Category Archives: Uncategorized

Past Unfulfilled Home Dreams

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My Home Dreams have changed as I grew older.  As a child (5 or 6 years old) I imagined owning acres and acres of land and having all the endangered species on it.  Surprisingly, at this age, the house itself didn’t really materialize.  As I grew older, I realized how hard that dream would be to accomplish and had to scratch it off.

My next Home Dream was to live near the mountains living off the land, with a small meandering stream-fed lake beside a log cabin.  In this dream, I was a fisherman and a hunter (just for the record, I’ve never hunted).  I imagined that I wouldn’t really have many neighbors.  I had this dream until college, when I realize I had a bad allergy problem and how difficult and lonely this dream would be.  This dream was more feasible from a cost perspective, but very inconvenient and an extremely hard life.  Scaling back my dream, I still would like a cabin in the woods; but I currently have more important things to save my money for.  Actually this dream is partially fulfilled by renting a cabin in the wood occasionally (we did that last year).

An occasional Home Dream would be to live by the Delaware River like my Uncle did.  But those thoughts have always been squeezed out when I realized that I couldn’t afford such a plot of property.

Today, my home dreams consist of owning a small rental property, preferrable a 1 dwelling house (although I’ve heard this isn’t the way to go).  I would like to find one dirt cheap that’s in great shape in a great market.  Yeah, this is one of the more feasible dreams, but still hard to obtain the perfect combination that is profitable.  Plus, I don’t know if I really would like to deal with tenants…

How have your dreams evolved of what your perfect home dream would be?

-MR

I Didn't Quite Grow Up The Way I Thought

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I remember staying at my Uncle and Aunt’s place during a few weeks every summer when I was eight.

Mostly, I hung by myself, then sometimes followed by my Uncle, then finally my Aunt.  My Uncle was a Judge, so he was pretty busy during the day.  Unfortunately, my Aunt was an alcoholic (and actually died of liver problems later in life), so she never felt like playing much.

My Aunt and Uncle lived in a cottage directly beside the Delaware river (salt water not fresh).  I enjoyed waves, watching ships and the occasional submarine float up and down the river.  On the river (and beach), there were constantly excellent sea life to watch (blue fiddler crabs, eels, snapper turtles, fish, etc).

My uncle would walk his dog ever evening down a deserted road to an old lighthouse that was now owned by a hunting club.  Sometimes on the way, he would pick blackberries for the elderly woman at the end of the street.

Occasionally, when he would come home from court, he would pour himself a glass of Scotch (Glenlivet), and light his pipe, then go out on his enclose porch.  Next he would read the paper, or just look outside towards the river.

I thought, wow, what a great lifestyle.  I wanted to have a cottage on the Delaware river too, and do as my Uncle did, except the smoking of the pipe.

That was a long time ago, and now that I’m grown up…  I’m nothing like that.  I do have sitting chair that’s pretty close to what my Uncle had, but that’s where the similarities end.  My Uncle lived well but overall had a pretty frugal existence.  After he passed (my Aunt passed years earlier than he did), he had ended up with over a millionaire dollars in net worth.  But nobody was really surprised in my family.

How did you imagine your adult life being like when you are pre-teen?  Mine is different, but still good!

-MR

Planning Ahead To Buy My Next Car

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Both of the automobiles that we have are getting old and will soon need replaced!

So I don’t want to incur that cost of buying 2 cars as close together as we did the last time!  So, I decided to think through it this time around.

My plan it to replace our minivan (wife’s primary car), sometime before 2015.  My car, I’ll just keep driving until it totally disintegrates.

I don’t want to take out a loan, and had plan on going in and writing a check for our next “new” used car!  But lately, I don’t want to spend the money on the car either.  Once I spend that money, it’s gone!

What I would like to do is invest the money in dividend yielding stocks or bonds for the next 3 or 4 years, then use the money from the yield to make payments on the next car.

I would continue to invest money, building the principle, then use the money to make payments on my next car… and so on and so on…

Of course if there ever came a point where I would just be able to pay for the entire car in cash without affecting my wealth level, I would do so.

I would use the same process that I’m using for my lunch experiment.  Saving up the money, invest it, then use it to support my purchase of future vehicles.

What do you think?  Am I being delusional?  Should I just pay cash for the cars and start over each and everytime?

The Reasons I Like Money Over Gift Cards

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First, let me say that the rules around gift cards has improved as seen in the Denver Post article: Feds overhaul gift-card rules!

Prior to this change being implemented by the Feds, I was a Gift Card policy victim!  You see, at work I rewarded an Amazon Gift Card which I firmly held onto it for more than a year, waiting for that something perfect that I wanted, so as to reward myself for doing a great job at work.  When I found that perfect something, lo and behold it expired!

Back then, $100 meant a lot more than it does today (don’t get me wrong, I still respect the purchasing power of $100!).  So I was upset… But what really pushed me over the edge was that fact that if I lived in California, they would still have to honor the value of the card!!!  HUH?  Yep, Cali realizing that the principal of having the card expire was somewhat underhanded and created a law that made it illegal to be so in Cali (2 points for them!).

Since I don’t come from Cali, I was very livid.  The side effect of me getting basically screwed was that I vowed not to purchase anything from www.Amazon.com… and I haven’t since!  So yeah, they may have made a pure $100 on me the day my card expired, but I’m sure they lost much more than that on profit they could have had from me…

But there are more reasons that I like cash over gift cards:

  1. If you invest the money, you make money off of your money gift!
  2. Invested money can be a hedge against Inflation.
  3. Cash money doesn’t comes with a “no-usage” fee or any fees.
  4. There is no need to go to an exchange gift card site, and thus accept less value for the card.
  5. Cash Money doesn’t have a magnetic stripe that can go bad.
  6. Paper Cash weights less than a gift card.
  7. Cash can be rolled up and put behind my ear!  (Why?, good question???).
  8. Cash is King, it can be used for anything, not just at Starbucks or Best Buy 😉

So, you may be wondering if I have other gift cards?  Yes, I do!  But I made sure they don’t expire nor that they had fees associated with them!

Reader have you ever gotten burned by not using your gift card in time? 

If so, perhaps the new laws will benefit you too.  Or even better ask for cash only instead of gift cards!

-MR

Disclaimer:  I’m not entirely sure that Amazon really screwed me, it could have been the Gift card company that runs their gift card option.  But, either way it was painful for me at the time!