Results matching “2006”

I have found someone more frugal than me.  Granted, I don't consider myself that frugal -- I spend a lot of money on computer/tech related stuff and I have some monthly bills (Internet/server rental) I could probably get rid of or reduce drastically.  But this guy Jacob is really out there.

He comments about Bicycle riders on the freeway, which is illegal in most states due to a minimum speed rule.  However, during rush hour/traffic jams, most cars travel well below the mimimum speed.  Set the mimimum speed to 15 and watch the cyclists pass the cars getting ticketed.

He challenges you to wear something out.  Other than jeans and cars, I haven't really worn anything out.  I have good t-shirts from '97 that still look pretty fresh.  We often end up replacing things that still work.

He discusses living on $6000 a year or $500/month.  I do not see how he can find health insurance for $75/month, no matter how healthy you are.  I've priced health insurance many times over the last several years and find it to be 3x that amount.  I can only assume that his employer is shouldering the bulk of the health insurance costs.  But since this is a retirement article, you need to look at personal insurance prices. However, I have lived without health insurance for a couple years and have lived with some pretty low earnings.   In 2006, my worst business year ever, I made $20,000 and spent around $17,000 in business expenses, giving me about $3000 for personal.  Granted, that year, things my business bought also happened to help me out.  However, I wasn't buying clothes or heat and I ate dirt cheap or for free (at other people's houses).

If I decided to go extreme in 2006 (but keeping the house), my budget would be like this:

mortgage = $6000  / $500
utilities = $900 / $75
transport = $900 / $75
food = $600 / $50
total = $8400 / $700

Of course, you'll notice I left health insurace out.  Assuming I could get good personal health insurance for $250/month, I would need an additional $3000/year.  Of course, I could go back to an efficiency apartment over a garage and bring my rent/mortgage down to $200 like I did in 2001.  Recently, I refinanced to pay off some business debt I had incurred (advertising that just didn't pan out) and my mortgage is now just under $800, so (not counting the health insurance) I would have to bump the mortgage up to $9600/$800 and the total to $12,000/year or $1000/month.  Now, my transportation is up somewhat since I'm working in another state than I live, but in reality that's only another $25/month or $300/year.  So, without spending on the wedding, I should in theory be able to get by on $12,300/year.  With mimimum wage at 6.55, I should be able to make $13,100 working 2000 hours a year and (as I am below poverty) not pay any taxes.   If I made mimimum wage, I should be able to do that localy and bike to work while cutting down on my travel expenses.  Having a wife adds to our combined expenses, which are offset by our combined income, but we rise above poverty and get taxed more -- too much math, but I wager it still works out in our fiscal favor.

Taking those figures into early retirement, you can eliminate most of your travel, or you might have the house paid off.  However, going by $12,300/year...  we can find out the mimimum amount needed to retire.  On high/stable end, you would need $301,000 earning 4% to pull $13,000/year.  At 6%, you would only need $201,000 to earn the same amount.  Keep in mind, you would need the first year or two's worth of expenses on top of that as you wait for your interest/dividend payments to come in.

Imagine if the house was paid off (which I plan to do in 4 years on a much higher budget) and you reduced that $9600 to the $1800 of taxes/insurance (which are now included in the mortgage).   Suddenly, the yearly budget drops to $3,900/year.  The minimum retirement amount drops to $65,000 @ 6% and $98,000 @ 4%.

So at these figures, anything over $301,000 with a mortgage or anything over $98,000 with the morgage paid off is extra money to spend, gift, or reinvest.

All of that being said, I don't think I could voluntarily do it.  Now that I've been making solid money for over a year now, there is a sort of addiction that comes with it.  Like I said above, I dropped $3,000 on a car, something I wouldn' t have even considered before.  Most of my cars have been under $1000 and I once worked out that the average cost of my cars + repairs cost me under $500/year.  Since I got this car, I've put around $1500 into it, something I wouldn't have even considered before -- if I was facing a potential $1000 repair bill (the transmission), I would be shopping for a different car.

I'm also still carrying premium business class Internet service with static ips.  This is a holdover from my business and runs around $120/month.  I'm powering several servers and have a virtual server.  Except for the virtual server (which holds web hosting accounts), I am not making any money on these.  I could get by with a cheaper Internet connection  (say $60/month) and I mainly use the servers for experimentation.  The servers and Internet make it an expensive hobby, but it is a hobby I take pleasure in.

Also, I like eating out fairly regularly, which I have been working against.  I get irritated at a pack of lunch meat costing $3, with a block of cheese costing $2.50.  However, I also think a $5 footlong from Subway is cheap.  In reality, I could probably make 10 such subs for about $10.

Anyways, Early Retirement Extreme focuses on doing more with less (cutting costs) along with some good investing advice.  It is definitely worth reading.

For only 5 days into May, it's been fairly eventful.

Robin is graduating this month -- the pinning ceremony was on the 2nd and her graduation is on the 10th.  Of course, before she even got to go to her pinning ceremony, I had a few questions for her.  The first question (both chronologically and in order of importance) was "Does it fit?" (it did) and the second question was "Do you want to be my wife?" (to which the answer was "Of Course!").

We're still working on the small details like dates and locations, as well as the big ones like what to put on the gift registry.  We'll try and keep people updated.

Probably the biggest thing going on this month is that I moved the countertop that was in the front room (my primary workshop area), de-constructed it, and re-assembled it in the new workshop area (the former junk room).  Over the next couple months, I plan on moving the living room from the upstairs to this newly emptied area, creating both a tv room/den and a living room area.

I like to splurge on something once each year, typically a gadget.

• In 2000 I bought a Toshiba 1605 laptop.  I bought while on leave and took it with me to MCT and MOS training.  That laptop was pretty good at the time with 32MB of RAM that I upgraded to 196MB.  It had an 8GB hard drive running Windows 98.  It also had a built in modem that worked fairly well.


• In 2001  I bought a Sony MVC CD1000 Camera.  I had been working at Pennswoods for quite a while and I had no bills to speak of.  Money was no problem for me.   I also started up my business, signing a 5-year lease on a commercial building.  The next month, 9/11 happened and I was told to prepare for deployment.


• In 2002 I bought a Kyocera QCP 6035 smart phone.  During this year I also took a trip to Washington state for vacation.  This was a good phone.  It sometimes froze on me when I opened the flip, but it generally worked really well. It allowed me to combine my palm pilot and cell phone in one device, and I was all for that.


• In 2003 I upgraded to a Kyocera 7135 smart phone.  This was my favorite phone of all time.  Palm OS, clam-shell design.  What's not to love?  Apparently it can no longer be activated in the US because it does not have a tracking GPS built into it.  I was deployed at the beginning of the year and left the 6035 with my parents.  When I returned, I read reviews on the 7135 and got it within a month of my return.  If I could have this phone now (activated of course), I would still think of it as the better phone even though it lacks bluetooth support.  I have not come across a phone that I felt I would enjoy more (inside or outside my price range).


• In 2004 I was flat broke and bought Ramen noodles.  This was between deployments, between jobs, and I had serious car troubles.  It was a dismal time for me.  I spent each evening at a different house, moving from couch to couch.


• In 2005 I purchased an HP dv1000 laptop.  I tricked it out with a whopping 512MB of ram, 80GB hard drive, and extended battery (lasts 3+ hours).  I should also point out that during the summer of 2005, I was again broke. My business was my sole source of income and not doing as much as I wanted it to. However, everyone else I knew was broke, and we all enjoyed that summer playing pool, eating at Dennys, and taking road trips to Western PA, Eastern Maryland, and Southern Virginia.  I don't know how we afforded any of it.


• In 2006 I purchased a house.  Not exactly a gadget, but I believe it will outlast all of my other gadgets.  Business was doing a lot better for me during this summer.  Up until winter came, things were truly looking up.


• This year, the year of 2007, I purchased a xv6700.  This is a Windows PPC 6700.  It comes with 64MB of ram, has bluetooth, wifi, is evdo capable, and will take mini-SD cards.  It has a touch screen and a slide out keyboard that works really well.  This device is more of a computer than a phone, and in that regard works very well.  The phone side of it leaves a bit to be desired.  There seems to be a slight delay between when you press a key and when it updates the screen, which is a bit distracting when placing a call or entering your pin.  Otherwise, this is an amazing gadget.  The phone portion is vastly improved if you use a bluetooth headset.  Plantronic Voyager 550 is the one I got and unlike those earpieces that you corkscrew into your ear, I barely notice that I'm wearing the headset.  I linked to a video review that I would highly recommend watching even if you're not in the market for such a phone/ppc.  There are reasons I chose a phone that is more of a computer than a phone, and I will go into that next.

As you may have read, I am working for "the man", a big corporate entity in Virginia.  My main business has become a sideline endeavor for the foreseeable future.  I still have customers I support, and I'll still do a lot of the same stuff.  But, I'm not taking calls constantly for the business and not using my phone that much as a phone.  I'm shifting to work I can do remotely such as server administration, scripting, and device configuration.  Most of this can be done via web and email.  With an email/web/ssh capable mobile device, I can even handle some emergency tasks from just about anywhere.
On another note, not splurge related, I have finally been placed on Night One.  This is a wonderful shift that is basically 3-4 (alternating) nights each week.  I will always work Sunday night, Monday Night, and Tuesday night.  Every other week, I will work Wendesday night as well.  The shifts go from 6pm till 6am.  Once I am done at either Tuesday or Wednesday morning, I am off to do my own thing until the following Sunday night.  The long shifts sound horrible, but I much prefer the shorter work week (even though I might go home to do even more work, of a different kind).

New Year's Eve 2006 has come and gone. My "party" if you can still call it that was a lot smaller than planned, but still an enjoyable evening.

The end of December has given me a lot of of time to reflect on the past year or so, on where I am, and think about what I want to do next.

Reflection:
In April of '05, I got home from my second trip to Iraq. By May of '05, I had received my last active duty paycheck and was living entirely off of income from my business (not counting the reserve pay of $100-$200 per month -- most of that went right back into Marine activities). In December of '05, I had survived eight months of "on my own", survived Christmas, and I met Robin. In March of '06, I took another step and separated from the active reserves. No longer would I be making the trip to Ebensburg once a month. Two months later, in May, I committed to purchasing a house for me and my business, finalizing the paperwork and closing costs in June. In August, my business acquired Access Lightspeed, a nationwide dial-up ISP. In November, I took Robin to the Marine Corp Ball, and in December, we had Christmas together (multiple times). Overall, an excellent 21 months for me.

Where I Am:
While the last 21 months looks good on the surface, it was not without its rough spots. You can be moving along real good for a month or two, and then all of a sudden, you have a couple weeks of crap that leaves you spending the next two (good) months trying to catch back up. As it is, I have no real source of income I can count on to meet the bills each month.

I am not as good as some people believe me to be. There are some people I don't think very highly of. While everyone has been known to fall on hard times, these are the people that do it chronically. You know the type. They always have a reason for it, a story even. Somehow, through a series of seemingly unavoidable circumstances, the person has run out of money, and quite likely they have no work to make more of it. They live in a constant state of crisis. Well, it seems I am well on my way to becoming one of these people. I go from seemingly having plenty of work to having no work for no apparent reason. When there is no work, there is no money coming in, so I can't pay the bills that are due, were due, are now past due. Something always comes up at the same time like needing heating oil for the house, or tires for the car, or (currently) axle bushings for the car. And you start to realize that if you told someone a story in August or September about why you couldn't pay your bill right now, and then you're telling them another story in December, you're not doing quite as well as it seems. I hate having to tell someone that while I did agree to pay this amount before, I can't make good on that agreement. So what do I do? I screen my calls with caller id. There are two people that call me, and I know their numbers. I know from previous times that if I do answer and tell them that I can't pay right now, they will ask when I can, and I don't know. It might be in three days, it might be in three weeks. And then I do something, I make the money, I call them up and make a payment, and everyone is happy for another month or two. But until I do that, I'm one of those people, either screening their calls or telling stories. I will *tolerate* those kind of people, but I can't stand being one -- even though I am.

I remember once back at the unit, everyone was expected to throw $2 into a fund each month (it went towards various "fun" things for the unit). I did have $2, I just didn't have it on me in cash, so I borrowed from a friend. This prompted a conversation with another friend from Pittsburgh. I explained how I was essentially broke after I put gas in my car to go home (all in good cheer though) and she asked how that could be. I told her that self-employment doesn't pay as much as one would think. She told me that she had two jobs to make ends meet. There was a hint of an accusation in that.

The truth is that even though I am really good at cutting corners, budgeting to save money, and stopping myself from buying things I can't afford, I'm not really financially responsible. If I was, I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that I had enough money to make good on my promises. If I want my promises (fiscal or otherwise) to mean something, I have to stand behind them and honor them.

What I want to do next:
Basically, I am going to do what it takes to get my bills paid. Overall, my debt is mostly from advertising and total less than $5000 ($416/month). Compared to a lot of people I know, that is a small debt, but a debt nonetheless. To take care of this, I am going to take an actual W2 job that will provide me with a steady income. I'm calling it a part-time job because it will only be 3 days a week, but in truth, it will total 36 hours. I can always add more hours/days on as I need them. All income from this job will go towards my debt and immediate living expenses. It will take away from running the business and being available to clients, but is a necessary step for me to get things back on track.

Updated: 11/12/2009

Be sure to take a look at my basement junk list!

Some time in the past, I had a long paragraph detailing the difference between what I want and what I need.  That philosophical paragraph got deleted somehow, and I don't see myself re-writing all that.  Basically this is a list of things that I'd like to have.  I originally put this together back in 2005/2006 because people always ask me what I want for Christmas/Birthday/Wednesday.  With this, I could simply either point them to my site or print it out for them.  I would just update this whenever a thought popped into my mind.

I am fairly close to giving up on this list.  I've long ago gotten what I need, and I want less each year.  I'm actually in a state where I want to reduce the number of things I own, reversing the influx of household items.  Some days I want to just go through my basement, set aside any photos/momentos, and toss everything else.  The biggest things stopping me is that I have no place to "toss everything" unless I rent a dumpster.

This Christmas, I don't want anything.  If you feel the need to get me something, I have a few useful oddities listed below and a collection of books wishlisted on Amazon below that.  Otherwise, the gift of money (or a gift card) is always useful.  People that know me know I 'm a goofy guy, so goofy gifts are a safe bet as well.

• Stuff on Amazon.com


• Queen sized "Indulgence Luxury Blanket" (from Robin's list)


• Digital Picture Frame


• Shopping Cart (that I can push to the grocery store and back)


• Stainless Steel Pizza Pan (most common one is Norpro's 16" pan)


• Smallville Season8


• Angel Seasons 1-5


• Buffy Seasons 1-5; 7


• Jeans (34×34) Rustler Carpenter pants (and I bought 2 of the Levi's carpenters that look the same and did not like them)


• socks (white or grey boot socks)


• Board games / card games


• "Ginormous" street map of PA, MD, WV, or VA (for hanging on a wall)


• Indoor "welcome mat/rug"


• Parmesan Cheese (grated)


• Clock for living room (night visible)


• Lockable wall-mounted key holder
  

Things have been moving really fast recently. I bought a house, a Jeep, joined the chamber, bought an ISP, and am working on starting a broadband Internet company as well. Since events in my life have been moving faster than I have been able to keep up with, I have worked out a few additional goals/ideals/resolutions to work into my existing set. These new ones include:

1. I will not (pay to) eat out more than twice per week.


2. I will not (pay to) eat from Sheetz more than once per week.


3. I will return/handle any and all phone calls within 12 hours.


4. I will not purchase anything else (including advertising) on a payment plan (or other credit) until my existing debt is paid off.


5. I will have a relaxing night with friends over at least once a month, if not more.


6. I will stick to these resolutions.

The times seem so exciting
but what's with all the rhyming?

I met my girlfriend Robin in December
But it feels like we've been together forever.

In March I parted ways with the Marine Corp.
I won't be going to Iraq any more.

I bought my house in May.
It's a nice place to stay.

My parents have been married for 40 years.
We celebrated with crabs, hot dogs, and beers.

Vacation ends. A lovely week down at the beach. Essentially I can just walk barefoot out the door, wander down the hall, down the steps, and I'm on the beach. I spent some time in the ocean, time at the pool, but I got sunburnt on the neck during miniature golfing. Robin, who constantly lathered up with sunscreen, got burnt really bad. All in all though, the beach is a nice place to visit, but it's definately not a place I would choose to live at. However, for the rest of the story, check out the pics.

I wanted to bring this comment to the light of day. I got it off of a Techdirt article, and I completely agree with it. I'm not saying that people were healthier "in the old days", but in my mind, unless you have some known medical condition that says otherwise, getting sick, getting germs, getting the occasional virus, and even some parasites is overall good for you. You should get all this as a child, your immune system then trains itself to fight off and recover from these diseases so they don't affect you as bad later on in life.

No Subject Given
by Anonymous Coward on Friday, February 10th, 2006 @ 11:19PM

It's curious how people that lives in a planet called Earth are so concerned about germs. I mean, it's unavoidable. People still don't realize that the slighest of the breezes can trasport millions of bacteria directly to your nose, eyes and mouth without any need of touching anything. The size of bacterias range from 0.2 to 5 microns and viruses from 0.005 to 0.1 microns, so I sincerelly have no idea what can we do to avoid them. Well, you can always wrap yourselves in duct tape. :) Germs lately are huge business heh?

The year drew to a close, and so does this saga. I don't have my family's Christmas pictures gathered together yet, but the rest of December's is up for viewing.

Some have asked me about New Year's Resolutions. I rarely make them, because I make resolutions all the time. This year though, I decided to make one, but I've actually started it well before the end of the year. I want to remove those things in my life that seperate me from God (bad habits, ways of thinking, etc). One of the big things that God has laid on my heart in 2005 has been sexual purity. While I may be physically pure, my mind is far from it, and I intend to change that in the here and now. I'd also like committ more time to reading the Bible, studying God's word. Beyond that, I am believing in making my business profitable in the first 3 months of this year. I want to have all of the bills paid and current (not just the important bills), with a surplus in the bank. These are currently my main goals for 2006.

What's been hapenning since the 30th? I ended up going down to a bar in Hopewell after all. John and myself are in dispute about the name. He calls it "Steele's Bar", and everyone I know calls it "Lisa's Bar", but neither of us looked at the sign when we were down there. Anyways, we played pool, ate hot dogs, watched the ball drop, and had a great time. Robin and I are hitting things off quite well. She is proving herself to be a well-rounded, emotionally stable, intelligent individual. She's also a tomboy which is absolutely fantastic (she is however, rumored to pull a Cinderalla act from time to time, which could be interesting as well).

Yesterday and today I managed to catch-up with Adam and hang out a bit, which was good because with both of us being busy recently we haven't really been able to.

And finally, next Friday is Comedy night, I've got friends coming in from as far off as Pittsburgh, and from as close as Everett. Saturday, I want to get some activity together, either watching movies or playing board/card games. It turns out that quite a few of my knuckles are busy on Saturday, but there should be enough of us to have a good time. Contact me if you're interested.