Wow... I'm *really* on the finances bandwagon lately...
I do over 95% of my shopping online. If I have to walk into a brick-and-mortar store to buy something then I probably don't bother. It would totally rock if could order online at Home Depot like I do a Fry's. Sixteen two-by-fours drop-shipped to my driveway with free shipping!? Dude! I am ON IT!
But, you gotta be safe. Check out this article on the 12 Angry Men blog.
If you are shopping online you've gotta be using ShopSafe. If your credit card company doesn't offer it then drop 'em like a six-day old raw egg and get another. With ShopSafe you set an expiration date (always go with the lowest possible) and a credit limit (always choose just a little bit over the final cost) for your temporary number. What's more, the temporary number they give you is only valid at that merchant. So you're protected three ways: (a) the card will expire quickly and be useless for fraudsters, (b) the limit is nearly all used up by your purchase and (c) if somebody else gets 'hold of it they can't use it anywhere else. If you're going brick-and-mortar you could even print out your temporary numbers for the places you plan to shop and take 'em with you.
If you are absolutely opposed to ShopSafe or just can't part with your current card company then use PayPal or Google Checkout. This holiday season (and evermore) use these guys to keep your credit card number out of the hands of the vendors!
The whole idea behind these three services is that your actual credit card data is not sent to the vendor. Instead, they act as a middleman for the transaction. If the vendor's systems aren't secure or the vendor is unscrupulous then you've got an extra layer of protection in place.
There's bad people out there folks. It really stinks that we have to suffer because of that but it's the human condition. The Garden, the apple & all that... Protect yourself when you're out there in that digital mall just as you would in any other rough neighborhood.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
If you spend it... track it...
On Casey's blog this morning was one of the simplest and most helpful financial tips you'll ever read: Don't buy it if you can't afford it.
That just gets right to the point doesn't it? Like all good tips it's also just plain common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn't always very common.
I hope this is just the first of many upcoming Monday tips from Casey. We all need a common sense reminder from time to time and what better time than Mondays?
Without being presumptuous, I'd like to add my own tip (or four) to Casey's. These are things that have helped us over the years, maybe somebody else will find them useful as well.
1. Be completely transparent with your spouse (and even your kids) about your spending.
Never, ever, ever (!) spend money that your spouse doesn't know about. OK, so trips to the grocery or for gas are just a part of living and we can expect those. But for anything out of the ordinary your spouse should know before-hand. Whether it's a pile of computer parts or a new pair of shoes it's just plain polite to let your spouse know that you're about to relocate some funds.
2. It's not "my" money, it's "our" money.
We have never, ever had separate accounts. I know this is a popular thing for lots of couples: "his money" / "her money". I've even known couples that alternate paying the utilities from separate accounts. I don't get this at all. When a man and a woman are married they become one. That doesn't say "they become one -- except for their money." (And, actually, it's God's money... He's just letting us keep track of it for a while.)
3. If you spend it -- track it.
We've done this for our entire relationship. We've used paper & pencil, Quicken, spreadsheets... you name it. The only thing we don't track is the cash in our pocket. We get our "allowance" every week and use it for our lunches. Everything else, though, is tracked to the penny. The checking account is cross-balanced between the bank's website, Quicken's register and my projection spreadsheet. Likewise for the credit card. We triple-check every six-pence going in our out of our pockets.
4. Forecast the future.
I rambled on about this in my last post so I won't go into the details here. The gist of it is that you should have a rough idea today of what your cash-flow will look like 12 months from now. You simply cannot make wise purchasing decisions unless you know how they are going to affect your future.
OK, that's it for my top tips. I feel like I'm jumping on the financial bandwagon here with my friend's Casey & Brad but this is important stuff. More couples argue about money than any single other thing. Guess what? We do to -- about once a year... There's a reason my first two points are about communication; if you communicate about your finances then you're a lot less likely to argue about 'em.
That just gets right to the point doesn't it? Like all good tips it's also just plain common sense. Unfortunately, common sense isn't always very common.
I hope this is just the first of many upcoming Monday tips from Casey. We all need a common sense reminder from time to time and what better time than Mondays?
Without being presumptuous, I'd like to add my own tip (or four) to Casey's. These are things that have helped us over the years, maybe somebody else will find them useful as well.
1. Be completely transparent with your spouse (and even your kids) about your spending.
Never, ever, ever (!) spend money that your spouse doesn't know about. OK, so trips to the grocery or for gas are just a part of living and we can expect those. But for anything out of the ordinary your spouse should know before-hand. Whether it's a pile of computer parts or a new pair of shoes it's just plain polite to let your spouse know that you're about to relocate some funds.
2. It's not "my" money, it's "our" money.
We have never, ever had separate accounts. I know this is a popular thing for lots of couples: "his money" / "her money". I've even known couples that alternate paying the utilities from separate accounts. I don't get this at all. When a man and a woman are married they become one. That doesn't say "they become one -- except for their money." (And, actually, it's God's money... He's just letting us keep track of it for a while.)
3. If you spend it -- track it.
We've done this for our entire relationship. We've used paper & pencil, Quicken, spreadsheets... you name it. The only thing we don't track is the cash in our pocket. We get our "allowance" every week and use it for our lunches. Everything else, though, is tracked to the penny. The checking account is cross-balanced between the bank's website, Quicken's register and my projection spreadsheet. Likewise for the credit card. We triple-check every six-pence going in our out of our pockets.
4. Forecast the future.
I rambled on about this in my last post so I won't go into the details here. The gist of it is that you should have a rough idea today of what your cash-flow will look like 12 months from now. You simply cannot make wise purchasing decisions unless you know how they are going to affect your future.
OK, that's it for my top tips. I feel like I'm jumping on the financial bandwagon here with my friend's Casey & Brad but this is important stuff. More couples argue about money than any single other thing. Guess what? We do to -- about once a year... There's a reason my first two points are about communication; if you communicate about your finances then you're a lot less likely to argue about 'em.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I'm Back!
Hey all, it's been way too long since I dropped in to write a bit. Nothing sinister or unpleasant, things have just been busy. I know, I know, that's a lame excuse but it really is the truth. Most days I can grab 30 minutes here & there for some recreational surfing but I rarely have the time to write.
So what's been going on? Well, Mountain Lake has been it's usual crazy self. Those of you who attend know what I'm talking about! Growth groups have started back and I find myself leading a whole new group of people. It's a larger group that I'm accustomed to so that'll take some adjusting on my part. They're great folks though and it'll be exciting as we all grow together.
MLC just wrapped up a series on finances called Becoming the Boss of Our Bling. The pastors spent three weeks talking about different aspects of finances: faithful giving, the danger of defining ourselves through our stuff, and how to evaluate our financial status.
Like every series at MLC it was relevant to our day to day lives. We've always tried to keep control of our finances but it's all too easy to let our finances take control of us! Check out Casey Graham's blog for some cool stuff. Casey really has some great ideas on getting things in order and he's plugged into a whole pile of like-minded people.
So, sorry to disappoint, I don't have any deep insightful thoughts tonight -- not that I'm under any illusion that I ever did have any deep insightful thoughts. I've got a few things bubbling around in my head so if I can grab a chunk of time soon I promise to post one or two before the end of the year.
Oh... wait... there is something I want to add on the topic of finances...
This is, like, so 1980's but my primary financial management tool is ... wait for it ... a spreadsheet. Yes, I use Quicken to pay my bills and manage my accounts and it's really great for that. But, honestly, it's forecasting and tracking just aren't that good for me. It could be because it's a canned application and doesn't give me any way to really customize things -- no, changing the categories of a report is not customization! Not that a spreadsheet is as malleable as a Java file in an IDE but it does give me a chance to manipulate my financial data in ways that I want rather than in ways the Quicken programmers decided.
So what's in my high-tech late-80's era spreadsheets? Well, I have two currently. The one I've used for many years is a projection tool. I have a tab per month and on each tab I track everything coming in and going out. Regular, recurring payments are scheduled and each month's value comes from the preceding history (and gets updated with real values when they roll around). It's more than I can describe in words but the point is that at any time during the year I can look at any tab (or the handy-dandy graph on the 13th tab) and see what my cash-flow will look like at that point in time. Of course the projection can't predict things like a broken washing machine or whatnot but it does a good job at covering 80% of the situation. That gives us enough information at a glance to know whether or not it'll be smart to remodel the kitchen. We may have enough money this month to get started but if the project says we're in the red three months out then getting started is a Bad Idea. If you're not using some method -- even pencil and paper -- to project your future cash-flow situation then you really have no idea how today's spending is going to impact tomorrow's opportunities.
My second spreadsheet is only a couple of months old. On this one I track our credit card expenses. If our credit card company was enlightened and would let me download transactions into Quicken daily I probably could live without the spreadsheet. Alas, they don't -- apparently they think it is sufficient to only show me the data on the web. So... a daily cut-and-paste into my spreadsheet lets me have a daily view into what we've spent. That in itself would be useful but where it really helps is to throw that up against a weekly budget value that rolls up into a billing-cycle budget value. I don't care how much we spend on food or movies -- I only care that we stay in the budget amount each week. This works surprisingly well. If we do really good or really bad one week then we adjust it into the next week as appropriate. If we're having bad weeks at the beginning of the month the we know that dinner & a movie isn't on the todo list at the end of the month. C'est la vie. Since we started doing this we've cut our monthly credit card bill to somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of its previous average. The tool is just a means to an end though; as with the projection spreadsheet, the real value is in raising our awareness of where things stand.
OK, so not a very spiritual post but rethinking the Bling series gave me the idea. My spreadsheets work for me and I make no promise that they're anything other than noise to anyone else but... if you're interested post a comment and I'll figure out a way to make 'em available.
Peace to all.
So what's been going on? Well, Mountain Lake has been it's usual crazy self. Those of you who attend know what I'm talking about! Growth groups have started back and I find myself leading a whole new group of people. It's a larger group that I'm accustomed to so that'll take some adjusting on my part. They're great folks though and it'll be exciting as we all grow together.
MLC just wrapped up a series on finances called Becoming the Boss of Our Bling. The pastors spent three weeks talking about different aspects of finances: faithful giving, the danger of defining ourselves through our stuff, and how to evaluate our financial status.
Like every series at MLC it was relevant to our day to day lives. We've always tried to keep control of our finances but it's all too easy to let our finances take control of us! Check out Casey Graham's blog for some cool stuff. Casey really has some great ideas on getting things in order and he's plugged into a whole pile of like-minded people.
So, sorry to disappoint, I don't have any deep insightful thoughts tonight -- not that I'm under any illusion that I ever did have any deep insightful thoughts. I've got a few things bubbling around in my head so if I can grab a chunk of time soon I promise to post one or two before the end of the year.
Oh... wait... there is something I want to add on the topic of finances...
This is, like, so 1980's but my primary financial management tool is ... wait for it ... a spreadsheet. Yes, I use Quicken to pay my bills and manage my accounts and it's really great for that. But, honestly, it's forecasting and tracking just aren't that good for me. It could be because it's a canned application and doesn't give me any way to really customize things -- no, changing the categories of a report is not customization! Not that a spreadsheet is as malleable as a Java file in an IDE but it does give me a chance to manipulate my financial data in ways that I want rather than in ways the Quicken programmers decided.
So what's in my high-tech late-80's era spreadsheets? Well, I have two currently. The one I've used for many years is a projection tool. I have a tab per month and on each tab I track everything coming in and going out. Regular, recurring payments are scheduled and each month's value comes from the preceding history (and gets updated with real values when they roll around). It's more than I can describe in words but the point is that at any time during the year I can look at any tab (or the handy-dandy graph on the 13th tab) and see what my cash-flow will look like at that point in time. Of course the projection can't predict things like a broken washing machine or whatnot but it does a good job at covering 80% of the situation. That gives us enough information at a glance to know whether or not it'll be smart to remodel the kitchen. We may have enough money this month to get started but if the project says we're in the red three months out then getting started is a Bad Idea. If you're not using some method -- even pencil and paper -- to project your future cash-flow situation then you really have no idea how today's spending is going to impact tomorrow's opportunities.
My second spreadsheet is only a couple of months old. On this one I track our credit card expenses. If our credit card company was enlightened and would let me download transactions into Quicken daily I probably could live without the spreadsheet. Alas, they don't -- apparently they think it is sufficient to only show me the data on the web. So... a daily cut-and-paste into my spreadsheet lets me have a daily view into what we've spent. That in itself would be useful but where it really helps is to throw that up against a weekly budget value that rolls up into a billing-cycle budget value. I don't care how much we spend on food or movies -- I only care that we stay in the budget amount each week. This works surprisingly well. If we do really good or really bad one week then we adjust it into the next week as appropriate. If we're having bad weeks at the beginning of the month the we know that dinner & a movie isn't on the todo list at the end of the month. C'est la vie. Since we started doing this we've cut our monthly credit card bill to somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of its previous average. The tool is just a means to an end though; as with the projection spreadsheet, the real value is in raising our awareness of where things stand.
OK, so not a very spiritual post but rethinking the Bling series gave me the idea. My spreadsheets work for me and I make no promise that they're anything other than noise to anyone else but... if you're interested post a comment and I'll figure out a way to make 'em available.
Peace to all.
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