What about “I just can’t afford that right now.”  Or “It’s not in the budget.”

It’s just another way of saying “I am not going to spend money on that right now.”  And we all have our reasons.  Maybe we can’t go out [...]]]> Does this phrase bother you when uttered by people who you know have money?

What about “I just can’t afford that right now.”  Or “It’s not in the budget.”

It’s just another way of saying “I am not going to spend money on that right now.”  And we all have our reasons.  Maybe we can’t go out to lunch because we really are broke.  Maybe we have stretched ourselves a little thin and can’t buy lunch because we have to pay rent.  Maybe we are careful with our budgets and don’t have the money in the “lunch” category.

For the most part, it doesn’t bother me.  But I have a friend who is constantly complaining that she’s broke and she’s not.  She revealed her financial situation to me (in general terms) and she pays all her bills and has paid off her credit card.  She’s got spending money.  Spending money that she spends.   She’ll tell me on Tuesday that she’s broke and then on Wednesday, go and drop $200 on new clothes.  It’s her choice as to what she buys, but I’m sorry, that doesn’t qualify as broke.

What REALLY grates is that sometimes, someone will offer to buy her lunch for her.  I would happily do that for a coworker or a friend if I knew she was tight on cash and wanted her to join us.   But I think it’s wrong to claim you have no money and take advantage of someone else’s generosity.

Do these phrases bug you?  Would you prefer that someone just say “It’s just not in the budget” rather than “I have no money.”  Do you care?

Sorry to all the DC bloggers for missing happy hour again – something important came up last minute, unfortunately.  I guess that’s life!

I wish I could remember what my [...]]]> So either my blog ate all my auto-posts set up for this week or I just dreamed that I did them.  Either is possible, to be honest.

Sorry to all the DC bloggers for missing happy hour again – something important came up last minute, unfortunately.  I guess that’s life!

I wish I could remember what my posts for the week were about.  The fact that I can’t remember makes me think that maybe I did make up the fact that I wrote them and scheduled them to post.  Anything is possible.  Plus, right now, all I can focus on is that there are about 6 hours left between me and the weekend.  I am ready.

This morning, a coworker and I were talking about the guy from Missouri who won the lottery recently and just seemed so humble about it.  He didn’t seem to have any grand plans for the money – getting his teeth fixed (if you didn’t see the pictures, he was missing some front teeth), taking his kids and his girlfriend’s kids to Disney World, paying his bills.  I hope this guy gets some good financial advisors in his life and doesn’t end up like so many lottery winners – broke.  When you have money like that, suddenly you have a whole lot of friends you never knew you had.  Family too. 

We were talking about what we would do with the money if we won.  Number one, I would quit my job.  Good bye, work.  I’d probably get either a part-time job doing something I loved or just be a professional volunteer, because I don’t know what I would do with my time otherwise.  I would buy a reasonably sized home, nothing too extravagant.  Maybe a vacation home somewhere too.  I think the big splurge would probably be flying first class all the time.  But I probably wouldn’t do a ton of traveling, maybe one nice trip a year. 

It’s kind of fun to dream.  I never buy lotto tickets, so it’s not as if these dreams will ever come true, but the fantasy is fun.

To put it simply, a loss leader is a product put on sale such that the store makes no money on it and usually takes a bit of a loss.  The purpose of these products is to get people in the stores and get [...]]]> Do loss leader products work on you the way they’re “supposed to?”

To put it simply, a loss leader is a product put on sale such that the store makes no money on it and usually takes a bit of a loss.  The purpose of these products is to get people in the stores and get them to buy.  They’re most frequent during Black Friday sales when stores have five DVD players at ridiculously low prices in order to get people to come into the store.  Sure, they lose money on those five DVD players, but people who come into the stores lured by those prices still spend a lot of money.  Even if they’re buying sale products – the sale products are still bringing in a profit to the company.  Just maybe not as big of a profit per item.

So are you the kind of customer who the companies love?  Do you fall for the loss leader?  Will it get you into a store?  If a grocery store that isn’t your normal store has a great sale, will you go in and do all your shopping there that week, or will you just buy the sale item?  If your normal grocery store is offering a sweet sale, will you buy more because you saved so much money on the sale items?

The other day, I decided to use my free rotisserie chicken coupon (the thank you for using the grocery store’s pharmacy).  And all I intended to buy was the chicken itself.  But for whatever reason, I decided to also pick up a pack of gum.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe because I wasn’t going to pay anything otherwise.  Maybe because it was cheap.  Maybe because I like gum (which I do).  But normally, I buy gum in bulk because it’s so much cheaper.  Instead, I picked up a single pack.

Clearly, this wasn’t a big purchase.  Nor was the chicken really a loss leader for this purchase – rather it was designed to get me to use the pharmacy.  But still, I spent money when I didn’t initally plan to. 

Along the same lines, I’m a sucker for a good coupon.  A store that I frequent just sent a 15% off coupon good until the middle of May.  So I’m sitting here, figuring out what I will need from that store in the next few months.  Why not stock up while things are on sale, after all?  But I have to be careful to not splurge just because things are on sale.

Coupons and loss leaders often trick us into spending more.  The trick is to not let your money get away from you.

One coworker thinks that when a couple gets married, each person should put a percentage of [...]]]> The office is a bit slow today, so my coworkers got into a big conversation about marriage (I think it may have started with Tiger Woods).  That morphed into a conversation about family finances, and it was very eye opening.

One coworker thinks that when a couple gets married, each person should put a percentage of their income into the family accounts and then keep the rest for their own use.  (He did admit that if one person is a high paid exec and the other person is a teacher or in some other profession where they’re making less, then that situation changes.)  I’m a fan of that idea.

One coworker said that everything should be combined, no exceptions.  I see the value in this, but I do think that in a relationship, couples need their own money.  A few years back, my dad started getting an “allowance.”  He knew that he was allowed to spend from the family fund, but felt guilty taking money from the family to buy something for himself.  Now he has his own money, which makes him happy.

One coworker was raised that the husband pays for everything.  That makes sense – if the wife is a stay-at-home mother.  But this coworker (a female) thinks that the husband should always be the breadwinner for the family, no matter how much the wife makes.  I thought that was fairly ridiculous and unfair. 

Two coworkers then started debating the percentage idea as if they were married to each other (with no kids).  What then qualifies as a family expense and what is a personal expense.  If the husband wants a new tv that the whole family will use, is that out of his money or the family money?  His reaction was that if it was out of his money then she wasn’t allowed to use it and he was taking the power cord with him when he left.  I’m pretty sure he was joking, but it did open up some of the conflicts that could come up with separating finances. What about vacations?  She said that if it was his idea to go on vacation, he should pay and he laughed.  Clearly these two people should never get married.

It was interesting to hear these coworkers debate about finances and to see just how different everyone’s views are.

Almost too relaxed, if you ask me.

Rent is due on the first of the month, as is true with most apartments.  We also get a grace period, like most apartments.  But our grace period is a whopping ten days!  I’ve never needed a ten [...]]]> My apartment complex is pretty relaxed when it comes to rent payments.

Almost too relaxed, if you ask me.

Rent is due on the first of the month, as is true with most apartments.  We also get a grace period, like most apartments.  But our grace period is a whopping ten days!  I’ve never needed a ten day grace period – I always pay on the first, sometimes the second if things are a little crazy.  I’m not going to complain about the grace period though.  It’s a nice little perk.

What does get me, though, is that they don’t deposit rent checks right away.  Nor do they deposit them by the end of the grace period.  Frequently, it’s not until the 15th or later that the check shows up.  And I know they deposit them at the same bank branch that I bank at, so it’s not just a check clearing delay.  Plus, I have called before to make sure they received my payment and they say “Oh, we have, we just haven’t gone to the bank yet.”

I guess this shouldn’t frustrate me, but since I am penalized if my check is late, it would be nice to get some confirmation that they received it.  Yes, it’s a small complaint.

I suppose this does indicate that the company is doing well, since they don’t need that money right away.  That’s a good feeling.

Except that I’ve already spent it.

And not even on anything exciting.  Dental work and continuing legal education courses.  To be honest, I’m not sure which is more painful.  But [...]]]> Yesterday, I found out that I will be getting a very small performance-based bonus.  I’m pretty pumped about the recognition, and the money’s a nice plus too.

Except that I’ve already spent it.

And not even on anything exciting.  Dental work and continuing legal education courses.  To be honest, I’m not sure which is more painful.  But both are things that I need to spend money on, and it’s nice to not have to scrounge around in my other budget categories to make it happen.

So really, it’s a good thing.  This bonus is going to good use.  It’s just a little disappointing to not be able to have any fun with it.  Typically, I try to put half of every bonus into savings, but I’ve decided to let this one go straight towards these two expense categories, with any excess going into savings.

I feel like such a grown-up.  A boring, boring grown-up.  Maybe I’ll use a few dollars of the money and buy some ice cream to eat while watching the CLE courses.  Though that might undo the benefits of the dental work.

Being a responsible adult is no fun.  But making a good financial decision, while boring, feels pretty awesome.

The answer that I got was that they couldn’t do much, but that I would be eligible for another [...]]]> Last month, my promotional rate with my cable company expired.  That meant my bill was going to jump.  Just what everyone loves to have happen.  So I called the cable company to see what they could do.

The answer that I got was that they couldn’t do much, but that I would be eligible for another promotional rate in three months.  I accepted that and hung up with the rep.

A few days later, I decided to call back and reduce my services.  Even if it was only a $10 difference, that $10 would add up over the months.

Surprise, surprise, there was no 3 month waiting period for a new promotional rate.  In fact, I was eligible for a better promo than I was on for the past two years, with no change in services.  So my bill is lowered, and I get to keep all my services.

Oh, and I have to go through this all again next year.  But it’s worth it.

“Who do these writers think they are, anyway?  They don’t have money problems.  They don’t make stupid mistakes and overdraw [...]]]> The other day, some co-workers were discussing a finance article that one of them had read recently.  I didn’t catch the title or the details of the article, but what I did catch was this comment:

“Who do these writers think they are, anyway?  They don’t have money problems.  They don’t make stupid mistakes and overdraw their accounts.  They just give advice when they have no idea what it’s really like.”

My first thought was that from what I understand, journalists aren’t exactly making a whole lot of money.  Now, this could have been an article from Warren Buffett or Donald Trump (who you could argue understand money problems, just on a different scale), but I bet the author was just like you and me.

And that got me to thinking.  Do personal finance bloggers come off that way?  Do I come off that way?  I’m definitely not perfect.

Admittedly, I have never overdrawn my bank account, but that’s because I use my credit card for everything (save for rent and a small cash withdrawl every month).  And while I do pay off that card every month, I have had to wait for a paycheck to clear before making the payments.  Sure, I could just pull from savings in that instance, but that’s not the point of savings.

Have I ever maxed out my credit card?  Not recently, thankfully.  Given the rates on my credit card, it would take a major medical emergency or some really idiotic spending to get me there.  But I did max it out.  Once.  And I will never do it again. I was in college and had a smallish limit on my card.  I went to Europe on a school trip, and had set up an automatic payment so that my balance would be cleared and I could continue to use the card.  Of course, the payment failed, which meant I reached my limit and suddenly had no way to pay for things.  And since I didn’t have my bank account information with me, I couldn’t initiate a new transfer.  So I had to call my father (collect, of course) and have him make the transfer for me.  I was humiliated.  I was 21 years old, in another country, and had to call my dad to bail me out.

After that experience, I never set up automatic credit card payments.  I may have bills automatically hit the card (such as the cable bill), but I always submit the online payments manually.   Sure, I could just go automatic and watch for the payment (as I do with bills), but I tried that and found myself obsessing over whether or not the payment went through.  Easier to just do it manually. 

Do I still make stupid purchases?  You bet.  I’m better about it than I was, but I definitely still do it.  I’m a sucker for a good coupon.  I also still battle the urge to make impulse purchases, and I’m terrible about stocking up.  Just yesterday morning, I was making a cup of tea at work, looking at the two bags of loose tea in my cabinet and thinking “You know, I could run to the tea shop at lunch and buy more tea.”  What do I need more tea for?  I have two bags! (Not to mention all the regular teabags in the cabinet.)   And the odds are good that by the end of the month, there will be a third bag of loose tea in that cabinet.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m far from perfect, but I’ve definitely learned a lot from both my mistakes and from the mistakes of others.  The key is to make your mistakes few and far between, or just try to keep them small.  I have a friend who has a budget envelope called “Whoops.”  It’s money for when he’s spent just a bit too much in another budget category or for those impulse purchases he probably shouldn’t have made.  I think if I knew I had a Whoops fund, I would be more likely to spend because hey, there’s money for it, but different things work for different people.