Before I begin sharing my wisdom, I want you to know that I am happily remarried.  Unfortunately, this wisdom I share did not come cheaply.  I encourage marriage, I think that marriage is a wonderful thing and wish you to have a successful marriage.

Most marriage failures can be attributed to two main factors, money and lack of communication.  When the money is flowing life is good and everybody’s happy.  When the money is tight, things can change a lot -  tensions rise and communication can break down.

Marriage checklist

1. Education: Get your primary education out of the way.  The biggest mistake most couples make is assuming  they’ll finish their education after they’re married.
2. Career: Establish your career before you get married.  Establishing a career takes a lot of time, money and energy.
3. Experience: Each person should live on their own away from each other and away from their parents for awhile, because they need to understand the cost of living.
4. Self-fulfilment: Don’t expect your partner to fulfill your needs.  They should compliment you of course, but they shouldn’t be your entire life.
5. Common interests: Make sure you have several common interests, things that you would do either together or separately.  The more activities you have in common with each other means the more fun you will  experience together.
6. Realistic budget: Create a budget that you and your significant other plan to live by.  I suggest that you both go through FPU (Financial Peace University) by Dave Ramsey.  You won’t regret the experience.
7. Emergency fund: Create an emergency fund.  Dave Ramsey says a baby fund is $1,000 in the bank.  A fully funded emergency fund is 6+ months of expenses that you don’t touch except for an emergency, such as being get laid off.
8. Share your dreams: Talk about what your future looks like in 1 year, 5, 10, and 20 years down the road.  It’s preferable if you agree on what your future looks like.
9. Children: Talk about when you would like to have children and how many you would like to have.  Ideally, you agree on that too.
10. Child-rearing: Talk about child-rearing.  It’s best if you both agree on how you will do it as a couple.

A marriage checklist is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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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)

Gas

• Actual Hwy MPG = (Percentage of trip traveling 60 MPH) x Hwy MPG
• Miles Per Gallon = (Actual Hwy MPG + City MPG) / 2
• Miles Per Gallon x Cost Per Gallon

Your Hwy MPG only counts when you’re traveling at Hwy speeds.

Oil

• Oil change every 5,000 miles, since most of the miles are on the freeway

Tires

• 60,000 mile tires
• $125 / tire

Assuming a quality tire that’s made for commuting

Insurance

• Minimum Coverage
• Uninsured motorist

Tolls

• The fee you pay to get to the other side

Parking

• Garage Parking usually applies when you live or work in a large Metro area.

Vehicle Replacement

• Reliable miles
• I once had a neighbor that drove his car back & forth to work and did regular maintenance on his car.  He had a policy of replacing his car after it hit 100,000 miles.
• My cars have been very good for me.  With regular maintenance, they have served me over 200,000 miles without any major issues.  So, I replace my cars at 200,000 miles.
• Let’s take the average and say a car should be replaced with another car at 150,000 miles.
• If you bought a slightly used car that has 30,000 miles on it, and drove it until it had 150,000 then you can expect 120,000 miles out of it. 

Registration

• The fee you pay to the government for use of your car

Driving Time

• Driving Cost = Hours per day x Hourly Wages

Actual Commuting Costs

The Actual Monthly Commuting cost pictured here doesn’t include the cost of Monthly Tolls or Parking.  If you heed the warning signs and decide now that you will set aside that much each month then, when it comes time to maintain or replace your car, you won’t be surprised.  You’ll be expecting it and you’ll be prepared.

True cost of driving to work is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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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.

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.

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.

New year’s resolution – don’t charge Christmas is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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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?  The Deal

It turns out that there was a special on flash drives on Friday.  The special was all day, not just during the “Door-buster” time window when they give you a few hours to make your purchases in order to get the deal.  I wasn’t planning on shopping on Black Friday.  I didn’t want to deal with the insane crowds and extremely long lines.  But, since, I needed a larger flash drive and I didn’t have to fight the crowds and the price was so affordable, I finally decided to take advantage of this deal.

As I mentioned yesterday, my wife and I supported our local Waffle house while I waited for the “Door-buster” time to expire.  I figured the crowds would eventually disperse and shopping would return to a semi-normal state.

The Search

It took a little while to find the little guy.  I had to make sure it was the right one.  There was a similar 8GB -Sandisk Cruzer model.  But it was more than what I wanted to pay.  After a little searching, I finally found it.  It rang up as $14.  Can you imagine?  $14 for an 8GB flash drive.  I am still amazed by this deal.

As I started using it in my computer, it easily handled the video files I copied over.  They took up less than 2% of the drive’s capacity.  After copying over all the other files from my old flash drive it only took up 355MB or less than 5% of it’s capacity.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this room.   I’m sure it will be filled up quicker than I think.

Photograph: By Wes Johnson using my DIY Macro Photo Studio 1.1.1.

USB flash drives are getting really affordable is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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Count the cost
It seems like many stores are competing early for shoppers’ dollars earlier this holiday. The sales have already begun. Why wait for a sale and fight the crowds when you can get it a few days earlier without all the hassles? Most of the time, people are rushing from place to place, trying to get that bargain, standing in long lines to save a few dollars. It is true, you might save $20 or $30 bucks but at what cost? If you count the number of hours spent standing in lines and multiplied that by the value of your time, you might discover you come out ahead when you buy a few days earlier or a few days after Black Friday. We already counted the cost and decided to make a purchase early. The time we spend on Friday morning will be with each other over breakfast at the local Waffle shop.

Watch for crazy drivers
I’ve noticed that a lot of people are starting to drive crazy. Drivers seem to have a lot of stuff on their minds and concentrating on the road doesn’t seem to be on their list of concerns. What does this mean for everybody else? It means the only person that is watching out for you is you. Keep your eye out for those people who are not paying attention. Be careful when you’re entering intersections. I’ve already seen a few people run red lights in intersections. Don’t assume everybody will be courteous on the road.

Have you noticed a change in people’s behavior already? Is it my imagination or is there something to it?

Christmas Shopping starting early this year is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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The answer is yes, there will be a few that I know of. Some of them are online deals and others may be at a store near you.

According to Black-Friday.net one  major chain I know will be carrying sub $100 Blu-Ray players are:

• Best Buy – Insignia ($99.99)
• Meijer – Sylvania ($89)
• AAFES – Sharp Aquos ($99)
• onsale.com – Magnavox ($89.99)

Some other places are carrying sub $150 Blu-Ray players:

• Costco – Philips ($139)
• Sears – Samsung ($149.99)
• Sears – Sony ($149.99)
• Sears – Samsung ($149.99)
• Radio Shack – Samsung ($149.99)
• Best Buy – Samsung ($149.99)

The are many Blu-Ray players that have fallen below $150.  Okay, so we all know it’s psychological pricing, just 1 penny below $150, but it’s still technically < $150.

So, the question for this season is do you fight the crowds for a Blu-Ray player under $100 or would you rather pay $50 more for the convenience of not fighting the big lines?

$100 Blu-Ray Christmas update is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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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..

Blu-ray Disc Player for Christmas, around $100 is a post from: Words of Wisdom by MrWes thank you for reading my blog.

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