Welcome to your week late Link Payday! It’s been a horridly busy few weeks with the fumigation, the century ride, and life in general. Now that I’m having a weekend where I’m not ridiculously busy (just the typical really busy), I’m trying to get caught up here on Uncommon Cents and giving you highlights of some of the best personal finance blog posts of the last few weeks:
JD over at Get Rich Slowly shares a post by guest blogger Erica Douglass who shares the secret to Finding Time to Pursue Your Dreams. The big secret: turn off the TV! I’ve already done that, though; I have to find 750 more post TV hours to pursue my dreams here…
One of my favorite personal finance bloggers (actually, one of my favorites regardless of area of interest), Mrs. Micah discusses some of the benefits of Combining Kiva Lending and Birthday Presents and how it can be a way to give back to the community and the world. While Kiva is interest free lending, it can benefit those in developing nations big time and has very little in the way of default risk. I’m thinking about doing just this.
Frugal Dad spends some time doing dirty work for the rest of us when he puts his energy into Evaluating the Best Gas Credit Cards for Rebates. While I agree that the Discover Open Road is a great card (I have one), my personal choice, the Pentagon Federal Credit Union Platinum Visa isn’t mentioned–until it was commented on by another reader and myself, anyway!
My buddy Ron over at The Wisdom Journal gives us 17 Sneaky Savings Strategies. These c an help whether you’re trying to pay off debt, save for specific goals, or save for retirement. This is a fantastic post for all of us who are interested in trying to save.
Finally, Trent over at The Simple Dollar gets right to the heart of the matter of people living beyond their means (which is the primary cause of financial distress) when he says it right out loud and pulls no punches by telling us to Stop Trying to Impress Other People.
And that’s your Link Payday for October 12, 2008!
If you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty, you can figure out how to fix almost anything with help from the Internet. Sure, the library is a great source of repair and do it yourself project books, but you don’t even have to leave your notebook computer to figure out how to work on various things.
For instance, one of my friends couldn’t figure out what was going on with her Sony Vaio mini tower–and in fact, couldn’t figure out how to open the case (don’t laugh, it was really hard to figure out)! With a bit of search work on Google and Yahoo!, I was able to locate the service manual for her machine and get into it (unfortunately, it turned out her motherboard was dead–but at least I could get her hard drive into a suitable case for backup purposes).
Need to know a bit more about unclogging a toilet? Or dealing with a stuck drain? Want to figure out how to change radiator fluid? Patch a hole in the wall? How about how to mount a camera to bicycle handlebars? Or what to do if a ribbon cable connector on a notebook motherboard fails? All of these are examples of things I needed to figure out how to do, and found great information on these repairs and do it yourself jobs on the Internet. You can even learn things far more esoteric, like how to install Mac OS X on a generic made-for-Windows-and-maybe-Linux box or how to use your cell phone for close to cable modem broadband speeds for your entire home network.
Sites like eHow and Instructables are great resources for those who like to repair, maintain, or get creative with making things. You can also try Lifehacker for some great ideas on Geeking out your life. But Google is your best friend here; there’s lots to learn just by using that search engine and finding out what other people have done when in your situation.
While not everyone likes to get their hands dirty, you can spend less, learn more, and get lots of satisfaction by doing repairs and hacks yourself, and all the knowledge you need is out there, somewhere, on the World Wide Web.
One of my friends is a workaholic nurse (people think I’m a workaholic, but I have days off!) who works seven days a week. She’s also one of those come-in-early-and-stay-late kind of people. Why does she do it? Besides the money (nurses get paid pretty well), she says that it makes her more frugal, because if you never walk into a store, you never spend money there.
I’ve spent a little bit of time considering that statement. I guess it’s true, although if you really need to work in order to keep yourself away from a store, I’m wondering about your discipline. But still, there’s lots of traps every time you enter a store. Just thinking about yesterday, when I stopped by Safeway to get a friend of mine who just had a baby some flowers, as I approached the cashier, I was assaulted by mints, tabloids, and gift cards.
I can understand how people will spend more with these kinds of tactics going on.
What do you think? Does just going to a store make you spend more money?
Some of my Twitter friends have been participating recently in The Sixty One. It’s a Web site that’s both social network and music site, allowing users to not just listen to musical artists, some well known (like Kanye West), some cultish (like Jonathan Coulton) and some unknown, at least by me, but also set up radio stations (kind of like Last.fm or Pandora), and vote for their favorites in a sort of Digg like system. It seems to be gaining pretty rapidly in popularity, so I checked it out tonight.
In a word: Wow.
There’s full versions of songs there for you to review and “bump” (which is like a “digg”). You also get “points” depending on how many songs you listen to (as well as a few other bonuses). The site is free, although they do have the customary PayPal Donate button and apparently are Amazon affiliates for MP3 sales of the music featured on the site. You certainly can (and really, if you like the artists, strongly consider) buying the music, but listening is no charge, like radio. But no commercials, and lots of artists and songs you’ve never heard before.
This is going to require a lot of time to look into, but I’m looking forward to it!
…I’d tell them to stop acquiring new debt. Right now.
I’d tell them that there were things they wanted to buy that they couldn’t afford–like $700 billion of bailout money and Medicare Part D (well, too late on that last one).
I’d tell them they need to figure out where their money’s coming from and where their money’s going and to figure out how to spend less–by making difficult decisions and sacrifices–and how to increase income–even if it means increasing taxes.
I’d tell them to get started on an emergency fund for rainy days–like the rain that’s coming down right now!
I’d tell them to figure out where their worst debts are and to put the majority of their money there; to consider snowballing their debts or to pay off the highest interest rates first, but to have a strategy of some type to effectively pay their debts, including refinancing them if necessary.
And I’d tell them this was not going to be easy; it was going to be difficult, it was going to take a long time, and everyone in their family would need to sacrifice, but in the end, it would be well worth it.
Funny how if the businesses and individuals who got this financial fiasco going in the first place had done their personal finance homework in the first place… there wouldn’t be a financial fiasco going on.
Well, sadly, no, not funny.
The house just got fumigated! We had a bit of a termite problem but a larger one with rats and mice–came back today to find (so far) nine dead ones post fumigation. More importantly, as I sit here in the late evening, I don’t hear any scurrying of little feet (other than the dogs) so I believe that the deed was done well.
We stayed at a local hotel overnight; they gave us the fumigation rate, which was about 15% under the going rate. That was nice. The room was clean and comfortable, and we were pretty happy with it. What wasn’t as nice–and this wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t great–were some of the nickels and dimes that went along with the stay. Two in particular:
Parking: $7.33 for 24 hours–I didn’t have a great alternative to this given the area I was in (and really, had we stayed in Waikiki, it would’ve been at least double), so I paid it. Still, I’ve stayed at a hotel down the street and parked free overnight, so I hoped this one would have been the same–no such luck.
Internet access: $10 for 24 hours–forget it. Me and my tethered phone and Cradlepoint router have close to cable modem speeds as long as I have decent mobile phone access, so that’s the route I went!
In the end, the expense was not horrible; it’s just that some of these things could have been a lot less than they were. We did alright; I just wish we did better!
While these are tech podcasts and not financial, there are some real gems in them regarding the current economic mess.
From This Week in Tech:
Jason Calacanis: Just focus on product… because at the end of the day, if the product gets better, y’know, and you get more sales, everything will improve.
Andrew Horowitz: Who said that stocks should only go up?
From MacBreak Weekly:
Leo LaPorte: Hold the line, stay here, keep doing these shows, build an audience… we can survive, and eke out a living, and be here when the tide turns. Let’s hope it does.
This is probably wise advice for personal finance bloggers in particular; talk about a business that you can start very part time without a lot of up front investment and a low burn rate for money. Remember that down cycles are normal parts of the normal life of the stock market. Sooner or later, if your content is great, things will get better!
I think the answer is a yes with caveats.
It has always struck me as interesting that the prices on the brick and mortar and Web stores are not the same. In fact, the Web prices are not even always lower, as might be suspected. I recently purchased a wireless adapter at Best Buy which was listed for $10 less in store than online! On the other hand, I’ve often ordered online for pickup at discounted prices and/or using Discover Card’s ShopDiscover program which increases–sometimes to as much as 5%–the reward received for purchasing with that brand of card.
It can also be helpful if the Web site allows in store pickup and to check the stock (accurately!) of an item. CompUSA (back when they actually existed as a brick and mortar store) was notorious for having outdated inventory information; many times the Web site would say that the item was in stock at a store, but it really wasn’t. Best Buy and Circuit City both have pretty decent store pickup options (although Circuit City has been out of stock at least once on an item I purchased and never called me to tell me it was back in stock–I had to deal with their voicejail–not a typo–system to figure it out); Circuit City gives a reward card if they can’t fulfill the order in a really short amount of time too! CircuitCity.com also allowed me to avoid going there to try to purchase an item this weekend; their Web site verified for me that it was out of stock.
Some Web sites, however, offer neither in store pickup nor the ability to check if an item is in stock. Those sites are much less useful; at least if they offer a store locator and phone numbers and addresses of local stores, they are of some use.
I’ve found BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com to be pretty useful when dealing with their brick and mortar stores; OfficeDepot.com, OfficeMax.com, and Costco.com a bit less so (although Costco.com has one big advantage over Costco the brick and mortar store–you’re not bound to only using American Express!). Stores that are a bit more general, like Longs.com and WalMart.com, have been much less useful for me.
I conclude that some Web sites for brick and mortar stores work really well, and some work really poorly–which ones do which varies considerably. Take a look carefully when you want to try to use these Web sites to your advantage.
Welcome to your Link Payday for September 20, 2008–fumigation edition! We’re getting the house tented for the first time ever on the 25th, and I’m working every day right up to that point. So in memory of the soon to be deceased termites, roaches, and rodents, here are some of the best posts from around the financial blogosphere over the last couple of weeks:
Moolanomy gives us 5 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Investment Performance. In today’s difficult market, I think this is definitely worth reviewing!
The gang over at Spilling Buckets tackles a huge question with lots of implications in Chivas Regal and a Fine Wine, Why is College Expensive? Having been out of graduate school for more than a decade, it shocks me to see what students are paying today even at a public university that’s known for being a bargain!
Trent at The Simple Dollar takes an interesting approach to dealing with recurring expenses–which I am so not a fan of–when he tries to determine The Least Important Bill. I’m thinking mine is a tossup between my cell phone and cable Internet–but I’m not sure I can successfully do without them!
All Financial Matters gives an important lesson in a basic yet complicated personal finance task when they answer a Reader Question - How to Calculate Personal Rate of Return. This is a tough one to do, and I’m glad they took it on!
Finally, my buddy Ron over at The Wisdom Journal highlights 50 Frugal Things You Aren’t Doing (well, I am doing a lot of them, but surely not all of them!).
And that’s your Link Payday for September 20, 2008!
One of the ladies I work with is about to deliver her first baby and there’s a baby shower planned for her on Friday night at a local restaurant. I’m on call this week, which gave me an excuse to bow out, but the bigger issue is that the dinner cost $40, which didn’t include the gift.
While I love the gang I work with, $40 plus a shower gift of another $20-$50–and that’s going stag–is a pretty steep price. I can give a better gift that will do more for them–say, a $50 gift card to Babies ‘R Us or somewhere similar–by staying home, and spend less as well.
Similarly, a physician I love working with is retiring; his party is also $40, with the gift being whatever you wish to donate. While the cost is close, I think that a retirement party is a once in a lifetime thing; a baby shower may not be. Still, there has to be a line where it just gets too expensive for some of these celebrations. Where is that?
