Category Archives: Problems

Staying Home During The Ice Storms

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I live in a part of the country that gets snow during the winter season, so I’m use to living with ice and snow.  But the latest storms is something that I don’t remember seeing in a long time!  The amount of freezing rain that we received is incredible.  My entire yard looks like a block of ice!

I looked out the window this morning and my garbage can, along with all the neighbor’s trash cans, have slipped into the road.  This is new, I don’t remember this happening before!

So the question is should I go to work or stay home?

I’ve heard from those brave souls that drove into work earlier that the main highways aren’t that bad.  As I look out my window, my road has about a 3 to 4 inch layer of ice though.  The city schools where I live have all been closed.

Normally, I would just telecommute to work for the entire day, but I have some important meetings that I need to attend at the end of the workday.  Yes, I could just dial into a conference call for those meetings, but I would like to see the visuals associated with the meeting.

So what I decided to do is connect remotely for the morning, then go in later, possible after lunch.  I do this for the following reasons:

  • This give the plow and salt trucks a chance to clear the roads well.
  • the temperature is over freezing, and by staying home, I make sure the plows get my road before the water starts to freeze again.
  • This give the opportunity for other to get to work before me, just to make sure the roads are good from the perspective of someone who live where I live!
  • I get to say good morning to my kids before I leave (usually I don’t get this option).
  • Give the facilities people the chance to make sure all the walking surface to the building are well salted.
  • Gives me the chance to watch the weather channel and local news to make sure all it well and will stay well.

When you have the option to telecommute on bad winter days, sometimes it’s worth thinking through all the choices.

From a financial perspective, it’s worth considering to telecommuting on bad winter days because of the cost that could result from an accident or the dangers to your health from injury slipping on the ice, etc.

-MR

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Starting The Year Out Hard

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So far I’m starting this year out hard!

2010 was a bad year for me, even though I paid off my mortgage and my sister had a baby!  I’ve been hoping that 2011 would be a much better year, but so far, the year is starting out hard!

Hard Events of 2011, so far:

  • A old friend’s dad died at the very beginning of the year.  I went down alone because everybody in my family was busy.
  • A co-worker’s father-in-law died and we were short-staffed at work, so I volunteered to cover third shift while he was in china for two weeks.  This shift was draining…  I won’t be doing this again, EVER!
  • It was determined that my son needs braces, BAM… getting them will cost over $4,000!
  • I went to lunch one day at taco bell, and hit the snow-covered wall rim of the drive-thru with my tire, boom I got a flat!  Of course I didn’t bring a coat since I knew I was just going through the drive-thru.  So there I was changing the tire out in the snow without a coat on.  Next I took the tire to a shop to get patch, but the side wall had a tear, so I had to get a new tire grrrr!

No doubt, this is a horrible start of the year!  You might think I would be down, but I’m not.  Life happens and you need to keep a positive outlook no matter what!  So to the year 2011, I say bring it!!!

Life is full of bumps and this year I’m not going to dwell on my problems!  It’s full steam ahead for me!

How is your 2011 so far?  I still believe this will be a much better year for me that 2010!

-MR
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Me Me Me, It’s All About Me, After My Family First!

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My entire financial existence just got judged based on one particular post on my blog. The blogger assumed that my whole financial existence was focused on declaring war on debt (perhaps he’s getting me confused with the much larger and well established blogger: Enemy Of Debt, but so be it).

This blogger posted about how I didn’t do investments, such as 401ks, 529s or any other type of investments…  HA!

Since 2000, I’ve been contributing to my 401k, and since mid 2008 I bumped it up to the maximum amount (yeah, I jumped in with both feet while the market was at its lowest!  I believe the Buffett saying: “Be fearful when other are greedy and greedy when others are fearful“).

I also have a 529 plan for each kid that I expect to be well over $100,000 for each kid, when they are 18.

I also have a Roth IRA, HSA, and an online brokerage account .

I been a shareholder in various stocks since I was 6 years old, and I’ve made my share of mistakes!

Needless to say, the other blogger at 7million7years took a glance at my post and made a lot of incorrect assumptions about me!

But even with the assumptions corrected, his approach is still drastically different from mine.

His approach is more about becoming a higher level of rich than what I am striving for.  Actually, he might already be at this level, I’ve only read a few of his posts on his site, so I can’t really make a solid judgement of his financial being.  I applaud him for his efforts but that approach only works for less that 5% of the population (I’m guessing, but I’m also betting that my number is conservative too and the percentage is really closer to less than 2%).

But my approach is different!  You see I come from a family of entrepreneurs, but I chose a different path.

After growing up without learning practically anything from my dad (for example, how to catch a ball, riding my bike, batting, swimming.. you name it) since he was always worked 80+ hours per week at his business, I decided I didn’t want my kids to grow up like that!

Since I’ve been an employee for a good chunk of my life, during the times when I’m not at work, was able I teach both of my kids how to ride their bikes, (they learned swimming at the local recreation center), hit the ball with a bat, catch the ball, throw a football, and other sports exercises.  I’ve done numerous things with both, and in this respect, I’m light years away from when my dad was at the same point in time.

Yes, my net worth is less than someone like my dad, but my family is happy!

I hope this clears up any confusion about me vs the other blogger’s lacking interpretation of me!

-MR

Sometimes Life Throws You A Curveball Example

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I had big intentions Friday, but sometimes life throws you a curveball and you have to do whatever you have to do to keep your head above the water!

Timeline of my big Friday Plans to improve the www.Moneyreasons.com website

  • 4:00 – I get off work, I have some big plan for revamping pieces of my website tonight!  I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it after dinner!  The kids are home, they want to play with the turtles (we have 3 very small turtles, 1 is only 2 weeks old).  Don’t tell my wife, but I like them too 😉
  • 4:45 – The wife and I talk about dinner and the plans  for the weekend in general.  I’m still exited about revamping pieces of my website, but we talk for about 45 minutes.  It’s cool, though… It’s still all good.
  • 5:30 – My boss calls me, he need me to remote into work at 10:30pm to work on something.  That’s hours away, I’m cool with that.
  • 5:45 – Time to get Pappa John’s pizza (yum it was good)!
  • 6:30 – Finally I’m on the computer, First I try to put twitter icon back on, but the graphics don’t line up well.  I get tired so I shelf it for another day.  I start thinking about drawing something for Saturdays post on the www.moneyreasons.com website.   I wonder if I can still draw as well as I could when I was a teenager? Hmmm.
  • 7:30 – I’m playing with my Banner Header now.  I have a graphic, but it’s only the title words “Money Reasons“, I wonder if anyone realized that I changed it a week ago?  Another Hmmm.
  • 8:15 – Oh no!  Something that’s not suppose to happen to a seasoned techie like me, happens!!!  I inadvertently, save my header code over my style.css code… Aughh!  My theme is no longer recognized and my site looks horrible, panic sets in!!!
  • 9:00 – I’m still fighting this issue.  My website still comes up, but without the theme…  It looks horrible!
  • 9:20 – I finally get it back, but I lose all the work I did on the banner earlier.  Grrr.
  • 9:30 – After poking around I’m satisfied that my website is working again!  Whew.  My daughter wants to me to read her a bedtime story.  So we start to read… Zzzzz.
  • 10:45 – I fell asleep!  My wife wakes me up saying I thought you had to work at 10:30?
  • 10:50 – I scramble to log into the systems at work, ready to apologize to the guy that I was going to help.
  • 10:51 – I connect to the VPN where I work!  I start to IM the guy (POW)
  • 10:52 – I get disconnected from the VPN where I work!
  • 10:53 – I realize the problem is on my side!  I call my ISP and they said “Yeah, we’re replacing a piece of hardware on the routers down here because one of them is acting flaky“.  But I need the connect to work, I exclaim.  They say oh it should take no more than a few minutes.
  • 11:35 – Aliens must have abducted my ISP support because that few minute took almost 45 minutes!!!  I hope the aliens were more gentle than I would have been… or do I?
  • 11:40 – I reconnect back to the VPN of my day job and do what needed to be done.  Now I think about the humorous article I wanted to post for this coming Saturday.
  • 11:50 – I’m too frustrated and it’s too late to do anything other than complain.
  • Now –  Well, the post isn’t the funny post I hoped it would be, but it is interesting and shows how when we plan for something, it doesn’t always happen the way we hoped it would play out..

Have a Great Weekend!  Life is funny sometime!

If you have a similar story please do tell!

-MR