What DO We Spend $ On?

Aside from the basic needs, we usually will spend some extra money on footwear. It’s not that I’ll go seeking out a specific brand, it’s just that the really cheap stuff just never seems to fit right or be very comfortable.

I do tend to hang on to shoes and boots for several years, usually until they start falling apart or begin to take on water.

Something I’m having a hard time letting go of are my coats and jackets. I have a black wool dressier coat that is my main winter coat, a light rain coat wind breaker thing I wear a lot, a waterproof winter coat, a Dickey’s work coat, and this green army looking coat. I considered buying one coat that has a fleece jacket inside to get the two in one deal, but I never did it.

I don’t spend extra money on tools, car parts, clothes in general, furniture, electronics, anything really. I think I’ve gotten along just fine not going top shelf. Well, there are a few consumables that we do spend money on. Those are beer, wine, and I have some nice bottles of scotch in the cupboard. I have a plan to cut back on the beer spending because the craft stuff is so damn expensive. I will be saving those for special occasions rather than making it a weekly expense. As for the wine, my wife has been getting boxed wine and it lasts way longer, so you don’t have to pound the bottle in a couple of days. Don’t judge the box, it’s becoming more popular and there is good stuff you can now buy in the box. If it tastes good to you, then it’s good.

We did recently sell all gas powered lawn equipment and replaced it with electric. We started with the snowblower. It was big and heavy, sucked to store, and it seemed like everytime I needed to use it, we were out of gas.  Not to mention, you smelled like an asshole after you used it and it was loud as hell. Well, not anymore!  The Greenworks 80v snowblower only weighs 30lbs and had enough juice to clear our driveway out after a big storm this year. I can fold it up or hang it on the wall too.  Here is Darth Vader and I doing a little demo of it.

The same goes for gas mowers. They suck. We will be getting the Greenworks 80v mower this week that will share the battery with the snowblower.

With this technology being somewhat new, finding used units is very hard. I haven’t found any near me at all, so this time it will have to be new.

Earlier I said I don’t spend extra money tools. Let me clarify that. I have spend a shit load of money on tools, just not more than I needed to. I buy anything I can from Harbor Freight, as long as the online reviews are good. If not there, I’ll look at Amazon. If you were going to bring your car to get the brakes replaced, you’d probably be looking at between $300 and $1000 to get them changed. Why not put that money toward the equipment needed to do it yourself?  Everytime something comes up where I don’t have what it takes to get a job done myself, I make that investment. It is always wayyyy cheaper than paying someone else to do it and you also have the option of recouping some of that money if you decide to sell the item when you’re done with it.

Remember that a lot of outsourcing isn’t necessary with the internet around. Look at it as a task before sending the work off to a “professional.” You might find that it’s not as tough as you think. Have some confidence in yourself and have a back up plan if you do get stuck. This is a huge area of savings that could even turn profitable for you if you end up liking to do the work.

Our biggest money sapper is still food.  We go out more than we should and we could probably cut back on groceries although we have gotten better about buying less and wasting less by going more than once a week.  We get the bare essentials one day then just make trips while were out and about if we end up needing more later in the week.

We will continue to learn from our mistakes. That’s one of the only things setting us apart from the vast majority of the general population.  You don’t really ever “learn your lesson” if you don’t modify your behavior before the next incident occurs.  Learn and improve.

Your Clothes

I’m going to get fired up while writing this one, I know it, because I know me. 

I rarely buy clothes. I am wearing a belt right now that I got in 1999. I wore pants to work yesterday that I got in the mid 2000s. Why?  Because there is nothing wrong with them. I’m not trying to impress anyone with fancy duds. If my wife is ok with it, then so am I. She happens to be ok with it. 

I own less than 50 articles of clothing right now. That sounds like a lot, but it’s not. I have undies, socks, a few solid color t-shirts, a Beatles t-shirt, a Fender t-shirt, an MS bike tour t-shirt, a pasta sauce t-shirt, two jeans, three sweatpants, a hoodie, five dressy shirts, three dress pants, some undershirts, a couple of sweaters, and three flannel shirts. Even that seems excessive. I think I am going to get rid of all of my socks and just get one color because you can’t really see them, I don’t care, and sorting them sucks. I have a pair of boots, brown and black dress pants (I can probably downgrade here too if I ditch brown related dress outfits), and a couple of coats. 

I got rid of a ton of clothes recently. A ton. People who I work with know I wear the same stuff all the time. Having less makes decisions easier when getting ready for the day. Wash loads are more frequent, but smaller and easier to manage. 

When I do buy clothes, which I don’t, they are from second hand stores or bargain basket sale deals from Walmart or Kohl’s.  I’m not a kid jumping around on my knees worrying about wearing them out. I sit at a freaking desk at work most of the time, so quality means very little to me. You aren’t going to sell me on the “feel” of a $1000 suit. Comfort is super important to me, but so is price. I would wear sweatpants and t-shirts or hoodies every day if I could. And why can’t I?  A few months ago while browsing a Goodwill, I found about ten fleeces in excellent condition by brands such as L.L. Bean, Landsend, and Columbia, all for less than $5. My wife even got a Mountain Hardware jacket for $5 a few years ago!

Rant time – dress to impress, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. BS. Dress me up, I do less work. I’m unconformable. It does nothing to my mind to improve my performance. Stop it. 

I went to a Louis Vuitton store in Phoenix years ago and it turned my stomach. I curiously asked the guy working there how much for the golf bag and he said, “eight.” I laughed and said, “eight hundred dollars for a golf bag?” He did not laugh, but replied, “eight thousand dollars.” I don’t know if it should or not, but that just pissed me off.  I feel like I wouldn’t have much in common with the kind of person who would buy something like that, but who knows?  Wrong. I know, I wouldn’t. Bath towels were $200 and they weren’t spun from unicorns tails. They felt like the ones I’ve been using, since, I don’t know if I’ve ever bought new ones?  I have not personally ever purchased a towel. I think I stole a few from my parents when I first moved out and my wife might have bought some, but they work great!  I can even dry myself off with them after a shower. I wonder if anyone has checked the tags to see if they were designer while they were hanging on the backs of the door?  Probably not. 

I mean, what are you really paying for here?  It’s like you just want to pay the people at the top of a particular company when you overspend on things like this. We KNOW that the cotton in them isn’t magical. So why is it so expensive?  We KNOW that the people who actually made them are not earning great wages or even using some special skill to make them. Where the hell do you think your money is going?  Designer fashion easily makes it to my top lists of useless industries. 

Using your cost-value knowledge, how much “better” are Versace socks at covering your feet than the Berkley-Jensens I got from BJs?  Hmm. You think about that one. 

Summary, get rid of clothes you rarely wear and spend less on the ones you do buy.  

Get Rid of It!

Here is a screenshot of what cleaning out some junk got me on eBay in the last two months. 


This is some stuff that was doing nothing for me. It added nothing to my life. 

Here is a shot of some recent Craigslist action. 

You are sitting on a gold mine, I’m tellin’ ya!  There is currently $250 worth of stuff sitting on there right now waiting for someone to snatch up. What would have done with these things?  What do you do with things you don’t use anymore?

I love these win-wins, when you get rid of junk and make money doing it. 

The apps make it so easy to list items too. You just take a picture of what you are selling and it walks you through the posting process. Setting up an account is easy too. 

Craigslist buyers can be easy to deal with or awful. There are a lot of scams out there and they list some of the signs in their site. 

Start to price your items by searching to see what other people are trying to get for theirs. I have a rule where I won’t meet up with anyone for under $20. It’s just not worth the hassle. I usually bring the sub-$20 items to work and give them away. 

Just meet up with the buyers or sellers somewhere public and only deal with cash. Don’t feel pressured to sell something just because they are offering you “$100 cash.” I hate when people say that as a part of their low ball offers. What the hell did they think you would accept other than cash?  It doesn’t sweeten the deal in any way. Also be prepared to be peppered with these lowball offers by throngs of idiots. 

eBay on the other hand is much easier to deal with when it comes to the buyers and sellers.  The only downside is that you have to package and ship the items when they sell and you have a feedback rating. If you sell busted stuff, you’ll get negative feedback and you’ll have a hard time selling anything else. Timeliness and service are important as well. It’s sort of like your own little business, and it actually is for many people. I’m proud to have 102 eBay sales with 100% positive reviews. Oh, you’ll also want to set up a PayPal account if you’re going to be using eBay. That’s easy to do too when you get to their site. 

Homework: Get eBay, PayPal, and Craigslist accounts then find one $20 item you can sell. It’ll be like the first time you smoked crack all over again. Cripes, I hope you weren’t able to make a strong connection there. 

Go!

Acorns – Your Digital Change Jar

A few months ago I heard about an app that synched with your checking account, rounded up every purchase made with that account, and invested it for you. The cost is $1/month. I think the name has something to do with squirrelling away money? The app is called Acorns. 

Here is how I’ve done so far. I don’t miss the money at all because it’s doing all of the work for me and since I rarely have cash on me, this works great.

I will say that the returns aren’t great, but I just use it as another savings account. If you suck at saving or have something particular that you are saving for, this might be a good solution for you. 

Click here to download the app and start to save more tomorrow. 

Do I have to Go Without?

No!  You just want to take the big picture into consideration. 

If you are passionate about playing the piano and want to keep taking lessons to get better, then do it. Consider if what you are putting your money toward brings you some happiness. Not brief gratification, but something lasting that your really enjoy. 

Maybe you collect trinkets and this is also tied to your social life, keep doing it. You’ll be allocating funds from other areas you’ve saved to apply here and this should also be part of your budget so that the spending doesn’t get out of control. 

Something I’ve had to do a few times is scale back on my hobbies and what I’ve bought for them. I meantioned before that I used to have four guitars and a lot of photography equipment, but realized I could sell most of that stuff since I didn’t really need it. My basic needs in the hobbies were still satisfied with the basic gear I held on to. 

Just keep the end goal in mind and ask yourself if this spending will get in the way of what you want your future to look like. Ask yourself what is more important to you?

Saving Money on Car Repairs

If I didn’t do my own repairs, I don’t think I could afford to own a car. It seems like every time I heard about someone going to a shop, they walk away paying $400+ dollars. Here are some tips to help ease that pain.

Never go to the dealship. There is a reason that they are known as the stealership. That friendly person at the service counter is a sales person. Make no mistake, they are trained to sell you the whole ticket. Maybe they throw you a bone here and there either to get you back next time for the big sale or because you’ve already spent thousands there in the past. There is no reason to pay top dollar for parts or repairs. A good mechanic can diagnose and repair any make of vehicle.

Find an independent repair shop that has a good reputation. Their labor rates are sometimes half of a dealership and if they know what they’re doing, they can fix your car.

Buy your own parts. If you let the shop source the parts for you, they are going to mark them up sometimes over 100%.  I’ve even seen them as high as 400%. Do not let this happen. Before you deal with a shop, as them if they will let you bring your own parts and if they said no, find one that will. This could be the number one money saver. Most shops deal with one parts distributer and they certainly aren’t going to price shop for you. They might tell you that they won’t warranty the work if you bring your parts because they can’t confirm that they are quality, but that’s ok. Warrantys are for suckers, not you.

When buying parts, make sure you shop around. The prices very greatly based on brands and stores. If I’m not in a hurry to do the repair I nearly always buy online. RockAuto.com has stupid low prices and even when shipping heavy parts, still beats the pants off of anything you can get locally. The downside is that if you get the wrong part or for some reason have to ship it back, you will lose money and time, so take that into consideration. I prefer the smaller storefront style places like PartsPlus. They typically have people who know what they’re doing and aren’t trying to upsell you garbage at the register that you don’t need. I’ve been a long time customer of BanD Auto locally and the manager jokes saying, “if you want car parts you come here, if you want air fresheners you go to AutoZone.” The bigger chains are usually a breeding ground for parts-jockeys who love giving advice in an area they know nearly nothing about. It can be embarrassing. So the next tip…

Don’t take repair advice from the parts person at the store. They either don’t know or are selling you something.

Never, ever, buy snake oil that you put in your gas tank or mix with your oil to “unlock your engines true potential.” Nothing sold in a bottle can fix your car. It’s nonsense and those parts people love selling it. Fuel injector cleaner that you put in your gas tank is a total waste. I have a professional injector cleaning machine and flow tester and sometimes even that doesn’t work. No way will that diluted can do anything.

Find out what repairs are needed now and what can wait and ask for an explanation why. Your dirty air filter can wait.

Educate yourself. If you have some basic knowledge of how some systems of the car work, it will be harder for you to be scammed. I’ve heard some ridiculous expainations on why someone “needed” a repair. http://www.aa1car.com/library.htm is a great resource. As trouble comes up, read a little about it and see if what you are being told makes sense. If it’s questionable, you can always get a second opinion.

Try fixing it yourself. This seems really scary but with YouTube and some basic tools, you can do a lot on your own. If you’ve ever seen someone do a brake job, you’d wonder why you pay $400 for it. It turns out you can usually get the parts for $50-100 and find a video that shows you how to do it on your exact car. 

For those of you who like to tinker, I’d recommend downloading the Torque Pro app on your phone for $5 and purchasing a bluetooth adapter like this one. This set up with allow you to read and erase codes as well as do some serious diagnosing with live data. To learn more on that topic see these videos. This is where the real saving begins – with knowledge. This guy will get your better equipped than plenty of pros. 


Renting vs Buying

Understanding the concept of depreciation and resale value can help you decide whether you should buy, rent, or borrow something. 

Let’s use a tile saw for example. The big box stores rent them for about $40/day. A quick search shows that you can buy one for between $50 and $300 from various easy to access stores. You want to ask yourself how often you are going to use one of these things and​ do you want to store it?

Some of you may already be thinking that buying one would be the way to go here because you could sell it after and still beat the rental cost. This is a good thought, but there might be a better option, or two. 

Clearly, if you know someone with one, you could ask them to borrow it and give them some beers, wine, whatever. If that’s not an option, then looking used is probably your best bet. 

Knowing that the second you use that new saw, it’s value will plummet, you will still be losing out on max value here. Fast depreciation is a problem with new purchases.  I wouldn’t imagine it would be hard to sell, but who knows. 

Now, searching on Craigslist shows that there are a bunch of used units ranging from $30-300. Some appear to be industrial units but keep in mind, these are the depreciated values here. After a one time use, you will likely be able to sell it for damn bear what you paid or possibly even more because someone else took​ the depreciation hit, just like with cars. 

I’d go for that cheap $30 one and try to sell it for $40. 

Likely Results? -$10 to +$10 (buying used and selling) vs -$40 (rent) vs -$60 to -$300 (new) vs -$20 to -$100 (buying new and selling). 

Ok, so i made up those numbers, but the point is that you have more options than buying or renting. Always remember that you can sell something after you’re done with it to recoup some, or more than all of your money. 

Don’t underestimate the value in selling things that you have no use for anymore. 

Mo’ Money Less Problems

Knowing that a lot of life’s stress revolves around your bills and your job, only an idiot would think that having more money would create more problems.

Cripes, the fact that the vast majority of the country has to work forty hours a week to SURVIVE should be an indication that money is the problem.

People who complain that the lottery winnings get taxed like crazy and you actually “only” walk away with half of that 100 million, just don’t get it. Get me a million bucks and I’m done with the race forever.

Getting a hold on you finances is the key to less “problems” and I believe that financial independence and having no debt is the pillar of happiness, allowing you to do whatever the hell you want with your time.

Someone actually told me that they weren’t interested in retiring early because they liked working…

Here are some other phrases that make me cringe:

– If you make more, you just spend more

– I’ll be paying that off for the rest of my life anyway

– It was on sale, so I couldn’t pass it up

– This might be my only chance to buy a new car

– I’m not going to go without in order to save money

There are flaws in all of those statements if you are trying to live more simply and save more money, or are even interested in freeing up your life to di what you want.

Being a regular follower of this site, you can identify what those issues are, can’t you?

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Thank you!

Starting to Declutter

Being surrounded can be stressful, even when what is surrounding you is your own stuff.  What a mess.  You feel like you’re always cleaning up and organizing.  The problem is that there is too much to begin with.  You can keep reorganizing as much as you want but that stuff will not stay where you want it.

If you think it feels good to organize, I can say that it feels better to get rid of that crap you keep on having to mess with.

A great place to start is your junk drawer.  Have you used anything in there in the past six months?  What is that stuff?  Bring the trash can right over to it and start getting rid of things from inside.

Next, move to your night stand or where ever you put things before bed.  That stand might also have drawers on it full of junk you haven’t used in  years.

That’s honestly a good start.  Forcing yourself to really decide if you need to hang on to those chincy trinkets you’ve kept “just in case.”

You might even find something that you get to list on craigslist or eBay and make a few bucks out of it.

Start with the small and easier decisions.  It will feel pretty good.

More Money

Here is a quick tale on how I made more money this weekend. We went for a family walk through our neighborhood and went past a pile of aluminum piping by the side of the road that someone was getting rid of.  Quite a bit of it. I went back home, got my car, and picked it up.

Always, always pick up stuff like this and find a way to get it home. Heavy metal like steel is a waste of time and resources but aluminum and copper should always be collected.

You then go to your local scrap yard with it and they give you money.

I usually have a little pile of metal in the garage that I save up to bring in.  If it’s just steel, it will only be a couple of dollars but my son likes to watch the construction trucks work and we get ice cream with the new cash.  Softer metals like aluminum and copper can get you much more money.  This pile might be worth $30 or so?  I’ll update this after I drop it off so that you know!

Don’t turn down free money.  Yeah, you have to get somewhere with it so it’s not really free, but you know that I mean.  Acts like this add up and when you slam the extra money on your bills, it makes a difference.

This is the mindset you want to have to get ahead.