A Penny Saved

My wife and I just finished writing a Christmas letter with pictures of the girls at the bottom. I was able to take the letter to work and make 400 copies for a cost of only $40. As employees, we get to use the color copier for personal use and are only charged 10 cents a copy. That’s a great perk! It got me to thinking, what other perks do I get at work? Here are a few off the top of my head:

• Free food. Often there are activities at the church and food is left over. Yahoo! Helps the budget, but not necessarily my waist.
• Flexible hours. Being a pastor is not 8 to 5. Sometimes that means working evenings and Saturdays (and of course Sunday!). But it also means I can be flexible when I take a day off - like taking 1/2 day today so we could celebrate my youngest daughter’s fifth birthday.
• Church Mailbox’s. Our church has mailboxes for most of the families in the church. We use it for church business, but can also use it for personal correspondence. So those 400 letters - we didn’t have to mail 350 of them! That’s a savings of $143.50.
• High speed Internet. Where we live, cable is not available, but the church has it. So when I need to do some serious surfing, I head to the church.
• Babysitting. Being a pastor, my family gets many offers for free babysitting! And since our church does criminal background checks and some training, i know the children are in good hands.

I am sure I am missing some. What about your workplace? What perks do you get? I would love to hear from you.

In this week’s U.S. News & World Report, I read through an article on the U.S. Economy by James Pethokoukis entitled “Gloom and Doom, or Zoom.” Most of the article was about whoever wins the Democratic Nomination will be a shoe-in for the Presidency based upon the economy (with a little back-tracking at the end). But what really interested me was this statement he made near the very end of the article: “As it is, with wages up 7 percent the past year and consumption up 6 percent, consumers seem to be crying all the way to the mall.”

Two things bothered me about this statement. First, wages up 7 percent? I have not read that anywhere else. If true, that would be good news (at least for everyone else - I didn’t get that this year!). Second, that spending rose almost as much as wages. Can’t we Americans ever save anything?

All of us make assumptions in life. Sometimes it’s in big things (career, friends, religion, politics, race, world views, etc.), and sometimes it’s in little things (”I thought you took out the garbage last night!”). Sometimes we need to challenge our assumptions to make sure they are still right for us, or if they were ever right to begin with. This includes our financial assumptions.

For example, I just recently had to change one of my little assumptions regarding finances and grocery shopping. My three little girls love chocolate milk. Okay, so do I. So in order to save money, we bought low fat white milk and just added chocolate powder. I thought this would be cheaper than just buying chocolate milk. Well, I sat down the other week and actually priced it out. We were spending more money by buying milk and mixing in powder than we would have just buying the chocolate milk! So now we buy the chocolate milk - it tastes better, saves time, and is cheaper. I can have my craving and some change left over.

With this lesson in mind, I plan on reviewing some other financial assumptions I have made to see if they are really correct. What about you - do you need to review some assumptions?

Today is election day in many communities. For better or worse, politics can have a major impact on our finances through tax rates, what items are taxed, our retirement, and through a host of other issues. So have a say in your financial freedom and future by voting today.

As they say in Chicago - Vote early and vote often!

No matter how deeply in debt you are, and how impossible it might seem to get out of debt, no financial situation is hopeless.  After all, you got yourself in debt -  you can get yourself out of debt.  And no, I’m not referring to filing for bankruptcy.  There is always fat to be cut from your budget, no matter how minimal it may seem.  Once you’ve cut all the fat, there are always ways to make more money. 

Perhaps you can pick up an extra shift at work, or maybe get a second job, or even make money online.  The truth is, there are endless ways to make more money, provided that you’re dedicated enough to stick to them.  No matter how hopeless your situation may look, some planning and a lot of hard work can help you get through to a better place.

Despite the obvious design flaws that I can see just from the image the mint is showing off, I still decided to pick up a couple and see what they were all about. I missed out on collecting the state quarters and really don’t feel like trying to catch up now. In the end, I’ll end up keeping the collection to give to my son at some point.

In any case, now that I’ve seen one of the Washington Golden dollars, I have a few more impressions. First, the obverse design (George’s face) is really as bad as it looks in the image. No ifs, ands or buts about that. He really does look that angry. If you look closely enough, you’ll notice that the “In God we Trust” is missing from the face of the coin. After a quick inspection, you’ll notice that it’s been moved from the face to the edge of the coin. Instead of the usual ridged edge, we get a smooth edge with the phrases “In God we Trust” and “E Pluribus Unum” imprinted on it. As unique as that idea is to U.S. currency, it isn’t executed very well. The lettering is almost smudged and nearly unreadable.

Where the coin really shines (pardon the pun. Gold nearly always shines.) is on the reverse. It features a splendid design of lady liberty (the statue of liberty) and eschews the usual “one dollar” for a nice modern, European looking $1. It’s really too bad that they ruined the wonderful design on the reverse with a poorly designed obverse.

In the end, I still think that the introduction of the new gold dollar coins will not change the usage of the dollar bill. In fact, at the end of the ten year schedule, I can only imagine that the allure of the new golden dollar will have faded year over year. The only thing that it might have going for it in the latter years is that more of the people who will be collecting them will have favorites amongst the Presidents that are in the late releases. Reagan for instance should see a pretty high demand. Carter, if he’s gone by the time the 10th year rolls around and gets his own dollar coin, could be fairly popular as well.

Also, keep an eye out for the first lady series of gold bullion $10 coins. They are to be released on a fairly close schedule with their husband’s golden dollar. Could make a unique set if you collect both the golden dollar and the $10 gold bullion coins.

Technorati Tags: gold dollar, washington gold dollar, gold bullion, gold coin, george washington

Happy Valentines day everybody.  Nothing warms the heart better than a commercially fit holiday.  By commercially fit holiday I mean a holiday where the sole purpose of it’s continued existence is for the sale of commercially available goods.

You can stop looking at me like that.  I’m not a bah-humbug sort of fellow most of the time.  I know that like Christmas there is a bit of a deeper meaning to Valentines day that most people seem to miss.  It’s a good case of missing the forest for the trees.  Or not.  What it really boils down to is that some salesperson (most likely a salesman) in the early years of commercials decided that Valentines day would be a great day to meet his quota for sales of chocolate or roses or whatever V-day fodder he happened to be selling.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, both the men and the women get in a little hot water with their significant other if they don’t get them something.  Luckily, my wife is not very demanding and a dinner out and a movie usually is enough, but there are some who won’t settle for anything less than roses, dinner, and diamonds.

How much do you spend on V-Day?  Or how much is spent on you?  Does it make you any more loved?  Or special?  Perhaps there would be an easier way for your significant other to express how loved and special you are to them besides spending $50 on flowers.

Technorati Tags: valentines day, valentine, flowers, roses, diamonds

Honestly.  What blind person designed the new Presidential $1 coins?  And furthermore, who approved the design.  Have you seen them?

George Washington looks like he’s ready to kill someone.  John Adams looks like he could star in the next production of CATS.  Thomas Jefferson has a major unibrow thing going on and his cheek looks like it’s had a bad botox treatment.  And James Madison?  What the heck happened to the left side of his face?

Honestly, I like the idea of a dollar coin.  I think that the $1 bill is past it’s time and is more of a burden than a boon.  They have a really small lifespan when compared to even the next highest bill and besides strippers(sorry.  exotic dancers) most places could easily make the switch to the dollar coin.  Whats more is that most people empty their change into a coin jar or some such at the end of the day.  Imagine how quickly that will build up in value!  All those dollar coins in there!  The truth is that while I do like the idea, I just don’t think it will get picked up.  They’ll do it until they run out of presidents and then they’ll have a different design, but it’ll be mostly for collectors and not for commerce.

Technorati Tags: presidential, presidential coin, presidential dollar coin, dollar coin

Many of us spend 10 or 11 months of the year being as frugal as possible and saving our money as best as possible.  On those 1 or 2 months of the year, however, we sometimes lose all control and ruin all the hard work we’ve put in the rest of the year.

It seems the Holiday season brings out the habitual spender in us all.  In a mad dash to give the best possible gifts for each and every person that we know, we spend and spend until we can’t spend anymore.  And even then we apologize for not spending enough.

While there are many different theories on how to save yourself money during the holiday season, the best way to do so is to not fall victim to the constant comparing and pressure to spend.

The saying “It’s the thought that counts” is merely a nice way of acknowledging a poorly received gift. So what is a gift giver to do?

How do you handle the gift giving season?  Do you set a limit for each person? Do you exchange names?  Some combination of both? Or do you have your own unique way to handle it?

Let us know!  Leave your hints,tips, and secrets in the comments here.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, gift giving, gifts, spending, holiday season

I’ve recently held a bit of discussion with some people over the fact that I did a paid post here earlier this week. I don’t think that it’s as big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be, while others are taking a stance of non-participation by censoring people like myself that do make money with paid posts.

As stated in the post in question, all paid posts on this or any other blog that I run will be clearly marked as a paid post. The content of the post will not be regulated by the entity paying for the post and will be my honest opinion of the product or website. In fact, to take it further, I see no difference between my doing a paid post every once in a while and having affiliate links in a unpaid-for post. In many cases, affiliate links are not marked in any way. Further, I see little difference between a paid post and regular advertisements like adsense, Text-Link-Ads, and others. I’m still being paid to put up content in both cases. And in both cases the advertisement is clearly marked.
What are your opinions of this? Do you use services like PayPerPost or ReviewME? Have you found that people censor your blogs because of it? Or that people are more negative towards you and your blog because of it? Let me know. I’d like to hear what the consensus is among the personal finance realm.

Technorati Tags: payperpost, reviewme, paid posts, personal finance, advertisement