- Yesterday I was chatting with one of my company’s summer interns about his plans for the weekend. He told me that he was going skydiving. Wow! I thought, that’s awesome. I’ve always wanted to go skydiving, but never got around to it before I got married and became a parent. I explained to the intern that the second thought that went through my head after “Wow” was “life insurance policy.” I have a sizable life insurance policy in place already, but I’ve been meaning to read up on the fine points of it to figure out exactly what coverage I have. I find that I have many insurance policies, but don’t know what insurance I actually have. You always hear horror stories about people having insurance, but not being covered for some bizarre sequence of events. So back to the top of my to do list goes: Read and understand current insurance policies.
- A short phone call this week earned me about $150. I have been engaged in a kind of progressive credit card arbitrage. We got a cash back rewards credit card last summer that came with a high limit and a 0% APR on purchases for a year. We’ve been making minimum payments to the card while stashing the rest of the full payment in a high interest savings account. I had written in my credit card notes that the 0% offer expires in July. I called the credit card issuer to ask specifically when the offer expires. The answer is that the offer is good until the END of my August billing cycle, which means that I don’t have to settle up until the middle of September. I estimate that I should be able to earn about $150 dollars in extra interest on the money that is sitting in my Vanguard Money Market fund.
- We finally received our tax refund this week, which isn’t bad considering that we didn’t file until about 3 weeks ago. It took longer than expected to file this year due to some Traditional to Roth IRA conversions that we ended up being ineligible to make. So it took a while to figure out how to undo the conversion and then how to record that on the tax return.
- In case you’re wondering: this tax refund will be used to bolster our emergency funds which currently total $10,233. This is far short of 6 months worth of expenses, but we’re getting there.
Some articles that I enjoyed over the last two weeks:
- Gather Little By Little investigates the fine art of hypermiling — eking every possible mile out of a gallon of fuel for your car. We have been de facto hypermilers since 2001 when we purchased a diesel car that easily gets 45 miles per gallon. However, I have been independently implementing some of the suggestions that also appear in GLBL’s article and anecdotally seem to have improved city mileage to previously unheard of heights. I won’t know for sure until the next fillup, which may still be weeks away.
- The Boston Globe reports that People in Debt Feel Literal Pain. Wow! Debt troubles are pervasive! The lesson here: If you want to improve your health, get out of debt.
- Gametheorist writes about his children’s entrepreneurial teamwork in selling candy bars for their sports club fundraiser. What fascinated me about this was the posturing of the pricing in order to induce people to buy more. What further fascinated me is that it worked so well!
- Lastly, PaidTwice had another rough week in homeownership. Her week went from dreams about a more luxurious bath experience to a shorted circuit breaker to a major, necessary home repair. Isn’t it nearly always the case that just when we start to feel secure, comfortable, and in control of our lives Mr. Murphy comes knocking? This happens to me at work, with our finances, around the neighborhood, on the highway, etc. The best guard against Mr. Murphy is a healthy emergency fund, both in literal and figurative senses. Always try to foresee alternative outcomes and plan around them or hedge against them. We can’t foresee or prepare for everything, but a little planning can go a long way — see Point 1 at the top of this entry.
This week I participated in two carnivals.
Some other articles that I enjoyed this week:
This week I participated in 3 Carnivals:
I also added my blog to the World of Personal Finance Bloggers map at Part Time Money. Check out the distribution of bloggers around the US and in the rest of the world.
It was an unexciting week in the personal finance blogosphere, but I did manage to find a few interesting articles:
- Lynnae at BeingFrugal.net posted the next installment of her (Not) Keeping Up with the Middle Class review. I still agree that personal responsibility is priority one, but many comments continue to argue that government and big corporations have little influence on the squeezing of the middle class. I disagree — I think these two elements play a large roll.
- The Freakonomics blog had a post on an opportunity for Obesity research using New York City’s new law requiring restaurants chains of 15 or greater to post calorie content in the food. Interesting stuff…
- PaidTwice had a post titled Don’t Wait Until Mortality Stares You Down to Write a Will. What struck me about this was the realization that PaidTwice had a greater chance of dying while riding to and from the hospital than he did while being tested. It is only the fact that the chance of death was outlined in black and white and he had to sign off on his acknowledgment of it. It’s amazing what a difference framing a statistic in one form or another has on perception. Incidentally, one of the last things on our path to financial wellbeing for ScrapperMom and I is to write a will…
Here are some interesting articles that I read this week:
- Lynnae at BeingFrugal.net started a multi-part book review on (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents by Nan Mooney. Lynnae was upset at the assertion that people don’t have choices, and I agree with her. However, I argued that the middle class is being squeezed by both corporations and the government and that “middle class” members should be able to take their kids to Disney World now and again. Yes, people make bad choices, but all too often these days many people are taken advantage of by greedy companies under the full knowledge of our government. See my review on Maxed Out for more thoughts on this.
- The interview with the author’s of Nudge at the Freakonomics blog was very interesting. It’s amazing what a difference can be made simply but changing the framing of the question or the default choice for such things as organ donation and 401(k) contributions.
- At MyTwoDollars.com guest poster Tisha Kulak discusses the pros and cons of co-signing a credit application for your children (or anyone else for that matter). Most of the comments conclude that one should not co-sign for one’s children. I tend to be less black and white about just about any issue. I suggested that co-signing for a credit application is acceptable as long as it’s not the first lesson your child is getting in money management and responsible use of credit.
- Paidtwice at Paidtwice.com argues that All Funds are Emergency Funds until you have sufficient reserves. We have a fund into which we make monthly payments towards annual bills (insurance, taxes, etc.). This article reminds me that we don’t have to have a whole year worth of payments for each annual payment before paying out of the account. All we really need to have is enough money to cover the biggest bill.
- Madison at MyDollarPlan.com writes about the lessons learned while filing her taxes this year. Madison and I both had issues with Roth IRA conversions this year that required recharacterizing contributions due to ineligible conversions or contributions. The recharacterization was easy, but I’m still struggling with how to fill out the necessary tax forms. I have not yet filed our taxes this year (we’re getting a refund, so we’re not late…). I’d like to thank Madison for her help to me on this sticky issue.
Off topic:
- I enjoyed reading the article by Lenore Skenazy here and the follow-up here, as well as Ms. Skenazy’s NPR Talk of the Nation Interview which featured a great quote: “It’s not like we threw him into the East River…”. Her thoughts about Free Range Kids sure has generated a firestorm of comments. ScrapperMom and I find ourselves on opposite sides of the issue, though we are not radically left and right on it, but rather both closer to the center.
photo figure credit: ctsnow
