You really should've thought about keeping those positions you'd need most upon returning and asked friends/family to "host" them. Maybe a bartering agreement. You host my stuff and I'll help you "X" when I return. There's being frugal and then there's making mistakes. Of course it's easy to look back and say, "I should've...I could've."
In North Carolina at one point I heard beginning salary was around 25K, but I just looked and for bachelors with 3 years of experience it is just under 31K. Again what people said, the salaries really vary. I know in our state we have a pretty big dropout rate for beginning teachers because of the combination of high workload/bureacratic responsibilities paired with low salary. Also many teachers pay for school supplies out of their own pocket because the school is underfunded.
Sorry, but this piece is so utterly self-contradictory in its attempt to push an agenda that it even fails to push that agenda effectively. First you conclude that for 25 years our free market economy has utterly failed to regulate itself (as it is supposed to), leading to disaster. Then you conclude that this is why free markets are better than planned economies, which can never work? Scuse' me? Is that why the world currently proclaims the Canadian banking system the best in the world?
In essence, your argument seems to be that some feeble PR campaign for Americans to save more is the key to reforming our economy. The problem with that is the free market system will outspend your "save more" campaign with it's own "spend more" campaign by a factor of about 500 to 1, as it has always done (how did we get here again?). You refuse to face the simplest fact of all, that it is the so-called free market system that very much brought about it's own downfall. And, if you factor in the amount of capital lost in this crash (still not fully tallied, gotta keep that man behind the curtain for as long as possible) over the past 25 years, I think the math will NOT show that our free market economy has been more productive than a host of more planned economies. Unless you count ponzi scheme yields are part of that productivity (which you seem to be doing).
I think that this book would be great. Teaching pays an adequate amount, although the work can be stupenduous.
Financially, I think there are traps though in the amount spent in the classroom, as well as that summer. Some districts only pay 10 months out of the year, which means that it requires careful planning. Those classes which have to be taken during the summer may only be reimbursed after you are finished taking them...prorated by the grade you earned. I hope he addresses some of those issues in the book.
Really, I don't know where you get your proposition that an unemployed person would be more inclined to take the crappier paying job if benefits were less. Do you know what it is like to be unemployed today? I ask you, what "crappier" job? There are not jobs. Period.
I've gone to job forums and meetings and met people with excellent skills that have been unemployed since last spring.
Maybe a year or two ago it would have been reasonable to assume that 26 weeks of unemployment benefits were enough to tide one over until he/she finds a job but not today. I've been unemployed since last December. I have applied for many jobs and signed up at temp agencies. I have many years of experience in my field. I have been called for no interviews. None. Currently I am taking some college classes to enhance my job qualifications in other related fields. Hopefully by the time the classes are finished the job market might be a little better. Personally I'd be surprised if I find a job, any kind of job, before maybe this July.
I can only be thankful to know that the benefits will extend up to 79 weeks and I have at least that long before I have to face the specter of losing my apartment because I can't pay the rent.
Good post!
My husband and I just sold our 2,500+ sq feet house and downsized to a one bedroom 550sq feet apartment... I don't miss any of it... I have never been attached to things... my philosophy is that you can replace things, but not the people you love or your health. I am actually glad that stage in my life is over -- where I had the desire to live in a huge house with 3 bathrooms, sauna, den, etc., etc. Since I already know what is like to live in a studio apartment, I am certain that I won't miss any of it in the future. I am sure that I don't miss cleaning for two days every week or 2 weeks straight of spring cleaning! Now we have what's necessary. I can clean almost every day (I have allergies) and it takes me little less than an hour (30 mins if my husband helps me) and I have time to do other things. I still have somethings stored at a friend's garage... but hey, I will be having a garage sale soon, and I can save that money for a rainy day! Keep what you use, what you need, and what you absolutely cannot leave without. Store what you know you can't replace. The rest is junk. In two years time, evaluate what you stored away -- you will be surprised at the fact that you don't want it as much anymore.
Great post. I agree that if you haven't looked at rates in a while or it has been a while since you purchased your policy then you may be able to lower your rate. If you are looking to lower your rate or purchase for the first time then I would advise not putting it off much longer.
As the life insurance companies get more strapped for cash expect them to start pulling back on some of the dramatic rate decreases they've doled out over the past couple of decades. When they had lots of capital and were looking to grow then taking on cheap term policies at razor thin margins may have made sense. Now that capital is more scarce they will try to focus on lines of business with larger margins and raise rates on lines of business with small margins.
Been gradually drawing down over the last 7 years. Started off with a big house and have since found that living near my employer in a small apartment with my wife is much more convenient.
That being the case we are down to one car (paid off) and have spent the better part of the 7 years reducing our debt and increasing our savings. Currently debt free and building savings to a point that we can bail anywhere if/when the hammer falls at the corporations we work for.
The rule of thumb we followed to minimize our stuff was to get rid of stuff that we haven't needed in at least a year. Similar to getting rid of unused icons on the desktop.
We are now offloading everything on Craigslist and Ebay and could easily move into a studio apartment with what is left. Similar to Baker in the the first post, we hope to sell everything in the coming 10 months and make a move to either Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Keep up the great work at Wisebread! I believe the world economy will stabilize as a result of the thoughtful actions of the populous to embrace the concepts of thrift and sustainability.
@ Meg - I like the idea of putting stuff away and returning to it later. It will be interesting once I unpack old clothes to see what I actually want to keep.
@ Colin, Khurt, Lucille - I agree that there is definitely something to be said for buying quality items vs cheap junk.
I would proceed with caution before buying a permanent policy. The market place is filled with horrible policies containing high sales charges and surrender fees.
With the ease today of paying yourself first, I feel like the "buy term invest the difference" is more relevant than ever.
I think the key is being mindful in what we choose to live with -- and live without. Life is too short to deny a hobbyist cook the true pleasure of, say, a pasta maker or an ice-cream freezer if it will be used often and happily. Similarly, there's little joy in buying and caring for an inventory of cooking tools that rivals Surly Table's.
Just as considered choice helps us stick with diets (birthday cake once a year) and budgets (that new album from a long-time favorite band), mindful choice is key to making it work.
There is a line between purging everything and getting rid of excess junk. Probably one of the best things that helped stop the accumulation of junk was buying things for longevity. We are throwing (or donating) less because we simply are buying fewer things and those that we do don't wear out or fall apart as fast.
I have to agree with Kurt on shoes. I quit buying cheap shoes. Better quality shoes fit better and don't pinch or cut as much. They also tend to have a better structure to them at least with heels.
Thank you for a concise and well-written piece on this important subject. You deliver the information without hyperbole and your style is enjoyable to read.
It's a balance, that's for sure. Nobody wants to take the pasta maker in their backpack to Asia. On the other hand, if you love to cook and enjoy certain types of culinary adventure as a frequent form of family fun then you do start missing some stuff after a while. The comfort factor has come into play for us before. You don't realize how amazing a soft comfy couch with a well placed lighting source and end table feel until you haven't been able to sit in one for a while. Then, when one becomes available for reading or even has a TV across from it available for watching . . . oh man.
I also agree somewhat with what the person said regarding putting it in boxes and setting it aside for a while. Out of the all the belongings that got delivered here at the new place after having been in military storage (the stuff that never got delivered to the lake house and therefor never got trashed in the flood), we were seriously surprised at some of the stuff we kept. Bear in mind that we also did an ENORMOUS amount of downsizing before we ever packed up and sold the house in Arizona. It was a 12,000 pound shipment (gotta stop accumulating so many books) and I would say that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent has been given away, donated or sold since it arrived here in early December. And I am still finding a box load or two per week that we are giving away. The boxes are getting smaller though, so that's a plus. Some of the things we have agreed to enjoy for the time being but won't have a problem selling when the travel bug strikes us again.
Having lived at both ends of the spectrum and now firmly in the middle, we are finally at the point where enough of the clutter is gone that we can begin to start making more "precision choices" for lack of a better term. This is where it gets a bit more time consuming, because more thought has to go in to each decision as we live with the stuff for a while and see if it still even fits who we've become over the last few years. Also, not that we want to go and accumulate stuff just for the sake of doing it but sometimes there is a smaller, more space efficient sturdy model available now that we didn't know about before. If something's on its last legs, we use it until it drops. But if it's something we use a lot, and it's cumbersome, we try to research an affordable quality replacement that better suits our lifestyle when the time comes to replace it. This becomes easier to find the time for once there is less in your life to worry about.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying I agree with you, but don't have all the answers yet myself . . .
I would gladly pay 20 bucks to have all my pictures put on DVD! Since my son was born we have thousands and thousands of pictures- it really has become unmanageable! I use Snapfish and love them- I would die if they went belly up!
I too, sold everything to travel a few years ago, and between semi-furnished dwellings and caretaking gigs, I haven't even really missed the 6 boxes that remain of my old life, stored in a friend's garage.
I do, however, echo the sentiment that you will not make money selling your stuff and re-acquiring it down the road. The only way to justify it is when you factor in the the cost of storage or shipping. If those expenses will outweigh the financial loss from selling your stuff to being with and acquiring new stuff later, it warrants consideration.
Then again, I do miss my super-funky couch with so many fun memories...
Your fancy Prof-talk and blatant misspelling of the word "wheather" seems to have confused me.
Maybe you see affiliate links for inapplicable products where they don't exist. If I inadvertently tried to sell you a tampon, then for this, I truly apologize.
namely, greed. It'd be quite revealing if they showed webcam reactions of everyone "bidding" during the final stretch — a sad, but often-repeated frailty of how desperate we can be.
You really should've thought about keeping those positions you'd need most upon returning and asked friends/family to "host" them. Maybe a bartering agreement. You host my stuff and I'll help you "X" when I return. There's being frugal and then there's making mistakes. Of course it's easy to look back and say, "I should've...I could've."
In North Carolina at one point I heard beginning salary was around 25K, but I just looked and for bachelors with 3 years of experience it is just under 31K. Again what people said, the salaries really vary. I know in our state we have a pretty big dropout rate for beginning teachers because of the combination of high workload/bureacratic responsibilities paired with low salary. Also many teachers pay for school supplies out of their own pocket because the school is underfunded.
Sorry, but this piece is so utterly self-contradictory in its attempt to push an agenda that it even fails to push that agenda effectively. First you conclude that for 25 years our free market economy has utterly failed to regulate itself (as it is supposed to), leading to disaster. Then you conclude that this is why free markets are better than planned economies, which can never work? Scuse' me? Is that why the world currently proclaims the Canadian banking system the best in the world?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/opinion/28tedesco.html?scp=1&sq=canadi...
In essence, your argument seems to be that some feeble PR campaign for Americans to save more is the key to reforming our economy. The problem with that is the free market system will outspend your "save more" campaign with it's own "spend more" campaign by a factor of about 500 to 1, as it has always done (how did we get here again?). You refuse to face the simplest fact of all, that it is the so-called free market system that very much brought about it's own downfall. And, if you factor in the amount of capital lost in this crash (still not fully tallied, gotta keep that man behind the curtain for as long as possible) over the past 25 years, I think the math will NOT show that our free market economy has been more productive than a host of more planned economies. Unless you count ponzi scheme yields are part of that productivity (which you seem to be doing).
...however, the Brother MFCs stop printing when the ink level drops below a certain point. So printing until the ink is almost gone is impossible.
I think that this book would be great. Teaching pays an adequate amount, although the work can be stupenduous.
Financially, I think there are traps though in the amount spent in the classroom, as well as that summer. Some districts only pay 10 months out of the year, which means that it requires careful planning. Those classes which have to be taken during the summer may only be reimbursed after you are finished taking them...prorated by the grade you earned. I hope he addresses some of those issues in the book.
Really, I don't know where you get your proposition that an unemployed person would be more inclined to take the crappier paying job if benefits were less. Do you know what it is like to be unemployed today? I ask you, what "crappier" job? There are not jobs. Period.
I've gone to job forums and meetings and met people with excellent skills that have been unemployed since last spring.
Maybe a year or two ago it would have been reasonable to assume that 26 weeks of unemployment benefits were enough to tide one over until he/she finds a job but not today. I've been unemployed since last December. I have applied for many jobs and signed up at temp agencies. I have many years of experience in my field. I have been called for no interviews. None. Currently I am taking some college classes to enhance my job qualifications in other related fields. Hopefully by the time the classes are finished the job market might be a little better. Personally I'd be surprised if I find a job, any kind of job, before maybe this July.
I can only be thankful to know that the benefits will extend up to 79 weeks and I have at least that long before I have to face the specter of losing my apartment because I can't pay the rent.
Good post!
My husband and I just sold our 2,500+ sq feet house and downsized to a one bedroom 550sq feet apartment... I don't miss any of it... I have never been attached to things... my philosophy is that you can replace things, but not the people you love or your health. I am actually glad that stage in my life is over -- where I had the desire to live in a huge house with 3 bathrooms, sauna, den, etc., etc. Since I already know what is like to live in a studio apartment, I am certain that I won't miss any of it in the future. I am sure that I don't miss cleaning for two days every week or 2 weeks straight of spring cleaning! Now we have what's necessary. I can clean almost every day (I have allergies) and it takes me little less than an hour (30 mins if my husband helps me) and I have time to do other things. I still have somethings stored at a friend's garage... but hey, I will be having a garage sale soon, and I can save that money for a rainy day! Keep what you use, what you need, and what you absolutely cannot leave without. Store what you know you can't replace. The rest is junk. In two years time, evaluate what you stored away -- you will be surprised at the fact that you don't want it as much anymore.
Great post. I agree that if you haven't looked at rates in a while or it has been a while since you purchased your policy then you may be able to lower your rate. If you are looking to lower your rate or purchase for the first time then I would advise not putting it off much longer.
As the life insurance companies get more strapped for cash expect them to start pulling back on some of the dramatic rate decreases they've doled out over the past couple of decades. When they had lots of capital and were looking to grow then taking on cheap term policies at razor thin margins may have made sense. Now that capital is more scarce they will try to focus on lines of business with larger margins and raise rates on lines of business with small margins.
Great post!
Been gradually drawing down over the last 7 years. Started off with a big house and have since found that living near my employer in a small apartment with my wife is much more convenient.
That being the case we are down to one car (paid off) and have spent the better part of the 7 years reducing our debt and increasing our savings. Currently debt free and building savings to a point that we can bail anywhere if/when the hammer falls at the corporations we work for.
The rule of thumb we followed to minimize our stuff was to get rid of stuff that we haven't needed in at least a year. Similar to getting rid of unused icons on the desktop.
We are now offloading everything on Craigslist and Ebay and could easily move into a studio apartment with what is left. Similar to Baker in the the first post, we hope to sell everything in the coming 10 months and make a move to either Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Keep up the great work at Wisebread! I believe the world economy will stabilize as a result of the thoughtful actions of the populous to embrace the concepts of thrift and sustainability.
Thanks for the informative post. Do you know of some other good resources to learn more about insurance? Books, posts, etc.
@ Meg - I like the idea of putting stuff away and returning to it later. It will be interesting once I unpack old clothes to see what I actually want to keep.
@ Colin, Khurt, Lucille - I agree that there is definitely something to be said for buying quality items vs cheap junk.
Interesting perspective . . .
I am trying to move toward having only what I need and use. Things that save me time or money or makes me money.
Great post! Life insurance is a powerful, but misunderstood tool in the financial toolkit.
My take:
Buy Term Life Insurance and Invest the Difference? http://divorceddadfrugaldad.com/2008/10/13/buy-term-life-insurance-and-i...
I would proceed with caution before buying a permanent policy. The market place is filled with horrible policies containing high sales charges and surrender fees.
With the ease today of paying yourself first, I feel like the "buy term invest the difference" is more relevant than ever.
I think the key is being mindful in what we choose to live with -- and live without. Life is too short to deny a hobbyist cook the true pleasure of, say, a pasta maker or an ice-cream freezer if it will be used often and happily. Similarly, there's little joy in buying and caring for an inventory of cooking tools that rivals Surly Table's.
Just as considered choice helps us stick with diets (birthday cake once a year) and budgets (that new album from a long-time favorite band), mindful choice is key to making it work.
There is a line between purging everything and getting rid of excess junk. Probably one of the best things that helped stop the accumulation of junk was buying things for longevity. We are throwing (or donating) less because we simply are buying fewer things and those that we do don't wear out or fall apart as fast.
I have to agree with Kurt on shoes. I quit buying cheap shoes. Better quality shoes fit better and don't pinch or cut as much. They also tend to have a better structure to them at least with heels.
Thank you for a concise and well-written piece on this important subject. You deliver the information without hyperbole and your style is enjoyable to read.
Thank for article ^^
It's a balance, that's for sure. Nobody wants to take the pasta maker in their backpack to Asia. On the other hand, if you love to cook and enjoy certain types of culinary adventure as a frequent form of family fun then you do start missing some stuff after a while. The comfort factor has come into play for us before. You don't realize how amazing a soft comfy couch with a well placed lighting source and end table feel until you haven't been able to sit in one for a while. Then, when one becomes available for reading or even has a TV across from it available for watching . . . oh man.
I also agree somewhat with what the person said regarding putting it in boxes and setting it aside for a while. Out of the all the belongings that got delivered here at the new place after having been in military storage (the stuff that never got delivered to the lake house and therefor never got trashed in the flood), we were seriously surprised at some of the stuff we kept. Bear in mind that we also did an ENORMOUS amount of downsizing before we ever packed up and sold the house in Arizona. It was a 12,000 pound shipment (gotta stop accumulating so many books) and I would say that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent has been given away, donated or sold since it arrived here in early December. And I am still finding a box load or two per week that we are giving away. The boxes are getting smaller though, so that's a plus. Some of the things we have agreed to enjoy for the time being but won't have a problem selling when the travel bug strikes us again.
Having lived at both ends of the spectrum and now firmly in the middle, we are finally at the point where enough of the clutter is gone that we can begin to start making more "precision choices" for lack of a better term. This is where it gets a bit more time consuming, because more thought has to go in to each decision as we live with the stuff for a while and see if it still even fits who we've become over the last few years. Also, not that we want to go and accumulate stuff just for the sake of doing it but sometimes there is a smaller, more space efficient sturdy model available now that we didn't know about before. If something's on its last legs, we use it until it drops. But if it's something we use a lot, and it's cumbersome, we try to research an affordable quality replacement that better suits our lifestyle when the time comes to replace it. This becomes easier to find the time for once there is less in your life to worry about.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying I agree with you, but don't have all the answers yet myself . . .
I would gladly pay 20 bucks to have all my pictures put on DVD! Since my son was born we have thousands and thousands of pictures- it really has become unmanageable! I use Snapfish and love them- I would die if they went belly up!
What a useful post! I've never seen such a clear, concise explanation of life insurance. Definitely a good place to start investigating!
I too, sold everything to travel a few years ago, and between semi-furnished dwellings and caretaking gigs, I haven't even really missed the 6 boxes that remain of my old life, stored in a friend's garage.
I do, however, echo the sentiment that you will not make money selling your stuff and re-acquiring it down the road. The only way to justify it is when you factor in the the cost of storage or shipping. If those expenses will outweigh the financial loss from selling your stuff to being with and acquiring new stuff later, it warrants consideration.
Then again, I do miss my super-funky couch with so many fun memories...
Wha-Huh?
Your fancy Prof-talk and blatant misspelling of the word "wheather" seems to have confused me.
Maybe you see affiliate links for inapplicable products where they don't exist. If I inadvertently tried to sell you a tampon, then for this, I truly apologize.
namely, greed. It'd be quite revealing if they showed webcam reactions of everyone "bidding" during the final stretch — a sad, but often-repeated frailty of how desperate we can be.
"MIR". The first time I saw it, I was like, "Wha? The space station?" Ah, how I've learned.