Yearly Archives: 2009

Mortgage Milestones, My Mortgage Countdown #4

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This month I’ve finally broke thru the $5,000 dollar mortgage barrier!

I still have about $4,989 left to go.  That’s almost the cost of our upcoming Disney vacation (ouch.. thinking about it still hurts a bit)!

With my mortgage, I created “Mortgage Milestones“, each time I cleared one, we would go out to a nice restaurant to celebrate.  You can see from the list below, I increased the number of milestones as I get closer to $0 owed.  This added a bit of incentive to stick to the schedule, and reward the family for their patience and sacrifices.

  • $75,000
  • $50,000
  • $25,000
  • $10,000
  • $5,000
  • $0

Once we get to $0, We’re going to go to the nicest place I can think of in my area.  I’m expecting the freedom from a mortgage payment to be a huge change in my life.  Already, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the money saved from the mortgage.

If you plan on making extra payments on your mortgage as I did, I’d definitely recommend making “Mortgage Milestones” as I did.  If I had to do it all over again, I think I’d make the earlier milestones $10,000 increments instead of $25,000.  Keeping the $5,000 decrement amounts once you hit $10,000 in the end just to spice it up a bit.  This also keeps your whole family focused on the goal of paying off your house early.

So a better revised “Mortgage Milestone” configuration would be:

  • $100,000
  • $90,000
  • $80,000
  • $70,000
  • $60,000
  • $50,000
  • $40,000
  • $30,000
  • $20,000
  • $10,000
  • $5,000
  • $0

Beware of Electric Vampires In Your House

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My computers suck… literally!

At one time, I use to have up to 6 computers plugged into power strips sucking electricity nonstop.  Looking back, now I realize what a needless waste of money that was.  By my calculations, I was probably wasting $25 to $30 extra per month on them sitting doing nothing.  What many people don’t realize, is that when the screensaver shutdown mode is on, the computer is still pulling the same amount of energy as if a user was surfing like usual.

Here are my calculations for my computers:

Computer Mode Watts Used per Month Cost per Month
Standby 17280 $2.22
On/Screen Save On 223200 $28.63
Total Cost per Month———-> $30.85
  • Notes about the table above…
  • I’m using a 12 cents per kilowatt hour cost base for electricity.
  • I made my numbers conservative (I didn’t include monitor electric usage).
  • I used the following site to figure most of the math for my calculations above: michaelbluejay.com.

I didn’t include any other appliances that are draining electricity in standby mode, like TVs, DVD/VCRs, home entertainment systems, etc…

Now that I have wised up, I only have 1 desktop computer on full time, and 2 desktop computers in power save mode (oh well, at least that’s a little better…).  If you have any computers that are on and not doing anything useful, it might be worth your while to turn them off.

Don

Forget the Economy, I’m going to Disneyland

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Well, actually I’m going to Disney World, but hey… close enough!

Disney's Cinderella's Castle

Disney's Cinderella's Castle

WOW, I really underestimated the costs that are involved with a Disney vacation in Florida! I thought the trip would cost around $2,500.  It turns out that booking the tickets, flight and dinning plan has a price tag of $4,500!  Ouch! I’m sure the final cost will be closer to $5,000 dollars 🙁

I don’t like spending that much money!  But with my son approaching double digits in age (he’s 9), we figured we should go now while he is still young enough to enjoy it with us.  This might be the last trip to Disney we take, it really depends on how much the kids enjoy it.  But with a price tag that will approach $5,000, I’d rather use the money towards a good quality, used car 3 years from now.

On the new experiences side of the trip: The flight to Florida will be my daughter’s first ride on a jet.  Also, this will be the first time we’ve went on a vacation with friends instead of our family.

How am I paying for this?  I’m charging this trip to my credit card.  But wait, I’m not going over to the dark side of financial balance sheet!  I will pay this trip off next month!  We are just using the credit card for convenience, and the reward points.  This will be the most money I have ever spend on vacation.

This is one of those life balance milestones, that I can now check it off of the “need to do at least once” list…  Disney will be a great memory for kids, and I’ll make sure plenty of pictures will be taken.

-MR

Freegan’s lifestyle isn’t for me.

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I take great personal pride in being frugal and green both at the same time.  I try to put a green spin on my frugal ways, but I will never have the courage (or health) to be green in the freegan way.

If you’ve never heard of a freegan (free + vegan) before, basically they are people that hate waste and they hate that way people waste resources.  To counter the waste of other people, they will go dumpster diving for food and other items that they believe still have value.  Now don’t confuse freegans with the homeless, most of the freegans have jobs or other sources of money.  These people just care about the environment and are doing something (extreme as it might be) about it.  I think of freegans are kind of like the ultimate modern-day hippies (minus the association with drugs aspect) kind of…

The vegans part of the freegan’s name is becoming more optional than the rule of thumb.  After all, why waste meat products?

I’m not against this, and I commend them for doing so.  But when it comes to getting food in a dumpster, I have to personally draw the line there.  Some of the freegans are very clever.  So have informal arrangements with restaurants, so that when the restaurants discard their trash, some of the better pieces of food are separated in plastic bags separated from the rest of the regular trash.

freegan

freegan.info picture – Saiya

The closest I’ve come to this kind of activity is when I sometimes get a bowl of popcorn when a co-worker goes down to our cafeteria.  He brings a big bowl of leftover popcorn from the cafeteria back to his cube and offers it to us surrounding cubicle dwellers.  He doesn’t do it because he needs the money (he’s rich compared to me, he does it because he hates to see it wasted).

On the other hand, I think I might consider using freecycle.org.  Especially if I was younger and on a limited budget. 🙂

This freegan wiki provides further descriptions of the freegan way.