tip, how much? Well I've scored all of Emily Post's Guidelines, Encyclopedias, and just about every resource I know and have found the best all inclusive guidelines for you at Findalink. It covers everything from tipping at restaurant to tipping at a funeral and all things in between so all of your bases are covered.

Personally I try and follow common courtesy but in general I tip when I feel its appropriate and I tend to "over tip". I'm an extremely generous tipping when I receive good service. It just makes sense to appreciate job well done. For example I tip my hair dresser around 30% despite the guide calling for 10-20%, I do this because this the the woman who controls whether I have a good hair day or bad hair day for the next 4 months, so when she does a great job I let her know. Plus when I come back she remembers (although I've been going to Leslie since I was in elementary school so I think she remembers me, but the large tips help her remember to take good care of me). The same is true of a waiter or waitress, I tip large when I've had really good service, not because I think I'm going to get the same server the next time but by tipping large I'm reinforcing the good service that they offered so they will continue this habit. That's just my two cents on tipping.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up -- The Neglected Edition

2008-06-22T13:51:00.003-04:00

Ugh -- this past week has been exceptionally rough on the Project from Hell. This week we were trying to top out the building so it meant even more exceptionally long hours (Thursday I was at the job site for a solid 20 hours yuck!) -- I think I'm still sleep walking trying to catch up on sleep. I'm now trying to spend a lazy Sunday on the sofa sleeping and catching up on the PF Bloggers World -- while I was sleep walking my peers on PF Blogger were busy keeping up informed.

A few highlights from this past were include:

Ashley from Wide Open Wallet featured another guest post from Bruce the Tax Guy about how to hire a professional. Very good advice - especially since I've started thinking I might want to hire a professional financial adviser but that discussion is for another post.

Kevin from No Debt Plan discusses Target Date Retirement Funds. This is what the bulk of my retirement is housed in because its really easy to manage.

Master Your Card's Kristy shared how to Get Perfect Credit -- looks like no matter what I'm going to have to wait another 20 years before I can potentially have perfect credit, I guess I'm okay settling for near perfect credit ;)

Penelope from Our Four Pence Worth shared an interesting twist on Monopoly with accounts.

Living Almost Large raised some interesting questions about are Credit Cards really the cause of debt or is it simply the people using them. Personally I use a credit card for every purchase, I think for the last month I've had the same $12 in my wallet. I'd be in real trouble if I could only use cash. Until Mr. Be Mine I'd never met anyone who was a strickly cash person, to me it seems a lot more difficult and more expense - always having to drive to the bank plus you have to keep all of your receipts to keep track of your spending. Are you a cash or credit person?

Weekdend Round Up - Happy Dad's Day Ya'll

2008-06-15T16:31:00.003-04:00

Hope everyone's having a wonderful Sunday with their Dad's.

This past week in the PF Bloggers World was most exciting a few highlights to check out are:

This week Ashley from Wide Open Wallet and I exchanged financial data and posted Millionaire in the Making Stories about each other.

Kristy from Master Your Card posted about how young is too young to have a credit card. I have to say I got my first card that I was responsible for when I was 18 however I listed as an authorized user on one of my mom's credit cards since I was 12. About a year ago I had to ask my mom to take me off of as being an authorized user because it was great when I was younger to have a long credit history but the balance my mom carried on that card was hurting my debt to credit limit since she was close to maxed out on the credit card.

No Debt Plan's Kevin shared about do-it-your-self projects. I think I'm like Kevin a lot in that my DIY project end up taking forever and a day longer than planned. About 4 months ago I bought an unfinished side table and you guessed it - it only have one coat on it right now. Maybe Kevin's success story will help motivate me to finish it up.

Living Almost Large posted about Medical Costs in Retirement. I know that's a big concern for a lot of retirees. I guess I'll have to make sure my mortgage is paid off so I can afford medical care in retirement.

Congrats go out to Ginger from Girls Just Wanna Have Funds for being featured on Good Morning America. -- You go girl!

Also out side of the PF Bloggers World Banker Girl posted 6 Secrets for Fast-Tracking your climb up the corporate ladder. Very useful to me since I'm aiming to make it to the next rung this year.

Millionaire in the Making

2008-06-13T07:08:00.001-04:00

I’m a huge fan of the Millionaire in the Making stories that CNN Money publishes. Ashley from Wide Open Wallet and I decided to swap financial data and write each other’s Millionaire in the Makings stories. You can view my story written by Ashley at her blog Wide Open Wallet, below is her story.

Millionaires in the Making:

Ashley and her Dear Husband (DH)

Ages: Ashley 31, DH 42
Occupations: SAHM and Telecommunications Installer
Salary: Approximately $91,000 combined
Home and Land Value: $110,000 estimated equity
Retirement: $17,200
Cash on Hand: Approx $20,000
Monthly Expenses: $4,000 - $5,000
Debt: $34,732 outside of mortgage

Ashley started her blog, Wide Open Wallet, because she wanted an outlet to share her financial views since according to Ashley her friends grew tired of listening to her talk about personal finance. So you know this couple has to have their head on straight when it comes to money.

The couple has two young children, a girl and a boy. Ashley’s DH works in telecommunication as a telephone system installer and she stays home with the children. Ashley plans to eventually return to work after their youngest goes back to school but that won’t be for a few more years. However, she had tried a few part time jobs such as elder care but it’s not really worked out for the time and energy involved.

Currently the household earns around $91,000 a year. This is great considering the household expenses are between $4,000 and $5,000 each month. They have minimum debt out side of their mortgage. Their total non-mortgage debt is $34,732, which is comprised mainly of car loans.

The couple bought their current home in 2004 for $184,000. The home is in a great location in Arizona and has appreciated in value since purchasing. Currently the house is appraised at over $250,000 despite the current housing crisis.

Unfortunately, the couple got a late start saving for retirement. Currently DH has $2,700 in an IRA and is contributing $100 a month. Ashley has a retirement plan that’s currently valued at $14,500 and is saving $50 a month towards her retirement.

The couple’s financial goals include providing for their children and one day retiring.

Future Millionaire’s Take

With their current savings and home value Mom and her DH are well on their way to becoming millionaires – it’s just a matter of when. Calculating a modest return of 7% they will become millionaires in 43 years.

But the even bigger question for this couple will be “Is a Million Dollars Enough for Retirement?” This is a big question for Mom and her DH that needs to be investigated. I recommend they review their current spending and determine which expenses they will still have in retirement and any future expenses, including medical, they might have. Then develop an approximate monthly budget for retirement and add at least a 10% safety net. This will give Ashley and her DH a goal amount and can adjust their savings accordingly. Then determine what monthly contribution is needed to reach this goal. One can determine this by using Bankrate’s calculator for saving goal.

While they are starting to work towards their retirement goal Ashley and her DH should tackle some other financial objectives. Priority number one should be building up their emergency fund to have between 8 – 12 months of living expenses. Even at their bare minimum expenses of $4,000 they only have 5 months and that includes liquidating all sources of cash on hand, not just their emergency fund. The other piece of securing their emergency fund is to make sure it’s earning some money, put it in a high yield Money Market or On-line savings account where they still have easy access but are gaining some interest at the same time.

Ashley and her DH should also look into starting to plan for their kid’s college. As young as their children are who knows if Daughter or Son will go to college but by starting to save for them now will save their children from the burden of working full time while in college or having to take out student loans. (I fully support kids being responsible for a portion of their education, it will make them value it more but if possible it’s nice if parents are able to help them out). The best way to start saving for their children’s college expenses is via a state 529 plan. This allows for tax exempt dollars to be saved and grow to be used towards college expenses much like a 401k except you’re not taxed on the money at the time of withdraw if its used for college expenses. If they are not sure if Daughter or Son will attend college they can still save because they can change the beneficiary to another qualifying family member at any time in order to keep the account going and avoid taking non-qualified withdrawals when the original beneficiary doesn't need those funds. And even if all else fails 529 Federal law only imposed a 10% penalty on the earnings from this plan.

Once their Emergency Fund contains between 8-12 months of living expenses and college savings has been started for their children Mom and her DH should look into accelerating their debt pay off and then establish a future car savings account so that any future car purchases can be paid in full and avoid paying interest. After that Ashley and her DH should just focus on enjoying a good financial future.

All in all Ashley and her DH are right on track to be Millionaires in the Making.

Monday Money's Funny -- Too Happy to be Rich

2008-06-09T07:10:00.001-04:00

Weekend Round Up

2008-06-08T14:20:00.002-04:00

I had a lovely weekend. We celebrated my mom's Birthday and I baked a storm. I spend all of Saturday in the kitchen but it was well worth it to see my mom so appreciative. So times in life the best presents are the ones that are of your time and energy.

Now for some highlights from this week in the PF Blogger World:

Our Four Pence Worth's Penelope Pince posted Simple Solutions to Staying out of Debt.
Kristy from Master Your Card posted about the Modern "Necessities" that Drain your Cash. (Althought I have to say I love my cable TV)
Girls Just Wanna have Fund's Ginger provide a great link for the Ultimate Graduation Resource List. Good luck to all of your recent Graduates!
Mom @ Wide Open Wallet posted about the Opportunity Cost of Having a Baby. Its very interesting read for any one especially a career woman.
No Debt Plan's Kevin post about Portion Control and your Finances. I'm always worried about portion control for food and finances as a Marathon Runner and as a Future Millionaire.
Living Almost Large posted Food Inflation. No wonder my grocery bill keeps going up.
And Seb from Pinching Copper with is humorously truthful posted posted the death of the SUV with rising gas prices.

Carnival of Personal Finance #155

2008-06-04T07:08:00.001-04:00

The Carnival of Personal Finance #155 Hosted by Pinyo @ Moolanomy is up and running.

Check out my article which is post #4 under Money Management.

There's a ton of great articles (a total of 98), I know what I'll be doing this weekend in addition to celebrating my mom's B-day.

While you're reading all of the great articles - the ones I scanned so far seem to be very useful (especially the career ones in my case) don't forget to check out fellow PF Bloggers posts by Our Four Pence and Living Almost Large that were included in the Carnival.

My Annual Review is coming up

2008-06-03T07:03:00.000-04:00

My annual performance review is coming up and one of my financial goals for this year is to obtain a promotion.

I'm a little worried that my goal of a promotion might not happen this year, not because of a lack of performance on my part but because my role in the company has changed. The new role which is on a difference career ladder I've only been performing for about 6 weeks now, definitly not enough to prove myself in to obtain a promotion but I definitly deserved in my old role.

I feel like a promotion was coming if I had been able to stay in my old role or go back to preconstruction, especially since on Monday my old boss, who's doing my review, called to make sure I was going to fill out a skills assessment that he was going to email me. I said I'd never heard of it before and he said it was a tool that he liked to use to prove to the brass that someone was ready for a promotion.

I've filled that form out and have all of my other ducks in a row to prove I'm ready for a promotion so we'll see how it all goes - unfortunately I won't find out anything until late August.

So we'll see how it all turns out - wish me luck.

Monday's Money Funny --- Can't Afford Mortgage

2008-06-02T07:24:00.000-04:00

"This is my bed, my dogs," she said. "This is my life in this car right now."

Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.

"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them, is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."

Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament.

If you find your self in a situation where you can't afford your mortgage payments, my advice would be to get out as soon as you discover this problem because its not going to get better only worse. Since I'm not a trained professional that's only my gut instinct but I've found many reputable sources with similar suggestions as well as step by step methods.
New York States Guide to When You Can't Afford Your Mortgage
Non-Profit Neighborhood Works' Mortgage Solutions
HUD's Tips for Avoiding Foreclosure

I hope no one is facing this problem but I know with the current housing market problems and US economy this could be a very real problem for many.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up

2008-06-01T18:49:00.002-04:00

I was sick most of last week so I had plenty of time to read blogs. Here's some of the highlights from this last week in the PF Blogger world.

Living Almost Large posted about Money Personalities. I checked out the quiz and discovered I'm 38% Saver, 25% Empire Builder, and 13% Guardian.

Jonathan from Master Your Card posted 7 Ways to Curb Overspending. I think I do/will try all of them except I probably won't be freezing my credit cards any time.

Our For Pence Worth's Penelope posted a Vacation Checklist. Which is perfect for me since I'll be leaving for my cruise on July 11th.

Seb at Pinching Copper wrote a very interesting post about Pennies, especially since his blog name is about saving pennies.

Wide Open Wallet's Mom pulled out her budget from last year to check her personal inflation. I love the idea, now I need to go dig around and bull my budget from last year to compare.

Don't forget to check out all of the PF Blogger's blogs and posts by visiting the left tool bar for the links. Hope everyone has a great week.

Net Worth Update -- June 2008

2008-05-31T07:11:00.000-04:00

	Updated 5/31/08	Change from Previous Update	Updated 4/29/08
Total Net Worth	$104,853.72	$4,777.40	$100,076.32

Net Worth Comprised of
Retirement Savings:	$29,559.78	$1,728.25	$27,831.53
401k	$23,571.07	$1,347.39	$22,223.68
Roth IRA	$5,988.71	$380.86	$5,607.85

House Down Payment/CD's:	$57,244.83	$163.70	$57,081.13

Future Car Savings	$5,300.72	$5,100.45	$200.27

Emergency Fund/Money Market:	$11,207.28	-$3,738.37	$14,945.65

"Cash"/Checking:	$1,541.11	$1,523.37	$17.74

I'm less than $150 away from my goal net worth for 2008 and the year is only half way over. YAY! This means I need to reevaluate my net worth goal. I have increased my net worth goal to $127,000. I came up with this number based upon my current net worth plus what I anticipate contributing to retirement via my 401k and Roth IRA ($10,250), plus what I anticipate receiving as a bonus after taxes from the project I just completed ($10,000), plus my monthly car savings for the next 6 months ($900), and then I added saving an extra $100/month and rounded up.

I think this new goal is definitely achievable but I will have to push myself to achieve it because it extends beyond my automatic savings.

The Cost of Getting Sick

2008-05-30T07:30:00.003-04:00

I have a viral infection...oh the joy. At first I thought it might just be a cold but then Wednesday I woke up with a fever and knew I couldn't go to work and I needed to go visit the doctor. I've since spend the last few days laying in bed trying to get better.

Fortunately my fever finally broke today and I'm starting to feel much better, I started thinking about the finances involved in being sick.

Doctors Visit Co-Pay: $20
Soar Throat Drops: $3.00
Nose Spray: $3.50
Sudafed PE: $6.00
Box of Kleenex: $1.50
Prescription Co-Pay: $40
Special Sick/Comfort Food: $15
"Vacation Days" from Work: Loss of real vacation since vacation day had to be used for sick days

All in all the damage from being sick is $89 -- its a good thing this is the first time I've been sick in about 4 years. Fortunately I also have a flexible spending account that allows me to get reimbursed for most of these expenses with pre-tax dollars.

What to do with $5,000?

2008-05-29T07:12:00.003-04:00

I've struggling with a rather good personal finance dilemma since updating my net worth last month.

From the left side bar you can see that my Money Market for my Emergency Fund is nearing $15,000. I've made a rule of keeping at least $10,000 in my emergency fund which equates to a little over 5 months worth of expenses at my current spending. However, if a real emergency occurred I most likely would cut back on spending including eating out, entertainment, and savings which would extend my emergency fund to over 9 months worth of expenses. All in all I feel very comfortable with having an emergency fund of $10,000 even given my current work situation.

I have my pay checks and expense reimbursements direct deposited into my Money Market and then only transfer the funds I need into my checking to pay bills, this allows all of my savings to gather in my Money Market, plus earn a little extra interest. In the past when I reached $15,000 I would then take $5,000 and transfer it into a higher interest earning CD ear marked for my future house down payment.

I continued this method even after reaching my House Down Payment goal. I now have over $57,000 for a down payment which is over the 20% needed for any house I would choose -- the price range of houses I'd feel comfortable buying would be around (most likely less than) $250,000. So there's not a real need to put the $5,000 from my money market towards my house down payment funds.

So what do I do with this $5,000? (See I told you it was a good dilemma to have).

My options they way I look at it are:
- Earmark it for additional money towards a house
- Add it to my car savings pot so that I'm closer to achieving that goal
- Set it aside and forget about it until I really need/want to use it for something
- Invest this money in the stock market, since I don't really need it for anything it won't actually hurt me if its all lost
- Blow it --- but I can't think of anything that would really be worth $5,000, plus the saver in me really struggles to part with even a penny

I've basically ruled out blowing it, and I'm am just too overwhelmed by the stock market right now so I've ruled that out. That pretty much leaves my options as house, car, or hold on to it. Since I couldn't make up my mind I've opted to combine the three. I'm going to officially earmark the $5,000 towards my future car and add it to my emigrant direct savings account. I have decided to add $5,000 to my car savings, primarily so that my monthly contribution does not have to increase and now I have a reasonable chance of achieving $20,000 in the next 6 years when I would start thinking about purchasing a new car. And since all of this money is in a saving account its easily movable so I can always change my mind at a later date since most likely I'll be buying a house before I buy a new car plus I can always transfer the $5,000 to something else if I finally decide a reason to hang on to it.

I've also decided to increase my monthly car savings contribution to $150 in an effort to achieve the $20,000 with in 6 years. Hmm....now I have another financial dilemma, what should my next savings goal/plan be since I think I'm on track with everything else. I know I probably should start investing outside of my retirement accounts but to be honest it just plain scares me.

Staying on Financial Track --- Check your Credit Report

2008-05-28T07:48:00.000-04:00

I wrote last week about how to stay on Financial Track no matter how busy you were

Scott, a regular reader, send me a link to a USA Today Article about how to Use the Web to Help Keep your Finances in Order and I wanted to share it with you. It has some great advice, including checking your Credit Report. It served as a good reminder to me since I have not checked my credit report in a little over a year. I quickly did so and you all will be happy to know that there's nothing on there that's in correct (very exciting).

(Start of Work Week) Money Funny - Cost of Pop Culture Icons Today

2008-05-27T07:17:00.002-04:00

Est. home value in the '70s: $87,700

2008 est. value: $509,700

Actual 2008 value of "real"
Brady house: $1.5 million

Raising six kids has never been easy, and architects don't make as much money as television's Mike Brady would lead us to believe. Wow, there's a surprise.

The Bradys lived in a large, four-bedroom house with a live-in housekeeper in suburban Los Angeles. In the earliest figures available from the National Association of Realtors, the average cost of a single-family home in the area was $87,700 in 1979.

Today, the average house in the same area goes for $509,700, and a house that can fit nine (not counting Oliver) would probably cost a lot more. Real estate Web site Zillow.com, currently values the "real" Brady House at about $1.5 million.

An architect's annual pay averages $64,150, according to the latest estimates from the BLS. That would mean Mike made an inflation-adjusted $15,687 a year during the show's final season in 1974 when Greg was getting ready to go college.

As with all Money Funnies this promoted me to research. Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to combat inflation, however you can learn more about what is inflation so I thought I'd share an about.com entry explaining inflation.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up

2008-05-26T16:53:00.002-04:00

I hope everyone's had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend. Its time for the Weekend Round Up highlighting some of the great posts shared over the last week by my fellow PFBloggers.

Kristy over at Master Your Card continues the Emergency Fund Debate. Personally, I don't see how one can not have a emergency fund, life happens and you've got to have a pool of money some place that you can draw from. What are your thoughts on Emergency Funds, please share over at Kristy's post.

Living Almost Large posted about the Rising Luggage Costs. I guess I've been living in a cave and haven't seen the news lately and haven't traveled in the last month to be aware of this new trend. Luckily when I fly for business I rarely check bags but I usually fly once or twice a year for personal travel and always check bags, I guess I'll be having to figure out a new plan of action this year.

Get Rich or Die Trying's JB recently got married (Congrats go out to him) and is on his way to Vega. He posted about why he choose to spend money on a Honeymoon rather than paying off his debt. I think he did the right thing, you can't go on an all out money diet or you will fall off the band wagon, I think JB is making the smart money moneys, even though he's going on vacation he was still budget conscious. What do you think?

Seb at Pinching Copper pondered whether Credit Cards will be the next Financial Crises. I'm sad to say I think they will. I think its a spiral effect, first the house then the car and then credit cards. I think we headed down a couple of years of bad times. But I'm hopeful none the less.

Wide Open Wallet's Mom recently posted about Credit Protection and why its not needed. Everyone watch out, there's all types of gimmicks like this around. I told you all a while back about booking my cruise for this summer, well one of the add ons included unless you specifically requested it be removed was medical protection insurance, basically for an extra $30/person you are guaranteed that your money from the cruise will be refunded if you have a medical reason documented by a doctor for being unable to attend. But what they don't tell you is that up to 7 days before the cruise you can receive 60% of the costs back no matter the reason and IMHO if you really can't afford to loose the costs of the cruise then you shouldn't be going anyway.

Kevin at No Debt Plan shares why you should only buy appreciating assets on credit. Also check out his post on Credit Cards and Depreciating Assets don't mix. We're in full agreement. I plan to never buy any depreciating asset on credit including cars.

Despite agreeing that credit cards and depreciating assets don't mix, I am still a fan of the credit card much like Penelope at Our Four Pence Worth who posted about why Credit Cards Really Aren't so Bad.

Too Lazy to Pay Mortagage -- How to Stay on Financial Track No Matter how Busy or Lazy You Are

2008-05-20T20:30:00.005-04:00

I recently found out some very "interesting" information about an acquaintance that shocked me. The other day Be-Mine and I were out with his best friend and his best friend's wife. The four of us are very together people especially financially. One of the topics of conversation was about a couple who they are friends with struggling to put their old house on the market. A few conversations later we started talking about how prevalent its become for people to just walk away from their mortgages and allowing their homes to go into foreclosure. I remarked about how I just couldn't ever imagine doing that and "wife" brought up the fact that the wife of the couple we were just talking about just walked away from her house a year ago after she got married because she just never listed it for sale with a real estate agent. It was joked that she was more lazy than our two men combined.

This blew me way, how can someone be so lazy that they allow a house to go into foreclosure, especially this individual who I've always know to have a ton of energy and be very dedicated. I'm not certain this is the full story since I am aware that this couple has had some financial troubles in the past and declared bankruptcy, but none the less, I thought I'd explore this idea of being too lazy or just too busy to take care of financial business. I know we are all busy people and some times get stretched way too thin (I'm feeling that pain right now) so I thought I'd recommend some ways to ensure that your financial matters get taken care of no matter how busy you are or how lazy you are.

1. Automatic Bill Pay for recurring payments (Rent/Mortgage, Car Payment, Insurance etc) --- Use it for all of those bills that you know are the same amount each month and you don't need to check before they are paid.
2. Use online banking --- Use online banking to quickly check your accounts on a regular basis so that you do not have to waste time at the end of each month reconciling accounts to ensure that the checks that cleared were correct.
3. Utilize online bill pay --- Don't waste time organizing bills to be mailed on certain dates, writing checks, and stuffing envelopes. I love online bill pay, I receive a bill in the mail and that very day I open it, review it and then schedule payment. I probably spend all of 5 minutes max performing this task.
4. Make Savings Automatic via banking transfers --- Save time and ensure commitment towards saving by having a pre-determined amount of money transfered from your checking to saving monthly/weekly/regularly
5. Make Retirement Savings automatic via payroll deductions --- Sign up for your 401k/403b etc at work and all the paperwork is complete for you. In addition to this you can sign up for payroll deductions to your Roth IRA or other retirement accounts. It only takes a few minutes to sign up with your HR department and then you never have to think of it again for a full year
6. The Number One Way to Ensure you're on financial track despite busy times is to MAKE GOALS AND REVIEW THEM OFTEN --- Every year I set goals for myself - financially, professionally, and personally. I write these down because goals only move from dreams to goals when written, I then create an action plan for each goal and post both my goals and action items in a nifty colorful pyramid and post these in appropriate places. For example my professional goals are posted on my desk drawer, my personal goals which include my running goals are posted on the refrigerator, and my financial goals are posted next to my computer. Goals help you keep your eye on the prize no matter how busy or lazy your are, plus by creating action steps you not only have a starting point towards achieving your goal but also baby steps that can be accomplished even in busy times.

I hope these tips help you stay focused during busy times. I'd love to hear your tips for keeping on financial track when you're busy or if you're just plain lazy?

Weekend Round Up

2008-05-19T19:04:00.001-04:00

Hey all. With my new no guilt for not posting concept. I didn't have enough time (and still get 6 hours of sleep) to finish catching up on my fellow BFBloggers posts from the past week. I plan to do in the coming week and include those highlights with next week's Weekend Round Up.

But in the mean time I thought I'd remind you all to check out their blogs for some good ideas/tips and stories.

Changing Post Schedule

2008-05-18T21:15:00.005-04:00

I just got back from am amazing get away. Mr. Be-Mine and I went Hiking and celebrated his Birthday.

It was wonderful to get away from the real world, away from my job problems, away from tvs, computes, phones etc and just chill. I can't remember the last time I was able to truly enjoy a sunrise. Normally sunrises occur when I'm standing in the building trying to get pre-task plans complete with the work crews so we can start our day and normally the sunrise goes completely unnoticed other than to note that the site lighting at the job site can be turned off.

While I was up in the Mountains, I realized that lately I've been stretching myself way too thin lately. The primary reason is because of the demands and expectations of my new project. In the construction industry, I've always anticipated/expected to work 10 hours a day, 12 hours at busier times or when we've behind schedule but since joining this new project I've been regularly working 14+ hours a day on top of running every morning, posting here, volunteering at the food bank (although not as much as I'd like to lately), and trying to do the day to day activities of life all while trying to get sufficent sleep to accomplish all of this activities. To be honest its just not working and some things are slipping through the cracks, so I realized things have to give.

One of them is posting 6 days a week on this blog. Unfortunately I've not even been able to even keep up with this, and each day I go with out a post I feel incredibly guilty so to avoid the guilt I'm just going to make the decision that I'm only going to post 3-4 times a week.

By reducing the number of times I plan to post it will do two things. 1 - It will remove my guilt for when I don't post. 2 - It will allow me more time to complete posts and really put together quality posts that I was able to do when I was working on the project in Valdosta.

I hope you all will still check in regularly to follow Saving Savy by a Future Millionaire as I really appreciate all of your feed back and will need it even more now I as go with this new challenge in life.

Its Offical - I'm looking for a New Job

2008-05-15T21:50:00.003-04:00

I knew this day was coming, every thing had been building up but the explosion happened yesterday. Yesterday, I have officially decided to seek a new job (in Atlanta). Wow -- even typing it for the blog makes it seem more final and more scary.

It's been a really hard decision for a number of reasons but I've weighed all of the pros and cons and have really thought out all of my options and I think this is the course I need to take. So as of yesterday, I'm officially one the job search. I'm going to take things slow thought, primarily because I have a large bonus coming from the project I just completed and it won't be distributed until September 19th. My second reason for taking things slow is that I'm the eternal optimist and I can't help but hope/wish/dream that things will change and I can stay with my current company.

Since deciding that I need to seek a new job I've been trying to think out my action plan so here's what I've got so far:
-By Next Weekend update my resume
- Tuesday, May 20th have dinner with my old mentor to seek guidance
- Start contacting people I know that work for other GC's to feel out their job market
- Talk to my old boss about being a reference and if he has any suggestions of places to look
- Contact people through professional organizations that I'm involved with.

Any other good ideas?

Stimulus Check is HERE --- I think...

2008-05-14T20:08:00.003-04:00

Yay! I had almost given up hope on when I'd recieve my stimulas check but I think it will officially hit my account tomorrow.

I logged online to my bank just now in order to schedule payment for my power bill and noticed that my account balance was exactly $600 more than my available balance. When this happens it usually means that there is a direct deposit pending. So yay - I think my rebate check is coming.

For those of you who've not yet received your check you can check on the IRS website for the status of your check, just make sure to enter your exact refund amount and all of your other pertanant details to find out where your check is. The one catch is that the status check only works if your check has already been released per the IRS Schedule.

I hope you all enjoy your stimulus check as much as I am enjoying mine aka my new LCD TV.

Advice for 18 Year Old Future Millionaire

2008-05-13T21:11:00.004-04:00

Two of my fellow PFBloggers, Kevin from No Debt Plan and Kristy from Master Your Card recently shared advice they would have given themselves when they were 18. It got me to thinking and reflecting on how my life has shaped up in the years since I was 18 and I decided to join them by posting the advice I would give myself when I turned 18.

I have a few words of wisdom to share to myself at 18 but nothing major. I think every experience I've had from 18 to now has shaped me to become the person I am today and I very content and happy with who I am in general and also financially so I wouldn't want any radical changes.

1. Watch out for that Curb!!! -- My first semester of college I was carrying my freshly laundered clothes back to my dorm from the laundry mat and misstepped on a curb and dislocated my shoulder. Three surgeries and almost a year of physical therapy I was finally back to normal, if I had it to do all over again I'd never pile up so many clothes I couldn't see where I was going.

2. Study Abroad, the Money will work out. -- The summer between my 1st and 2nd year I had the opportunity to Study Abroad in France (to date I've never been out of the country) and after much debate and number crunching I decided against studying abroad because I was concerned that I would not have enough funds to cover that semester with out working and be able to pay tuition the following semester.

3. Stay in touch with your High School Friends. -- This is not a financial advice but good advice none the less. College is a new exciting experience and unfortunately I got distracted with new experiences in college and as the years went by I lost touch with several of my friends from high school. To date I only stay in close contact with one of my high school friends.

4. Negotiate Harder for your salary. -- In my opinion I am well compensated for my job, however I can't help but think about some of the potential I might have given up by not pushing a little harder instead of accepting the first counter offer.

5. Have Fun, Enjoy College, it ends sooner than you think (even thought its well over 4 years). -- I don't really have any regrets, but I do miss the good ole days. :)

What about you? Any good advice for yourself at 18?

Monday's Money Funny - Budgeting

2008-05-12T09:08:00.000-04:00

One of the regular features on my blog is "Monday's Money Funny" which are humorous (at least to me) articles/jokes/just about anything that I've discovered over the weekend when I catch up on all my on line reading that spark a need for knowledge. For example the previous Monday Money Funny was a about Americans seeking second jobs.

This week I thought I'd continue the theme of the economy's recession. Heck all of the media are sensationalizing the recession by running daily series like "Surviving" and "Your Daily Cents," so this week's Monday Money Funny is about budgeting.

Lately the City of Atlanta has been having some budgeting issues, that's putting it mildly there's a $141 Million budget deficits that the city was unaware of until recently. In fact they thought there was a surplus and has already spent what they thought was the surplus. To get the budget back in line the city is laying off 441 workers. If you're curious about the back story check out this AJC article.

This week's Monday Money Funny is a video from CNN show casing how the City of Atlanta is spending $300k on toilets despite being in a $141 Million deficit. Talk about mismanagement of funds.

Since obviously the City of Atlanta needs some help figuring out how to budget I thought I'd provide some links for their use (not that the Mayors reads my blog but you never know) and also for those of you who'd like more information about budgeting.

Check out:
About.com's article explaining How to Set Up a Successful Budget
eHow's article explaining How to Budget Wisely
and Jonathan's at Master Your Card post explaining the Basics of Budgeting Money

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up!

2008-05-11T07:07:00.001-04:00

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mothers out there. This weekend I've caught up on my blog reading from posts this week so I thought I'd share some of the highlights from the PFBloggers world.

Living Almost Large shares a story of how one of her husband's fellow grad students wants to just Add it To Her Tab, and doesn't get the big picture about how much debt she's going to be in.

Penelope @ Our Four Pence Worth reminded us all that the cost of mailing via the USPS is increasing on Monday. Unfortunately I still have stamps from when it only cost 39 cents to mail a letter, looks like when I mail letters I'm going to have a total of 4 stamps (one 39 cent and 3 one cent stamps) on each letter.

Get Rich or Die Trying's JB reminds us all of why to save.

Seb @ Pinching Copper draws paralells between Grand Theft Auto IV and personal finance.

Wide Open Wallet's Mom share's her father's own Millionaire Next Door Story. I love stories like this - it reminds me to keep on my saving path so I can become a Future Millionaire.

Continuing with the Millionaire Theme, Kevin from No Debt Plan shares 10 steps to Avoid Becoming a Millionaire in response to Kristy from Master Your Card shared 10 steps to becoming a Millionaire.

The Little Things Make a Big Difference

2008-05-09T21:21:00.003-04:00

I can honestly say this has be one of the worst work weeks I've had in a long time. The sad thing is that I don't clearly see the light at the end of the tunnel, all I see is a small light at the end which is really just a train barely towards me...

Despite the rotten week I did have one bright moment and that way this evening.

A month or so ago when I was at target I received a store coupon attached to my receipt for $2.00 off any two Garnier Fructis Hair Care Products. It just so happens that I typically use Garnier's sleek and shine shampoo and conditioner so I stuck it inside my wallet to save for when I needed to buy the next time I ran out of shampoo and conditioner.

Today on my way home from work I stopped at Target to pick up some toilet paper because Fashinoista and I were our last roll - never a good place to be. While picking up some t.p. I noticed that one of the end caps was displaying Garnier Shampoo and Conditioner on sale for $1.99 (its normally around $3 a bottle). When I see the sale I get all excited, I'm going to get to use my coupon for $2.00 off any two products and essentially get one of my bottles for free - Yay! When I stopped at the end cap to select my type of shampoo and conditioner I discovered that some of the shampoos had instant $1.00 off coupons. Its even more my lucky day for hair care - I take off two of the coupons for instant $1.00 off and grab my shampoo and conditioner and head to the check out line - I'm not quick sure if they'll accept 3 different coupons for my two bottles but it worked!!!! I bought $3.98 worth of products and had 2 each $1.00 coupons and one $2.00 coupon so I actually made money by buying shampoo and conditioner. (Hey two cents is two cents -- plus I now have a stock pile of shampoo and conditioner for when I run out of my current bottles).

I was so happy with myself for the deal I got in fact it was probably the highlight of my week, see coupons pay off.

This time when I checked out attached to my receipt was a $1.00 off any sized Colgate toothpaste. It doesn't expire until June 2 so I'm already mentally trying to figure out where to find additional coupons so that I can get my toothpaste for free too. :)

Ugh!

2008-05-06T21:47:00.002-04:00

Ugh...work stinks.

I've had an even crappier day than normal since starting the project from hell so I'm just going to pack it up and go to bed and try and make the day end sooner by sleeping the rest of it away. Sorry there's no real post today, hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I'll have some insightful personal finance info to share.

In lieu of a post and at the risk of sounding obsessed with my LCD TV purchase...I thought I'd share an article that Fashionista emailed to me yesterday proving that I made a smart decision going ahead and buying the LCD TV now. Isn't she great for looking out for me. :)

Monday's Money Funny - Extra Jobs

2008-05-05T19:58:00.000-04:00

My specially designed Tiger Woods TAG Heuer watch read 11:45 a.m. yesterday when I got back from the practice range. After washing up and shaving with my favorite Tiger Woods Gillette Champions razor and getting in a few rounds of EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, I picked up the copy of Golf Digest on my coffee table—the one with my ad for TLC Laser Eye Centers. What caught my attention, however, was an advertisement on the adjoining page for your product, Pine-Sol.

Call me crazy, but it looks like you're lacking a big-time celebrity endorser. Yes, you have that sassy fat black woman who appears in commercials and print ads, but she's hardly a celebrity. I'm talking about someone with name recognition. Maybe even someone who's won, say, 64 professional golf tournaments, 13 major championships, and has been named PGA Tour Player of the Year nine times? Your lady may be funny, but is she the most marketable athlete in the world with a supermodel wife, a new baby girl, millions in the bank, multiracial appeal, and a great goddamn smile?

No.

[...]

Bottom line, you need me, and I'm ready to break into the domestic-products arena. Despite my work with Accenture, many people still think of me as cold and calculated. A couple of Pine-Sol ads where my mom shows me how easy it is to clean my bathroom ("Oh Mom, you're embarrassing me!"—you know, that kind of crap) and we're all set.

But if you don't move on this fast, tomorrow I'm all over the TV with my new Tiger Woods–strength Lysol Wipes. Think about it.

Plain and simple, I would do an excellent job endorsing Pine-Sol. You know it, I know it, the makers of the all-new Gatorade Tiger most certainly know it. A high quality, all-purpose cleaner such as Pine-Sol deserves an endorser who is an ultra competitor—someone who will go to the mat for you no matter what. No way I'm going to half-ass it like Roger Federer or David Beckham would.

[...]

In the end, this is all very simple. Basically, what you have to ask yourself, Pine-Sol, is do you want to make half a billion dollars today or not? That's it. And if there's still any doubt in your mind, think about this: If I've convinced an entire populace that I drive a fucking Buick, I can sure as shit sell a bottle of Pine-Sol.

Most Monday's Money Funnies promote me to do some research, this time I didn't need to since I have already found a great source for tips on stretching dollars during this current economy with rising costs. The Atlanta Journal Constitution offers some great tips for this current economy's rising costs called "Smart Solutions, Tough Times." Personally my favorite is how to find cheap gas, but even if you're not in Atlanta there's also great tips about making your car last longer and 10 ways to save on groceries.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up

2008-05-04T21:45:00.002-04:00

I've had a lovely weekend. I was a single woman this weekend because Mr. Be Mine has been working out of town this week and unfortunately most of the work needed to take place on the weekend. I took full advantage of a very girly weekend. On Friday several of my girl friends and I went to see Marriage of Figaro, Saturday The Councilor was selling her hand made jewelry and coasters at a craft fair and she wanted help so I put on my old retail hat from my high school days and helped work the booth, then today after Church my mom and I went to the dollar theater and saw 27 dresses.

Wow! Just typing it makes me feel tired - but it was a most enjoyable weekend. And now for what you all really want...this weeks highlights from the PF Bloggers. Also don't forget to check out their links over on the left hand side to read all of their posts.

Highlights from this week include:

Johnathon at Master Your Card has started a new series call Life or Debt. For anyone in debt I highly recommend reading, these emotional aspects of being in debt are enough to prevent me form even considering it. I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

I appreciated Pinching Copper's Seb reposting his Why We Rent, especially since I'm starting to have doubts about continuing to rent. I'm at least renting for the next year since I just signed a lease with a roommate, but after this year I'm going to have to reevaluate.

Kevin at No Debt Plan shared his cash back stats for Amex Blue Cash Back. I too recommend the Amex Blue Cash Back, so far I have $81.72 in cash back, but unfortunately I think I'll catch up with Kevin since I keep having $50+ weekly grocery bills and the sad thing is I'm not buying anything out of the ordinary.

Mom at Wide Open Wallet shared about how she's able to purchase a Wii in part by selling coupons on Ebay. I've never thought of selling coupons, I appreciate the idea - I'm going to have to try that (first I have to find a little extra time in my life!).

Memberships have their perks

2008-05-02T17:10:00.002-04:00

I'm going to share a few quick thoughts since I just got home from work and need to rush and change and get ready for the Opera! Yay!

My one thought for the day is that Memberships have their perks and often times more than pay for themselves.

I have 1/2 of a dual Young Patron Membership to the High Museum of Arts in Atlanta, primarily to take advantage of their foreign film festivals and Friday Night Jazz once a month. Its a great deal, essentially just visiting the museum 5 times more than pays for the membership not to mention the film festivals. But on top of that there's other great perks like discounts at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and for the Atlanta Opera. Tonight I'm able to attend the Atlanta Opera's Marriage of Figaro performance and sit in the Orchestra level seat which normally cost $123 for only $25 a seat. Talk about the membership paying for it self in just one event.

I know not everyone lives in Atlanta or is interested in these types of activities but there are a ton of other similar programs in other cities for various activities - I recommend checking them out if you can.

Quality and Personal Finance

2008-05-01T19:43:00.005-04:00

Almost three weeks ago I started a new role with my company, I'm responsible for the Quality Control and Assurance for the construction of a 5 star hotel and condo. I spend most of my day in the field performing inspections and overseeing the work being installed. Anyway this got me to thinking about how much money is being wasted on the project by subcontractors for taking a few extra minutes to install work correctly the first time. I don't think it for lack of caring that they don't take the few extra minutes because most everyone takes pride in their work, but we are almost 5 months over schedule and every hour, heck every second, on the job is precious especially since in the coming months we'll be going to three shifts and working 24 hours a day.

By not taking the extra few minutes upfront to make sure that the work is by the most recently issued blue print and is aligned etc everyone is having to go back and repair work that's already been installed and often times the repair takes longer than the initial install since most of the time the task must be started over from scratch after removing the first attempt. Plus the added time and cost of the subcontractor's management having to look at the problem I notify them of and then filter it back down to the workers.

Taking the extra time to make sure its right the first time applies to personal finance as well. If we took a few extra minutes to first determine what we really need/want so that we can ensure we're not overbuying or under buying either would led to more expenses. (Under buying because you'd have to re-buy to get what you really need.) After determining what is really needed or wanted we should all take a little extra time to research specifications, reliability, etc before larger purchases. Last put not least if we take a few extra minutes to comparison shop, even as little as calculating unit prices in the grocery store we can all save a few extra pennies.

I try and do all of those to save money. After watching all the money being wasted on the project for not doing everything right the first time I'm further motivated to make sure I don't waste money by not taking the time upfront.

Benifits of Renting vs. Owning

2008-04-30T20:07:00.002-04:00

Recently I've been thinking about why I'm glad I am currently a renter and not a home owner.

My main reason is money. I'm not going to go through the analysis to try and prove that one can rent the same house for less money than owning the house or anything else along those lines - mainly because I don't think its always true instead I'm going to look at why renting is better for me at this point in my life.

1. Location of renting is better --- I currently live in a fantastic location (and am loving it!). Regardless of the quality of the home from a "handyman special" to a "McMansion" there is not a house or condo with in a 10 block area of my current location that I could buy with a mortgage and HOA's that would be even close to my current rent.
2. By renting I'm more willing to settle for less space, amenities, and upgrades --- Because I'm only committed to living in my apartment for a short period of time I know that I can always upgrade if needed or wanted so I'm much more willing to rent something that works for right now rather than hunting for room to grow. I'm also okay with lesser quality than I'd want in a home.
3. Renting allows for easier roommates situations --- By renting both my roommate and I are held to the same contract with our apartment complex so if either of us were to break the lease the apartment complex gets to be the bad guy. If I were a home owner I'd want to make sure I could afford the mortgage on my own with out needing to rely on a roommate but even if I had a roommate I'd have to forced into the position of landlord.
4. No maintenance costs --- No maintenance costs is what got me thinking about why I'm glad to be a renter. Sunday afternoon our A/C stopped working, I checked it out and it wasn't any of the obvious fixes so Fashionista and I called our apartment's maintenance answering service, about twenty minutes later they called us back and tried to walk us through the basics for repairing (which I'd already done) since none of that worked and A/C problems are considered emergencies by our apartment complex a maintenance repairman arrived about an hour after we called and discovered it was the compressor. It then took him a little over 6 hours for the new compressor to be installed and the pipes welded in place. As Steve, the repair guy, was working on this I couldn't help be think of the expense, compressors usually cost between $1,500 and $3,000 not to mention the overtime/off hours time that having a repairman at your home on a Sunday probably costs. After this repair it made me extra happy to be a renter and the bill be sent to my complex and not to me.

At least for right now I'm very happy that I'm currently renting. I know in the future I will become a home owner and will hopefully be just as happy.

Are you a renter or a home owner? What's benefits do you have?

Monthly Net Worth Update -- May 2008

2008-04-29T04:50:00.000-04:00

As discussed a few times on this blog, I’m a very conservative person so I tend to under estimate. In my last net worth update I predicted that I would reach the $100,000 net worth mark in Mid-June...well...it seems that I'm not a very good predictor (which is a good thing). I actually reached the $100,000 mark about a month and a half earlier since this month my net worth is now officially over $100,000! Yeah!

	Updated 4/29/08	Change from Previous Update	Updated 4/3/08
Total Net Worth	$100,076.32	$3,597.77	$96,478.55

Net Worth Comprised of
Retirement Savings:	$27,831.53	$2,345.74	$25,485.79
401k	$22,223.68	$1,812.04	$20,411.64
Roth IRA	$5,607.85	$533.70	$5,074.15

House Down Payment/CD's:	$57,081.13	$168.65	$56,912.48

Future Car Savings	$200.27	$0.00	$200.27

Emergency Fund/Money Market:	$14,945.65	$2,682.51	$12,263.14

"Cash"/Checking:	$17.74	-$1,599.13	$1,616.87

Analyzing the table I thought I’d take a moment to explain a few irregularities.

My future car savings does not reflect any increase this month because my transfer into my emigrant direct savings earmarked for my future car is on the 1^st of each month so last month I updated my net worth on 4/3/08 so it was after the transfer and this month I’ve updated my net worth prior the 1^st of the month and the transfer.

My “cash”/checking looks very light because I have my bi-weekly paycheck deposited into my money market fund to take advantage of high interest rates and then once a month transfer my expenses from that account into my “cash”/checking account.

Monday's Money Funny - Tax Rebates

2008-04-28T21:09:00.001-04:00

But what if every penny of that $100 billion were spent this summer, jolting the economy exactly as lawmakers intend?

Wide-screen televisions would fly off the shelves. Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Walt Disney would think it was Christmas all over again. Tens of thousands of teenagers would get summer jobs. And for a few months, U.S. economic growth would surge to twice the rate expected. And then fall, possibly on its face.

As with all Monday's Money Funnies this article promoted me to research. Personally, I'm going to be bad and "help" the economy and use my tax rebate to fund my new LCD TV but for those of you who are going to be good I thought I'd share below some articles I found about how to put your tax rebate to good use.

MSN Money's The Best Ways to Spend a Tax Rebate

About.com's Smart Ways to Spend Your Tax Rebate

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round-Up

2008-04-27T16:08:00.004-04:00

Sunday has rolled around and tomorrow the work week starts back up again, I don't know where the weekend has gone.

Starting the new project has been crazy lately, I've been working all kinds of hours and sadly I don't see it lessening any time soon so I've been having to catch up on all my blog reading on the weekends since I barely have enough time to eat dinner and go to sleep before I have to start the work cycle all over again the next day.

Anway....Below are a few articles that caught my eye this weekend as I caught up:

Living Almost Large writes about having financial priorities and it is okay to splurge some times. I'm in full agreement wit LAL - I often write about financial "savy-ness" is all about smart money choice.

Mom at Wide Open Wallet shared about her friend was contemplating a second job instead of reducing luxury spending in her post I deserve it.

Penelope Pince from Our Fourpence Worth also discussed luxuries versus necessities and has a great break down on how to decide the difference. So often I hear people say they have to have xyz when in reality its a luxury.

All in all my thoughts are if you don't have the money stick to the necessities, if you have your necessities covered, are not in debt (other than a mortgage), have a healthy emergency fund, and are contributing to your retirement than you should be able to make wise money choices and fund some luxuries but keep in mind unless you have an endless money supply you can't have every luxury and so you have to pick and choose to stay within your budget.

No Debt Plan's Kevin answered a reader question regarding opening a Roth IRA and minimum investments. For anyone who hasn't already started a Roth IRA I highly recommend it - check out Kevin's Million Dollar Retirement plan using only a Roth IRA.

Kristy at Master Your Card posted about the additional costs associated with paying your federal taxes by credit card. Can't say I ever thought about paying them with credit card but now that I know the costs involved I most definitly will not be paying via credit card, I'll continue to whip out the good ole check book.

The Social Margin's Cinder helped remind me that you need to Treat Your Job like an Investment. I'm wondering with all of the blog posts and articles about leaving bad jobs are not a sign, but then again my job only got bad recently when I was transfered to the "problem project", but all food for thought. Thanks Cinder for posting about this.

I also enjoyed Seb's post at Pinching Copper about Is the Price of gas really that bad? The secretary at my old project would always complain about the rising cost of gas and how its almost so bad people can't afford to pay the gas to go to work anymore and according to her people are actually paying more gas each day than they make. I can't tell you how many times I tried to explain to her using all kinds of examples of how people make more than pay for gas to drive every day. Oh well some people like to focus in on one thing.

Well that's it for this Sunday. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Vacation Saving

2008-04-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

Its starting to get warm outside and summer is just around the corner - time for all those summer vacations.

I thought I'd share how I plan and save for vacations, especially since this week I've been pushed to figure out my vacation plans since my new boss of two weeks told me I have to have my vacation request for the rest of the year to him no later than April 28th. (I've never had to turn in my vacation requests more than a few weeks in advance not 8 months in advance but thats neither here nor there).

I had to quickly plan a summer vacation if I wanted to have one this year, plus confirm plans for my cousin's wedding in September, Thanksgiving, and Christmas plans. At least those were slightly easier because there's less choices.

With the crazy hours I'm having to work on this new project by the time I get home each night I barely am able to find time to eat dinner and post here before I crash into bed to start the process all over again - I'm hopeful that this will eventually change but I don't see an end insight until we start the finishes in the building and move to 24 hour a day which will force us to have shifts so maybe I could work a normal amount of hours even if they are at odd times -- but I digress this post is about vacations. With the crazy hours I've been putting in, I didn't have the time to deal with trying to plan a vacation and with the rush to plan a summer vacation and not having the time to invest in researching my options, I could have easily over spent but I'm proud to say I haven't.

The way I plan for for irregular expenses like Vacation is by saving every month through out the year by utlizing a "dummy" transfer in my financial software even though it stays in my Money Market until needed. To come up with the amount to save each month for these irregular expenses is that I track my expenses from the previous year and then add 10%.

Last year my summer vacation was a 5-day weekend at Destin with Fashionista. I also took m 3 day weekend mini-vacations to Savannah, hiking, and Hilton Head. For the Destin Trip and my mini-vacations I spent $1020 excluding gas for driving (gas and maintence absorbed in my regular monthly budget).

So far I didn't have any plans for this year's vacation. Since Fashionista was going to Europe this summer and using up all of her vacation time then I knew our usual Destin trip would be out. I was talking to my mom and she brought up the two of us going on a cruise - we'd been talking about this for years but for one reason or another it just never worked out.

Niether one of us had ever been on a cruise and so thought it would be a fun adventure for us. My mom's not a planner so planning the cruise fell to me, I did a few quick google searches and found the options overwelming. I had no idea how to evaluate the options and which lines were the best. I ended up calling a family friend who's also a travel agent, told her what we were looking for in a cruise and with in a day she emailed me four options and the pros and cons of each cruise - plus two of them she'd actually sailed on herself.

My mom and I ended up choosing to go on a cruise to the Bahamas on a Royal Caribean for 5 nights. On top of the cruise we're going to go down two days early and stay at the beach. Total cost of this trip per person is $770. Yeah! Under budget and have seveal hundred dollars worth of spending money for the trip.

Moral of the story...when you're out of your league and short on time seek professional help. It can really pay off, by contacting a travel agent I saved both time and money.

How do you split Rent?

2008-04-23T19:25:00.002-04:00

Last weekend Mr. Be-Mine, Car Enthusiast, Fashionist, Latest Beau one of my best friends who we’ll call The Councilor since she’s in grad school to be a career councilor plus a few other friends who will remain nameless since my creativity was used up after “The Councilor”, went to dinner and we were talking about Fashionist’s and mine apartment since we’d just moved in. They were curious to know how come Fashionist got the master bedroom and bathroom. I explained that Fashionist had requested it and offered to pay more based upon square footage.

Fashionist and I had already long since talked about how we were going to allocate bedrooms. In our previous apartment in the college ghetto the two bedrooms were nearly identical (her’s slightly larger but next to a neighbor and mine slightly smaller but surrounded by our apartment so noise was less) and shared a bathroom so we just split rent and we were both content with that.

This time we knew that the apartments we were going to be looking at would be different and have a master bedroom and a second bedroom. Fashionist, being the fashion diva that she is, requested to have the master but said she’s be willing to pay more for it based on square footage. The was fine by me, I’ve never had “master bed room” before so it was no big deal, plus I liked the idea of having a little less expensive rent, since the ½ way point for the rent of the apartments we were looking at was near the top end of what I wanted to pay. All and all we were both happy.

After explaining this Mr. Be-mine and Car Enthusiast had a field day making fun of us. Fashionist and I are both a little on the anal retentive side (probably why we are such good roommates together) so they couldn’t believe we’d gone thru the effort of calculating the square footage etc.

The Councilor, always being the peace maker said who care’s as long as the two of them are happy that’s all the matters – which I firmly believe. It makes both Fashionist and I happy – we have a planned method of how to share rent and it wasn’t based off a coin flip or anything so there’s no possibility of resentment. We do however split utilities 50/50 which I think is reasonable as well.

For all of you that split rent I thought I’d also give you a few links for tips about how to calculate rents:

Sylvia at About gives a formula for figuring rents

and Oh my apartment has these tips for splitting

Hope these help!

Right Move --- Wrong Time

2008-04-22T19:08:00.004-04:00

I told you all almost a month ago about how my bedroom TV dieing about how I've really been wanting an LCD TV but couldn't justify the expense when I could borrow a TV. I eventually decided that I was going to go ahead and indulge myself with the luxury of a LCD TV but only after I had settled into my new apartment both physically and financially.

Well I'm almost physically settled (just a few more boxes to go) but financially I feel like I need to wait a few months for everything to balance back out BUT I've been handed a great deal on an LCD TV. A few days ago my mom was at Target and found a 26" Sony Bravia LCD TV on clearance marked down from $699 to $441. She went ahead and picked it up for me and showed up on my door step.

Before this TV fell into my lap I was planning to wait until June or July to buy a 19" TV (the same size screen as the one that died) and spending between $400 - $500 on an "average" brand TV.

Now I'm torn - do I take the bigger, better brand TV that's on clearance two-three months earlier than anticipated or do I return and wait for the right time and buy the more modest TV? Either way at least its the right price. I will say the longer the TV sits on my dresser waiting to be returned the more tempted I am to just go ahead and keep it.

Monday's Money Funny

2008-04-21T17:57:00.003-04:00

TOKYO, HONG KONG, SEOUL—Asian stocks closed one of the worst and most mournfully reflective months on record last week, with the falling American dollar negatively impacting trade volume and causing the markets to drift, like the faded cherry petals of spring blossoms, downward towards the shadowed sea of burgeoning recession, Eastern market analysts warned Monday.

"Our worst monthly drop; rate cuts make investors flee—to commodities," Nikkei Index vice commissioner Fukako Mishima said, claiming job creation by Mitsubishi, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Sony failed to provide confidence in a market already as skittish as the aging husband of a teenage bride, forcing investors to shore up cash reserves with orders of durable goods and agricultural products. "Fading dollar's gleam, a feeble warning beacon: Seek bellies of pork."

Currency devaluation reflects silently on still and glassy water.

As with all Monday's Money Funnies this article promoted me to research. So here's some guides to coping with Market Down Turns, be it the Asian Market or the current American Housing Market.

The Market Oracle posted this guide of What to do Now shortly after the Asian Market. Also there's an older article but still good advice at rediff News called How to cope with Market Volatility.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up

2008-04-20T18:36:00.005-04:00

Yay! I'm down to only three more boxes that need to be unpacked so I thought I'd take a break and share with you some of the highlights from this week in the PFBloggers World:

Jonathan over at Master Your Card has shared a three part series on Identity Theft. I'm glad he's shared - I hope none of us have to use the advice.

Kevin @ No Debt Needed shared his advice about Buying Clothing off Season. I ran errands this weekend and one of them was to the mall to buy Fashionista a B-day present and I have to stay I got the clothes shopping bug. I've been pretty good for the last six months or so - I can't remember the last new article of clothing I've bought so maybe its about time to add a few pieces to my wardrobe.

If you came into $1M...? Is the question that Living Almost Large asked of her readers this week. What would you do if you came into $1M? Make sure and share your thoughts in her comments.

Mom at Wide Open Wallet did the cost calculations on hybrid cars as a follow up to Girls Just Wanna have Fund's Ginger's post about hybrid suv's. I'm glad to know that hybrids are still more expensive - I can't help question my decision 4 years ago to forgo a hybrid Honda Civic instead of my "regular" Honda Civic, at the time it came down to money but now with gas prices I question my original decision.

Following along the car theme of this Round Up - I appreciated JB's frustration about needing to drive and pay the rising gas costs. I feel his pain.

And last but not least, I recommend reading Seb's guide to buying car tires online posted at Pincing Copper. Most helpful - I never would have thought of buying tires on line but its perfect timing as I've started noticing wear on my tires.

Don't forget to check out all the other blogs in the network. I've conveniently listed them all in the left hand column for your use.

Make Credit Card Companies Work for You!

2008-04-19T09:47:00.002-04:00

Today I thought I'd share with you one of the many ways I am building my net worth - I make credit card companies work for me. No, I’m not an investor in credit cards companies or even own stock in credit card companies I make them work for me by using them to their full advantage.

I use a credit card for every purchase I make, buying a $2 half gallon of milk – goes on the credit card, buying a $2000 sofa – goes on the credit card. I even pay a lot of my bills like Cell Phone, Power, Water etc with my credit card. I do this because I’m going to have to pay for these items one way or another and using my credit card is as easy as using my debit card or a check since at the end of each month I pay my credit card balance in full.

There’s a couple of ways that I make the Credit Card Companies work for me:

1. 30 Day Interest Free Loan - Provided you pay your balance in full each month, credit card companies provide interest free loans for 30 days to their customers. Not too many other financial institutes offer interest free loans. By taking advantage of the interest free loan you make money by keeping your income and net worth earning interest for you. Plus if you purchase something and then return it never costs you a penny of interest.

2. Cash Back Rewards - Who doesn’t like getting something for doing something you already do? (Okay you English majors that was probably a really bad sentence but you know what I’m saying). I typically earn about $150 a year in cash rewards. No strings, no need to mail in rebates, no need to anything but sit back because on the anniversary of my card I automatically get credited the cash back. My personal preference of rewards is a cash back card because its much easier to redeem and its something I will always need.

Credit Card Companies work really cheap for me – with the interest and cash back I probably make between $200 and $250 a year from them, but its $200 or $250 that I didn’t have already and required no effort from me. I only have two credit cards, I use my main card for every purchase unless I’m in some place that doesn’t accept American Express then I use my visa that I’ve had since I turned 18 – I get no rewards from the Visa but I still get an interest free loan for the month.

I prefer the Amex Blue as my main card because there’s no annual fee and the reward is cash back. It might not be best for everyone out there and since there’s a ton of cards available there’s bound to be one that works for you. To help decide which card works best for you, credit cards.com has an interactive questionnaire that will lead to you several credit cards that might work for you.

I do want do say - don’t mistake my advice, I’m not advocating you go out and get 10 credit cards that each offer different rewards because 1 – your FICO score will decrease and 2 – you can’t maximize rewards because your spending is not concentrated. I’m also not advocating using a credit card if you wouldn’t pay them off in full each moth or if you would loose touch with the value of money and not use a credit card as if you were paying cash for it.

What I am advocating is if you can use a credit card responsibility then take advantage of what credit cards and help increase your net worth by making credit cards work for you.

The Final Moving Costs

2008-04-17T19:30:00.004-04:00

Alright - I think that most of the "damage" from moving has settled so I can total all of my costs. Before I moved I shared my budget with you all so here's the time to see how accurate my budget was. There most likely will be a few other odds and ends that I'll discover I need over the next two weekends when I finish unpacking but all the big costs are complete. I've also not included the restocking of my kitchen supplies since I'd made them dwindle before the move and the cost involved probably averages over the months.

So here's the total moving costs:
Moving Truck and Labor - $1,000 ($500 less than budgeted!)
Non refundable Apartment Deposits - $400 (per budget)
Refundable Apartment Deposits - $200 (per budget)
Cable/Internet Set Up Fees - $50 ($15 under budget)
Electricity Transfer Fees - $30 (per budget)
Lease Transfer Fees - $350 (per budget)
Gas Set Up Fees - $25 (per budget)

Misc. Allowance considting of: - (org $300 budget -- $7.01 over budget)
Mail Forwarding - $1.00
Spackle and Putty - $28.76
Dinning Out While Moving (includes thank you meals for helpers) - $189.21
Kitchen Liner and misc household goods - $23.26
New Floor Lamp - $64.87

For a total moving cost of $2,362.10. My budget for moving was $2,870 so all in all I'm under budget! Yay!

Even thought I'm under budget moving still costs a lot.

FINALLY All Moved in so its time for --- "Weekend" Round Up on Wednesday

2008-04-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

I'm officially in my new apartment and am finally back in the ATL. Yay! Over the last few days my family, friends and I made good progress unpacking and getting the place in order - almost all of the boxes are unpacked and its starting to feel like home. And on Monday I started my new "job" - same company completely different role and project so its like starting all over again.

Now that every thing's at least livable until I get motivated to finish unpacking I've started feeling guilty for neglecting my blog for the last few days so thanks to my new neighbor for letting me "borrow" their wi-fi, don't worry the cable guys coming tomorrow to set up our internet so I won't have to continue "borrowing", I was able to catch up on my blog reading.

Since today is the day after the big Tax Day - I hope everyone's filing went well - I'm very glad I filed mine several weeks ago so I didn't have to add any more stress to the moving time. Kevin @ No Debt Plan and I apparently share the same thoughts about taxes.

Thought I'd share the highlights from my blog reading:

I also liked Kevin over at No Debt Plan post that reminded us all that accumulating wealth shouldn't be your #1 end all goal in life.

Mom at Wide Open Wallet shared about how she and her husband got off on the right foot.

Ginger @ Girls Just Wanna have Funds questions why anyone would give up a 401k match -- I have to agree with her. I love my 401k match - its like a 3% salary raise, I can't understand why some of my co-workers turn that down.

Pinching Copper's Seb shared why he loves Mint.com -- personally I'm a wesabe.com fan because you don't have to provide any of your account info, you manually upload so I feel like my security is more secure. Either way I highly recommend using some type of tool to track your monthly budget - otherwise how do you know your expenses and your savings.

JB @ Get Rich or Die Trying shared about his Pretty Princess Party --- okay don't worry about JB really it was about spending money to live and the Princess Party was for his Step Daughter. I'm glad he shared because I have some news to share about how I just spend money...I'm still trying to get over the sticker shock. I'll give you all the details tomorrow about this purchase.

Living Almost Large posted a very interesting post about Social Status and Dating. I have to say I'm really ton, I'm one of those double standard women I guess. I've always joked that I want to marry a man who wants to be a stay at home dad so I can continue my career with a single minded focus and have some one take care of the kids, the house, and all those little details but at the same time I think I might loose respect for a partner who's' not as career ambitious as I am no matter the job or the pay rate of his chosen job. Its definitly food for thought -- thanks Living Almost Large for keeping me up at night debating this in my mind!

And last but not least Johnathan at Master Your Card shared some Government Credit Card Bloopers -- this would have made a wonderful Monday's Money Funny.

Since I should have my internet connection set up tomorrow I plan to get back to my regular blog schedule. Until then I hope you enjoy some of the post from my friends over at PFBloggers.

Moving Day has Arrived...

2008-04-10T07:32:00.001-04:00

Hey All – I’ll be taking a blogging “vacation” for a few days that is if you call moving a vacation.

Right now I’m sitting on the floor of my apartment with my walls all puttied up, my boxes are stacked sky high, and my power soon to be disconnected waiting on the moving truck to arrive to take all my worldly possessions and transport them up to Atlanta.

Since I have a few minutes I thought I’d share with you all the cost of moving so you can see how expensive a move is. I’ll have to get the real totals later next week after everything settles down.

Moving Truck and Labor - $1,500

Non refundable Apartment Deposits - $400

Refundable Apartment Deposits - $200

Cable/Internet Set Up Fees - $65

Electricity Transfer Fees - $30

Lease Transfer Fees - $350

Gas Set Up Fees - $25

Misc. Allowance - $300

Being back in Atlanta with my family and friends….Priceless.

Well that’s it from me for a while until my internet connection is up and running in my new apartment.

How 10 minutes saved me almost $200 a year.

2008-04-09T11:45:00.001-04:00

This week’s Monday Money Funny about cell phones promoted me to follow some of the advice I’d found about how to lower your cell phone bill by reducing services.

I pull out my last bill and discovered I had over 7,000 unused Rollover minutes with my current cell phone I couldn’t believe how many unused minutes I had, its over 7 months worth of talking that I was wasting, so obviously I’m paying for more service than I need. I decided I need to find a plan with less minutes and of course one that would save me money. First I double checked to make sure there would not be any consequences for changing my contract provided I stay with my current provider, fortunately there are not so I’m free to change my plan.

My current monthly phone bill is $55,12 which is for a plan that includes 900 any time minutes, unlimited nights & weekends, unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile, and 200 text messages. To start looking for a new plan I went back to my last 6 months of cell phone bills to see range of minutes used.
Per months I use:
Any Time Minutes: 288-397
Nights and Weekends: 157-463
Mobile-to-Mobile: 1275 – 2754
Text Messages: 13-48

Armed with this data I went on line and investigated other plans that would fit my ranges. I found one with 450 any time minutes, 5000 nights & weekends, unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile, and 200 text messages for $44.98 plus fees and taxes after I deducting my 24% preferred employer discount the total cost would be $34.18 plus fees and taxes – I’m estimating with fess and taxes my new phone bill will be around $40. That’s a saving of $15 a month, which is a savings of $180/year for spending about 10 minutes worth of work – if only my billable rate at work were this high. :)

This Future Millionaire's Drive to Save

2008-04-08T06:03:00.007-04:00

This post has been sitting in my draft box for quite some time. I’ve been hesitant to post about this because it’s a little of an over share about my family life but I’ve already mentioned a few times about how my family’s money management has shaped me and I’m over sharing about everything else on this blog so I figured I’d go all out and actually post my family’s financial warts and all. So here it goes…why I’m so adamant about being financially responsible and saving…

To understand my drive for saving I’ll start before the beginning of time. Okay, maybe not quite with Adam and Eve but I will start before I was born. In past posts ( Income vs. Goals, Is everyone in Debt?, and Family and Finances) I've talked a little bit about my family so you probably have at least a picture of what my family is like but this is the post where I’m going to lay it all on the table, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I come from a family headed by a divorced single mother who’s a school teacher. Growing up we were middle class surrounded by extreme wealth and McMansions, but felt like paupers in comparison. We lived in one of the wealthiest counties in the country; in fact my mom who still lives there recently sent me an article about how our county is the 8^th wealthiest in the US. I really think my mom’s and our family’s outlook towards money and possessions would have been a lot different if we’d lived in a different area, but the schools there are some of the best and they paid a lot better than the surrounding areas so it was a win-win for both my brother and I for education and for my mom with salary.

My mom in contrast comes from a very privileged and wealthy background. Growing up her family was one of the prominent families in her town; they belonged to the country club, lived in a very large home and drove corvettes (yes – sickening as it is her first two cars were both brand new corvettes). My mom continued this lifestyle through college and her early career years thanks to the support of her dad. I don’t know how long this support would have continued but we’ll never know because my grandpa passed away when he was 51 and my mom was only a few years out of college. While he was a smart money man, a banker in fact, he did not leave anything specifically to my mom, rather everything was left to my grandma B who has her own money issues.

My grandma B then stopped supporting my mom, my mom thinks this was because my grandma B wanted all of the money for herself – which knowing my grandma B I can believe, but my mom was a grown woman at that point and should have been taking care of herself financially anyway. Over the next 20 years my grandma B proceeded to use up every last penny and then some of the money my grandpa left - the man passed with considerable savings his liquid and portfolio estate was about 6 times what I plan to have saved to retire upon plus he had a pension. After the money was gone my grandma B got into substantial debt, her mother, my great-grandmother “Nanny”, who was on her last years bailed my grandma B out of debt and started supporting her lavish lifestyle (yes that’s right my 80+ year old Nanny started supporting her 60-something daughter) and eventually my grandma B inherited 80% of my Nanny’s estate, my mom received the other 20%.

Unfortunately, Nanny’s estate didn’t last my Grandma B long either. Just before my Grandma B passed away she had to declare bankruptcy because she had a 6 bedroom house filled with purchases, in fact all of the rooms, including her very own bedroom you could hardly move in let alone find a place to sit because she’d had them piled with purchases she made but never used. After her death my mom was the beneficiary of her life insurance (to be honest I’m really impressed she kept up the payments on the life insurance). Because of the life insurance my mom was able to pay off all of her debt and have an emergency fund.

All growing up I saw my mom’s struggles with finances, primarily because she didn’t account for that fact that her income was less than her wants. And I saw the effect of over consumerism first hand, we had a house jam packed with stuff while my mom struggled to juggle bills each month and stretch the last of the milk by adding water or other odd little tricks when the week before we’d just eaten dinner at a 4 star restaurant – it was always one extreme or the other. We never lived the “poor” life by any means, there are so many people everyday that truly struggle to make ends meet, our family’s issue was just wants not meeting income.

I think my mom kept getting into debt because I don’t think she ever could quite accept that this wasn’t going to be her future lifestyle no matter how much she wanted. She could never quite accept that it couldn’t be a self-sustaining lifestyle when you’re a single parent on a teacher’s salary with occasional child support payments. While I think my mom could have help this situation I realize its very difficult for her to let go of how she grew up and I’ve come to accept this as a fact of life. I will give her credit thought for trying; growing up each year it felt like we were getting poorer because expenses would be trimmed each year in an effort to make our lifestyle closer to what my mom’s income was but it was more like a diet instead of a life style change and one big splurge was all it take to start the binge back up.

When I was a child I always had the cutest designer clothes – it was one of the things she took great pride in, in fact she still harps at me if I’m wearing nice/cute no name shirt instead of a “real shirt” as she calls it. I admit when I was younger, maybe even as late as middle school I benefited from my mom’s spending ways, we’d go to a store and I’d pick out a toy or whatever and ask for it and my mom would always consent and some times even want to upgrade what I’d chosen. After I became conscious of the consequences then it was a different matter. I would beg my mom to put back some of her purchases because I knew the stress and heart-ake she’s have later over this when the credit card bill would come or time to pay the HELOC used to refinance the first CC debt pay off attempt.

While my mom was heartbroken when her mother passed about a year and a half ago, receiving the life insurance from my grandma B was a wonderful new start for my mom and she was so excited to finally get out of debt because she did realize the burden it was placing on herself. A similar thing occurred after Nanny passed away and my mom received her estate but my mom assured me and herself that this time it would be different. However to date my mom’s back in consumer debt because she still hasn’t adjusted her wants to her income so in her words she just can’t make ends meet. I know all the intimate details of my mom’s finances primarily because I try and help at her request with budgets, financial planning etc and I know if she scaled back (as in only go shopping once a month for clothes and not every week or cut back from the $200 cable package with all premium channels she doesn’t watch to the $75 family package) she could make ends meet. My mom is close to retirement, in fact she could retire next year and receive her full teacher’s retirement benefits however she won’t because there’s no way she could support herself let alone continue to pay off her new debt.

I truly love my mom with all my heart, and I know this post seems a little harsh on my mom but to honestly answer the question about why I save I have to tell you about my mom because I save because of her. I don’t want to end up like my mom financially (in all other aspects I would love to be like her, in fact honored to be like her) and I don’t want to end up like my Grandma B either. I don’t want to have the financial stress that my mom had, I don’t want to be embarrassed to have people over to the house because its so filled with stuff you can’t move, I don’t want to be forced to work as I start to reach retirement years because I didn’t save enough or am so in debt that I have to keep working to make ends meet.

The future I seek is one of financial freedom and to have financial freedom I have to live below my means, continuously save, be debt free, and be happy with the lifestyle I’ve chosen. I am very happy with the life I lead, I take great pride in my home and how its clutter free, I take great pride in seeing my bank account grow rather than the growth of my home or possessions, and I take great pride in knowing that if I continue on this track I can retire early, if I want, and without worry. I also take pride in knowing that I’m doing this on my own - I put myself through college and have never received any financial aid or support from anyone. With the life style I’ve chosen I may never have every single consumer good people dream about but I will have peace of mind --- to me the only thing I’m sacrificing is stress.

So in a nutshell that’s what motivates me to save, I hope this post provides you a little more insight into who I am. What motivates you to save? Don’t worry you don’t have to lay out all your family dirt to answer like I did.

Tagges for 7 Random/Werid Facts

2008-04-07T13:29:00.006-04:00

I was tagged by Mom at Wide Open Wallet to share 7 random or weird things about myself. So lets see…some random and weird stuff about me:

I have never learned how to swim.

When I was in high school I jumped off of an old bridge that was 15 feet above the surface of the water and dove/sunk into the Chattahoochee River. I realize fact 1 and 2 don’t go together, but for some reason when peer pressure set in I thought it would be cool – hey I’m still here to tell about it so it couldn’t be that bad.

In college I walked thru a drive thru because the main dining area was closed and my girlfriends and I were desperate for some chocolate. The fast food place called the cops on us. Once Deputy Sheriff Bud arrived, he graciously drove thru the drive thru and bought my girlfriends and I frosties.

I once had to be "rescued" by the Swainsboro Fire Department because I got lost in the two stop light town, and yes the fire truck came with lights flashing. In my defense the friend I was visiting in Swainsboro was a volunteer fire fighter.

I’m a huge neat freak – I scrub my counters twice a day and vacuum at least every other day even though I take my shoes off at the front door.

Despite living 4.5 hours away last football season I still managed to attend every Georgia Tech home game. --- Talk about being loyal to the team! Go Jackets!!!

I am USDA certified to inspect food salvage, so basically I took a two-day class and a 100 question test so I can pick through other people's garbage. Don’t worry I’m not that weird, its for a good cause – I volunteer at America’s Second Harvest weekly and run their food salvage in the evenings which connects salvaged food with those most in need. I firmly believe that the cure for world hunger has been discovered, we just need the resources (aka volunteers) to make it happen. Not all volunteers need to be USDA certified so if you’d like more info about this very worthy cause or to sign up to volunteer please visit either Valdosta Food Bank or Atlanta Community Food Bank maybe I’ll see ya there.

Alright--- I’m getting off my cure for world hunger soap box and am tagging….

anyone who wishes to be tagged by commenting on this post or emailing me...that way there's no pressure for you to carry on the chain post:)

Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog. Some random, some weird.

3. Tag up to 7 people a the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Monday's Money Funny - Cell Phones

2008-04-07T13:23:00.007-04:00

This week I thought I’d share an article from MSNBC the discusses how to choose a cell phone for your business needs.

Here’s some highlights from the article:

“Cell phones are becoming so complicated these days, just calling a business contact takes a bunch of strokes, beyond just dialing the number. And I keep hitting the stupid speaker button on my iPhone with my cheek, allowing everyone near me at the supermarket to hear my conversation while I’m ordering cold cuts.

Small business owners must be at their wits end when it comes to all the options cell phones offer these days. What’s right for your business? Is it worth getting 3-D maps, or voice controls, or GPS?

These are just a few of the new options phones are starting to offer, according to a Wall Street Journal story that ran this week.

But it got me thinking about whether having a phone with a nannycam is really something any business needs.”

I had to kind of laugh a little at the article – I mean shouldn’t it be pretty obvious to get the phone for your needs and not pay for the extra’s you don’t need. But then I started thinking, I received my phone bill last week and I have over 5000 roll over minutes so obviously I’m paying for extra’s I don’t need

So I did a little research and not just about minutes but also on other ways to save on you cell phone so here’s a few good articles for you to explore to help lower your cell phone bill.

Compare cell phone plans http://www.cell-phone-plans.net/

9 ways to save on your cell phone http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/25682

E how – how to save money on your cell phone bill http://www.ehow.com/how_2199438_save-money-cell-phone-bill.html

Monday's Money Funny - Cell Phones

2008-04-07T13:23:00.006-04:00

This week I thought I’d share an article from MSNBC the discusses how to choose a cell phone for your business needs.

Here’s some highlights from the article:

So I did a little research and not just about minutes but also on other ways to save on you cell phone so here’s a few good articles for you to explore to help lower your cell phone bill.

Compare cell phone plans at cell-phone-plans.net

9 ways to save on your cell phone from Yahoo

E how – how to save money on your cell phone bill

Weekend Round-Up

2008-04-06T21:39:00.003-04:00

This has been a very busy week for me with packing and preparing for my move to Atlanta come Thursday, but despite all the packing I've been able to read some very interesting posts from my fellow PFBloggers -- I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Kevin @ No Debt Plan shares a personal story of attempted Identity Theft -- I hope its a lesson to all of us not to provide any personal information over the phone.

Living Almost Large shared her and DH's net worth update for March and I have to say this Future Millionaire is dang impressed. Seeing her stats helped remind me that while I think I'm doing a great job of saving there's plenty of room for growth.

Mom @ Wide Open Wallet joined me in responding to No Credit Needed's question about Financial Strength and Weaknesses. Hopefully we'll both find ways to break out of our shells and not be so conservative in our investments.

Get Rich or Die Trying's JB shared how thinking his car needed repairs saved him from a bad financial move.

For those of us who are slightly jaded with all the housing/mortgage meltdown stories, check out Seb @ Pinching Copper's post about how there are no victims in the housing bust.

Jonathan @ Master Your Card shared The College Student's Guide to Credit Cards. I too wish there had been a Banking 101 course offered in High School.

The Social Margin's Cinder posted an amazing article about Planning for your future with out Social Security- Starting Younger. I really appreciate the post and used it as a check list for ensuring I'm on the right track. I'm on tack with Steps 1-3, but a re-occurring theme for this week is that I need to work on Step 4 investing.

I also thought I'd add a round-up from outside of PFBLOGGERS and that's Single Guy Money's post about how his Childhood has influenced his finances. Not only did it help clarify some of his money moves but it also has given me courage -- for the past 2.5 months I've had a draft post sitting in my box about why I save and haven't posted it because it's rather personal about my family - specifically my mom. But after seeing Single Guy's courage to post about his family background I'm going to dust off the post, double check my editing and share it with you all on Tuesday (after all can't miss Monday's Money Funny for the second week in a row).

Lay Offs

2008-04-05T07:32:00.002-04:00

Cyclist called me yesterday on his way home from work to fill me in on all the latest office happenings.

I’m very sad to report that yesterday a lay off in the Preconstruction Department was announced. That department is in the process of being temporarily disbanded and everyone is going out on different jobsites, unfortunately, one of the estimators in the department wasn’t so lucky as to be reassigned to a jobsite and has been laid off effective yesterday morning. When Cyclist told me my heart went out to the guy. This guy, Grad, just graduated from the University of Cincinnati last May. Grad moved down to Atlanta and away from his extended family and friends in order to accept a job with our company. He often keeps to himself, I really hope he’s got some good friends in town who he can confide in for moral support. He must be devastated. I can’t even begin to imagine what I’d do if I were laid off – I guess sit and stare at the wall for a few days and try and come to terms with it. Grad is still so early in his career, I can’t image what kind of a set back this might be for him – its always easier to find a job when either have a job or are still in college.

Cyclist and I talked a while more about how we felt really bad for Grad. Then he and I started speculating if there might be more lay offs. We were trying to decide if this was because of a true lack or work or if it was a convenient excuse to get rid of this person. We both like Grad, he's a nice enough guy but not a hard worker at all or a very smart worker either.

Cyclist and I tended to agree that if there was still work then they would have kept him but since there wasn’t any work and rumor has it that none of the projects wanted him on their team because of his reputation of not being a great employee, Sr. Management probably found it was easier to just let this person go. I don’t know if we decided this because we wanted to make ourselves believe this would be the end of the lay offs or if its truly the real reason.

I’m hopeful that there won’t be any additional lay offs. I’m not so worried about myself, especially since if all else goes wrong I still have the Tampa offer, but I’d hate to see something like this happen to my co-workers – the core group of the department that have been there for years is a tight knit group and any more lay offs would be a huge moral deflater.

Cyclist also hopes there aren’t any more lay offs but after that he said something that surprised me – he said if there are going to be any more layoff’s he’s going to volunteer himself to be the next one let go.

I asked him why he would volunteer himself, his response was that it would be better for him to go than someone like Big Daddy who needs the money to live day to day. Cyclist said he’s not an independently wealthy man but he’s been smart about finances plus he thinks he could find a job pretty easily because of his contacts and experience. Even if he can’t find a job he said figures with his savings he could hold off at least 4 or 5 years before he needed a job and not effect his retirement which he is planning to start in about 10 years at age 62. He started to ponder out loud that even if he could just find some part time consulting work then he’d be set and not ever need to work full time again and still be able to fully retire at 62.

While my heart still goes out to Grad, I can’t help but be dang impressed with Cyclist. I really hope to be able to be in Cyclist’s shoes one day. Its amazing the comfort and freedom Financial Independence can provide.

March Net Worth Update

2008-04-04T08:23:00.001-04:00

Somehow the end of the month just flew by me. I’ve finally updated my net worth and am most excited. I knew it would be increasing beyond my average $2,000 due to my tax refund and that I was well under budget for this past month. When I added everything up I was very pleasantly surprised to discover I’d increase my net worth far more than I anticipated.

	Updated 4/3/08	Change from Previous Update	Updated 2/29/08
Total Net Worth	$96,478.55	$4,289.44	$92,189.11

Net Worth Comprised of
Retirement Savings:	$25,485.79	$1,847.95	$23,637.84
401k	$20,411.64	$1,411.16	$19,000.48
Roth IRA	$5,074.15	$436.79	$4,637.36

House Down Payment/CD's:	$56,912.48	$157.32	$56,755.16

Future Car Savings	$200.27	$150.27	$50.00

Emergency Fund/Money Market:	$12,263.14	$1,768.47	$10,494.67

"Cash"/Checking:	$1,616.87	$365.43	$1,251.44

I’m thinking that I should be over the $100,000 mark by mid-June. Maybe sooner, depending on when my bonus for the success of my current project is released.

PS I’ve spend a good bit of time working with networthiq but couldn’t quite obtain the format I wanted so I’ve decided to abandon that idea and stick with an excel spread sheet – its very easy to use and I have the flexibility to format it the way I want. I’ve yet again changed the format of my net worth on the left-hand side, I’ve decided to show the changes and previous net worth in this post and display only the updated numbers on the left-hand side bar. I think this will be all the changes to the format of my net worth.

What are your personal finance strengths and weaknesses?

2008-04-03T13:33:00.003-04:00

No Credit Needed posted his response to Reader Feedback Request #1: What are your personal finance strengths and weaknesses and encouraged bloggers to write about this topic, so I thought I’d add my two cents.

Personal Finance Strengths – I’m dedicated and driven not to have debt and to become financially independent. I’ve seen and lived through my mother the stress of being in debt so I know I will never allow myself to be in that situation - I’d sell everything I own before I’d incur any debt other than a mortgage. And to be honest the idea of mortgage debt even scares me a little.

Another personal finance strength of mine is that I have been able to put things in perspective and see the big pictures which makes me willing to make wise money choices (a more pc term for sacrifices). I’m more than willing to live below my means to ensure that I can save for my future - be it short term or long term future. I think these strengths make me IMHO an amazing saver.

Personal Finance Weakness – My biggest weakness is that I’m too conservative. While I think I’m an amazing saver, I’m not a good investor. I shy away from risks, and in fact it was only with in the last two years that I started investing in mutual funds instead of FDIC insured savings accounts. I work hard for my money and make wise money choices and hate the idea of loosing even a dime – trust me this current market has been rough on me since I invested in mutual funds. With this current economy and market I have been pretty proud of how well I’ve managed the storm. My retirement accounts keep showing negative growth and I haven’t completely freaked out yet…so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

I know I need to learn more about investing and take a deep breath and just do it. I think this is also my biggest obstacle to true financial independence where my interest/portfolio income = my desired life style.

Passive Income

2008-04-03T06:16:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently exchanged a few emails about different financial matters with a reader (shout out to Grant). In one email Grant asked me about what I meant for passive income when I stated my goal for financial independence would be when my passive income = desired life style. Our email conversations got me to thinking more about passive income so I decided to share my thoughts and share Grant’s thoughts so you could then share your thoughts. J Thoughts, Thoughts, Thoughts – the best way to gain knowledge.

Until writing this post I considered passive income to be income/money that I didn't have to "work" for, as in a traditional 9-5 (or in my industry 7-6) job. What passive income plans entail is to have saving and principal money that earns interest and dividends.

For 2007 I earned $2,919 in passive income, which is the equivalent of more than a month of expenses for me. This was earned through laddered CD's which contain my house down payment, a money market which contains my emergency fund, and an interest baring checking account which contains my monthly expenses budget.
For the time being I do not include in my passive income calculation any money earned from my retirement plans (401k and Roth IRA) since I don't actually have access to them until I retire. As I progress I want to grow my passive income so that it's about 20 times what I earned for 2007 and invest more in non-retirement brokerage accounts.

Grant was kind enough to share his thoughts:

I have a slightly different perspective on passive income. I view it as money I can make while I sleep (even if it requires a little work here or there). For example, owning a business like a gas station or car wash, owning real estate, earning residual income on intellectual property, etc. Of course, income from investments like yours also fit in my definition.

I agree with Grant – owning businesses is a type of passive income, just not that type of passive income that I personally want.

Before posting this article I did a little recon about other types of passive income besides owning a business and earned interest and discovered something very interesting from Wikipedia. “There are three types of income—earned, portfolio and passive income. Most types of passive income are derived from rental/property, while other types of passive income are derived from royalties from patents or license agreements.”

So while finding out more ways to obtain passive income I learned that what I considered passive income is not passive income. What I considered my type of passive income is actually portfolio income. I guess I’ll be modifying my goal explanation to be financial independence when investment/portfolio income = desired lifestyle.

What about you, what are your plans for passive or investment income? How are you going to achieve financial independence?

PS check out this article, How to Earn More and Work Less at About.com – it has some interesting ideas of how to obtain passive income.

Updates

2008-04-02T13:28:00.002-04:00

Thought I’d share some updates on some decisions I’ve made that I pondered out loud with you all in some past posts.

Roth IRA Diversification (click here for original post): I’ve decided go with option 1 and wait until next year to diversify my Roth IRA. I decided upon this because I did not want to deplete my cash reserves because in the coming months you never know I might need to have an emergency FU fund. (Check out Single Guy Money and Single Ma for their take on FU funds)

New TV (click here for original post): For the time being I’ve decided to use Mr. Be-Mine’s TV. I’m going to wait a few months and get a good feel for my expenses after moving and recover financially from the move before adding the additional expense of a new TV. But, I’m definitely planning in indulging myself with a new LCD TV, the timing is that only thing I’m unsure of.

I think that’s about it for items to update you all on (other than work). If you think of anything else let me know and I’d be happy to share.

When to Buy a New Car -- Car Enthusiast's Purchase

2008-04-01T16:56:00.002-04:00

I wrote a post awhile back about my friend Car Enthusiast* and how he asked for my advice about how much to spend on car. He took my advice in part - I love it when people do that. J

* I have also referred to him as Car Fanatic in some previous posts. Somewhere along the line I inadvertently changed his nickname. Sorry for any confusion.

I thought I’d share an update on his story in conjunction with a follow up to the open discussion from last week regarding When to Buy a New Car.

Car Enthusiast bought a new car the Saturday before Easter, he called me up that evening all excited about it and drove over to Mr. Be-Mine’s house to show it to us. Its a beauty. He purchased a gorgeous black Honda Civic Si - the sports package. He’s hoping to race it as a hobby.

We’re close enough where we talk finances, while we may not discuss salaries, we do talk big purchases so he told me some of the details of the deal. He put down $2,000 which he’d saved under my advice and financed just under $20,000 at 6.75% for 5 years with a monthly payment of just under $400.

Personally I’d prefer to be able to buy a car outright, but I know that’s not an option for him right now and timing for everything else worked out right where it was the best time to buy a car. I think that financing will work for Car Enthusiast, even thought he’ll have to pay interest it will work out for the best and he should be able to handle the payments after all he’s managed to save more than that for the past four months in order to create his down payment. All and all I think he might a right move for him.

It got me to thinking about when to buy a new car, which promoted the open discussion from last week.

I thought it would be an interesting case study to examine his timing for buying a new car. I had told Car Enthusiasts a while back about my post about the advice I gave him and I ask last Saturday if he minded (not that it would matter since I post anonymously anyway and could have just done it anyway) and he told me to feel free to analyze his purchase.

The big areas to look at before buying a car in my opinion are:

Personal Timing, Financial Timing, Life Span of Car Timing, and Anon added Research which I’m in full agreement with adding to the list.

So here goes the examination of each area for Car Enthusiast’s situation:

Personal Timing – Car Enthusiast is being transferred from Atlanta to Louisville and will be there for the next two years starting in June. With his transfer it makes sense to exchange his 16 year old Honda Civic that has been driven over 280,000 miles for a more reliable car. Car Enthusiast doesn’t mind doing car repairs, in fact he enjoys it but once he moves won’t have the equipment to do any major repairs that his last cars. In Atlanta he’s able to have access to just about any tool or equipment he needs for repairs since his dad owns a car repair shop and he could always go over there and the best mechanic in the shop (his dad of course) would fix it. Being 8 hours away will limit this opportunity.

Financial Timing – While many of us, me included, would rather wait until we can buy a car out right I think Car Enthusiastic passes the financial timing test because he planned for this expenditure. Saved for months, adjusted his budget to accommodate this new monthly payment and knows he can afford these payments since he’s been “playing house” and making them for the last few months.

So check – financial timing

Life of Car Timing - As mentioned in personal timing, Car Enthusiast’s car was well past the mileage mark most would being the life span of his vehicle. While he could continue to make the repairs on this vehicle, no longer having free mechanical work it would not be cost effective to make the repairs.

Research - Car Enthusiast definitely did his research, as you can tell by his name he’s very into cars, attends car shows all the time, researches all the models and could quote spec on just about any car on the road. To make this purchase he has been planning for months and has checked out every detail from gas millage to performance to seat color for just about every car on the market. He also did his homework on pricing and the options he wanted.

So check – research

All in all I’d have to say my friend bought a new car at the right time. I hope/plan the timing will work out as well from me when it starts getting time for me to buy a new car.

And the Winner is....

2008-03-31T20:23:00.003-04:00

Congrats JB you've won a copy The Millionaire Next Door! Email me your shipping address and I'll have it sent to you.

To determine the winner of this contest, everyone who commented on this blog from March 6 to Friday, March 28 was entered, if you made more than one comment you got entered more than once. I then randomly drew one of the pieces of paper.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the comment contest.

We interrupt the regularly schedule Monday’s Money Funny segment to share a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

2008-03-31T15:14:00.004-04:00

As many regular readers know my brother and I have been training to run our first Marathon. We were inspired after running our first half-marathon last March and have been training ever since with the heavy training and gearing up occurring over the last four months.

D-day arrived this Sunday and we put on our running gear and headed out in the cold to accomplish out goal. Even thought we’d been training for so long and many long runs ramping up to our peak of over 20 miles, we still struggled some during the actual race. But we persevered and finishing just 4 minutes past our training goal finish time.

I have this amazing sense of accomplishment from having run 26.2 miles and knowing that my hard work and training paid off. I’m still feeding off my runners high from yesterday even thought I’m rather soar and walking like an 80 year old today.

Like most things in life I can relate it all back to personal finance. While personal finance is usually not as physically painful as a Marathon it does take sacrifice and planning to achieve your financial goal. To achieve a financial goal, be it retirement or a new TV, you make the plan to achieve it, implement the plan, and then do it.

I got this similar sense of accomplishment (although not nearly as great) when I opened my Roth IRA and started saving for my future car.

The photo on the left is of my brother and I after we finished the Half-Marathon last March, I’ll share a picture from this years Full-Marathon once they are posted

Reflections from a Week of Training ---- Changing Behavoirs

2008-03-29T07:19:00.005-04:00

Yea!!---I'm finally back in town and am not living out of a hotel. The first thing I did after getting home was to look for that jump drive --- and it was not found, so now I will be on the look out for it. Not to self always back up work. I use that jump drive for my personal documents so not just the topics from last week were lost. I have my fingers crossed that it will be found.

I wanted to take a few minutes and share what I learned over this last week in training. In my industry I have to take a lot of different trainings to maintain my license to practice but this week I took a class where I not only learned a ton but I also have a new out look. The safety training I took was very powerful - it wasn't about new policies or procedures, everyone knows what you have to do to be safe it was about behavior change and getting people to actually follow rules for the benefit of their life. It really hit home when Tuesday a crane accident occurred on one of our job sites - not because some one didn't know the rules but because they chose not to follow the rules and two lives were lost. To me that made the behavior change even more important. While there is absolutely no comparison to the loss of life or the injuries that occur in construction accidents, I started thinking on my way home from the training about how behavior is so important in all aspects of life, for example in personal finance.

Everyone knows the basic rules of personal finance ---- Live Below Your Means; Save the Rest ---- its pretty simple but a lot of people don't play by the basic financial policies and why is that- its because of thinking and behavior. One of the quotes that was used in the training was by Kenneth Foo and states "When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs. When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations. When you change your expectations, you change your attitude. When you change your attitude, you change your behavior. When you change your behavior, you change your life."

There was an epiphany for most people when they changed their thinking about personal finance and in tern that changed their beliefs, expectations, attitude, behavior and ultimately their life.

For me, I feel a little silly as a personal finance blogger because I'm not like most of the bloggers out there who are either in debt or were in debt but have changed their lives. I've never been in dept and can't pin point an experience or an event that changed my thinking. For me I think it was a gradual awareness that occurred when I was a child, I saw my mom struggling in debt and decided I never wanted to live like that.

Have you changed your thinking so your behavior changed? What caused your thinking to change?

Work-Life Balance --- What's your Max?

2008-03-26T19:40:00.004-04:00

This week I'm out of town and forgot to bring the jump drive with my posts for this week --- so in lieu of doing a more traditional post I'm having an open discussion.

Before starting a new topic this week I wanted to give you all some updates about work --- see it pays to drink with the big wigs when you're traveling. I guess one of the big things that came out of the bar was that the "problem" project I'm going to will be changing to 24 hours a day by the middle of April. I'm supposed to keep this under raps as the news hasn't been broken to the project team yet. This is should interesting for me as I've never worked on a project that had shifts - sure I've worked on plenty of projects where we had to go to 10 or 12 hour days, 6 days a week but never shifts so staffing should be interesting, managing the problems etc should be a real learning experience for me. The other interesting thing to come out of this was that the owner of my soon to be project is looking to build some more projects so they are trying to add significant man power to it in order to prove we can handle the next job -- this is a very good thing, it means there will be work in preconstruction department in the near future, unfortunately not enough to justify reuniting the entire department.

Okay...on to the topic for today's open discussion.

At first I thought about asking you all what your time was worth and what's the maximum number of hours you'd be willing to work but I don't know what words of wisdom I could share about this so decided against it. But then changed my mind because my blog is all about my personal opinions (with some research to back it up) so I've decided I'll ask anyway.

What is your time at work worth? What's the maximum number of hours you'd be willing to work?

When to Buy a New Car?

2008-03-25T20:15:00.001-04:00

This week I'm out of town taking at a Safety Training Class. When I travel I'm notorious for always forgetting something - but this time I forgot something that I can't easily run to the Hotel gift shop and replace - I left my jump drive with 4 pre-planned posts I wrote this weekend in anticipation of traveling this week. Normally I don't plan posts out but I did this knowing that my company's culture is when you're traveling in a group you go out to the bar each night and with the recent turmoil at work and "temporarily" disbanding my department I figure its in my best interest to continue the practice so I can get the real inside scoop about what's going in the company after the Big Wig's have a little to drink and are more free flowing with the real story.

I know I won’t have the time to spend quality posts and I don’t want to leave the blog dormant until Saturday especially when my comment contest is ending on Friday, March 28th. I was brain storming about my options today sitting in this training class (I know excellent use of time) and came up with a brilliant thought…an open discussion – rather than me post my views and then ask for comments I’d provide a topic each day and then follow it up next week with a detailed post with some resources and my two cents. Feel free to chime in with a topic if you have one you’d like to share about.

Okay so first topic…when’s the ideal time to buy a new car?

I’d been thinking of writing a post about this recently especially since Car Enthusiast just purchased a new. So let’s hear your thoughts when is the ideal time to buy a new car considering:
-Personal Timing
-Financial Timing
-Life of the Car Timing
Etc etc etc

Monday's Money Funny - 3 Star Hotel with Helipad --- I guess even the Millionaires are Trimming Their Budget

2008-03-24T12:39:00.003-04:00

The hotel is the first in the city to offer a helipad to well-heeled customers.

"It was the brainchild of our builder, David Marvin," said Chuck Powell, area general manager for Hilton. "He saw a need for a helipad in downtown Atlanta, especially if you think of the city's traffic."

The pad, on the 15th floor, is the latest amenity offered by Atlanta hotels to distinguish themselves in the competitive lodging sector. From butlers to spas to restaurants created by celebrity chefs, the city's hotels are sprinting to top each other to attract big spenders.

Mark Newton, program director of the hotel, restaurant, tourism management program at Gwinnett Tech, said the helipad will give the Hilton Garden Inn a marketing advantage.

"Every brand is trying to find a way to get the consumer to notice their product," he said. "You want to be remembered. It's all about positioning."

Seriously a helipad at the Hilton Garden Inn? Don't get me wrong I think the Hilton Garden Inn is a nice place, but its a 3 star hotel and most people being flown in private helicopters don't stay at 3 star hotels. There's only one 5 star hotel in Atlanta (soon to be a second that's currently being built by my company), so I can understand those "well heeled" clients needing to down grade their standards a little and stay at at 4 star hotel - but you tell me who owns/rents a helicopter and then stays at the Hilton Garden Inn? I guess even millionaires are having to cut back in today's current economy.

Usually my Monday's Money Funny promote some type of research - but I'm sad to say that's not the case today, unless you're like to know how to fly a helicopter. I decided to include this article anyway since I found it rather humorous and timely as I'm going to be living out of a hotel for the next week. Too bad I can't take the Helicopter to the Hotel it would sure save on my travel time.

Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. If you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Weekend Round Up

2008-03-23T19:18:00.002-04:00

Below are some of the highlights from this week in the PFBloggers World:

Living Almost Large questioned about Downgrading your lifestyle? I found this most interesting as I'm about to move into my nicest housing ever so its going to be hard to downgrade from that in the future.

Johnathan at Master your Card posted Why raise your Fico score? Check out the chart at the end of the post highlighting the different interest rates based upon FICO scores - gives me extra incentive to ensure my FICO score is as high as possible before I buy a house in the next year.

Kevin at No Debt Plan posted It’s Starting to Sink In. He and his wife area already starting to plan to buy their next car in 2012.

If you're in my age range make sure and check out Planning for your future without relying on Social Security - Part One - Starting Young posted at The Social Margin.

Seb at Pinching Copper posted be sure and check out my comment about why People who make minimum wage choose to make minimum wage.

Don't forget to check out all the other blogs in the network. I've conveniently listed them all in the left hand column for your use.

How Much Should You Spend on a Hobby?

2008-03-21T09:24:00.001-04:00

Since you all were so helpful when I was trying to decide if I should purchase an LCD TV (still haven’t finalized my decision – but I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to do) I thought I’d try the same with the cost of a hobby.

Some of the bloggers in the PFBlogger network have suggested I change over to wordpress from blogger so that I could have more flexibility with my blog template. I’m all for changing over except there would be some costs involved to do so.

Seb at Pinching Copper did some research about the costs associated with registering a domain name and hosting fees. The domain name is $10 a year hosting would be around $6 a month which would equate to about $82 a year to use wordpress instead of blogger.

To me that’s a lot of money in order to blog. I blog for my personal enjoyment, not as a money making adventure. In fact my blog’s in the red because I’ve funded a few comment contests. It was suggested so I did add google Adsense in an effort to recoup some of these costs but my current Adsense account has only $4.17 in it and you can’t even access this money until you reach the $100 mark. In my estimation at the current rate I’ll reach the $100 mark to be eligible to withdraw earnings in about 8 years. So needless to say I’m not banking on these funds.

I started thinking about if spending close to $100 a year is reasonable for a hobby. So I decided to examine my hobbies outside of blogging and their yearly expense:

Volunteering Weekly at the Food Bank:

Travel to Food Bank calculated at the IRS’s .505/mile reimbursement rate - $262.60
Monthly Donation - Excluded (I’m excluding my monetary contributions because I could volunteer weekly without donating each month, I just chose to donate since I see first hand the need and benefit)

Exercising/Running:

gym membership - $660/year
Replace Running Shoes - $400/year
Replacement of Worn Workout Clothing Articles - $90/year
Race Entry Fees - $ 170
Travel via car and subway to races and the gym. Car travel also calculated at the IRS’s .505/mile reimbursement rate - $787.80

Reading:

Library Card – Free
Purchasing the Occasional Book that I can’t find at the Library - $20/year

Obviously I do have more expensive hobbies than blogging. My hobbies currently cost $1340 a year excluding transportation, including transportation $2390.40. Dang - that’s a lot of money. I have to admit while I had a good idea of the hard costs associated with my hobbies since I keep track of my spending by categories I never sat down to calculate the cost of the transportation until today. After figuring out the true cost of my current hobbies do I want to add another $100 a year for blogging when I can use Blogger.com for free?

I’m not sure what to do yet – I’m going to do my usual wait and see before making a decision. I know the benefits of not using blogger and using wordpress would be quite nice but where do I draw the line for hobby spending? Where do you draw the line for hobby spending?

Updates on "The Work Situation"

2008-03-20T21:02:00.003-04:00

Wanted to share two new developments on "The Work Situation" that's been giving me a lot of heartburn and heart ache.

Do you want the bad or the good first? I'll start with the not so good aka bad news first.

I'd already been told in no uncertain terms from my boss's boss's boss (the big dog of the Atlanta office) that my only options were to be forced or to be happy about being force. I can understand what's going on in the company to realize that I don't currently have an option about going into preconstuction however there are other options for projects to be sent to and I think my concerns need to be addressed not only about the project I'm being sent to but also my concerns about this derailing my career path in preconstruction. I'd made my concerns know to big dog, my my immediate boss and Mr. VP who was supposed to be my new boss. My boss and Mr. VP listened to my concerns but their hands are tied by big dog. When I tried to talk to big dog he kept brushing me off (which kept further irritating me and making me more upset about the situation - if you're going to be changing my life at least spend five minutes to talk to me or schedule time to talk to me!). Unfortunately until today all of my communication had to be via telephone since I'm on an out of town project and not in the office with any of these people. Today, I was at a millwork shop with the big dog for an event and even without me saying a word he made it very clear to me that I didn't have any options, it has already been decided that I'm going to this problem project. Then wasn't really the time to talk so I said I'd still like to talk to him more about this and would he have a few minutes tomorrow, I named several times but he wouldn't commit. I'm so frustrated. I've come to accept that I can't work in preconstruction for the foreseeable future since the department is being temporary disbanded but the treatment I'm getting makes me feel even more like exploring my options and possibly leaving the company. In fact, nothing would make me happier than to come in tomorrow and just drop my resignation letter on his desk and tell him I'm otta here and on to some place where they at least make time to talk to their employees. But I recognize its just my anger and I'd never do something like that.

Now on to the good news...

On my drive home from the millwork shop today I received an interesting call from my old old boss. The one before Mr. VP, in fact he was in the same role as Mr. VP until he got promoted to run a different office of our company and became the big dog of the Tampa Office. Anyway he called me up today and said he’d heard what was going on from Mr. VP and knew how much I wanted to go back to working in preconstruction and according to him I am damn good at it and deserved an opportunity to do so. He offered me a promotion and a nice salary increase to go work for his office of our company. He’d offered me essentially the same deal two years ago and I respectfully declined then. I didn’t accept then for a number of reason including that fact that it would be a permanent relocation to Tampa. Almost all of my same reasons for declining the offer two years ago stand except for my concern about the office not being strong enough to support a large preconstruction department. In the last two years since old old boss took over this office they have grow dramatically and have increased their work load to far surpass my office. I’m not sure what I will do but the nice thing old old boss did was say this offer is open ended and when I decide I'm ready to make the move to call him up no matter if its in 3 months or 3 years he’ll always have a spot open for me in preconstruction if I want it. He and I talked for a while after that and just caught up, his final words were "if I know you, you’re not going to accept my offer today or even this month, but that’s okay I understand. I’d love it if you would accept. I'm going to call you back in a few months and we’ll talk because I hope by then I’ll be able to convince you to make the move."

How do you Cap your Financial Luxuries?

2008-03-19T09:46:00.004-04:00

I’ve had a pretty bad last week, on top of the happenings at work, my TV died. Okay, so the TV dying is not quite on the same level as the work shake-up, but it does add insult to injury.

I’ve wanted an LCD TV for quite a while to replace my bulky 19” RCT bedroom TV that takes up half of my dresser top. My envy of others for their LCD TV’s has been getting greater and my monthly shopping trip to Target or Wal-Mart for staples has started including a side trip to their electronics department to visit LCD TV’s.

I’ve recognized this is a desire and not a need, and I can “make do” with my current bedroom TV so it’s senseless to spend $400 on a desire when I already have a product that creates the same out put. My side trips to the electronics department have helped reinforce how expense it would be to replace a working product with a new one just for looks. Until recently that is.

Last week, actually the very day I’d been called about the change of career plans I went home tried to turn on my bedroom TV and all I saw was snow and static, but could faintly hear through the static the show coming in. I thought my cable had gone out so I called my cable company to come out and repair it, I’d had a few problems similar to this about a year ago and it was because the signal had been reversed.

The cable company finally came out to repair it yesterday. The repairman told me that it wasn’t the cable line it was my TV. He even got a cable extension to run from my bedroom jack into my living room TV prove it was the TV. According to him it’s my tuner. I called a local TV repair place to obtain a ball park figure to replace the turner and was informed it would cost about $250 but they would need to look at the TV first to confirm and to look at it if I chose not to have them do the repairs would be a $50 service charge.

Well no dice, I am not going to spend that much to fix a 13 year-old TV, that to be honest I’m surprised it still functions since it was an el cheapo no name TV to begin with. Instead of fixing this TV I’ll buy a new TV. From my visits to the electronics department I know I could purchase a replacement TV similar to my current one for about $150 or I could purchase a LCD for about $400. For a price difference of $250 I decided that I’d just go for the LCD, its what I want, chances are it will last longer, it will be easier to move in the future, it will be HDTV ready for the 2009 conversion, etc etc.

I get excited, I started seeing the new LCD TV taking the place of this old clunky RCT TV. I can see it hanging on my wall, not sitting on my dresser, I’m day dreaming about my shinny new TV, the clear pictures it will present. Oooo I’m even thinking about having a functioning remote control – oh life is good. I’m so excited I could finally justify dipping into my non-emergency irregular expense funds to buy a TV. I even went on line and started browsing to check out deals and get a better feel for prices.

I’m all giddy with the idea of a new TV, until Mr. Be-Mine and I talk last night and I’m relating my excitement about being “forced to buy a new TV”. He deflates my excitement by offering me his RCT TV that he keeps in his basement game room since he never uses it; in fact it’s not even plugged in. There goes my giddiness about a new LCD TV. No longer am I “forced” to buy a new TV, I have an option now.

I still really want that LCD TV, but now it comes to choices do I really want to spend $400 for a 19” LCD TV or use a 30” free RCT TV? There’s a big price difference between the $250 to buy the TV I want compared to spending $400 when I have the option not spend a dime.

I can’t help but listen to the “gemme gemme’s” and the “Iwanna wants” voices in my head when it comes to the LCD TV. I’m usually pretty good at squashing these inner voices for most purchase but squashing this voice when it comes to an LCD TV has started to become harder. I realize a TV is a luxury, but it’s a personal choice that I’ve made now its just where to draw the line with indulging my luxury.

Where do you draw the line and how do you reign in your material things desires without tightening the belt so tight you feel so deprived that you struggle to stay on the “material things diet”?

More Interest Rate Cuts :(

2008-03-19T07:51:00.003-04:00

I thought dropping from 3.6% to 3.3% was a bad drop when I complained in my Bait and Switch post. I should have known it would get worse...I was updating my budget and logging into all of my bank accounts to upload information when low and behold I log onto Emigrant Direct and discover my interest rate has dropped down to 3.0% now! I guess Emigrant wasted no time after the Fed's cut interest rates by 3/4 a point yesterday.

I guess I'll just be losing more interest.

I've been holding out on you all ---- Changes for Future Millionaire's Career Path

2008-03-18T16:46:00.005-04:00

For the last week I’ve been holding out on you guys about something pretty major happening in my life with an indirect relationship to finances. I’ve been holding out, not because I didn’t want you all to know, but because it was difficult for me to post about it because I was pretty upset about the changes.

As I’ve discussed in past posts, my “lateral growth opportunity” project in Valdosta is ending soon and I’m moving back to Atlanta. Until last week, the plan and commitment had been after this project I’d be returning to my old department and doing the job I love. Don’t get me wrong I’ve enjoyed the project in Valdosta but its not what I think I’m most successful at or something that I find extreme joy in. My old role I truly loved so I kicked butt at it and “was ‘da bomb”, which is in part the reason I was given this growth opportunity designed to fast track my climb up the corporate ladder.

Before I jump into telling you all the major work happening, I thought I’d give you all some background about what the company (or more specifically my office/branch of the company) has been going through for the last few years which will better explain the reason for these changes.

The office of the company I work for is taking some pretty big losses on two projects that were worked on over the last three years; both of these projects have recently ended. By big losses I’m talking about 13 million dollars, we typically only make between 1 and 1.5 million of profit on a project, so 13 is a pretty big loss. There’s also one other project that broke ground last year that’s headed down the road to take some pretty big losses as well.

The last couple of years while we’ve had a ton more projects that were a big success and made up for the losses (including the project I’m currently working on), the efforts of most of the big wigs has been directed towards these two “looser” projects and how to try and keep from losing even more money. Because they were focused on the “looser” projects the big wigs were not out selling our company so that we could win more work.

On top of that our preconstruction department’s been swamped for the last two years with two really big jobs. Between the two projects, its more volume than we typically do in a year so that’s good, however about 9 months ago both of these projects broke ground so that department is not very busy. Between no current jobs in preconstruction and no new jobs coming in from sales for the there’s not going to be a lot of work in that department for the foreseeable future.

Without getting work awarded it means that there’s no need for a preconstruction department. The decision from up above has been made that people in the department except for the two highest positions are being transferred into another department due to a lack of work and there’s not a time line for when the department will be resurrected (although IMHO it better be soon or else this office of the company’s going to be sinking, no preconstruction means no construction and no construction means no money).

The decision from above to dissipate the preconstruction department was made on Monday and since it was guaranteed I would be returning to preconstruction

I got a call that afternoon from my boss’s boss’s boss (the big dog of the Atlanta office) telling me the news. Not only am I not going back to Preconstruction but I’m going to the current problem project that won’t be completed for two years and will be there for the duration of the problem project.

Anyway I won’t get into all the details of this problem project but word on the street (trust me construction companies or at least mine is worse than a high school when it comes to gossip) is that not only is this project headed south as in losing dollars and behind schedule but it’s a real rough place to work. The management “sucks” on this project - there’s a huge micromanage mentality and almost daily verbal abuse. In fact, within the last four month seven people who were assigned to this project have resigned from the company, somehow that tells me something’s wrong when that many people leave. On top of bad management the Owner is shall we say difficult and the Architect and Engineers aren’t the most helpful to put it politely.

I’m all for helping out the company where I’m able and I can understand a company decision has been made to dissipate the department temporally. But I don’t want to be in a bad working environment nor continue in a role that’s not my first love for another two years. On top of performing a role that I am not a big fan of and possibility not enjoying my day to day job, my advancement (ie promotion) within my chosen career path is going to be delayed for at least two years – maybe longer since my preconstruction skill set will be rustier when this project is completed.

I’ve talked to several influential people about my concerns and it appears that I don’t really have a lot of options within the company,. However, in this day and age I do have options outside of the company. I get calls from head hunters fairly often, but I’m just not the type of person to job hop. Until this turn of events I’ve been extremely happy with this company, even turning down slightly higher paying offers because there’s more to life than an extra 5 or 10k a year. To me its about the quality of life, role, experience, and very important to me the quality of the people I work with.

I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve talked to my friends and family about it a lot – although they were not that helpful. My mom’s first reaction was to ask me if I had a current resume, Mr. Be-Mine’s suggestion was to start calling my contacts at other construction companies, and of all people this surprised me but The Council said to look else where too.

But I’m hesitant to do that because I’m a loyal person plus I have a lot invested in this company. As my boss puts it I’ve got a lot of “stock” as in I’ve earned a lot of respect and am viewed pretty highly and to have to go start over somewhere else I wouldn’t have the same “stock” level there at first, it would take years to build it up. On top of that I love my job (well when I’m doing the role I love), I love the company (until they pull crap like this), and most importantly I love the people that I work with and the culture we’ve all worked together to create (although on the jobsite for the project I’m being sent to I’m not so sure that will be the case). This is all food for thought.

Anyway…so long post later – I just wanted to share with you all what’s happening in my life. I hope you all have been having a better last week than I am. On the bright side Thursday morning I’m heading up to Atlanta for work and will be in the ATL until Monday, so it won’t be like one of my usual 9 hour round trip drive for a quick jot up for just the weekend.

Monday's Money Funny - Gas in Gorda, CA

2008-03-17T11:05:00.002-04:00

This week I’m couldn’t help myself by continuing with another gas article – this one much more recent. The reason why I couldn’t help myself with sticking with the same topic is this morning when I was at the gym running on the treadmill I burst out laughing watching the CBS news clip about gasoline prices (I’m sure the guy next to me thought I’d lost it).

So I went on line and was able to find a small article about Gorda’s gas prices – but if you can check out CBS news tonight, I’m sure they’ll show the same clip. Its down right hilarious.

Highlights from the article include:

“Try not to run low on gas in the tiny Big Sur town of Gorda, where a gallon of unleaded regular costs $5.20. And it's $5.40 a gallon for premium. Amerigo Gas Station employee James Willman says at least once a day he gets an earful from motorists who pull into Gorda, which is about 35 miles north of Cambria on scenic Highway 1.
Willman says "they say all kinds of stuff _ `You ought to be shot,' or 'Where's your mask?'"”

As a side note, which is not mentioned in this article but was in the news clip, this gas station is the only one for 50 miles along this stretch of highway. Go figure gas is more expensive there. I think I’ll bring an extra gas can in my trunk if I’m ever in that part of time.

Last week I did some research and found a few articles for you all on how to save gas so I thought since I was going to re-feature saving on gas that I should expand my research so I have several more articles for you all today. Here’ the most interesting articles:

How to Advice has Thirty Gas Saving Tips
About.com featured How to Save on Gas – Tips to Improve Mileage
and straight from the horse’s mouth The EPA offers Tips to Save Gas and Improve Mileage

Well that's it for this Monday. Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. Also if you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.

Carnival of Personal Finance #144- St. Patrick’s Day Edition

2008-03-17T10:17:00.006-04:00

Be sure and check out The Carnival of Personal Finance # 144 - St. Patrick's Day Edition which is being hosted at Being Frugal.

I've very excited to say that my post Asking if Salaries are no longer Taboo was included under the career section.

Also props to my fellow PFBloggers: Trees Full of Money for inclusion of his post about Life Lock and Kevin at No Debt Plan for his post about how he budgets.

A few of my other favorite bloggers were included:
Banker Girl's post on The Current State of the Banking Industry and Single Guy Money's post on Keeping his Current Tenant.

I hope you enjoy this 144th Carnival.

Weekend Round Up

2008-03-16T21:13:00.003-04:00

Okay its offical Weekend Round Ups are being moved to Sunday, so as you watch your Grey's or Sunday Night sports you can surf the net and explore the highlights from the PFBloggers World.

Below are some of the highlights from this week in the PFBloggers World:

It must be a case of Great Minds Thinking A like because I was planning to post about MP Dunleavy, "Happy Hooker has got to go..." article but Living Almost Large beat me to the punch so check out her commentary instead - it will save me from posting. :) Also check out her post about gift giving guidelines.

Mom over at Wide Open Wallet shared about not knowing she was frugal until about two months ago. I'm glad to know Mom doesn't go to some of the extremes that some people do.

Get Rich or Die Trying asks a very important question, should he empty his emergency fund to pay off some accounts in collection. My advice to him was to continue on the payment plan because you never know when a "real" emergency like a job loss, unexpected medical, etc might arise and you'll need those funds then. So go over and visit him and let him know your thoughts - it can't be an easy decision to make.

I've already posted about it, but I thought I might mention it again in case you haven't had time to check out Seb’s Open Letter to Ben Bernanke @ Pinching Copper.

Don't forget to check out all the other blogs in the network. I've conveniently listed them all in the left hand column for your use.

S.O.’s Salaries --- A Drive Down Peachtree Dunwoody Rd (Part 2)

2008-03-15T13:04:00.001-04:00

So yesterday, I told you all about the conversation Fashionista and I had while driving down Peachtree Dunwoody Road on our way to lunch, now for the even more interesting conversation on the way back from lunch.

We had just come from a good girl gossip lunch and had discussed Fashionista’s latest beau who’s she down right giddy over – I’m most excited for her, she needed a guy she could get giddy about (she and her fiancé ended their relationship of over 5 years about 8 months ago). We were driving back down Peachtree Dunwoody Road and we passed the 7 bedroom house again and I commented that I still can’t imagine what their salary is to be able to obtain these homes. We started talking a little bit more about this and then we passed another McMansion with kids in the yard and she made the comment that she’d like to be like the mom who lives in that house.

Fashionista started talking about how she hopes to be with someone (as in married) who can support her if she chose to stay home with or without kids. She then proceeded to tell me dollar values of latest beau’s salary and bonuses. I couldn’t believe it, she and latest beau have only been dating for about a month and a half, plus its not like she’d ever even told me her salary information. I really like latest beau and I just can’t see him salary dropping without being prompted.

I was totally shocked and told Fashionista how surprised I was that she new his salary. (I was also shocked that she told me, and shocked with how much latest beau made, I think I’m going to become a consultant too. j/k about becoming a consultant) I asked her if she’s asked him that information and she said she had in a round about way. They both have talked about their salaries and their future salary potentials especially since they are in the same field.

I joked with Fashionista about what she does she do on the first date say “so what’s your salary so we can go ahead and schedule this second date?”

Fashionista said “No, that’s not it, we just talk about stuff and it would work its way into the conversation. Come on you can’t tell me you don’t know salary.”

“Umm…no we’ve never discussed salary, I could probably take a good guess because of the type of work he does and the fact that he works for the government but I’ve never asked and he’s never volunteered.”

Fashionista was shocked, how could I be dating him and not know his salary. I told her I knew the more important stuff, like the type of person he was, his life goals, how compatible we were and financial goals (not in terms of dollar amounts).

Even though we haven’t talked about salary I guess we have crossed a little into “taboo” IMHO financial items such as net worth. I have a ballpark idea of that his net worth is, but that’s because we talk about investments, savings vessels, and future goals. He’s never told me a dollar figure and I’ve never told him a dollar figure. I’m sure he has a ballpark idea of what he thinks my net worth is but I bet he’s deflated it a little. In fact I think he’d be shocked to know what net worth I do have, I’m sure he’s thinking I probably have a net worth of half or a quarter of what I have because I’m only a few years out of college and he knows I put myself through school where as he’s been out of college for about seven years.

I’m not sure if I’d even want to know his salary. At this point, how would that change our relationship if I new his salary. I suspect he makes a good bit more than me (I’m guess around 20% more) but I really don’t know. What if I make more? I’m not opposed to that, I know if Mr. Be-Mine and I have a future that eventually I’d probably make more than him, just because I work in private industry and I still have a lot of room for advancement where as Mr. Be-Mine after his last promotion topped out and has no where else to go on the career ladder without changing jobs.

What do you think? When should you divulge salary and net worth? After you know does it change things?

PS Check out Living Almost Large’s blog, on the right hand column she has informal poll results as to when you should divulge this info.

Mc Mansions --- A Drive Down Peachtree Dunwoody Rd (Part 1)

2008-03-14T12:38:00.003-04:00

Fashionista and I were driving down Peachtree Dunwoody Rd in Atlanta the other weekend on our way to a girls lunch/gossip session. (For those of you not familiar with Atlanta – that part of town is where the mega McMansion’s reside). Fashionista and I were ridding along and couldn’t help talking about homes with for sale signs advertising their price and size. There we two homes in particular we(me) couldn’t believe a 7bd/8ba house of 4.3 million and a 6bd/6ba house for 3.7 million. I say we(me) because Fashionista said sees herself in a home like that one day.

I on the other hand, even if I had a billion sitting in the bank I don’t think I’d use some of that money to buy one of these homes – I mean what would you do with all the bedrooms, these homes are so large they already have offices, gyms, craft rooms, and just about every other room type most of us “normal” folks would use extra bedroom(s) for.

I commented that I wanted to know what these people did for a living. I mean seriously what do these people do to make the kind of money to buy/ qualify for a mortgage to buy these homes. It’s not just like there’s only one house like this and a Donald Trump type lives there, these multi-million dollar homes are all over plus there’s a ton of condo’s coming into the market that are selling at over a million dollars. In fact my company is building several condo’s where the smallest units go for a million, no, not the penthouse that one goes for about 15 million. Shesh!

Fashionista made some suggestions for their jobs including investment banker, doctor, lawyer, business owner, and real estate investor.

Now I know this might be possible but it still blows my mind.

Their salary has to be ridiculous – on the drive I did a quick calculation and dividing 4.3 million by 3, the common rule of thumb I’ve seen for mortgages is your house should be about 3 or less times your annual salary, which means they’d have to be making about 1.5 million are year. Before posting this I went to my bank’s calculators and discovered to be qualified to have obtain a mortgage with $880,000 down (20% of the purchase price of 4.3 million for a house) you would have to make $75,000 a month - which is more than I make in a year! If you had no money down you would have to make more than 100,000 a month. I couldn’t even figure out the real value as the calculator will only let you impute up to 100,000 a month income and it comes short of reaching the 4.3 million mark for your loan. Pure craziness!

There’s more good conversation to discuss on this blog from our drive down Peachtree Dunwoody Road beyond Multi-Million Dollar Homes, check tomorrow for that portion. In the mean time, would you ever consider buying a home that expensive? What do you think these people do for a living? And for my pure curiosity since we’ve recently had the in debt debate - could these Multi-Million Dollar Home Owners be in debt beyond their mortgage?

Don't Forget My Comment Contest Ends March 28th!

2008-03-14T12:25:00.003-04:00

Hey All - just wanted to take a second and remind everyone of the comment contest that runs until Friday, March 28th. Click here to find out all the details of the contest.

I really appreciate your comments and feedback which why I'm holding the second contest of this kind. So happy commenting. Remember the more comments the more entries.

Feds Please Stop Dropping the Interest Rates - You're Hurting Us

2008-03-14T08:30:00.005-04:00

Check out Seb’s Open Letter to Ben Bernanke at Pinching Copper.

At first I bookmarked this article to including in my round-up but then I decided it was too good to wait, especially since it seemed to be talking right to me because of my frustration with dropping interest rates both with my car savings at Emigrant Direct and my savings at my brick and mortar bank.

Over the last few days I’ve been exchanging emails with a reader about passive income (note to self – write a post about passive income soon) and I had calculated that last year I earned $2,919 from my house down payment CD’s and Emergency Fund Money Market.

It got me thinking about the amount of interest I’m going to be “loosing” this year because of the interest rate cuts. By the end of the year all of my laddered CD’s will have expired and I will need to renew at a lower interest rate. Last year my CD rates were around 5%, so far I’ve had to renew two of them for around 3% plus my money market has dropped from 4.5% to a measly 2.7%. Doing a few quick calculations I’ve discovered I’m going to make about $1,000 less this year from this passive income.

Ben – listen to Seb he speaks for all of us who were financially responsible. Please don’t punish us for other’s mistakes.

Money, Money...Money! (sing it with me now) -- Tax Refund is Coming!

2008-03-13T09:55:00.004-04:00

Singla Ma provided a link that allows you to track your refund. As promised in my tax post, I was really good I waited almost two weeks after mailing in my federal taxes before I started checking almost daily on my refund. Until today it always said it had not been received...BUT today, I log in and and guess what...my refund is scheduled to be direct deposited on March 18!!! Yeah!

Now I just have to figure out what to do with my tax refund? What are you doing with yours?