Provident Living

There is financial advice everywhere we look, it seems. Well, I take that back. It seems to be everywhere when its either on your mind or you're looking for it! But the one piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since I was about 5 years old, is from my mother. Now that I am old enough to comprehend these type pf things, it means the world to me. She said, simply and profoundly, "NO MATTER WHAT, LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS". It seems easy enough to follow, yet millions in our nation are drwoning in debt. Why is that? I believe that is because their is too much pride and envy within our social circles and we have forgotten how to enjoy life without money being the string that controls us as puppets. Several of my friends are only 22 and 23 years old, and have found themselves with 10 to 20 thousand dollars worth of debt. And they wonder why? Because they obviously did not live within their means. In other words, spent money they did not have. Now that is going to plague them the rest of their lives. Another thing I noticed about those very same friends, is that all of them have come from wealthy parents and comfortable backgrounds. Well except for one of them. That speaks volumes as well. Another one-liner that my mother said years ago. "Always value the dollar". Simple right. If that large portion of my friends who are trying to swim their way out of debt would have simply valued and respected the dollar, I believe they would cherish what they had to begin with and never made the poor choices that have put them in the shackles of debt.
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!
I LOVE YOU MOM

Tips on home purchases

I am in the market right now for buying a new home and have had many different programs for loand and financing thrown my way. How do you know what will be best for your future? Well, I believe there are different ways of optimizing your dollar for different circumstances. I am going to focus on my current situation and explain what is best for me. I am a student with a minimal income of around 3 thousand dollars a month. Not much savings either. Meaning not more than 10,000 dollars. So after hearing of how great a rate you can get by putting down as much money as possible. To just about anybody, the low rate sounds woderful, especially when it is a fixed one. However, becasue we do not plan on being in the home for more than 5 years, it really doesnt make much sense to tie up all of our cash in this home just for a lower rate that wont be used for more than 5 years of the 30. So with that in mind I said that it is probably better to pay the extra hundred to 200 dollars a month for 6 months after purchasing the home, and thenrefinance after six months and then receive your lower interest rate without having to use all of your precious savings. And for newlyweds in college, we all know that savings is a literal lifeline. And looking at the flip side of this coin...If we were well into out middle age years and had a healthy savings and predictable income every month, and were looking to buy a home that we would plan on spending a significant amount of time in, then I think it would be best to go ahead an dput a large sum of cash down on a home to go ahead and lock in that low rate for the remainder of a mortgage. So to sum up my thoughts and plan of attack; When buying a home and plan on maximiaing your dollar on the home, use as little cash as possible to get into the home. because chances are it will be a very long time before you see it again!

Better to Give Than Recieve

Just a quick plug for today. The principle of giving if you want to recieve is something that all of us should incorporate into all of our financial decisions. Matter of fact, my Accounting instructor mentioned this to our class right around the same time the class started and it has kind of stuck with me. I dont think it should matter wether you are religious or not, but I do feel that if you give 10% of your income even if you do not see anything monetary directly in return, I feel very strongly that just the practice of giving a percentage a month will create a discipline that cant be broken. Think of it as creating a habit. We all know how hard it is to break a habit. So making this a habit will also create the habit of saving a percentage per paycheck. So lets figure that becasue it takes 21 days continously of repitition to create a habit, (most people agree), we will save our paychecks for 21 consecutive weeks and 'voila' you have created a habit that will sustain you through just about any financial roller coaster that you might encounter for the rest of your life. Sounds good doesnt it! I feel that the stability of many families throughout the world could be saved simply by generating this practice of giving especially when they are just getting started. Because we all know that when you dont give when you have little, you wont give when you have lots!!!!!

Savings paying off!

We all know how important a savings account is. But have we all had to utilize a savings account because of necessity and not for reasons of recreation or investing? Much to my surprise, for the past 4 months I have had to utilize my savings out of necessity while I focus just about 100% of my time to schooling efforts. So even with my wife working full time, it is safe to say that I have somewhat of a testimony of saving from first hand experience. From a financial standpoint, its easy to say, 'Well why not just go work at so and so for minimum x amount of dollars'. Well, my train of thought is more along the lines of making the investment of time into my school this semester will propel me into the down side of the hill of graduating instead of just working anywhere and taking the risk of lower grades which means having to take the same classes again and prolonging the period of time until I graduate. Slippery downhill slope, right? I think so, that is why I finally took this huge risk of not working, or you might want to look at it as an investment (of time)! So anyway, just to refresh the minds, why is graduating from college so big? Well, as an accounting major, I feel that you need a steady stream of income to produce even a frothier and more heady stream of income. Or in other words, you need money to make money. So I could just go be joe shmoe salesman who is perceived as deceiving and just trying to get my cut for the rest of my life. Or I could have invested this semester and used my savings account to maintain our quality of life, and continue to look up and prepare to meet my goals and apirations for my family's future. The underlyiing moral that I planned on writing about was trying to save half of what you make! It might sound like a tough thing to do, but lets face it, anytime is a good time to sacrifice! Becasue saving now, means enjoying sooner than you would expect.

Excel Millionaire

So in my Accounting class the other day we were discussing investments. We discussed the avenue of becoming a millionaire by the age of 70. I have heard of that process several times before from my older siblings and it excited me of course then but I think now that I am older I felt a bit of urgency. The excel spreadsheet that our instructor brought up was I believe 1200 dollars a year at 8 percent. And at the age of seventy, voila`, you are worth over a million dollars. So after analyzing that for awhile, I figured that I want to be worth that in less than 40 years and more like 15 years! And of course that means that I had basically two options that I needed to optimize. So the easy one was I thought, well lets try and just double the amount of money invested per year. So I plan on investing 2500 dollars a year, but then my other dilemma had to be solved and that is of the percent of money that will be working for me. And I know alot of folks wont believe this but I have figured a way to make 16 percent on my investments. Well its not exactly perfected yet, however I have seen it produce 16 percent for 5 consecutive years and I hope to cash in as well. I dont really want to give away this secret until I have it producing at a contstant flow for me but it has to do with real estate.

Week 4

Well its finally Friday, and that means no school. Well at least no going to the school, but it always seems to mean a bunch of homework. This week was test week and I felt somewhat comfortable taking my tests but I think that was my downfall. becasue on all of my tests that I was 'comfortable' with, I didnt take the extra time to sharpen up what I didnt know. And I think that could have hurt me on the tests. Oh well, cant change the past, only the future.

My latest entreprenuerial decision was this past week. My wife and I found a property in a smaller town in Texas that has a house on it but the house is 50 years old and in poor condition. However it was a corner lot and the price was way to 'once in a lifetime' to pass up. So I called the guy and he told me that he grew up in it, its old, needs lots of work, and it hasnt been lived in for 20 years. I really wanted to buy this land cuz it seemed like a win win. Wether we wanted to simply tear the house down and rebuild or to sell the bare lot, either way I felt like we couldnt lose on this one just because of the price we would be getting it for. Then my wife suddenly tells me 'we cant buy someone's childhood home! They are gonna be so sad if we tear their house down!' Needless to say, I still havent ben able to convince her that that is ok and it happens all the time. So no investment yet. Oh, and the taxes I believe were something like 150/year. Pretty good stuff. So I think I am going to keep on trying to convince her cuz it is just to good to pass up.

Some thoughts updates about work. While I have been waiting on sigining with a real estate brokerage, I decided to go and take all the tests to get a Commercial Drivers License. Dont ask me why cuz the only reason I can think of was it might boost my resume' to have as many certifications and license's as I can. So all took all 6 tests, and I passed all 6. Including Hazardous Materials. So i thought well, I could drive fuel tankers or even propane trucks or something of that nature while I am waiting for the real estate market. So I was asked to go get fingerprinted and get a background check done through TSA for the next 30 days and then they said that I would be good to go. Believe it or not, it kind of sounds corny, but I am pretty excited to drive around and get paid. Even if it is a big rig! Soome other business decisions, that I have thought about doing for myself or even just starting it and handing it over to one of my brothers or somethng like that; is that of a used appliance store. Now it probably wouldnt be that easy to be super successful in the valley or a big city. But do it in a small town like a Safford or something like that. I think it really could be successful just becasue of the number of folks that are always getting rid of their washers and dryers and even refridgerators just becasue one little thing went wrong. Well all you need is some handy hands and a couple of phone numbers to purchase small appliance parts and 'voila'! You would then have your used appliances. I dont know how lucrative it would be, but it sounds fun to me if nothing else!

Week 3

Some financial desisions of note this past week would be a decision to buy some airline tix to fly back to Boston for spring break. I was certain that we (my wife and I) were going to buy these tickets last night that we had found for 90 dolars each way which was an amazing deal! However after talking it over with my wife, we decided to not 'waste our money' that we dont have and wait til we are a bit more financially stable hopefully in the summer. Instead we decided to pay off the remainder of our lease until June, so we can save basically all of our income until June before we have any major bills to pay! I thought it was a good idea just because it will help us to save for either a down payment on a house or maybe an improvement on a 0down house in June. Thats the goal anyway, so we'll see. As for employment, I am still waiting on a call form my #1 prospect for work in leasing homes with a property management and I still dont want to just be an agent that just buys and sells houses.

As for education, I am excited for most of the classes this semester except for Calculus. It seems to be quite a speedbump for me in grasping these concepts that I learned 5 years ago as a junior in high school. But Accounting is great as 240 seems to be alot more exciting than 230 and I think that is an indication of what area I would like to work in. Business Stats is very interesting and I enjoy the instrucotrs patience and knowledge. And last of all Psych132 is lets just say exactly what you would think it would be. All the students tend to be very liberal and take every word from the instructors opinions as doctrine and truth instead of bias and pure opinion. But oh well I am having fun with it and making sure that not my opinion is heard as well.