Thrifty makes Cents

Dropped off a few items at local charity thrift shop. After getting tax deduction receipt, thought to take a look inside for some clothes for the boys since the shop has all clothes at .99 cents on Sundays.

Four pants, one shirt, and one vest later walked out after handing the clerk six dollars. Such a deal on some new duds for the twins.

I never understand the negative attitude some have against used clothes. Now, I have a closet full of these .99 cents. And I've other garage sale items and such. Big rule thought is no socks or boxer. Those we buy new of course. Off limits otherwise.

Everything else fair game. After all, once a new item is worn, by even you, it used.

On the Hunt for online helpers

I trying to find a few online helper resources. It'd be nice to find an all inclusive portfolio tracker. Sure, there's lot available. But none that I really like. Marketwatch is pretty good. The eTrade one has a nice analyzer that will break your portfolio down into investment type. But the search continues...

I'd like to keep a food budget. Keep track of my general eating habits. See how my calorie intake compares to exertion. Not all I assume allow tracking of activities. I've tried the iGoogle counter, but it doesn't even have an entry for bananas. I eat several a week. So that's no good. Nice thought that there are dozens of these freebies all over the net.

Automotive maintenance tracker. I keep a little notebook of the maintenance I do on our two cars. It's handy to make sure I get oil changes done, and so I can see what other works has been done. It's be nice to track this online. Then I don't have to wonder if my notebook ever gets lost.

We'll see what I find.

All My Jobs - Job 1

For my first real paying job I delivered newspapers. I was a paperboy. I
did this for two years or so. 7th and 8th grade it I remember correctly.
When I start I delivered in the afternoons using my bike or skateboard.
I'd say I had about 50 houses. Within the first year the paper switched
to a morning format so I had to get up early and deliver before school.
That sucked. I didn't sleep in for more than a year.

Ah, but the money. I collected the monthly fee from all my houses. I
want to say they paid around $12 a month. I think I got $2 of that and
any additional tips. (Most folks didn't tip.) But I did make over $100 a
month. And I learned something about banking because I had to deposit
all my collection money into the paper's bank account.

One of the real issues was anytime my family went on vacation I had to
find a sub to deliver. (I usually use some Jeff kis down the street.)
I'm quite certain I paid them more per day than I made. But that was
just part of the incentive. In addition, the paper often ran
subscription contests. If you could sign up additional people you'd get
cash and prizes. I particularly remember getting free fireworks one year
for signing up 4 new homes to my route.

Over the course of having the route I used my earnings on two big ticket
items. First is I replaced my Norco BMX bike with a Specialized Hard
Rock mountain bike. I was one of the first kids in school with a
mountain bike. (Although the jewelry store owner's kid in our
neighborhood had a Stumpjumper. That's life. Always someone else with
something better that didn't have to earn it.)

The Hard Rock actually helped me run my route quicker. So buying it felt good and had a purpose.

The other item I bought was a Suzuki RM80 motocross bike for $700. I
still remember my mom driving me to pick this thing up with a wad of $50
bills. She couldn't believe my dad okay'd the purchase. I probably only
had it a year or two but probably sold it for about the same amount. It
seemed awfully fast at the time. Boy, I'd like to ride that bike today
and see just how fast it isn't compared to some of the streetbikes I've
ridden.

As high school approached I could see having a paper route was less
appealing. I don't know which kid got my route. But I bet they were
happy at the time. Easy money for a 12 year old. Except for the rainy
Pacific NW winter morning. (If I was really lucky my mom would drive me
on the route. My dad never liked that pampering.)

Jobs are only jobs till they affect your life...

Aug 13 posting on Nevblog has some advice he directed to his soon to be a college grad cousin. I enjoyed reading through it. I finished up with college 10 years ago. And such a long road it's been since then.

As it turned out I did not put career on the top of my list. In fact, I don't think it even showed up on my list. But my lack of career focus did allow me to enjoy my 20s, traveling and visiting over 30 countries, and finish visiting all 50 states. All the while not incurring credit card debt. I respectively paid down my smallish college loan ($15,000ish).

I feel privileged for the opportunities I had and took. But, back to the aforementioned post, made me think of the other path I could have taken after college: career path. But I can only speculate the what its. But I can think of how I ended up into a career of IT. There's a long journey in my story. How many jobs did I have. A lot. So, let's take a look. Step by step.

I'll jog my memory and strain to recall all the legitimate jobs I've ever had. And how I ended up here. It'll take lots of posts to cover it all.

401k or IRA

I watch the Suze Orman show when I can. She prefers folks to contribute to their 401k only up to the company match and put the rest in Roth IRA. Now I had already planned to bump my 401k contribution from 6% to 7%. But maybe I drop it down to 5% for just the company match.

Orman has various reasons for this approach. But for me the I'd say I still like the tax shelter of an IRA over a Roth. So, I'll likely move this money into my Schwab IRA which offers low cost index funds that my Fidelity 401k can't quite match. That is the key. In a few years I can switch to the Roth strategy for the long term growth potential.

A Real Pay Raise - 401k adjustment

Well, not really a raise. A pay adjustment would better describe my meeting this past Thursday with my manager. He quietly called me into his office and mentioned corporate 'levelings' were required at our office. 'Levelings', I thought? New speak for layoffs? That rambled somewhere in the back of my mind. But I'm in a healthy career in a healthy industry in a healthy city. Could I be seeing pink leveling?

Nope. Apparently my job code required an adjustment to my pay. And, luckily, in the positive direction. My manager told me that effective immediately my pay had been adjusted upwards of 7 percent. Completely blindsided. So, first things first: Will bump 401k contribution from 6 to 7 percent. And use some of the extra monthly proceeds to continue contributing to my IRA.

The Math of Limits

When it comes to investing and personal finance everything come down to one word: math. Keep adding and compound and adding and compounding and retire wealthy one day. That's the hope.

It's the simple math that promises as much. A few cents here and there all add up. Right? Right.

So, same for health? Having twins has left me with less time for fitness minded efforts for the past year. But, recently I've been bring by bike to work via bus and riding to the wife's office about 6-8 miles depending on route and which office she'd at. We carpool home, which saves her time driving, and walk to get the twins.

Before leaving the office I have been grabbing a cold Gatorade for the ride. Yesterday I thought about it. Wasting a bottle each day. But also important, those 130 calories each ride. So it figures:
3500 calories in one pound fat. 130 calories per bottle. Using water instead of Gatorade over the course of 27 rides saves 3510 calories. One pound of fat. (sure metabolism is more complicated than simple math but hey, this model works for me)

SO only water for me now.

Daycare Raise

Daycare costs more than our mortgage. Crazy. And way less tax subsidized. So I feel a raise is coming when the twins move out of the infant room into todders. It's a mixed raise since the daycare is also raising it's rates $10 week per child. So were losing $80 of our raise. but nonetheless we'll be paying less. It's $30 less a week per child for the toddler room.


But I still find it insane we pay over $23,000 a year in day care costs!

Financial Overhaul Needed

Blame it on the days of summer. Or the twins. But either way the past two months have gone by quick. I'm behind. I really, really need to overhaul all of our finances. This involves looking at current allocation of assests and rebalancing. I really need to transfer some of our cash in hand into equties. We have around $25k in our ING account. Ideally we probably only need $15k for liquid emergency funds.

Excel - Cash Account Monthly Weight Balancing

Started plotting our Schwab Investor Checking account twice a month. Imported the data into Excel which produces a nice line chart, that over time, will show the overall trend of the bi-monthly account balance. I've proven, sadly, that I don't have the attention to detail to do a bugdet. The Excel chart will at least show how our cash-at-hand trends over time, until I get down to business and get a budget done.

Coping with sick Kids - Day off

One of the twins is running a toothing fever. Since wife started new job last month, it's up to me to take it for the team and stay home. Luckily I can work from home instead of taking PTO. I've done this two other times and generally get about 6 hours or work in. But now that the twins are able to entertain themselves a bit I hope to log 7 hours today.