kyl3 (the band)

As some of our future intentions will have some upfront costs and in order to increase our safety net and financial independence I have been looking at ways to adjust our budget in order to save some money and cut out some unnecessary expenditures.

780 anual savings by cutting out our weekly eating out of chinese food. While we really enjoy the food and not having to cook one night a week as I figure the anual cost to be ($15.00 x 52) 780 dollars it just is not worth it.

600 anual savings by cutting out the MediaMax Unlimited option on my Samsung Blackjack mobile phone and by dropping our family plan down a notch. We have been way under on our minutes usage so much so that now we have 1,957 rollover minutes that we will never actually use because we are always under our minutes each month.  While I love surfing the internet, receiving email, using twitter via SMS text messaging and uploading video to my youtube account all via my Blackjack all with it being coverd by the MediaMax Unlimited option on my phone for a whopping 39.99 a month I think it is just not worth it.  I spend most of my time at work or at home where I have the interent.  If I need to use the internet to get directions via the Live Search program on my phone I will just have to pay per usage at the rate of $0.01 per KB transfered.  It is rare that I ever need to use this feature on my cell phone plan.  Normally it gets used just because the option exists.

Walking to work? Due to the fact that I would have to ride by an intersate entrance and exit ramp where people are definatly not paying attention to any pedestirans and the lack of sidewalks make my route to work very unsafe to ride a bicycle.  I have seen many a commuter zooming 20 miles faster than the speed limit on the road rushing to get on the entrance ramp to the freeway because they are late for work and it would only take one of these cars hitting the side of you on your bicycle to really do some serious physical damage to you costing time and $$$$ and having it HURT.  Thus we have decided against me bicycling to work.  Walking to work would be possible.  According to Google Maps it 1.3 miles to my work from my apartment.  That is of course going by car drivable roads.  I think I could cut of some of the distance by using some short cuts.  I love the satellite view offerd by Google Maps.  While it won’t save too much money to walk versus driving to work, maybe $ 5 a month since my commute is so short, I think it will be liberating walking to work and not being chained to my car.  I will feel like I did when we lived in Europe. FREEDOM

Rog3r only commutes to the hospital 2 days a week so his commuting costs are low.  He can’t ride the bus to work because he has to be at work before the buses start running.

Earning extra income? I will still need to investigate all these options more. Here is a good link about transcribing.  Here is a good line about writing for an income.

I am also selling our books and DVDs online via half.com.  You can see my “store” here.  We are also selling some items on craigslist.org; Sony 5 Disc CD Player, Toshiba DVD Player, Iomega External Zip Drive, Iomega External CD Drive, 2005 Ford Taurus 3.0L V6 Gas/ E85,  VCR Toshiba 4 Head, and a Dell Dimension L933r Desktop with WIndows XP install disc. Note: the links will only be good for 45 days or so since that is when they expire on craigslist.

I just thought this was so interesting to read.  Read it here.

I really enjoyed this excerpt so much that I have to post it here.  This is one of my favorite financial websites.

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  In 2006, JLP from All Financial Matters interviewed Clements, asking, “What’s the most important thing you have learned since you started writing about personal finance?” Clements replied: 

  Financial success has very little to do with your ability to pick winning investments. Instead, what matters is stuff people never think about…The ability to delay gratification is critically important. Similarly, a lot depends on maintaining steady employment, staying in good health, avoiding divorce and whether you have children.

April 15^th is 6 days away.  I have plenty of time to complete my taxes and file on time. J  No, really I will be completing this task this weekend. All other financial investigations will be put on hold in the mean time.  The site Get Rich Slowly has a great informative PDF file about 66 ways to save money that the webmaster found published by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Federation of America.

A good way to keep more of your money is to spend less of it on the things you buy.  Don’t just walk into a store and pick up something and buy it.  Discuss the price with a representative, see if they can lower it.  Don’t walk in with that attitude that you simply have to have the item.  Walk in with the attitude that you can easily leave the store without giving them any of your hard earned money if they don’t negotiate the price with you. 

I know that on the news everyday it seems the anchors talk about the slowing economy and as you listen you start to get down and worried.  Slap yourself and realize that there are still a lot of people making profits in the type of economy.  You can be one of them.  At least use the doom and gloom to your advantage and go into stores ready to negotiate the price.  Remember there is nothing you HAVE to buy.  Some food, clothing and shelter is nice but above and beyond that is not necessary.

As an example my Fiancé and I purchased a guitar amp last week.  We had been talking about buying one for about 6 months.  We had been playing a lot of guitar and decided to go for it.  We went in with an idea of what we wanted and about how much we were willing to spend.  We went to the store and started looking around.  An representative offered to assist us.  We advised him of what we were looking for and he pointed out some amps in our range.  We only needed a small one to play in the apartment or doing a  little band paying in a garage; nothing to perform in a large space with.  We saw a fender amp for about 170.00 that we really liked.  We also had some other items we wanted to purchase like guitar strings, cords and some picks.  We rounded up these items and then told the representative that we wanted to purchase the fender amp but the price was a little out of the price range we were looking for.  We asked if there was any special going on or if he could lower the price of the amp.  He pulled out a calculator and then said he could lower the price to 119.00.  It seemed so easy.  We had done a lot more haggling in South America when purchasing a belt.

Go ahead and ask them to lower the price for you.  They will probably say yes.  If they say no, just walk away.  You probably did not need the item anyway.

We all know that when you open any account of any kind they all want to do a credit check aka credit inquiry aka credit pull.  I never knew that there were two different ways to check credit history; a soft pull and a hard pull.  A soft pull does no damage to your credit a hard pull however drops your overall FICO score for 6 months. 

Silly that just a credit inquiry would drop your score.  If you have the credit to buy something you’ve got it.  So you just have to space out when you buy big purchases like a car and a house?  That isn’t very economically stimulating.  Maybe we should tell George W.?

I found a neat wiki all about personal finance here.

I also set up my Traditional IRA with E*Trade.  I set up a “complete savings” account also.  Their rate is now 3.45% APY.  There was no minimum balance required.  And if you set it up after 30 days they will put $ 25.00 in your account.  And you can set it up online in a matter of 10 minutes. 

Since I have funded my IRA now I can finish doing my 2007 taxes.  Mine are not too difficult to do as I use TurboTax.  How do I do my fiancé’s taxes.  He needs to file so he can receive the economic stimuli payment.  But he received no w-2 as he earned 0.00 wages this year.  He is a full time Nursing Student.   I will work on this over the next few days. 

The question is how do you file without an income?  The government sent all those letter to everyone advising no matter what every needs to file and then we will all get some economic stimuli 300-1200 $$$ so we can then in turn go out and buy stuff to stimulate the economy.  Word to the wise; save the money, stash it in an IRA or a savings account.  I will find out shortly if you can file with no financial documentation.

Each one is administered by a state.  Then the state passes off the management to a mutual fund company thing.  Oh well I am still confused as to how it is really orchestrated.  Kiplinger.com has them rated here.  Maybe that will aide understanding.

I have investigated nothing financially since the last post.  I am still reeling from the fact that the governments take 29% of the money I earn.   What do they do with it?  Is there a published general ledger somewhere?  I don’t think so.  Maybe the politicians are just laundering the money.  They start social programs and raise taxes for the revenue but then when it comes down to it no one qualifies for any of the social programs so they just funnel the money around and around until it ends up in their pockets.

When the politicians say they are going to raise taxes to start some social programs for the “poor” and that they will only be taxing the “rich”, their definition of rich and poor is very different from that definition of rich and poor we have in our minds.  In the eyes of the government if you have a job earning any kind of wage at all then you meet their definition of rich.  You have money eligible to be taxed.  A great question to ask your politicians is not how the program will benefit but who will qualify, SPECIFICALLY, and how do they plan to PAY FOR IT.  SHOW US THE NUMBERS, ITS OUR MONEY.  Because, really, I am all about them taking taxes out and providing financial aid to college students working their butts off, paying teachers a descent living wage for having an advanced degree, paying to fix the potholes, and I could go on and state all of the great things the tax revenue could go towards but we all know it doesn’t.  The money gets lost in the “shuffle”. 

Most days we are squashed between big government and big business.  None of these margins benefit John Q. Public (documented or undocumented).  We need to ask the hard financial questions of ourselves, our government and our “Enrons”.

AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax)

I am working on figuring this one out.  It appears to be an entire other tax system.  If they didn’t gouge enough out of you with the first then you have to use the second, the AMT.  It does not seem fair.  I am still working on understanding this one…. Here are some good links that I have used to get me started.

Wikipedia Entry

Smart Money