dmmink’s posterous

It is the first week of March and my family and I just returned from a week at the beach in beautiful Santa Barbara, California.  I think this is the first time I have ever gone to the beach during the "off season".   One of the things I could not help but notice was how differently the beach bums were dressed. Usually, California in July means a myriad of bikinis, sun-tanned bodies, and other folks trying to show off what "momma gave them", but California in March was all about hoodies, jeans, and other modest women's clothing. Obviously, the whole world has not taken up the modest clothing movement.  But it was strange to see so many beach dwellers in modest clothing, even if it was just the brisk weather forcing people to cover up.

Our family was a little unsure of what to expect from an off season beach trip.  We were pleasantly surprised with the less crowded beaches, the lower prices (everything was discounted), and the warmth of a good wet suit.  We were able to do just about everything we usually do - including surfing, boogie boarding, sea creture hunting (during low tide), and long walks on the beach.

 
1. Drive less.  Yes, gas prices have come down.  But, who knows when they will skyrocket again.  Find ways to reduce your transportation costs.  Does your area have a transportation system?  Could you carpool with a friend or neighbor?  Cut your transportation costs and put that money into savings.
 
2. Cut back on the drinks.  You don't have to have a Starbucks coffee every morning.  Have you ever stopped to think about how expensive those gourmet drinks are?  How much do you spend every day?  Multiply that by 1 week?  Now, multiply that by 52 weeks in a year.  That is how much money you could have in savings if you brought your own drinks from home or went without entirely.
 
3.  Conserve that precious energy.  Turn off the light when you leave the room.  Turn off the TV when you leave the room as well.  Find ways to reduce your heating and air conditioning bill.  The biggest home-energy expenses are heating and air conditioning.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "During every 24-hour period, you will save about 3 percent on your energy bill for every 1 degree you lower the thermostat setting (or, conversely, raise it when air conditioning is the big cost).
 
4.  Take up gardening. Gardening has many benefits.  You will burn calories.  A nice garden will make for a nice yard, which will add value to your home.  Mowing your own grass will save you $300 per summer.  Apply your own weed killer and fertilizer to save another $200.  That's $500 right there!
 
5.  Choose small pets, or go pet-free.  Large pets are a large expense.  Here are some approximate annual costs of pet ownership: small dog, $780; cat, $640; a medium dog, $1,115; a large dog, $1,500.  When it comes to pet ownership, smaller is better and cheaper.  Less really is more (more in your savings account).
 
6.  Don't flush money down the toilet.  Do you have to buy brand-name toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, plastic-wrap, etc.  Consider buying these products in bulk.  You'll pay half the price as you would normally.  Instead of buying these items at your local grocery store, try buying them at Costco, Sam's Club, Kmart or Wal-Mart.
 
7.  Go easy on the media.  Media and entertainment expenses has become a huge expense for many people.   Take a look at how much you spend on cable, satellite television, Internet, etc.  See what you can do to cut this major expense down.
 
8.  Use the tax-advantaged plans at work.  You can use your company's cafeteria plan, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, etc.  You can easily put $500 into savings by using these plans once you spend $2,000 in pretax-ed dollars.  Most employers can offer some sort of these plans.  Use those pretax-ed dollars before you spend your own dollars.
 
9.  Don't go out to eat.  Eating in can obviously save you a lot of money.  Instead of going to a restaurant and spending at least $25, go get a $7-$10 pizza at a pizza joint.  Or better yet, cook yourself.
 
10.  Get out of debt.  Avoid credit card debt at all costs.  NEVER pay interest on an instant approval credit card and pay off your balance in full every month.  Getting out of debt quickly can save you a bundle in the long-run.
 
As you can see, it doesn't have to be difficult to start a savings account.  Take a close look at your spending tendencies and make necessary changes to get your savings account up and going. 

Yesterday, I mentioned that Dream Systems Media had the opportunity to attend/speak at SMX West 2009. I also mentioned that it was a fairly expensive venture, however it would have been much more expensive had we not been able  to hedge a lot of our costs via credit card rewards. 

We paid for four round trip flights and hotel accommodations for 4 nights all via credit card rewards.  All of this was made possible thanks to a credit card comparison study that we conduct each year.  Our company goal is to make sure that we leverage the money we spend and that means choosing the right credit card.

On a personal level, I use an AMEX cash back credit card and have enjoyed getting some decent checks from them.

Have you heard of the new real estate site www.unclesamsland.com ?  In my opinion, Uncle Sam’s Land might be a great find for those looking to invest in today's real estate ‘buyer’s market’.

Apparently, there is no membership fee for the site, and properties start under a thousand dollars.  Uncle Sam's Land is picking up these properties via hundreds of tax auctions all over the country.  The company assigns staffs of researchers to conduct due dilligence on each property available at a tax auction and then they "bid on the best crop available."  

If your unfamiliar with tax auctions, here is the typical proicess:

1) The land owner does not pay property taxes
2) The state puts a tax lien on the property, and from this point, 1 of 2 things can occur

Option 1 - Tax lien sale

The county can sell a tax lien certificate to the highest bidder at an auction. Please note that the certificate is not a deed to the property.  In fact, the bidder is actually bidding on the right to an interest rate, which she can then charge the delinquent property owner for paying the taxes. At tax lien sales, the lowest bid (lowest interest rate) wins.  Now if the property owner fails to pay back the certificate, the certificate owner can foreclose on the property just like a mortgage company.  At that point, the property owner would have a set period of time to pay back the loan or lose the house.

Option 2 - Tax deed sale

The county can also hold a tax deed sale at a public auction.  The highest bidder wins the auction and now owns an acutal deed to the property.  At this point, all individuals with liens against the property are notified of the sale and have a right to bid on the property.  If they fail to bid on the property within a cetain period of time they lose their right to their lien claim and the auction winner now owns the property free of any other claim.

Uncle Sam’s Land inventory consists of tax deed sales.  Most of the land purchased by this group are empty lots.  Occasionally, the properties will have structures on them. 

Why would these properties make good investments?

Because each of the properties has gone through the foreclosure process, they are priced dramatically less than what the fair market value would indicate for them.  Basically, the new owner is walking into a significant amount of equity for a relatively meager amount.  Purchasing real estate for ‘pennies on the dollar’ is without question the biggest attraction to Uncle Sam’s Land. 

Furthermore, the basic nature of the purchase transaction is nearly effortless for even the most novice investors.  Included in the purchase price are the documentation fees which will enable the new owner to be placed on title of the property.  Once payment has been submitted following a transaction, Uncle Sam’s Land will create a Quit Claim Deed which will request that the new owner customer be placed on title of said property.  Normally, the county will take anywhere from 1-3 months to process the request, and once the process is fully completed, the Deed (the document which proves you are the owner) is sent to you to keep for your records.  Simple as that.

I recently read that at one point in time Google deleted their corporate blog.  Can you believe that?  The most powerful search engine in the world deleted its blog.  In fact, accidental blog deletion happens all of the time to companies and individuals.  Luckily for us there is a new company whose aim is to provide blog backup. Bloggled.com is the name of the company, and their motto is "Be a hero. Save a blog." 

Bloggled was founded by a fella named Brent Ramey who realized that his wife and many of her friends spent an amazing amount of time blogging.  One day, Brent's wife accidentally deleted the family blog and nearly went into depression.  Brent and his business partner decided it was time someone offered a backup blog service, and Bloggled. com was born.

To date, the young company has backed up hundreds of thousands of blogs.  Bloggled also runs a fantastic corporate blog, with lots of funny stories, political fuel, and other reads of interest. So if you have a blog, and who doesn't, I ask you : have you backed up your blog? If not, you may want to go take a look at Bloggled's service.  It is free for a limited time.

I am still steaming over the unbelievably bad experience I just had with the Highland Utah Jiffy Lube.  (click on that link ff you want to read the full version of my story).  Short recap of the story:

• My wife got in a car accident
• I was out taking care of her car and decided to stop at Jiffy Lube
• Utah Jiffy Lube employee locks my keys inside my car
• Utah Jiffy Lube store manager tells me it is my fault and refuses to pay for a locksmith
• I am forced to walk home on the Highland Highway in the dark, with snow and ice everywhere!
• Utah Jiffy Lube plugs up one of their 3 bays for a full business day b/c of refusal to pay for a locksmith
• I have to call in a favor to a police woman friend who unlocks my car
• I finally get my car home 18 hours after making one of the worse decisions of my life

I have not been this mad since high school.  I literally had to go play basketball for 3 hours that night just to try and sweat the stress out.  

Suggestions for Utah Jiffy Lube:

• Send all store managers to some kind of mandatory customer service boot camp
• Tell your employees not to shut open car doors unless they are holding the keys
• Offer to give patrons a ride home if they are stuck at your store because you locked their keys in their car
• Offer to pay for a locksmith to come unlock the car, if one of your employees locks the patrons keys in the car

This is partially my fault - I should have never stopped at a Jiffy Lube in the first place! These are the same guys that are famous for the telling you every part on your car is dirty, worn out, and needs replacing.  How many times have you heard:

"Sir did you know your windshield wipers, your air fllter, your coolant, and belts are all about to give out?  We can replace each of these parts for a total of $239.00, plus your oil change which was only $34.95..." That is what I thought!

So my wife and I got sucked into a great financing offer - 5 years no interest with 10% down.  We have an empty formal living room and would like a new bedroom set.  So, we momentarily purchased about $4,000.00 worth of furniture on Black Friday.  I drove home with that awful feeling of buyer's remorse and then booted up the good ol' household budget software to see what this expenditure was going to do to our budget.  Although, the budget planning tools were showing me that we could easily live within our budget I still just did not feel right about carrying the $4,000 debt.

So, I decided that the furniture was going back.  This of course broke my wife's heart, as she was anxious to invite over family and friend's to bask in the new look.  I learned something about money management here, which is: just because you can afford it does not mean you should buy it.  In fact, I have since taken steps to save an enormous amount of money on the impending furniture purchase.  Today, I signed up for 2 new wholesale furniture accounts.  This should allow me to get basically the same furniture for about 1/2 the price.  I have also decided that we will furnish the rooms in stages.  First, we will take care of the formal living room. Second, we will re-furnish the bedroom.  And third, I will get some new office furniture.  I feel much better about the new approach.

Many of you may have read the recent post 15 ways stores trick you into spending money by MSN Money. If you have not, you should, it really is a great read. And if you can recognize the 15 tricks the article exposes you should be able to save a grip of money next time you visit the grocery store.  But, here is another secret (actually secret is a poor word choice  because I want you to tell everyone about it) you can use to save money every time you go to buy groceries - walk in with a budgeted amount of cash in an envelope.  Guess what, you are not allowed to spend any more money than the envelope contains.  This is a little budget help the envelope budgeting way!

I think the current mortgage crisis is evidence that money management ability is not on the list of "strengths" for most Americans. In other words, we all need a little help in cutting back on bad spending habits.  For decades, people have found that budget help with the envelope budget system.  Today's money management software allows you to ditch the physical envelopes in exchange for virtual envelopes, but the system has remained the same. 

You can find literally thousands of success stories from individuals who have lived by the envelope budgeting system.  Of course, there are dozens of other budget programs, so go out and find one that works for you.  Remember, the stores can get as tricky as they like, but it will have absolutely no effect on your spending habits if you live within a personal budget.  Good luck.

A few days ago I was talking with my sister, who is a CPA, about how she could make some money online.  I seem to have these conversations a lot.  We discussed several options and then I asked her how she felt about starting a specialized blog.  She said she had never given it any thought.  Time to give it some thought.

Both her and her husband are accountants.  She teaches accounting classes at a University.  She has and knows a lot of information other people would like to.  Chances are she will always be involved at some level in the accounting field. So it makes a lot of sense to continue to build her reputation in a field in which she is already established.

She of course responded by saying, "but how am I going to make money posting free information on a blog?"  First of all, lots of people make good money maintaining popular blogs.  (Another post for another day "how to monetize your blog").  But more importantly, she can build the current and future value of herself as a professional by creating a useful, popular, blog.  For example, let's say 10 years from now she goes to apply as a full time professor at a larger, more prestigious University and she is able to tell her potential employer "I own a blog which has top 10 Google rankings for accounting, accounting principles, accounting firm, etc." You can see the infinite value in that right? ;)

Plus, with the software available today, your blog can quickly become your book.  There are many programs which can quickly turn your blog into a book by clicking a button that says print my blog, or publish my blog.

So, my dear sisterm, stupid is... not keeping a blog.

Have you ever noticed that people really pick and choose which modern conveniences they will welcome over their “old school” way of doing things?  A few summers ago, I had the opportunity to work in a law office and I was amazed at the way my boss did business.  First of all, the guy did not even own a computer. Secondly, he would lose his cell phone for weeks at a time and not seem to miss it.  But, this guy, like all people, had his modern vices like a flat screen television with high definition programming. I always find it interesting that everybody has certain modern conveniences they take the time to learn and use, as well as a few areas of holding out.

So, how do you keep your online budget?  Do you indulge in the convenience of a money management software? Or, have you refused to give up the pen and ledger?    In case, you have failed to join the revolution – here are the top 3 reasons you should be using some kind of household budgeting software:

1. You save trees - When you record the expenses digitally there is no paper mess!

2. You save time – Almost everyone can type faster than they can write.  But even if you’re a slow typist, think of all the time you save by not having to do the math.

3. You are more accurate – No matter how many “mad minute” contests you won as a 5^th grader, you are bound to make more mistakes calculating all of those debits and deposits than your good friends Mac or PC will make.

So, if budgeting software is one of those modern conveniences that you have heretofore decided to forego, I hope this post encourages you to think through that one more time!