One question I’ve been asked over and over when talking about quitting my job is how I overcame the fear of not being able to find a new job, or not being able to pay my bills.  Obviously, both of those questions played a part in the decision.  My answer might surprise some.  I didn’t.  At least not to the point that they’ve completely left my mind.

At the moment, I’m not looking for another job.  I took on a part-time job, working for a local computer repair shop, and I’m not even looking for a new full-time job.  The part-time job doesn’t pay anything even close to what I was making at my full-time job.  And, the truth is, I don’t care.  So far, using the income from my wife’s full-time job, and the income from my part-time job, along with some of the income I make from this site and others, we’ve been able to pay the bills.  We haven’t been able to keep up with our debt repayments on the same aggressive schedule that we had been on before, but we can pay the bills.

Even so, making the decision to quit my job meant overcoming the fear of both of those things.  And, I did it.

Almost a year before I quit my job, I wrote a post on another site of mine, entitled Overcoming Fear.  In it, I wrote about facing fear with rationality.  Looking at fear with a rational eye, and truly, asking “What’s the worst that could happen?”  I knew, during the decision making process, that the part-time job was available, and that it would likely be mine for the asking.  The worst that could happen there was for that particular job to become unavailable.  But, there are other part time jobs available here, and I could take one of those.  The hours at another one of them might be worse, and the pay might even be worse, but jobs were available.  The worst that could happen was that I could end up having to take a different part-time job that I wouldn’t like as much.  The worst that could happen with our bills would be if we couldn’t make ends meet.  The absolute worst case scenario would be if we were pushed to a point, financially, where we would have to declare bankruptcy.   Even that is was a pretty remote possibility, because I could always take on a second part-time job to help bring more money in.

I found the worst case scenarios, understood what the ramifications would be for each, and took a leap.  And, in the end, I’m very happy that I did.  My stress levels have gone way down.  I enjoy what I’m doing again.  And, I’m in control of what happens with my life, now.

Overcoming fear can be about the best case scenario too.  With any decision, there is always something that is a positive.  For me, the positives of getting out of a situation that I was suffering in, regaining control of my life, and stopping the trade of my time for money, made it well worth my while.

Do you fear?  I encourage to read my post on Overcoming Fear, look at your fears with a rational eye, and ask yourself what the worst case scenario is.  Some fears aren’t worth fearing.

Share with us.  What are some fears that you’ve overcome?  What are some fears that you want to overcome?
photo credit: notsogoodphotography

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  By now, you’ve likely got the turkey out defrosting, and are getting the rest of the ingredients for you Thanksgiving Day feast all in order and ready to go.  Tonight, or tomorrow, you’ll start traveling wherever it is that you’re planning on going (or your guests will start arriving) and you’ll be surrounded by family and friends, ready to take in the festivities of football and food.  Enjoy it!

I’d like to take this time to make a special thank you to my family and friends.  While we all have things to be thankful for, I feel especially thankful for all the support I’ve received from everyone during my new adventure.  I knew that I had the support of my wife when I Quit my job, I had no idea how the action would be received by the rest of my family and by my friends.  Not once, have I been told that it was a stupid thing to do, or that I shouldn’t have done it.  Everyone has been supportive of the decision and has done what they could to accommodate the changes in our situation.  For that, I am truly thankful beyond measure.

When I finally put in that two-weeks notice, I was floating on this nice little cloud, high above the world, happy with my decision and feeling like I could do no wrong.  Like Andrea of So Over Debt put it, it was the first good nights sleep I’d gotten in quite a while.  And, of course, for the two weeks that I was still working, I stayed on that cloud, anticipating that last day, and the end to my tenure at that employer.

As those two weeks went by, I went from anticipating the day, to downright demanding it came faster.  As more and more of my tasks were transferred to temporary replacements, and I packed more and more of the stuff off of my desk, I began to think about all the things I could be doing at home, at my computer, with this site, and my other sites.  It was torture!

At the end of those two weeks, I nearly ran for the door!  I was already filled with ideas of what I would write the next day, the things I would do, and the changes I could make.  Little did I know that I had a bit of a different path planned.  You see, I woke up early the next morning, with the flu.  Yep.  I spent my entire first day of self employment with the flu.  The following day, I was well enough to at least sit at my desk, but being productive was almost certainly out of the question.

One of the things that I decided, early on in this adventure, was that the income from this and other sites wasn’t going to be enough to make up the difference, or even to make a dent in it.  I would have to get a part-time job in order to help pay the bills, while I built the sites up to a reasonable income level.  I already had a lead on one, so the first full week of self-employment, I went and met with the owner and we worked out some details, and I started last Thursday.  The part-time income from that should help with the bills.  I’ll get a bit less done on my sites, as I’ll be working three days a week, but it was something that I felt/feel was necessary in order to keep some constant money coming in while I work on building other things.

Now, a full week and a half after I quit, and the holidays rushing in on us, somethings are coming back into focus.  I’ve always gotten a bit worked up about finances.  That’s why I created this site, after all.  So, knowing that we lost over half of our income and will only be able to constantly replace about 1/3 of that income immediately, has me a bit stressed.  My wife want’s to do some holiday shopping, and my natural instinct is to shut off all of that, and “give hugs” this Christmas.  It’s caused a bit of friction, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

I’m recovering.  From the high of quitting my job.  From the flu.  From stressing entirely too much over money.  From a lot of things.  Such a major life change is bound to require some recovery period, and I am confident that I’ll come out the other side.  There’s just a few bumps in the road.  What an adventure!

photo credit: alibree

I did something a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure that, based on the title of this article, you can guess what that something is.  In fact, today is my last day.  Starting at 5, I’m a free agent!

Why I Quit my Job.

Over the last several months and weeks, several things had happened at work, and while each would have likely been bearable on their own, the whole was completely unbearable. I don’t want to get into any real details, as I prefer to take the high-road and just leave what’s done, done. Unreasonable demands on me, and and my time had made my work a true chore, and I wasn’t willing to deal with it anymore. And so, I attempted to make my argument as to why the demands were unreasonable, but those arguments fell on deaf ears, and I submitted my resignation and two weeks notice. And, boy, did it feel good.

What about that House?

If you’ve been reading the last few weeks of articles, you’ve noticed that I’ve been writing alot about the house we were planning on buying, and the process that we and other prospective home owners have to go through. As you can likely imagine, the loss of one of our incomes has made it impossible for us to be able to afford the new mortgage payment that the new house would have brought with it. As a result of that, we’ve since cancelled the purchase and will remain in our current house.

The upside of not buying the house, and having to pull our current house off of the market is that we’ve done quite a bit of work on it in the last month or so to make it more appealing to prospective buyers. A new deck, some new flooring in the hall, and paint touch ups, among other things have made the house look pretty nice. It still remains rather small for our growing family, but it’s in really good condition now, and we’ll just have to make do.

Plans for the future.

With my resignation, I got something that I hadn’t really expected. Some freedom. I declared my free agency, and I’ll be attempting to make the most of it. I’ll be spending a lot more time writing for Beating Broke, as well as my other online properties. I’ll be writing some guest posts for other personal finance sites, and am hoping to have another ebook ready for you all sometime around the end of the year. (If you’ve got topics you’d like to see an ebook on, please let me know in the comments!)

I’ll likely have to take on a part time job, but have resolved to make it part time so that I have the time to do the extra work on this and other sites. It’ll help supplement the income I make online until such time as the online income grows enough to support me doing it full time.

How can you help?

The biggest way that you can help me, right now, is to continue reading my articles, here. It’s why I write them. It’d be pretty boring if you didn’t stop in to read, leave comments, and add to the discussion. If you’ve got topics you’d love to see covered here, please let me know in the comments or by using the contact us link at the top of the site. I’ll do my best to cover them as quickly and as fully as I can. Finally, share the site with your friends! Let them know how much you enjoy the articles!

photo credit: timsnell

I was reading a story somewhere where a person was being interviewed about their debt.  In the interview, the person was speaking about how they had this credit card debt and how they just couldn’t get out from under it because of all the interest, fees, and other ways that the credit card company throws on the heap each month.  They went on to talk about how they were in fear of having their car and house repossessed because they were falling behind.  With each new problem, they were quick to point out the things that were keeping them back and causing their slide into bankruptcy.

Something occurred to me, then.  They were taking no ownership in their finances.  No matter what the financial woe was, it was always someone elses fault.  The credit card companies were tacking on interest and fees.  The bank was adding late charges onto their car loan and mortgages.  Not once did they take any ownership of their situation.  Not once did they say, “we shouldn’t have charged so much on the credit cards”, or “we bought more house than we could afford”. The blame was always on the other guy.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my journey towards beating broke, it’s that it’s all my fault.  I signed that credit slip.  I signed that mortgage.  I signed the loan papers.  Yes, some of the credit card companies have interest rates and policies that border on predatory.  Yes, the banks will allow you to borrow right up to a point where you’re living paycheck to paycheck.  But, I signed on the dotted line.  Along the way, I discovered all of that, and I took financial ownership.  And, in doing so, I took control.

Through financial ownership, I have control over where my money goes.  I have control over which debt gets paid off first.  I have control of how tightly the purse-strings are held.  And, most importantly, I have control of my financial future.  A future that I plan to make as financially independent as possible.  Not at the whim and mercy of any bank, but a future where I can plan to buy things, and save money towards retirement.

My journey isn’t over, but I am beating broke.  I’m taking financial ownership and making my future one that is free from broke.

I want you be able to say the same thing.  It’s one of my goals for this site to help you beat broke.  Beating broke is the first step in your financial journey towards a life free from concerns over where next months bills are coming from.  You can do it.  But, you’ve got to take financial ownership.  You got yourself in the situation you’re in, and only you can get yourself out.  Do it today.  Accept that you are the only one that can take ownership of your financial situation, and you are the only one with the power to fix it.  Take that step.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Unfortunately, losing an engine in the one car wasn’t the end of our car trouble.  It was, by far, the worst of our car trouble, but, certainly not the end.

Because the engine in the other car was gone, we are down to just the one car.  We’re carpooling.  For people with office jobs, carpooling isn’t such a big deal.  For us, it’s a bit of a problem.  In order to do her job at her business, my wife needs a car to transport her clients as well as to meet her clients at their job sites or for job interviews.  Not having a car is not an option for her.  Because the company is still very young, they don’t have the financial ability to have a company car.  Which means that they have to use their personal cars.

So, everyday, we have to coordinate my getting to work, the kids getting to daycare, and then the reverse of that at the end of the day.  Still not a huge deal, right?  Until you consider that my wife’s job isn’t just a 8-5 sort of job.  As the owner of the business, there are meetings and things that she has to attend out of town, and after hours.  Just in the first week that we were doing this, she’s had to be late to meetings so that she could leave long enough to pick up the kids, then me, and then drop us off at the curb in front of our house.  An inconvenience at the least.  Luckily, everyone has been pretty understanding so far.  But, the longer we are without that second car, the more chance there is that she’ll have to be late to or miss a meeting with someone who won’t be so understanding.  And if that happens, it means lost work for her and the company, which means lost revenue.

But, I’ve gotten off on a bit of tangent.

Because we have an increasing need to use the second car, we needed to put new tires on it.  We’ve known that it would need the tires, but because it was the car that I was driving to work and back, it wasn’t a priority.  I drive less than a mile total each day, so dealing with bad tires wasn’t a big deal.  Now, with my wife driving the car every day and putting more mile on it in a day than I normally did in a month, the tires became a big deal.  Especially in the dead of winter.  So, new tires it was. A planned expense, but a rushed one that came before we were truly prepared to do it.

To finish it all off, the day after we put the new tires on the car, my wife came home to pick up a couple of things for a meeting she had later in the day.  The neighbor across the street had a friend come and pick her up for an appointment, and, while backing out of the neighbors driveway, backed right into the side of the car.  The better part of the drivers side door is now concave, and the drivers side mirror is shattered.  Luckily, the other driver has insurance, so we’re hoping that it will pick up the damages.  But, because the other car is in the shop until further notice, we’ll have to wait until it gets out to send the other one in for repairs.  And we’ll be carpooling still.  Just in the other car.

And that, my friends, is our January in cars.  Here’s hoping for a less turbulent February.  I’d say a less turbulent 2011, but I don’t want to jinx it…

photo credit: majcher

Sometimes, when it rains it pours.  And January really was one of those months for our cars.  In mid January, one of our cars wouldn’t start in the morning.  Now, we live in North Dakota.  A car not starting in the morning isn’t unheard of, and borders on common.  Especially when the overnight low nears the -20 degree range.  So, I wasn’t too worried about it, and figured it just needed a little warming up to get going again.  Since we were expecting to get into the 20s that weekend, I just left it and tried it again when the temperatures warmed up.

As you can probably guess from the title, that didn’t work.  So, my thoughts immediately go to the gas line.  If the gas level gets low enough, the condensation in the tank can get into the gas and then freeze the line up so that the gas supply is either so low that the engine won’t run, or can stop the gas flow altogether.  I ran to the gas station, grabbed a bottle of heet and dumped that in.  When that didn’t work, I even went so far as to run an extension cord out to the car and use my wifes blow dryer to try and warm up the lines.  Still, it would not start.

With anything like this, there is a point where you have to admit that you just don’t have the skills or the tools to do the job.  If the line was frozen, it needed to be warmed, and I had exhausted my capabilities to do that.  If we had a garage, I could have pushed it into the garage and let it warm up there, but we don’t have a garage.  So, I had to have it towed to a mechanic.  I don’t like doing that, but I have roadside assistance insurance so the tow is covered, and we do need the car to run.

Unfortunately, when the mechanic started running diagnostics on the car, they discovered a far worse reason that it wouldn’t start.  They couldn’t get the engine to produce any compression.  No compression, in an engine, means that the pistons are not moving.  And if the pistons are not moving, that means there is something wrong with the engine.  In the case of this car, the most likely culprit is that the timing chain broke.  To add to the problem, the engine is what’s called an “interference engine”.  Which means that it uses the interference created by the movement of the engine to help keep the engine moving.  When an “interference engine” loses control by losing it’s timing chain, it basically runs amok.  The pistons and lifters run however they please and start banging into the rest of the engine until parts start bending and breaking.

I know this because it’s already happened to this car once.  Apparently, this particular model and year of car is pretty famous for it on the internet.  The engine gets to about 69,000 miles and loses it’s timing chain, and, as a result, it’s engine.  You’d think there would have been a recall at some point, but I guess it wasn’t a big enough problem.  The first engine in the car blew at about 58,000 miles.  We put in a used engine that already had 28,000 miles on it.  The car is now at about 97,000 miles.  If you do the math, that makes the second engine at about 67,000 miles.  Right on schedule, I guess.

Depending on the severity of the damage, we either need a few new parts, or a whole new engine.  And, until they tear the engine apart, they won’t know the damage.  And, as luck would have it, the mechanic that I had tow the car doesn’t do engine work of that level.  If it needs a battery, oil change, jump start, etc, they do it, but to get in and start replacing parts is more than they have the manpower or space for.

After making a few calls, I found a mechanic that specializes in engine work.  Our options are to put a new to us used engine in the car, rebuild the engine (replace most of the old parts with new parts), or to put a whole new engine in the car.  The mechanic was only able to find one used engine, but it has well over 100k miles on it already.  But, it would only cost about $1700 to put it in.  To rebuild the engine would cost about $3400.  And a whole new engine would be about $4700.  Did I mention that the cars value is only about $4500?

My wife and I have discussed it, and we’re a bit hesitant to put in a used engine into the car.  We had the “should I sell my car or fix it” conversation as well, but it’ll be cheaper to just fix it.  We’ve done the used engine bit once with the car already, and look where that got us.  We’ve decided to have the engine rebuilt.  It’ll cost twice as much, but we’re hoping that it will last quite a bit longer than the used engine might.  We’re also hoping that we’ll be able to then keep the car that much longer.  Also, the rebuilt engine would have an aftermarket timing chain to replace the one that broke, so shouldn’t have the same problem as the factory chain had.

The one bright spot is that we own our cars.  We’re not making any payments on either, so we aren’t going to be hit with the double whammy of paying for a new engine on a car that we’re still paying payments on like we did the last time this happened.  We may have to take a loan out on the car to pay for the engine, but it should still only be one payment.  Hopefully.

The whole thing is going to be a major setback to our payoff plan.  We had planned on using our tax refund to make a big dent in our debt snowball, but it now looks like it’s going to be put towards paying for the new (rebuilt) engine.  I don’t like it, but the situation could be much worse.  When the first engine blew, it was before we had started with any sort of financial plan.  In fact, it was one of the larger contributing factors to our getting control of our finances.  Now, it’s more of a setback and inconvenience than anything.  It sucks, but we’ll get over it.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of our January car troubles.  Stay tuned for part 2 coming soon!

P.S. if you’re wondering, the car is a 2002 Oldsmobile Alero.

photo credit: fauxto_digit

If you’d like to catch up on this on-going series, start here, then go here, and here.  Then come back here and read on.

There, now that you’re caught up, you know that my wife quit her job about a year ago.  Sometime around last August, she and two of her friends (and ex-coworkers) decided to start a business together.  And as of the last update, you knew that the business was going well.

Now, the business is still doing well.  Better than most of us expected, I think.  On May 1st, they began working with the clients that the certification that they picked up allowed them to.  Because of that, all three of them should be seeing full time hours fairly soon.  My wife has been working full time and then some for several months, but everyone else has been relegated to doing most of the office work (that is unpaid).  That’s good for us, but wasn’t all that great for everyone else, or for business partner morale.  Unfortunately, much of what my wife does is limited to people with certain qualifications.  Qualifications that only my wife has.  And, until the business is able to help pay for the others to get those qualifications, she’s got to do it.  With the new program that they just started, that should become more of a possibility towards the end of the year.  Of course, if the new program continues to do well, it might not be something that needs doing anyways.

As I expected, due to the added insurance costs, and some increases in withholding for ChildCare, my checks are much smaller than they were in 2009.  We had planned on that, and since a lot of the extra is pre-tax, it will help us in the long run.  It is a bit sad to see your net income be less than 50% of your gross income though.  To try and compensate, I’ve re-doubled my efforts here and at my other websites to try and make up some of the difference.  Income is increasing there, but it’s a very slow process, and it has yet to be enough to make any significant difference anywhere.

Due to my wife’s increased work load, we’ve been able to keep up with our bills and haven’t had any major issues.  It hasn’t been good enough for us to return to aggressive debt payments, but we haven’t added much new debt either.  That’s a win if you ask me.

The rest of the year looks pretty good.  My wife’s business looks like it will continue to grow and, with any luck, so will my side endeavors.  I’m hoping that we might even be able to start our debt snowball rolling again.

Inevitably, you’re going to screw up.  You’re going to make a mistake and it’s gonna cost you.  If you’re lucky, it’s only going to cost you a few dollars or a bit of bruised pride.  If you’re not so lucky, it could cost you much more than that.

Let me tell you a little secret.  We’ve all been there.  In all likelihood, we’ll all be there again.  But, some of us will get back up, dust ourselves off, and get back to doing what it was we were doing in the first place.  The rest will sit on the ground where they landed, beaten and broken, and never get back up.  They’ve given up.  The world got the best of them, and they have lost the will to try again.

Getting back up isn’t the hard part.  Gathering the will to get back up is.

None of us who have fallen and gotten back up have any greater aptitude for it than anyone else.  Sure, we may be better at some things than other people, but when we fail, we are all the same.  Here’s a little bit more of a secret.  Some of us are better prepared for the fall.   We’ve done what we can to soften the blow, not because it’s inevitable, but because it could happen.  Think of it this way; you don’t buy health insurance because your sick, (well most don’t) you buy it in case you get sick.  You don’t wear a helmet while bicycling because you know you’re going to fall, you wear it in case you do fall.  Sometimes situations are out of our control.  We certainly don’t choose to get sick.  And we don’t choose to fall off of our bikes on to the hard concrete below.  But, sometimes it happens.  And the better prepared you are for it, the easier it is to get back up and get going.

An example.

Many years ago (something like 7), I drove a old pickup (older than I am).  One particularly cold day, then engine refused to start.  It refused to start the next day despite having a charger on it and attempts to pull start it.  I couldn’t go without a car, so what was I to do?  I had no savings, and no means of coming up with any extra money.  I had fallen.  In order to get myself up and out of the hole I had dug, I was forced to take on a massive (for me at the time) car loan on a used car.  The bank wouldn’t finance much without a down payment, so I took what I could get.  It was a terribly low spot for me, financially.  I went from having no car payment at all, to having a car payment of a little under $200 a month.  I could afford it, but just barely.  If anything had happened to my income or if an emergency of some sort had arisen, I would have fallen that much farther (and harder).  To be honest, I didn’t learn all that much from that particular episode.  But, I did get back up and back on the road.

A week or so ago, my car sprung an oil leak.  The repair wasn’t horribly expensive (only about $150), but enough that it could have been very damaging if I had been in the same situation as I was before.  But, I’m not.  I’m prepared.  I have a small emergency fund that can easily cover an expense of that magnitude.  The fall wasn’t nearly as bad.  It wasn’t as bad of a situation as it was before, either.  But, because I had prepared, the fall was very short and I was able to recover quickly.  In fact, it was less of a fall than it was just a little bump.

Preparing for an emergency isn’t a bad thing.  It doesn’t mean that you are expecting to have an emergency any more than having health insurance means you’re expecting to get sick, or wearing a bike helmet means you’re expecting to fall.  But it cushions you against the fall.  Getting sick is less stressful if you have insurance that you know will pick up part of the bill.  You’ll have less road rash if you’re wearing a helmet.  And, if you have an emergency fund, more falls will become bumps.

Do yourself the favor.  Prepare now, so that when you do fall, you’ve got some cushioning to land on.

I dislike getting a refund from the government. I don’t like having to look up the my tax refund status.  I don’t have any good reason to give them an interest free loan, but any changes I make to my W4 don’t seem to make any difference.  I keep getting a refund every year.  This year, the numbers were really off, because we added a dependent last march.  After all the numbers were entered, and the forms filed electronically, the IRS sent us a nice deposit of a little over $3000.  Combined with a bit under $500 from the state, and we end up with $3500 in the bank.

Now, before I go on to tell you what it is we are doing with that money, I need to say something.  For the last several years, we have spent nearly every spare dime we have on paying off debt.  We still have debt that needs to be paid off.  However.  Despite my hate for debt, I’ve come to realize that you cannot let other things slide in order to pay off that debt.  With that in mind, here’s how we’re spending our refund.

We’re getting a new kitchen.  The cupboards in our kitchen are original to the house (circa 1950) and have been painted so many times that they no longer close.  The drawers grind against their frame and the resulting paint dust and wood dust falls down from them onto anything in the cupboards below them.  We have to wash our pans before we can use them because of the dust.  The linoleum on the floor is peeling up.  The carpet is ancient, smelly, and stained.  If you took just the kitchen from our house, it would fit right in with many of the run down slum rentals in town.  We want to move up to a newer (read bigger) house soon, so we need to make this house sellable.  In my opinion, with the kitchen in this condition, it would not sell for what it is worth.  So, we went and bought all new cupboards, countertop, and flooring. Oh, and a dishwasher.  That’s a certifiable luxury, but it helps that we bought it all on sale.  All of the supplies came in at about $2300.  There’s still a few odds and ends that we’ll need to purchase, but we should be able to keep it at about $2700 or less.

This weekend, my father is coming to town to help me install it all.  With any luck, come Monday, it will be mostly finished and usable.

If the plan works, we’ll still have about $800 or so left over.  And with that, we’re buying a couch.  And maybe a loveseat.  Depends on the sale I suppose.   This could be classified as a luxury that we don’t need if it weren’t for the hole in the one cushion, the rips in the spring lining that allows everything to fall between the cushions and disappear into the couch, and the stitching that is coming out at all the seams.  The couches that we are replacing are in dire need of it.  We got them free and have used them for several years.  The couches we had before that were hand me downs and garage sale finds.  It’s time for something new.  And, yes, we could go to garage sales and find new used stuff, but we’ve been saying that for at least a year and haven’t done it, so we’re going to splurge a bit.

When we’re done with all of that, we’ll go back to trying to pay everything off.  My wife’s new business is growing well (that’s another post), and her income is leveling off some, so we can more properly budget for debt repayment.  We’re leaps and bounds from where we were when we got married, and with any luck, 2011 will be the last year we spend with any real debt aside from a mortgage.

What are you doing with your refund?