Poker for Money

I don't play cards as often as I'd like. I'm an average player, but I tend to play too conservatively to win any real money. Usually when I play I can manage a few good hands, and get into the top 1/3 of the group I'm in. From there I have to get pretty lucky. I toyed around with playing online for fake money, but I find that is no way to learn. People do some dumb things when fake money's on the line.

I signed up for a 6 month tournament with my brother and his friends. The tournament cost $100 to enter, and meets once a month. Each meeting is an additional $60. The monthly games pay out for the top three. Players are also awarded points towards the series over the course of 6 games. Our second game is this week, and I'm currently in 4^th place (1 point).

To me, this is a really fun way to do something that's not going to cost too much money, but has a potentially great reward. After the initial month of $160, the commitment is only $60/month. The games last about 3 hours, and are a great way to blow off some steam while sitting around the table busting on each other. The added benefit is if I finish 3^rd or better, that week becomes free.

My brother and his friends all play regularly. In our first round, and times I've played with them in the past, I've shown that I can stay with them, but If I took more time to study it, I think I could get better than them. That's not bragging. I'm not WSOP material. The trouble I run into is my style is to play low risk, high reward hands. I move my weight around when I have the hand to do it, and often scare players out of the pot. I outlast the reckless players, but their chips get distributed amongst other players. In our first round game, I did well to make the top 4, but when we got there, I was out-stacked by the top three, and the blinds were going up. This put me at a severe disadvantage, and I was quickly taken out of the game.

I've got 1 week worth of studying hand strengths and percentages before my next game. I'm hoping to get into the top 2. It will be an interesting strategy because of the point breakdown. Everyone will be gunning for the leader at 10 points, and second place (6 points) from our first game. If I let them get knocked out, and bide my time, I may be able to make a late run at some chips, and put myself into the top two. My strategy going into this game is help knock off the top two players early, so they don't collect any points, then to get myself into the top to, putting me between 7-11 points.

What I haven't factored in is what to do if I win money in this. I suppose for now, I'll put it towards the next month's game. Playing with house money is the best way to play. After that, the money should really go towards savings or beefing up our cash reserve. Having written that, it's clear that I'm as conservative in Poker, as I am in life.

Carnival round up for January 31, 2011

My Restaurant.com post is far and away my most popular thanks to Restautrant.com featuring it on twitter. I've also submitted it to several Carnivals! I should probably edit the feature and include a formula to calculate the value of a cert but till then,
Check it out at:

The 4th edition of Totally Money Blog Carnival

the 23rd edition of Carnival of Wealth

What I ate Last night

Last night (Wednesday) Mrs. Lwil made: Pasta with sausage, artichokes, and sun-dried tomato. It can be found on Giada De Laurentis' Everyday Italian. Served with homemade Rosemary Foccachia bread

Ingredients:
The two recipes required 18 ingredients (a theme apparently) just like last week. This week, the individual ingredients were a little more expensive.

Total Cost: $23.35

• Sun Dried Tomato packed in oil: $5.49
• 1 pound sausage (we used a provolone and roasted red pepper pork sausage) $5.00
• 1 jar quartered artichoke hearts $2.69
  
• minced garlic $0.02
• Chicken broth $0.80
• White wine $1.50
• Pasta $0.80
• Parmesan $1.00
• Basil $0.33
• Parsley $0.40
• Mozzarella $4.00
• Flour $0.50
• Yeast $0.40
• Honey $0.10
• Salt $0.01
• Pepper $0.01
• Rosemary $0.30
• Olive oil $0.00 (Reserved from tomato)

Cooking: Mrs. Lwil cooked this meal. It took about 45 min. We make this meal pretty often, because we really like it. It's super easy. Boil the pasta, brown the sausage, and make a really easy sauce. Not much too it.

Serving: This is one of the Mother-in-law's favorites. We also like it very much. You serve it in a big bowl like in the picture, and out it goes.

Cost per serving/serving total

At $23.35 for a total of 5 servings (several people had second. I was starving, and had thirds! Could have realistically served 8) $4.67 Per Serving (could be $2.91)

What’s for Dinner this week?

Week of 1/29 – 2/4    

Saturday – Jacob Wirth

Sunday – Turkey Dinner

Monday – Beef and pork stuffed peppers

Tuesday – Fish & Chicken cooked in some manner, presumably

Wednesday – Turkey Pie

Thursday – Mac & Cheese with Sausages

Friday – Calzones, Pepperoni and Mushroom

 

 

Friday Links

Links to some of the favorite things I've read this week.

1/28/11
a Sun called Beetle Juice!
In this story, which is not very heavy on Science like I thought it might be, we hear about the possibility that a "nearby" star called Betelgeuse will collapse, then explode causing the earth to be light 24 hours a day for weeks. According to the article this could happen in 2012, or in 1 million years (otherwise known as 1002012) I suppose it all depends on if we say its name 3 times in a row? I'm amazed by how advanced we've become and how little we still know. Either way, Betelgeuse is coming for us, and he's bringing Neutrinos! (which I think is a brand of frozen pizza)

GAS Crisis! GAS Crisis! See what a former Shell Exec has to say
I've seen this article all over, and the scary take away is $5/gallon gas, and crisis level shortages in about 10 years.. My truck gets less than 14 Miles a gallon regularly, so this is a bit of a scary proposition. The big push is for alternate sources of energy, as it should be. Take this article with a suspicious eye on two accounts. 1. It's from Fox news, and 2. The interviewee is a former oil exec.

Get Rich Slowly is talking about mortgage walkaway and Strategic Default

I fall on the business decision side of this equation. A mortgage contact gives you certain options, and consequences to those options. I see no issue with breaking the contract if you're willing to accept the consequence. There's a huge side to this that pushes personal responsibility and morality, and that side makes very good points, they are just points I don't happen to agree with. I wish I could someday write content that generates as much discussion as this post did.

Matt at Bruce Bucks used an old post to remind himself Why I Want to be Debt Free
This is something that I think helps everyone, no matter what your goal. Write down what you goal is, and what you need to do to get there. Refer to it often. I was thinking about that this morning, I'm happy with my career, but I didn't set out to get here. What if someone had taken the time to talk to 17 year old me to talk about what I was going to learn in college, and what I wanted to do in life. I never had that conversation growing up.

Snow Day

Today is another Snow day in our area. Mrs. Lwil literally hasn't worked a full week in January. I think there've been 3 snow days, and 2 holidays in 4 weeks. That doesn't include the additional 2 hr delay she got on another day. I've written in the past about how important a schedule is and how it can impact finances and stress.

Snow days cost a lot. In addition to cooking, we also keep our son home on days like today, even though his daycare is open, and we've paid for the day no matter what we do. At the end of this school year, there could be make-up days, causing Mrs. Lwil to go later into the year, and Baby Lwil to go an extra week of day care. We have to get more gas for the snow blower if we end up using it. We once again infringe on the in-laws who were not anticipating us being home. I said to Mrs. Lwil, in jest at the time, "go teach the baby something." Thinking more about it, teaching the baby is the real benefit of snow days. Our son gets more time with both of us, he does things he wouldn't have done at school, and he learns not to rely on a rigid and strict schedule.

Today's snow day is a leisure day. Mrs. Lwil made breakfast for everyone, better than the typical cereal or "breakfast cookie" we usually have. She went out to shovel (my back's still hurting, and I'm also working). Now that those items are done, she can spend the rest of the day playing, while baby learns. They can draw, play games, play "guys" and tackle and hide & seek, go out and play in the snow, slide down the snow banks, build a snowman, snow angel, or snow fort. They can spend time cooking and cleaning up. Baby Lwil gets that much more time with his grandparents before they head off to Florida for the winter. Snow is a wonderful thing because it offers free things to do, and I'd take this over 100+ degree days in the summer where you don't want to be outside.

Sometimes I get a little too caught up in the budgeting and financial consequences of these unexpected days off that I lose sight of how incredible they can be for all of us. I won't lie either, I'm very jealous of her day off, while I'm in the basement working away. I'd estimate all of the expenses for today at $70 (expenses for food, missed daycare day, savings on gas for transport). This month has been different because of All the days off, that amount is closer to $300, which is still a significant amount to us at this point. It's impossible to figure balance cost against the value of the added things we've done though.

I'd be very curious to see how other budget focused people view days like these. I can't be the only one that struggles with balancing the cost vs. value of a day like today. Can I?

Grad School

A part of my wife's job is continuing education. If I understand it correctly, she has to be enrolled in classes for the next 20-30 years. Currently, she's working towards her Master's degree. There's also some sort of step raise system that I don't entirely understand. What I take away from the situation is each degree means more money coming in, and I'm not opposed to that.

Unfortunately, Grad school costs money, and she's not offered tuition reimbursement in the strict sense of the word. You could argue that step benefits equate to tuition reimbursement spread out over a long time. We don't do a good job of budgeting for grad school costs, and that's something that has to change in 2011.

Over the past few months every time the subject of grad school has come up, we've had some other major financial decision hanging over our heads, and Mrs. Lwil had decided not to register that semester. This is a conversation that we should have had months ago, because I had chalked it up to her either procrastinating, or being bad with paper work, but she was genuinely trying to do her part to protect our budget!

As of February, there's a Grad School line item in our Savings allocation budget!

For me, Grad school is something I would like to do eventually. My tuition would be fully reimbursed, but I would have to pay it in advance. I also need to take and pass the GMAT before I can consider going. The GMAT scares me. While I think I write fairly well, Grammar is not my strong suit. I dread essay questions. I worry about reading comprehension because I'm a slow reader. While I think I would comprehend the passages quickly, it would take me longer than the average person to actually read it. Math was always my best school subject, but I haven't taken a math course since 1999. I'd need to re-learn all of the theories and formulas just to pass a basic test.

I have two GMAT books, and a free software program that is supposed to offer practice tests, but I wonder if enrolling in a GMAT course would be the better way to go. That would be an added expense. Aa quick Google search gives me a good place to start I think I just have to dive in and take the practice test without any prep work. That will tell me where I'm at. Now I just need to find 4 hours so to spend on this!

264th edition of the Festival of Frugality

My post on Complaining to/Contacting a company is featured in the 264^th edition of the Festival of Frugality carnival. It's my first carnival, so I'm pretty psyched about it.

Check it out at Spruce Up Your Finances -- http://spruceupyourfinances.com/264th-edition-of-the-festival-of-frugality/

Eating out on a budget: Restaurant.com

Mrs. Lwil and I don't eat out often. When we go out, there's usually some discount involved. We love Restaurant.com. My mother, who's never met a discount she didn't like, introduced us to Restaurant.com. She was frugal before anyone knew what that meant. Having always cooked for 6+, she's not very good at cooking for just herself. I think on a given week, she goes to dinner with a different person 5 times, and has her leftovers for lunch 4 times. Whenever we hear about a new place, she's already been there. She does not use the computer at all so it was a little surprising that she knew about Restaurant.com.

Restaurant.com sells restaurant coupons. Typical coupon values run from $10 to $100, but cost between $5 and $40. The site often sweetens this deal with discount codes of 50-90% off. That means you could get a $10 off coupon, for $0.50 or, an even better deal, $100 off a restaurant bill for only $4.00 out of pocket! Most coupons have restrictions like valid times, minimum orders, or amounts spent. They can make for a very frugal way to dine. It just takes some thought.

Using Restaurant.com:
Read the fine print. Most of the deals come with some catch. Most require that you agree to add a 20% tip to the Pre-discounted value regardless of service (some will add this into the bill). Many places exclude the cost of alcoholic beverages. I've found that presenting the coupon at the beginning, when you are seated, is the best practice. Once, when I did not do this, and found out after we had eaten that they no longer accepted coupons. This week, I got an email about one coupon I ordered. They dropped out of the program, and I have to exchange it. I had given this one as a gift, and had to take it back from my mom to exchange it. Regardless, there's a frugal way, and a not so frugal way to use it. Here's how!

What’s for dinner this week?

If there are any items below that you would like to see featured in my "what I ate last night" please let me know.

Week of 1/22 – 1/28    

Saturday – Pulled pork with baked fries

Sunday – Lamb, roasted potato, broccoli

Monday – Steak w/ rice pilaf and salad

Tuesday – pork/chicken picatta, spinach

Wednesday – Giada pasta (Bowtie pasta with artichoke, sundried tomato, and sweet chicken sausage)

Thursday – Chinese "takeout" Chicken w/ String beans, pork fried rice

Friday – Falafel w/ Salad and Rice

 

 

Friday Links

Links to some of the favorite things I've read this week.

1/21/11
50 cent, stock mover and shaker
I guess this is the new thing now, Start following celebs on twitter, and capitalize on stock advice… not because it's actually good advice, but just because everyone else will do it!

It's almost Tax Time!
I've been trying for the last two years to get my refund amount lowered by lowering my withholding, and storing that cash in an interest bearing account. I'm not sure where we will end up this year, our rental income is down from last year, but Mrs. Lwil's is way up. we spent less in mortgage interest, but more in child care. Last year, we got close to $9,000 back. I changed my withholding and put $2600 into an interest bearing account. I think I'll still get a refund, but I've got the cash in case I owe, and the govt didn't get a free ride off my dime!

The driving wave of the future! SUPERSTREETS
We drive a pickup truck and a jeep. Neither one is very good on gas. Anything civil engineers could do to improve my driving efficiency would be great!

Wisebread posted about putting yourself out there and vulnerability

I found this post fascinating because for the past two weeks I've been writing to an audience of few. But I'm putting a lot of deeply personal information into this. The only audience member that I know for sure knows me is Mrs. Lwil (Hi!). I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ways to grow this space, and how much to put out there about myself and my family. I've also been thinking a lot about sharing this blog with people I know, but I haven't done so yet.

What I ate last night

This is something I'm kicking around as a weekly series to post after a recipe that I particularly liked. I also need something to use photos and give the blog some color. I haven't decided if I'm going to dedicate this to a frugal meal, or not, but I will to my best to cost out the meal.

Last night I made: Orange – Balsamic glazed chicken breast w/ tangy lemon risotto. This is a recipe from and can be found @ Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals.

Ingredients:

This recipe requires many ingredients. 18 for two dishes, but most of them were items we would buy and have on hand anyway. The only items I had to buy special was Rosemary. Here's a breakdown of what I used, and the estimated cost. Note that if I used a portion of an item, I calculated a proportionate cost. The rest will be used in another menu item later.

Total Cost: $18.83

• Rice: $1.50
  
• Chicken Stock $6.00 (big opportunity to make my own here)
  
• Chicken $5.00 (we made about 2x what the recipe calls for, this could be cut in half)
  
• Olive oil $0.09
  
• Small onion $0.20
  
• Garlic: $0.02 (Pre minced jar)
  
• Lemon $0.33
  
• White Wine $1.50
  
• Sugar $0.03
  
• Butter $0.15
  
• Parmesan Cheese $1.00
  
• Basil $0.50
  
• Poultry seasoning $0.06
  
• Rosemary $0.30
  
• Marmalade $0.50
  
• Balsamic Vinegar $0.30
  
• Arugula $1.25
  
• Scallions $0.10

Cooking: Mrs. Lwil actually cooked this meal. It took about 45 min. It takes a lot of practice to actually turn out a 30 min meal in 30 min! The cooking seemed very easy. It was hands on, with a lot of stirring, but not anything that required much skill

Serving: From what I understand everyone like the meal. I didn't eat till much after it was cooked because I had to go out, but I thought it tasted really good, and I'd add it to our rotation. The chicken was still moist from being finished in the sauce. The arugula bed soaked up a lot of the sauce and was really good as a salad. The Risotto was incredible, for what can be a heavy dish, the lemon kept it light and refreshing. I think of this as more of a summer or fall meal, but I was really very good.

Cost per serving/serving total

At $18.83 for a total of 6 servings (which could have realistically served 8) $3.13 Per Serving (could be $2.35)

I'd say this one passed for both tasty and Frugal!

Growth in the Life and Times Family

A short post to share some updates to the Life and Times Family of Blogs. When I started this blog earlier in the month, I named it as Life and Times Living with In-laws. I did this because of an existing blogged called Life and Times of little Cal, that my wife had written for a few years, but had stopped. Well, reading me has inspired her, twofold, and I'm proud to introduce the Life and Times Family. Life and Times of Little Cal is about the adventures our little man enjoys, while Life and Times, Homemade Edition will explore Mrs. LWIL's life, and is more free form. I Hope you enjoy

For Updates on Baby LWIL, check out:

Life and Times of Little Cal

For Updates from Mrs. LWIL, check out:

Life and Times, Homemade Edition

How to contact a company and how to write or file a complaint

For the past 10 years, I've worked at various capacities in a consumer focused call center. I've heard every story, complaint, and demand that you could ever dream of. From time to time, I get really frustrated with the level of entitlement some people feel. The business I'm in provides no shortage of laughter, and funny stories to retell. It has also groomed me to become the go-to person for any of my friends or family that need to get what they want from a service or support line. I pride myself on the fact that I get what I want, when I want it, every time! There's a method to this, and below, I will share that method, and my tips and tricks with you.

Why should you complain or contact a company to begin with?
For one, if you buy a product or a service and you are not happy with the result, you have a right to ask for the value to be repaid in some form. Second, most companies want to hear about their products and services. When they don't get something right, they actually want to fix it. Keep in mind that wanting to fix something, and actually being able to are very different things.

Mint.com and budgeting

For several years, I've used an excel spreadsheet as a budget. The drawback to this is I have to manually enter most of my data. This takes up a lot of time, but I'm also slightly obsessed with spreadsheets, so I kind of like that. In the interest of trying to automate my budget, I'm trying some online tools.

I have been using the all accounts feature from my bank's website for a while, and I find that does a got job of organizing everything in one place when it comes time to update my spreadsheet. I've also signed up, recently, for Mint.com. I like my more manual method because I'm used to it. I have different tabs built in to track all sorts of things: monthly budgeting, projected budgeting, debts/payoff plans, retirement accounts, and an annual review to name several.

I'm not sure how I feel about Mint so far. It took close to 3 hours to set up my budgets and add my accounts. There's still one account that just won't connect. I like the idea that I can see my monthly spending, what I have budgeted, and allocated, but I'm just not sure it will save me time over the method I'm currently using. I'll try it out for a full budget cycle and see how it works.

First impressions:
Good: UI – It's really easy and well organized
Good: Ease of adding accounts – much faster than I remember from when I added them to my bank's site. Much easier than going to each site individually
OK: Budgeting tool – I haven't figured out how it's calculating my income, but it's inflating it.
Annoying: number of ads – one wrong click and it has you signing up for something that you might not need, but as long as I read what I'm doing, I can avoid this
Bad: Goal planning – maybe it's me, but the "debt" repayment and other goals are seriously lacking. I'd like to be able to set goals for my mortgage and personal loans in addition to just credit cards, and with the stock goal available, I'm not able to do this, as far as I can tell.

I'll make Mint updates a part of my monthly reviews.

How important is a schedule?

In honor of a Monday holiday from work, I decided to write about scheduling, and what can happen when schedules fall off track. Time off from work (holiday's, vacation, and "Sick" days) is great to recharge yourself, and ease your mind, but it can also be a train wreck if it's not properly planned. We all have a routine. For me, it is working Monday – Friday, with dinner, gym, and family time, and project work mixed in. Saturday is grocery day, and there's usually something planned for the afternoon. Sunday is Hockey day, and usually something in the afternoon. But every once in a while, there's something thrown in there that pushes the schedule to the curb. Without careful and thoughtful planning, this can be catastrophic… or it can be a minor hiccup.

Take today for an example, on a typical Monday, we're both out of the house by 7:30. Mrs. Lwil goes to work, I drop baby off at day care, and either return home to work, or head for the office. We're on a Monday holiday today, which is great, but it's costing us more in planning for the remainder of the week than we would like, and it's possibly even more taxing in terms of stress than is worth it. Mrs. Lwil and I slept in a little, till baby Lwil woke up around 7:15. After waking up, it was more TV time than usual for him, and some baking for her – I slept even later till almost 8! Mrs. Lwil is a very good baker, and make up some wonderful cranberry/orange muffins for us, and her parents. When I see this, I immediately see, a breakfast item that was unplanned, and used up resources (ingredients) that will cost us more this week than a typical Monday. After breakfast, we lazed around, and eventually, there was lunch to be made. Today, we made homemade chicken soup. Unfortunately, as this is not a planned lunch, we used up some chicken and chicken stock that I had planned to use in a recipe later in the week, and will have to be replaced.

These things alone aren't a disaster. We'll get more stock, make the dish with chicken breast that we have instead of chicken thigh, and have to buy more flower sooner than anticipated. At most, this is $10 more than we may have planned on spending. There's also the stress issue. During the entire time of cooking, there was unsolicited running commentary on what she was using, and how it could be done different, other ways to do things, offers to take over. Sometimes, the in-laws can be a little over involved. This is a stress for them as well, as they usually have the house and kitchen to themselves on a Monday, but today, we were occupying rooms upstairs that they might have been using otherwise. There was some tension in the room, because she wanted to cook, dad wanted to be cooking, and I was chiming in about all of the items that were used that were already allocated to later meals. It was frustrating for all, and shows that deviations from the normal routine can have a ripple effect.

My Grocery Process

I have quite a lengthy grocery process. It's one that's taken about two years to develop, and a full week to complete. I know there's lots of room to save on groceries too, but I'm not quite there yet. I think as long as we're living at our in-laws, I'm not going to put even more effort into it. But perhaps some of you will explore your own grocery process, and it will inspire me to cut some costs. We spend a LOT on groceries. I was reading another post at Budgets are Sexy this week that talked about grocery costs, and how much they vary from person to person. Our budgeted amount is $225/week. I am really looking forward to Feb, because my in-laws go to Florida. I ran numbers today, and we can take off at least $40/week with them gone.

Why is our number so high? For one, we're essentially a family of 5 between the 3 in my family, and my mother and father in-law. On top of that, two of my nephews are here two days a week and we provide them with breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Then my sister in-law is here two nights a week for dinner (dinner for 8 those nights, plus she takes our leftovers home for her husband). And 1 night a week, we provide dinner for another brother in-law. From Feb – April, we will be down to just the three of us most nights, far less breakfasts and snacks, and we'll be rid of most of the junk. Plus the weekly visits from other family members slow dramatically! I'm banking on $200/month in extra cash flow for the three months the in-laws are away! To add to the financial strain, I should add that my wife does most of the cooking. I do some (maybe once a week), but for the most part, she comes home after working all day, and it expected to feed 5-9 people a meal that is not only delicious, but satisfies the preferences of each person. Cooking is something we both really enjoy, but the stress and tension involved in cooking here has caused me to give up on it for now.

Read on for my process:

Friday Links

Links to some of the favorite things I've read this week.

The Motley Fool Guide to buying a car
My family is/was planning on buying a car in the near-ish future. We don't "need" a car. Our current situation is a 2004 Nissan Titan with just over 70,000 miles. Our second car is a 2003 Jeep Wrangler with 45,000 miles. I don't want to give up the Jeep because I love driving with the top off in the summer, but it's just not practical. We're looking at the Nissan Rogue. Fortunately, we have time to make a decision, and save. Ideally, we'd pay cash, but with our current debt, this might not be feasible – if I can pay down a higher interest rate debt, I'd essentially be trading in one debt for another, and lowering my interest rate… anyway, even though this is old, I love this guide, and this method, I re-read this every 1-2 weeks.

Consumerist's The case of the noisy bagel!
I have a friend that works for TSA. We have talked a lot about the full body scanners and pat downs. For all of the privacy and violation concerns that people have, it's no picnic for TSA either. It's possible that an attractive person will walk through a scanner, or opt into a pat down and be paired up with an inappropriate and unprofessional TSA employee. For that reason, we all need to watch out for one another, and there needs to be a high level of oversight to the process. It's far, far, far more likely that a very unattractive, or un-hygienic, or simply someone seeking attention will come along and make a scene, and even if they don't make a scene – the TSA doesn't want to see/touch that person any more than they want TSA to see/touch them. Don't believe me? Go to the mall and imagine EVERYONE you see naked. Prepare to be disgusted. Anyway, I thought this story was pretty funny.

Squawkfox's The Cost of doing an Ironman Triathlon
I'm currently planning my 2011 race season. Last year my wife and I did 2 Sprint, 1 Olympic and 1 Half Ironman triathlon, each. We also signed up, and paid for, an additional Olympic, but it was a rain out. The race was held, but we decided to skip it. Poor road conditions, lack of preparation, and an unsafe feeling. It was a bummer to waste money on it, but the right decision. It's a long term goal or dream of ours to complete a full Ironman. We budget more than $1,000 a year towards Triathlons and other races. That doesn't include upgrades that we'll both soon need to bikes, running shoes, and clothing.

Engadget's Appliances of the Future from CES
I need these, all of them! In the near future, I'll do a piece on my grocery shopping routine. It takes me almost as long to set up my list and plan my coupons as it does to shop. I've used Peapod for home delivery, but the delivery fee, and inability to select my own product and meats is prohibitive. All I really want is a device that lets me scan things when they are out, so they are automatically added to my list. It would have a function to add things like fruit and veggies. It would monitor for sales at local stores. It would print all of this onto a page that I would bring with me. I wish I was technical enough to invent this!

Get Rich Slowly's Ask the reader: Dream House
I hope this article is still around in a few years when I face this same decision. I know that housing is something I obsess over, and I worry that future me will not have the discipline to hold off till my entire financial future is in order before I pull a "great deal" trigger.

I spend millions, in my mind

I like to dream about what I would do if I had money, won the lottery, or was gifted some major luxury like a house.

Electronics, retirement, gifting money, a new career, a house with all the fixins. I want all of these things. I love gadgets. I'm already itching for a new Verizon iPhone, even though I have a blackberry that works just fine. I like my job, but I'd rather not work every day. I would like to hang out with my family all day, or work at a job just for the fun of it instead of the income and benefits. I wish I could give more to charities, or help friends in need. I'd love to go out for a night and be able to say, don't worry, the tab is on me. If money wasn't an object, I wonder what job I'd want to do. Would I write, would I open up a recording studio and charge insanely low rates to garage bands to help them out (I studied studio recording in college), would I work as a day time bartender and watch TV all day? I can't say what I would do, but I'd really love to find out, and so I spend a long time thinking about it. The one thing that I constantly thing about is our living situation, and how it will change in the next few years.

I long for the days when I have my own place again. I troll the craigslist rentals at least 3 times a week looking for "places I might live" when we're no longer Living with In-laws. I'm entering the HGTV dream home (even though I'm not eligible because of my employer) 6 times a day. Don't get me wrong, I like where we're at now, but it's not easy. We're under someone else's roof, and despite all the positives of being in a much better and safer place than we were in, there are drawbacks too. It's hard to write this without ranting about all the little things, because they are few, and petty, and far outweighed by the positives, and the sacrifices that my in-laws are making for us too. I long for the days when I have my own place again.

How do I get my own place? Step 1 is selling my condo. We have a very reasonable mortgage that we can afford, and still make progress on our debts, and live a comfortable life. The issue is we can't reasonably live in our condo. It needs to go (another showing this week!). We know a few places that we want to look, but it's important that we're not locked into anything for the long term (5-10 years) right now in case we change our mind. For this reason, we're interested only in renting, and not purchasing.

What do we want? This is something I struggle with every day. I really want a single family rental. I want something modern, because I don't want to live through renovations, or lack of renovations. I want a good location, stability, privacy, a space to entertain, a back yard. All of these things add a price, of course, so I'm left looking at a balance between what's affordable, what's acceptable, and what's un-livable. There are really only two things that are unacceptable, dingy wall-to-wall carpet (it will never get clean, and it always remind me that it's not my house), and apartment building style living (I've done it before, and I don't want to worry that I like to crank music while I work, or play and laugh and stomp around on a Sunday morning at 7). There's border line stuff too, of course. I don't love the 2-3 family house idea for much the same reason I don't like the apartment building. I don't like a dated appearance because I'll always feel like someone's grandmother died there. I love a modern kitchen, and would spend a lot of time using one, but that means more rent too. Then it comes back to stability, and long term plans. I also want to put us in the best position now, to have an easy life later. We can "afford" $1800 per month towards rent, with room to save/make accelerated debt payments. Our "ideal" situation costs $2200-$2400. We can "afford" that too, but we would need to budget carefully, and scrape every opportunity of extra cash together in order to save. There are fringe places available at $1200-$1500, but we've have to sacrifice some of what we want to live there. We also wouldn't have to live there as long because of the increase in savings.

Where will we be in 2, 5, 10, 20 years? Single family houses scare me as rentals. I feel like in this market, people are renting them because they can't sell them, and are really looking to sell them. I'm worried that it will be pulled out from under us before we are ready. Now I know, having been a landlord, that I can get all of that in writing, but it's still scary. In 2 years, I hope to be in a place that I love, or have the option to move on under my own terms and conditions. In 5 years, I hope to be debt free, and have a significant amount to put towards a purchase. By 10 years, we'll be well into paying off a mortgage (at least 1/3^rd paid down). And in 20 years, our child (or children) will be at school, and soon to be finished, ready to move out on their own, and we'll be ready to move into the next phase of our lives.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to make the first step yet and all other plans stay on hold until then. My coping method is to live vicariously through Craigslist, and other real estate sites to see what's out there, and daydream that we're in those houses. What's your current living situation? Are you happy with it, or would you change it? How do you continue to stay disciplined enough to sacrifice now, in order to reach future goals?

Blogging in the Dark

There's a snow storm where I live today. For the second time that I can remember, we're seeing Thundersnow (the first time was about two weeks ago.. I think this is something new that the weather people made up to sound more sensational). Thundersnow is when it's snowing, and thunderstorms move in at the same time. It can cause locally heavy snow (3-6 inches per hour), flashes of lightning and, of course, thunder. Really it's interesting to watch. Sadly, this much snow means I also need to shovel at some point, or snow blow. This creates a problem because I've got a bad back right now from a hockey injury on Sunday.

I had a great plan for work today; I would get up early, work in the morning till the power went out in the afternoon, and then get to spend some time in the snow with my family when the snow tapered off. The power didn't cooperate, as it went out at 7:45. It's amazing to think of all of the things I rely on power for. I can't send emails, I can't use web based systems, and I can't IM. Luckily, I set my cell to get forwarded calls, so at least I have that. Currently, I'm (in addition to writing this) clearing out my inbox and moving emails to proper folders (I have a bit of an organization obsession) and saving reply drafts to my outbox. I have far more important work things to do today, but none of them are possible without the internet, and my lap top battery will only last so long.

On to things I can do without power I guess – playing board games, catching up on some paper filing, playing "tackle"/being a dog/being a horse/hide and seek. It's not so bad when the power's out!

PF.

Daddy, where do debts come from?

I hope I don't ever have to answer this question, or any form of it for my own children (just one right now, but maybe more someday). The truth is, for me, debt came from many places, and it's something that I would love to eliminate. I came across a neat comparison feature on MSN that allows me to track how I stack up against "Typical American families" See how YOU stack up. Unfortunately, the data used on this page is from 2004 (7 years ago!) so I also took a look as some more recent data I found out on the web to see how things have changed in the current, post crash, world. For more info see Creditcards.com. For the comparisons below, 2004 came from the MSN article, 2010 came from Creditcards.com

Credit card debt:

• 2004: $8,000
  
• 2010: $15,788*
  
• Me: $3,000
  

*the 2010 figure is based only on households with credit card debt, and could be artificially higher than 2004. No calculation method was provided for 2004's data

# of cards: Not including retail cards, or debit cards

• 2004: 2.7 Bank credit cards
  
• 2010: 3.5 Bank credit cards
  
• Me: 3 bank credit cards
  

Interest Rates:

• 2004: 14.71%
  
• 2010: 14.67%
  
• Me: 3.21%*
  

*Currently, the bulk of my credit card debt is held on a promotional rate of 1.99%

Unused (available) credit:

• 2004: $6,185
  
• 2010: NA
  
• Me: $33,000 (I have two high limit cards with $0 balance)
  

Paying off cards in Full

• 2004: 40% of accounts paid in full, monthly. 3% past due by 30+ days.
  
• 2010: 49% of accounts paid in full, monthly. 4.27% past due by 60+ days
  
• Me: I do not pay in full, but I've never been late.
  

Spending vs. Earning:

• 2004: 43% spend more than they earn (Dollar value spent = 1.22:1)
  
• 2010: not part of survey
  
• Me: 25% of the time last year, I out spent my earnings for a month. But in the 75% of months that I under spent, I allocated to pay off debt.
  

What's the conclusion? Over the past 7 years, we've collectively taken on more credit cards. Those of us that pay them off in full do so at a higher rate, but those who don't have seen their average balance double. Interest rates have typically stayed the same, but again for those with a balance, the likelihood of a late payment has gone up, and in most cases this triggers fees and higher interest. This unfortunately creates a terrible spiral where those carrying debt can't afford to bring it down, and aren't able to make a minimum payment. Missing a payment triggers fees and higher interest rates, pushing more debt on those that have already proven they can't afford it.

What to do? Well, don't carry credit card debt obviously! (I'm really shattering the mold with this thinking, I know). But for those that do carry debt–

1. Stop using the cards for one. Use whatever method works best – give the card to someone else to hold for you, keep it in a safe deposit box, or freeze it in the freezer. Whatever it takes to stop using the cards.
   
2. Budget, Budget, Budget – it's necessary to carefully spend money, and ensure that more is coming in than is going out.
   
3. Develop a plan to pay down debts (I use the method that Trent outlines at The Simple Dollar but whatever works for you)
   
4. Stick to your plans!
   

#4 came up for me today. Wife has a retirement party to attend this week. She asked for a check to pay for this. This check was NOT in our budget, but was not a huge amount either ($25). My first reaction was what budget line item can I stick this under? Instead, I really thought about it, we both get a cash allowance to do whatever we please every week. This week, mine was spent on playing Poker… poorly. Isn't it within my right to charge the Wife for this check, and deposit that portion of her weekly cash back into the account? That's what we did. I'm not sure she was pleased with this.

Though the focus on this debt feature was Credit cards, those are not the only (actually, they are the smallest) debts I have.

How did my particular debts come to be? Let's take a look!

Introduction to my financial picture

I started to take a very close look at my finances about a year ago. I started a budget (something I had been doing, without much discipline for years) where I would actually track every penny coming in and going out.

Over the course of that first year, we made great progress. We weren't always as diciplined as we should have been, and we grossely underestimated our expenses at times, but it was a start.

Here's where we stand, and this will serve as a template for a monthly financial snapshot series

Test Post

Life and Times living with In-Laws will officially kick off in January 2011 with a series of background and historical posts to build on the overall theme of the blog.

I'll be telling stories about my family (me, my wife, and our child) and our experiences living with her parents, while renting out a condo (or not) navigating debt, and bills, and trying to put ourselves into the best situation for the long term.

our last 18 months haven't been the easiest -- we've had some growing pains, and ups and downs here, but every once in a while, we're reminded why we did this, and we're very grateful to be here.

We try to never forget, G&K are doing a huge favor to us.

PF