“Guest Post” Archive
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This is a guest post from Shane, the author of the Debt Crushing Dad blog and a father of three. He and his family started on the debt free journey in 2007 with over $90,000 in debt. Currently they owe about $25,000.
If you are anything like me, paying off debt has become the lens through which you see the world. I hesitate to do anything that would take away from the goal of paying down debt. This can be good and bad. Good in that it helps me to get out of debt faster and bad in that it can cause me to make bad decisions about issues that are more important than money.
A friend recently suggested that everyone in our area have their house tested for Radon. I didn’t think much of it as I have heard the term before, but no one I knew had ever been very concerned about it. To be perfectly honest, I was afraid that something would be wrong and I would have to pay a lot of money and derail my debt payments. It was easier, but stupider, to assume that everything was fine as it was. After my wife asked me a few more times I finally went to our local health department and purchased a $7 detection kit. I’m very glad that I did.
So what is Radon?
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US. It’s a radioactive gas that derives from the decay of uranium and thorium in the soil and bedrock. Certain areas are worse than others, but every home is at risk. Your house acts like a chimney for it due to the lower air pressure versus outside. Over time, as you breathe, the radioactive particles get into your lung tissue and then decay, giving off a burst of energy that can cause dangerous cell mutations to occur, the first step in a cancerous growth. Generally your immune system destroys these cells before they can become a tumor, but it isn’t a guarantee so minimizing your exposure is a must. Outside air usually contains about 4.0 pCi/L (Picocuries Per Liter). This is now considered to be the upper limit for safety indoors. Our test showed levels of 106.5 pCi/L!! To put that into perspective, a level of 20.0 is equivalent to smoking five packs of cigarettes a day.
So, obviously, we set about figuring out what to do about this. I was feeling pretty guilty about having exposed our family to this (albeit unknowingly) for the last three plus years, but realized that I couldn’t change the past and finding a solution was my top priority. We ended up having two different Radon specialists come to our house to give us an estimate. My biggest fear was that they were going to tell us that there was nothing they could do, leaving us in an unsellable and unhealthy home. Thankfully there are solutions and they’re pretty affective.
The contractor that we decided to go with tells us that his system can generally get the levels down to about 0.6 pCi/L. A huge improvement over where things stand now. The process involves drilling a hole in the foundation and inserting a pipe. The pipe extends all the way above the roof and an inline fan pulls the bad air from below the foundation and exhausts it where it is diluted and swept away before it can enter the house.
The cost for the system is about $925 installed. Thankfully we had a $1000 emergency fund in place. I always have to fight to keep from feeling down about losing debt reduction time when stuff like this happens. It means one more month of paying on our debts. When I feel that way, I remind myself that this was going to happen anyway, and because we were prepared, we won’t be incurring more debt to get it fixed.
The lesson I want to pass on here is to not neglect important things just to get out of debt a little faster. Get a physical every year and maybe even keep the gym membership. Your health is more important than your debt free date. And you should contact your local health department for information on a Radon detection test kit.
We’re always on the lookout for interesing, motivational and real life personal debt stories. It doesn’t matter whether you are an established debt blogger or have just started blogging. We’d love to have you share your personal debt story. Feel free to contact us at any time with your personal debt story.
This is a guest post by Todd Ryan who blogs at So Help Me Todd where he talks about faith, family, finances, and other quandaries.
When I first started trying to improve my financial situation, I went through a series of phases:
Denial
I didn’t think I had that much to learn. I mean, I was already balancing my checkbook and reviewing my statement each month, and I could tell you about what I was spending as I knew how little much we had left over each month. We weren’t doing anything wrong, we just needed more money and then we’d be fine.
But, I didn’t think it could hurt to at least read a book and make sure.
Shock and awe
One of the first things any personal finance book will tell you is that you have to start recording every purchase you make and associating it with a category. Cash, check, credit card, everything gets recorded.
After a week or so of recording everything, you’re told to go back and add up what you spent in every category. So I complied and dutifully went about adding up each category, thinking that it shouldn’t take too long to find that you can’t get blood from a turnip…
Anger
Holy (insert family friendly expletive here)!
I spent how much on work lunches?
Why do groceries cost that much?
I could buy a coffee maker every month and STILL spend less on coffee!
“This is crazy!” I said and quickly set out to see how we could reduce our spending.
On a mission
Suddenly, I became Ima Schwartzasaver, the Terminator.
And every category suddenly read “Sara O’Connor” in big bold letters.
“Are you Sara O’Connor?” I said to the cable bill.
“Yes”, replied Ms. Sara Cable Bill O’Connor nervously.
Well, I’m fixin’ to terminate you.
(gratuituous violence scene)
Repeat. Lather. Rinse.
Closing in on total annihilation
After surveying the trail of “reckless spending” carcasses in my wake, my eye caught one of the behemoths of my budget.
(queue the suspenseful music, preferably something from “300“)
Groceries.
(Hopefully when you read that word, in your mind it sounded like the guy who does the movie trailers for the summer blockbusters)
That one should be easy to cut, especially after all the stories I heard about couponing. Heck, I’m such a bad dude I bet extreme couponing would be more my style.
And off I went.
I did the research.
Read the forums.
Got the book from the library (Did I mention I’m frugal?).
Watched the show.
And so, a couple of weeks later I was ready, having laid the foundation:
- Bought multiple copies of the newspapers for my area, and filed the coupons by coupon source and date
- Saved the coupons in the mail
- Scavenged coupons left behind by others at restaurants
- Set aside a storage area for my bounty
- Registered for all of the in store reward cards
- Used websites to figure out when my coupons would line up with store sales
- Compiled a list of which stores I would visit (4 in total), which coupons I would use, and how many different transactions it would take at each store.
Operation “Grocery Store Domination” is a GO!
And it really did work.
I came home that day, exhausted after several hours of shopping and driving between stores, but I had saved over 50% on my grocery bill.
So I gleefully set about unloading the car and marveling at my loot, feeling like the modern-day metro sexual version of a pirate.
The fact that I was the “wench” because I did all the shopping and cooking kind of ruined my fantasy, but I did have a pretty cool parrot.
Anyway, about an hour later I had everything stowed and had bragged about my success to my wife (who actually accompanied me on some of the trips).
Having worked up a big appetite, we were starving, so I casually remarked something about whipping up something that would probably cost us pennies on the dollar.
Off I went to the pantry to see what we had.
Hmm.
20 boxes of cereal.
Nah, not for dinner.
30 boxes of spaghetti.
Rats, the spaghetti sauce was on next week’s attack list so that won’t work.
3 blood sugar test kits.
What the? Oh yeah, that was so I could get that rebate thing that made them free and gave me cash back in the store so that I can……never mind. I can’t eat them anyway.
10 Air fresheners.
Well, that’s good. If I cook something that smells nasty I can overpower it with that fresh pine scent.
10 pounds of chicken breast, boneless / skinless.
NOW we’re talking! I’ve got a bunch of great recipes for those….
(rummage through the recipe box)
Well, I’ve got about a dozen great recipes, but we’re missing at least one ingredient for each of them, which means another trip to the store.
Man down!
So we ordered pizza that night, and I quickly realized that couponing wasn’t going to work for me. It was hard enough (and I failed) coming up with something on a weekend after I had just went shopping, I couldn’t imaging trying to do that after working all day.
So back to the drawing board I went, and I stumbled across a site called emeals (at the time they were E-mealz).
The premise of emeals is that they provide a one week menu for you (they offer menus by store or food type, i.e. low carb, low fat gluten free, etc.) with the shopping list to go along with it.
And, their menus are designed to average (now) around $85 per week to feed a family of 4. For us, the “family of 4″ has been very inaccurate in that we’re able to feed a family of 5 (including a teen that wears a size 14 shoe and his younger brother who eats more than he does) to satiety and we have had leftovers every single meal.
They have sample plans available under the “How it works” section on their website if you’d like to see the types of meals they offer. We have a couple of picky eaters and we’ve only found one or two dishes that we didn’t like.
How do I know what my grocery budget should be?
Even after implementing emeals, I still struggled with determining how I was doing in my grocery budget. Most of the personal finance books I’ve read speak in percentages, but those were always way off and didn’t seem to make much sense to me.
How can one percentage work for a retired couple, a house full of teenagers, and a single person?
What if there are special dietary needs that are required medically?
Doesn’t the cost of food change? If this book was written in 1999, are the percentages still accurate?
Get your slide rule out…
And then I discovered the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) website. On their site, they have a document (PDF) that is updated monthly. In that document, they list the average cost of food necessary to eat according to the food pyramid broken out by age, sex, and four different budget levels.
Even though I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the pyramid, that seemed like a reasonable model and the fact that they tied it to the consumer price index made it very factual to me.
So I pulled up the PDF and began to calculate what our average monthly cost should be:
- Let’s see, I’m a 42 year old male so, let’s start with “Thrifty” (jot that number down) from the “19-50″ column.
- Next, my wife…find her age range….find thrifty….jot that number down
- (Repeat for the other 3 family members)
- Cool, here’s my total. Wait…..what’s the text at the bottom?
- Oh, I need to adjust the total by 5 percent because these figures are based on 4 family members. Makes sense, but a pain in the butt.
- So there’s my total. Oh. I should probably do the other 3 spending levels as well just so I know them.
Needless to say, this became a lengthy, tedious process that I wasn’t anxious to repeat.
Here he comes to save the day!
Never fear though, dear reader. Not only is this the “Blogging Away Debt” blog, but you happen to be reading the “Blogging Away a Pain in the Butt” guest post.
Luckily for you, I designed and hired someone to code the math behind the table and present in a homely but very efficient and beneficial (not me, the calculator smarty pants) page where all the math is done for you.
All you have to do is select the sex and age range for each family member and press the “Calc” button to see what the average spend in each food category for your family should be.
The table supports up to 10 family members; if you have more than that you already have your own reality show on TLC, so what do you care how much groceries cost? Sheesh…celebrities are so needy.
Anywho, here’s the link to the calculator: Food Costs Calculator (don’t worry, it opens in a separate window)
For us, thanks to emeals, we fall just above the “Thrifty” average and just below the “Low” average for most normal months. If we have company or cook a holiday meal it creeps up to “Low”, but we average below that.
So how do you fare?
Are you at the “Thrifty”, “Low”, “Moderate” or “Liberal” level?
If you’re at the “Thrifty” level or below, how do you do it?
If you’re at the “Moderate” or “Liberal” level, can you think of ways to lower your bill besides becoming a Republican? (Sorry, couldn’t resist. Get it? Liberal? Republican?. Never mind.)
Have you had success at couponing, and if so, how did you overcome the challenge of finding meals easily based on what you have in hand?
We are always looking for interesing, motivational and real life personal debt stories. If you have a personal debt story that you’d like to share, feel free to contact us so that we can share it with all the readers.
Disclaimer: This post is sprinkled liberally with links to emeals, a site where I am both a customer and (like every customer) an affiliate, receiving a 25% commission when you sign up. However, I post these affiliate links with no shame as 100% of the profits I receive from emeals (and from my blog) go directly to a non-profit charitable corporation I’m launching this summer. Currently, the funds are going towards incorporating costs as I tapped out my “dream” budget balance pretty quickly working on developing the concept. If you’re interested, there is more information about the charity on the calculator page.
This is a guest post by Samantha Peters, who is a regular contributor on Paid Twice a personal finance blog, where she writes about practical ways to reduce personal debt.
My older brother had been in dire financial straits for sometime, and was far too proud to ask his little sister for help. It’s a standard personal finance rule to resist getting involved in the money messes of relatives, but of all the money management rules we’re meant to follow, this one is broken the most. So if I was going to decide to help my big brother get out of debt, how was I going to go about it without getting myself in trouble or robbing him of his self-respect?
I decided to sit down and devise a series of rules and regulations to follow. Not only have they helped to minimize risk while maximizing my ability to get involved, they’ve also helped to reduce the embarrassment my brother doesn’t want to experience, which was one of the main reasons he wasn’t seeking help in the first place.
The following is my very own how to help a loved one in debt manifesto, which so far has been working out quite well:
Demand to See Everything
I decided that before getting involved financially with my brother’s debt problems, it was imperative that I have a complete understanding of his entire situation. By asking my brother to fetch every shred of paper proof of his total debt, he actually discovered he owed a little bit more than he thought he did. While it would have been an innocent mistake, his underestimation could have potentially made any efforts of mine to help utterly irrelevant.
Exhaust All Third Party Resources
Upon talking with my brother about his debt, I discovered he hadn’t even bothered to call his student loan lender, let alone anyone else he owed money to. I wanted to make sure that all the obvious moves had been made before getting myself involved any further than as an acting advisor. You’d be surprised what people won’t do simply because of pride.
Provide Tools and Offer Limited-Risk Options
Before I lent any money, I wanted to makes sure that all other non monetary options had been explored. I was willing to offer a spare bedroom if my brother was willing to sell hi home to pay off his debtdebt. I had a used compact car that I was willing to sell at discount to him if he was willing to sell his brand new truck to reduce his debt. While my brother didn’t take me up on all of my offers, it gave me the opportunity to explore options that didn’t mean a cash hand out plus see how serious he was at getting rid of his debt. I think it’s important to see if these sorts of options can solve a loved one’s personal debt crisis before choosing to lend cash instead.
Write up a Contract if Money Is Exchanged
I decided early on that if the only way my brother was going to get out of debt was if he borrowed money from me, that we would get it in writing. While it may seem as though such a formal agreement would alienate a loved one looking for help, I found that a personal loan contract had the opposite affect. My brother was ashamed of his debt and he felt as though a contract made it less like charity and more like a business transaction.
Virtually every personal finance guru out there tells you to avoid helping relatives get out of debt at all costs. But the honest truth is that when loved ones that are close to you need help, it’s almost impossible to say no. With that being said, it’s critical that you take the proper steps to ensure that such assistance actually helps and that it doesn’t put you at risk for getting into debt yourself.
We are always looking for interesing, motivational and real life personal debt stories. If you have a personal debt story that you’d like to share, feel free to contact us so that we can share it with all the readers.
By Sleeping Mama
This is a guest post: “Sleeping Mama” is a 30-something mom to a two-year-old little boy. Her blog, Sleeping Should Be Easy, chronicles the day-to-day life of her toddler, from proud moments to challenging days and everything in between.
I buy Pampers instead of generic, shop at a farmers market, and buy new toys for my toddler. Despite all that, I still claim to be a frugal mom.
How? By choosing to spend on what’s important to my family while aggressively cutting back on what’s not.
Take diapers, for instance. We tried several brands and even considered cloth diapers, but Pampers won my baby’s heart (and bottom). If I ran my budget strictly by the numbers, I would have insisted on buying the least expensive brand, regardless of its performance and ease. Instead, I’m willing to spend more on what works for us and find ways to lower costs as much as possible (I buy Pampers in bulk online using my credit card rewards mall, which gives me an extra 15 points per dollar for that particular online store).
Buying organic food is another example. We shop at the farmers market so for several reasons—to support local communities and eat tastier food among them—but we limit how much we spend per week (that $30 fish would just eat up our budget!) and use most of our purchases to cook at home.
Frugality is a lifestyle, and like any long-term lifestyle, needs to be sustainable. Yes, we could deprive ourselves and live bare bones, but that mindset will hardly go far and is likely difficult to maintain. Instead, we’ll gladly pay the cost of something we enjoy (assuming that it doesn’t eat up most of our income) and skimp on everything else.
So while diapers and food remain a high cost for our family, we’ve tightened our budget on a few other categories:
We frequent the library
Every week I borrow at least six library books for my toddler to read. I can run a search through my library’s website, place holds on the books I’m interested in and pick them up at my convenience—all for free! If my toddler isn’t interested in particular books, I don’t have to worry about buyer’s remorse since we don’t own them. We still buy him books, but at least he’s “test-driven” them before we even spent a dime. The library also hosts free children’s events such as story time or musical performances that we’ve attended.
We cook at home
We hardly eat at restaurants and rely on home-cooked meals. Since we don’t mind spending time in the kitchen, we’re able to save quite a bit, especially since we use leftovers for lunch at work the next day.
We hang out at the park and find free entertainment
My toddler loves going to the park, whether it’s to run on the grass, climb around on the playground, look for pine cones, scoop some sand, or even simply sit and pick flowers from the ground. We’ve gone to practically every park there is in our city. We also find free entertainment or venues: parades, festivals, free museum days. Even shopping centers offer free playgrounds or fountains (if you can avoid walking into the stores!).
We don’t drive fancy cars
When the time came to replace my dying Corolla, we were tempted to take the money we’ve saved and use it as a down payment for a fancier (or even larger) car. But we had enough money saved that would have allowed us to buy another basic Corolla with cash, which is what we did. For us, we just wanted a car that functions and provides basic comfort.
We look for promo codes and printable coupons
Although we buy our toddler new clothes, we opt for lower-cost brands and look for promo codes or printable coupons. Any time I shop online and there’s a field to enter a promo code, I’ll quickly google the store’s name and the words “promo code” to see if anything comes up. Or if I’m planning to go to the actual store, I’ll google the store’s name and “printable coupons.” Usually there’s a code for free shipping or a coupon for a percentage off your purchase.
We don’t buy our toddler too many toys and gifts
This past Christmas, we bought our toddler one gift—and it cost $16. For his birthday, we didn’t buy him any gifts and instead threw a little party with his immediate family. Children don’t really need too many toys and gadgets. I even think boredom is good for them since it forces them to crank up their imagination. And when we do buy him a toy, we’re almost always sure he’ll love it (because we know what he’s interested in) and they’re usually good-quality, long-lasting toys.
What’s important to you?
Our expenditures may be similar to some families while completely opposite for others; neither is necessarily more frugal than the other. So long as you’re clear about your priorities and your budget has room, you can continue spending on what matters to you and cut back on those that don’t.
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My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
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- Everybody Loves Your Money
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- Free Money Finance
- From the Brink of Bankruptcy
- Generation X Finance
- GRACEful Retirement
- Grad Money Matters
- It’s Your Money
- Josephsangl.com
- Kick Debt’s Butt
- Lazy Man and Money
- Low Income Life
- Make Love Not Debt
- Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
- Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Money, Matter and More Musings
- My 1st Million at 33
- No Credit Needed
- One Million and Beyond
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
