The trend continued for a large majority of my life, as I went into the military, then married a military spouse. We moved on average every two years. Even when I tried to buy and settle down (and I say I because the wife was ‘talked into’ this fiasco) we ended up only staying there a few years.

Ye Olde Homestead

Fast-forward about 4 years, renting and not really saving for a down payment. We were presented with the opportunity to buy a house (and when I say presented, I mean "forced out of our rental property due to it being sold out from under us", but I’m not bitter. Much,. Anymore.).

Still being fairly young and stupid about finances. We found ourselves looking around for that ‘perfect house’ with a month’s worth of time to find, close, and move into the place. No small order there. The only saving factors were;

• We had recovered from our previous financial mistakes, were pretty much out of debt, and had some money saved up for expenses.
• The housing market was in a tiny slump, price-wise, so houses were still in the reasonable range.
• We still had our VA papers to get a zero-down low-interest loan for the house.

We contacted a real-estate agent and began to look around. An afternoon looking through the MLS book, and going to see about 5-7 houses (one of which wasn’t even done inside yet, another that the realtor couldn’t get inside), we finally picked out our home to be.

Yeah, really. 5 houses, picked one. I know. I can’t really believe it looking back either. Might as well have thrown darts at the map.

Home, Home on the Range

Good thing is, it worked out. Good area, great schools, nice BIG house for the price. Someone somewhere must like us because it could have worked out MUCH worse.

Some things I would have done differently though.

• Plan out what the family needed – We didn’t consider that we’d have another child in the future, but we did pick a 3 bedroom home with a basement. Over the years, I’ve had my ‘office’ moved from a nice little room with a little window, to a cold, drab basement with a LITTLE window. How’d THAT happen when I wasn’t looking?!?? Next time, plan for a little contingencies. Having an extra bedroom (or two) if it fits in your budget isn’t a bad thing.
• Choose the area Carefully – We chose this area because I’ve lived in the next town and have always heard good things about THIS town. It worked for us, but even here, there are areas of the town you wouldn’t want to be caught late night in. A good deal in a bad part of town, isn’t a good deal. Try to imagine what it will be like in 10-20 years too. Remember, in Back to the Future, Marty’s home in the new spiffy subdivision, wasn’t so spiffy after it had been around for 15 years. Tract housing is good for stepping-stone houses, but maybe not for a long-term place to live.
• Area Jobs and Commuting Distances – Again, we lucked out pretty much. I’m in a sweet-spot, being close to a major highway that leads directly downtown (so a straight-shot commute to a large percentage of jobs), and not TOO far away from other areas that have lots of work.

Even though these things did work out for us, it could have easily went the other way. Bad schools/location, long commute, too small a house. Any of these plus a thousand other little problems could have made the last ten years MUCH more miserable. Take these into account when you’re looking for your new house. They might save you some headache down the road.

Here’s some interesting facts. The blog started in August of this year and;

Site Statistics

• I’ve gone to 64 regular subscribers in 4 months.
• I’ve been Stumbled, Dugg, Reddit, and Dugg about 3 dozen times so far.
• I’ve got an average daily page-hit of 100+ now.
• The most page-hits I’ve had in a month is ~6000.
• I’ve posted about 95 articles.
• I’ve got a Technorati authority of 53 and reactions of 143 blogs and a rank of 143,900
• I’ve got a Google pagerank of 1 (woohoo, I’ve been noticed!).
• I’ve got about 200 pages indexed with Google and my search engine traffic is around 6-7% of all traffic.

Networking/Social

• I’ve been invited into the M-Network annex
• I’ve made friends with around a dozen PF bloggers
• I’ve joined Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and a number of other social bookmark sites.

Personal

• I’ve changed the web site look-feel three times (finally settled down to one theme).
• I’ve started accepting advertising, but have already had to reject one advertiser for payday loans.
• Because of the concentration on personal finance, I’ve maxed out my 401k, my emergency fund is over $12,000 and no credit card I currently have has an interest rate over 10%
• I have closed 23 credit card accounts, and have 3 more that I have left open with zero balances.
• I’ve paid off both cars.
• My available assets have increased to over $100,000.
• My retirement investments last year gained by 25%.

It’s been a fairly turbulent year, but good overall for the site, myself, and my family. I’d like to thank the M-Network gang (and annex) for their help, friendship, and ideas/pointers. It’s been a great help.

Happy New Year!!

Photo by Amelungc

You see, I HAVE Been There Too.

Back in the last economic recession/slowdown/readjustment during 1993, the wife and I had just purchased our own home. It was more than the realtor recommended for our debt/income levels, but we could make the payments (barely) and thought that it was better to get more house now, rather than ‘trading up’ later. So I went ahead and bought the house.

I say I because I made the #1 financial mistake you can make in a marriage, not getting your spouse’s support on financial decisions. Yes, I still hear about it to this day, 14 years later. I was a gung-ho pro-homeownership, I’ve-lived-in-rentals-my-whole-life-and-hated-it buyer. I convinced my wife finally to sign the paperwork, even though she had some VERY fearful feelings about the whole thing.

We had the VA providing a zero down mortgage, and our closing costs were about $1000, which was a HUGE amount for us. We put part of the down, on some of our credit cards. (Sob!)

We bought the house in a small college town near the Air Force base where my wife worked. This place was SO small that when the students came back to school, the town’s population literally DOUBLED in size.

We were doing ok for the time, I had just left the army a year or so before and was working on my degree, while working part-time, and the wife had her Air Force position to support us as well.

Then Things Started Going Down Hill

In 1993, the Air Force had a huge Reduction In Forces (RIF) enforced on them by congress, so they were letting go people left and right. My wife was one of the ones singled out for the RIF process. That meant that a VERY significant part of our income time evaporated in the space of a few months.

To add to that, there were only about three kinds of jobs in town; College Staff (virtually impossible to get unless one had a PhD., even for non-teaching positions), Military (’nuff said), and Minimum Wage Flunkies. The Minimum Wage Flunkies were everywhere, since in a town with about 12,000 college kids, a significant percentage of them were always looking for work.

Law of Supply and Demand: High Supply, Low Demand. There were no jobs paying over minimum wage in a 50 mile radius of the town.

We tried, we REALLY tried. We slowly racked up the credit cards, living incrementally on those while we got farther and farther behind on the bills. We scoured the areas for jobs. I dropped out of school so I could get a full-time minimum-wage position at a local trucking company, while the wife picked up my paper route (yes, PAPER ROUTE) while looking for other work.

It just didn’t work. We finally decided to search for jobs in a nearby city, and found a couple of jobs that paid more than we were making in town, but the damage was already done. All the credit cards were maxed, and we were 6 months past due on the mortgage with NO possibility of coming up with the past-due amount.

We finally moved out and rented a small place in the nearby town. I remember signing the paperwork (A "Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure") and feeling like I’d just admitted to the world that I was a failure. It still sits as one of the low-points of my life.

..

It’s taken years to realize that we did all that we could do, and that we made a lot of stupid mistakes with our finances. It’s also taken years to get past that point and forgive ourselves for the situation.

When you identify so strongly with your belongings, you forget some basic truths. You are not your stuff. You don’t need your stuff. Life goes on WITHOUT stuff. It’s hard, since society impressed on everyone that ’status is everything’, and especially during my formative years in the 1980s (The Conspicious Consumption Era). BMW’s and Yuppies were the rage, and you’re value was defined by what you made and owned. I still catch myself judging my worth on my job and lifestyle sometimes.

So if you’re going through what we went through, just remember that you’re not unique, and that you’ll come through it someday, stronger and smarter for having survived. Learn from the mistakes and pass on the knowledge. That’s what keeps me going. 

Inspired by: Frugal For Life’s 25 Ways I Save Money. Dawn’s original article was posted in September of 2006. Patrick at Cash Money Life passed along the link to the article. It seems to be gaining a life of it’s own as a viral question. So, I’m all for running with the other lemmings;

Below is a list of 25 things my family does to save money and stretch our resources.

1. Make it automatic – Before I see my paycheck, ALL the bills get paid and the remainder gets deposited to various accounts. (Wholeheartedly stolen from Partrick at Cash Money Life, because it’s my #1 money saver too.)
2. Pay Bills On Time – Along with #1, I pay everything that might have a penalty on time to avoid that penalty.
3. Shop for Only Consumables at Wal-Mart – While not a big fan of Wal-mart, it’s still a good place to get disposable/consumable stuff. Don’t get stuff you intend to keep long-term though. 
4. Pay Insurance By-the-Year – By paying yearly, you save around 5-10% sometimes. Not bad.
5. Shop Around for Insurance – Along the lines with #4, I do a little shopping each year a month or so before the insurance is due to be renewed.
6. Buy Quality – When you buy big-ticket items, shop around and be willing to pay a little more. The idea isn’t to get the cheapest, but the best quality & most durable. Buying a $5 hammer every 6 months is more expensive than buying a $20 hammer every 4 years.
7. Ask for Discounts – EVERYWHERE. It doesn’t hurt to ask, and aside from the media portraying bartering as ‘bad’, asking for price discounts works.
8. Buy Off the Internet, With Care – Being able to shop multiple places from the comfort of your home saves you time, money, and hassle. Just make sure you buy your stuff from reputable places.
9. Free Shipping – With #8, self-explanatory.
10. Perform Car Maintenance – Not necessarily saying that I do the maintenance, but getting the regular oil change, and rotating/filling the air/checking the tires adds up to better mileage and a car that lasts longer.
11. Shop on a Full Stomach – Tried and true, eat before going grocery shopping. The food companies put the pretty pictures on the boxes to make you hungry. It works too!
12. Call Credit Cards and Ask for Reduced Rates – Every 6 months or so, I call the credit card companies and ask for them to reduce the interest rates on my cards. It’s so successful I have no rates over 8%. Worst they can say is no.
13. Use Reward Points Wisely – I killed two birds with one stone by using my Amex points to get a year membership to Blockbuster Online. The family rents movies, the boys get free games and I save $$$ from entertainment costs.
14. Get Free Books to Read – I go to the library a lot, and download regularly from Wowio (cool site, no affiliation). Maybe not the most up-to-date assortment, but nothing to sneeze at either.
15. Change All Lightbulbs to Fluorescent – More upfront $ than normal bulbs, but saves energy over the long run.
16. Turn Up/Down Thermostat – Summer, 72 degrees Fahrenheit, Winter, 65 degrees. Sweaters and fans make up the difference.
17. Subscribe to Deals Feeds – Buy.com, Woot.com, Microcenter.com and MANY others regularly send out sale e-mails. I keep an eye out for tech goodies I need but don’t necessarily want to buy unless on sale.
18. Buy Subscriptions via eBay – Sometimes magazines run HUGE sales on magazine subscriptions. I got 4 years of Wired for $12, and 2 years of Maxim for $4, to name a couple.
19. Use MyPoints.com – I receive e-mails from MyPoints.com with advertisements. At 5 points/e-mail, they build up over the year. Usually around Christmas, I lump them together for a nice gift-card. (no affiliation w/ Mypoints.com)
20. Pre-Pay the Mortgage – It’s only $50-100 extra a month, but it saves THOUSANDS in interest. Here’s where a little really goes a long way.
21. Buy Pet Medication On-Line – It’s amazing the discount between Brick-and-Mortar pet supplies and on-line pet supplies. Talk about a markup.
22. Go to the $1 Movies – For movies you’re not quite sure you want to see, wait until they hit the discount movie theatres before going. Save $7-9/per movie on questionable releases.
23. Shop at the $1 Store – Even cheaper than Wal-Mart, shop for TRULY disposable items at the $1 store (or your local equivalent). Disposable items that don’t hang around long. (Band-aids, Flower pots, other household-but-out-of-sight items).
24. Buy in Bulk, Wisely – Are you really going to use that 120 oz. can of tomato paste before it becomes red spackle?? Probably not, but there’s lots of other products that last forever that you can buy in huge amounts (Toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, etc). If you do go into the perishables, make sure you have a freezer that can accommodate the stuff.

and

  25. Read Other 25 Ways to Save Lists – Adds up to HUNDREDS of ways to save.

If you write a financial blog, or just want to share your 25 ways to save, then GET TO IT! Nothing like the present.

Great article Dawn!

That means, that even though I made the check out right, and the name on the check didn’t match the person/business cashing it, the bank let it go through.

Taking Matters into My Own Hands

Needless to say, I was a little steamed. I called the bank and had a nice long conversation with the people there. The gist of the conversation was;

• We don’t get copies of the check for weeks/months
• Via the ACH system, neither names nor dates are verified before transferring funds
• There is a way to file a complaint, but it generally will take a long time to resolve. (i.e. recommended I ‘live’ with it.)

So, I decided to chalk it up to experience and live with it. That gave me one account I still had to send money to, and another account I didn’t have to pay on for the better part of a year. All in all, about equal since neither charged interest. Just inconvenient.

Those Who Forget History,.. Repeat It

About a year later, I got into financial difficulties and was struggling to get out. One of the creditors I worked with (I’ll call him SCUM for sake of this argument) told me that if I sent a series of post-dated checks, they’d hold them and cash them one-at-a-time until they were gone.

Sounded good at the time, so I sent in a series of checks all post-dated and in order, and planned my budget accordingly. Soon, I found that SCUM had gone ahead and cashed all the checks at once. Luckily I had the money in the account, now I just had to figure out how to do things like pay the rent and eat until my next payday.

Another call to the bank (after not getting ANY word back from the 4 calls to SCUM I made) and I was reminded of something.

• Via the ACH system, neither names nor dates are verified before transferring funds

But something else I learned.

• A wrong date on a check isn’t an actionable item.

Meaning, that I could have put Dec 41st, 1655BC and they still would have cashed the check. And there was nothing I could do about it. The recipient was correct, so there was no fraud involved (in the bank’s eyes). I was out the money and that was that.

SCUM got his money, all at once, and probably got a nice little bonus for it. I got a cleaned out bank account, pending bills that got paid late, and a couple of weeks of Mac-and-Cheese and cheap noodles for meals. That lesson, I remember!!