i do love trucks, big big trucks, and i love driving them off road and doing all sorts of truckish things with them. this is one of those things i struggle with, as i do love my many trucks dearly, but i hate how terrible they are for the enviroment. i truly do.
for this reason, i try to drive the least ammount as possible, and instead ride my bicycle for errands instead. i live out in buford, GA, which is now a suburb of atlanta, complete with a wasteland of gigantic McMansions, strip malls on every corner, and a walmart at every exit, not to mention a total lack of public transportation or sidewalks. all of this tends to add up to almost force people to drive their vehicles to get anywhere, even if it is just the neighborhood down the road to go visit a friend. a fine example of this mindset of having to use the car for every thing is a neighborhood called Hamliton Mill. well, not a neighborhood, but a 'community'. this is acres and acres of gigantic houses on small lots. this isnt your regular neighborhood, no, this is much much larger, and spans for miles. businesses arent allowed inside the confines of hamilton mill, except for their golf country club, which is somehow outside the definition of a business. hamilton mill doesnt have very many sidewalks connecting its various individual 'communitites' which are like small neighborhoods within neighnorhoods. this, along with crazed teens hyped up on energy drinks with their first car(truck) speeding along tends to make it hard to walk or even bike places. this i know, as i previously mentioned, i ride my bicycle a lot.
now, its hilly here, which is probably another factor contributing against biking a lot, along with no sidewalks or bike lanes, along with people who seem to have personal vendettas against bikers (ive been sideswiped once, and had my front tire clipped by someone who decided they dont need to stop for 'yield' signs). my legs and arms can attest to these peoples existence (no broken bones yet, amazingly, just a lot of skin missing, and some bone scraped off as well.) in the mornings, i ride to my local high school where im a senior, rather than driving, as most people do, or riding the bus, which comes waaaay to early for anyone to awake at (5:45 in the morning- insanity!) i ride my bike into school, where the only sidewalk i ride on is out in front of the school, and that extends for less than a 1/5th of a mile. and of course, the school cant be bothered to have a bike rack anywhere. as far as i know, im the only person who rides a bicycle into school, and i ride about 3 miles in the morning to and back in the afternoon. maybe less in the afternoon, but i ride on the hillier route back. now, riding in to school is dangerous becuase of the people who drive to school in the morning- they resent me for whatever reason, and enjoy honking at me, throwing things out the window at me, trying to hit me (suceeded once- a huge white SUV hit me, i went down and lost quite a bit of skin on my left side , but still managed to make it on time!). the roads here are generally in a state of disrepair, and as a biker, i try to ride with the white sideline on my left side, allowing faster traffic to pass me, but with the roads the way they are, all thats left of side of the road is usually crumbled into nothingness and only the white line remains, or even that is gone too. buford is a strange mix of suburbia and rural georgia, as it was basically cow pastures about 6 years ago, until the Mall of Georgia decided to plop down.
despite almost everytihng working against me , my athma, crazy drivers ( the dump trucks are the worst- i swear theyre off the road half the time going full speed), and crumbly roads, i still ride as much as i can. my range is about 20-25 miles and growing, and my average speed is about 17-18 mph. i suppose im an early adaptor, and i am planning on doing engine swaps with most of my trucks to diesel becuase of the fantastic tourqe and biodiesel option.
But wouldn't the easiest way to save money be to avoid buying $250,000 cars? Interestingly enough I have just finished reading "The Millionaire Next Door" reviewed on this site. That book did a detailed study on the cars the wealthy drive - what they found...very few millionaires would be driving this car. Just a thought.
Simply dip your toothbrush in hydrogen perozxde solution (from drug store) then dip in box of baking soda then brush your teeth for 30 seconds. Really works. (Especially good for removing red wine stains :)
My favorite costume so far: Tippy Hedren from Hitchcock's classic The Birds.
Went to Goodwill, bought a great little '60s style suit for $10, bought a couple of birds at Michael's, attached them to the suit, put my hair up in a French twist, runs in the stockings and a little "blood" here and there and everyone got it :)
At some point in the next ten years, I will build and live in a strawbale or cob house. I'm obsessed, and they are a fantastic way to use the natural materials around you to create an beautiful, affordable, energy-efficient home!
I used to live in Toronto, Canada, and the city has a great recycling/garbage system. Pick-up for garbage, recycling (paper and plastic), and compost items is both free and weekly.
As I travel, I am surprised to discover that this isn't the case in many other Canadian and U.S. cities. Something to work towards, I guess!
1) I currently reuse grocery bags as pooper-scoopers. We're moving in 9 months and I hope to have a place with an appropriate storage spot for a real pooper-scooper so I'll never touch plastic bags again.
2) Slowly transition from paper towels to microfiber cloths. Trying to persuade doubtful spouse of the possibility. (Might as well buy some cloth napkins to help with this).
3) Buy thermostat programmer/timer
I have been doing the usual green things for quite some time. My latest goals: use reusable bags almost everywhere, avoid toxic chemicals (cleaners, pesticides, etc), eliminate all junk mail, and buy/own less stuff. But most importantly, trying to convince my family and friends to do the same, especially with the oncoming holiday onslaught.
I should also mention what one of the hospitals did to me. I was leaving there (3 hours from where i live) and having family drive me home so I could meet with my personal doctor 2 days from then. I needed to bring with a copy of my CT scans. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester would not hand them over to me but rather said they needed to be mailed to me. Not to my Doctor, not to the hospital but mailed directly to me. How stupid is that, I was right there, why not hand them over? I'll tell you why. Because a week after them being mailed to me on top of my other bills I got a seperate bill for $46 for Fedex shipping and $6 to burn the scans onto a cd.
Nice huh?
I recently had a burst appendix a week after getting married and only about 2 months into a new job. My first decent paying job, and was about 20 days out from having insurance through the company.
I was in and out of two hopsitals for almost 2 weeks till they took out the infection and what not. I now have almost $60,000 in debt from the time in the hospital and the Community Care through an outreach program with the hospital completely denied me any money off of the bill. I couldn't believe it. I am now 3 weeks back at work after being off for over two months. It's gonna take us 4 months+ to catch up with bills and even then are probably gonna have to file Chapter 13.
I have worked since I was 15 and now my first decent paying job actually screwed me.
I guess I was most furious also that my wife and I while I was not working (she makes very little) were only approved for 41 dollars a month in emergency food stamp help.
I guess the solution for a middle class person such as myself would be to get my wife pregnant, have a couple of kids and quit my job.
Maybe then the state would step up....oh but wait I don't want to be like that. I want to work.
I guess you only get breaks if you extremely rich or extremely poor in this world.
My husband and I went 30 days without buying any plastic. See our blog to find out more about plastic, it's impact on the environment, and ways you can lessen your impact.
I've already been doing recycle for years, everything from plastic to batteries; also, I've been using CFLs since they came out years ago when they cost a premium...
Now, I've started to switch all of my bills over to e-bills...since I've overcome the fear of not physically sending out the checks.
I realized I forgot to mention that I use a fix rate of 9% for the HELOC. Keep in mind that the HELOC will be a variable interest rate. So perhaps in this basic version of doing this method, you will come out slightly better by paying Semi-monthly and adding extra per month.
However, keep in mind that UFF claims much, much better results. And I'm guessing their model uses variable interest rate for the HELOC.
But as you can see from the discussion above, it sure doesn't hurt to get a free analysis from UFF if you are interested.
It's not just jobs - it's a major values shift. Of course, having jobs that allow us to telecommute one day a week would be great, but it also means not driving everywhere we want to go.
It pains me, but it means that when I have a craving for chili cheese fries, I shouldn't jump in the car and go get some. I save gas, I save calories, I save money. It's just that I'm so USED to being entitled to giving into my cravings (be it for Ethiopian food, a movie I want to see, some paint I'd like for my basement) that I really have to contemplate the idea that going out and buying/seeing/renting stuff whenever I want is shockingly wasteful.
I subscribe to the blog and press release feeds on US Recall News. The blog is usually updated every day with new recalls and the newsletter goes out once per week. There are also feeds from the FDA, CPSC, USDA and other agencies that you can subscribe to. Here is a list of all the recalled toys so far: http://www.usrecallnews.com/2007/10/complete-list-of-recalled-toys-for-l...
The blog action day post brought up a good point - what is going to happen to all of those lead-contaminated toys? Millions of them... are they just going to be thrown into landfills?
I created an Excel spreadsheet to implement the approach of using a HELOC to accelerate the mortgage payoff. It's very basic, but it proves that this approach works. It's basic in the sense that it does't take into consideration if you move your paycheck money into the HELOC to reduce the interest cost.
More importantly, it works better than paying Bi-Monthly, Semi-Monthly, Bi-Weekly, Weekly, or paying extra each month. I think it comes very close if not better than better than if you pay Semi-Monthly and add extra money on each first payment of the month. And this is based on using this basic version of the method. UFF's product promises much, much better outcomes than what a basic spreadsheet can do.
But here's the kicker...are you ready...I'm getting pretty much the same savings in interests with my basic spreadsheet method as the $1999 program that is currently selling out there (i.e. EquityGeniePro)!!! Or at least it matches/beats the results from the SAMPLE payoff calculator that they use on their website.
So what are you paying $1999 for? You’re paying for a software that tracks your progress and maybe some other features that may or may not be useful to you. Oh, you're also paying for someone to develop an easy to use program so you don't have to worry about how all this works or how to keep track of everything in case you deviate from the plan. I’m not sure if you can implement something like this in Quicken or not…but I would venture between Quicken and Excel, you can get pretty close. Is it worth $1999? That's up to you to decide.
The UFF product is clearly the superior product so far (IMHO). But I've only been playing around with the spreadsheet for a day. Why do I say the UFF product is superior? Because as of now, their claim of savings is so much more than what I'm getting in the spreadsheet that I may just plunk down the $3500 and go for it. Furthermore, I believe UFF guarantees your results in writing, provided you can consistently come up with the positive cash flow that you claim to have in the initial analysis of your mortgage. But please don't quote me on that...simply inquire them about it.
Here's my analysis (and I cannot guarantee any of these values as I'm not a financial expert):
Approach A:
Pay mortgage down via HELOC in $1977.73 blocks, and using $1000 each month to pay off the HELOC:
Loan Amount $200,000.00
Annual Interest Rate 6.00%
Term of Loan in Years 30
First Payment Date 11/1/2007
Frequency of Payment Monthly
Payment (per period) $1,199.10
Rate (per period) 0.500%
Total Payments $267,504.98
Total Interest $67,504.98
Interest Savings $162,812.49
# of Payments Saved 237
# of Years to Payoff 10.25
Built-up Cash Reserve $120,015.30
Approach B (Brad G.’s method… it appears to give you the best out come, although I’m no expert):
Pay mortgage down via semi-monthly and adding $1000 extra with each 1st payment of the month:
Loan Amount $200,000.00
Annual Interest Rate 6.00%
Term of Loan in Years 30
First Payment Date 11/1/2007
Frequency of Payment Semi-Monthly
Payment (per period) $599.28
Rate (per period) 0.250%
Total Payments $266,891.61
Total Interest $66,891.61
Interest Savings $164,592.65
# of Payments Saved 476
# of Years to Payoff 10.17
Built-up Cash Reserve $120,664.63
From the above data, you can see that the Approach A costs ($67504.98 - $66891.61) = $613.37 more in interest and takes one month longer to pay off the loan than Approach B. However, keep in mind that the $613.37 in interest cost will most likely be eliminated if you move your paycheck into your HELOC account each month.
Plus being on a semi-monthly plan could restrict your cash flow quite a bit as it is a contract between you and the bank. You can’t choose to pay one month semi-monthly, and pay monthly on another month (at least this is my understanding of how it works…please correct me if I’m wrong).
There was a question about ARMs and how that would affect the MMA program. It would really depend on your mortgage interest rate and the HELOC rate, and with an ARM, the rate would change and the benefits would change also.
Points taken about using the HELOC to access cash when needed. I guess I was thinking of using HELOCs for purposes other than paying off the mortgage, such as major vacations, cars, etc. There are tax advantages to the HELOC vs. other types of loans but I would still think carefully about having many liens against my primary residence. If you build up your investments, you can borrow against them as well but without the tax advantage.
The simple, open-ended interest sounds better than close-ended, compound interest but there are pros and cons of each. (See discussion about simple interest by Jack Guttentag, a former professor with the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania). In my earlier discussion about using the HELOC, I was compounding the interest and the example Tri is using simple interest; you need to look at the term of the loan (or watch it in action) to see how interest is applied. Jack, aka The Mortgage Professor (overlook his visual design, he's got great content), also discusses HELOCs and it looks like interest in his example is calculated daily using an average balance calculation but, again, you would need to analyze the HELOC documents and the bank's interpretation to get an accurate picture of how interest is calculated.
If you apply $5,000 to the principal when you first get the loan, then you will shave off $23,000 from the loan balance over the 30 year period. But it looks like you are paying $5458 to save $23,000 which sounds good but the $5458 is in today's dollars (present value) and the $23,000 is in future dollars (future value). The future value of $5458 at 6% in 30 years is over $32,000.
I do see how managing every dollar and timing every expense with a program could work but the fees involved with the program, HELOC, etc. may cause it not to work as expected.
Oh, there's no doubt that people love their cars. They'll go on driving if they possible can.
It's also true that $5/gallon gas won't stop them. As Bruce mentions above, $8/gallon gas doesn't stop them in London. The thing is, though, nothing is going to hold gasoline prices at $5 or $8 per gallon. With the supply no longer growing, the price will rise as far as necessary to hold the quantity demanded at the quantity supplied. I expect that $5 gasoline will mostly just squeeze people's budgets for other stuff. At $8, people will switch out of their SUVs and drive small cars. Another few dollars will get people to move closer to work, and so on: the slow, painful process I mentioned in the article, with most of the pain falling on the poor.
The rise in price won't be unbroken. Once people make these changes--smaller car, house closer to work--demand will drop and prices will follow. But those price drops won't last.
It's also true that buses don't appeal to a lot of people. Before I started riding them, I imagined that they were mostly populated by people who couldn't drive--children, the poor, the handicapped, alcoholics who had lost their drivers license--and you do see plenty of people who fall into those categories on the bus. But now that I ride them pretty often, I also see plenty of people who simply don't want the hassles of parking and driving, plus plenty of people who just want to reduce their contribution to global warming and all the other ills of our car-driving, petroleum-gulping society.
My principle goal in this piece is to give a heads-up to Wise Bread readers that these changes are coming. A lot of the actions that people will want to take (things like changing jobs and changing homes), require lead times of years. Raising the issue now may help some people accelerate their plans in these areas, or start making plans, or simply plant the idea in their head so that a year or two from now an otherwise-surprising spike in gasoline prices might make sense and prompt them to start making plans then.
A secondary goal is to prompt a few more people to advocate for a world where expensive energy won't be as painful--a world where trains and buses let people get to where they want to go.
Finally, I agree that the complete transition will take decades. We'll be burning petroleum-based fuels for another hundred years. But for most of that time we'll be burning very expensive petroleum-based fuels. Some people will arrange their lives so that they don't have to burn as much. Those people will be much better off.
I would love to have a rapid streetcar or light rail system to get to the gym, doctor or to run smaller errands. But our community sees no value in such a crazy idea because it would cost money.
I would also be all for using a decent rail system to get to other cities for business or vacation. The nearest rail station is 3 hours away in a bad neighborhood with unsecured parking.
I wanted to get one of those neighborhood electric vehicles. I could drive it in the small limited area around my house but beyond this small subdivision I could not drive it because ALL of the ways into town are either interstate or two lane highway. NEV's usually go no faster than 40mph. This means we also can't bike into town.
So I am going to buy a bike next summer so I can at least get to the small grocery and post office in our area. There are still many places in this neighborhood I can't get to safely. It would mean walking on the shoulder of the highway.
I already consolidate my trips and do them in a loop. The urge for take out or getting that can of paint on a whim. Forget it. If it can't wait until the next time I go to town it is an impulse buy.
Worm bin composting can be tricky - you have to monitor it carefully to make sure the soil isn't too acidic (too many coffee grounds and orange peels) and not too warm. Kids seem to enjoy it, though. But yes, I believe they do have to be sheltered. The freezer idea is a good one - I only wish my freezer wasn't packed full of soup stock!
Thank you for your blog. It's a good place for me and everyone else to participate and learn. I have a comment about your statement:
"The HELOC arrangement is a bit of a bother to me, but I may just be old-fashioned about borrowing against my home."
Well, how is that different from borrowing a primary mortgage? All you are doing is borrowing from the house using one type of loan (HELOC, open-ended, simple interest loan) and paying off another loan (which you are also borrowing from the house) that is a close-ended, COMPOUND interest loan.
"It can be a dilemma to decide pay off early vs. invest."
I agree with Eddie's comment regarding this topic. Many people have expounded their ideas/stance on this topic. It all boils down to personal preference in terms of how much risk can one afford to subject himself/herself to.
To Eddie:
Thanks for the positive feed back Eddie. A question about your coment:
"I have found a new program that is less expensive and provides the same benefits at www.Maxequityexpress.com"
How do you determine that the program provides the "same" benefits? Did you have the two company do an analysis of your situation? I'm asking because I'm trying to get a couple of vendors to give me a free analysis right now. By the way, the product from that website is the same as EquityGeniePro (http://www.equitygenie.com/calcs.html).
To: Brad G.
Questions about your statement:
"The people defending MMA's program are the people charging $3,500 and where their commission is between $1-2K. Their program would have only a marginal difference over an under $100 personal finance program such as MS Money or Quicken."
Prior to my posting of how to accelerate your mortgage with a HELOC, do you know how the MMA program or similar product works? Have you made a comparison analysis between using your method and theirs? I'd be interested to see if you some numbers. It just might convince me that I don't need the software after all :-).
1) Recycling as much garbage as I can, along with newspapers
2) Installed a Pur faucet water filter and stopped buying bottled water
3) Using canvas grocery bags
4) Swapping out lightbulbs for CFL's as they burn out.
5) Cleaning my bathroom with a vinegar & water solution instead of overpriced harsh chemicals.
6) Reading labels at the store and purchasing more things packaged in recycled materials.
First of all I believe that if every car in the world suddenly went dead, it would not help the pollution problem that much. It might in major cities, especially smog-clogged areas where ten-lane freeways exist, but many of us don't live in such places. Remember that the earth itself spews out pollution (volcanoes) so you can't put all the blame on humans. Also much of the earth's pollution comes from third-world nations where we have very little influence.
Where I live, if cars were to suddenly disappear (or no one could afford to drive them) we'd all be dead. There simply is nothing in walking distance except one "convenience" store (and since you advocate frugality, I would hope you can see the financial peril of doing all your shopping at a convenience store/gas station, not to mention the ill effects to one's heath).
Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in a city where everything is in walking distance, and I'll tell you why: I grew up in one. Remember Paul Simon's song "My Little Town"? He could have been singing about the town I grew up in. We had plenty of merchants, but no chain stores to speak of, so all the local merchants thought it was perfectly okay to mark up everything they sold by anywhere from 50% to 100%. The only reason people were able to survive was that they could drive to other towns 15-20 miles away where prices of just about everything were far more reasonable - and that was before anyone had ever heard of a Wal-Mart.
Then there are other problems. My health insurance only authorizes me to use one pharmacy in my area (otherwise I have to pay out-of-pocket for the prescriptions) and that pharmacy is about a dozen miles away. That same insurance only authorizes a handful of doctors and none of them are within walking distance. That's one reason I say that if I suddenly have no car (and no one around me has one either), I'm dead. We don't even have public transportation out here (not even taxicabs).
The worst of it is that I have a feeling - no actual proof, mind you, but when you hear enough reports from varied sources you just start to believe in the possibility - that our governments are at best holding out on us with regard to advanced energy-efficient technologies, and at worst actively suppressing them to prevent the collapse of the petroleum industry. If they are doing anything like that and it ever comes out, people are going to be mad as hell (except, of course, for those who simply refuse to believe it despite the evidence), and that's probably what's delaying the release of those technologies. The politicians really don't want people to know that we had the solution to the energy crisis as much as fifty years ago and kept it from the public, because not one of those scoundrels would ever be re-elected.
Even if I'm wrong about that, it would take decades to convert our society back to one where everything is either in walking distance, or there is a sufficient level of public transportation that cars are not needed (and please don't discount the fact that the majority of people in large parts of the country wouldn't get on a bus if it were free AND it picked them up at their front door and took them directly to wherever they wanted to go). If your response is that we don't have decades, then I'm telling you flat out that unless new technologies come out fairly quickly, a lot of people are going to die, because society cannot adapt that quickly. Even if everyone suddenly decided that they wanted to move to the nearest major city - and you know that will never happen - there's not enough housing for them. We couldn't even handle the aftermath of one Category 5 hurricane without considerable loss of life - we're certainly not going to survive a major disruption to our way of life (not all of us, anyway).
The cynical part of me says that when everything gets scarce, and no one can afford to travel, there will be civil war. And I don't think it will help much to plan ahead for such times, because it will only prolong the agony and make people a target for their neighbors that feel that when times are bad, they have the right to appropriate whatever they need by force. In a "Mad Max" scenario, once the stores are emptied, the survivalists will be the first to be attacked (even a concrete bunker won't hold up against a mob - remember when the Berlin Wall came down, large chunks were removed by people armed with hammers and pickaxes). I just hope I don't live to see those days, if they ever come, and I truly hope they never do.
So, please don't write off "better cars", if by "better" you mean cars that do not pollute and do not consume petroleum products, because that is exactly what we DO need to avoid serious loss of life down the road. You aren't thinking about the unintended consequences of a major societal shift in a direction that most people will not willingly go.
One other point, I somehow suspect that most of the readers of this blog don't really enjoy being preached at. We may be looking for ways to save money and/or live frugally, but this post wasn't really about that, it was simply a particular opinion being laid upon us. Please remember that marketers preach at us all the time, often telling us what bad people were are (or leaving that strong implication) if we don't buy or use their product or service. You guys talk about how new parents are beset upon by marketers who insist that the little darling absolutely needs whatever product or service they're selling. Many readers of this group, I suspect, are at the point where we turn off that sort of thing, and we also turn off attempts to preach a particular viewpoint and look upon it as just another sales pitch. Please be careful, lest you alienate your readers.
i do love trucks, big big trucks, and i love driving them off road and doing all sorts of truckish things with them. this is one of those things i struggle with, as i do love my many trucks dearly, but i hate how terrible they are for the enviroment. i truly do.
for this reason, i try to drive the least ammount as possible, and instead ride my bicycle for errands instead. i live out in buford, GA, which is now a suburb of atlanta, complete with a wasteland of gigantic McMansions, strip malls on every corner, and a walmart at every exit, not to mention a total lack of public transportation or sidewalks. all of this tends to add up to almost force people to drive their vehicles to get anywhere, even if it is just the neighborhood down the road to go visit a friend. a fine example of this mindset of having to use the car for every thing is a neighborhood called Hamliton Mill. well, not a neighborhood, but a 'community'. this is acres and acres of gigantic houses on small lots. this isnt your regular neighborhood, no, this is much much larger, and spans for miles. businesses arent allowed inside the confines of hamilton mill, except for their golf country club, which is somehow outside the definition of a business. hamilton mill doesnt have very many sidewalks connecting its various individual 'communitites' which are like small neighborhoods within neighnorhoods. this, along with crazed teens hyped up on energy drinks with their first car(truck) speeding along tends to make it hard to walk or even bike places. this i know, as i previously mentioned, i ride my bicycle a lot.
now, its hilly here, which is probably another factor contributing against biking a lot, along with no sidewalks or bike lanes, along with people who seem to have personal vendettas against bikers (ive been sideswiped once, and had my front tire clipped by someone who decided they dont need to stop for 'yield' signs). my legs and arms can attest to these peoples existence (no broken bones yet, amazingly, just a lot of skin missing, and some bone scraped off as well.) in the mornings, i ride to my local high school where im a senior, rather than driving, as most people do, or riding the bus, which comes waaaay to early for anyone to awake at (5:45 in the morning- insanity!) i ride my bike into school, where the only sidewalk i ride on is out in front of the school, and that extends for less than a 1/5th of a mile. and of course, the school cant be bothered to have a bike rack anywhere. as far as i know, im the only person who rides a bicycle into school, and i ride about 3 miles in the morning to and back in the afternoon. maybe less in the afternoon, but i ride on the hillier route back. now, riding in to school is dangerous becuase of the people who drive to school in the morning- they resent me for whatever reason, and enjoy honking at me, throwing things out the window at me, trying to hit me (suceeded once- a huge white SUV hit me, i went down and lost quite a bit of skin on my left side , but still managed to make it on time!). the roads here are generally in a state of disrepair, and as a biker, i try to ride with the white sideline on my left side, allowing faster traffic to pass me, but with the roads the way they are, all thats left of side of the road is usually crumbled into nothingness and only the white line remains, or even that is gone too. buford is a strange mix of suburbia and rural georgia, as it was basically cow pastures about 6 years ago, until the Mall of Georgia decided to plop down.
despite almost everytihng working against me , my athma, crazy drivers ( the dump trucks are the worst- i swear theyre off the road half the time going full speed), and crumbly roads, i still ride as much as i can. my range is about 20-25 miles and growing, and my average speed is about 17-18 mph. i suppose im an early adaptor, and i am planning on doing engine swaps with most of my trucks to diesel becuase of the fantastic tourqe and biodiesel option.
But wouldn't the easiest way to save money be to avoid buying $250,000 cars? Interestingly enough I have just finished reading "The Millionaire Next Door" reviewed on this site. That book did a detailed study on the cars the wealthy drive - what they found...very few millionaires would be driving this car. Just a thought.
Simply dip your toothbrush in hydrogen perozxde solution (from drug store) then dip in box of baking soda then brush your teeth for 30 seconds. Really works. (Especially good for removing red wine stains :)
1) No more plastic grocery bags! They suck in so many ways.
2) Green-minded holiday gifts!
3) CFLs everywhere! (perhaps I could combine 2 & 3...)
My favorite costume so far: Tippy Hedren from Hitchcock's classic The Birds.
Went to Goodwill, bought a great little '60s style suit for $10, bought a couple of birds at Michael's, attached them to the suit, put my hair up in a French twist, runs in the stockings and a little "blood" here and there and everyone got it :)
At some point in the next ten years, I will build and live in a strawbale or cob house. I'm obsessed, and they are a fantastic way to use the natural materials around you to create an beautiful, affordable, energy-efficient home!
I used to live in Toronto, Canada, and the city has a great recycling/garbage system. Pick-up for garbage, recycling (paper and plastic), and compost items is both free and weekly.
As I travel, I am surprised to discover that this isn't the case in many other Canadian and U.S. cities. Something to work towards, I guess!
1) I currently reuse grocery bags as pooper-scoopers. We're moving in 9 months and I hope to have a place with an appropriate storage spot for a real pooper-scooper so I'll never touch plastic bags again.
2) Slowly transition from paper towels to microfiber cloths. Trying to persuade doubtful spouse of the possibility. (Might as well buy some cloth napkins to help with this).
3) Buy thermostat programmer/timer
I have been doing the usual green things for quite some time. My latest goals: use reusable bags almost everywhere, avoid toxic chemicals (cleaners, pesticides, etc), eliminate all junk mail, and buy/own less stuff. But most importantly, trying to convince my family and friends to do the same, especially with the oncoming holiday onslaught.
I should also mention what one of the hospitals did to me. I was leaving there (3 hours from where i live) and having family drive me home so I could meet with my personal doctor 2 days from then. I needed to bring with a copy of my CT scans. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester would not hand them over to me but rather said they needed to be mailed to me. Not to my Doctor, not to the hospital but mailed directly to me. How stupid is that, I was right there, why not hand them over? I'll tell you why. Because a week after them being mailed to me on top of my other bills I got a seperate bill for $46 for Fedex shipping and $6 to burn the scans onto a cd.
Nice huh?
I recently had a burst appendix a week after getting married and only about 2 months into a new job. My first decent paying job, and was about 20 days out from having insurance through the company.
I was in and out of two hopsitals for almost 2 weeks till they took out the infection and what not. I now have almost $60,000 in debt from the time in the hospital and the Community Care through an outreach program with the hospital completely denied me any money off of the bill. I couldn't believe it. I am now 3 weeks back at work after being off for over two months. It's gonna take us 4 months+ to catch up with bills and even then are probably gonna have to file Chapter 13.
I have worked since I was 15 and now my first decent paying job actually screwed me.
I guess I was most furious also that my wife and I while I was not working (she makes very little) were only approved for 41 dollars a month in emergency food stamp help.
I guess the solution for a middle class person such as myself would be to get my wife pregnant, have a couple of kids and quit my job.
Maybe then the state would step up....oh but wait I don't want to be like that. I want to work.
I guess you only get breaks if you extremely rich or extremely poor in this world.
My husband and I went 30 days without buying any plastic. See our blog to find out more about plastic, it's impact on the environment, and ways you can lessen your impact.
I've already been doing recycle for years, everything from plastic to batteries; also, I've been using CFLs since they came out years ago when they cost a premium...
Now, I've started to switch all of my bills over to e-bills...since I've overcome the fear of not physically sending out the checks.
I realized I forgot to mention that I use a fix rate of 9% for the HELOC. Keep in mind that the HELOC will be a variable interest rate. So perhaps in this basic version of doing this method, you will come out slightly better by paying Semi-monthly and adding extra per month.
However, keep in mind that UFF claims much, much better results. And I'm guessing their model uses variable interest rate for the HELOC.
But as you can see from the discussion above, it sure doesn't hurt to get a free analysis from UFF if you are interested.
It's not just jobs - it's a major values shift. Of course, having jobs that allow us to telecommute one day a week would be great, but it also means not driving everywhere we want to go.
It pains me, but it means that when I have a craving for chili cheese fries, I shouldn't jump in the car and go get some. I save gas, I save calories, I save money. It's just that I'm so USED to being entitled to giving into my cravings (be it for Ethiopian food, a movie I want to see, some paint I'd like for my basement) that I really have to contemplate the idea that going out and buying/seeing/renting stuff whenever I want is shockingly wasteful.
I subscribe to the blog and press release feeds on US Recall News. The blog is usually updated every day with new recalls and the newsletter goes out once per week. There are also feeds from the FDA, CPSC, USDA and other agencies that you can subscribe to. Here is a list of all the recalled toys so far: http://www.usrecallnews.com/2007/10/complete-list-of-recalled-toys-for-l...
The blog action day post brought up a good point - what is going to happen to all of those lead-contaminated toys? Millions of them... are they just going to be thrown into landfills?
I created an Excel spreadsheet to implement the approach of using a HELOC to accelerate the mortgage payoff. It's very basic, but it proves that this approach works. It's basic in the sense that it does't take into consideration if you move your paycheck money into the HELOC to reduce the interest cost.
More importantly, it works better than paying Bi-Monthly, Semi-Monthly, Bi-Weekly, Weekly, or paying extra each month. I think it comes very close if not better than better than if you pay Semi-Monthly and add extra money on each first payment of the month. And this is based on using this basic version of the method. UFF's product promises much, much better outcomes than what a basic spreadsheet can do.
But here's the kicker...are you ready...I'm getting pretty much the same savings in interests with my basic spreadsheet method as the $1999 program that is currently selling out there (i.e. EquityGeniePro)!!! Or at least it matches/beats the results from the SAMPLE payoff calculator that they use on their website.
So what are you paying $1999 for? You’re paying for a software that tracks your progress and maybe some other features that may or may not be useful to you. Oh, you're also paying for someone to develop an easy to use program so you don't have to worry about how all this works or how to keep track of everything in case you deviate from the plan. I’m not sure if you can implement something like this in Quicken or not…but I would venture between Quicken and Excel, you can get pretty close. Is it worth $1999? That's up to you to decide.
The UFF product is clearly the superior product so far (IMHO). But I've only been playing around with the spreadsheet for a day. Why do I say the UFF product is superior? Because as of now, their claim of savings is so much more than what I'm getting in the spreadsheet that I may just plunk down the $3500 and go for it. Furthermore, I believe UFF guarantees your results in writing, provided you can consistently come up with the positive cash flow that you claim to have in the initial analysis of your mortgage. But please don't quote me on that...simply inquire them about it.
Here's my analysis (and I cannot guarantee any of these values as I'm not a financial expert):
Approach A:
Pay mortgage down via HELOC in $1977.73 blocks, and using $1000 each month to pay off the HELOC:
Loan Amount $200,000.00
Annual Interest Rate 6.00%
Term of Loan in Years 30
First Payment Date 11/1/2007
Frequency of Payment Monthly
Payment (per period) $1,199.10
Rate (per period) 0.500%
Total Payments $267,504.98
Total Interest $67,504.98
Interest Savings $162,812.49
# of Payments Saved 237
# of Years to Payoff 10.25
Built-up Cash Reserve $120,015.30
Approach B (Brad G.’s method… it appears to give you the best out come, although I’m no expert):
Pay mortgage down via semi-monthly and adding $1000 extra with each 1st payment of the month:
Loan Amount $200,000.00
Annual Interest Rate 6.00%
Term of Loan in Years 30
First Payment Date 11/1/2007
Frequency of Payment Semi-Monthly
Payment (per period) $599.28
Rate (per period) 0.250%
Total Payments $266,891.61
Total Interest $66,891.61
Interest Savings $164,592.65
# of Payments Saved 476
# of Years to Payoff 10.17
Built-up Cash Reserve $120,664.63
From the above data, you can see that the Approach A costs ($67504.98 - $66891.61) = $613.37 more in interest and takes one month longer to pay off the loan than Approach B. However, keep in mind that the $613.37 in interest cost will most likely be eliminated if you move your paycheck into your HELOC account each month.
Plus being on a semi-monthly plan could restrict your cash flow quite a bit as it is a contract between you and the bank. You can’t choose to pay one month semi-monthly, and pay monthly on another month (at least this is my understanding of how it works…please correct me if I’m wrong).
There was a question about ARMs and how that would affect the MMA program. It would really depend on your mortgage interest rate and the HELOC rate, and with an ARM, the rate would change and the benefits would change also.
Points taken about using the HELOC to access cash when needed. I guess I was thinking of using HELOCs for purposes other than paying off the mortgage, such as major vacations, cars, etc. There are tax advantages to the HELOC vs. other types of loans but I would still think carefully about having many liens against my primary residence. If you build up your investments, you can borrow against them as well but without the tax advantage.
The simple, open-ended interest sounds better than close-ended, compound interest but there are pros and cons of each. (See discussion about simple interest by Jack Guttentag, a former professor with the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania). In my earlier discussion about using the HELOC, I was compounding the interest and the example Tri is using simple interest; you need to look at the term of the loan (or watch it in action) to see how interest is applied. Jack, aka The Mortgage Professor (overlook his visual design, he's got great content), also discusses HELOCs and it looks like interest in his example is calculated daily using an average balance calculation but, again, you would need to analyze the HELOC documents and the bank's interpretation to get an accurate picture of how interest is calculated.
If you apply $5,000 to the principal when you first get the loan, then you will shave off $23,000 from the loan balance over the 30 year period. But it looks like you are paying $5458 to save $23,000 which sounds good but the $5458 is in today's dollars (present value) and the $23,000 is in future dollars (future value). The future value of $5458 at 6% in 30 years is over $32,000.
I do see how managing every dollar and timing every expense with a program could work but the fees involved with the program, HELOC, etc. may cause it not to work as expected.
Oh, there's no doubt that people love their cars. They'll go on driving if they possible can.
It's also true that $5/gallon gas won't stop them. As Bruce mentions above, $8/gallon gas doesn't stop them in London. The thing is, though, nothing is going to hold gasoline prices at $5 or $8 per gallon. With the supply no longer growing, the price will rise as far as necessary to hold the quantity demanded at the quantity supplied. I expect that $5 gasoline will mostly just squeeze people's budgets for other stuff. At $8, people will switch out of their SUVs and drive small cars. Another few dollars will get people to move closer to work, and so on: the slow, painful process I mentioned in the article, with most of the pain falling on the poor.
The rise in price won't be unbroken. Once people make these changes--smaller car, house closer to work--demand will drop and prices will follow. But those price drops won't last.
It's also true that buses don't appeal to a lot of people. Before I started riding them, I imagined that they were mostly populated by people who couldn't drive--children, the poor, the handicapped, alcoholics who had lost their drivers license--and you do see plenty of people who fall into those categories on the bus. But now that I ride them pretty often, I also see plenty of people who simply don't want the hassles of parking and driving, plus plenty of people who just want to reduce their contribution to global warming and all the other ills of our car-driving, petroleum-gulping society.
My principle goal in this piece is to give a heads-up to Wise Bread readers that these changes are coming. A lot of the actions that people will want to take (things like changing jobs and changing homes), require lead times of years. Raising the issue now may help some people accelerate their plans in these areas, or start making plans, or simply plant the idea in their head so that a year or two from now an otherwise-surprising spike in gasoline prices might make sense and prompt them to start making plans then.
A secondary goal is to prompt a few more people to advocate for a world where expensive energy won't be as painful--a world where trains and buses let people get to where they want to go.
Finally, I agree that the complete transition will take decades. We'll be burning petroleum-based fuels for another hundred years. But for most of that time we'll be burning very expensive petroleum-based fuels. Some people will arrange their lives so that they don't have to burn as much. Those people will be much better off.
I would love to have a rapid streetcar or light rail system to get to the gym, doctor or to run smaller errands. But our community sees no value in such a crazy idea because it would cost money.
I would also be all for using a decent rail system to get to other cities for business or vacation. The nearest rail station is 3 hours away in a bad neighborhood with unsecured parking.
I wanted to get one of those neighborhood electric vehicles. I could drive it in the small limited area around my house but beyond this small subdivision I could not drive it because ALL of the ways into town are either interstate or two lane highway. NEV's usually go no faster than 40mph. This means we also can't bike into town.
So I am going to buy a bike next summer so I can at least get to the small grocery and post office in our area. There are still many places in this neighborhood I can't get to safely. It would mean walking on the shoulder of the highway.
I already consolidate my trips and do them in a loop. The urge for take out or getting that can of paint on a whim. Forget it. If it can't wait until the next time I go to town it is an impulse buy.
Worm bin composting can be tricky - you have to monitor it carefully to make sure the soil isn't too acidic (too many coffee grounds and orange peels) and not too warm. Kids seem to enjoy it, though. But yes, I believe they do have to be sheltered. The freezer idea is a good one - I only wish my freezer wasn't packed full of soup stock!
To Julie:
Thank you for your blog. It's a good place for me and everyone else to participate and learn. I have a comment about your statement:
"The HELOC arrangement is a bit of a bother to me, but I may just be old-fashioned about borrowing against my home."
Well, how is that different from borrowing a primary mortgage? All you are doing is borrowing from the house using one type of loan (HELOC, open-ended, simple interest loan) and paying off another loan (which you are also borrowing from the house) that is a close-ended, COMPOUND interest loan.
"It can be a dilemma to decide pay off early vs. invest."
I agree with Eddie's comment regarding this topic. Many people have expounded their ideas/stance on this topic. It all boils down to personal preference in terms of how much risk can one afford to subject himself/herself to.
To Eddie:
Thanks for the positive feed back Eddie. A question about your coment:
"I have found a new program that is less expensive and provides the same benefits at www.Maxequityexpress.com"
How do you determine that the program provides the "same" benefits? Did you have the two company do an analysis of your situation? I'm asking because I'm trying to get a couple of vendors to give me a free analysis right now. By the way, the product from that website is the same as EquityGeniePro (http://www.equitygenie.com/calcs.html).
To: Brad G.
Questions about your statement:
"The people defending MMA's program are the people charging $3,500 and where their commission is between $1-2K. Their program would have only a marginal difference over an under $100 personal finance program such as MS Money or Quicken."
Prior to my posting of how to accelerate your mortgage with a HELOC, do you know how the MMA program or similar product works? Have you made a comparison analysis between using your method and theirs? I'd be interested to see if you some numbers. It just might convince me that I don't need the software after all :-).
1) Recycling as much garbage as I can, along with newspapers
2) Installed a Pur faucet water filter and stopped buying bottled water
3) Using canvas grocery bags
4) Swapping out lightbulbs for CFL's as they burn out.
5) Cleaning my bathroom with a vinegar & water solution instead of overpriced harsh chemicals.
6) Reading labels at the store and purchasing more things packaged in recycled materials.
First of all I believe that if every car in the world suddenly went dead, it would not help the pollution problem that much. It might in major cities, especially smog-clogged areas where ten-lane freeways exist, but many of us don't live in such places. Remember that the earth itself spews out pollution (volcanoes) so you can't put all the blame on humans. Also much of the earth's pollution comes from third-world nations where we have very little influence.
Where I live, if cars were to suddenly disappear (or no one could afford to drive them) we'd all be dead. There simply is nothing in walking distance except one "convenience" store (and since you advocate frugality, I would hope you can see the financial peril of doing all your shopping at a convenience store/gas station, not to mention the ill effects to one's heath).
Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in a city where everything is in walking distance, and I'll tell you why: I grew up in one. Remember Paul Simon's song "My Little Town"? He could have been singing about the town I grew up in. We had plenty of merchants, but no chain stores to speak of, so all the local merchants thought it was perfectly okay to mark up everything they sold by anywhere from 50% to 100%. The only reason people were able to survive was that they could drive to other towns 15-20 miles away where prices of just about everything were far more reasonable - and that was before anyone had ever heard of a Wal-Mart.
Then there are other problems. My health insurance only authorizes me to use one pharmacy in my area (otherwise I have to pay out-of-pocket for the prescriptions) and that pharmacy is about a dozen miles away. That same insurance only authorizes a handful of doctors and none of them are within walking distance. That's one reason I say that if I suddenly have no car (and no one around me has one either), I'm dead. We don't even have public transportation out here (not even taxicabs).
The worst of it is that I have a feeling - no actual proof, mind you, but when you hear enough reports from varied sources you just start to believe in the possibility - that our governments are at best holding out on us with regard to advanced energy-efficient technologies, and at worst actively suppressing them to prevent the collapse of the petroleum industry. If they are doing anything like that and it ever comes out, people are going to be mad as hell (except, of course, for those who simply refuse to believe it despite the evidence), and that's probably what's delaying the release of those technologies. The politicians really don't want people to know that we had the solution to the energy crisis as much as fifty years ago and kept it from the public, because not one of those scoundrels would ever be re-elected.
Even if I'm wrong about that, it would take decades to convert our society back to one where everything is either in walking distance, or there is a sufficient level of public transportation that cars are not needed (and please don't discount the fact that the majority of people in large parts of the country wouldn't get on a bus if it were free AND it picked them up at their front door and took them directly to wherever they wanted to go). If your response is that we don't have decades, then I'm telling you flat out that unless new technologies come out fairly quickly, a lot of people are going to die, because society cannot adapt that quickly. Even if everyone suddenly decided that they wanted to move to the nearest major city - and you know that will never happen - there's not enough housing for them. We couldn't even handle the aftermath of one Category 5 hurricane without considerable loss of life - we're certainly not going to survive a major disruption to our way of life (not all of us, anyway).
The cynical part of me says that when everything gets scarce, and no one can afford to travel, there will be civil war. And I don't think it will help much to plan ahead for such times, because it will only prolong the agony and make people a target for their neighbors that feel that when times are bad, they have the right to appropriate whatever they need by force. In a "Mad Max" scenario, once the stores are emptied, the survivalists will be the first to be attacked (even a concrete bunker won't hold up against a mob - remember when the Berlin Wall came down, large chunks were removed by people armed with hammers and pickaxes). I just hope I don't live to see those days, if they ever come, and I truly hope they never do.
So, please don't write off "better cars", if by "better" you mean cars that do not pollute and do not consume petroleum products, because that is exactly what we DO need to avoid serious loss of life down the road. You aren't thinking about the unintended consequences of a major societal shift in a direction that most people will not willingly go.
One other point, I somehow suspect that most of the readers of this blog don't really enjoy being preached at. We may be looking for ways to save money and/or live frugally, but this post wasn't really about that, it was simply a particular opinion being laid upon us. Please remember that marketers preach at us all the time, often telling us what bad people were are (or leaving that strong implication) if we don't buy or use their product or service. You guys talk about how new parents are beset upon by marketers who insist that the little darling absolutely needs whatever product or service they're selling. Many readers of this group, I suspect, are at the point where we turn off that sort of thing, and we also turn off attempts to preach a particular viewpoint and look upon it as just another sales pitch. Please be careful, lest you alienate your readers.