Living a Life of Payments
How many of you have said “I’m always going to have a car (or credit card, or student loan) payment”? Ten years ago, I was definitely one of those people, and I know a number in my family still think that way, and I’m sure some friends and other associates do as well. Even if it’s not in the forefront of your mind, you may not be able to imagine your life without a payment, even including a mortgage payment.
Basically, for most of us, we CAN live a life without payments, even if we’re earning barely more than minimum wage. You may not like what you hear, and it probably won’t work in all situations. For example, I can imagine a single parent with multiple kids barely making it by paycheck to paycheck or on government assistance aren’t really able to do much with their finances, but this article isn’t necessarily to cover those situations yet. But for others, we can look back upon what years of financial and frugality blogs have been telling you.
The main tenets for living a life WITHOUT payments
I’m sorry about how simple these sound, but you’ll also recognize how difficult they are to implement into your lives and finances:
10 Car Shopping Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
As you know, I love cars, yet I’m trying to force myself not to get a new one (I’m slowly losing the battle though). As part of my love for cars, I subscribe to a number of car mags and numerous car blogs. Every so often, I’ll also peruse books and other publications for information. Back in 2005, Consumer Reports published a book called Smart Buyer’s Guide to Buying or Leasing a Car. They compiled a list of common car shopping mistakes and a few ways to avoid them. Since I have fallen for a few of these, I’d like to share them with you and comment on them from my own experience:
Falling in love with a model
No, I’m not talking about Heidi Klum; I’m talking about becoming so focused on a single brand or model that you become biased for that model or against any other model. Buying the car of your dreams is nice, but make sure that reality lives up to your dreams. Quite often, they don’t match up. For example, my wife loves MINI Coopers and has stated she never wants another type of car again. That’s great that she LOVES her car, but the reality is MINI is on the bottom of the reliability list, and if we didn’t have the extended warranty or maintenance plan, we’d have spent a couple grand right out of the gate with our most recent MINI (bought used in 2010).
I hate running. Why do I do it?
I’ll start off by saying I use to be a cute skinny kid up until the age of about 5 or 6 years old. Blame it on TV or moving back to PA with my Gram and her Italian cooking (“You have to eat everything on your plate!”) or my own lack of self-control (probably more of the last one), but I became the heaviest kid from probably 1st through 12th grade, excluding the heavyweights on the football offensive line. I was fat, and I knew it and was picked on for it for all of my childhood and some of college (I put an end to that quickly, but that’s another story).
So, needless to say, I was a pretty inactive kid. Sure, I had a city playground literally in my backyard, but I preferred to stay inside and read books and play video games. My parents tried to get me active by enrolling me in Karate, Wrestling, Baseball (which is NOT an active sport!) and Football. The first two just weren’t my style, although I did win a couple wrestling trophies, but that’s because the other team had to forfeit that weight category 
I did do pretty well in baseball, but never got past minor league. Plus, my weight and playing catcher didn’t work out together and I suffer a weird-looking knee to this day. I couldn’t keep up with the running in high school football compared to the 4 years of football before, so I dropped out and became the waterboy. It was embarrassing, but I was used to the abuse by then. I hated running and would do anything I could to get out of it, including faking injuries.
Financial Failures and Money Saving Auto Repairs Not to Do Yourself
(Guest Post by Heather C. Stephens)
You know that pit in your stomach feeling you get when you’ve been hit with an unexpected car repair? You don’t have the money to fix it, but you’ve absolutely got to have a car to get to work? Add to it that you’ve been working arduously to pay off your credit card debt, so charging is not an option. What do you do? If you’re like me, you try do to it yourself. Sometimes it works…this time it didn’t.
Read on to hear how I turned a money-saving DIY auto repair failure into an opportunity to realize my financial success with a little inspiration from a post I read on Budgets are Sexy.
Here’s the story…
I’m a girl who’s not afraid to pick up a tool and attempt to fix something myself. My dad was a stickler for teaching us girls the practical things in life we may need to know someday. For the most part it’s served me well, although sometimes my confidence trumps my skill.
I can’t cook to save myself, but I love to save money when I can fix things by myself. I’ve been known to rewire part of our 85 year old home, fix the washer and dryer while my husband was out of town, sweat pipes, remodel a bathroom, etc.
I started saving for a car, then…
I always have to repeat this for new or one-time readers, but I’m a car nut. If it has 4 wheels, I have an opinion on it, and there’s a good chance I’ve considered buying one.
So, needless to say, I’ve been saving up for a “new” car (to me, new might mean brand new or used), whether as a replacement for my 2006 Honda Ridgeline truck (almost 90,000 miles) or a second “fun” car. We do our banking at ING Direct (post a comment if you want to get $25 for opening a new account and I’ll email you privately), mostly because I got money for opening the account, rates were MUCH MUCH higher than my BoA savings account, which is long closed, and I can open new “sub-accounts” easily for specific savings goals.
I had sub-accounts for Emergency, Travel, Car and Home, and was plunking random amounts into each as I had extra money after each pay. The amounts were getting so high, especially my car account, that I was wondering when I should stop saving versus when I should buy something. I won’t say how much I saved, but it was enough to pay cash for a brand new, fully-loaded compact of some sort.
Trying some new gadgets to help “Manscaping”
Thanks to whatever genes I inherited, I’m a hairy man. Unfortunately, though, that hair doesn’t necessarily translate to my head as I’m also balding. Luckily I’m already married cause my chances in “the wild” would be severely reduced unless I had one heck of a personality! There’s some debate about my personality…
So anyway, Norelco contacted me to see if I wanted to get a couple of gadgets they’re promoting for hair trimming/shaving. Since I cut my own hair, and have tried a variety of shaving techniques including wet shaving, I knew this was the promotion for me.
What did Norelco want me to try?
1. The Philips Norelco 3d Electric Shaver
2. The Philips Norelco Do-It-Yoursel Hair Clipper
I couldn’t turn down free stuff, but I warned them my only other experience with an electric razor, about 15 years ago, wasn’t good. It left me razor-burned and took too much time. Would this experience, with a razor costing almost $200 ($150 right now on Amazon) be any different? Can it supplant the good old Fusion razor as my preferred shaving instrument? And what about the hair clipper? Why do I need something different than the $40 kit I bought at Kohl’s, or even the $20 kits they have at Walmart?
Clever Dude and his bride started with $500k in debt and in just 4 years, it's down to $300k!