Author Archives: Money Reasons

About Money Reasons

A offbeat personal finance blogger that comes from the tech world.

Why I switched to Mint Mobile and why you should consider doing likewise!

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Why Mint Mobile is best mobile plan out there!

It’s very fast, and if I had a 5G phone, there would be no extra cost for 5G usage on Mint Mobile!

My former phone carrier was Cricket Wireless, which is not bad, and which will serve as my base for comparison in this article as of 10/2021.

Cricket uses AT&T as the backend to their system (AT&T owns Cricket, by the way…) and that’s great for coverage, but unfortunately, AT&T caps the Cricket download speeds to 8 Mbps). With Mint Mobile, the backend provider is T-Mobile, but Mint Mobile is, for the most part, uncapped (at least so far in my area, not sure about megacities…), so this means that my speeds increased from 8 MBps to an average of 40 to 60 Mbps in my city. That’s blazingly fast compared to Cricket (wish I had a 5G phone…)

Mint Mobile Owner and Celebrity Influencer…

Oh, Ryan Reynolds kind of makes it cool too. I wonder if Blake Lively will chime in sometime in the future (Ryan’s so lucky!)?

In my house, Mint Mobil provides around 20 MBps to 50 MBps for download data speeds (again, wish I had a 5G phone…). If I had a 5G phone, there would be no comparison because Mint Mobile would be at an entirely superior level of performance (thanks to T-Mobile).

I chose a similar plan (10G month data download, unlimited texting, calls…) to what I had previously, but with an important exception… I CAN NOW USE MY PHONE AS A HOTSPOT ACCESS POINT!!! Since the huge number of people are working from home now, this is critical because it provides an emergency way to connect workstations/laptops to work so that we call can still be productive, even what your primary ISP is down!

Last summer, I had an emergency outage where I was in the middle of running a script when a thunderstorm took out my city ISP. I literally drove to the library (which uses a different ISP) to remote back into work and inspect the logs from my still running critical and too new PowerShell script. With my new Mint Mobile hotspot, now I can just connect to it from my workstation (really laptop) so that I have access to work in such emergencies in less than 2 minutes. Whew!!! My next purchase (maybe next year) will be a backup battery for my monitors to my laptop, that way I could have total power loss at my house and still remote into work via the Mint Mobile hotspot… or maybe I’ll get a Tesla Powerwall battery (nice dream huh…).

Being a financial blogger with the title being “Money Reasons”, obviously I’m a frugal guy so money savings is important to me. This is where it gets interesting… not only do I at lest quadruple my data speeds, get 5G for free connectivity and speeds (did I mention that I wish I had a 5 G phone), have hotspot capabilities for free (your phone also has to be able to enable this option in its settings) but also (drumrollllll) it’s half the cost! Yes, crazy huh.

So Mint Mobile is charging $60 for the first three months (so $20 per month), but if you click on a referral link (yes, mine is: http://fbuy.me/sOjQr ), you get an extra $15 off the $60 price (sweet, right…). And if you pay 1 year in advance, you’ll keep the $20/Month rate (this is what I did). If you decide to go with a shorter ($25/month for 6 months, or $35/month for prepaying for three months), those are still cheaper than my previous provider, and probably yours too!

So if you click on my link: http://fbuy.me/sOjQr, then click “shop plans” on their website, you can see their current plans. Once you do get “onboarded” to Mint, check out their referral program, you can reduce your cost even more via that problem.

Oh, one last thing… If you are a heavy consumer of data, you can go with the unlimited plan for $30/month if you prepay for a year. You do that that $30/month rate for the first 3 months as part of your promotion, after your first 3 months of the promotion, you can get the next 12 months at a low $30/month rate if you prepay for an entire year too

Okay, I always like to see an example on stuff like this, so this is what I did:

  • I signed up for the 3 months plan at the promotion rate of $20/month for 3 months on 10/5/2022. This was amazingly great, right!
  • On date: 1/5/2022, the introduction rate is over and I can either prepay for 3 months @ $35, 6 months @ $25/month price, or 12 months @ $25/month price (<-I chose this, for now). I say I chose the 12 months plan because I set it up the autorenewal so I don’t have to remember in January in 2020 (although I’m sure mint mobile would text me before that date).
  • Since the 12 month plan is not active yet, I might change it… I’m honestly thinking of going with the unlimited for $30/months if I pre-pay for 12 months. The $30 price is still cheaper than my old provider. I have until 1/4/2022 of next year to change my mind…

I usually don’t get this excited about phone carriers, but this one is a win-win-win combination. I don’t see that much anymore, but it’s my favorite type!

Thanks,

MR (aka Money Reasons)…

More Mint Mobile stuff:

5G coverage (and your area checker option) map with Mint Mobile: https://www.mintmobile.com/coverage/

“I need to transfer my number to Mint Mobile”, instructional video:

How to Gain Wealth and Help the World During the Pandemic Recovery

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Never has there been a better time than today to gain wealth while helping the US economic recovery and those unemployed.

I have much to cover in this article, I’ll try to keep it short, but this article is more like three or articles in one, so I’m going to section the information into topics below based on your perspective: Working and Investing Opportunity, Small Business in my community help, and lastly helping Unemployed but Paid workers in my community.

Working and Investing Opportunity

I’ve never seen so many businesses desperate for workers as I do now in my community! So I’m going to help my community keep these small businesses “in business” by offering to work on a part-time basis for them, in addition to my regular full-time job.

All the money I make working at a 2nd job, I’m planning on investing! After I’ve accumulated $5,000 in a regular brokerage account, I’m going to move those $5,000 dollars into a Roth IRA account. Once the money is in a Roth IRA, I plan to split the money three ways:

  • 50% of the money will go into a less risky investment, and will probably be an ETF modeled after the S&P 500 index (like Schwab’s SWPPX or Vanguard’s VOO).
  • 40% percent of the money I’ll invest in more risky investments like small to mid-cap companies that I hope will appreciate over the next decade.
  • The remaining 10% will sit in cash for “emergency fund” purposes since you can withdraw your Roth IRA “contributions” tax and penalty-free (but not the earnings!). It’s really the perfect instrument for critical emergencies.

After Fully funding my Roth IRA, I’m planning on investing in my regular brokerage account, and probably in dividend stocks (The idea is to create Multiple Purpose Stock Dividend Investment Funds)… but also I’m going to buy some crypto for the thrill of it!

Oh, that reminds me, check to make sure you are permitted to invest in a Roth IRA. Key considerations are that you need earned income (this should be covered since you are investing the money from a 2nd job) and cumulatively, your adjusted gross income is less than certain income amount thresholds. Click here for the Roth IRA income thresholds in 2021.

Working a 2nd job means you have power! Economics 101 – “supply and demand”, I can ask for more because labor (workers) are in limited supply. So whatever wage rate being offered, I can negotiate more (just a little above though, don’t go crazy). So just to be clear, “demand” means that employers need more labor. Today, “demand” might not be the best word, but basically, it means “want or needs more of”.

I can also set a maximum amount of hours I’m willing to work a week (maybe 16 to 24 in my case, but the sky is the limit), and I don’t have to take any drama since the money is just for investing purposes… If my manager tells me to do something I adamantly disagree with, I’ll say “No” and if the manager pushed me on it, I’ll literally take the high road and say, “Well, this is not working out for me, so regretfully, I’m putting in my notice and that I will be leaving in 2 weeks” (or whatever timeframe works for you). I wouldn’t recommend burning bridges because you still might want to go to that small business or may want to work there in the future.

Remember, the goals are three-pronged… 1.) investing money, 2.) help your community’s small businesses, and 3.) enables the small business to stay in business so those that are currently not seeking employment have jobs waiting for them eventually.

Okay, I explained my basic investment strategy above, let’s talk about how it benefits small businesses in my community!

Small Businesses in my Community Help

In my community, there are small businesses that are hurting because unemployment benefits are artificially high since the government is added extra money in addition to the regular state unemployment benefits. Talking to some of the small restaurant owners that I go to, they say that people literally are not even applying to the want ads they have in the windows or wherever they advertise.

When I say small businesses are hurting, I mean that they could potentially go out of business which depresses the community you live in because of the loss of business and loss of local jobs.

So I realize that eventually, the government benefits will end so that’s why I decided to help out both the small companies in my community and the workers that will need jobs when the government stops paying them to stay home.

A small part... okay a large part of my desire to help small businesses in my community is because I enjoy using there product or services, especially local restaurants. If you have a great local restaurant that you really enjoy, why would you not want them to remain in business?

Helping Unemployed but Paid workers in my community

On the surface, all that I mentioned above might seem like it’s a negative for the “unemployed but paid workers” in my community, but not really.

My goal is to keep the employer alive so that once these smart “unemployed, but paid” workers lose their unemployment benefits, they will have the employer that I’m working at as an employment option. All of the three benefits (investing income, saving small community businesses, and saving jobs for unemployed workers that aren’t currently looking) I mentioned are required for me to work a 2nd job.

Okay, so now onto the smart, “unemployed but paid” people that are getting money from the various government for not working (I’m sure I might do the same if I were younger). This is what I recommend for this incredible opportunity!

  1. Accumulate cash (personally, I would invest a small portion of the cash in investments).
  2. Start a side business. Don’t draw a salary and reinvest any money you get into building the business so that it’s rock solid.
  3. Learn, research and call to discover future opportunities. Even read bloggers like me, I have some great ideas that hopefully in the future I’ll be communicating.
  4. I would do hiking and bodybuilding to get into shape. Such activity would make you look better and enables you to be healthier.

Closing thoughts!

The pandemic cost us all, now it’s time to draw outside of the lines and even the book, to get things moving along again so that it benefits the world.

You know what I’m planning on doing, hopefully, you’ll do the same or something even better!

Thanks,

MR

Year End Financial Results 2020

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2020 was horrible in all other respects, except financially!

Better late than never!

Because of the pandemic, I couldn’t work out at the gym and had to stay home which enabled me to gain weight. The company I work for was in the middle of a huge project so many a night, I would be working to 10 pm (sucks considering I start at 6 am), it was rough!

One silver lining was that a bit before February, I started moving a small portion of my investments into cash, but then once the stock market dipped 20% I started moving the cash back into investments in small tranches every few weeks until late May 2020.

Financially, at the end of the year 2020, my return was a few percentage points above what the S&P 500 achieved. So I did okay, I still experienced a big drop in my portfolio value during March and April (which always depresses me a bit), but I held tight, and much like in the past, I increased my contribution percentage. My philosophy during the pandemic was if the fan starts to turn brown and smelled, money wouldn’t really matter much anyway.

My Financial Pyramid results

So things are moving slowly along. It’s easier to move up from the earlier “white-colored” lower levels than once you get to the “green-colored” levels in the pyramid. Even though financially, I have moved up a quarter in the level called “Upper Middle Class”, I still have a foot firmly at the “Asset Accumulation” level, so I still live pretty frugally. I might go out a bit more than I used to, but I’m still driving a 2010 car, so obviously, my lifestyle has hardly changed.

Grading my performance

My game has improved, and although I’m not quite ready to give myself a solid “A” yet, I’m definitely a higher “A-“. What I could have done better is the following: small investments in crypto and other advanced stock strategies. Actually, there is a lot I would do differently, but that’s another article or two for some other time.

Financial Pyramid

Future Goals climbing the Pyramid

In the next 5 years, I would like to hit the next green level called “Financial Independence and Break-Even Point”. While I couldn’t retire on this level because of future recessions and other market downturns, I would like to semi-retire and get a part-time job, or a hobby job (that makes decent money still). It’s a stretch goal, but we’ll see.

A few of us are thinking about creating a wealth investment club for the less than upper classes (especially blue-collar workers). Half the battle is belief and planning an investment strategy so an investment club with mentors could really help others.

I have had my current investment tragedy for over a decade so I know mistakes I made and I think that my knowledge could benefit others by shortcutting the process for them.

We’ll see, I might wait until I go into semi-retirement to do such a club, but I might start now to work out the bugs with a few people.

We’ll see…

Happy Halloween!

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This is an amazing video, I’ve watched for years. Even time I watch it, I’m always impressed with the details, especially the alien movement and shadowing. Most of the “internet experts always comment on the quality, but nobody every talks about the small insignia on the clothing. Three dots with lines connecting them. Small things like that always make me more curious.

This video was posted on YouTube way back in 2011 (before Deepfake tech even, lol) and posted by Ivan0135.

It’s believe that parts of the film is fake, but most people, including video experts, are still amazed by the quality of the alien considering this was posted all the way back in 2011 (that’s like a century in internet time).

Inspiration for Casper the friendly ghost?