Nothing But Net (Worth)

Ouch…

Dropped the ball. Took a break. On the mend. Coming back, stronger than ever.

Let’s see how we’re doing and what we’re doing. Starting over at Square One.

Back by Labor Day 2009.

- broke

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Trimming the Fat: Our Apartment

We had lived in our apartment since September of 2007.  We loved our apartment and our lease was coming up for renewal, but we weren’t exactly sure what we should do.  With the economy in the gutter, we weren’t ready to buy a house (heck, our credit card debt would not allow it), but we started looking at other places to live.  First, we contacted our current landlords and they were not willing to reduce our rent.  They were offering deals to new tenants, but the old tenants were stuck with their rental rate and that was that.  From that point, we looked at the market, which was considerably less than what we were paying and we decided that it was time to move.  We started scouring Craigslist for apartments, especially those that did not carry a broker’s fee, and found a few.  We checked them out, but nothing really caught our eye.  We then decided to look at apartment buildings near our current apartment.  Although this meant that we would have to rent a moving truck for a short-distance move, we figured that we should explore all of our options.  Nothing in New York City was particularly attractive, as we had come to enjoy the finer amenities that we found in apartments outside of the City.  So, we found an apartment that was a few blocks from our old apartment, built by the same company that built our old building and the deals were intriguing.  We could get 2.5 months free rent, save $75 a month on parking, and live on the top floor of the building, avoiding the noise that we had come to hate in our old apartment.  If we signed the lease, we would have a small overlap with our old apartment, but that was a good thing because it gave us time to clean the old apartment and move in stages, as opposed to having to clean while we packed and move.  In the end, the rent deal was too good to pass up and we decided to stop looking.

In the end, based on the free rent, parking, and all of the other extras, we may have saved almost $10,000 after moving costs.  That is pretty awesome, if I say so myself.  Yes, I know this means that our rent is high and we could probably live in a cheaper apartment, but this is really our only big expense.  We have a washer/dryer, a dishwasher, and great air conditioning, which are a few things that we wanted in an apartment.  If that means we eat out a little less or cut a few more coupons, so be it.  We like the new place and will use the rent freebies to pay off some more debt.

Next up: Cable (or, is Fios really a better deal?)

- broke

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My Debt Consolidation and Automation

I’m still a little iffy on the decision to take my family’s help and consolidate my debt. It just worries me from the standpoint that, if I screw up in my career, I have a chance of screwing over my parents. What if I don’t make enough? What if I get hurt at work or laid off? It does add a different level of stress, but the stress that is relieved is huge. Luckily, I am in a profession where, if I were unfortunate enough to get laid off, I’d have a pretty good shot at landing another job. Sure, it might not pay as much, but I’d rather be employed than not, so a few dollars here and there isn’t the end of the world. I am glad that we’ve learned to tighten the belt around here. Earlier in the year, we tired and succeeded in some parts and failed miserably in other attempts to shed “payroll” in our household. We are getting to the point where we’ve cut back and are starting to reap the benefits.

Once my parents offered to help out, I paid off one credit card in full and felt a great deal of joy. I immediately paid a second credit card in full and felt even better. Working things out in Quicken meant creating a new debt category with the loan, but at least I was able to get a few cards off the books and replace it with one accounts payable. I really prefer making one or two payments instead of nineteen, so I’ll be pretty happy once I have it down to a chosen few with most of those being automated. I love automatic payments. It makes life much simpler. Whether it is a credit card, a utility bill, a student loan or a cell phone, things are just easy when you can set ‘em and forget ‘em. I want my finances to be like a crock pot, put the ingredients in, turn on the pot and walk away for a few hours.

Automated living is the way to go.

- broke

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First steps…

Cold Turkey is never easy.  It’s also very ineffective unless you have the willpower of Ghandi.

In trying to lose weight, I decided that I would take pictures of myself with my shirt off.  Boy, that sent a message.  I have put on a significant amount of weight since 2005.  In 4 years, I’ve pretty much put on the freshman 15 every year.  That is pretty sad.  I work a lot, but I need to make time for myself and my body.  If I don’t, I may be able to pay off my debt, but I’ll be dead or physically miserable by the time I do it and I won’t be able to enjoy a minute of it.

Now that I have assessed both my financial and physical status, it is time to set a few goals.  These aren’t “lose 20 lbs in 20 days” or “pay off 20K in 20 days” kind of goals.  I was supposed to try and lose 10 lbs before this week.  Yup, failed again, but it’s time to get back up and start actually working on these goals.

My Goals for June 2009:

1. Pay of $2500 in debt.  This is apart from the Parental Aid I am receiving.  With the free rent, I should be able to pay off at least $2500 in debt, if not more by the time July 1 rolls around.
2. Kill 2 more credit cards.  This should be a direct result of the Parental Aid.  I would like to kill more, but I know that a reasonable goal is two cards.
3. Lose 10 lbs.  I have a lot of weight to lose.  Years of Weight Watchers has taught me that I should probably be able to lose two or three times that amount if I really put my mind to it. However, I’m going to stick with a reasonable weight loss goal for the first month.
4. Go to the gym 4 to 5 times a week for the next month.  You should always go to the gym more days than you don’t, but for me to lose weight, I’m definitely going to have to hit the gym much much more.
5. Start running again.  I ran a lot last year.  I haven’t run since December.  6 months is a long layoff, but I need to get back to it.  It helped me lose weight and get motivated.  Time to charge up the iPod.  I should run at least twice a week.
6. Work on writing.  I’ve always wanted to be a writer, more than anything else.  I want to write at least 30 pages for my book.
7. Work on 1 small business plan.  I talk with my friends all the time about starting certain businesses.  It’s time for me to get off my butt and start doing something.

Wow, seven goals.  I need to start meeting these goals or exceeding them.  If I don’t, I’m just going to be fat and broke for the rest of my life and that’s no way to live.

- broke

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HELP: Progress Bars

Does anyone out there have a good progress bar to recommend?

Also, does anyone have any idea how to get the Widgets in Wordpress to stop cutting off the text on the left and right sidebars?

Thanks!

- broke

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My Weight: May 24, 2009

Well, the weight loss is not going as well as the debt loss, but I am getting there.  I weight myself on Friday and I weighed in at 263.  Not great, not bad.  Just blah.  I need to get to the gym more.  It is hard in the business that I am in because you work late and sleep in and work late and sleep in.  I still haven’t found my morning gym grove just yet, but I will get there.

Here is the updated chart:

I still need to get a pace, a diet and a plan.  I’m not there yet.  I am almost to the point where I can get automated when it comes to my debt, but I need to become automatic when it comes to eating and going to the gym.  I can’t just eat crap and expect that my body (and my waistline) won’t pay for it.  Frustrating as it is, I’ll keep on trucking.  The hardest part is that we’re heading into the summer and I’m looking at another year of trips to the beach with my shirt on.  It gets old after a while.  I just need to find a way to turn that into motivation to get things going.

Shouldn’t the t-shirt at the beach statement be enough?  It should, but sadly, it isn’t.

- broke

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Deus Ex Machina and the List

Obviously, I would love to blog more, but life is getting in the way.

Even though I am not blogging as much as I used to, I have been taking the time work on writing a book that has been in my head since I was in college.  Well, a different version of a story that I’ve always had in my head.  It is somewhat auto-biographical, but we’ll see how it turns out.  I will save that for another post.

This post is dedicated to a list that I have always been embarrassed about…my credit card list.  I mentioned a week or two ago that I am going to get help from my parents to consolidate my debt.  Sure, it is a deus ex machina, but nonetheless, it is a way to get my debt under control and it does not involve having to use some sort of debt consolidation.  For those of you who don’t know, a deus ex machina is “a plot device in which a person or thing appears ‘out of the blue’ to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty.”  It was usually the King that came to save the day.  The example of a deus ex machina that sticks out in my mind is that from Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” which I read back in college.

Well, as part of the “healing” or my way of going “debt gangsta” as I called it months ago, I want to list out my credit cards.  My goal is to hit zero balances on all of them and switch to either a totally cash based system or one where I pay each card in full every month.  I used to rely on rewards, but now, I don’t really care about the extra cash, especially since many of the cards are trimming their perks.

Here it is:

1. Discover
2. Discover Miles (I believe they closed this due to inactivity)
3. Citi Professional (ZERO BALANCE)
   
4. Citi Platinum Select
5. American Express Blue
6. American Express Blue for Business (ZERO BALANCE)
   
7. American Express Platinum for Business OPEN (CLOSED)
8. American Express Platinum for Business (ZERO BALANCE)
   
9. American Express Starwood for Business
   
10. U.S. Airways (Bank of America, but going to Barclay’s) (ZERO BALANCE)
    
11. Bank of America Credit Card
    
12. Capital One Miles
    
13. Capital One Miles (Family card)
14. Brooks Brothers Platinum (ZERO BALANCE)
    
15. Chase Platinum
16. Chase Freedom
17. Chase (Circuit City, but becoming Best Buy)
18. Sleepy’s

Wow, that is a lot of credit cards.  It feels good to get that off of my chest.  I am going to keep annotating the list to reflect the ones that I get to zero.  I guess I should set up some automatic transactions to keep my older accounts open, but right now, while I care about my credit report, I care more about my financial health and I would rather get all of those numbers to zero.

- broke

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Hello, my name is Broke, well Fat and Broke, and I’m an addict

Two of the hardest pieces of information to reveal about yourself are a) your weight and b) your debtload.  Well, this is not saying that everyone has this problem, but if your fat or heavily in debt, you know what I’m talking about.  I’ve still got a lot of debt to shed and a lot of weight to lose, but the first step in fixing things is admitting that you have a problem.  The second step is talking to someone about it.  I’ve been very afraid to talk about this with anyone, which includes my wife, my friends and my family.  Yesterday, I took a step in the right direction.  I talked with my father about this.  In the grand scheme of things, my dad may be one of the closest friends I’ve ever had.  Sometimes, I think I should combine him and my mom because I have confided in both of them many times and while I used to talk with my mom about money, I now talk about that topic with my dad.  Well, as a result of the conversation, my father offered to help.  No, he’s not going to pay off all of my debt, but he has offered to help me with the consolidation of debt, to avoid higher interest fees and to keep my monthly payments more manageable.  I could have turned down this offer and showed my pride in wanting to do it on my own, but just like with diet, sometimes you just need help and I would be lying if I said that I did not need help.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that I can pay off several credit cards in full, get my credit back in order, and start working towards my cash only system.  Sometimes, the cash just wasn’t there to make the transition. This way, it will be.  After I pay off those cards, I plan on examining my remaining debt (except for student loans) and then I will attack that debt with some sort of modified snowball approach.  I think I am beyond the mental rewards and it’s time to keep finance charges at an all-time low.  I will make the most of 0% offers and then pay them off as the approach their deadlines. I will keep my fixed, low-interest credit cards and will focus on them once the more variable cards are out of the way.  This will help me budget much more efficiently.

Maybe this is the only true bail-out because I actually plan on paying him back.  Dad, I can’t thank you enough.

- broke

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Bleh…

I woke up this morning, got on the scale and noticed that I’m pretty overweight.  Ok, it’s not like I haven’t noticed in the past, but for some reason, it all just hit me at once.  I’m fat.  I’m broke.  I hate my job.  Wow, this sounds like a lot of fun.  Then I realized that I can do something about it.  Forget can.  I MUST do something about it.  This has got to stop.  Today is May 8, 2009.  I need to lose 100 lbs and I need to get my financial life in order.  I don’t want to go balls to the wall because we all saw how that worked out earlier this year, but I need to find a happy medium.  Well, here we go:

Weight

This is a tough one.  Wow, I’m fat.  I mean, I have strong legs and probably some of my weight is muscle, but I’m still fat.  My clothes don’t fit right, I don’t like to be naked, and, well, it’s just f’ing depressing.  So, I was over at the Consumerist a few weeks back (maybe months) and I read a post about a guy trying to lose 120 lbs.  Well, I’m 265 lbs right now (which, according to skinnyr, makes me severely obese).  If I lost 120 lbs, I would be heroin chic for my frame, so that’s not going to happen.  I’m thinking between 75 and 110 lbs should do it.  I was about 190 in college, which was a good fighting weight, but I wouldn’t be upset if I could make it to the 165 to 175 range.  As I mentioned, indirectly, I’m going to use skinnyr.  They offer a free weight tracking chart.  I will add it to the home page, but it will look like this:

So, I added a graph.  That’s not going to make me lose weight.  I thought about taking Alli, but there is just something wrong about living in fear of yellow discharge.  I’m not sure I’m a gastric candidate, nor do I want to be (no offense).  I think this has to be done the old-fashioned way.  Diet and exercise.  I need to drink tons of water.  I may join Weight Watchers.  I will Twitter every calorie I take into my body.  I will Twitter about exercise.  I will Twitter about the lack of exercise.  I need to go to the gym 5 days a week.  Not once.  Not twice.  FIVE FRICKIN’ DAYS!!!!!! If anyone out there is reading and would like to hold me accountable, I’d appreciate it.  I mentioned, in the past, a monetary reward/penalty for not going to the gym.  I’m just not sure how that would work.  Maybe $5 for each day I go to the gym?  That could be all the $$$ I can spend over the weekend?  Yeah, that really doesn’t do it for me.  There has to be a way, but I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Money

Well, for those of you who have read my blog in the past, you know I’ve got mega loads of debt.  While it is not GM debt, it’s still pretty high.  What can I do about it?  Well, I think that I’ve done some good things and bad things since starting this blog, but they have all been in spurts.  Just like with my dieting, they are short-lived.  I get bored easily and I’m usually busy with work and spend too much money at Target.  Damn you, Target! Seriously, I spend way too much money.  I need to go to a cash only system and I’m getting there.  With the money I saved from moving to a new apartment, I will be able to get set up for a cash only system.  No more credit.  Straight cash!!!  Seriously, it is time to work on a budget and stick to it.  I’m tired of sweating over Quicken and Mint.  I want to be debt free and avoid the bankruptcy nightmares that I’ve been having for the past few weeks.  I don’ think I’m at that stage yet, but I’m afraid I’m getting there. 

I need to find a good chart because, as we’ve all seen, the tracker I set up pretty much blows.

Well, here we go again.  Just like with diets, I have a feeling there are going to be many false starts along the way.  It’s just a matter of being lucky enough to find someone willing to give you a jump.

- broke

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Trimming the Fat: Car Insurance

I’ve always seen commercials for Geico, Allstate and Progressive.  They all tell me that I can save a ton of money on my car insurance if I switch to their company.  I’ve had Allstate since I was in high school.  The only reason I’ve stayed with Allstate is because they were my parents’ insurance provider and since my parents were paying for my insurance, they became my insurance carrier.  Well, 12 years later, I’m still using Allstate.  About a month ago, I decided to get a quote from Progressive.  It was a little cheaper than my Allstate rate, but instead of going right to Progressive, I did a funny thing.  I emailed my insurance agent and told him that I was trying to get a more competitive rate for my car insurance and I wanted to see what he could do.  He was very appreciative of me giving him the chance to see what he could do and guess what?  He was able to enroll me in one of the newer Allstate programs and my monthly car insurance payment went from $180.00 a month to a little over $90.00 a month.

Wait…wait just a second.  By sending one email, I was able to cut my car insurance in HALF.  Were they ripping me off for the past few years?  I doubt it.  It’s more like cell phones (which I will talk about later) in that, if you are willing to renew or follow up on the current deals, you may be able to save some money.  This year, I am managing to save some $$$.

So, as far as my first trimming the fat experiment, I was able to save about $87/month, which translates to $1044 a year.  WOW!!!!!!!!!  This doesn’t even include all of those Safe Driver’s incentives that Allstate is throwing around these days.  I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I’ll just relish this mini-victory for now.

Next up: My Apartment.

- broke

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