Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

I just transferred the final $330 to DW's Roth. That maxes hers at $5,000 and I maxed mine a few weeks ago with the tax stimulus check, so we are done for 2008!

The "extra" savings for the remainder of the year will go toward prepaying our home equity loan. The balance is about $10,000 and I plan to have it repaid by the end of 2009.

The medical speaking engagement I was supposed to have on 6/18 has been cancelled. The sales rep was in this morning. She said they just got back from their annual meeting and the company is discontinuing those types of programs so she had to cancel my upcoming lecture.

I'm bummed as I would have earned $625 for that presentation.

Recap for the newbies - I'm a physician and get to do various online surveys for doctors only. These are not surveys available to the general public. They pay very well and can sometimes be technically difficult to complete.

After a very slow month in April, my survey income rebounded very nicely in May. I collected a total of $680. And that doesn't include a few dollars in AOL Opinion Place surveys.

More months like May would be very nice.

We met with the caterer for our daughter's Bat Mitzvah last night. Along with finalizing the menu and decorating details, we also had to make a partial payment of $5,300. I knew it was coming. We had the money saved. But I still hate writing checks for big numbers like that.

We're really happy with how the menu planning went. It all sounds delicious and we're looking forward to attending the party. We've been to so many affairs where the food was tolerable at best. We've even been to some where we left the reception and headed straight to a restaurant because we were so hungry. That won't be happening after this affair.

Now if only we could disown some family members and whittle down the guest list by 10 or 20 or 30 people. Oh well. Can't have everything.

I haven't written an entry for a couple of weeks. Nothing particular to report on until now, so here's an update.

I just transferred another $445 to my wife's Roth. Mine got maxed at $5,000 with the money from the tax stimulus. After today's transfer, I need to send in another $1,085 to max hers. I'll do that in the next couple of weeks.

Our daughter's Bat Mitzvah is 4 months away, September 27th. We are meeting with the caterer on Wednesday to go over the menu, table linens, and other details. We will be making an installment payment to him of $5,300 also. That represents approximately 50% of the total bill. At that meeting, I'll get the suggested bar list so that we can start shopping for the alcohol needed. We will be saving hundreds by providing the alcohol ourselves instead of paying them to provide it.

We spent the day in Atlantic City yesterday. The 3 of us plus my mother went down. We had a nice lunch together and then my wife and I went to Caesar's to play for a couple of hours. Also, I had a $25 cash comp to collect. I ended up losing $50 at blackjack which left me down $25 counting the money they gave me for coming in. My wife lost about $46 and got a $5 comp for parking, so $41 for her.

After lunch, we did some shopping at the outlets. We picked up some nice stuff at the Disney outlet on clearance - a couple of Mickey vases $3.99 (one to keep, one for a pollyanna present for our collector's club), an Eeyore wall-hanging $3.50, and a couple of very nice stained-glass hangings $2.50.

I guess that's all for the moment.

A while back, I got an e-mail from the New Hampshire tourism dept. to do an online survey. We vacationed in NH last summer which is how they got my name. I filled out the survey and thought that was the end of things.

A couple of days ago, I get a letter from them inviting me to join the NH Travel Advisory Panel. I would have to complete a series of 4 online surveys over the next year. For each survey, I'll get a gift card from one of several companies of my choice. Plus I'll get an extra $10 for registering for the panel by 5/23. All together, it will be $65 for the 4 surveys and sign-up bonus.

I just registered, which took about 5 seconds, and I'll get $10 for doing that. The first survey is in June, then September, December and March. Pretty simple way to pick up an extra $65. BTW, I chose Amazon for my gift cards.

The past week especially we've been making a serious effort at trimming the grocery bill. That means shopping the sales, clipping coupons, comparison shopping and visiting multiple stores to get the best deals (within reason given gas prices).

Some success stories so far:
Shop Rite had OJ on sale for $1.88 (normal brand is nearly $4.00 regularly and maybe $2.50 on sale; store brand is usually $2.29). So I bought 4 (that was max allowed) and froze them.

Shop Rite had pasta on sale $.74/pound box. Bought 5 boxes.

Genuardi's had bread on sale 1/2 price. That saved $1.75/loaf. Bought 2 loaves and froze one.

Genuardi's had store-brand frozen meals that I sometimes take for lunch on sale 5 for $10. Bought 5.

Shop Rite this week has strawberries 2 packs for $2.50 (usually $5.00). Also had a coupon for $10 off a $50 order so used that. Also a couple of other good sale items that I can't think of at the moment plus used other coupons.

All together, probably saved $20 or $30 since Friday between coupons and sales on stuff we'd be buying anyway.

We got our $1,500 tax stimulus deposit on Friday. I just transferred $1,345 to my Roth. That was how much was needed to max it to $5,000, so I'm done with that account for the year. The remaining $155 went into my wife's Roth. That brought her total to $3,470. Another $1,530 and we'll be set for 2008.

I took the day off today and my wife and I went to Atlantic City. We enjoy going and don't get to do it as often as we'd like. Typically, we go on a weekend day when the place is much more crowded so it was very nice to be there on a weekday.

We parked at Caesar's, as usual. I had a coupon to redeem for a free buffet at Bally's so we walked over there to redeem it. Unfortunately, they told me the promotion had ended and they couldn't honor the coupon (I have had it for a while).

My wife signed up for her own Total Rewards card (she's been playing on my account until now). Now when the casinos have special promotions and give-aways, we'll both get them instead of just me. Today, for example, they were giving away a pair of cubic zirconia earrings to card members and randomly placed among the cz earrings were 200 pairs of real diamond earrings. We didn't get the diamonds but the cz ones are nice.

We played for a while - me at blackjack and her at slots. I left the table up $5. We decided to have lunch at Wild West at the buffet. I used $20 of comp credit and paid for the balance. Lunch was very good. They have a nice buffet with plenty of choices and good food.

After lunch, we walked around The Pier shopping mall for a little while, bought some fudge for our daughter and then headed back to the casino. We played for another 45 minutes. I ended up down $4.50 for the day. I'm happy any time I walk out with close to what I came with. I had fun. I got comped for parking ($5.00) and earned credit toward more comps (like the $20 I got today for lunch).

All in all a nice day. Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

I just transferred $675 to my wife's Roth. That brings our total for 2008 to $6,970. Only $3,030 to go. Our tax stimulus check is due to be direct deposited tomorrow. That is $1,500 and I'll transfer that to the Roths leaving $1,530 to max them for the year.

Now that I'm back and settled from the weekend, I tallied up what the whole deal cost me.

Thursday, I flew to West Palm Beach, FL to attend my aunt's funeral on Friday. Friday night I flew home and drove to Princeton, NJ to attend our good friends' son's Bar Mitzvah on Saturday and Sunday. Of course, the Bar Mitzvah trip was planned but the funeral trip was not.

Not counting gas for the car or any new clothes, we spent about $1,015 in 4 days. $735 was for the funeral and the rest was for the Bar Mitzvah. And I'm not even counting lost income from taking the day off on Friday. If I add in everything, it would be over $1,500.

I'm not complaining at all as I'm very, very glad I was able to be at the funeral and we've been friends with the Bar Mitzvah family since high school (over 25 years now) and wouldn't have missed that affair for anything. It just illustrates how important savings and emergency funds are.

Recap for the newbies - I'm a physician and get to do various online surveys for doctors only. These are not surveys available to the general public. They pay very well and can sometimes be technically difficult to complete.

April was a REALLY slow month for survey income. I collected a total of $165. I don't know why it was so low. To compare, as of yesterday, May 5, I had already collected $195 for May with most of the month still to come. April was a good month for doing surveys. I did ones totaling $615, but there is always a lag between when the survey is done and when the payment gets sent. Some of that came in during April. Most will come in during May.

So an off month for collecting income, but a good month for generating income which should show up this month.

I left the house on Thursday and flew to Florida for a funeral. When I arrived back in Philadelphia, I drove straight to Princeton, NJ to attend a Bar Mitzvah (a 2-day affair), meeting my wife and daughter who were already there. Yesterday morning, as we were packing to return home, I realized that between the 3 of us, we had worn or packed 14 pairs of shoes!

Normally, I would blame my wife, but I was just as guilty. I had 4 pairs: my sneakers, my casual black walking shoes, black and brown dress shoes. I had 3 different suits with me, one needed brown shoes, the other needed black. I wore sneakers for traveling and the rest of the time and brought the casual black shoes in case we went out with friends before or after the affair.

I realized that many people in the world, and even here in the US, are lucky to have one pair of shoes to call their own. Here we were, 3 people with 14 pairs between us, and that's just what we had packed. We truly are a spoiled bunch. Even those of us who think of ourselves as fairly frugal live with such incredible excess when you really think about it.

What's my point? I'm not quite sure, but it just seems like we could all use a bit of simplification in our lives. It would benefit our finances. It would free up space in our homes. It would decrease the strain we each put on our planet's resources. And it would make packing for travel so much easier - LOL.

My aunt died this afternoon. She has been critically ill for a few weeks and on a ventilator in ICU for the past 2 weeks. There had been no sign of improvement and her condition started to deteriorate so the family made the decision to take her off the vent.

The funeral is Friday morning in Florida (I'm in NJ). I just finished making all the arrangements for my mother and I to fly down Thursday night. Unfortunately, we will need to fly back Friday evening because we have a Bar Mitzvah to attend Saturday morning here in NJ. So it will be a crazy few days running back and forth but I was always close to my aunt and her family. Her daughter and I are age peers and grew up spending a lot of time together. They lived a block away from me growing up so we were always over each other's homes.

Just another reason to keep an emergency fund.

Nothing financial about this post.

The 3 of us participated in the March of Dimes March for Babies today. It was a 5-mile walk done to raise money for the March of Dimes. Our daughter's class got involved after one of her teacher's had a miscarriage earlier in the school year.

Even though we are all in decent enough shape, a 5 mile walk still represented a fairly ambitious activity for us. We did do a couple of 2-3 mile hikes in New Hampshire last summer so I didn't really doubt that we could do it. It was just way outside of our normal activity level.

The walk began at 9:00am and we got back to the starting point just before 10:30am. We were a little achy, but enjoyed the sense of accomplishment and knew we had raised money for a good cause.

My wife and I keep saying we need to get into better shape, and we have been walking in the evenings although not as regularly as we could be and usually for less than 30 minutes. Having done this 90-minute walk today, I can definitely use that to push us to walk more regularly and for a little longer than we've been doing. Knowing that we did today's walk is pretty motivating (though we're waiting to see how we feel when we get up tomorrow - LOL).

A few months ago, I went throught the speaker-training program for one of the pharmaceutical companies and did do one speaking program for them. I was hoping it would become a regular thing, but so far it hadn't.

But today, the rep from that company was in and said she'd like to have me do a program sometime in June. That would be great. I told her I was wondering what had happened as I'd like to do them more regularly, maybe every couple of months if possible.

I enjoy doing it and the money always comes in handy. I think the current rate for speakers is $625 per program. So at least I know I've got one coming up.

I just got back from shopping for a couple of new suits. I went to Men's Wearhouse, which is where I bought my current tuxedo a couple of years ago. I knew they had decent prices and excellent customer service. And I was not disappointed. In fact, my wife came along and she was jealous of how easy the process was compared to shopping for women's clothing.

We walked in the door and a salesman came over. I told him I needed a suit and he pulled out a tape measure and checked my size right there. He walked us over to the racks, asked what color I had in mind and picked out a jacket for me to put on. I didn't care for the design (3 button) so he took it back and gave me a 2 button one which we liked. Plus, the 2 button one came with 2 pairs of pants, making it more versatile and it was cheaper than the 3 button suit.

Then he explained the current 2-for sale and what I'd save if I needed anything else. I did want a 2nd suit, so he picked one out that I probably wouldn't have looked at on my own, but it was very nice and looked very good on me, so I got that as my 2nd item.

We walked to the fitting area and the tailor came out and marked each piece for altering. Then we paid and were on our way. The whole process took barely 45 minutes. Oh, and I also brought in a pair of suit pants that needed the hem resewn and they did that for me while we were shopping.

The total damage for 2 suits with 3 pairs of pants and alterations on those items and the pants I brought in was $633. They do have a rewards program and I had a few hundred points from buying the tux. With today's purchase, I earned a $50 gift card which I'll get in a couple of weeks and I'm within a few dollars of earning another $50 card. So when I get the first $50 card, I'll go back and pick up a couple of shirts and make sure I spend enough to get me the other $50 card.

There are places I could have gone where the suits would have been cheaper and still acceptable quality, but the service wouldn't have been nearly as good. I'm not often willing to pay for service. I'm more of a "leave me alone and let me shop" kind of shopper. But once every 10 years when I need a new suit, I appreciate the extra attention that a place like Men's Wearhouse offers.

Today is Earth Day. Today is also the 10th anniversary of the opening of Disney's Animal Kingdom park in Florida. That means 10 years ago today, my wife and I were enjoying a wonderful day exploring the wonders of the new park as we were there for the grand opening. In fact, our first visit to the park actually happened a few days before they opened to the public when we attended the preview for annual passholders.

Does any of this have anything to do with finance? Kind of, in a philosophical sort of way. Something that we discovered very quickly upon entering Animal Kingdom (AK) was that it was different from other Disney parks. The focus wasn't on glitz and fantasy and manufactured experiences. The focus, instead, was on reveling in the wonders of nature. What did that mean? It meant that the best way to enjoy the park wasn't to get through the gate and rush to the most popular attraction to get at the front of the line. And then rush from there to the next attraction. The park WAS the attraction.

We spent 2 full days opening to closing exploring every path, every display, every shop, all the decor and carvings and artwork. It was a wonderful experience.

How does that apply to money and finance? I think the "stop and smell the roses" theory applies. Your financial goal might be paying for college or buying a house or retiring or all of those, but you still need to take time along the way to enjoy the journey. You can't work toward retirement with blinders on, never stopping to enjoy all that surrounds you.

I spoke to many, many people who were disappointed by Animal Kingdom. Their main complaints were that there wasn't enough to do, not enough rides and shows. They were bored after a couple of hours. In speaking with them, invariably they took the guide map and raced from attraction to attraction and did little else. When I told them about all the great stuff we saw and showed them the hundreds of pictures I had taken, they didn't recognize much of what I spoke of because they hadn't taken the time to do those things. They zipped right past them.

I think that's how many people live their lives. They focus on the big stuff and forget to take time to enjoy the details. Sure, retirement is important. Sure, that multi-thousand-dollar vacation was fun. But it is often the little things that make life worth living. I have a little sign on my desk at home that says, "Enjoy the little things because one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." Animal Kingdom was a "little things" experience, admittedly located within a "big things" destination.

Far too many people to this day fail to appreciate that park in the way it was designed. As a result, Disney has been forced to add thrills to keep people coming. In fact, since adding the Expedition Everest roller coaster, AK has become the attendance leader among the four parks in Florida. I have to admit that we love that ride, but we are saddened by what the park has become and how the original message has been lost in the process.

We also have a poster hanging in our family room with quotes from Adair Lara's book, "Slowing down in a speeded up world" which also applies to this topic. She talks about making time to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, things that don't cost a penny but really can make a difference in how you feel and your outlook. It is all lessons that more of us need to follow, myself included a lot of times.

Our daughter is 12. Every night at bedtime, for years, we have each taken a turn saying what was special that day, the point being that even in our mundane, repetitive schedules, there is always something that made that day unique and memorable. So pay more attention to that stuff and enjoy the journey of life.

For quite a while, especially when my wife wasn't working at all for several months last year, our cash flow was kind of tight. We were still doing all of our standard saving and investing, but there wasn't much of anything left over each month, a situation I wasn't really used to.

Since she went back to work part-time, and 50% of her gross goes to her 401k, her actual take home pay is minimal, but it is enough to give a cushion to the cash flow. I guess partly as a result of that and also from watching our spending a little better, we're finally building up some surplus in the budget again.

I keep thinking I'm forgetting something, like some bill or expense that is coming that I haven't accounted for, but I really don't think that's the case. In fact, as I posted earlier, I paid our auto insurance bill in full recently instead of paying it over a few months like I had been doing. Plus, I put our entire tax refund into our Roths and plan to do the same with the tax stimulus payment next month. Also, the final payment for my daughter's braces is due in May. After that, we'll have an extra $150/month to work with.

We do have our daughter's Bat Mitzvah coming up in September, but we already have money set aside for those costs.

I guess the bottom line will be that we'll be able to have our Roths maxed for the year by the end of May, a month ahead of schedule. Then, I'll work on making extra payments to our home equity loan. I'd like to get that repaid by the end of 2009. That will free up another $218.01/month. Of course, by then, we'll probably need that money to fill our tanks and our pantry if prices keep climbing like they've been lately.

Planned obsolescence is when a product is manufactured to have a short life span, forcing customers to replace the item on a regular basis.

I think that describes cell phones perfectly.

I've had my cell phone for a couple of years. It is in excellent shape, works perfectly well and has the 2 main features I demand of a cell phone, the ability to make and receive calls. Despite all of that, I will be replacing it in the immediate future. Why? Planned obsolescence.

When I first got the phone, I needed to charge the battery every 2 weeks or so. Then it started being every 10-12 days. Then 8-10. Now, a charge only lasts 5-7 days, even less if I actually use the phone. I'm tired of listening to that annoying low battery tone beeping through my conversation.

I could just replace the battery. I did a little searching online and found a replacement for as little as $13.99 plus postage. Perhaps, I could find one in a local store and avoid the postage. However, I can get a brand new phone for FREE (after rebate). So why would I spend $14 or more to get a new battery for the phone I've got? I really wish a new phone wasn't the best option, but there's no way around it. My cousin, also on our family plan, had to do the same thing a couple of months ago. I have to wonder how many thousands of phones end up in landfills each year for this very reason.

My daughter will be celebrating her Bat Mitzvah in September. Both for creativity reasons and to save money we are making our own invitations, place cards, sign-in board and centerpieces. Since we're using a bunch of craft supplies in the process, we've been making a point of using the weekly AC Moore and Michael's coupons for the discounts.

Today, we first went to 2 different scrapbook supply stores. We need cardstock to back/trim the invitations. We also wanted to get a corner punch to embellish the corners of the invitations rather than just having plain square corners. We got some good ideas but didn't actually purchase anything.

Then we went to AC Moore and Michael's (they are across the street from each other). As AC Moore, we used a 50% off coupon to get a 24x36 inch canvas to use as the sign-in board. At Michael's, we got adhesive we need for the centerpieces and used a 40% off coupon to get oil pastels, also for the centerpieces.

We saved $12.00 plus tax with the coupons. I figure by going every week, we'll probably end up saving a couple hundred dollars by the time we're done.

I just made my latest Roth contribution, $640 to my wife's account for 2008. That brings us up to $5,800 total so we're past the halfway point of the $10,000 max.

For some reason, when we got back from a morning event at our temple, I decided to tackle the pack of phyllo dough that's been sitting in the fridge since I bought it a couple of weeks ago.

I thawed a pack of frozen spinach and mixed it with a container of feta cheese and made a batch of spinach and feta puffs.

Then, I asked DD what she might like because she doesn't care for those. She said she would like mushroom and green pepper ones. So I chopped up some baby bellas and green pepper, added some blended pizza cheese and some garlic and oregano and did a batch of those.

Finally, I had told DD a while ago that I'd make dessert phyllos some time. So DW chopped up an apple and I mixed in brown sugar, flour, oatmeal and butter, seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg, and made a batch of those.

They're all chilling in the freezer now. We'll make dinner in a little while - cook up some pasta and have the spinach and mushroom puffs on the side and the apple ones for dessert. The rest will stay in the freezer for quick snacks, sides and lunches for a while.

Thanks to recent market performance and relatively low spending lately, our balance sheet is looking a lot better than it did a few weeks ago. We're still down for the year, but only by about $5,500. A few weeks ago, we were down close to $20,000. We've also paid down $2,300 in debt so our net worth is only off about $3,200 YTD. I'm certainly not used to seeing it in negative territory, but at least it is a lot less negative than it was not too long ago. Those numbers also don't include the paycheck I got today because it hasn't been deposited yet. That'll make us close to even for the year.

March was kind of slow for medical surveys. I took in $300 for the month which is quite a bit below what I had been averaging. Part of the reason is I only did one of those phone-in surveys that I get the Amazon gift certificates for. I've just been really busy in the office and haven't had time to do them. Maybe April will be better.

As I posted earlier, we ended up getting a tax refund this year when I fully expected to owe a couple thousand dollars. The state refund came in this week. We owe about $900 to federal which will come out on 4/15. The net gain is $1,230.00 so I just transferred that amount to my Roth account. I figure it is $1,230 I didn't expect to have so I'd put it all into savings and help get the Roths maxed out sooner. Now I only need another $1,840 to max mine and $3,000 for my wife's.

We hardly ever have people over anymore. I realized today that one reason for that is the cost. We were hosting a meeting of the planning committee for a retreat we do every fall. All together, there were only 7 people but we spent nearly $50 buying food and goodies to put out a nice spread. Of course, not everything got eaten and we kept all the leftovers, so the true cost wasn't that high, but still, the money got spent on stuff that we wouldn't have been buying otherwise.

Having a bigger party for a couple dozen people can easily run into hundreds by the time you add in paper goods and plasticware and everything.

I'm glad we did it and we had a very productive meeting, but it was still kind of pricey.

This time to my wife's (I alternate between our accounts). Her account is in a bond fund and is one of the few bright spots in our portfolio this year, up over 7%.

Based on my usual investment breakdown, I was actually only due to put $575 in this week. Due to knowing that we don't owe anything for taxes and will be getting $1,200 back, I upped the contribution. I picked $855 because that makes the YTD total an even $2,000.

Between the 2 accounts, I've now put in $3,930 of the $10,000 limit. Next check, or possibly sooner, I'll probably put $1,070 into my Roth to bring it to an even $3,000 YTD for the account and $5,000 overall.

The numbers I posted yesterday were wrong. I had only quickly glanced at the forms from the accountant. I took them out this morning to review them and sign them and saw my error.

We are getting a state refund but we owe on the federal. We're still netting a refund but it is for $1,230, not $3,036.

That's not quite as bad, though it is still $100/month that we've overpaid.

I posted this on the forums but it belongs here, too. We have owed taxes in each of the past few years. That's fine with us as we don't believe in loaning money to the IRS all year. Due to some large capital gains and some extra side income in 2007, I fully expected to owe again. I was expecting to owe in the neighborhood of $2,000 and had set aside money for that purpose.

We went to the accountant on Thursday and got everything back today. Between state and federal, we are getting a refund of $3,036! I'm not sure how - my accountant isn't in today. I'll call him on Monday to see what happened and adjust so it doesn't happen again next year.

So I'm not glad that we overpaid our taxes by that much, but I can't complain about an unexpected $3,000 windfall.