Category Archives: Entertainment

Financial Lessons Learned By My Son Today!

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Pokemon Kitty

Well something amazing happened today. My son all of a sudden wanted to sell his old Nintendo DS games and Transformer Toys that he never plays with.

So we hopped on eBay and did a search for his DS games that he wanted to sell. Unfortunately, they only were worth about $5 to $10 dollars. I winced a little at the hurt look on this face. Some of his transformer will go for over $10, but not much more, maybe top side will be $20.

So after a few eBay searches, I asked him why he wanted to sell them… That when he told me. He wanted to buy a new Pokemon DS game that just came out. But just last week he spend all of his money and took a $40 loan out from me to buy a $120 Lego Star Wars ship… And now he’s realizing he should have held off on the purchase! He learned a small lesson in opportunity costs. You see he has about 25 Lego star wars models already, and he’s been waiting for the new Pokemon DS game to come out!

So what lesson did he learn?

  • The first lesson, not to go in debt! He won’t be able to afford that DS game until mid summer.
  • 2nd lesson,diminishing returns on the Lego Star Wars ships… I mean how many of these does he really need?
  • 3rd it smart to keep some money aside for be events that are important. So he learned about a weak form of an emergency fund (although it’s not really totally that, it’s similar enough…)

I refused to give him the money to by the new game. To do so would ruin the lesson. I do feel bad that all of his friends will have the game and will have mastered it by the time he finally get it. But I think the lesson is much more important!

So it was a tough day for a nine year old!

-D

How Credit Cards Helped Me To Become Debt Free

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Do I sound like Bizarro?

Hi I’m Reasons Money, oh wait… that’s Bizarro!    

I know, my title doesn’t make sense on the surface, but hear me out!    

It’s true, my credit cards helped me get out of debt quicker than if I hadn’t used them!    

First, let me set the background.  For the last 12 years, I’ve only owned reward credit cards (Sony,Upromise,  GM, Citi, Schwab, etc).    

Secondly, I almost never (hard to believe huh) carried credit card debt longer than a month.  I like to pay my balance in full each month!  The only time that I didn’t pay my credit card balance in full was when I bought a computer with a best buy card that had a 0% interest deal (and even with this card I paid it off early).    

I only own reward credit cards, and usually ones with pretty decent paybacks percentages!    

So how did (and does) that help me pay off my debt any quicker, you might ask? 

Well, first I get a discount on my purchases, typically anywhere from 2 to 5%!  If you pay with cash, you will incur that additional cost!  This is better than I did in the stock market last year! (Laughing, but really crying inside…).  This alone make the reward cards a great deal!    

You might not think this make a big difference but it does!  Instead of saving that money, we used it to help augment our Christmas presents!  We have also used it to rewards ourselves for being so frugally minded.  Yes, purchasing goods with credit cards is frugal (there, I said it!)    

The amounts saved via reward credit cards is like a forced savings plan.

Now, I’m not really Bizarro, and I know that in many ways having Credit Cards for some is like giving a beer to a recovering alcoholic.  But if you have the displine or if you create a budget to control your debt, Reward Credit Cards could be used for good instead of evil (another corny superhero cartoon reference).    

Credit card are a lot like guns!  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, same with credit cards!  Creadit cards on’t get you in debt!  People get themselved in debt!   

I know what I typed runs against the grains of popular opinions out there!      

What do you tkink?    

-D 

One Caveat:  If you are married, your spouse must be frugal and on-board with paying the credit card in full each month for this to work!!!  My wife is and it has worked great!

Creating Priceless Bedtime Stories For Kids

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This post is something that could potentially be of great value to you  in your future and more importantly in your child’s future.  The value is more in a memories category though, not monetary value.  That said, I would have paid a decent amout of money to have recorded them. 

Creating memories and stories

The Background: 

When my son was 5, every Friday, I tried to tell him original bedtime stories.  Unfortunately, I was bad at it.  So I did what any creatively struggling Dad would do with his son…  I made up a story about a superhero (I our case Batman, my first attempt was Spiderman, but that flopped)…  Batman was easy, because of the dual identity, the cool gadgets and vehicles, and of course the Batcave! 

My partially made up Batman stories were a hit, my son looked forward to hearing them each Friday.  I even tried to imbed morals and a bit of a life lessons in some of them.  It was so much easier then trying to come up with an original story about of the blue.  Don’t get me wrong, even using the Batman themed stories, was tough, after all I was making the stories up in real time (I had a lot of Ummms and pauses initially, but I got better).  After a while, he started in on the creative process telling his own stories after mine.  Surprisingly, he liked to tell Spongebob Squarepants stories.  He started these when he was six.  We had a great time, and we have some solid memories!  I wish I had recorded them, but unfortunately, I didn’t (please consider Camcording these stories if you decide to try this)!  I would pay a pretty penny to have all of his stories in a recorded format today (and I’m sure I would be will to pay a lot more in the future, this “miss” is truly a lost treasure). 

As he turned 6, then 7, the stories moved to every other Friday and I had to change the format (he no longer liked Batman as much).  So we had some Fireman, and the Star Wars Jedi stories… and then when his life became busier (sports, pokemon, homework, legos and Nintendo DS…) we eventually stopped all together. 

Now it’s my daughter’s turn.  This time things are different, I’m not using a popular character like Dora or My little Petshop animal (although she probably would enjoy those type of stories too).  Instead, I’m creating different worlds and travelling back in time to tell my stories.  Now we talk about a girl in a magical castle that looks a lot like my daughter, or we teleport to the world of “Azul”, where this word is completely water covered except for 1 small island.  In Azul, our human equivalents live in the water and are mermaid-like creatures.  It’s also different this time too, because periodically, my daughter will create illustrations (that’s what she calls them instead of pictures) that go with her stories (she does this earlier in the day), in anticipation.  Like my son, we do a story exchange.  Great memories…  I still need to camcord or at least audio record the storytelling.  Now that I’m writing this, I think I will do that for the next storytime sessions (they occur on every other Friday).  It’s funny how by my writing about it now, I finally realize that these story sessions are worth a lot to me.  Not to mention my wife, perhaps she would like to hear a story that our daughter created! 

I know this isn’t a typical financial post, but I would like to say that the bonding with your child and the memories formed while telling such stories could someday be a great treasure your child will cherish in their adult lives. 

Even if you don’t want to expend the energy on creating your own stories (although I would encourage doing so), just reading stories at night time once a week could be a great experience too!  My wife reads the kids a story every night except Fridays (that’s my night), and they seem to really enjoy it. 

I really enjoyed hearing my kid’s made up stories.  Some of the ones my daughter has told me has floored me!  She’s getting pretty good at it!

My Frugal First Talent Show

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In our grade school (kindergartner’s thru 4th graders), we have an annual talent show that I attended for the first time.

Talent Show

What was the reasons I waited until this year?

My 6 year old daughter participated in the event this year!  She was suppose to do a hula hoop show, while a song played for 3 minutes.  So I was expecting a interesting but somewhat mundane hula hoop routine.  I was very surprised when she started out as I expected, but then she started doing jumps and then started moving around (pseudo dancing).  The audience clapped at the jumps, but the dancing and moving around floored everybody (especially me).  I was filming her on a camcorder, and actually had to look at her, messing up the frame for a few seconds. Later, I asked my wife if that was part of the rehearsals they were practicing, and she said no (I think she was surprised too). I was very proud, but really I was more amazed than anything else (this is rare for me)!

After my daughter’s 3 minutes spectacular show, I thought everything else would be lame (and there were a few mediocre performances), but I was pleasantly surprise with most of the acts.  There were two 4th grade girls that nailed the Hannah Montana (most of the girls sang these) songs they performed.  In my opinion, there were 3 standouts (my daughter being one of them of course ;)).

So why am I posting this?

Yes I’m proud of my daughter, but really this is a great form of entertainment!  It’s free and you are supporting your community in spirit and financially if you buy a bag of popcorn 😉

I got especially lucky, because one of the 4th grade girls did two performance that would have rivaled Hannah Montana herself.  The girl (named Katie) did a performance that was performed so well, that people almost stood up (I know I almost did).

I imagine that not all talent shows were as good as the one I went to last night, but it’s entertaining anyway, and occasionally, you’ll get to see that big diamond shine a little more brightly than the other jewels (nobody was rough last night…).

So this is my frugal tip for some free entertainment.  It only happens a few times a year, so check it out if you get the chance!

You might be amazed by some of the performances…  I know I was!