In the interests of frugality, it’s best to have your relatives and good friends combine “command events” (such as births, weddings, deaths, etc) with a warm climate. That way you get a mini vacation thrown in for free.
Archive for March, 2007
Warmth in the Name of Frugality
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007Snow
Monday, March 19th, 2007
It makes a pretty pattern. You can also see some frugality in that picture. The car is obviously missing a bit of the trim (the door “bump strip”) and the sideview mirror has some writing on it. After a minor incident in which the left mirror was damaged, I got a new one from the junkyard at about a quarter of the cost of having one ordered. Relatively easy to change it out, the wiring had a clip-together harness (they adjust from inside the car) and there are three screws under a snapout panel. Pain in the neck to do in the cold but still do-able.
I knew it could be done, because my right sideview mirror had been neatly removed by an 18-wheeler on the Cross Bronx Expressway some years back. So that one’s from the junkyard as well, since at the time there was no way I could afford new (plus the NYC-metro area rates for putting the new one in). Now I can afford it but I save my cash for other things.
Update: One thing you need to balance is the amount of time it takes you to do something vs the amount you save. In this case the first time I did it it took over an hour to figure out how to get everything apart. At the time, the amount I saved was much more than I would have made working for two hours. The second time it took about half an hour, which is about what it takes for me to get my car to the shop, walk home, walk back, pay, and drive home again. So in this case the savings was “free” because the other option would take the same amount of time.
Dollar Stores
Monday, March 12th, 2007I was just having a conversation over the weekend about dollar stores, and how much money they really could be making. I live near a strip mall with a dollar store and there never seem to be very many people in there. The strip mall rent is expensive, so we had decided they weren’t profitable.
Then I saw this today: Dollar General shares jump amid hefty buyout proposal. KKR does some strange things but they seem to make money, and they’re offering 7.3 billion for DG. Makes you wonder.
Moved my Rollover IRA to Vanguard
Monday, March 5th, 2007A couple years ago due to some interesting circumstances, I had a very short window of time to take my money out of a 401(k) that was closing. Because a lot of other things were also changing, I took the easy way out and signed the forms my 401(k) company sent which just moved the money into a rollover IRA with the same company. Very easy, nothing needed to be notarized, etc, etc. And it’s been chugging along getting a little bigger every year.
But recently I’ve been re-evaluating all my finances (starting a blog was one of the things that came out of this) and I took a closer look at the IRA. I have yet another 401(k) from a long time ago and I was contemplating rolling it into the IRA as well. Then I looked at the management fees. Wow! No wonder it only got a little bigger every year.
After much looking around, I decided to go with Vanguard. They have low fees and really that’s about all that matters to me. I’m not going to be touching the IRA more than once a year (for rebalancing) so I don’t need a website with bells and whistles and I don’t want a live advisor because they might convince me to make changes I don’t need to make.
The process was kind of a pain in the neck, but it’s not something I need to do every day. First I had to fill out a bunch of forms online with Vanguard, then print them out and have some sort of banking guy put a magic stamp on them. This required driving around town on two different days (I first tried to do it on a Saturday, and guys with the magic stamp don’t work on Saturdays) to different branches until I found the right guy. [The stamp is a Signature Guarantee, definition here for the interested.]
Then it just took time. Now the money is all at Vanguard and I just have to deal with the original company (apparently moving all your money out is not the same as closing the account, so I have a zero-value IRA with them that is still accruing fees). Next step is to figure out the fees on the very old 401(k) and decide if I want to put that in with the rollover IRA as well. I probably will, mostly because it will be easier to deal with one place rather than two, and I have enough trouble dealing with allocation and rebalancing as it is.
What to do with your lottery winnings
Thursday, March 1st, 2007An interesting article from Fortune magazine:
Brad Duke, 34, a manager for five Gold’s Gym franchises in Idaho, pocketed a lump sum of $85 million after winning a $220 million Powerball jackpot in 2005. He spent the first month of his new life assembling a team of financial advisors. His goal: to use his winnings to become a billionaire. Here’s what Duke has done with his money so far.
I think this is one guy that isn’t going to look around in five years and wonder why he’s more broke now than before he won.