Got my Capital One credit card paid off this month. (Again) My only current CC debt is my interest free (until May) Household bank account, which has a balance of about $600 right now. My car loan is down to about $3500. Haven't touched the savings accounts for the wedding yet.

Right now I'm currently reading The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner

So far it is very simple, but powerful. I haven't read any of David Bach's other books, but have browse through them at the store. Everyone raves about their simplicity and easy to follow prose. This book is also along those lines.

I'll provide a full review once I've finished it.

Time Flies

I apologize (again) for the lapse in posting. Things like a wedding being held on the opposite coast seem to take a lot of time to arrange.

We're finding the expenses adding up, as we knew they would. We're trying our best to keep the prices low, and to use the credit cards sparingly. However, it's easier said than done. Darcy is keeping a spreadsheet of all wedding related expenses, and it's staggering how quick it adds up.

I've been able to keep up with the savings programs at ING and VirtualBank, $25 goes each week to each account. I'm also doing $100 month to my Sharebuilder account, and spent an extra $100 to pick up some Google shares as they have dropped after the release of Google video. I feel pretty confident that the stock will perform better in the future.

Some of the expenses for the wedding will come this weekend as we fly to the West coast this weekend to get the marriage license, and to confirm our wedding location and interview the photographer. It will be a whirlwind four days.

Review: The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me

Thanks to the kind folks at Simon & Schuster I had a chance to receive and review this neat little book. I polished it off in just a couple hours total time, and found it to contain some solid reminders and tools to help me as I move forward with my financial life.

The book is small, and short, coming in at just about 100 pages and is very easy to read. Richard Paul Evans shares with us the five lessons that a multi-millionaire shared with him when he was just a youth. The millionaire is not named in the book, (Though we're told he owned a professional basketball team)he was someone who spent some time with Evans and other youths in the community, trying to impress upon them the importance of handling money right. The book includes lessons from the bible without getting overly 'preachy' or going into doctrine. It's more about certain principles that can help your viewpoint (e.g. "The love of money")

The five lessons are broken out into chapters, and fleshed out a bit, though always remaining simple and easy to understand. Here are the lessons in outline:

1) Decide to Be Wealthy. ("Wealthy" is defined, and may not be what you think.)

2) Take Responsibility for Your Money.

3) Keep a Portion of Everything You Earn.

4) Win in the Margins.

5) Give Back.

That's it. The lessons have sub-points, of course, for instance, there is a bit called "The Millionaire Mentality" taken from J. Paul Getty's 1965 book How to be Rich. In that book, Getty outlined four mind-sets that characterize the wealth builder. They are:

1) The Millionaire Mentality carefully considers each Expenditure.

2) The Millionaire Mentality believes that freedom and power are better than momentary pleasure.

3) The Millionaire Mentality does not equate spending with happiness.

4) The Millionaire Mentality protects the next egg.

Each of those points get a mini-chapter of their own within Lesson Four ("Win in the Margins")

The book also has a number of fine resources at the end, which include a number of ways to actually "Win in the Margins" including ways to increase your income, and ways to save more, including on insurance, travel, utilities and food. There are also two forms included in the book, a Net Worth Sheet and a Cash Flow Sheet. (12 of each in the book, plus access to more online)

As I said, I polished this book off in a couple of hours, and believe I will be referring back to it in the future. It really simplifies what it takes to manage your money and have enough so that you're not in debt and worried about making it from week to week.

Year End Statement

Here's a look at how my accounts shape up here at the tail end of 2005. You'll see a new bit of CC debt with the CO (Capital One) Credit Card. That was for some repairs to my vehicle.

2006 looks to be an exciting year, both personally and financially.

• We're getting married in May. Merging of finances has already begun to a certain extent, but will continue throughout the year.



• Much of the savings I have now will likely be eaten up with the wedding and honeymoon.



• I hope to have my car paid off by mid-year. That will be almost 3 1/2 years early.



• We'll be looking into beginning the process of getting some land from my parents and planning and building a house there.



• I hope to see my web ventures continue to grow and make me some side income.

Deposit Put Down, More to ING

A fairly busy financial week for the last week of the year. Some of the events:

• Received my payment for October and November from the Fox Sports Website.
• Made a $500 deposit (from checking) for our Wedding location in California.
• Transfered $600 to ING Direct for more savings.

We'll have some things coming up soon. We've got to start booking some of the travel for family, and also the honeymoon.

On a totally unrelated note, there was a financial downer this week as well. I received a call from a financial services company which handles my ex-wife's car loan. I was a co-signer on that loan. She's behind, and usually is every month. Now she is about 38 days past due.

Now I realize that my options for getting taking off the loan as a co-signer are slim and none. But it's a period of my life that I want to completely put behind me. She cannot refinance the loan in her own name because her credit is so poor. I'm not sure what my other options might be, but I'd be open to suggestions...

Early Expenses

The first wedding expenses are trickling in.

We spent about $50 on "Save the day" cards, which were ordered online. We got priority shipping and processing, so they cost a little bit more.

We had bought a couple rolls of stamps in preparation, but then found out that the stamps would be going up in price starting January 8th. We'll have the cards out before then.

We also registered a domain, purchased hosting for a year and a website template for a total of about $95. We plan on using the site to keep people informed, as they will be coming from all over the country to our wedding.

So that's almost $200 already...

We're waiting to hear from the location we've decided upon as to how much of a deposit we'll need to put that down. We'll probably have to put down $500 to a $1000. Edit: It's going to be $500 to put down.

My future mother-in-law is graciously and generously insisting on paying the rest of the reception fees, which means we pay for the dress, flowers, music, cake and honeymoon. A few other things too.

D is a travel agent, so she's got some great deals lined up for the honeymoon...

More ING

Snuck an extra $300 over to the ING Direct account this week. Hoping to have $6000 or so saved in cash by the time the Wedding/Honeymoon bills start coming in.

Also have $100 more going to Sharebuilder today. For the first time, I'm actually seeing increases and decreases in the balance of the account due to the fluctuations of the stock market. Previously it might go up or down by a matter of cents, now I'm seeing it in dollars. It will be interesting to watch as the account grows to see how the market impacts. This account was created as my first foray into stocks, and is my testing ground.

We're looking at wedding locations, and it's always frustrating when you go to a place, tell them what you want and they verbally give you a figure that sounds reasonable. Then you go and tell them to send a written proposal and it is thousands more than they verbally quoted you. Not cool.

Current Financial Snapshot

So here is my December 1st, 2005 Financial snapshot. It shows things in pretty good shape since the last one, which I believe was at the end of August. You can also compare this to where I was a year ago.

A few points of clarification on the data:

You might wonder why I'm carrying the credit card debt when I have enough in accounts to pay it off. The debt is on a 0% APR card until May of 2006. I plan on paying the balance off before then.

Something to keep in mind with the figures for the month is they included a large cash purchase...namely, Darcy's engagement ring. I'm not going to say how much it was, but lets just say it was in the thousands.

I'm going to be picking up a nice payment sometime in the next month for my first two months of work on the Fox Sports web page. That's likely to be stashed away into some savings to help with wedding expenses.

I've increased my automatic deposit to Sharebuilder to $100 a month. That should help it grow a bit more, as with my previous $50 a month deposit, that included two purchases of $4 each. Now I'm still making two purchases, but a higher % of my money is going to be desposited. (Before: $50 - $8 = $42 Now: $100 - $8 = $92 So now 92% of my deposit is going towards stocks as opposed to only 84% before.) If I keep the same plan, the more I deposit, the higher % of my money is actually going to start working for me.

I need to see if I can afford to double up my weekly withdrawals to ING and VirtualBank as well. Right now $25 a week is automatically going into each account. To go to $50 to each might make things a bit tight for me. I'll ponder this.

So at the moment, I'm automatically placing $300 a month into either MoneyMarket accounts or Investments. For someone who couldn't save at all a few years ago, this is definite progress.

The planning...

The next few months are going to be very complicated, the opposite of the "Simple" life we're looking for. We've both talked about how we want to just start our life, fast forward to that point where we've got the house, and are settled in, building for the future. But for now, there is a lot more to plan and get done. For instance:

Wedding in California, where Darcy's family is. We're going back and forth over size. Our initial guest list had a max of 165, including children, if everyone came. We don't expect them to, especially a lot of the East Coast people. We've considered trimming the list down to 75 or so, but still need to work that out.

Finding a location is difficult. Darcy was out there all last week and looked at several places. We're planning on paying for everything ourselves, so we're looking for bargains. We're finding that most places want you to use their catering and so forth if you book their facility. That jumps the price. Places that allow you just to rent the place, mean a whole lot more work.

Food...make our own, (family style) cater, or just serve Hors Doeuvres and drinks.

Transportation for our friends and family. Darcy is in the travel business, so she's looking to get some bargains for those who will be coming out with us.

Honeymoon.

Not mentioned yet, was of course, the dress, the flowers, the tuxes, all that stuff.

How to do all of this and not amass a huge debt is the challenge. We don't want to enter married life with huge debt because of one day....Should be interesting!

My finances at the moment are looking pretty good. I hope to have a snapshot up near the end of the week showing where I'm at.

Its Official!

OK...so I can break my blogging silence here finally.

My large purchase that I paid cash for was an engagement ring for Darcy. She accepted it yesterday and we're engaged...looking forward to a life together.

With that made official, there is now a whole world of financial planning coming up. We need to consider:

• Wedding plans (likely to take place in California - where Darcy's family and friends are.)
• Honeymoon
• Future Planning (House, etc)

Things should be picking up on this blog in the coming days and weeks. I was a little quiet because I didn't want to give too much information away...

Checking In

Got a few good payments this month on the web stuff, so I was able to pay an extra $100 towards my car payment and make a $400 payment on the credit card.

I'm left in pretty good position this month because I don't have to rely on mailing my rent check so that it will get there after my next payday. (Wednesday) I have the money right now, in the account.

A unit has opened up in my building for sale. Darcy and I are looking at perhaps buying the unit and building equity for a couple of years instead of paying rent and then either selling or renting it out. We'll see what happens, the realtor hasn't even returned our calls at this point.

Planning Ahead

One challenge that I seem to come up against is the fact I have a few different accounts out there, and it isn't always easy to access my funds across those accounts. Sure it can done, but it requires some better advanced planning on my part, which isn't always my strength when it comes to financial things.

Example. I just received a couple pretty good sized payments via PayPal. I have the PayPal debit card and sometimes use that for gasoline and groceries. It would take 2-3 days for any amount that I transfer from PayPal to appear in my checking account. Then, if I wanted to make some sort of on-line payment to a credit card, or make a payment via check to my car, it would take a few more days. Since the payment date on those items is coming up rather quickly, it takes some quick decisions on my part to make it happen. Quick decisions are not my forte.

Right now, I think I'm going to transfer a portion of these payments to my checking account, and then make a larger-than-normal payment to my credit card. (Min payment is $50, I was planning $200, now I think I'll do $400) The card is 0% APR for the next 10 months, but I'd still like to get it paid.

On the other hand, I have two savings accounts, one with ING and the other with VirtualBank. Looking through Yodlee, I've got just over $2400 in those accounts, with a purchase of about $2000 coming up. What I think I'll do with this is make the purchase with my other credit card, then transfer the money I need into my checking account, and then pay off the card before there is any payment or interest due.

The bad news will be that my savings will be just about depleted. The good news is that I will have saved up for a major purchase and paid cash for it. Rather painlessly, too.

My other project...with the local FSN station...appears to be coming together. My contact there has said that they are building the page and logo now, and I should be posting there soon. Once that money starts coming in, I'm going to bulk up my savings and investments a little more. I think I'm going to do a minimum of $100 to the Sharebuilder account monthly, (Up from the $50 now) and perhaps double my other savings from $200 a month to $400 month. This should still give me a couple hundred dollars more per month for my bills and expenses, plus allow me to save for some more planned expenses coming up in the spring of next year.

Sounds easier to make decisions when I write them out in this fashion.

I'd like to also thank the two sponsors who have helped out the site and my financials by purchasing a blogad in the right hand column. Give them a visit...

More income?

It appears that my wish to increase my income another $1000 a month has gotten a boost.

It's not totally passive income, but it is money that I'm not going to have to work really really hard to get.

The local Fox Sports News cable station has approached me about doing updates on their website about the local NBA franchise. I would do updates after each game with links to stories in the local papers, as well as a weekly column. For this, they have proposed $200 per week. That means $800 a month!

I'm hesitant to post about it, as I was supposed to do something similar for them last season and it fell through on me. They were very apologetic this time and have eliminated the "middle man" company they were using for last season.

I would be getting paid monthly, which would make it easy to distribute that income among the different accounts I'll be putting it in.

Let's hope it works out!

Passive Income

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Let's list sources of passive income.

By that term, I'll loosely define it as ways to earn money by taking an initial action, and then letting the initial capital grow, or develop on its own.

Ways:

Investments
Savings Accounts/Money Markets

I'm reaching a blank...what else?

I've got a website that I make a little money from, but I do have to work at it...a couple hours each day. I'm working on a couple other concepts which might allow me to make money without having to take such an active role.

Let's create a list here in the comments section, and I'll pull them together and make sort of a master list.

What am I doing?

I need to get back on track.

For the last few months, I've sort of been skating along...not exactly racking up the debt, but probably not being all that frugal either. I have been putting away the $250 month in savings and investments, but otherwise I'm pretty much spending all my income. I'm not behind on any bills, but I'm not making up ground either. My last two car payments have been for the minimum...the first time in the nearly two years I've had the car that that has been the case.

Was it summer? Did the good weather and having things to do put me in the position of not caring about my finances as much as I should have? Could be. In any event, I think I need to outline some goals for the fall:

1. Create more passive income - $1000 a month would be ambitious. I'm going to try.
2. Increase my savings plan by $100 a month.
3. Pay off the credit card, despite having 0% APR for a year.

Month End Update

Here's something I haven't provided the last couple months, a financial snapshot.


I'm a little disappointed in my progress at this point. The credit card balance is back up there, and so I'm sort of starting from scratch. It went to a good cause, but it's still an blight on the record here.

The car payment has come down a bit since the beginning of the year, and the other positive balances have gone up.

In the coming months, I expect to be investing in a bit of jewelry. That's sort of what the VirtualBank funds are earmarked for at this point.

I may need another big November to put me back into where I'd like to be by the end of the year. I was hoping to actually forego the fund raiser on my other site, but it's looking like I'm going to need to go to that well once more.

I'd like to have the car and credit card debt paid off by the end of the year. Four months to make it happen and go into 2006 with a pretty clean slate!

Overdue Update

For some reason, I haven't had much to report in this space as of late. That's unfortunate, because I know people are stopping by everyday and I've had nothing for them.

What's been happening in my financial life? Not a whole lot, I did that recent balance transfer, and then last week I made a financial gaffe and realized I hadn't sent out my Jeep payment until the day before it was actually due.

This week I will be spending money, but hopefully not using any credit. Darcy and I are going with another couple out to San Francisco, where Darcy is originally from. We got $99 fares each way from Independence Air from Manchester NH to S.F. so that was quite reasonable. On Friday night we're going to a Giants game and on Saturday we'll be doing some wine tasting in the Napa Valley.

I'm going to be "photoblogging" the trip on one of my other blogs, that blog has a food theme, so the pictures and things I'll be blogging about will involve food and wine for the most part. You should start seeing photoblog entries on that site starting Thursday evening. The site address is at http://parttimegourmet.blogspot.com/ So be sure to check that out if you're interested.

I'm hoping to keep costs relatively low for the trip, but we'll see how that all goes.

I've tried to keep things relatively on-topic for this blog, so much so that I guess recently that I've had bloggers-block for this address. You would think that wouldn't be the case, since we all use money every day.

Balance Transfer Done

I have successfully engineered my first ever 0% APR balance transfer.

When I received my card from HouseHold Bank, I called to activate the card, and while on the phone with them, the very helpful representative assisted me in making the balance transfer....right over the phone.

This was on Wednesday, and this morning I went and checked my Capital One balance, and it is all paid off once again. So now I have 12 months of 0% APR to pay off that balance, though I plan on paying it off much sooner than that.

I have to say, I was very impressed with the rep from HouseHold Bank. She was extremely friendly and helpful. It was nice to be treated as a real person, rather than the second rate credit risk talkdown that I have been subjected to in the past from other credit companies. Here's hoping it continues.

Trying the balance transfer trick...

Over the course of the last couple weeks, I've suddenly rung up almost $1800.00 in credit card charges. This is disappointing to me, after having worked hard to pay them off, but none of the purchases were frivolous, and as mentioned in the previous post, most of them were to help my parents out.

I was dreading paying the interest charges again, as there would be no way I'd be able to pay the whole balance off this month.

Then it occurred to me, I have a brand new credit card on its way to me which is offering 0% financing for a full year and free balance transfers. So I'm going to try something that I've only been able to read about others doing; I'm going to transfer that $1800 to the new card and save the interest until I can pay off that balance in the next few months.

I'll keep you posted as to the progress of this transaction, as mentioned, I haven't received the card yet, but I do know it is on the way and I know the credit limit I've been given.

Unexpected (but worth it) Expenses

This weekend saw my credit card balance go up to $1000 after being paid off a couple months ago.

This weekend there was a family reunion up at my parents farm. About 100 people were in attendance, some of whom I hadn't seen for several years. After everyone left, Darcy and I stuck around to give my parents a gift for their anniversary.

About 8:00 my dad went out to milk the cows, and then came running back in with chilling words: "We've got a fire here!" I looked out the window and could see flames coming out of the barn. I ran to the phone to call 911, but it was dead. My sister grabbed her call phone and dialed for help as I ran down to the barn, my father was there inside spraying down one of the walls with a hose, it hadn't spread too far yet, so he was able to get the flames under control while the fire department was on it's way.

In the meantime I was getting the cows in the area out of the barn. One cow directly in front of the fire was was burned slightly on the ears and hurt herself as she pulled back from the stall and yanked on her chain, her neck rubbed a bit raw. We got her out ok though, along with the other ones.

Once the fire department got there, they tore out some of the walls to make sure there wasn't still fire or embers in there that might ignite again. They figure it was an electrical fire, perhaps from a radio. They were there for a couple hours. Once they left, there were a whole number of problems that were left to figure out.

There was no electricity in the barn - no lights, no power for the vacuum milking system.

The Cows need to be milked - if you don't milk cows on schedule, they might actually start leaking milk, and if they're not milked on time, the milk can actually start to sour inside of them, causing an infection.

Thankfully there was still power to the milkroom, where the milk is kept in a chilled, stainless steel tank.

A neighbor (who is also a farmer) came up and helped get some things sorted out. They figured out that they could get the vacuum pump working for the milking, but still had no lights. It was just about closing time for the local Wal*Mart, so Darcy and I ran down there and bought a small generator, a couple sets of floodlights, some long extension cords, a a fan and a couple other items. Ran close to a $1000 - put it on the credit card, but didn't think twice about it.

Get everything set up about midnight and was able to milk the cows and close up around 2:00 am. A long day.

I'm going back over there today, and if there are more needs, I won't hesitate to put more on the card to help them out.