Fairs Are Fun

This past weekend Mrs. K and I went to a county fair for the first time in...well, a long time. She had a craving for shaved ice and I had a hankering for some mini-donuts. I have a soft spot for them or more accurately from them.

At the gate I was a little surprised by the six dollar entry fee. I was used to free admission fairs. At least now I had a goal, outside of just getting mini-donuts, I was going to get my six dollars worth.

First stop, a baby monkey. What? Yep, a baby monkey. Did I want my picture taken with it for eight bucks, no. Did we waste a few minutes watching it do crazy monkey things, of course. For the next couple hours we wandered the fair grounds looking at all the booths, rides, cows, horses and llamas. There was some food and craving-easing done in there somewhere. Granted that cost some money, but it would at home too. Plus a fair is as good of reason as any to eat some less than healthy food and feel ok about it.

All in all, a pretty good time was had and we were ready to head home. Until I found out it was only a half hour until the greatest event that fairs have to offer. Butter eating contests? No. Turtle races? Not quite. It's the demolition derby. To me there is nothing better than people taking cars and running them into each other until they can't...run into each other anymore. It must be the caveman in me. K SMASH. Needless to say Mrs. K was not quite as enthused, but she's a trooper and let me have my silly fun. Almost three hours of awesome crazy fun.

Cars go smash, make K smile.

Six hours after paying what I thought was a lot for entry into the fair, we left feeling pretty entertained. Where else can you pay one dollar per hour for such an array of entertainment. Oreos on sticks, monkeys, llamas, cars running into each other. Pretty cheap fun, definitely worth the price of admission.

What have you done lately for cheap entertainment?  Find a county fair in your area here.

Retirement Calculator Spreadsheet

Photo by 401(K) 2012

Instead of just telling...err typing you something, today I thought I would give you something. Candy. No, not candy. It's a retirement calculator spreadsheet. Exciting right? Not really. Well, you're the one reading a personal finance blog, what did you expect? Candy. Moving on...

A couple years ago, I wanted to figure out what I was looking at for a retirement year. I searched around the Internet and found a number of retirement calculators, but I wanted something a little more customizable. So one night I hammered out this spreadsheet.

You can enter your salary and expected investment return. It also has places for 401(k) and IRA contribution information. In case you have other types of retirement accounts, there is a spot for both a percentage-based account and/or a biweekly contribution account too. Plus you can enter starting account amounts. I know, it sounds like a lot, so thank me! Actually, maybe look it over first and make sure you appreciate the awesomeness of it and then thank me.

Oh yeah, I forgot, I said the reason I created this was because I wanted more customization. My main motivation for making this was to see what our retirement timeframe would be if we switched to a single income. In order to figure that out, I made the spreadsheet allow for customizing your salary (and everything else) on a biweekly basis. So, if you want to see what would happen if you quit working, you can. Just change the salary to zero on the date you would stop receiving your paycheck and there you have it. Everything will adjust automatically. Same for contributions. Want to see how much adding a percent to your 401(k) will have in 25 years, change it and it will auto-fill down for all future entries. Try it out. Let me know what you think.

Download the spreadsheet here if you haven't already. Don't forget to share this post with your retirement calculating friends and family.

What are you doing to make sure you retire at your ideal time?  How have you been tracking your progress?

To Do

When it comes to paying bills, I have a system. Starting one year ago when we bought our house, I entered all my bills in my iPod touch to-do app one week before they are due. I pay the bill when the to-do reminder goes off.  Pretty simple.

Until...

The other day I got an email reminder from the gas company to pay my bill. Usually I ignore these because the bills aren't due for another few weeks and I like earning my pennies of interest in the meantime. I did notice in the email that the bill was quite high though. Then I looked at the electric bill and it too was high.

Now I'm thinking that there are little utility company gnomes coming into our house while me and Mrs. K are sleeping. They're opening fridges, cranking the a/c, probably have every light in the whole place on. All while I'm peacefully dreaming about early retirement.

A Utility Gnome Posse. You Have Been Warned!

Luckily that wasn't the case. It turns out the to-do app on my touch only schedules my monthly events for one year. The previous month just happened to be the one year anniversary of us buying our new house. So, the app gave me an anniversary gift of not paying my utility bills on time. SURPRISE! Instead of utility gnomes, it was just the bill total for the last two months, plus a nice little fee of $1.64 (there go my interest pennies) to remind us that we should pay on time. Needless to say, that app is no longer with us.

I looked around for a replacement and came up with Producteev. It has web access, mobile apps, and Mac apps. And, of course, it's FREE, otherwise I wouldn't be using it. So far so good, haven't missed any payments yet, but we have a ways to go before our home's second year anniversary.

What do you use as a reminder to pay your bills? Has that system ever failed you?

Photo by debabratad

Go Go Power Savers

Photo by 401(K) 2012

My wife and I are still DINKs. Please go back and make sure you read that right. DINKs stands for Dual Income, No Kids. We often wonder what our financial situation would be like if we were SIOKs or SITKs or NINKs or some other crazy thing that I don't want to think about. So, after reading a couple of other posts about single income living (here and here), today that wonder turns to action.

Luckily for me, our cash inflow and cash outflow is pretty simple and all our accounts are available online. Our paychecks are direct deposited into our ING checking, and from there the money goes to one of two places, expenses or investments.

My objective was to determine the percentage of income we are saving.  My method: 1) Add up all direct deposits year-to-date. 2) Add up all investments year-to-date. 3) Divide investments by direct deposits. 4) Hope for a big number, ideally over 53%.

As I was going through my ING transactions and adding by calculator, I realized I had a much better way of doing this.  I signed in to Mint, did a quick search on income, a quick search on investments,  and BAM totals already added.  Pretty sweet, huh?

Mint Awesomeness Sidebar

Quick sidebar for those of you not familiar with Mint. It's a website that you can sign-up for that will basically organize and categorize all of your financial information and transactions (provided that your account can be accessed online by Mint). How does it work? Well, after you sign up, you add all your online accounts. Mint then retrieves all of your transactions from your linked accounts and does some pretty cool auto-categorization and budget creation.

There are a lot of other things that it can do too.  I use it to instantly check the balances on all of my accounts, including net worth and investment totals. I also like looking at the budgets, even though I leave the default, which averages your previous months' spending.  I have my target retirement amount entered as a goal, so I can see how far ahead of the game I am.  Finally, I use it to check our account transactions every week or so, to make sure nobody hijacked my identity (and keep tabs on what Mrs. K has been buying, shhh). Mint is extremely useful and best of all FREE.  Definitely worth a look.

End Mint Awesomeness Sidebar 

So where was I?  Ahh yes, hoping for a big number.  My hope was for something a little over 50%, so that we could live on a single salary. Our number, drumroll please ............ 56.4%.  This number made me a pretty happy camper, although I don't particularly like camping so it made me a pretty happy... penthouser (not in the dirty magazine sense, silly, but the top floor suite sense). Anyway, I was happy.  At this savings rate we could live on a single income without making any changes.

But Wait A Minute

I forgot to add in the money that we were automatically depositing into our Roth 401(k) and Roth IRA accounts.  After tacking those on, the savings rate increased to 74.4%. Wait, were you hoping for another drumroll?  Oops, I'm sorry. That seems like a pretty crazy savings rate to me, but I re-ran the numbers and got the same thing. 

What does this show? Well, for one, you obviously have no lives. Did you just think that? Shame on you! I'll have you know that we already took a vacation and a half this year. I think it shows that Mrs. K and I are both lucky to have the jobs and support structure that got us to this point.  Also, it shows the benefit of living below your means. Could we go out and buy a new car every year, yeah.  Could we eat out fives times a week, sure why not.  But because we choose not to do those things, we have the comfort of knowing that if one of us lost our job and the other lost half their salary, we would still be living the high-life cruising in our 2001 Pontiac Grand Am. At least until there is a little K in the picture.

What's your savings percentage goal?  How are you living below your means to get there?

Sour Apple

Original Photo by zolierdos.
Sad Face by K!

For those of you who don't know, yesterday was Apple's third-quarter earnings report.  Since I'm an Apple fan-boy or fan-man, I justified that it was ok for me to gamble on Apple beating expectations and surging to new highs.  SHAME ON ME!  A 5.5% loss later and I'm wishing I would have sold at my profit target like a good little swing trader.  But hey, I just recently started picking my own stocks and am still getting my feet wet.  Lesson learned.

Why did I just start picking my own stocks you ask?  Or you didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you why anyway.  Good question.

Coming out of college I was focused on a lot of different things, a new job, finding a house, a girlfriend that was getting tired of waiting around. Needless to say, there wasn't a whole lot of free time.  I had a little money from working summers during college that I wanted to invest, but didn't know much about the stock market and was afraid of picking individual stocks.  Instead, I picked a mutual fund  As time went on, I started learning more about the stock market and my interest in buying stocks increased.  Fast forward four years and guess how much I had made on my mutual fund investment.  Zero.  Well, with all I'd learned over that time, I figured I could have done that...right?

Bring on the stock market...game.

Not making any money in those four years was enough for me to overcome my angst about picking specific stocks.  But instead of jumping right in, I decided to start a virtual stock exchange game.  It's a cool fantasy stock trading game, at least as cool as a fantasy stock trading game can be, which is pretty freaking cool.  You can create games and invite friends. It can be a simple buy and sell game or a complex one using limits and margin accounts.

After playing for a few months and learning a thing or two, it gave me the confidence to switch to picking individual stocks with the money in our cash rewards credit card account. Now I'm addicted to the stock market, good or bad, and wouldn't change a thing.  Actually, I wish I would have done it sooner.  Which brings us to today.  My stock picks are beating my former mutual fund, errr, at least up to yesterday they were, and I'm having fun with a new hobby.  So, if you're at all interested in picking your own stocks, create a free fantasy game and give it a shot.  It's a good way to get started in the stock market and maybe you'll learn a few lessons, like I did today, without losing any real money.  Send me an invite and I'll play too.

Have you ever thought about investing in individual stocks or do you already?  Is there another financial move that you are interested in making but are afraid to jump into?

Note:  It is generally recommended that you invest no more than 10% of your portfolio in "mad money".  Mad money being individual stock buying/selling like I just started.  I'm only playing with 3.5% of my portfolio.  The rest is in low-fee mutual funds.

Free For All

Photo by Nero.Lives

Now it's time for the other things of value part of the blog.  Today's thing is MLB.TV Free Game of the Day.  Every day there is a different free game that you can stream live.  If you're a fan of baseball and want to check out a random matchup on occasion or if you're not a fan of baseball and want something to help you take a nap, check it out.  The day's free game is listed at 10a.m. CST which gives you plenty of time to do chores, kiss up to the wife (or whoever requires kissing up to), and/or think of excuses to free up time to relax and enjoy the game.  Big market and winning teams seem to make more appearances on the free game of the day.  Kind of explains why my Rockies were on last night for the first time in...well I can't remember.  So, last night was like a holiday for me which means I shouldn't even have been creating this masterpiece you are reading.  But I'm a man of the people and I will make sacrifices for, ooooh games on...

Morning Update:  Rockies lose 3 - 6.  It's probably going to be awhile before I get to watch them again.  What do you use to watch your favorite out-of-market team play?  Or are all your favorite teams from your hometown?

Come Sale Away

Greatest cover song ever.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything was on sale?  Well, there is a way.  It may not be 50% off, but a sale is a sale.  WARNING:  This method is for disciplined people only.  If you are questioning whether or not you are disciplined, RUN from your computer.  Or just skip this post and come back tomorrow, that works too, but it's a lot less dramatic and therefore less fun.  SO RUN.

Alright, now that we have disciplined-only readers, I'll tell you how you can make every purchase into  a sale.  All you have to do is buy something, that's it.  The key is how you pay for it.  In order to make it a sale, you'll need a rewards credit card.  Hence, the need for you to be disciplined.  In case you didn't notice, disciplined is sort of the theme here.  If you can manage to only buy what you can afford and pay off the full balance every month then this might be for you.  If not, RUN.  I guess RUN is another theme we have going here.

Anyway, back to the rewards credit cards.  My weapons of choice for making sales are the no-annual-fee 2% cash rewards American Express and 1.5% cash rewards VISA.  Now, I know what you're thinking, there's X card out there that gives you 5% on travel, restaurants and puppies.  However,  puppy purchases may only get you 5% back in January thru March, and you have a big puppy expense in August, so no 5% for you.  I'm not into that.  I don't want to have 10 different cards and need to sign up for the newest categories in order to get the highest rewards rate every month.  I just want to know what percent I'm getting all the time on every purchase.  So why do I have two cards?  It's simple, not everyone accepts American Express.  With these two Fidelity cards, my rules are easy.  1) Put everything I possibly can on them.  2) Use the American Express if possible, otherwise use the VISA.  3) Pay the full balance every month.  4) Get free money.  Mrs. K and I have received between $500 and $1,000 in cash rewards each year we've had these cards.  Sold?  

Plus, you no longer need $2,500 to open a Fidelity brokerage account to link to your credit cards for rewards depositing.  You can simply open a no minimum, no fee Cash Management Account, think free online checking account.  By simply opening this account and signing up for the cash rewards cards, everything you buy can be on sale for 1.5% to 2% off.

What rewards card do you have and why did you choose it?  Do you use different cards depending on the circumstance?

Winn-ING (since 2007)

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

Starting this blog made me reminisce about when my obsession with personal finance began.  THIS is that story.

Like most people, when I got my first paycheck I thought, "Hey having money is good, I would like some more please."  Now after saying that to my boss the next week, I found out being polite alone will not get you more money, I mean I did say please didn't I?  Well, at least it didn't work for me, maybe you're better looking and should still give it a shot.  Anyway, asking for money wasn't off to a great start, so I decided to look into what I could do with the money I had.  I already had a savings account at a local bank, but wondered if there was something better out there.  My search led me to ING.  One of my best Internet finds yet.

What's so great about ING.  Well, it's an online bank.  Now I know what you might be thinking, "my local bank offers online banking."  Even though that may be true, it isn't the same as being an online bank.  Online banks don't have buildings that you can go to for financial services.  This may seem inconvenient, but in place of those buildings you get exponentially larger interest rates on your savings.  We're talking 8 to 80 times or more.  Let's do some quick math to make this sink in.  Right now you could get a savings account at some brick and mortar banks with a rate of .05%.  ING's current rate is .8%.  That's 16 times!  On a $10,000 balance, you'd be looking at interest of $5 a year versus $80.  Now that may not seem like a lot of money, but hey, it's a month of free cable, if you still have cable after the last post.  Plus, back before the latest and greatest crash in 2008, the ING rate was 6%.  So, it was $37.50 annual interest at a brick and mortar versus $600.  That's $562.50.  BAM!  It's that easy to make more money with money.  

I could end it there, but I'd feel bad for not including an even more awesome offering from ING.  

They also have an interest checking account.  The interest rate isn't crazy high like the savings account.  However, the greatness comes in being able to send electronic or paper checks from the website.  This lets it be a one-stop-shop for paying any bill that you have.  If the biller accepts electronic payments, ING will fire one over, if the biller only accepts paper checks, then through the mail it will go.  No more stamps, no more envelopes, no more mailbox, err that may be too far.  In addition to that, you can now deposit checks over the website by uploading photos of said checks and you can even order a checkbook, if you really really like stamps or licking envelopes...weirdo.  

So go forth and open these accounts, direct deposit to your checking, instantly transfer some to your savings, go buy some gas with your debit card, take out some cash from the free ATM (that's right, ING is part of a free ATM network), mail your mom a check, wire your brother some cash, photo deposit those birthday checks, and make more money while doing all of it.

Note:  ING is just one of many different online banks out there.  I started with an HSBC savings account, but switched it to ING when I found out about the awesomeness of their checking account.  It's very convenient to have instant transfers (not same day, but same minute) between checking and savings accounts.  But by all means look around, just make sure what you find is FDIC insured. 

Double Note:  I am not getting paid by ING to promote their products.  However, if you are interested in an ING checking or savings account, I can send you a referral where you get $25 for opening an account with at least $250, an instant 10% return.  Full disclosure, I would get $10.  Now, I realize that our relationship is new and we are still feeling each other (not in the creepy way) out, so if you don't feel comfortable requesting a referral yet, I understand.  Read more posts, see if I'm the kind of guy you'd take home to your parents to talk to them about retirement and if so, then email me for a referral.  You can send your referral request to GetWorthBlog@gmail.com.


Do you have an online bank account?  If so, which one and what do you think is the best part?  If not, what's stopping you?

Dis(h)missed

Let me start by saying, I'm writing this post with a heavy heart.  You see, in our never-ending quest to worry less about money and enjoy life more, Mrs. K and I decided to cancel our satellite dish service.  I'm not going to lie, it was a difficult decision.  Satellite/cable service has been a part of our lives for the past 15 or so years.  I have to believe it's kind of like sending your kid off to college, you start saving money and only see them on the weekends(when we go to a friend or relative's house).

What spurred us to make such a crazy decision?  While we were looking over monthly expenses we saw that our satellite service was the third highest bill after our mortgage and groceries.  Back when we signed up for our last two-year contract it was only around $40 per month but now it was over $90.  Which may not seem like much, but that's more than $3 every day and over an entire year we're talking $1,100.  That savings is the equivalent of over a 2% raise for people making the median household income of $51,914.  And I like raises.  I like raises I don't have to work for even more.

We're still only a couple months into the no dish zone, but so far so (mostly) good.  Netflix has been great for streaming movies or TV shows using our Wii and it's less than one-tenth the price of satellite service.  Most of our TV watching is done using that now. We put up an over-the-air antenna in the garage attic space so we can watch local channels.  At times there can be frustrations since we live a little farther than the signal wants to reach.  But I can deal with missing a live show if the weather is bad.  Especially since most shows are available for streaming online.

At this point, I'd say we're happy not having our satellite service.  We're saving money, spending less time in front of the TV (although not much with Netflix filling in) and getting more accomplished around the house.  Turns out we have neighbors, who knew.

However, every week we now get a letter from our former satellite service company offering us more and more to come back.  So if you have service and aren't under a two-year contract, it might be worth canceling to see what they would give you.  The last offer I got was for a $200 debit card, free NFL Sunday Ticket and free movie channels for a year, plus a year of 50% off programming.  Tempting, very tempting.  If that offer is still around come preseason football, they may have me.  But I'll try to stay strong.

What's your satellite/cable/tv situation?  Have you tried or thought about canceling your service to save money or spend less time watching TV?

And Goodwill Towards...Taxes

This summer we (Mrs. K) decided to have a Memorial Day garage sale.  I had mixed emotions about it.  On the plus side, people come and give us money for stuff we don't want anymore...yay.  However, in order to get that money we need to have a house-wide scavenger hunt, trust me it's not as fun as I just made it sound.  Oh and I have to clean the garage so we have space to show off all our hidden treasures.  Once everything was out in the open, the only thing left to do was price things.  I usually stay out of this part.  But this year would be different, this year I had a plan.

Since we had more hidden treasures than a 3 car garage could put on display, we decided we would take the unsold items to the Goodwill and rack up some tax deductions.  Yes, I like putting the in front of things that don't need it, it's fun, leave me be.  Anyway, back to my brilliant pricing plan.  The Goodwill (wasn't that fun?) provides this handy valuation guide, to tell you how much your donated hidden treasures are worth in the eyes of the IRS.  And be careful those eyes are always watching...ALWAYS.  Given that handy valuation guide, I figure I can price everything at a 25% discount to the Goodwill value.  Where'd that come from you ask?  Well, if you add your state and federal income tax rates together, that is what you will be saving on your taxes by donating to charity.  I rounded down to 25% because we had a lot of stuff and it makes for easier math.  Using this method, whether it sells at the garage sale or I take it to the Goodwill, I get a similar amount for it and I have an easy reference for pricing garage sale items.  Not to forget, donating to the Goodwill also results in that warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach.  So if you don't like that feeling, you have been warned (and you probably should do some self-reflection because who doesn't like helping people, you monster).


How has your garage sale experience been this year?  Find anything good?  What do you do with your leftovers, save for next year, donate?

Note:  Don't go pricing everything with this method.  I don't want to go to a local garage sale and find an antique coffee grinder marked at $4 because the valuation guide said it's $15.  I mean, it would be nice to find it and make some easy money, but I don't want to find it because of this post.

To Finance...Again

Once again 30-year mortgage rates are at record lows, 3.56% to be exact.  It seems like this happens every couple of weeks.  This time I was bored enough to see what kind of impact a refinance would have on my mortgage.

My current mortgage is a 30-year at 5% with $158,000 outstanding and 29ish years left which is a monthly payment of about $858.  Using this handy refinance calculator, I would save $129.37 per month and $45,019.31 in interest over the life of the loan.  Now the question is, will it be worth it.  When we purchased our house we payed $2,300ish in closing costs.  Which means it would take 18 months to recoup the cost of refinancing and then we would be pocketing that $129.37 every month for the next 27 years.  Sounds like a pretty easy way to save some money.

One problem for me and Mrs. K, we are lazily looking for land to build a new house.  So it's kind of a gamble on whether or not we would still be here (in this house, not dead) in the 18 months it takes to make back the closing costs on a refinance.  However, if it wasn't for that, we would be refinancing as I speak...err type.

What is your mortgage situation?  Have you already refinanced recently or are you looking into refinancing now?  Or have you given up on the whole home ownership thing?

To Sweat Or Not To Sweat

Phew, it sure has been hot lately.  We've been pushing 90 the last few days and that's in Wisconsin.  I'm sure it's even worse in most other places.  The other day this got me and a neighbor on the topic of air conditioning.  We compared thermostat settings with his being 73 and mine 80.  Note to self: bake some cookies so I have a reason to go sit in the coolness while waiting for a cup of sugar.  Although the oven would be countering my a/c, so edit note to self, lie about making cookies… Anyway, the thermostat comparisons got me wondering how much of a difference 7 degrees can have on the energy bill.  


After consulting the knower of all things good, bad and otherwise, the Internet, here's what I found.  The consumer energy center says you save 1%-3% for each degree (above 72) higher that you set your thermostat.  I pay around $30 per month more in the summer for my air conditioning.  Those numbers work out to about $1.10 of savings per degree above 72 degrees each month.  Which means I'm saving $7.70  monthly, compared to the neighbor, or around $30 over an entire cooling season.  It may not seem like much, but for the amount of effort required (pushing a button a few times on the thermostat), it's a pretty easy way to save a little cash.


What is your thermostat set at in the summer?  How many degrees are you willing to bump it up to get those dollars?  Our key is running our ceiling fans to circulate the air which allows for a higher thermostat setting while still feeling cool.


Note:  Make sure your thermostat is set at a temperature where you and who/what ever is living with you is comfortable.  For example, I tried setting my thermostat at 85 degrees, but Mrs. K was not comfortable.  A few dollars in air conditioning is cheaper than a few hours of couples counseling...just saying.

Welcome to Get Worth!

I guess I'll kick things off with some information about myself and the purpose of this blog so you can make a quick judgement whether to keep reading or clear your history and pretend this never happened.

It all started when I was a glimmer in my…ok too far back.  So I'm K, a 27ish year-old software developer.  If you assumed I'm a male because of my job then shame on you, that's sexist or something.  But yes, you were right to go with the odds, I am in fact a man.  That sounds weird declaring myself to be a man, reminds me of the OSU coach Mike Gundy's rant

(if only I was 40...or better yet, if only he was 27).  Focus K, focus, now where were we.  Ah yes, about me.  Well that's probably already more than many of you want to know.

So why is someone who spends 9 hours a day in front of a computer opting to tack on another 2 or 3?  Because the computers speak to me…  There isn't a whole lot to it.  I enjoy talking/reading/hearing about things.  Pretty simple, right?  What kind of things you ask, well I like knowing about things that can add value to my life and make things better, easier and more fun.  Hence, the blog name, Get Worth.  One of the bigger parts of making life easier for me is knowing about things that can help me worry less about money.  Things that can make me money, things that I can enjoy without spending money, or things that offer so much value that I'm willing to part with some of my money.  Also, I think there is a lot of useful financial information out there that can make a big impact with only minor changes. 

To close out this first post, let's go over feedback.  I encourage comments, questions, answers, emails, etc.  I think these things will help make the blog better and more useful for everyone.  If you have any specific questions, financial or otherwise, feel free to email me.

Disclaimer:  The information provided in this blog is for entertainment purposes only.  While I will be suggesting things that I do/use/buy/sell/eat/enjoy/something, always keep in mind that I am a software developer.  Finance has always been a hobby of mine and I would like to think that I am fairly sensible about it, but in the end my major is in being a computer nerd.  I'm just a financial nerd on the side.