In day one I talked about what how I believe I would take the news that I only have 31 days left to live. Now it is on to making life decisions based on this news. If I were actually dying in what, now less than 30 days, it would seem like the obvious choice to quit working. But if I did so I could lose employer group life insurance coverage at just the wrong time. Personally, my employer provides $40,000 in group coverage. If I am dying because of a medical condition, I may be able to take all of that time off through the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and keep my coverage. The worst case would be if I am still able to work and cannot take FMLA time off. Well I still have two weeks of vacation and 22 works days left on the calender. Continue reading
Live Like You’re Dying: Day 1 – The News
Kirsten at Indebted Mom posed an interesting challenge. It is for 31 days and it is to live like you are dying. Now you can’t actually do everything you would do if you were actually dying, because I have to plan as if I am not. But I am interested in seeing if this challenge will change my perspective on life. Continue reading
Versatile Blogger Award
Andrew at Living Rich Cheaply nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! From what I have gathered you basically tell 7 random facts about yourself and nominate a few others for the award as well. Being I think I have seen most other blogs already nominated for this award that I frequent, I may skip the nominating part and just go into 7 random facts. Continue reading
Frankly Frugal Finance: Weekender Edition #11
Mrs. Frugalwoods was asking about a pic of the bikes we bought, here they are!
Hey it is still the weekend, so better late than never for getting the weekender post up, right?
It was a very busy weekend for me personally, probably the last nice weekend without any rain so I was working on staining my deck, one of the things I mentioned in my goals. It is complete, but it took most of the weekend to do so. I think it turned out quite nicely, thanks for asking! Continue reading
Recent Stock Purchases
I mentioned in my post about Loyal3 that I have added some positions in Microsoft (MSFT) and Kraft (KRFT). I also have some small auto purchases being made, just $10 a month, into several stocks. The purchases that occurred during September include Coca-Cola (KO), Walt Disney (DIS), Pepsico (PEP), Walmart (WMT), Unilever (UL), and McDonald’s (MCD).
The only positions that had subsistence really were the purchases of MSFT and KRFT. Being that Loyal3 is fee free, I am able to put in just a few dollars at a time. Also, the added bonus is this makes my financial planning easier as I now have 10 automatic purchases set up I will automatically earn interest in my checking account which is usually over $15.00 a month. Now I don’t need to worry about the amount of times I use my debit card at the store and I can focus all of my purchases on reward credit cards while knowing I will be maximizing the return of my cash.
With that said, let’s go into a little detail about these stocks that I am purchasing. Continue reading
Prioritizing
We all know that there is only so much time in a day and because work takes up so much of your waking hours, we have to prioritize which activities we choose to do and which ones we choose not to do. For some reason… I feel like right now I just don’t have enough time. Maybe I am sleeping too much, maybe I can improve in some ways much more than I currently have, but I just feel like there is not enough time to do what I want to do while working full time. And until that full-time job situation is taken care of through financial independence I have to look at what it is I spend my time on and really how much time do I actually spend not just doing the activity itself, but the entire process of time I take in preparation or after the activity. So really I need to take a hard look at myself and ask if I value how my time is spent. With 168 hours to account for each week, I should be able to really look at this time at see if it is being spent wisely and if it truly is with what matters. So if you are dying to know how I spend what I consider my most valuable resource, look no further! Continue reading
Frugal FinCon Fiesta – Ask Anything!
Well being late to the party, is better than never, right? Well while all of the richy rich or at least richer than I in either cash or free time financial bloggers are in New Orleans for FinCon, debtdebs put together this great idea for us bloggers left behind to unite! And in this unity we get to answer any questions, you – the read, ask! Also, I plan on doing this instead of a weekender, just something a little different that will hopefully be fun!
So.. ask away!
I will get things started.
Q: So, Kipp, being a cool guy and all that you are, what is up with how much you spend in gas? Aren’t you more frugal than that?
A: Well thank you Kipp, I know that I am pretty cool, but it is nice to hear someone else say it. Anyways… most of our fuel expenses is with the wifey’s commute. It is 25 miles one way, so 250 miles a week. Not the most frugal commute, but it will do for now. I won’t force her to look for another job just to save a few bucks. Happy wife, happy life, right?
Ok, now your turn readers! I will be gone for a bit in the morning tomorrow so I hope I have some questions to answer when I get back! Continue reading
RANT WARNING – WTF – What the Fee!?
I have been looking to optimize the wife and my investment options, which is why I am in the processing of transferring her ROTH IRA to avoid the fees on her loaded fund. So when the option to join her work 401(k) opened after a year of employment I figured it can’t be worse than throwing more money into the ROTH at Edward Jones, right?
WRONG!
Blog Update
I will try to not do too many of these, as my focus is primarily on content, but I wanted to let all of my readers know about the pages I have been adding recently as a quick reference to reoccurring articles.
Additionally I have signed up with twitter and facebook. Although, it is worth mentioning that I am not a big fan of facebook and I haven’t been updating that regularly… yet.. but I would probably be more motivated if I had some followers! That and I haven’t found a way to auto post my latest posts onto the page yet, but I have found a way to do so for twitter but honestly I was doing good on twitter before the auto post thing.
So here is a quick breakdown of the pages I have added or updated recently: Continue reading
Frankly Frugal Finance: Weekender Edition #10
What, 10 weeks already? That is absurd, who told time to travel? Anyways, all joking aside, this was a very busy week! As a result I didn’t get around to blogs as much as I would have preferred, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t come across some great articles!
First off, I had a couple new posts this week per my Tuesday – Thursday posting schedule.
Disadvantages and Advantages of Loyal3
Wondering what Loyal3 is in the first place? Well it is a brokerage account. But not your typical brokerage account either. There are zero fees.
Income and Expense for August 14
August was a killer month here! Had a HUGE savings rate which really helped build our Net Worth up in August. Not every month will go like that, but you can dream, right?
With that out of the way, here are the highlights of the week! Continue reading