Tag Archives: Costs

Frugal Sins Of A Personal Finance Blogger

by

I’m consider myself a Frugal Blogger, and I am mostly, but I have my frugal sins that I commit.  And now, I would like to confess some of them, please try not to hate me!  (lol)

Frugal Sin #1:

I’m like Neo in “The Matrix” when it comes to not following David Bach’s “the latte factor” advice, …the rules do not apply to me!  Or at least you would think that is what I believe.  I have a McDonalds latte at least 4 days out of the week.  On top of McDonald’s latte’s, at least four times a month, I sneak in a Starbucks latte in too!  I also go to the local cafe shop and drink a few of their lattes per month.

This sin cost me about $15.00 extra a week, ($60.00 monthly).

Frugal Sin #2:

I’m currently not carpooling!  I have a buddy at work  that I’m sure I could carpool with again (we have in the past, when gas prices went over $3.00 a gallon), but I enjoy my alone time driving to work too much to give it up.  When I drive with my buddy, I feel like I have to entertain him, but I like listening to audiobooks, music, NPR, and other things.  Sometimes I even think about blogging topics.

This sin also cost me an another $15 dollars to my weekly expenses ($60 monthly).

Frugal Sin #3:

And what may be the most outragious sin of all… We still have a landline phone!  We have 2 cell phones, and a gmail voice account… and yet we still have a landline with Verizon?  My wife wants it just in case we need to call 911, but it’s not really necesary!  I wonder at what point in time, I will start to get embarrassed by the phone?  Maybe when we have company over, I’ll throw a blanket over our landline phones, or will I grab them and throw them in the utility room?  Oh the shame…

This sin also cost me an another $6 dollars to my weekly expenses ($24 monthly).

So my frugal sins only cost me almost $150 dollar a month, but still that’s $150 dollars that I could be saving for investments!

Please don’t tell my mom…

Would you like to confess some of your frugal sins here?  I think you’ll feel better if you put those nasty sins out on the table and in the open!

-MR

Beware of Electric Vampires In Your House

by

My computers suck… literally!

At one time, I use to have up to 6 computers plugged into power strips sucking electricity nonstop.  Looking back, now I realize what a needless waste of money that was.  By my calculations, I was probably wasting $25 to $30 extra per month on them sitting doing nothing.  What many people don’t realize, is that when the screensaver shutdown mode is on, the computer is still pulling the same amount of energy as if a user was surfing like usual.

Here are my calculations for my computers:

Computer Mode Watts Used per Month Cost per Month
Standby 17280 $2.22
On/Screen Save On 223200 $28.63
Total Cost per Month———-> $30.85
  • Notes about the table above…
  • I’m using a 12 cents per kilowatt hour cost base for electricity.
  • I made my numbers conservative (I didn’t include monitor electric usage).
  • I used the following site to figure most of the math for my calculations above: michaelbluejay.com.

I didn’t include any other appliances that are draining electricity in standby mode, like TVs, DVD/VCRs, home entertainment systems, etc…

Now that I have wised up, I only have 1 desktop computer on full time, and 2 desktop computers in power save mode (oh well, at least that’s a little better…).  If you have any computers that are on and not doing anything useful, it might be worth your while to turn them off.

Don

Forget the Economy, I’m going to Disneyland

by

Well, actually I’m going to Disney World, but hey… close enough!

Disney's Cinderella's Castle

Disney's Cinderella's Castle

WOW, I really underestimated the costs that are involved with a Disney vacation in Florida! I thought the trip would cost around $2,500.  It turns out that booking the tickets, flight and dinning plan has a price tag of $4,500!  Ouch! I’m sure the final cost will be closer to $5,000 dollars 🙁

I don’t like spending that much money!  But with my son approaching double digits in age (he’s 9), we figured we should go now while he is still young enough to enjoy it with us.  This might be the last trip to Disney we take, it really depends on how much the kids enjoy it.  But with a price tag that will approach $5,000, I’d rather use the money towards a good quality, used car 3 years from now.

On the new experiences side of the trip: The flight to Florida will be my daughter’s first ride on a jet.  Also, this will be the first time we’ve went on a vacation with friends instead of our family.

How am I paying for this?  I’m charging this trip to my credit card.  But wait, I’m not going over to the dark side of financial balance sheet!  I will pay this trip off next month!  We are just using the credit card for convenience, and the reward points.  This will be the most money I have ever spend on vacation.

This is one of those life balance milestones, that I can now check it off of the “need to do at least once” list…  Disney will be a great memory for kids, and I’ll make sure plenty of pictures will be taken.

-MR

Yearly Cost of Owning Pets

by

Today, I’m sitting down to calculate the cost of owning my pets.

I’m not including any cost like worm pills for the dog, vet visits or grooming expenses.

We currently have 1 dog (a chocolate lab), 1 cat, 2 hamsters and 1 1/2 fish.  With the fish, sometimes we get new ones when the fish dies and sometimes we don’t, thus the 1 1/2 number…  We really like having pets, but they do require a lot of work (I hate cleaning cages) and if you add up the cost per years, it’s ends up being a little over $1,000 dollars.

Obviously, the most expensive pet for us is our dog.  She eats about 1 bag of dog food a month (@ $45 per bag).  We got unlucky with our dog because she has a food allergy that requires us to spend $45 per bag.  Our cat goes through about 1 bag of cat food every 3 months (@ 10 per bag).  Cat litter usually runs about $12 a month.  The cost of the hamsters and fish pale in comparison to the dog and cat from a food perspective.  But the hamsters do require frequent bedding changes (once a week, but we stretch it to 2 weeks).  So the bedding cost for a hamster usually runs about $5 per month.   The fish cost about $3 a year. 

When we go on vacation, we only board up the dog.  We get away with the cat because we bring out extra litter pan for her, and she use all 3 until we return.  Note, we only take 1 week vacation, 2 weeks and we’d have a problem…

Yearly Pet Costs    
  Food Cat Litter Boarding Bedding
Dog 540 0 180 10
Cat 40 144 0 0
Hamster 40   0 60
Fish 1 0 0 2
      Total Cost: $1,017
  *bedding for the fish is water changes

 

My kids really enjoy there pets though, so for the time being, this is an expense that I can’t get out of. 

If you do want a pet, that isn’t expensive, fish are the way to go.  We currently have 2 beta fish, and they are both pretty and easy maintenance.

-D