Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
Happy Friday Dinks. It’s almost time for the NCAA March Madness tournament. Let me ask you a question, do you love basketball? As you know I am not a huge sports fan but there is something about a win or go home sports tournament.
In other news… (the journalist in me has always wanted to say that) if you are going to FinCon14in New Orleans this September and you would like to talk about your blogging success – good news. Our friend and FinCon14 founder Phil Taylor has opened up the speaker submissions. If you want to speak at FinCon14 go here.
There are some really great personal finance posts out there this week in the space we call the Internet. I included some of my favorites below.
Good morning Dinks. Think about your monthly budget. We’ll come back to it in a minute. After the passing of Fast and Furious star Paul Walker I decided to re-watch all the movies in one sitting, that’s six all together. There is one movie; I think it’s the first one, where Vin Diesel says “I live my life a quarter mile at a time.” For those of you who haven’t seen the Fast and Furious movies, they are about street racers who race quarter miles for money and pink slips. On a little side note I really love the second movie, but the fifth and sixth are also amazing.
This quote got me thinking…how do I live my life? I guess I would say that I live my life two weeks at a time. I know that some people budget on a monthly basis, but not in my house. My boyfriend Nick and I live on a biweekly budget. We are lucky that our pay cycles are exactly the same so every two weeks we get two payroll deposits into our bank account. This makes our biweekly budget very easy to manage.
4 really good reasons why I don’t use a monthly budget
1. Micro is always easier than macro managing. A monthly budget is just too long term to manage money. I like to see things in the smaller picture when it comes to money. Actually I live in the short term in my life in general. I am not a long term goals kind of girl. I check my bank account daily and I divide my biweekly budget in half to control my weekly spending.
2. We budget with our pay checks. It easy to manage your expenses when they coincide with your income. I love this about our biweekly budget. We buy our groceries weekly, we pay our rent biweekly and we take out personal spending cash biweekly. We control our money with our pay frequency and it works out perfectly.
3. More payments helps save on interest. Making biweekly payments on our credit cards helps pay off the balance faster which helps us save money on interest charges. We don’t usually carry a balance on our credit cards, but if we do making biweekly payments instead of monthly payments helps us save on interest charges. Making biweekly payments also keeps us on top of our bills; our payments are never late because we pay them every two weeks.
4. It’s easier to make smaller bill payments. This is a mistake I used to make all the time when I was living in debt. I would try to pay all my monthly bills in one lump sum payment and it emptied my bank account. Then I would end up using my credit again to live until my next paycheck because I spent all my money on paying bills. I don’t make this money management mistake any more. Now I pay my bills twice a month. I take all my bills, split them in half and make biweekly payments. My bills are still paid on time and I am not broke three days after I get paid.
Good morning Dinks. If you are like me then your parents are retired. Well at least one of mine is. My Dad is 60 and he retired almost five years ago and now spends his days playing poker with his friends. My Mom tried to retire once but she didn’t really like it so she went back to work. My Mom is a very structured person so the carefree lifestyle that comes with retirement kind of freaked her out. Are your parents retired?
My parent’s views on retirement, among other things, very drastically. My Dad counted down the days until he could retire. He accepted his last pay check with grace and started collecting his monthly pension. My Mom failed miserably at planning for retirement and she ran right back to the workforce. Her retirement was forced when she lost her job so she didn’t have time to prepare emotionally for the transition. They are two very different people with two very different views on retirement, maybe that’s why they are now divorced.
Planning for retirement with your employer
My Dad worked at the same job for the majority of his adult life. It was a union job that gave him a good salary, full benefits, paid vacation and a company-paid pension plan in exchange for eight hours of manual labor per day five days a week.
My Dad definitely looked forward to the day he was eligible to retire and he has never looked back. Isn’t that a strange thing to say, eligible to retire? We often talk about retirement as being the time of our lives when we are ready to stop working, but the truth is we can only retire when our money allows us to.
My Dad always says if he didn’t have his company-paid pension he would never have been able to retire. With two kids, a house and two cars there wasn’t a lot of room for retirement savings in my parent’s budget. Money was spent on the kids, monthly expenses and our annual family vacation. Retirement planning just wasn’t in their financial forecast.
The emotions of planning for retirement
When my Mom’s company closed down in 2010 she received a payout package and thought she was ready to retire at 54, but she was wrong. My Mom is the type of woman who wakes up at 7 am on the weekend, so it was hard for her to wake up every day without a schedule. To say she didn’t like it would be an understatement.
The stress of money (or lack of) was also a difficult adjustment for my Mom. She was at home with not much to do. She worried about spending money because she didn’t have a steady pay check coming in every two weeks. She now had to adjust to living on a monthly budget and she didn’t like it. My Mom was bored during her mini retirement. After repainting all the rooms in her house and remodelling the kitchen at her cottage she went back to work.
Maybe when we are planning for retirement we take our spending for granted. While we are working if we over spend a bit we know we will pay it off with our next pay check or we can work some extra hours to gain overtime pay. But what happens when we no longer have that option?
Is your retirement planning based on your age, emotions or your money?
My friend Mark told me the funniest story this week about his tenants and I just have to share. Every time I hear or read a story about a tenant nightmare, cough cough wink wink to Sandy@YesIAmCheap, I am thankful that I still rent and have not jumped into the real estate business.
Have I seen your what?
Mark is in the middle of renovating his triplex. He has a mid 40-ish single woman tenant upstairs and an older gentleman (I’m using that word loosely) tenant downstairs. Mark lives in the middle apartment on the second floor but has been living on a friend’s couch while his apartment is completely gutted and renovated.
The woman upstairs is quiet enough and always pays her rent on time. The man downstairs is a whole other story. Earlier this year the male tenant told Mark that the home renovations are making his apartment tremble and his $200 bottle of after shave fell out of his medicine cabinet and broke, so he refuses to pay his $600 rent…since January.
This older male tenant is retired and lives on a fixed income. I highly doubt he has a $200 bottle of after shave, but I could be wrong. I buy my boyfriends aftershave and the most I have ever paid is $18 at The Body Shop; if I buy it at the pharmacy it’s only $12. Tenant nightmare number one.
Monday evening as the contractor was packing tools into his truck the male tenant comes out of his apartment and says “You are done for the day. Did you happen to see my snake?”
How big is your snake?
The contractor’s reaction is priceless. He asks “How big is your snake? Is it a small garden snake?” The male tenant replies “No it is a python. My friend was over for dinner and brought his two snakes. When he left he only had one snake. So please let me know if you find it.” Tenant nightmare number two.
Now there are a couple of problems with this story:
#1: Who comes over to someone’s house for dinner and brings their pet snakes then lets them slither around someone else’s apartment?
#2: What exactly is the contractor supposed to do if he does see the python snake?
It’s a snake-atrophy
When Mark gets the call from his contractor he immediately freaks out. In a total panic he calls the Police to advise them there is a python on the loose somewhere in the city. They advise him to call the SPCA and The Ministry of Environmental Affairs. Now the entire city is about to ransack Mark’s apartment, tear out walls and ruin his $25,000 renovation as they look for this missing snake.
The Police came to Mark’s apartment and questioned the male tenant about the missing snake. He told the Police he has no idea what they are talking about because he never mentioned anything to the contractor about a missing snake. Tenant nightmare number three.
Is this ground for eviction?
Now Mark has to decide if the man tenant was lying about losing the snake or if he is lying about never saying he had a snake. Either way Mark does not want to move back into his apartment until this whole matter is cleared up and the contractor doesn’t want to go back to work until someone finds the missing snake.
If there is a missing snake does Mark have a legal obligation to tell the single woman tenant upstairs?
After being on his friend’s couch for three months during the renovation (one of which is a delay) and after being $5,000 over budget Mark’s home renovation his now on hold until someone finds this snake.
Good morning Dinks and Happy Friday. As you read this I am on my way to Boston. I decided to give my boyfriend Nick a little break and take a weekend road trip with my two friends. I absolutely love Boston and this time we have some really cool activities planned.
When I’m on vacation I usually just like to wonder around like a nomad, see the city and visit places that I have seen on TV or read about. I am not into big tourist attractions, but I love animals so museums and zoos are usually a must.
The last time I went to Boston was December 2012 so I am really looking forward to this trip. We are going to walk the Freedom trail, we are going to visit The New England Aquarium and we are going to eat at Wahlburgers. It’s the restaurant of former New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg and his action movie star brother Mark Wahlberg. Mark is known to some of us as Marky Mark. Remember Good Vibrations? It’s a burger joint and all three of us are vegetarians, so it should be interesting.
If you are in Boston and want to grab a burger let me know @TahnyaKristina.
Have a great weekend Dinks. Enjoy these posts from our friends:
Clever Dude – My Experience With a Random Act of Kindness
Good morning Dinks people always say that being debt free gives us a sense of freedom and it’s true. It lets us do other things with our money that don’t revolve around paying interest and paying bills. Financial freedom truly comes when you can choose to do what you want with your money as oppose to having to meet your monthly debt obligations. Being debt free definitely gives me a sense of comfort in knowing that I can enjoy my money.
No more fighting about debt
Being debt free also improved the quality of life in my relationship. Money was a really sore point in our relationship a few years ago when we were spending the majority of our income on making multiple credit card payments. It seemed that money was the underlying root of all our disagreements, arguments and fights.
I know a lot of people who say that money doesn’t matter, it’s just a number. But it’s hard to believe that when money is ruining your life. Now I’m debt free, loving my life and my relationship is thankful for my improved money habits.
What’s the point of having money if you don’t enjoy it together?
Some people will tell you to live on less now so you can enjoy your money later, but what happens if later never comes. I say we should enjoy our money now while saving for the future. What’s the point of having money if you can’t spend it together? When we were over $50,000 in debt we were both working multiple jobs and working overtime just to afford the monthly payments. That leaves very little time to spend together as a couple.
As we became debt free we got so addicted to making a certain amount of money that we both just kept working like crazy. Our bank accounts were finally in the black and we loved watching our money grow every month. You may be thinking, so what’s the problem? The problem was we didn’t see each other, eat dinner at the same time, fall asleep together at night or wake up together in the morning.
We were on different schedules and not only were we not enjoying our money because we had no time to spend it; we also weren’t enjoying each other because we had no free time. It’s hard to be in a relationship with someone when you never see them.
Enjoying our money together
Now that we are debt free and we have learned that money doesn’t buy happiness we are actually enjoying our life together. We take an annual vacation, we eat dinner together and although we don’t fall asleep together at the same time we do wake up together every morning.
I am not sure if our old money habits got us in trouble because we were young or because we were really bad with money. I am sure it’s a little bit of both. We learned to manage our money together and our relationship is stronger because of it. We spent it together, paid it off together and now we are saving it together. I don’t even want to think about where we would be if we didn’t make the decision to turn our financial lives around. Being debt free definitely saved my relationship.
Good morning Dinks. I am admitted former spend-a-holic. I am also a 33 year old who used to be over $50k in debt. Thankfully I turned my entire life, including my finances, around and now I’m debt free. I say that because when I decided to take my finances into my own hands and control my spending it changed my entire lifestyle.
Decided to be debt free and avoid spending splurges
I started spending less and using the majority of my money on repaying my debt. It felt like a defeat because I felt like I was wasting money paying off debt since I wasn’t spending it on myself. However the truth is paying off my debt was the best decision I ever made. Instead of spending money I was using it to pay off debt and that was a big lifestyle change – for the better.
Spending splurges were out of the question with my new financially responsible lifestyle and it made me realize that I don’t need “stuff” to be happy. I started to think of creative ways to use items that I already have like recycling clothes and I started looking for cheaper ways to buy items such as buying basic household items at the Dollar Store. That’s something I never did in the past.
What happens when spending splurges relapse?
It was a hard struggle, but now that I’ve been debt free for a couple of years my day to day living habits have definitely adjusted. I went from spending money carelessly to actually feeling guilty about spending more than $20 on anything. Big change.
I do still have moments when I just want to take my bank card and go shopping for new clothes, personal beauty items and expensive dinners. The fact that I want to use my bank card and not my credit card is also a huge indication of my personal growth.
How I avoid spending splurges
Whenever I get in the mood to spend money I keep these three tips in mind:
Bad memories come rushing back. I remember the feeling of being broke and I definitely don’t want to relive my past. Those were some of the toughest years of my life. My relationship suffered because we were always fighting about money. I don’t want to go back to living with the burden of stress and I definitely don’t want to go back to going to bed angry.
If it’s not a necessity I don’t need it. I ask myself if I need or want the item. Spending splurges were an emotional coping mechanism for whatever else was going wrong in my life. So is eating and I’m trying to change that too. It would be great to have all the latest clothes, but I don’t really need them.
Think about the future. I think about getting my credit card statement. The after guilt of spending is brutal and it’s far more consuming than the temporary euphoria that comes from spending. I may be momentarily happy when I buy my new item, but I will be very depressed when I get my credit card bill in the mail and have to make a lump sum payment onto my credit card. Of course that’s if I choose to use my credit for the purchase.
Good morning Dinks. As you know my boyfriend Nick is a huge sports fan. He watches a lot of sports, but we don’t go to a lot of NBA or NFL games because it’s very pricy. I don’t know how season ticket holders afford the cost of attending games all season. I thought that going to the movies for a night out was expensive. Well it doesn’t even cost half the price of attending a professional sports game.
The sad thing is sports fans are starting to see changes when it comes to ticket prices. The cost to see your favorite sports team will be increasing as NFL Teams introduce variable ticket pricing into their stadiums. The feelings between the sports industry and fans vary.
Sports fans will pay more for the same seats
And they aren’t happy about it. Variable ticket pricing is also known as tiered ticket pricing and it allows stadiums to charge different prices for the same tickets depending on the demand of a game. Seats for a low ranked team will be cheaper than the exact same seats of more popular match ups such top ranked teams, teams with major star players or teams with long standing rivalries.
Our friend Lee Huff from the FinCon Facebook Group is less than pleased. He says “I’m against it (variable ticket pricing). The NBA already does this, so if you want to take in an affordable game you have to watch one where the good teams beat up the bad teams. Otherwise, you’re stuck paying a huge premium.”
And he’s right. At the beginning of February while I was in New York I was thinking about seeing a Knicks game. Well they were playing the Miami Heat that weekend and the absolute cheapest price, aka the highest seats, I could find were $180 each. YIKES.
I can’t afford to enjoy live sporting events anymore
Fans aren’t sold on the concept of paying a higher price for more popular games. I personally feel this will hurt ticket sales at sporting events because people will no longer be able to afford to see their favorite players at popular sporting events. I know that I won’t.
If you live in a city with a major sports team this change may not affect you as much. But if you have to travel to see your favorite team the costs of accommodations and tickets can quickly add up.
Variable ticket pricing already exists in other sports
Tiered ticketing has been around for some time now in sports such as the NBA, MLB and NHL, but now the NFL is introducing this new pricing concept. I personally think it’s a bit ridiculous but at the end of the day professional sports is just another business.
The Boston Red Sox introduced fans to variable ticket pricing that includes variable ticket prices based on game demand as well as the time in baseball season and the day of the week. “We strive to maintain affordability and ticket accessibility while still generating the revenues necessary to fuel our baseball operations, said Red Sox President and CEO Larry Lucchino.
Happy Friday Dinks. Let me tell you, I had a great money week. Usually I look really forward to the weekends. Maxing and relaxing, but this week I am sort of sad it’s over because I had a really great week. Tuesday I got my protein shakes for free at the grocery store because the price scanned wrong, Wednesday I got a discount on my lunch combo and yesterday my new raise kicked in from my promotion at work. Isn’t that a great money week?
Have a great weekend Dinks and enjoy these posts from our personal finance friends:
Wise Bread – 10 Awesome Jobs You Didn’t Know Existed (and How to Get Them)
Good morning Dinks. We preach about saving for your goals, planning for retirement and living a happy financial life. But are you planning for what comes after retirement? I know that many people don’t like to talk about estate planning because it’s so final, but the truth is we have to talk about our money’s life after retirement because money doesn’t go away after we do.
What happens to your money after retirement?
As a financial planner my job is to make sure clients have the savings and protection they need to be financially stable now and in the future. This includes saving for short term goals, investing for retirement and estate planning.
Estate planning means having an updated Last Will and Testament, having enough money for final expenses such as taxes and funeral arrangements as well as having insurance on all credit products. More often than not clients don’t take life insurance on credit products such as their loans, credit cards and mortgages because they feel that they can’t afford the extra cost. I say sadly because that statement couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I want to help clients fully understand the true value of having a Will and having credit insurance both as financial products as well as a form of protection for the future of their loved ones. Estate planning starts with your Will. It’s crucial to make sure your money is handled according to your wishes after you have passed away.
3 things every Will should have:
A named executor. An executor is the person who will handle your property, money and other personal belongings after you pass away. You want to make sure this person is financially responsible and will get the job done; it could be a relative, a lawyer or a family friend. They will need to file your final taxes as well as allocate your money as stated in your Will. It is important to name an executor who you trust will carry out your last wishes.
One or more beneficiaries. A very important aspect of any Will is to make sure you say where you want your money and other belongings to go. You can designate one or more beneficiaries for all of your property. As an example you can say the value of all my belongings will be divided equally between my spouse and my siblings. One thing that many people don’t know is you can also designate beneficiaries for specific items such as your car, your jewellery, your home furnishings as well as a lump sum of money.
A legal guardian if you have kids. If you have kids or you have legal responsibility for kids you will need to state what will happen to those kids in your Will. This is important to make sure the kids end up in a happy home that you approve of. If a legal guardian is not named in a Will the kids could end up with a distant relative who they don’t know, end up being split up into two different households or even end up in the foster care system.
About Kristina Tahnyak
Good morning Dinks people always say that being debt free gives us a sense of freedom and it’s true. It lets us do other things with our money that don’t revolve around paying interest and paying bills. Financial freedom truly comes when you can choose to do what you want with your money as oppose to having to meet your monthly debt obligations. Being debt free definitely gives me a sense of comfort in knowing that I can enjoy my money.
