Cable competition

Great news! My town if finally getting a second cable provider. Currently, Comcast is the only game in town. However, Verizon and the town just signed a contract to allow their entry sometime later this year. The upshot of this is big savings for everybody. Towns with more than one cable provider generally have rates up to 20 % lower than single provider towns. I plan on taking full advantage of this as my cable bill (tv, Internet, and digital phone) is huge. I pay over $200 a month and hope to trim at least $40 off of this. I will look at Verizon's rates and then go to Comcast and see what they plan to do to retain this customer. Either way it is a win for the pocket book. Any savings that I get from this I plan to earmark for the kids 529 plans. The good old capitalist system at work.

How to get rich

Money magazine had an article last month profiling people who became rich through their own business'. The take away seems to be that the road to riches in this country comes through starting your own business. The problem with this is that for every success story there are many more failures. Still, the appeal of working for yourself is a great lure. These people all seem to have an original or at least novel idea and a sound business plan before they started. As I struggle to make my real estate business a money maker these stories provide me with incentive to keep working. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/moneymag/0706/gallery.success_stories.moneymag/index.html

Striking a savings balance

One of the most difficult issues I find as I work towards building a nestegg for retirement, is striking a balance between leisure spending now vs savings for later. I have read of people who are so focused on saving every dime that they forget to enjoy life. On the other hand we all know of people who spend money like crazy in the pursuit of instant gratification. Finding a balance somewhere in the middle is critical to being able to enjoy your present while securing the future. I often find myself reevaluting how I budget my leisure money and it is the issue that I find myself thinking about most often.

Minor League Baseball

Friday we took the kids to see the Lowell Spinners. They are the Red Sox short season single A team. The dollar certainly goes a long way at a minor league park. The tickets were $6.50 and the seats were just about 15 feet down the right field line in the second row. Parking cost $5 (compare this to $40 for some of the lots near Fenway), food was $2 for hot dogs, $3.75 for beer. The people at the stadium are very nice and attentive and the quality of baseball was very good. Most importantly the kids loved every minute of it. I cannot reccomend minor league baseball enough as an inexpensive way to introduce young kids to pro ball.

The Big Green Egg

So I have had my large Big Green Egg for over a week now and thouhgt I would share my early results. In a word SPECTACULAR. This thing is absolutely amazing. For anyone who enjoys grilling, smoking, or bbq'ing I reccomend visting the user board of Eggers. These people are crazy about their eggs and their passion shows through. I have used mine 5 times in the 8 nights I have had it. I figure that at this pace I will recoup the cost of the egg in a year or so (money saved from not ordering take out or eating out) and will have much more fun.

http://www.biggreenegg.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.shtml

The madness of dealing with banks

I cannot believe the lack of customer service in the banking industry. I had a scheduled 3pm closing for an equity line of credit last week and was at the bank for over an hour. It actually took only 15 minutes to sign the docs with the rest of the time being spent waiting for the one service rep to help the many many people who were waiting. While waiting I heard horror story after horror story of bank errors that were costing people money and more importantly time and aggrevation. One poor lady had made an ATM withdrawl and the bank had debited her account twice. This had led her account to become negative and she was charged $35 in overdraft fees. The bank admitted their mistake and was going to reverse the second transaction and credit back the fees, but said that it would take 5 business days for this to be reflected in her account. She was in tears, asking how she was supposed to live with no money until then. I felt badly for both her and the service rep as I know there was nothing she could do, but what a disgrace that it ever came to this. Almost makes you want to stash all your money in the floor boards.

Top 10 reasons people dont stick to savings plan

well actually I am only going to discuss what in my mind is the number one reason why I have trouble sticking to my savings plan. The unexpected unbudgeted major expenses. Today I picked up my car from the service center after bringing it in for an inspection sticker and to see why my check engine light was on. Four days and $1800 later and I have to juggle my plan for the rest of the month. I fully anticipated spending five or six hundread dollars, because I do every time I bring it in, but wow what a surprise I got. The car seems to be the one thing that is most often a budget buster for people. Every now and again you will get a major unexpected home repair, but I can count on the car socking me at least once per year. On the positive side there are only 10 more payments to be made on it.

I am also attaching a link about the "other" costs of home ownership for any of you looking into buying your first home.
http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2007/05/homecost.html

You should make sure you go into this venture with your eyes wide open.