Keeping your poker face on with AT&T

Lorrie and I decided to re-up our contract for cell phones with AT&T. Our current contract was up over a year ago. We've had our razor phones for 3 years now. So..we headed to an AT&T store and picked out some new "free" phones. When I got my new bill for our phones I noticed it was nearly $37 higher? So..I called AT&T and spoke with customer service. I ask "Why is my phone bill $37 higher when I didn't change anything?" The customer service rep told me it was for an upgrade? "But I didn't upgrade anything?" I told him. He proceeds to tell me that "when" you sign a new contract you upgrade. Hmmm....So I ask the guy "Your gonna to charge me $37 because I signed a contract to continue my cell phone for two more years?. That doesn't seem fair. I don't understand. I didn't upgrade anything?" So the guy tries to explain it to me again. I tell him it's unfair and ask if there's anyone I can speak with about removing the charges. He then  agrees to remove the charges from the phone. So there you go. Moral of the story...question any and all misc charges these forkers try to throw at you.

I know some of you might think...geez it's only $37. But $37 will buy Lorrie and I supper at Duffys in Esperanza.  It's all a means to an end.

:-)

My other car is a bike....

In my ongoing effort to cut expenses as much as possible (how else are we going to afford all of these Vieques trips!)  I've decided to give commuting to work via a bike a try. Notice I said try. It is 9.5 miles from where I live to where I work. Lorrie and I go to the gym 4 days a week (Wednesday is a rest day). The plan is for me to ride with her to the gym, using her vehicle to take the bike to the gym (6.5 miles), and then after my workout, bike to work (another 3 miles). I will then have to do the whole 9.5 miles home from work. From what I've read it's doable, we'll just have to see. I rode to the gym and back Sunday. That's 13 miles and yes I was tired but I made it. I have some financial motivation involed in this  endeavor also, I bought the bike this past Sunday and have over $600 in it. I fiqure that I'll pay for the bike in under 3 months with current gas prices, even less if the gas trend continues. My truck has a 24 gallon tank and I'm using over 3 tanks a month commuting to work, you do the math. At the very least I would like to pay for the bike, if it doesn't kill me first.

:-)

Easy $100

The average american household does 400 loads of laundry a year. That comes to 7.69 loads per week. That's according to  the Consumer Energy Center.
It has been reported that Tide is the clear winner for the first place spot in laundry detergents according to Galtech.

So...if the average household does 400 loads a year and uses Tide laundry detergent they're spending roughly $118 a year on laundry detergent. I searched and the best price I could find  for Tide  was at Walgreens. Using the 50oz bottle from Walgreens @ $9.49 they would have to buy 12.5 bottles in the course of the year to do the 400 loads. That's roughly 30 cents a load.

I have a way you can do the same amount of laundry for 2 cents  a load. Is it worth 15 mins to save over $100? It is for us and has been for years.

You'll need one bar of Fels Napha Soap. We buy it at Krogers for $2

One cup of 20 mule team borax. A box (76oz) of this will cost you $4. You'll get 10 cups out of the box. So one cup will cost you 40 cents.

One cup of "Arm and Hammer Washing Soda". Now that's washing soda, not baking soda. It's gonna cost you $4 for a 55oz box. That means one cup is gonna cost you 57 cents.

Add all this up and you have a grand total of $2.97. We'll round up to $3 and that's for 5 gallons of laundry detergent. At 1/4 cup per load you'll get 160 loads and that's 1.87 cents per load. I rounded up to 2 cents per load.

Here's how you make it:

Grate the entire bar of Fels Napha soap. We just us a metal grater. In a large pan bring 6 cups of water to a boil. Add grated bar soap, stir and dissolve. Remove from heat and add 1 cup borax and 1 cup of washing soda. Mix well. Pour this into a 5 gallon plastic bucket with lid. Fill the bucket with warm water to the rim. Detergent will form a lumpy consistancy and will need to be stirred prior to use. Use 1/4 cup per load.

You can make 7 loads or 35 gallons of detergent out of the box of washing soda. The only thing you'll have to buy is a bar of soap.

15 mins and you'll save over $100 a year.

Lower your phone bill....

Just got off the phone with AT&T. The reason for the phone call was to cancel our local phone service and go to a dry loop DSL line (that's a phone line with DSL only..no local phone). We already have cell phones with AT&T. Our current phone bill with DSL was $52. They gave me a promotional offer for 12 months for phone and DSL for $39 total, including tax. The dry loop was gonna cost me $30, so I'm getting the phone for $9 a month. I took the bait. One phone call just saved me $156 a year.

Make the phone call...your in the drivers seat..they're losing customers.

:-)

Being Debt Free

 "5 ways to save $2000 a year." That was the title of the video on Yahoo "Shine" that Lorrie and I watched last night. Always ones to be interested in finding new ways to save some dough, and at $2000,  we gave it a view.  I've got to say it was worthless, well almost. They did say  negotiate with your cable provider to see if there are any promotions they offer. That's the wrong approach. If your gonna do battle you had better bring some artillary.

 Thinking about just how worthless that clip was and knowing full well there are so many other tangible ways to save some money, take control and  live debt free, I've decided to share some of what we've done to get us to where we are. You know..."After the Mortgage."

1. To take control you've got to know where your money is going. There is no secret system to getting out of debt. Dave Ramsey and all those others are just putting a different wrapper on what's nothing more than simple math. What's coming in minus what's going out. You want the incoming larger than the outgoing, of course.   When we were first married, "ahem", some 24yrs ago.....I used to take a calendar and mark each week with what bills had to be paid and how much money was left over. I did this every January and did the whole year. That way, each week, Lorrie could look and see just how much money was left over, also showed you when to pay each bill. Not the best system in the world but at least we knew where it was going and we were in some sort of control. Now I use a simple spreadsheet in Micorsoft works:

For us the spreadsheet is not really necessary anymore, I still maintain it anyway.  The point is one should know exactly how much it costs to live. Include everything. All utilities, insurance, food, car gas, car payments, day care, monthly memberships.  If you pay your insurance bi-annually then divide that amount by six. If you pay your house insurance once a year then divide it by twelve.  If you don't know how to set up a spreadsheet you could always go to the library and get a book or inlist the help of your child or a friend. You could always do it on paper, but it doesn't offer you the flexibility to see what happens if you pay off a car. You immediately see the change to the bottom line. That $400 car payment means another $4800 a year. The beauty of this is you only have to set it up once. You can always add a bill or changes incomes.
This is the part that most people don't like. Mostly because they don't want to face reality, secondly because many are just lazy. How many of your friends know exactly what their living expenses are and I'm not talking about the mortgage only?   Once you do it, and you know exactly where you are at,  it will influence your financial decision making or at least it should. If you've only got a few hundred dollars extra each month the premium channel subscription on DirectTV might not be as appealing. Somehow make sure you know your bottom line and check it regularly.

2. Raise your deductable on your insurance as high as possible. When I tell people this they say "But what if I get in a wreck? I don't have  $1000 for the deductable."  I say you do because your paying out each month, albeit a little bit at a time. I say raise your deductable and open a home equity line of credit. Use it only if you need it in case of an accident to pay the deductable. A second option is to get a no annual fee credit card and use it to pay the deductable. This should save you at least 10-15% each month.

3. If you have a cell phone dump your land line. That's a pretty simple one. Why pay twice for the same service? If there are other services you have that are dependant on a land line then evaluate whether they are necessary or not.  i.e. security systems, sat tv, internet.

4. This brings me to one of the biggest leeches out there, sat TV. We have become so conditioned to think that we've GOT to have 100's of channels of TV, do we? Is it worth the cost? I mean really. If your not ready to dump the sat TV try this: If you've been a subsriber to say DirectTV for some time call them up and say you want to cancel your service. I did it before we were ready to totally get rid of it. They gave me a $10 rebate  each month  for a year. Not only that they did it twice, two years in a row. I'm telling you that the internet is eating into their business and they are losing customers. You have the advantage here. We totally dumped sat TV and now use the internet and Netflix online.

5. Along those same lines if you use ADT security and have been with them for awhile you can call and say that your want to cancel your service. They cut ours in half before we dumped it all.

6. Get a dry loop DSL line. You don't have to have local phone service to have DSL.

Up to this point I've only talked about changes that really don't require any effort on your part. But to really get ahead of the game you've got to put some effort into it. So here we go:

8. Take your lunch with you. The savings from this are huge but you've got to do.

9. Drink water at work and I don't mean bottled water either.

10. Only buy used vehicles, never new ones. Huges savings on insurance not to mention the underlying cost of the vehicle. Did you ever think what the purpose of a vehicle is? It's to get you from point A to point B. Well if you buy the brand new vehicle the cost of getting to point B is darn high. Especially when you figure in insurance and gas, somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 a month or $8400 a year. I used a $400 a month car payment, $100 full coverage insurance and $200 a month gas.

11. Buy used cloths. yeah I know...but I can save 1k year by going to resale shops. You pay the premium price....I'd rather spend a month in Vieques.

12. Recycle, compost and burn (if your in an area where you can) the rest. I canceled our trash service and built compost bins and a incenerator. Compost bins are nothing more than plastic garbage cans with holes drilled in them. The incenerator cost $200 to build. I was paying $18 a month for trash service. I'll recoup my cost for the incenerator in the first year. After that we are saving $200 a year.

13. Make you own laudry detergent. We make 5 gallons for under $2. We used to buy the  ALL free and clear. It cost would .25 cents a load to use. Our own costs less than .02 a load. Roughly you'll save between $50-$70 a year.

14.  Learn the lost art of cooking and eat in. I don't mean microwaving a frozen meal either (huge waste of money not to mention how unhealthy it is).

15. Un-plug all charges and electronics that are not in use. If you've got a TV in the basement that is rarely used, unplug it. Use compact  fluorescent bulbs.

16. Use your local library instead of buying books. Your already paying for it...so use it.

Hopefully this may be of use to someone. By far the biggest living exspense for most is their mortgage payment. Pay it off and the rest is easy. You pay it off by diverting as much extra cash as possible towards it each and every month.  If it means forgoing a vacation, then do it. If it means taking your lunch and having co-workers look at you strange, do it anyway. If it means not driving the latest and greastest new car, then do it. I can't tell you just how great it feels to watch your extra cash grow each month once you reach the debt free point. Everything changes.

Evening rant.....

Reading the news this morning  has taken me down a tangent that ended with an article I just finished this evening about living on a boat. Crazy that an article about how a U.S. official reportedly said that the administration is willing to increase the U.S. contributions to the IMF led me to end the day with reading about living on a boat, but it happened. I already knew that the  U.S. is the largest contributor to the IMF. Reading the article outraged me so I decided to watch a movie on Netflix. Just so happens one of the movies that came up was "Life and Debt".  Director Stephanie Black's documentary on how policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other aid organizations have altered the Jamaican economy over the past 25 years, leaving the locals to struggle in poverty. I was already primed because of the article so I thought "what the heck".  The movie is eye opening and worth the watch.  I encourage people to watch it.

So what does all this mean? I see so many people trapped. Be it in an upside down mortgage, credit cards or  just being hooked on the plethora of gimicks that are designed to steal your hard earned $'s.  I listen to co-workers regurgitate sporting stats with the exactness of an neuro-surgeon, yet if I ask them what the IMF is or what their supposed function is, all I get is a "deer in the headlights" look.  Uninformed.  All the time wondering if there's going to be any overtime this week, as if that's the answer.  Mortgage, credit cards, cell phones, sat TV, car payments...it's a trap and the vast majority of people are nothing but plankton that the sharks feed on . The same sharks that have now put so many countries begging to the IMF.  You buy the new car....you pay higher insurance, along with a hefty car bill and don't get me started on depreciation. Cell phone....biggest trap out there.  Is there a limit to how much the can actually  get people to pay each month? They're like leeches sucking your money from you, and you let them.  Our friends just couldn't believe it when we dropped our sat TV. I'm telling you we've haven't  missed it AT ALL. We've got dsl in the house and get all of our news off the internet.  IMHO the $25 a month I pay for my DSL is one of the biggest bangs for the buck out there. Not only do I get my news off of it, we listen to free internet radio (it's what feeds the background music on this blog), we pay all of our bills via online bill pay and watch all of our movies via the web. I was paying Direct TV $83 a month. They're leeches. We went to liability on all of our vehicles. Our friends thought we were nuts. "What happens if you get into a wreck?" they would say.  Well...we would buy another USED vehicle and pay cash. They just can't understand how one could have the cash to buy a vehicle. Well...take some that money your pouring into sat TV, cell phones and all the other sheit you don't need and save it. Better yet take it and pay off your mortgage. Your not going to get 5% return on the money in a savings account, so why pay the banksters the 5%. Nope..they would rather study sport stats. None of our friends could understand why we never amortized our property taxes nor house insurance, when we had a mortage. Well...if you write that check out you know exactly what it's costing you. You also pay more attention to any change in your taxes or insurance.  But no..that's not the American way. We've got to have in idiot proof and absolutely painless and that's the trap.  It's the same trap the IMF is setting for the global community and the same trap Greenspan set for U.S. homeowners.

People need to wake up and take responsibilty.  Live within our means. At the very least start somewhere. Take your lunch to work. Dump the texting on your phone (do you really need texting?).  We dumped our trash service and I built compost bins and an incinerator, we recycle the rest. We even  make our own laundry soap. What if I told you that we make a 5th of Kahlua for 3 bucks.  How about making your own exspresso or cappuccino at home instead of Starbucks. Stop buying pre-packaged meals and  learn the lost art of cooking.  Take all those little steps together and they add up.  It can work, we're proof. Our biggest  monthy expenses now are food and gasoline. I've even  thought about biking to work, it's 9 miles one way.  You don't have to buy into the game the crooks have ginned up. When you realize this your whole perspective is shifted.

You'll  spend your evening reading about living on a boat or you'll spend one month a year in a place like Vieques. 

:-)

Magic Jack

In the ongoing effort to reduce our living expenses to the least possible amount we purchased a "magic Jack". The plan was to eliminate the land-line, saving appox $30 a month. We would still keep a dry loop DSL line (cost for that is $35 a month).

First regarding the setup for the magic Jack, it was flawless and fast. I had it working in a very few minutes. Clarity is acceptable, my wife noticed some "clicks" present in the background, she also was noticing some background static when ever I wasn't talking. All this is minor though and completely acceptable given the price tag. That's the good news. That bad news is that I couldn't get an area code for a local number, so if people  call us from a land-line locally it'll be long distance. That ain't good. The only other thing with the magic Jack is that the application has to be running for the VIOP to work, which means you need to leave your computer up and running all the time.

Now since I've only got $39 invested in the magic Jack I'll keep it for further testing with hopes they might make my area code available. We might also take it to Vieques in Novemeber and see how well things work.

Along with eliminating the land-line we also plan on dumping ADT. I had called them in January of this year with the intention of canceling. They lowered my monthly monitoring fee to $20 a month. I still feel that $20 a month is too much.

It's been 6 weeks now since we cancled our Directv service and I can honestly say we haven't missed it a bit. Why we didn't do that a long time ago is a shame. We had Directv for 15 years, that's a huge amount of money we paid them.  What a waste. If your thinking about dropping your cable and are worried about missing it, believe me, you won't (even moreso if you use the internet for your news).