Earning 25 Percent On My Previous Mortgage Payment

by

Occasionally I write about being totally debt free (no mortgage, car loans or credit card debt), but I had one problem with being debt free that took me a while to solve, and that was “What do I do with the extra infusion of cash each month”?  Such an increase of cash by paying off my mortgage was like getting a second job on the side!  In fact paying off my mortgage has cut my annual expense by more than 25%!

Back to my problem!  Obviously I don’t want to incur lifestyle creep since I worked so hard to pay off the mortgage early.  To spend more just to increase my lifestyle would have meant that I basically sacrificed for nothing because I really wouldn’t be getting ahead!  But what to do that extra money?  I didn’t want to put it in a savings account that would earn less than 1%…

Here’s What I Did!

It turned out that my employer offers an ESPP (employee stock purchase plan) that enables me to get a 15% discount on the purchase price of my employer’s stock.    Obviously, 15% beats less than 1%, but it gets even better so that option is a winner if I cash out the stock immediately after it get’s in my account.  But in addition to the 15%, I’ve been putting the money into a (what I consider) safe dividend stock and making over 10% there too.  So that effectively give me a return of over 25% for that each year of participating in the ESPP.

Next Step:

Why not use the money for future real estate investments?  Believe it or not, but often I experiment with working on the best financial strategy until I get the best mix, much like I did with the combination of ESPP and dividend investing.

Bests,

MR

Using the Library As A Mobile Office

by

Recently, I’ve made a discovery that’s worth talking about, “Using the Library As A Mobile Office”

To have an office and all the expenses that are associated with having such an office may be able to obtained at your local library for free!

At this very moment, I’m in a small 12 x 12 room (with five chairs and a table, not like the larger meeting room in the picture below) in my library, writing this article while enjoying the view through a 6 x 10 window.  I find myself imagining what it would be like to come here everyday to do my blogging, online website, and rental investment property work.  Why pay for a full-time office, when you “the taxpayer” (including me too, of course) are paying for the room and nobody is using it?  If you are a starting out entrepreneur, perhaps this is an option worth exploring!

Let me describe the benefits of using the library as a mobile office!

  1. There are meeting rooms that site empty 90% of the time during the “business hours” time slots per day.  I’m sitting in one right now, and I have to say, it has the same feel as my regular employer’s office that is provided to me.
  2. There are regular options here that a normal work office would have like: air conditioning, heating (in the winter of course), restroom facilities (which are even nicer than my employer’s), water fountain, wireless internet access, fax machine availability (although I wouldn’t use it), copy machines, and even a phone in the room that I’m in (again, I wouldn’t use it because I have other alternatives), and many other perks too.
  3. Silence, in this office room, it’s even more quiet than my office at work, but if I wanted some human background sounds, I could just shift to the general area instead.
  4. Access to free electricity.  Currently, this library office has an electric outlet, so I’m charging my cell phone and I have my laptop plugged in too.
  5. Mobility!  In my state, practically all of the surrounding libraries have free internet access and meeting rooms such as the one that I’m currently in.  I could call ahead and schedule a meeting room at a different library each and every day if I wanted a change in scenery, whereas with my employer’s office, I’m stuck with the same grey short walls (cubicle walls) throughout the entire building.  In some ways working in my office employer’s site reminds me of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”.  Shoot we even have restrictions on how many plants we’re allowed in the office (2 small ones).

Now some of you might say “What about phone services”?  Well, google handles that for me!  With Google Voice, I have a number that I use for all of my calls, and the beauty of this number is that it can be setup to forward the call to four devices at once.  And once one of the devices take the call, the others stop ringing!  The kicker is that Google Voice is currently free (although this will probably change in the future at some point).

Of course, I won’t stay her the entire day.  I have a lot of the same options at home, but using the Library as a Mobile Office is an option to break the monotony of strictly working at home in an extra bedroom.

Have you considered using the library system as a mobile office?  I see a lot of advantages in doing so.  Plus if you travel to different states, why not use the facilities at the location that you are at?  Assuming many libraries are the same, this seems to be a perfect option to me.

Bests,

MR

Save Your Money and Youth – Stop Paying For Tanning

by

Believe it or not, I still know people that pay to go to a tanning salon, to achieve the year round tan.

While some think having a tanned body is attractive (or is it?), I don’t think that it’s healthy to be in a perpetual state of remaining unnaturally tan, day in and day out all year round!  Yet, I know of a few women that pay to go to a tanning salon, just to accomplish this feat.

 

 

Unfortunately, as they age, such damaging exposure give (both women and men) that leathery look that we’ve all come to associate with such long term tanning effects, not to mention the potentially worrisome skin cancer results.  It seems kind of odd to pay a tanning salon around $50 a month to get such damage done to your skin.  It’s kind of like paying the school bully to punch you every other day in the mouth to have fuller lips.

So from a bit of research, it sounds like 1 tanning session can run you an average of $8 for one session.  Many pay a flat rate of about $50 per month though.  So using the $50/month figure, that would be $600 a years.  While $600 a year won’t break you, it’s still a decent chunk of money to plop down on something that is unhealthy for you…

I use to laugh at the spray on tans that I watch as celebrities on TV would go through, but considering the risks of tanning salons, perhaps they were more clever than I imagined…

Given that you believe that a “golden” tanned look and make you more attractive, do you still think it’s worth it given the risk communicated through the media these days?  Or do you think it’s better to save your money?

MR

Going To An Amusement Park For More Bang For The Buck On The 4th of July

by

Our small city’s 4th of July Celebration was last night, but on the actual 4th of July, we just typically hang around with family and friends, not really doing much other than socializing (which is great too…).

This year we decided to do something different by going to an Amusement Park called “Cedar Point” on the 4th of July instead!  Now you might think that going on a holiday to such a place would be busy, but according to friends of my wife, it’s typically un-crowded on holidays.

Cedar Point Welcom

Since we haven’t gone to Cedar Point yet this year,we figured why not give it a try!  We’re hoping my wife’s friends were right and all the rides have  unusually short lines!  If the rides do have short lines, we should be able to ride more of the rides that we want to ride, effectively giving us more bang for our buck.  Of course the “bang” reference is also do to the fact that at 10:30 pm EST, they are also going to fire off fireworks.

Never heard of “Cedar Point”?

Cedar Point is an amusement park that is known for its large roller coasters.  It’s much more of an adrenaline kind of park than an amusement park like Disney World.  Most of the middle states in the US, know about this amusement park and frequently go there in the summer.

Cedar Point Dragster

 

Hope you (and my family too) have a great Fourth of July!

MR