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

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?

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?

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

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 last week's was on rising gas prices and highlighted Gorda's gas prices which reach over $5/gallon.

This week I decided to change it up from the gas price topic (although I ran across many Money Funnies about gas). Instead I found a very interesting article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about how the Hilton Garden Inn near Centennial Park has installed a Helipad for its "well-heeled" clients.

Below are some highlights of the article - you can check it out in full at AJC online:
The new Hilton Garden Inn across from Centennial Olympic Park is upping the ante in luxury accommodations.

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

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 Minimum wage doesn’t work 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?

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"

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?

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 :(

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

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.