Money Beagle

Here’s wishing to a happy and prosperous 2009 to everybody.  I will return with regular postings on Monday, January 5th!  Enjoy the new beginnings and new hopes and new dreams!

Merry Christmas to everybody!  I hope that everybody is able to celebrate the holiday with family and friends, and that the spirit of the holidays rings true on this day.

I know it’s been a tough year and that the year ahead contains many uncertainties, but hopefully this one day a year we can put that aside and let peace and joy find us.

It’s a short post today in honor of the holiday, so I’ll post some links to carnivals I’ve participated in.   Thanks to the following hosts for putting things together in this busy week, and for including my articles.  Please head over to each site as each of these has some excellent reads and the hosts worked hard to get them ready amidst the holidays.

• Andy from Saving to Invest hosted this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, and included my article on our energy and water saving washing machine.
• Destroy Debt hosted this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction, and included my article about paying double for gas as a way to pay down debt.
• Miss Thrifty hosted this week’s Festival of Frugality, and included my post about how I’ve evolved into a (somewhat) reformed techie.
• Where Are You Now hosted this week’s Money Hacks Carnival, and included my post about my ongoing attempts to level our monthly and recurring expenses.

Merry Christmas from Money Beagle, Mrs. Beagle, and also Baby Beagle, who is still a few months away!

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I hope that anybody that had last minute Christmas shopping is having luck and keeping their sanity in check.  Remember, no ’shopping rage’!!!!

For most of high school and over breaks during college, I would often work at my aunt and uncle’s store. They had a gift and collectible shop, and Christmas Eve was one of the more unique days of the year. It was very busy, but the type of shopper was definitely different than most of the time. You could almost see the desperation in their eyes as they would walk in and as soon as something caught their eye, they would point to it and they’d be ready to move on to the next stop that they had to make.

I’ve had to go out on occasion in the past for a last minute gift or two, but generally am wrapped up in advance. My earlier post about online shopping illustrated how I am not a fan of lines and chaos, so I figure it’s best for me if I don’t venture out to the malls that day.

Happy shopping and remember to stay in the holiday spirit!!!!!

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I have always been a big fan of Amazon since the advent of online shopping.  I’ve always thought that they had many great features that appealed to me.  Some of the best features in my mind included:

• Excellent pricing - I’ve always felt that they are very fair in price and have good deals
• Order history - They keep ordering history of every purchase I’ve made.  Many sites keep your history for only 12 months, if even that long.  I’ve always been able to look back at previous purchases for reference.
• Recommendations - Many sites have now built in features where you are recommended products based on your ordering history.  Amazon was one of the first and I think still one of the best at it.

A few months ago, my list would have included one more thing that was key: 30-day price protection. Amazon guaranteed that if their price went down anytime within 30 days of your purchase, that you were eligible for a refund.  You had to e-mail them the price you paid as well as the new price, and after checking it out, they would refund your credit card.  I used this several times.

That was an excellent feature, but unfortunately they discontinued that as of September 1, 2008.  I just found out about it today as I was going through and checking my prices, and discovered that the new policy had been instituted.

This is a huge letdown to me.

I can understand the business reason behind it.  They were probably losing money by having to return part of the sales back to people.  But, I still think that’s a big short sighted.  Why?

Well, not everybody checks the prices to see if the price has dropped.  There are sites such as PriceProtectr.com which automates this process for you (plug: it works with over 150 online retailers and is one of my favorite sites), but even so, my guess is that a very small percentage of people actually remember or take the time to check.

The people that do take the time are probably among the people that spend the most at Amazon.  I feel that this decision might have turned away many loyal customers.  Yes, Amazon might save money in avoiding refunds, but what if they lose all that plus more in sales because people gravitate to other e-commerce sites?

In other words, why take the risk of alienating your best customers?

Now, I won’t boycott Amazon and they’ll probably still get a majority of my online business.  But, it’s just a bit of a letdown and a bit puzzling that one of my favorite shopping sites got rid of a great feature, and one that gave them a pretty big competitive advantage.

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I’m in the middle of wrapping Christmas gifts.  My wife has been doing this for a couple of days on and off, and it’s my turn tonight.

Since I’m a ‘typical guy’ when it comes to wrapping, my wife handles all of the wrapping for anybody that gets gifts except for the gifts that I get her, of course.  So, my wrapping takes a lot less time.

One thing we realized this year is how many little scraps get cut out that accumulate.  My wife started saving anything bigger than a regular sheet of paper, and we’ve found that they can be used to wrap smaller gifts without wasting more paper. 

This has saved us quite a bit of paper.  The first four gifts I wrapped for her were of paper that had been previously cut.  I can’t tell what the gifts were that I wrapped because my wife peeks on here and that would ruin the surprise.

I’ve also found that they come in handy for filling in an edge for paper that’s a bit too short.  You know the kind.  Either you mis-cut or you have a piece that’s just a fraction of an inch too little.   Rather than scrap the whole thing, what I’ve done is to slip in a little piece that fills in the gap, then fold over as normal.  99.9% of the time the person will never see the ‘fill-in’ (though they probably would see the gap if you had just left it), so these little scraps come in handy to patch up mistakes too!

So, remember to hold on to those little scraps because they can really come in handy!

Back to wrapping!

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Here are some odds and ends from around the household for the last few days:

• I haven’t yet started wrapping the duct work in the basement as I discovered I needed to do.  I was planning on starting today but time ran out.  But, I do have some tape so I will plan on getting it done this weekend if everything goes well.
• Shtinkykat was wondering about some additional detail regarding the free credit check we did last week for my wife and I.  Since I didn’t get the actual score (since that costs money), the check up was rather anti-climatic.  I have actually paid for the score in the past, but that’s usually when I know that we will be looking to get a loan, so that I can check my score and make sure I’ll be getting the good rate.  The report didn’t show anything unusual which was the best news possible.  About the only ’strange’ thing I noticed was that the balance on my wife’s student loans didn’t really show the ‘extra’ payments we’ve been making.  I know they’re right because I log in to the actual account online, but they must only report every few months because the balance is a bit off.  Nothing to worry about now, but something I’ll keep an eye on, especially once we get it paid off (which once be for awhile).
• I didn’t record a Net Worth update for the month, only because there was nothing exciting warranting a full post.  The overall net worth went down slightly, mostly because of changes in the stock market as well as a lower value of our house, but our debt went down by about 0.46%, which was encouraging.
• Unfortunately, my fantasy football season came to an end this past weekend as I got knocked out in the semi-finals.  Actually, I get to play for the third place prize, but now that I’m out of the hunt for the championship, it’s a bit underwhelming.  Now I can start concentrating on trying to repeat my championship in fantasy baseball next season!
• The insulation project that I did over the spring seems to have paid off at first glance.  Last month seemed colder than normal, plus the cost of gas per unit is up from last year, yet our usage went down compared to last year.  I think it will take at least a full year to evaluate the progress, but the early returns look like it’ll be worth it!

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Just wanted to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving.  Although it has been a difficult year for the economy, there are still a lot of things to be thankful for.  I hope everybody enjoys the day with family or friends and is able to watch some football, eat too much food, and spend the day happy.

Cheers!

The snow shoveling season is upon us within the next couple of weeks, and I’m dreading the driveway shoveling that will begin.  Last season was our first winter in our house, and I realized quite quickly that having a side entrance garage means more driveway to have to shovel.  The three-car garage aspect just adds an extra 12 feet or so of fun!

Anyways, last year was definitely a learning experience.  My parents were kind enough to loan me their snowblower for the season.  My dad has had problems with his feet, and my mom was going through some health issues, so they felt it best to hire a snow plowing service for the first time.  I’m guessing that they will continue to do this, but I guess I should check to make sure that they don’t need the snowblower back!  Since my dad still hasn’t had the surgery he needs to fix his foot, I’m guessing that doing snow wouldn’t be the best idea.

But, I digress.

Last year, I purchased a snow shovel from Home Depot.  I went with the widest snow shovel that they had that wasn’t high priced.  It actually had a metal core but was coated in plastic to ‘protect’ the driveway from the metal.  I was sold.

Unfortunately, as the winter went on, I wasn’t impressed.  The plastic wore itself out to the point where my piles of snow was highlighted with blue plastic shavings.  I think by the end of the season, the shovel was about an inch smaller due to the amount of material that wore itself out.  In other words, it was a ‘one and done’ shovel.

I’ve done some research and have found that metal shovels are not damaging to driveways since the blade isn’t that sharp and they’re not powerful enough to really start pulling up chunks of concrete.  I think that if you have concrete that is already damaged, the blade can catch and pull up more concrete, causing damage.  So, this year I decided to try out a metal blade shovel.

I purchased one that was $30.  This is 50% more than I paid for last years.  But, it looks strong and sturdy and the reviews I’ve read online seem to indicate that it will hold up.  At this point, I just need it to last me two years and it’s already more economical than the plastic coated shovel.

My only concern is with the driveway.  I’m not convinced that this wouldn’t weaken the driveway.  Our driveway is just over 10 years old.  There are a couple of spots where it’s starting to crumble, so I’ll probably use the remnants of the plastic coated shovel for those spots, just so I don’t pull up more concrete with the metal blade.  I guess if I see any problems at all with the new shovel, I will stop and switch back, but hopefully this doesn’t create any problems.

Yikes, and to think that I had a chance to move to Florida a few years back.  Although I love Michigan, it’s certain times like this that I wonder what I was thinking by turning down the opportunity!

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Something has been sort of bugging me, and today I ran some numbers to verify that I should be concerned.  I noticed after I changed my marriage status from SINGLE to MARRIED after getting married last year, that my take home pay increased.

I didn’t add any allowances from what I’d filed with when I was single.  Nothing else changed, so I’m confused as to why the withholding rates suddenly change.  I verified today that in years past, they took out about 18-20% in federal withholding.  I’m making the same as last year, yet it’s only around 14%.  Yet, somehow I have a hard time believing that I’m going to pay less taxes.

My wife’s withholding is even worse.  She makes less, and for last year, they took out about 15%.  Now, they’re barely taking out 5%.  What the heck???????

This shouldn’t affect us too much, because when I noticed the increase, I started simply taking the ‘extra’ amount in my paycheck and putting it into savings.  I figured I’d just combine that with whatever return we got to get our ‘total ‘return, and it wouldn’t end up too much differently than what we got as a total refund last year.

Still, this seems rather dangerous to me, because it seems to me that a couple that didn’t save that ‘extra’ money might spend it and end up owing money to the government come next April 15th.

Am I missing something totally obvious here?

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Today is blog action day, and the topic that bloggers are encouraged to write about is poverty.

I think that poverty is an appropriate subject, given that the economy is going through so much right now. At the end of all the adjustments, it will probably come to pass that more people will be in a state of poverty within the United States.

Still, I think that we as Americans largely have little perspective about what poverty really is. We know there are many poor people. We know there are many people who can barely afford to get by. We know that there are bankrupt people. Still, across the globe, there are so many places where the situation is much, much worse, and where poverty is not just ‘a way’ of life. Sadly, there are places where poverty is the ‘only way’.

I’m reminded of a particular story that one of the pastors at my church talked about, probably last year or the year before. He had recently returned from a mission trip to Kenya, where he and the team that went worked to help people build a church. He met people in a village that had little. They grew and hunted for all the food that they had. There was little running water.

And something else that I will never forget is when he described how they lived ‘off of a hook’. What this meant is that most of the people in the village, they were able to hang every worldly possesion that they had off of a hook. They had some clothes, some toiletries, and not much else.

Think about that.

Yet, the people in the village were, as a whole, very content. They knew that they didn’t have much, but they still prayed. They still did the work that they needed to do. They were happy that they had been given the life that they had, and were making the best of it.

I wonder how many people out there are living ‘off of a hook.’

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