Beating Broke

Frugal Estate Planning

March 31, 2014 By MelissaB 2 Comments

One of the joys of getting married and having kids is that you then must face your own demise. The poet Donald Hall wrote about this in his poem, “My Son, My Executioner” stating, as a man and his wife look down on their newborn son, “We twenty two and twenty five/who seemed to live forever/observe enduring life in you/and start to die together.”

Cheery, thought, eh?

Estate Planning Isn’t for the Faint of Heart

Yet, if you have children, you must plan for their future should you die while they’re still young. I know, no one wants to do this. In fact, 4.5 years ago when I was pregnant with my last child, I sat down to do a will and trust kit that I got online. I only got about three questions in, before, in my wild hormonal state, I broke down crying when I started facing the questions about when I would want the cord pulled.

It took me another four years to feel ready to have our will written.

I know. Irresponsible. Yet, it took me that long to accept that yes, I will die at some point, and yes, I need to plan for it now, while I’m still healthy and (relatively) young.

It Takes a Strong Wallet, Too

However, facing my own mortality was only part of the problem. Once I was ready to have a will written, I had to face the fact that it was unbelievably expensive!

We live in the suburbs of a large city, so I don’t know if that’s the problem, but the first lawyer we contacted quoted us $2,500 to set up our will. When I told him that we are living on a smallish income and paying down student loan debt, he generously agreed to put us on a payment plan without charging interest. While I appreciate the generosity, we still couldn’t afford $2,500, even on a payment plan!

Next, I contacted a lawyer from my small hometown, but he still was expensive, quoting $1,200 to $1,500. As Dave Ramsey would say, “It’s not in the budget.”

A Frugal Estate Planning Option

In the end, we made a compromise. My husband and I both knew we needed a will in place, but we didn’t have the kind of money lawyers were asking for. Instead, we turned to LegalZoom.

For less than $250 total, my husband and I each had our wills drawn up. We each answered a few simple questions online, and each will took less than 30 minutes to create. Then we paid and waited for the lawyers at LegalZoom to look over the document.

Less than a week later, the wills came through the mail and were in our hands.

When we don’t have so much debt and have a larger income, we plan to get a will and trust set up in person with a lawyer. However, for now, on our budget, LegalZoom works perfectly. We have a will in place should anything happen.

Have you used LegalZoom for a will? Would you consider it? Does $1,200 to $2,500 for a will created by a lawyer seem outrageous or normal to you?

Composting; You’re Doing it Wrong

March 27, 2014 By Shane Ede 3 Comments

Each and every year, for the last several years, I’ve said that I plan on finding a space for a compost heap and create one. Several years ago, I went so far as to take all of the grass trimmings and garden trimmings and dump them into a pile in the back yard. And that’s where they sat, untended, and somewhat forgotten. I’m still hoping that this year is going to be the year that I get off my duff and actually create the compost pile that creates actual compost.

Every year, we end up buying several bags of garden dirt for our container garden, and it would be really nice to be able to just walk into the back yard, and load up the wheelbarrow with fresh dirt from the compost pile and add that to the dirt we already have before planting our garden. A few days ago, I spotted this TED talk, which threw my idea of compost for a little loop. You’ll have to watch it for the full rundown, but basically, the speaker is saying that we’re doing compost wrong.

How should we be doing compost?

Mike McGrath, the speaker, suggests that the commonly held belief that you just grab all the clippings, leaves, junk mail, and kitchen scraps is wrong. According to him, those things don’t really compost all that well because they don’t break down very easily. Instead, he suggests that your compost pile should consist of mainly the leaves from the trees when they are shed in the fall. All the rest, your kitchen scraps and paper bits, he suggests would be better off in a vermi-composter, or worm farm.

If it’s Not Broken, Why Fix It?

The method of throwing pretty much everything into a compost bin or tumbler is a pretty old method. It’s the way that people have been doing it, and suggesting you do it, for years. It obviously works to some degree, or it wouldn’t have reached that point. The first few times it failed, people would have decided it wasn’t a very good way to dispose of refuse and would have moved on to something that worked better. In short, it doesn’t appear to be broken, so why should we go and fix it, as Mr. McGrath suggests?

I think it’s about efficiency. If you want to take your refuse (lawn trimmings, leaves, kitchen scraps, etc) and break it down into usable compost (a.k.a. super-dirt), doing so as efficiently as possible make some sense. Of course, most people usually choose one or the other method (everything in a pile, or vermi-composting) so I haven’t been able to find any good examples of someone doing both. I don’t think that McGrath would have any opposition to a person adding worms directly to a compost pile. It’s probably not as efficient as having an actual vermi-composting setup where you can harvest the castings and throw them in with the leaves.

How do you Compost?

Here’s the place in this post where you get to help out the readers of Beating Broke. Do you compost? How do you compost? What do you think of separating the leaves and the kitchen scraps into two systems? Too much work? Ideal?

Declutter Your House Like You’re Moving and Make Some Cash

March 24, 2014 By MelissaB 10 Comments

It’s been a long, hard winter. In Chicago, this winter ranks as the third snowiest on record, and the temperatures have been bitterly cold. Of course, we’re not alone; much of the country has felt the same pain.

Finally getting some warm, sunny days and watching all the snow melt has put me in the mood to spring clean. I’m not someone who cleans just for the sake of cleaning. No, I clean for two main reasons–to feel better about our home and how we feel in it and to make some cash.

To me, spring cleaning and decluttering mean raking in some extra cash selling the ~~crap~~ stuff we no longer use, love, or need.

A New Way to Think about Decluttering

But this year, I’m looking at decluttering and spring cleaning in a different light. My husband’s mentor has accepted a job in Florida, and he asked my husband to come with him. For a few weeks, we thought about going before we decided it wasn’t the best move for our family.

Still, during those few weeks a move was on the table, I panicked a bit looking at all the stuff we would need to either move, sell, or donate before moving 1,000 miles. Suddenly decluttering became less about the mantra, “Only keep what you love and use”, and more about, “Would I pay to move this item 16 hours away?” It wasn’t a pretty picture.

Declutter your house and make some CASH!

How Much Money Can You Make Decluttering?

You make think of decluttering primarily as tossing or donating, but there’s also good money to be made in decluttering.

Things to Trash

Of course, we have our fair share of trash. One of our daughter’s is a prolific artist. She’s only 5, but she creates artistic masterpieces every day. I’m perfectly okay with just keeping a few of these and trashing the rest, but my husband can’t yet bear to let them go. We have three shelves filled with her work. Seriously! Almost none of those drawings would make a 1,000 mile move, so it’s time to purge.

Things to Donate

Right away, I saw plenty of stuff that we just don’t need and that have no resale value. Clothes that we don’t wear, clothes that the kids have outgrown, baby blankets we no longer use, books and more books that we no longer read. The list goes on and on. Those items would easily make the donate pile. (Remember if you itemize on your tax return to get a receipt for your donations so you can get a tax deduction.)

Things to Sell

But then I looked with a keen eye at the dollars we’re sitting on.

My husband has a jigsaw tool that he used once and never used again that could be sold for perhaps $50.
I have a good stash of canning jars, many of which I will never use and would not want to move 1,000 miles which could be sold for another $40 or so.
We have a foreign language program that we bought for homeschooling that was never opened because we were able to get a different program for free. That is worth another $250 to $300.

The more I looked around, the more I realized I was just holding on to stuff that easily tallied $1,000 or more!

Is decluttering worth it? For a cleaner house and an extra $1,000, I’d say yes!

What’s the most you’ve made when decluttering?