Beating Broke

Picking Yourself Back Up Again

May 5, 2010 By Shane Ede 5 Comments

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 The Dollar Coin

April 30, 2010 By Shane Ede 7 Comments

There’s been some talk recently (and in the last several years) that we should get rid of the dollar bill and move to using a dollar coin. Most of that talk is pro dollar coin. And, for the most part, their argument makes a lot of sense. The dollar bill is an expensive bill to make, much like the penny is an expensive coin to make. Dollar bills quickly degrade and need replacing. And, really, what can you buy for a dollar anymore anyways?

In fact, it almost seems like anyone in the personal finance blogosphere really should like the idea of a dollar coin. But, I just can’t bring myself to like it. First, let me describe my relationship with cash, bill or coin. I don’t carry it. At any given point in time, I probably have a few dollars up to twenty or so dollars in my wallet. It’s probably been there for months. I don’t use cash. On most work days, I go to work, and, when I’m done with work, I return home. I have very little calling for spending money during the week. And I really have very little calling for it during the weekend as well. But, you know what I hate more than carrying cash around? Carrying coins around. They’re always weighing down your pocket, jangling around with whatever else is in your pocket. They fall out of your pocket, leaving themselves buried in somebody’s couch. They’re dirty. I just don’t like them. If I happen to end up with some, the first thing I do is either deposit them in the little tray at the counter or throw them in the console of my car.

So, as you can probably tell, if I had my choice between the dollar bill and the dollar coin, I would pick the dollar bill every time. And, in case your wondering, when I do spend money, I prefer to use my debit card. It only takes up one little old slot in my wallet and it’s “accepted everywhere I want to be”.

The Great Kitchen Remodel

April 28, 2010 By Shane Ede 11 Comments

As I mentioned before, part of what were doing with our tax refund is to remodel our kitchen. Our kitchen was in a bit of rough shape, as some of it was likely original to when the house was built in 1950. The linoleum had been added, as had the carpet and the counter-top, but there was little evidence that anything else had been upgraded in 60 years. I don’t know about you, but that just screams for updating. We’d put up with it for almost 6 years, and it was one of the “must do” items on our list of things that had to be done in order for us to eventually sell the house and upgrade to something a bit bigger. When the opportunity came in the form of our tax refund, we felt that it was a justifiable usage of the money. Here, I’ll let the picture speak for me. That’s all the old stuff. Built in place. The doors on the cabinets had been painted so many times (I counted 6 layers of paint) that they wouldn’t close. The drawers had the same issue, except that they rubbed on their cases and dropped dust from that rubbing onto all of the pans and such that were in the lower cabinets.

Could we have lived with that for a couple of more years? Probably. But there’s a limit where saving, budgeting, and repaying debt become a true detriment to your happiness. When you reach that limit, you can become truly miserable. We could have used the money we spent on the kitchen on debt repayment. That would have felt good, but not nearly as good as it is to not have that kitchen any more! So, that just about covers the why of our kitchen remodel. Let’s move on to the how.

We didn’t (obviously) want to spend a whole lot of money on the kitchen, but just merely update it. We hit the not-so-local (100 miles) Menard’s and went about ordering the pieces for delivery. Also, we managed to squeeze in a dishwasher that was on clearance. It wasn’t really part of the original plan, but it was actually cheaper than the cabinet that would have had to go where it went.

Here’s how the cost on that broke down.

Cabinets: ~$1700 (They are the budget models, but have solid Oak facing and doors and look quite nice.)
Dishwasher: ~$180 (again, it was on clearance and was the last one they had.)
Flooring: ~$450 (laminate that was on sale to replace the chipping linoleum and stained carpet.)
Delivery: ~$180 (it’s a long ways, and it wouldn’t fit in our car.)

All told, that first trip cost us a shade over $2300. I didn’t go out and compare, but I think that’s a pretty good deal. Once all the parts and pieces were delivered, my dad came out to help out over a long weekend. He lives about 950 miles away, so it was quite the trek for him. And I must admit, the remodel would have likely turned into a small disaster had he not came. He’s a contractor, so he’s done a few of these before. And there were a few unforeseen issues that would have caused me a huge problem without the knowledge and help.

In the end, the four day weekend turned into a 5 day weekend. It was more like a 5 day workweek, but with far more physical labor than I normally do. But, it got done. There’s only a little bit of trim that I’ve got to put up, and it will be 100% finished. I’m hoping that I can find the parts for that here in town this weekend and get that wrapped up.

And now, for the grand unveiling! Here, in all it’s splendor, is our new kitchen.

What do you think? Quite the change, isn’t it? After it was all said and done, we added around $600 more to the bill with odds and ends that we needed throughout making the total bill come in at around $2900. Of course, if we had had to pay for labor, it would have significantly raised the costs. Yet another reason to at least try DIY. You’ve got to know your limits of course. I got lucky and my dad was able to come help, otherwise this would have easily turned into an example of what happens when you don’t know your limits. But, it didn’t. We’re extremely happy with the way it turned out and even though the space is still very small, the luxury of the new cabinets and drawers along with the dishwasher makes it all seem just a tad bigger.

Side note: While my dad was here, he was telling us a story about a remodel he recently worked on where the kitchen alone came in at about $100k. Incredible. The client put in solid granite counter-tops that cost $20k! Even if I won the lottery, I don’t think I could bring myself to spend that much money on something like that.