Sustain Yourself: Stop Smoking

If there is one thing that I find amazing, it’s watching old tv shows. You may wonder why, but here me out on this. Occasionally my wife likes to watch sex and the city, and I sometimes watch it with her. It’s not the acting or anything like that I find fascinating, its the fact that they are basically chain smoking through the entire series!

I seriously can not believe it. Everyone on the show is smoking all the time (filming started around 2000 I believe).

Now, I cant think of a tv show where anyone smokes as consistently as they did, nor as frequently. It seems to have fallen out of favor just as much with the general public over the last 15 years as well – no one seems to smoke anymore.

Quite a few good reasons to as well

  • It’s bad for your health – It will literally kill you. Enough said
  • It’s expensive – They tax the hell out of cigarettes, and no one cares but smokers. They typically dont have the votes to beat it back though, and they pay for it. I think in some of the higher tax states (NY) they pay over $7 per pack! and some people go through one (or more) a day! that’s 50 bucks a week right there.
  • It can lead to other positive life changes – I think this is because people realize that they can take on and accomplish a bit task like this, so they start doing other things as well.

It just really floors me why anyone would still smoke – I honestly dont understand it. I was always taught that it’s a gross habit and never to start, but for people that have started I imagine it’s difficult to quit.

Readers: Do you smoke? If so, how did you get started? If not, Why not? Do you remember what 1 thing led you to decide not to?

Mortgage Payoff

Early in 2014, I looked over our financial plan for the year. Typically, my wife would be included but she’s not real interested in numbers so I tell her what I’m planning to do (increase savings so we can reach X$ in Y account by the end of the year) and she’s asks a few questions, then I apply the goal-o-matic and at the end of the year we are where we need to be. It’s a nice system, and one that has helped me become a much better saver.

See, when I first started trying to save money (in vain) I kept my savings account at the same bank where my checking account was. After I got paid at the beginning of every month when I was in undergrad, I “paid myself first” and transferred some money to my savings account – usually $100 or $150 depending on the month. As you can guess, this didnt work at all. Typically sometime during the month, I’d run low on cash in checking and end up taking the money back out of my savings and putting it into checking. All this robbing of future me took was a few clicks on the computer (and can now be accomplished with a cell phone). Needless to say, this strategy never worked well. I was able to tell myself  was saving, but then still be shocked when the balance was never that high. It was grand! I could rest easy telling myself I was saving, then still have nothing.

After about 4-5 years of this, I finally wised up. I realized that I needed to put some hurdle (any hurdle, really) between me and my savings, so I opened up an account at an online bank. Doing that was just enough to stop me from spending my savings. It took too long to get back to my account, and I’d run the risk of overdrafting if I did it. It put up a simple question between me and whatever I was considering buying when my account was low “Are you interested in paying the $30+ dollars for this because the transfer wont finish on time?” Naturally, the answer was always no, and I started to see balances build in my savings.

After looking at our numbers and projections for 2014, we are going to hit a few important milestones. First of all, we are going to finally slay the last student loan. I upped the payment back to where it was before we got new windows, and if we do nothing the entire year, the balance will be gone (or really close to it) by 12/31/2013. Obviously, if we pay off more each month than what I’ve set up the auto payment as, that loan will be gone even sooner. The goal is to get rid of that as quickly as possible, then move our debt repayment energy elsewhere.

One of the first things that I thought about moving the cash that we will have in 2015 into is the emergency fund. Again though, I upped the amount going to this account every month and now we will likely hit our target number (10k) by the end of the year as well. H and I decided that once we hit 10k, we’d stop the majority of the contributions to the account (but still contribute a small amount monthly) until we hit 12k, then cease contributions all together. Back of the envelope numbers are suggesting that we will hit the 10k mark either late 2014 or early 2015, depending on how quickly the student loan payment goes away and gets redirected as well.

So for now, H and I are going to think about where to go after this year. Do we want to pay off our house as quickly as possible? It’s got a 3.375% interest rate and we’ve got ~50% Loan to Value ratio at this point, after all of our upgrades and payments made over the past 18 months. The rate is low and we would most likely do better long term elsewhere, but it would be a huge cash flow bonus to be totally debt free (it’s almost 33% of our non savings/non investment budget per month). Should we work on acquiring more assets, either rental properties or equities? Should we focus on continuing to expand our passive cash flow?

Thankfully, we dont have to decide right away, as all this magic will take 12 months. I bet they will fly by, but they will still be crazy and we will need to keep this in the back of our heads all year long.

Readers: What is your financial situation going to be at the end of 2014? What are you looking forward to accomplishing and what are you hoping to achieve? More importantly, how do you plan to get there?

Homemade Dryer Sheets

dryersheet

Earlier this week, I sent out an email to the list and talked about what I was going to start the year off here at SLB. I got some difficult personal stuff out of the way early, but I promised them that I would fill out a few of my most popular posts. If you’re not signed up for the email list, sign up here (I promise not to spam you because I hate people that do that shit). One of the first things that I thought that I’d do some follow up posts and show you how to do the ultimate DIY/Green your laundry room. No more weird things getting into your clothes, like Quaternary Acrylate Polymer (ingredient in most fabric softeners that rhyme with muggle) or Quaternary Ammonium Compound (in the aforementioned softener). Since I got tired of that stuff that I hardly know what goes in there, I created my  homemade fabric softener.

Jeff’s Note: Let me be the first to say that I know you wont get rich doing this (but I will, jk). Sure, you’re saving a bit of money and it all adds up, but if you’re just starting to right the ship your time would be better spent by tackling some of your high recurring bills, such as your cell phone or internet. Those could yield 750+ worth of savings per year, while this will be something like $50.

All that being said, I do this because it’s fairly easy to accomplish while watching tv, it saves a bit of money, and I dont put a bunch of weird stuff on my clothes while they are in the dryer. I also get to become a little bit more self reliant.

In the interest of focus, not long after that, I looked for more ways to green up the laundry room at our house and make it more sustainable and DIY. The cost is lower, it’s better for the earth and it doesnt have names that I couldn’t pronounce (even with college chemistry). My next logical step was homemade dryer sheets. In addition to the fact that dryer sheets are used in the same room and for the same reason (essentially) as fabric softener. They are both used to soften and make your clothes smell good, and they are both used constantly and kind of expensive! I got a little tired of paying the money and a little tired of the weird stuff that they put on dryer sheets (like Dipalmethyl Hydroxyethylammoinum Methosulfate). I cant say that either, so I decided to craft something a bit closer to what Im familiar with (and a lot cheaper too!)

My Recipe for Homemade Dryer Sheets

You will need:

  • Cloth pieces (I used an old t-shirts)
  • 8 drops Essential Oils (I like tea tree and lavender)
  • 1/2 cup Vinegar

The first thing that I do for my homemade dryer sheets is get the base for the sheets. There are a lot of suggestions to go out and buy things, but what I would do if I were you is to use some old t-shirt scraps like me that have been turned into rags. To do this, I start with a tshirt that is no longer wearable in public and cut the sleeves off. Once the sleeves are off, I cut the shirts into about 4″x4″ squares (and the sleeves in half). Once I have the sheets that I’ll be using (don’t worry, they are reusable) I get to making the soaking mixture.

Shirt

This is the t-shirt before I started cutting it up. It was kind of a sad day getting rid of this, since it was something that I got in high school (I’m 28)

Shirt After Cutting

Here are the shirts after they’ve been cut up. Since I used a quart mason jar, I had to cut these in half again. I ended up throwing the shirt collar and sleeves into the rag bin since there was not enough room in the mason jar to hold all the scraps that I created.

The next thing that you do is to take a resealable container (I use a mason jar) and add 8 drops of tea tree oil, 8 drops of a scented oil of your choice (I like lemon oil, orange oil or lavender, sandalwood is good too, if you’re a guy). Once I’ve added my essential oils, I add a half cup of vinegar, then i put all my cloths into the mason jar. That’s it!

IMG_20140130_184901013

Here is the final product. I forgot to take a picture after I mixed the vinegar and oil in, and before I put what will become the dryer sheets in there.

Now, a few usage notes:

  • These things can build a lot of static electricity, you should consider putting 1-2 safety pins on each dryer sheets to reduce the static while your clothes are in the dryer
  • Ring your cloths out before you put them in the dryer
  • Once the sheets are done in the dryer, put them back in your resealable container and  prep them for later use. My system is to put old cloths in one side and pull new cloths out of the other side.
  • If your container does not have adequate liquid to soak the cloths you put in it, double my recipe (use 1 cup vinegar and 16 drops of each of your essential oils).

This is the second in the series of how to keep your laundry room sustainable. If you missed the homemade fabric softener, check it out here. You can do all this stuff and keep it cheap – the main ingredient is vinegar!

January 2014 Monthly Review

This month H and I finally decided that if we wanted her to stay home with our daughter (still undecided) that we would need to live off of one income and bank the other. We gave it a trial run for this month, and aside from doctor bills that we paid related to our now deceased son, everything went well. We lived on a fairly low amount (subtracting savings) and still had a pretty enjoyable month.

I didnt get an elk this year, but H’s dad did, and since I helped him pull it out (~4 miles) he gave me quite a bit of it, which was really nice. We were running low on meat since I’ve had an awful hunting season. I’ll be spending quite a bit of time coming up here processing all of that.

House

Mortgage $111,993  (-551).  Just the normal payment here. This note goes down by about 550/mo, which for now is acceptable. H and I talked about goals and savings for 2014 and once we meet our emergency fund goals, we can start paying this down more aggressively.

Student Loan

Great Lakes Loan $ 6,211   (-$169) After talking with H, we decided to get rid of this last bit of non-mortgage debt. I bumped up the auto-pay to $400/mo, and if things go well with our increased savings goals, may make it $500 per month.

Total Debt: $ 118,204

Savings

I’ve decided to add our savings accounts to the mix. Currently, We have 4, and I have a Roth IRA. Both H and I (s0rt of) expect to get pensions if we stay with our current employers and retire with them. That being said, I’m not really one to trust all that, so we are looking at having a significant nest egg when we do end up retiring. We keep our savings accounts with capital one 360. We’ve used an online bank for over 5 years, and have had no problems with the at all. They pay the best (meager) rates of all the accounts we’ve found, so if you’re interested in getting a bit better rate, sign up with capital one now.

Kid Savings $6,077 (+$254) – This account is for expenses incurred related to the birth of our daughter. Honestly, I dont really know when to stop contributing to this account and move those contributions elsewhere, so for now this is going to continue at this level (or more, I may have bumped it up earlier this year)

House $1,525 (+$175) – This was probably the biggest loser (and the only loser) during the savings reshuffle. I knocked $50 per month off the contributions to this account, because right now we really are not doing many house projects, and dont have anything big planned (yet anyway). H is talking about finishing the basement, but since she’s pregnant, that means I’ll be doing it. Not sure when i’ll make time for that.

Emergency Fund $5,708 (+107) – This was one of the big winners when I redid our savings levels and withdraw rates at the beginning of the year. I increased contributions to this by 3x. Once this gets to 10-12k, we will call this done, and start directing funds to

Vacation $176 (+25) – Savings account for vacations – it grows very slowly at the moment, and when we went to alaska, it was fairly depleted. This was another big winner, with the contributions to this account increasing by 5x. Hopefully, it will grow fast, but given the fact that we have a child on the way, we probably wont be tapping this anytime soon.

Health

This is going pretty good. I’ve been getting back into going to the gym after taking most of december off, and I’ve really started getting better at eating better. Something that I’ve always tried, and pretty much failed at wholesale. Soon, I’m going to do a whole30 challenge. I’m looking forward to the results from that to see where to take it in the future. I’ll start writing about the challenge, the parameters and why I’m doing it in the future (I’ll be starting in the middle of next month)

New Mortgage Rules Can Make it Tougher to Borrow

Consumer safeguards that went into law in January of 2014 make it harder for mortgage companies to get away with sketchy and predatory lending practices. That is good news for consumers and big news from the federal watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The regulations contain many long-overdue changes meant to curb a repeat of the recent housing crisis and mortgage industry meltdown.

What is not being discussed very much by the media, however, is that tighter underwriting standards also create hurdles for some borrowers. Those who used to be able to qualify for mortgages when lending policies were more lenient may be denied under the stricter guidelines. “No documentation” loans are now illegal, for instance, and lenders can no longer qualify a borrower for a loan based on the low monthly payments offered by special “teaser” introductory rates that later expire.

Tougher Loan Application Criteria

From now on, most banks will be instituting underwriting rules based on what the feds call a “Qualified Mortgage,” or QM, and if you don’t qualify you won’t receive a loan. That’s true whether you find a great deal on a property or you just want to avoid throwing money down the drain to pay for rent. Those who want to refinance an existing mortgage to secure a lower interest rate or pay off a nagging home equity loan will likely face tougher QM criteria.

QM Criteria Highlights

  • Points and fees have to be 3% or less of the total loan amount, although higher thresholds may be allowed for loans less than $100,000.
  • Negative amortization is prohibited, as are interest-only loans and loans that include large balloon payments.
  • The maximum loan term for a QM is 30 years – which eliminates the 40-year loans borrowers have been using to lower their monthly payments.
  • The debt-to-income ratio of the borrower must be 43% or less (with some special and rare exceptions). That means that the total cost of your monthly mortgage payment and other fixed debts like car loans cannot exceed 43% of your gross monthly income.

QM Promises Protection for Banks

Since the QM is now the new “gold standard” by which the CFPB will judge the ethical and professional behavior of lenders, those lenders who fail to meet that standard open themselves up to liability and investigation. Banks do not want to get into legal trouble and be accused of predatory lending practices, and lenders that meet the QM underwriting standards are promised protection from legal challenges related to those mortgages.

Although instituting the criteria of a qualified mortgage as defined by the CFPB is voluntary, most lenders began to make changes to their underwriting to meet this higher standard as soon as it was unveiled. Consumers should expect that even though the QM is not the rule of law it will still be followed by virtually every mortgage lender. That sets the bar higher for borrowers who need to anticipate the additional restrictions they will have to overcome in order to take out a loan in the new QM category.

Your Credit Union May Offer Fewer Mortgages

Credit unions, which are run as nonprofit institutions, are typically much smaller than banks and have fewer resources to help implement these kinds of changes. Credit unions asked for a delay in implementation of the new CFPB rules for that reason, and now many of them are even considering eliminating mortgages from their product inventory. Half of the credit unions surveyed last fall by a credit union trade association were still deciding whether they would write only QM mortgages, only non-QM mortgages, or some of each. Some credit unions are expected to simply stop offering mortgage products and services until they are able to sort out their options and come into full QM compliance.

Credit unions have, for the most part, never offered exotic and hazardous loans – and have always maintained underwriting policies that don’t let borrowers take out loans they cannot afford. Credit unions traditionally have stronger guidelines regarding debt to income ratios, for example, to ensure that consumers don’t borrow loans they cannot repay. As nonprofits, they exist for the sake of their customers and that’s why credit unions are a great source of affordable loans with fewer fees and lower interest rates. If they stop making mortgage loans that is bad news for the consumer.

How to Improve Your Chances of Loan Approval

To improve your chances of getting approved for a mortgage that meets the QM criteria, you will need to pay special attention to your debt to income ratio. That means eliminating as much debt as possible from such things like credit cards. The goal when managing plastic is to achieve an excellent credit utilization rate, which is the percentage of the available credit you actually use. Using only a small fraction of what is available helps improve your credit score and helps ensure you are low-risk to borrowers.

Of course you also need to keep an eye on your credit score and the information contained in your credit report. Oftentimes the information in a credit report may be erroneous or outdated, and it takes time to resolve that kind of issue by filing a complaint with the credit reporting agency. Since the process can take several weeks or even a few months to erase the problem, it is always a good idea to start working on your credit profile at least six months before applying for a mortgage or refinance.

Tom Kerr writes for the blog at CompareCards.com in addition to others. He has been an avid writer for years, even winning awards for work he’s done.

Making Saving Easier

Over the weekend, I finally decided that it was time that H and I organized our savings accounts and created a strategy to pay off our remaining debt. We still havent figured out our retirement strategy (yet, but will be talking about that soon). The tough thing about finances is that many of the things that really help (like setting up auto deposit to a savings account) take some time, and many people put them off until later (like me, writing this almost a month into the new year). However, once they are set up, you dont have to think about them again.

Right now, H and I maintain four different savings accounts, each with a separate purpose. We have an emergency fund (1), a savings account for child related expenses (2), one for vacations (3) and finally, an account for house related expenses (4). These accounts help us keep money for specific tasks, but were getting very cumbersome to manage. The automatic transfers were all set up, but were based on when I got paid 2 times per month, as opposed to 1 like I do now. So there were withdraws of different amounts different times of the month, and all in all, there were about 7 transfers over 30 days, for varying amounts (of course).

Since we put most of our spending on a credit card during the month, I always have to make sure to leave enough money in our checking account to cover these withdraws as the month winds down. Each month, I have to add up the amount of each transfer and guesstimate how much will be in the account on that day. I started to get tired of it recently, so decided to change things. I wanted something that was quick, easy and required way less work on my part.

The first thing that I decided was that I wanted the transfers to happen soon after we both get paid (on the 1st) and later than our mortgage payment gets drawn in case something dumb were to happen, I like to make sure that always gets paid. Once I picked a day, I went over the total amounts we were putting into each account and then thought about making adjustments.

Here’s what it looked like:

 

AccountDeposit Amount
Emergency Fund$150
House Fund $275
Baby Fund$300
Vacation Fund$50
Total$775

After looking at the numbers and the total amount we were saving over all the accounts, I compared that with our monthly income and decided that this percentage was a bit too low for my liking.  So now, instead of 7 withdraws from our checking account spaced over the month, there’s 1 withdraw at the beginning  to all 4 accounts, and it looks like this:

AccountTotal
Emergency $300
House$200
Child$300
Vacation$200
Total:1,000

This is going to be much easier to keep track of than multiple different amounts on different days, and it’s also a nice round number that H and I are comfortable with saving each and every month. This is in addition to our retirement contributions, so I think we will be saving money at a pretty healthy rate going forward. Once we get the emergency fund up to about 4 months expenses (somewhere around 12-15k) we are going to stop deposits into that account and redirect the cash elsewhere, though we are not sure where at this point.

Some of this was possible by the reductions we made in key monthly expenses late in 2013, like getting a new internet provider and switching to republic wireless. Those two moves alone saved us ~1,500 per year – something we will happily add to our savings. Next, it’s time for us to get our retirement situation figured out for 2014, and look into life insurance, wills and other documents that would cover us in the event that the unthinkable happens to either (or both) of us, now that we are expecting.

Readers: What savings changes did you make this year?

Baby Update

As a warning, this post is fairly personal (more so than probably any other one on the site). There are no financial tips or ways to save money by going green here. Feel free to skip this article if you wish and we will be back to our normal programming next time.

A few months ago, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with twins. As of that moment, we knew exactly 3 people that were our age with kids (and one of those couples had a 1 month old, another a 8 month old). Needless to say, both of us were pretty unfamiliar with pregnancy and everything that comes along with it. For instance, I still cant comprehend why my wife was sleeping like 14 hours a day during the first trimester, but I’m more familiar with it now. What I really mean is that the while we still cant claim to know everything about pregnancy, we know a lot more than we did when we started (if you’re curious, she’s 26 weeks/6.5 months along as of this writing).

I was excited for a lot of reasons when we found out. I could generate a lot of interesting baby related content for the site, begin a new chapter in my life with my wife by creating a family of our own. We can develop our own traditions for the holidays and experience the joys of raising a family.

One thing that my wife or I did not expect 6 months ago was the emotional roller coaster we had just gotten in line for.

See, when we first found out we were pregnant, I frequently joked with my wife that it was twins (before we found out officially). That ended up being true, and we both were excited. Personally, I was excited because the odds were high that we would be having one child of each gender and they would have a buddy to grow up with.

I was also excited to have a son (and a daughter – but I’m more familiar with a father son relationship) so that I could have a relationship with him similar to what my dad and I had. Playing sports, being outside and sharing a close bond. I could still do all of these with a daughter, but it was exciting to have a son as well.

We went to the 20 week ultrasound (where gender gets confirmed, typically) and the doctors confirmed what we had suspected. Unfortunately, the excitement that I had about having a son lasted for all of an hour. After the ultrasound lady left, my wife said

“I wonder if she found anything wrong she would tell you, or if she tells the doctor and has them look at it first”

I of course wasn’t sure, so I simply said “Well, we are going to find out soon enough” – not really thinking that we had anything to worry about. I was simply commenting on the fact that we were soon going to figure out the process. Well, soon the doctor came in and a black cloud rolled over the pregnancy.

The ultrasound lady found some “abnormalities” with the baby boy, and the doctor was there to take a look and let us know what she thought. I was shocked initially, and listened to what the doctors said. Then I was crushed. They told us they thought a few things were wrong, and that we needed to go down to a hospital in Denver for further testing. As soon as we got home from the doctor, my wife and I went and searched for some of the different conditions that the doctors mentioned, and then sat down and told each other what we thought. At this point, my hopes were not high but we decided that we would hold off on doing anything else until we got an official diagnosis from the doctors down in Denver.

The trip to Denver came about 1 week later, and my wife and I were pretty nervous (and personally, I was not very hopeful). We left Wyoming early, and spent a grand total of 12 hours (or so) at the hospital. We met with cardiologists, perinatologists, geneticists, fetal care specialists and a whole bunch more people.

Even though H and I were as prepared as possible for bad news, I think we both held out a little hope that the problem would be correctable with surgery (as opposed to chromosomal, which we feared). Each doctor we talked to looked at what they needed to look at, and then we went on to the next doctor. Personally, I just felt like I was going through the motions – I had long ago put together the pieces that the doctors in wyoming told us and came up with a diagnosis. Of course, it goes without saying that I’m clearly not a doctor, but was still fairly confident in what I thought was wrong. As the day wore on, it started to bother me that no one was mentioning it as a possibility (even though I know there was no way to be 100% sure without a genetic test). I knew that the doctors wouldn’t say anything without 100% certainty, and I knew that it could only be gotten with a genetic test, yet still I would get annoyed with them not mentioning it.

Poor H had to undergo all of these tests, ultrasounds and everything, and it was a very long day. Not shockingly, I wasn’t involved much in testing and was the answering questions while discussing genetics and trying to help out my wife as much as possible. Finally, at around 6 pm, the doctors found us a spot to sit and relax (as if we could) and met for a while before delivering their conclusions on the case.

After waiting for around 45 minutes to an hour, we got to meet with all of the doctors and they gave us conclusions. Unfortunately, the results were not pretty. We had begun to suspect that it was a lethal chromosomal abnormality and the doctors did not confirm what we suspected, but confirmed that our son may not live to full term. In the event that he did live to full term, his conditions were so numerous and severe that he would die during birth, or immediately after. Thankfully, H and I didn’t hold out hope that he would be fine, only to have it ruthlessly dashed at the meeting with the doctors.

They sent us back home, and the next day we headed out to visit family for Christmas. Merry Christmas, right?

source: cheezburger

A few days after we got back, we had genetic testing done to confirm what the doctors suspected. The results came back, and it turns out that he had a condition called Patau Syndrome, sometimes called trisomy-13. Basically, there were 47 chromosomes instead of the normal 46 (23 from me, 23 from H), which screwed up development at just about every step of the way. While we initially suspected a duplicate copy of a different chromosome (18), the results were no less bad.

Not long after the amniotic test, we had a follow up visit with the doctor in Wyoming. Unfortunately, during the ultrasound, they were unable to detect a heartbeat for our son. While not unexpected, it’s no less damaging or easier to deal with.

Personally, I am more concerned about what is going to happen to our daughter. Twins share a special (read: weird) bond, and I wonder if she will feel like a part of her is missing growing up. I wonder if I’ll be able to look at her without thinking of the brother she had for a brief time.

Thankfully, the pregnancy isn’t a total loss (as it would have been if there were not twins) but it doesnt make it any easier. For now, my wife and I are just taking it a day at a time, trying as best we can to prepare for the other baby (who is totally healthy) and are looking forward to welcoming her into our family.