Author Archives: Money Reasons

About Money Reasons

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

Fixing Your Garage Door Opener By DIY

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Fixing your garage door by DIY via googling the problem

My garage door opener stopped moving the door one day.  My son pushed the button to open it, and the door made it half way up, but then stopped.  The sound of the opener changed from the regular sound to the sound of a vacuum cleaner running.

I googled the symptoms and found a youtube video on what sounded like my problem (the worm gear).  In fact, I was confident that the problem was a stripped gear just based on the sound it now made and some deductive reasoning.  To confirm my belief, the articles I found online stated that the gear only last 10 to 12 years (after all, the gear is plastic).

Since I was very busy I didn’t have time to fix the problem myself so I called a garage repairman to come out and fix it for me.  He came out and didn’t have the part!  He then told me that I had to replace the entire system, door, spring, motor and all.  Now this repairman was perhaps in his teenage to very early twenties (if that!) and I don’t think that he realized that I’m not a fool.  I laughed at him and informed him what I thought of his opinions since my house isn’t that old to begin with.  Unfortunately, I still had to pay him for coming out…  Now I could have tried another “more reputable” and experienced repairman, but since I had the google video and it looked very easy, I did it myself instead!

garage door opener gear replacement

So the first think I did was order the part from ebay (I needed a sears craftman garage door opener gear sprocket kit # 41C4220A) for $25 (free shipping).  Next, I followed the instructions in the following video series:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

I liked this video, especially because the repairman talks about getting the garage door timing set correctly, and demonstrates how to accomplish this!

I’m a DIY (Do It Yourself) kind of guy, so this worked well for me, if you don’t feel very comfortable doing such things, then I recommend not trying it!

I hope you found value in this post, I know I wish I had just did the job myself instead of calling someone out that tried to sell me an entire new system…

MR

Is a Vacation To Colonial Williamsburg Worth The Money

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A vacation is a tricky matter when determining if such a cost is worth it or not, especially since you only know after your vacation is finished.

Back when I was younger, I took a trip with my “then” girlfriend to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.  My “back then” girlfriend had gone as a child with her family and wanted to recapture the memory, and perhaps learn a few things that she might have missed as a child.  While it sounded pretty boring to me, I went along anyway, and surprisingly had a blast.

We went to Colonial Williamsburg, William and Mary College, hung out at a bar near William and Mary College, and just went everywhere.  By the end of the week, I was so sick of walking.  As a grand finale, on the way home, we stopped and spent a few hours at Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s house).  While we visited Colonial Williamsburg, we stayed at our first Bed and Breakfast Inn called Candlewick.

The combination of learning, a romantic B&B Inn, and just enjoying each others company, made for a great experience and memory.

So years later, I decided to take the family to Colonial Williamsburg to see if they would enjoy the location like I had…, boy was that a mistake.  The first hour in Colonial Williamsburg, my daughter starts the “I want to go home”, and complains about being tired of walking.  So after hoisting her up on my shoulders, and walking that way for the rest of the day, I ended up getting shin splints.  The next day was shear pain…

But I held my tongue, not wanting to ruin the experience for my wife and son.  Later they said they didn’t enjoy it much either.  So the trip was definitely not worth the cost this particular instance.  While I’m not sure if it was because we just stayed at Colonial Williamsburg this time, it definitely was a waste of money for me.  But kids would have been happier if we just went to a hotel and swimming all day instead.  Usually for spring break we go to water parks (which my kids love).  I wish we went with the easy vacation… the water park.

That said, if you are young and don’t mind walking the entire day, and don’t have young kids…  Colonial Williamsburg (along with visiting other noteworthy historical or recreational sites in the area) can be a great time.  I recommend going to a Bed & Breakfast Inn, and definitely take the candlelight (or ghost) tours.  The time we originally came down, that was a great time.  Monticello was pretty fascinating too, so if you have time you might want to stop and visit that site too.

In conclusion, the trip was a waste of money this particular time.  But if we done things a big differently, it might have been as great as it was in the past.

Lesson learned, next vacation I’ll take into account all of the variables.  This vacation definitely wasn’t worth the money this time, perhaps when the kids are older, and a side trip to Washington DC.

MR

Reasons To Get A Tax Refund

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This is yet another year that I’m filing my income tax return…

I know that this year there is a good chance that I’ll have to pay taxes, so the motivation to do my taxes early, no longer exists as was the case just a few years ago.

Most financial advisers will recommend against withholding your income taxes to the extent that you get a tax refund back from the government.   I admit, I agree that from a mathematical perspective, it is smarter to get the money that you earn as fast as possible, and a refund would be the less preferable route.

But from a non-mathematical perspective there are many advantages of letting the government withhold your withholding money, and here are a few of the ones that I have found to be great reasons, and the reason why I let the government hold my income tax refund money for me.

Here are the reasons I preferred getting a tax refund by declaring zero allowances:

  1. Avoiding being hit by a huge tax bill all at once.  Where I was younger there was a time that I didn’t withhold my taxes like I do today.  After a big bump in pay, I suddenly found myself owing the government a lot of taxes with money that I didn’t have.  After that time, I started withholding the maximum amount possible.  Life has been more stress free going this route for my family.
  2. Motivation to file your taxes earlier.  When I would get a tax return, I had a solid reason to file as early as possible to get my money back.  Without such motivation, I’m now in the scenario where I have no motivation to file early, so much like last year, I have no motivation to file early this year…
  3. A easy “stress free” saving program.  Yes, my tax refund has paid for vacations and enables me to deposit that amount into investments.  At a time when most savings accounts only yield .25% (a fourth of 1%), it really doesn’t matter that government could hold you refund for half a year (half a year because your refund amount doesn’t exist at the beginning of the year, and it takes each paycheck to build that refund amount).

The point of this article is that there is more than one way to do things.  I like to take a stress free route with respect to my income tax withholdings, but if you have the discipline with money, the more mathematical approach would be a better route as long as you don’t spend it first.

Hope you did your taxes earlier than I am…

MR

Avoiding Problems Too Long Is A Subpar Way To Live

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Sidestepping problems and letting them dwell for way too long instead of confronting them head on is a subpar way to live life.

While sometimes you get lucky and the problem works its way out, this is a bad way to handle things, as some problems linger for years and years.  Some things are complicated and will require a lot of work and even some pain to get past, but the alternative (wasting years of your life) is more costly in its own way.

When you ignore such problems, this is how a problem that starts out as a molehill turns into a nightmarish, “hard to manage” mountain, not to mention the side stress of carrying such problems with you at all times.

Let’s take debt for example, oh it start out small, perhaps you are carrying a thousand dollar balance, but soon it’s two thousand dollar, then year-end it’s five thousand dollars, and before you know it, your tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  I’ve seen this happen many time with a few of my friends.  With one in particular, he and his wife have declared bankruptcy more than once, drawing down the equity that they had built up in their house over the past ten years, finally ending in divorce.

Debt is one problem, but how about a bad marriage?  I know another friend that is dragging out his marriage because of the kids involved.  With his particular story, the marriage is sexless and he and his wife live more like roommates than husband and wife.  While both are decent people, it’s obvious that neither are happy with their situation.  If it wasn’t for the fear of screwing up their kids, they would have been divorced a long time ago.  But I have to wonder if they are mistaken on the current path.  After all, when you setup an artificial environment like this where the marriage is without passion, do the kids learn that acting like a loveless robot is the way marriages should be?

Perhaps my friend and his wife are doing more damage by staying together and teaching the kids that life has no passion and basically sucks, than good by staying together?  I can tell that my friend is hurting, but since he came from a broken home he is hesitant to let the kids go through such a painful process.

Home is a Prison

While normally such problems wouldn’t interest me, once while going out for a drink with my friend, he referred to the fact that he felt like he was in prison, doing his time waiting for death to come.  To me, it seems like this isn’t a good way to live, and the best route for him would be to scrap the marriage and look for a better companion.  Actually, I think both my friend and his wife would be better off.  A little poorer, but better off.

Lately, this has had me rethinking marriage from a fairytale perspective and now I no longer look at those guys that I know who have mistresses as the evil bad guys that society (and the movies) casts them to be.  After all, both of my top financial heroes (Benjamin Franklin and Warren Buffett) had mistresses, and if they can do it, why not someone in a painful, loveless marriage who believes that the embrace of death is something to look forwards to.

I think my friend should have file for a divorce after the first few years when he realized that his spouse wasn’t a good match for him, instead of dragging it out and having kids enter the picture.

Confront and fix your problems, don’t let them ruin your life!

Bests,

MR