Suburban Dollar

Keeping up with the Joneses, In a Good Way

Kyle — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:51:12 +0000

People always talk about keeping up with the Joneses in a bad way, but a recent article in USA Today made me realize there are ways to keep up with the Joneses that are not only good for your pocketbook but good for the environment as well.

According to the article there are now over 1 million household in the United States who receive reports on the energy consumption of their neighbors. The utilities utilizing the reports have seen a a 2-3% decrease in energy consumption where the reports are being utilized. Some people are complaining about an invasion of privacy but the reports are generalized to give you an idea of what others around you are consuming.

Being a suburban dad it doesn’t surprise me that this reporting method actually results in the reduction of energy consumption and being “green.” By providing a report showing you are less frugal and consuming more than your neighbors people are not so subtly encouraged to reduce their own consumption.

Some of the utilities had even started using smily or frowny faces to show how certain households ranked amongst their neighbors. Other utilities were rating homes as average, above, or below average. It turns out people really didn’t like having a big fat frowny faces telling them they sucked at conserving energy, in both instances the utilities stopped “rating” consumption.

I personally think this is a pretty good way to make people not only more aware of how much energy they are using but to also encourage them to reduce their energy usage. If the guy who keeps his house at 72 in the winter and 68 in the summer saw what he was paying compared to his neighbors it would make a pretty big difference, I know it would to me.

Readers:
Do you currently get one of these reports? Has it helped you to reduce your consumption?

What if we took this idea and expanded it into other areas like garbage and recycling?

Friday Finance Followers – Snow Bunny Edition

Kyle — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:47:27 +0000

About the time you are reading this post I should be gearing up for my first ever snowboarding lesson. If I end up in a position like the guy in that picture then I am most likely falling down the mountain and coming home with some casts on. I am super stoked about learning something new, well probably more stoked about a kid free vacation and eating at some new places but still excited. Only thing I am afraid of is liking it too much. The costs of going to decent mountain and boarding aren’t exactly what one would classify as a frugal vacation. I plan on having a blast, while I am doing that you guys/gals can check out this weeks Friday Finance Followers Posts:

@KateAshford brings the concept of marrying for health insurance to our minds. I had heard of marrying for citizenship, marrying for money, and of course marrying for love, but this was a new one to me. I understand the ladies situation but I agree with Kate’s points. If she would put the same effort into finding a job with benefits that will be OK with her ailment she wouldn’t have to sell herself into wedlock.

@EverydayFinance asks how much you could cut your budget if you were to get laid off. This is one of those thing I have actually thought about. When you look at your emergency fund it should be adequate to cover the ESSENTIALS. That means ditching everything that isn’t necessary to keep yourself afloat. Great list of how much that could save you.

@RJWeiss explains the wealth effect and why you should be wary of it. I had never really thought of it as a true blue phenomenon but I guess it is. In case you guys missed this housing bubble bursting, home equity != cash. I don’t even spend more when my income increases let alone if by some miracle my home value went in a positive direction.

@EvolutionWealth explains life insurance banding. I had no idea this kind of thing actually goes on but it makes a little bit of sense. Kind of scary that you could possibly have gotten 100k of life insurance coverage cheaper than you got your 87k policy for.

@MoneyEnergy tells us what to expect from the stock markets for February. Personally I don’t take a lot of stock in predictions on stocks. But she makes some good points that I can’t really argue with. I think the idea is to be generally specific about generalities when talking about future possibilities in the markets. No matter, it is still good to soak up as much perspective as you can.

Carnivals

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted at Cash Money Life this week and my post When You Fall Behind on Your Mortgage was included.

The Money Hackers Carnival was over at Passive Income Now where KKatz’s guest post Can you Build Credit History without a Credit Card was an editors pick

The Great Debate – My Wife Wants a New Car

Kyle — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:31:59 +0000

Usually I see bloggers posting questions from their readers about what they should do in certain situations. No one asks me any questions so I thought I would lay my own dilemma out there for you. My wife and I own two cars both of the are paid in full. I love the fact that I have the title to both of these cars and aside from fuel and maintenance they don’t cost me anything. I know a lot of people who wish they didn’t have a car payment and let me tell you I love the hell out of it.

Recently my wife has decided it is time for her to pick up a new car, the old one is just old to her now. Not only does she want a new car but she wants a 2007 or newer Black Chevy Tahoe. I don’t know if you have ever priced out a Tahoe before but a 2007 with decent miles costs at least $10k more than we paid for either one of the cars we own now. I attempted to explain how ludicrous it is to even consider such a thing as buying a new car, “why the hell do you want a new car the one you have is fine, I won’t have it PERIOD.”

For those of you married men out there, telling your wife she can’t do something is the equivalent of punching them in the face with a brick in your hand, they don’t like it. I still haven’t completed recovered from this little misstep although she did soften her resolve for a few months. We had discussed the option of a car swap, where I take her car and she takes mine. That way the cars are new, to us anyway. To me this was the best solution to the problem and one I embraced wholly. The only things I need to take care of are some new tires and window tint which I have been dragging on but plan to take care of soon.

Thinking that was the end of it I forgot about the dilemma entirely, until recently. I have caught my wife once again perusing the ranks of CarMax in search of the perfect used Tahoe with the occasional “Oh, look at this one Kyle it is only $36k.” Which usually results in me coughing and choking on my beer.

The way I see it is that I am failing to adequately support my desire for not wanting another car payment, these are the facts I think lean most towards us not purchasing, with a loan, a new car:

Both Cars are in good working condition
Out of the two of us working I am the only one contributing to a retirement account
With two children we are saving $0 per month for higher education
Student loan has not been paid off
Second mortgage has not been paid off

My wife really wants a new car, and I don’t want her to be unhappy I just don’t think it is the best thing for us financially right now. The fact that this hasn’t been worked out yet is probably 90% my fault for failing to communicate adequately. What would you do in this situation? What should I do?

No bashing my old lady, she is entitled to her wants just like anyone else, help us out an weigh in on the problem.

Suburban Dollar Turns One (Give Away Included)

Kyle — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:01:18 +0000

Oh, isn’t the little baby so cute… oh wait this is a website. It feels like my third baby though and today it turns one and just like a baby I think it is just now starting to walk from it’s previous crawling pace. From what I hear it is a pretty big deal to survive this long which means I have made it over the hump and on the road to notoriety. I whipped up another video in honor of the occasion and I am giving some stuff away.

Most Popular Posts

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The Contest

In honor of my one year anniversary I am giving away two Amazon.com $25 gift cards. There is three ways to enter to win, the contest will run from 02/04/2010 – 02/13/2010. The winners will be randomly selected from the entry’s received. Please only US and Canada entries, thanks.

1.) Tweet it

Tweet about this giveaway, make sure you are following me and then tweet “Win a $25 Amazon GC via @suburbandollar RT + Fllw to enter #sd1Yrgvwy Rules -> http://bit.ly/sd1Yrgvwy2″

(1 Entry + 1 Extra if you are a new follower)

2.) Comment

Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you would like to see from me in the next year, be sure to use your real valid e-mail address (it won’t display) so I can contact you if you win

(1 Entry)

3.) Subscribe

Subscribe to receive e-mail updates from SuburbanDollar.com. It is super easy just fill out the below form with your e-mail and activate your subscription, then pop back over hear and leave a comment telling me you signed up.

(5 Entries for any NEW e-mail subscriber)

February ‘10 Update

Kyle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:00:22 +0000

I can’t believe another month has already passed us by. Time flies it seems these days, between my day job, two kids, and this blog I don’t really find myself wondering what to do with my free time anymore. Financially the close out to January hurt pretty bad, it just hasn’t been a good month in the markets. We continue to steadily invest in my 401k, increase our savings, and decrease my student loan.

We are going on a much needed mommy and daddy only weekend this week so we didn’t make any principal payments on the student loan this month. We still plan on having the full balance paid off before the end of the year. We chose to take a weekend for us, we haven’t been away from the kids for more than a single night since our oldest was born 3.5 years ago so this should be a good trip.

With that said here is where we stand on our Net Worth this month. I should have the Wealthy Blogger list out sometime next week.

Assets
Cash Savings	$17,200.00	+$1,028.00
IRA	$9,539.00	-$245.00
Roth IRA	$3,259.00	-$73.00
401k	$45,316.00	-$460.00
Other Investments	$143.00
	$75,457.00
Liabilities
Credit Cards	$630.00	-$820.00
Student Loans	$7,912.00	-$99.00
	$8,542.00
Net Worth	$66,915.00	+$1,312.00

Review – Crush It! (VIDEO)

Kyle — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:02:59 +0000

This is my first stab at doing a video blog post so don’t hate on me to bad. I tried using a webcam but the audio sucked and the video quality was sub par, this final version of the video was shot using my iPhone and I actually think it turned out surprisingly well. If response is good I may invest in some real equipment but for now the iPhone seems to be working. I chose to do a video review because I think it will give you a better idea of how I really feel about a book, check it out and let me know what you think.

Find out more on Amazon.com

Check out Gary’s Sites:
GaryVaynerchuk.com
WineLibraryTV.com
WineLibrary.com

Readers: What do you think of Gary and his book? Have you read it?

p.s. I sound a little more country than I thought I did.. damn south is corrupting me.

3 Websites that Save Me Money

Kyle — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:01:36 +0000

An important part of being frugal and saving money is finding ways to reduce your expenses while at the same time working to increase your income. Even though I fail a lot I try pretty hard to reduce my costs whenever possible. Like switching cable providers (or at least threating to) to get your bill slashed. When you get creative and look for alternatives there is always ways to reduce your spending so you can increase the gap between income and expenses. Over the last couple of months I have come across three website which have helped me to significantly reduce my expenses.

GoogleVoice (http://google.com/voice)

Google Voice provides you with a single phone number that will dial all of your other numbers. It is the ultimate in portable numbers because it isn’t tied to a carrier at all so if you change cell phones you just have to change where it forwards to and no one needs to update their contacts. The biggest draw to me however, was the ability to use Google Voice for SMS on my iPhone. AT&T and Apple won’t allow the Google Voice App for the iPhone (if You have Android you are solid). You can get around it quite easily for about $2.00, here is how:

As of last week Google updated the mobile version of Google Voice to be pretty kick A$# (see picture to the left). Using the mobile website you can EASILY initiate new SMS messages, phone calls, and play voice mails from your Google Voice account. It is pretty much the same as if you had an app actually installed on your phone to do the work. The only thing it won’t do is alert you on new voice mails or SMS since it has no way to push to the iPhone. Enter GmailPush ($1.99), it sends a push notification whenever I get an e-mail so with the SMS forwarded to e-mail instead of my phone POW! Free SMS with notifications.

This allows me to use the lowest text plan as opposed to the unlimited plan saving me $15.00 per month.

Retail Me Not (http://retailmenot.com)

If you have never dropped by Retail Me Not before doing some serious online shopping then you are missing out on some great opportunities for savings. Retail Me Not is a user driven coupon code tracking site. People submit coupon codes for various online merchants and other users vote on the success or failure of the coupon codes. This allows you to get the best codes and most savings when shopping online. I discovered this little beauty when doing my Christmas shopping this year and saved $90.

Box.net

This site is relatively new to me, I already use DropBox to keep needed files synced between my iPhone, netbook, and desktop but that is simply storage and syncing. Box.net however lets you do some pretty neat stuff with sharing files. The reason it is so beneficial to me is that you can fax your uploaded documents via eFax for free. **Updated 02/08/2010, box.net is now charging for eFax services, it looks like if you had already added the app you are cool but it is a pay service now, BOO!”** I have to send out a fax every month for Dependant care claims and because I didn’t want to pay some online service to do it I kept a home phone around. Now that I can fax online through Box.net I dropped the home phone saving me $30 per month.

Right there with three free website I was able to save $90 shopping and $540 in monthly charges throughout the year. Not to bad for the little amount of work it took. What sites do you use to help you cut down on those pesky expenses?

Restaurant.com 80% Off

Kyle — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:34:47 +0000

Restaurant.com is now offering 80% off purchases. Get $25 Restaurant.com Gift Certificates for just $2.00 through 1/31/10. Just use coupon code “BONUS” at checkout on their, $25 Gift Certificates and Dinner of the Month Club.

Discount: 80% off
Expires: 01/31/2010
Code: BONUS

Friday Finance Followers – Here Comes the Storm Edition

Kyle — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:22:05 +0000

So they are calling for snow again in my neck of the woods, if it actually happens that will make twice in one year. To add to the massive rush of people buying bread and milk like it is going to be the apocalypse they closed schools in our county last night before even a single drop of snow started to fall. I don’t have any school age children yet so it doesn’t affect me but I am sure there are some pretty irate parents out there right now. What are you thoughts on the preemptive closing of schools at the threat of snow? Is it just good safety or bad call?

—- Updated 7:45 A.M.:

Damnit, now they just said they are closing my kids day care at 12 Noon, as it stands right now it isn’t even supposed to start raining until 3 pm, and then slowly convert to snow later in the day. I don’t get a refund for them closing for now reason now do I. WTF!

While you think about that check out this weeks links:

@FiscalGeek explains why storage units are gateway drugs to financial ruin. I guess I never thought of a storage unit that way but it is true that putting things in storage is just a way of not dealing with them. And when you start to push things away in life and ignore them that can spread to other aspects of your life.

@CanadianFinance talks about saving money with fractional RV ownership. I have zero desire to own an RV but this concept is pretty interesting. I can see the monetary benefit in timesharing a motorhome but I wonder if they apply the same concept to boats, now we are talking.

@ConqueringPF wants you to slap yourself in the face and make it happen. A good look at the things that are holding you back in life that you can control. Just slap yourself in the face and wakeup so you can achieve your dreams.

@RevancheGS discusses pets and money wondering where you draw the line. I was unfortunate enough to find myself in this situation not that long ago with my own pet, well not this situation but a similar one. Luckily we were able to get patched up for a lot less than the $4000 they initially thought but it is hard to be forced to decide between money or the death of your pet.

When You Fall Behind on Your Mortgage – Mindset of the Collector

Kyle — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:57:20 +0000

During my years as a first party collector for a mortgage company we learned a lot about people who don’t pay their bills. One of the most common things we noticed is the people didn’t really understand why they couldn’t pay. They just knew that at the end of every month they had less money than was required to pay whatever bill it was that happened to be due. Most mortgage payments are due around the first part of the month so guess who didn’t get paid? There are so many reasons someone falls behind on their bills from gross neglect to dire medical emergencies. Our jobs as collectors was to take the emotion out and sympathize without allowing ourselves to empathize with them. In theory this allowed us to take an objective look at their situation to determine the proper course of action to resolve not only the delinquency but the situation that caused the delinquency to occur.

There is a big distinction in 1st party collections and 3rd party collections when it comes to the initial mindset of collections. As a 1st party collector you are a direct representative of the mortgage lender and your main goal is to ensure the borrower pays on time every month for the full duration of the loan. You don’t just want to collect, you want to make sure they are able to stay current. Your ultimate goal is to improve the bottom line for the business and that means collecting regular interest payments from the borrower, not pissing them off and having to repossess* their home.

1st Stage of Collections

Collections on an overdue mortgage in my office would begin anywhere between 2-15 days past due. The initial contact attempts are mainly just to check with the borrow to ensure they didn’t “forget” to pay their payment or to see what the problem is and make arrangements to pay the current months payment. A good collector will realize someone who is already 15 days past due this month may not be on time next month and try to make arrangements for future payments as well. Collectors shouldn’t force the issue to much during this stage of “lateness” because the loan is most likely not considered delinquent until they are at least 30 days past due.

True Collections

When a loan reaches 30 days past due the loan is officially delinquent. Depending on the reporting dates for the mortgage company it could be reported on your credit report as late/delinquent immediately or not until the following month. Collectors are in for a tougher go of it because they have to not only collect or make arrangements for the current months payment but they also have to make arrangements for the missed payment as well. The ultimate goal, regardless of the stage of delinquency, is always to bring the account current and ensure the borrower can keep it that way. The goal of a good collector at this stage should be to take full assessment of the situation and determine what caused the delinquency and what the borrower might be able to do to ensure the account is brought current and stays that way.

Collectors can find themselves taking on the role of a very much uncertified debt councilor to people who don’t know they have anywhere else to turn. It is a hard situation to be thrown into but you learn to adapt and hopefully provide help to people who are in disparate need of it.

The Exception

When it hits the last week or the last couple of days of a month take all the good stuff I said about collectors trying to help and throw it out the window. In fact throw it in the garbage, crap on it, and set it on fire. At this point in the month the only goal of the collector, their boss, and probably their bosses boss is to meet the target delinquency goals so they can all get their bonus. What this means for the borrow is instant demands for payment, a total disregard for the customers overall well being and lots of phone calls. It isn’t unheard of for a collector to suggest a borrower take a payday loan or title loan to pay off their delinquent debt to the mortgage company. This is the point where you start to see people lose their cool, the bonuses for meeting goal can be quite substantial giving the collectors a big incentive to disregard what is best for the borrower and look at what is best for them. This is the unfortunate truth and greed of the collections world.

*When I talk about my collections experiences you may see me use the terms repossession and foreclosure interchangeably. To me they were mostly the same term since I worked as a collector for a company that did loans on mobile homes. If a mobile home had no property financed with it it is treated like a vehicle and registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). You don’t foreclose on a car you repossess it, the same holds true for non-land deal mobile homes.