One of the major mistakes most couples make in getting married is taking the plunge before they have much experience of living as individuals in the real world. If you know someone who is getting married or thinking about marriage, have them read this checklist. It might help their marriage become better than they hoped for or prevent it becoming a nightmare. » Read more: A marriage checklist
Archive for the ‘Finances’ category
A marriage checklist
February 28th, 2010True cost of driving to work
January 31st, 2010One of the exercises in my Personal Marketing class is to calculate the cost of driving to work. I have decided to share this information with all my readers.
First let’s define some automotive expenses related to driving to work (Gas, Oil, Tires, Insurance, Vehicle Replacement, Vehicle Registration, Monthly Parking, Tolls, and Driving Time) » Read more: True cost of driving to work
New year’s resolution – don’t charge Christmas
December 26th, 2009This is a public service announcement. Christmas is coming next year on December 25th. If you start saving now, you won’t have to put anything on credit cards. It’s quite simple really. If you know how much you spent this year and you plan to spend the same amount next year, you can calculate exactly how much you need to save each month.
Example Scenario Part 1:
If you have a family of 6 people and you plan to spend $50 on each person that would be $300 for next Christmas.
Christmas Budget = $300 = (6 people x $50 per person)
To figure out how much to save each month you would divide $300 by the remaining months. I have created this little table here to help demonstrate how much you would need to save if you started in a particular month. So, if you are reading this post in February, you have 10 months to save. You would need to save $30 per month for 10 months to reach your goal of $300 by Christmas. If you read this in June, you would have only 6 months left to save, so you would have to save $50 each month for 6 months to reach your goal of $300 by Christmas.
| Month | Months | Save |
|---|---|---|
| Dec | 12 | $25.00 |
| Jan | 11 | $27.28 |
| Feb | 10 | $30.00 |
| Mar | 9 | $33.34 |
| Apr | 8 | $37.50 |
| May | 7 | $42.86 |
| Jun | 6 | $50.00 |
| Jul | 5 | $60.00 |
| Aug | 4 | $75.00 |
| Sep | 3 | $100.00 |
| Oct | 2 | $150.00 |
| Nov | 1 | $300.00 |
| Dec | 0 | Christmas |
What about Black Friday?
If you want to have the money by Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. You’ll have to step up the pace a little.
| Month | Months | Save |
|---|---|---|
| Dec | 11 | $27.28 |
| Jan | 10 | $30.00 |
| Feb | 9 | $33.34 |
| Mar | 8 | $37.50 |
| Apr | 7 | $42.86 |
| May | 6 | $50.00 |
| Jun | 5 | $60.00 |
| Jul | 4 | $75.00 |
| Aug | 3 | $100.00 |
| Sep | 2 | $150.00 |
| Oct | 1 | $300.00 |
| Nov | 0 | Black Friday |
Example Scenario Spending:
If you made it to your planned shopping date and you reached your planned Christmas Budget, then you’re going to have a Merrier Christmas, because you won’t have the January Credit Card blues.
Now for the final part, take your budget and divide it between envelopes for each person. Then when you go shopping, as you buy items for that person, you take it out of their envelope. Once, the money’s gone, you’re done shopping for them. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
New Year Resolution:
If you make any resolutions this year. Promise yourself to save up for Christmas and avoid charging Christmas. You’ll be much happier if you save up for it.
USB flash drives are getting really affordable
November 27th, 2009
8GB Sandisk Cruzer
The other day, I received an email requesting me to download some files for a special presentation. I figured there would be no problem. I could copy the files to my trusty 128MB flash drive and be done with it. Unfortunately, the combined sizes of the 2 videos reached 163MB. Needless to say, my poor flash drive was not up to the task. It stopped halfway through the file transfer. I had to find another solution. Did I mention this happened on Black Friday? » Read more: USB flash drives are getting really affordable
Christmas Shopping starting early this year
November 22nd, 2009Something is in the air. All of the sudden everybody is out shopping. What is this phenomenon? It’s not even Christmas yet. It’s not even the day after Thanksgiving day (Black Friday) yet. Black Friday is typically one of the biggest shopping days of the year. So, why is everybody out shopping the week before? » Read more: Christmas Shopping starting early this year
$100 Blu-Ray Christmas update
November 17th, 2009In August 2009 I mentioned that Blu-Ray players were starting to drop in price to under $100. Already there have been a few instances of this happening since Father’s Day 2009. The question is will there be any for this Christmas? » Read more: $100 Blu-Ray Christmas update
FarmTown Addiction
August 28th, 2009
FarmTown
Farm Town is habit forming. One might event say Farm Town is even addicting. Anyone who has played it before would agree that once you start being successful at expanding your farm, you really enjoy the game. The question is how does one advance so quickly. My friends have asked me the same question. They’re struggling along and see slow progress on their farms but they look at mine and have farm envy. I’m not the best, but I’m advancing pretty quickly. I didn’t learn some of these secrets until someone shared with me, so I’m going to tell you a few I’ve learned.
Hints to success in Farm Town:
- Turn off space between fields
- You can remove space using the Application setting (wrench icon in the upper right corner)
- no space between fields means more crops on your property, more crops per harvest, you get more money per harvest
- Don’t buy animals or flowers
- your friends will give you flowers and animals
- Plant your trees in the back of the property and group like trees together
- so they don’t hide your crops and it’s easier to see when they’re ready to harvest
- Hide trees to get harvest those hidden crops
- You can hide trees using the Application setting (wrench icon) – show trees unchecked
- After crops harvested behind trees, you can show trees again using the Application setting
- Delayed gratification is key
- Re-invest your earnings from your harvest back into your crops
- Re-invest your earnings into Farm expansion
- You gain experience through plowing, planting and harvesting
- If you want to purchase something, delay it until you have done some expansion.
- Expand your farm by visiting the Real Estate office
- Click on Map
- Click on Real Estate Office
- Once you reach a certain level and have the money, you can expand your farm
- Earn extra money by hiring yourself out
- Click on Map
- Click on Market
- Wait in the market place to be hired by someone who usually has a large farm
- You’ll either be harvesting or plowing when you hire yourself out
- Make sure you remove the space between fields, otherwise you won’t be able to plow the fields properly
- Be prepared to work hard for the money
- Plowing, Harvesting and Planting all time time and a lot of mouse movement and clicking
- At the time of this article, you plant your own crops. You can’t outsource this task. As a result, the larger your property, the more time it takes for you to plant.
- Network
- What do you mean Network, I mean start making connections with other people, like your neighbors.
- Chances are if you start chatting with them & being friends, they might decide to hire you during their next harvest.
- Or you might decide to hire them when your fields are ready to harvest or plow.
- Choose your crops wisely
- Some crops grow quickly while others take more time
- You have the same amount of time to harvest as it takes to reach the harvest
- Weigh the benefits of the harvest payoff against the growing time
- I haven’t ever lost a crop yet because I plant conservatively
- I have seen others lose their entire crop because they planted something that grew too quickly and they weren’t able to harvest it in time.
NOTE: If you have no idea what Farm Town is, it’s a Facebook application.
You can find it by doing the following:
- log into Facebook
- click on the Applications button on the lower left corner of your browser
- click All Applications
- search for “farm town”
- in the search result you should see Farm Town by Slashkey
- I have written a blog called “lessons in FarmTown” to share about some lessons Farm Town teaches everybody.
The weekend is coming up, so why not give Farm Town a try. I’m sure you’ll agree that growing crops on a farm was never so much fun.
WARNING: Use of Farm Town can be habit forming from having too much fun.
Blu-ray Disc Player for Christmas, around $100
August 20th, 2009This might just be the year to buy a $100 Blu-ray Disc player for Christmas. In one of my previous blogs, I commented that Christmas is coming to be ready.
DVD Format Wars
During the Blu-ray / HD DVD wars. I jumped on the HD DVD bandwagon because the price of the player was a whole lot cheaper than Blu-ray. I thought there would be room enough for both of them. However, that was not the case. Not too long after my purchase a winner was declared in 2008. It was Sony this time. It was a little painful to swallow for a while, picking the wrong technology. Ultimately, I still won as, I saw many popular videos in HD DVD format go on sale for rediculously low prices.
No competition
After the war was over, there wasn’t any healthy competition driving the prices toward affordability. It seemed like the prices hovered in the $200-$400 range. You had two choices, an expensive game console or an expensive stand-alone Blu-ray player. Both were way overpriced. Since the format wars were over I have refused to purchase a Blu-ray player because of price alone. I knew there was no reason why they couldn’t be more affordable. All they had to do, was remove a few expensive options and provide us with a bare-bones model that can play Blu-ray discs.
A miracle happened
I don’t know exactly when it happend, but I heard rumors that Blu-ray players have started selling below $100. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard this. I had to verify this myself. So, I looked up some major retailers in my area (Fry’s, K-Mart, Target, Sears, Best Buy) At the time of this article I found a refurbished Blu-ray Disc player for $99 and another within $10. Pretty close for my book.
- K-Mart & Sears - Magnavox Blu-ray Disc player, refurbished $99
- BestBuy – Insignia Blu-ray Disc player $119
I hope this trend continues. I’ve seen several Blu-ray Disc players start to drop below the $200 barrier. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen around Thanksgiving. This should get real interesting. I’m still not planning to brave the crowds on Black Friday. But, with all the money we’ll be saving, maybe we’ll pay someone to buy it for us 
Christmas is still coming. Now that Blu-ray Disc players are getting closer to the $100 price-point, we’ll be able to find a deal this year..
Life Lessons in FarmTown
August 17th, 2009
FarmTown Logo
FarmTown is a Facebook application that encourages community and healthy competition. I personally put off playing it for a long time, but I had so many gifts from friends and family that I finally decided to give it a try. I found that it wasn’t a total waste of time as I thought it would be. My wife and I just started playing it not too long ago. Some of our relatives are way up there in the experience level and have upgraded their farms to the point that they have fun hiring others to do the work for them; they are enjoying the good life. We were showing off our farms to our grand-daughter and were showing her how the plowing, sowing and harvesting works. I actually think it could be a little educational without its players realizing it. She thought it was really cool. I showed them how they could make money in a short amount of time by working other people’s farms while you’re waiting for your crops to grow. Later on my wife said, you know this game might have some good lessons in there for her.
I thought about it for awhile and I agreed. There are some lessons to be learned, I will enumerate a few.
Some lessons learned:
- Money management
- It takes money to make money, if you haven’t reserved some cash for emergencies, you might miss out on future opportunities.
- It costs money for a equipment (water hose, rake,gloves)
- It costs money to plow
- It costs money for seed
- It costs money to hire others
- Money does not grow on trees, but you can earn it by harvesting trees
- Money is the fruit of your labor
- If you want to expand your operation or have more things, you need to earn more money
- It takes money to make money, if you haven’t reserved some cash for emergencies, you might miss out on future opportunities.
- Good things come to those who wait.
- Some of those crops grow really slowly.
- But when the harvest finally comes in, you can reap the rewards.
- Better things come to those who are not idle while they’re waiting.
- If you have some time to kill, why not hire yourself out while you’re waiting on your crops.
- Experience counts
- As you increase in experience, you get to do more cool things
- You have access to better things
- Teamwork (manpower) gets a physical task done more quickly
- Of course one person can do it all by themselves, but there’s more fun in numbers
- And while you’re at it, you can practice outsourcing the mundane stuff, while you do the fun stuff
- Hard work and persistence pays off
- Hanging in there while looking for a job
- Growing your skills to get to the next level
- In the end you gain some personal satisfaction that you’ve reached the top
- If you procrastinate, your harvest could go to waste
- Timing is important
Observations:
- I noticed that the Marketplace is kind of like the real life job market.
- A crowd of people all trying to get the attention of a potential employer
- Many of them frustrated, because they cannot get a job quick enough.
- It’s a chance to practice your social skills
- It’s a chance to practice some Personal Marketing
- Notice when you’re in the Marketplace, how desperate some people sound; don’t be one of them. There are other ways to stand out in the crowd.
FarmTown does consume some time, just make sure it’s your spare time, not prime time with your family. Unless of course they’re playing it with you.
