Welcome to another “Tuesday Tip Jar” where I will share awesome savings and financial tips as I find them. I might not have something for you every Tuesday, but when I do, you’ll find it here!
If you’ve got a financial tip you think others would benefit from, please send it to me via my contact page at the top of the blog!
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Quick Tip Jar Follow-Up: A few weeks back I posted about a government run service that allowed you to search for and reclaim lost money. At the time I was somewhat skeptical, but today I got two checks in the mail for both of my claims!
So if you’re in need of a bit of extra cash (or even if you aren’t), go read that post and find out if you have missing money owed to you. All the credit goes to David Bach and his readers for turning me on to this rad site!
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Today’s “tip” is going to be a bit odd in that I haven’t actually even fully tried it out to see if it works yet as well as I hope it will. Here’s the story:
Part of the lesson my wife and I have learned being in debt is that we never want our children to find themselves in this kind of situation. While the goal is to be able to help them financially one day if needed, we’d very much prefer to instead just simply teach them how to never need help!
Part of this lesson comes in the form of teaching them to invest their money, and so I’ve been on the hunt for a good investment app that frankly skews a bit towards kids. Now obviously kids can’t go around buying stock in Starbucks or Tesla, and they need a parent or some other adult to do it for them. So you need what is called a “Custodial Account” where an adult buys the stock for the kid and helps them build a portfolio, and then when the kid turns 18, they get the investments turned over to them.
Kind of like the nerdiest beer purchase for underage kids of all time.
But not all apps allow for this, and the ones that do are often so dry that your average kid isn’t going to be interested in paying attention to their cold design. So I started asking around and doing some research, and it shook out to 3 frontrunners…
The analogy I use is this: Let’s say you’ve gone and purchased yourself a pet gorilla… as people often do. Years of work have gotten you to a point where the gorilla will even let you put a pink dress on it and have pretend tea parties together...
Starting Credit Card Debt (01.01.19): $126,310.77 Current Credit Card Debt: $108,870.87 Total Paid Off: $17,439.90 Income Going to Savings: 2%
Being in debt has been incredibly stressful on me and my family. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my debt, and frankly there are times when it crosses my mind several times per hour.
I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but it’s all I can do to keep exercising and meditating daily just to keep my heart from exploding clean out of my chest at times!
The stress has lifted a bit now that we’ve regained some control and have our monthly bills covered. [Note: We started close to $4,000 upside down every month!] I’ve also got everything set up to auto-pay now, so nothing is late and no late charges are assessed and for the most part we can cover everything each month.
The problem is that it leaves us with almost nothing to put aside. On some months I can spare a couple hundred bucks to toss into savings, but until we get some things paid off later in the year with a bonus and some vesting stock, we’re in a literal paycheck-to-paycheck cycle right now.
The analogy I use is this: Let’s say you’ve gone and purchased yourself a pet gorilla… as people often do. Years of work have gotten you to a point where the gorilla will even let you put a pink dress on it and have pretend tea parties together.Read More »
If you are enjoying what you read, please help me out and share it!
Welcome to another “Tuesday Tip Jar” where I will share awesome savings and financial tips as I find them. I might not have something for you every Tuesday, but when I do, you’ll find it here!
Starting Credit Card Debt (01.01.19): $126,310.77 Current Credit Card Debt: $109,070.87 Total Paid Off: $17,239.90 Income Going to Savings: 2%
When people ask me what two skills on this planet I am probably the worst at, my answer is as follows:
Investing Money
Archery
So I figure it only makes sense that my favorite app for investing money is one named after a fabled deadeye archer, Robin Hood.Read More »
If you are enjoying what you read, please help me out and share it!
You don’t have to spend every dime you make, and if you invest wisely enough you won’t have to worry later in life about making every dime that you want to spend.
Starting Debt (01.01.19): $124,310.77 Current Debt: $107,793.15 Total Paid Off: $16,517.62 Income Going to Savings: 1%
I was probably a spoiled kid.
Both my Mother and Father grew up with next to nothing. They lived humble lives in very rural environments, and they learned to work hard and make their own way in this world.
I was born into modest settings as well. Not long after birth, my father bought a piece of dirt and put a double-wide trailer on it. He had just started a trucking business, and took out two loans to pay for a new home for his family.
Hold up for a second…
There is the making of a really good country song in that paragraph. You’ve got trucks, a double-wide, and dirt. If I can figure out a way to retroactively add a rodeo in there, Garth Brooks has his new smash hit!
Anyway…
In my early years, we didn’t have much. However by the time I hit around 11 or 12 years of age, my Dad was making a pretty good living, and our quality of life improved dramatically. I had more junk than the average kid, and if there was something I asked my parents for, I usually had it in a relatively short amount of time.
You can call that spoiled for sure, but I truly believe that because both of my parents had very little growing up, they decided that their kids would never know that feeling of wanting something you couldn’t have. This is a totally understandable frame of mind given their childhoods and while it’s an incredibly wonderful position to be in when you’re a kid, what they didn’t realize by giving us everything they wanted is that they weren’t ever allowing us to get a taste of the struggle that they went through.
If I wanted a new toy (I was a big Transformers nerd), my parents didn’t say, “Well then save your money up and go buy your little Optavius Prime Rib then!” Instead they just bought it for me. As a teenager I didn’t have to save for my own car, instead they just bought me one. I didn’t have to pay insurance for it either. Hell, I didn’t even have to pay for my own gas!
Now let’s just record scratch this blog post for one second and make something very clear: I’m not for one moment blaming my current financial situation on the fact that my parents treated me awesome as a kid! I had it really well, and I totally get that.
My point is that I spent a good portion of my young life being trained that if I wanted a thing, I got that thing… and usually right away.
So now I move out on my own, and I get married, and guess what? It turns out all of those things cost money when you don’t have parents to give them to you!
Not only did I have to pay for all of the fun things, but I actually had to pay for really lame stuff too like electricity and food. OH AND GET THIS… I had to actually pay for the GAS IN MY CAR!
The reality of this set in, and I couldn’t cope. I still wanted to have fun stuff and I wanted to have it now. So I started taking out credit cards, and lots of them. I didn’t actually save for anything, but instead just took out high-interest loans and bought the stuff I wanted instantly. It was really easy!
We know that old Garth Brooks smash hit. I won’t sing it again… for now.
So as part of this journey out of debt, my wife and I have decided to help educate our children on what we’re learning as well. This means that my kids will be opening savings accounts, and that we’re actually going to ask them to save for things they want.
As an example, my son recently decided that he “needs” a cell phone. With our cell plan, we get a third line for free and can get a heavy discount on a phone. So we told him that if he saves for the phone, he can use the third line. He’s now putting money aside and meticulously tracking it so that he can purchase the phone.
I’ve also told him that a portion of the money he saves must go into a separate savings account or he can use it (with my help) to purchase some shares in companies when he saves enough. The point is that this percentage doesn’t get used for things like phones or other “necessities.”
My daughter is a bit younger and isn’t on the hunt for anything quite as extravagant as a cell phone, but she’s saving money too and will also be buying some shares of her own.
I want to slowly but surely engrain in my children the importance of saving money. You don’t have to spend every dime you make, and if you invest wisely enough you won’t have to worry later in life about making every dime that you want to spend.
Fellow parents, please keep this in mind as you raise your kids. Just because you can buy them lots of stuff doesn’t mean you should.
If you are enjoying what you read, please help me out and share it!
Starting Debt (01.01.19): $124,310.77 Current Debt: $107,793.15 Total Paid Off: $16,517.62
I’ve seen a person’s ego aid in accomplishing some seriously amazing things. After all, it’s ego that makes someone say, “I don’t care if you think I’m short! I’ll be famous one day or my name isn’t Tom Cruise!”
Ego can also cause a buttload of issues.
Ego is the thing that makes you see your buddy with the hot new 55″ 4K TV and want one. It’s also the thing that makes you walk into Best Buy, see that exact same 55″ 4K TV right next to the even larger65″ 4K TV and think, “Oh man… my friends are going to be so jealous of this!”
You didn’t even need all 55 inches to begin with (do we really need to see all of the pores on Conan O’Brien’s nose?), and then you went beyond that and bought the one you really didn’t need. Most likely on credit.
Maybe it’s not TVs for you. Maybe it’s clothes, or action figures, or art, or wine or whatever. The point is that we all have that thing that makes our ego perk up and tempt us to spend.
Good Ego: Michael Jordan wanting the ball on the last play of a tied ball game in the final game of the NBA Finals.
Bad Ego: Me buying a 3D TV and surround sound audio system to watch the NBA Finals.
Good Ego: A doctor telling the President of the United States that she can and will operate on him to successfully remove his brain tumor.
Bad Ego: Me buying a piece of the deceased President’s tumor on eBay for far too much money and then spending even more on the display case to house it in, just to show it off to my friends each time they visit.
Good Ego: Eddie Van Halen sharing one of his groundbreaking guitar solos, without a shred of nerves, while standing in front of 50,000 screaming fans.
Bad Ego: Me taking out a Guitar Center credit card so that I can buy Eddie’s signature guitar thinking that at the age of 40 that has been the missing piece up to this point that has been standing between me and rock stardom.
Yes, I get that I made a Michael Jordan and Eddie Van Halen reference in the same post. I’m old. Deal with it.
What I learned the hard way is that this is all just junk. I wind up watching most sporting events on my phone because I’m sitting sideline at one of my kid’s soccer games (I can multitask!), and I haven’t used the 3D on that TV in at least 2 years. That guitar still doesn’t sound the way it does when Eddie plays his, and it never will. It’s also really dusty because I never play it… because it doesn’t sound like Eddie for some reason.
And that brain piece in the jar? I’m pretty sure it was just a piece of old cheese.
I bought a really nice muscle car. It’s a Dodge Challenger with more engine than I’ll ever need, and it sounds like it’s grinding up chainsaws when you rev it up. Friends called it a mid-life-crisis purchase, and they’re probably not wrong, but man is it a great car.
Today while driving to work though, I had epiphany. Think about how many people you pass in their cars on a daily basis. Some of those cars are pretty average. Some are pretty junky. 1 or 2 might be AMAZING.
But you know what?
You still forget them all. Even if you happen to remember the Lamborghini you saw parked in front of the Pizza Hut on 3rd St for an extra day or two, you certainly know nothing about the driver.
Now take your friends. We all have friends with nice cars. We all have friends with very vanilla daily drivers, and we ALL have that 1 friend who has the old crappy beat up car with the chip wrappers and old coffee cups littering the floor, the missing headlamp cover, the tattered dreamcatcher hanging from the review mirror, and the beer tap for a shifter knob. That car is a piece of junk.
And yet we’re still friends with that person. Some of us are best friends with them. What they drive means nothing to us at all.
The excitement of showing a new car off to your friends lasts about a week, and then you’re the same “dumbass” they have made fun of for as long as you’ve known them. Is it really that much better to hear, “Hey nice car, dumbass.”?
The only reason I bought my car was ego. I’ve had that car for several years now, and nobody in my family or circle of friends ever gives it a second look. And remember what I said about the cars you pass on the road? Nobody remembers my Dodge Challenger or any of the other dozen they might see that day.
Egos can make us do great things, but they can also makes us do really foolish things as well. Keep yours in check if you can, and your bank account will thank you.
And pick those damn chip wrappers up off of the floor of your car!
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Digging Out with Dave Johnson 