Do you spend your savings on Lattes and Lunch?

Daily/Weekly Spending.

So over the past month or so I have noticed my spending to be going up a little bit, I'm usually pretty good with only buying 1 or 2 coffees($2-$4), 1 snack($3-$5), and lunch once or twice($10-$20, so spending $15-$29 a week isn't terrible in my book, but it not only needs to get better, but it needs some more attention.  My goal is to keep my total to $20 for the week, this includes coffee, snacks, and lunch.  I'm going to keep track of my spending during the week and see where I am at.  I encourage you to do the same.

Day 1-Monday-Running Total at the Start of the Day $0.00

$8.50 on some amazing Paleo Granola mix, this should last me throughout the week as a snack, it's a little more than I usually spend, but it's for the whole week.  Strike that I ate the whole bag today, i'm pretty sure I gained 5 pounds doing so and it was delicious.  I also brought my lunch, so while this saved me some cash, the amount of food I ate, Paleo or not was about as much as an Offensive Lineman for the Packers.

Day 2-Tuesday-$8.50

So I lost my fantasy football bet and decided to pay up today and reward myself for losing apparently, 2 medium coffees $4.   Well in terms of losing I apparently lost on this one.  Good news is I am doing an intermittent fast today(http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/).  Here's a good website that gives the details good and bad.  I've done it a couple times over the past weeks and I find it great for balancing out my body and practicing hunger control.  Sounds crazy, but many people do it intentionally and unintentionally every day.

Day 3-Wednesday-$12.50

I have decided is going to be No Money Spent Wednesday, I mean I have a goal right, based on the way i'm going I'm going to lose and I don't like to lose unless it's the LB's, that's pounds for all you metric kilogram trackers out there.  I did a great job, brought in my coffee and ate some leftover chicken for lunch, I really feel like I won today.....Winning

Day 4-Thursday-$12.50

Well it certainly helps to have a Chili-Cookoff at work, I am spending $0 today on lunch, I will be doing my best to not spend over the $15 my wife "gave to me" for a Happy Hour, plus a little money coming from my work for the event always helps.  The good news is I was able to use the $15 for the Happy Hour from my wife, I'm going to include that in my total, I'm also going to include the $5 entry fee for entering the cook-off which if I would have won(should have won my Chili is delicious).  So I did spend a total of $20 today on the extra's in life, beer and chili.  When I came home my wife did happen to buy some take out food, which I do not count in my specific budget, but that is something I'm hoping to work together on very shortly:)

Day 5-Friday-Running Total at the Start of the Day $32.50

Today is a good day right, because it's Friday!  I started the day off with a free coffee(I have a coffee betting problem and I'm not afraid to admit, I won today).  I brought some lunch from home, keeping it simple with lunch meat, cheese, and an an orange.  I'm working on keeping this day free of spending, so I plan on wrapping it up with a total of $32.50.

Day 6-Saturday-Running Total $32.50

So once again the good news is I was able to not have any spending on my part, which for a Saturday is semi-amazing.  My wife and I did stop by portagegrounds.com
for a coffee purchased by my wife, while we figured out our spending habits and I am going to help set up an automation system for my wife, starting January 1.  I also ate my Paleo breakfast before I came so even if I would have spend money it would have been $2 or $3 total.

Day 7-Sunday-All-in Total for the Week $32.50

I did not spend a dime on food, actually cooked a couple things on Sunday(key to success for limiting Eating Out).  The most I did was drive the car to go play basketball, so I brought my water, worked up a sweat, and finished up the day right.

So in Summary for the week, this is actually really expensive for me from what I would like my budget to be.  The budget I would like to keep is $50 for the month, so in Chicago that amounts to about 1 coffee and a lunch a week.  I feel like I have been doing a poor job of my eating out budget, so I am sticking strictly to cash for the month of December, taking $50 out of the checking and calling it a month.  Well if anything this has kept me accountable and I learned that I still need to keep a stricter budget with coffee and eating out during the week because it encourages me to eat more healthy and Paleo and also keeps the costs down.

Thanks for reading and make sure to comment on what your budget is?  How you manage bringing in your lunch and eating out?  If I'm crazy for keeping track of this?

I'm a Real Estate Loser

Good Morning World, I'm a Real Estate Loser.

So over the past few months we have been looking at investing into real estate again, we purchased our home, a multi-unit a little over a year ago, we were able to fix up the property using a contractor and have enjoyed having a touch of what we wanted in our unit, while still receiving rent to help with the mortgage.  Because we have had success I was looking for ways to purchase more real estate, most likely buying and flipping the property(the shows on HGTV add to the mix) or even a buy and hold strategy to pay off the mortgage and get a little extra cash on the side each month.

Despite my enthusiasm and reading biggerpockets a real estate website for advice, the fact remained we needed a down payment for these homes and in most cases since the market we are looking in is mostly comprised of all cash investors.  In a stroke of two worlds matching up, a family member was looking to invest and felt comfortable with our decision making, which would include there money expected to be paid back in full and our name being on the loan and ultimately responsible for both the loan and any money used in the transaction.  So you can imagine my excitement, someone was willing to gamble on us in the real estate market.  I was so excited, let's make some money, watch out Donald Trump, Richard Kyosoki ain't got nothing on me, I will own Chicago one house at a time!


REALITY hit just the other day.  We have put multiple offers on properties, some low, some high, some all cash, some loan, most REO, but overall we are batting a big fat 0.  I think the crushing blow came a couple weeks ago.  We had previously submitted an offer on a house, the asking price was 181K and recently dropped to somewhere around 155K.  We felt the right price for us was to get this property at just a touch below 140K, we submitted the offer and this was rejected through Homepath which is where the government sells many of the properties from mortgages that were previously backed by FHA mortgages.  I was a little bummed out but we were on our way to San Francisco and I felt like we gave our best offer.

Then about a month later, I noticed the price had been dropped again to almost exactly what our original offer was, so I contacted our real estate professional to submit our offer again and even increased our bid a couple thousand over asking to make sure we put our highest and best offer to win the property.  After more than a week we were told we did not win the property and later saw the house move to conditional, taking it off the market.  That was the last time I have really been excited for a house and have decided it is best to focus in other areas where I enjoy my time more.

So today I am a Real Estate Loser, lost multiple bids, feels like have seen 50 houses in person to no avail.  It's a little frustrating, but as my wife says if it were mean to be it would have happened.  I think that I need to focus more on other avenues that I enjoy, including writing on the blog, my ebay store http://stores.ebay.com/GQ-Casual and my Shopify store gqcasual.com, which I just started in the past week or so.  We are still on track for the 7 year retirement, paying off debt as we go, I really believe we can make it.  Cheers and enjoy the read.

Don't forget to comment I love reading it.



 

Paleo and the 30 Day Challenge-It's Finance and Fitness

I have been away from writing for awhile and due mostly to focusing on other items in my life.  I found it best to use all of my focus on one item in my life to get the most production.   This is what I refer to as Sprint and Relax.  

So what have I been up to for the last 2 months?  Well the most important thing was I did the 30 day Paleo Challenge.  Paleo might be known better to you as the Caveman diet or the hunter-gatherer diet.  Here is a general outline of what I ate for those 30 days, shown below, you can check out  Robb Wolf's What is the Paleo Diet? for more info.

 Ok to Eat                 Avoid

Fruits	Dairy
Vegetables	Grains
Lean Meats	Processed Food & Sugars
Seafood	Legumes
Nuts & Seeds	Starches
Healthy Fats	Alcohol

I really took this seriously, I ate almost to the tee the outline above, I don't eat that much bread anyways besides sandwiches,which is usually the most difficult item for people to give up, but that was easily replaced with lettuce or cabbage.  Cheese or Dairy was probably the most difficult for me and after the 3rd week I ended up adding it back in.  Like many lifestyle changes, you end up taking what you can't live without and  I added cheese back in but went with a common theme in the paleo way of life to eat everything as natural as possible, just like your grandma used to make.  So I added Kerrygold Swiss Cheese which is made from all natural grass-fed cows, I also did the same thing with butter, using the same brand.  

I was able to lose around 15 pounds in those 30 days, which I am really proud of.   My parents came to visit and I knew immediately I would take a little break from my Paleo lifestyle.  Overall I have stuck with Paleo, many of the principals are easy to follow.  If I am ever in doubt for any of the items I choose to eat or need a recipe, I can always check the Internet to confirm or for the most part if it's Gluten Free then it's good to go.

  

Losing weight and being healthy for me starts with Paleo.  I did not go out of my way to exercise with the exception of walking my dog every day, so I think that's what made me feel great about this, I wasn't running 5 miles a day or lifting 3 days a week, I stuck with Paleo and it worked.

I think finance and fitness have so many of the same principals to winning.  You have to eat healthy or be financially fit, no credit cards or ice cream,  eat less than you need or don't spend more than you earn.  So many of these things are exactly the same and exactly the reason why America is Obese and Broke.  So try something different this week and bring all of your lunches or don't put sugar in your coffee this week, I think we all need to start somewhere and today is a good day.

My 7 Year Plan-Owning the Bucks or Retiring Early

About a year ago I wrote on how I believed Dave Ramsey was a genius, but I wanted my own plan, the Automatic Plan.  I’m happy to report I’m following my own steps pretty well.  I know where my money is going, I have everything set up to savings (I manually pay extra on debt with this amount, not as automatic, but it feels great), and investments. Credit cards are gone, I make payments to my student loans (which I detest), and in a combo deal we are also working towards paying off our home early from rental income.  So as of right now I am on step 4 and I am charging ahead. 

What I mentioned in the notes was “My 7 year Plan” but I never really talked about it.

http://financeandfitnessdreams.blogspot.com/2012/08/why-i-think-dave-ramseys-genius-but-i.html

Automatic Plan

1. Figure out Where all of your Money is Going
2. Make things Automatic-Debt, Savings, and Investments
3. Make paying off Credit Cards a Priority
4. Add additional payments to the Debt you like the least
5. Pay off home early
6. Make sure you and your loved ones are taken care of
7. Build wealth and give!
   
   

I always thought I wanted to be a millionaire, own yachts, the Milwaukee Bucks, and own houses all over the world.  I soon came to realize this takes a lot of hard work throughout your life, plenty of time, and some luck. Do I always want to be grinding it out looking for that next deal; do I want to be 60 or 70 and just now ready to enjoy my retirement?  That just doesn't sound that great to me.   I love to travel, enjoy a morning coffee or evening beer in different places, I love Chicago March-November, but winter gets old pretty quick. So I decided that the best way to truly have the option to do what I want at an early age is to be debt free and have passive income. 

 

So being on our automatic plan and having 2 houses that provide rental income, we have a plan to complete our 7 year plan and well RETIRE!!!  So I have student loan debt, which I am working on.  We have 2 houses, one which we live in, both receive rental income.  I am tackling the student loan debt, while we take the extra rental income and pay off each house as quickly as possible.  I ran some rough numbers  a few months ago and figured out if we took what we made and the rental income we could pay off both of our houses in 7 years!  I got pretty excited, because then we would have $0 debt, 7 years worth of investments in stocks(401K, Roth IRA, Individual  Brokerage Acct), and passive income from 2 houses.  So based on everything we would have $0 debt and 2 passive incomes coming from rental income.  

We could retire/semi-retire/do something we really like to do whether it’s volunteering or making 100K, so I would be 38 and living on a small income with my wife, available to travel freely which we really love to do, Miami could be our base home(happy wife, happy life), I could visit friends and family for weeks at a time(your couch will be my couch, your guest bedroom, my bedroom).  I could travel to Nicaragua(shown on the right) and hang with the wife’s family, maybe see if I can be a beach bum for a week, go to every single college basketball game in a 50 mile radius for a month, play golf with my Dad every day for a month, I don’t know but that sounds EXCITING to me!!!!  My goal is to make it work, little step by little step, sprint by sprint, paycheck by paycheck, I hope you will join me on the ride, because in many ways you already have by reading a blog or two and of course this one.

Creating a Business Multiple Revenue Streams-30 Day and 45 Day Update

Well I haven't created the next Google or Nike, but I have doing well with my side hobby(can't call it a business just yet).  My goal if I didn't type it the computer("the files are in the computer", name that movie?)  was to sell 1K worth of items on eBay, i switched that about 2/3 of the way through to make 1K profit, because for all anyone knew I could be spending 4K but selling 1K worth of items, that's not very impressive.

Well Said Sir, Well Said

I am happy to report I failed!  Well not exactly, I did reach my original goal of 1K in sales, but it did take me and extra 5 days to reach the 1K mark.  I have had over 100 items listed in my store called GQ Casual , give it a look if you would like, pretty much all Men's Clothing.


I would love to say I bought some used clothes yesterday and threw them on eBay the next day and I made a killing.  I have been doing this off and on since college, mostly with new clothes in college and used clothes over the last couple years.  I used a lot of trial and error, research, and knowledge about brands, sports, and what guys like to wear(hint I don't buy skinny jeans).  It took me time to develop a template for the items and change things like adding logos, telling why I sell on eBay "the man fund", and I even used to wash and steam almost every item I had, crazy amount of time.

Headquarters, Beats Me

EBay is not for everyone, taking the pictures, finding the items, shipping, listing the items this all takes time, but I enjoy 90% of it(listing it, not so fun).  As of right now I know this can make me money, not quit my day job money, but enough to have some extra money on the side to be used for whatever I want, whether it's paying off debt, going to a comedy show, or buying something I like and want.  Only time will tell on what I plan to do with this stream of revenue, but I do know it's currently coming in and I'm happy doing it.


Is there a business or hobby on the side that you do that makes money?  Tell me more about it, I love to see comments.

Cutting Back is Great, Winning is Better, and Earning More is Best

Sprint #1 and My Victory Pose

Everyday many of the personal finance blogs preach cutting back and living frugal.  I agree with and do my best to practice many of the principals talked about on a daily basis.  I however lean more towards the Big Wins and most importantly Earning More is the best.

I tend to look at it with examples, I can cut back on my groceries for $40 less a month, I can research on buying my next TV and save a $200 for the big win, or even better I can start a side gig and make an extra $500 month.  All are great, but as I prefer I'd rather go out and kill something and drag it back, you know earn the extra money.

I can't stress this enough, the best way to pay off debt, live comfortably, and be happier overall is to earn more, simple right. (I'm a work in progress and always remember you can't outearn your spending). This can mean so many things.  I turned to eBay to buy and sell items which earns me an income.  This just happens to be something I'm comfortable with, that I know a good amount about or have learned over time.  I work at a bank so it really has nothing to deal with my current job, just something I enjoy. I started doing this for fun, little extra money for going to a Daniel Tosh stand up, nice dinner for the wife and I, since it felt like what my Dad like to call his "beer money" fund, it is great.

So the question is Why can't you go out and do something similar, maybe you are a mechanic full-time, why not earn more by doing oil changes on the side, something simiple.  Let's say your a nurse, why not teach part time on the side.  There is a 101 different things you can do to give your income a boost.  I'm not just talking about your everyday full-time job working the 9-5, which you can also do Overtime, Bonus, Raises.  We can all make a little extra money and I am a great example of just trying something out that I figured out how to make extra money, who knew it would be eBay.

On that note I am very proud to announce, Sprint #1 has been completed, with some money to spare. 

I just paid the last little bit off and I am officially at a $0 balance on my student loan.  It's not a debt free scream, but it makes me happy to know I can do it.  I paid off over 3K in 4 short months!

It's been awhile between writing, but working overtime and eBay will do that, but as always expect more and more because this feels great and I want everyone to know it and share.

Please share an example of how you worked a side gig whether it was to pay off debt or buy an ice cream cone, I love hearing it.  Thank you!!!

Retire Rich or At Least Early

I recently read an article from Afford Anything with the article titled Party Like You're a 72-Year Old Retiree.  I like to read a lot of personal finance type of blogs and this was one of my favorites.  I planned on writing about something similar, but instead I'm going to take some of the key points and write about them in a little more detail from my side.

I'm 31 am I ever going to be retired???

"My parents, in short, have the coolest retirement ever. And what’s crazy is that they didn’t start saving for retirement until their 40s. That flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that if you don’t start saving for retirement by age 25, you’re totally screwed"

The median income for households is right around 50K, so let's use that number for our talk.  If you take $400 every month(this assumes you have $0 saved so far) at a 6% rate(lower than historical data), at the age of 65 you will have 500K.  That's some pretty good coin, but it's so hard to think that far ahead and to be honest $400 a month sure does seem like a lot.  Also remember that we are relying solely on the stock market in this scenario and while I think the stock market is the Golden Ticket, people from the Great Depression, the .Com crash, and the recent crash of the housing market and bail outs, makes me a little nervous.  So is it possible absolutely, but 34 years of giving up $400 month to have a half of a million dollars at 65, doesn't really get me to excited, so I'm guessing it won't for you either.

Keys to Retiring Early

"Yet by the time they both turned 60, only 20 years after they began working, they were ready to retire. They probably could have done it sooner if they weren’t raising little ol’ me."  They have zero personal debt. They paid off their mortgage within 7 or 8 years. They’ve never taken out a car loan and they’ve never carried a credit card balance."

So seeing the big picture or little pieces of motivation that come along really help and the statement above did just that.  So a pretty broad example but a couple took 20 years of saving had no personal debt, paid off their mortgage extremely early, and never had a car loan or credit card balance to speak of.  I am taking steps to get rid of every one of these retirement killers.  I had a car loan and sold my car and thus got rid of the loan with it.  I have a mortgage, currently on a 7 year plan to pay it off(the other option is when I turn 60 or in 2033 it would be paid off, sounds terrible), and I can happily say I have paid off my credit card balance.  

Enjoy Today and Tomorrow

"Yes, you should still enjoy today. Don’t get so obsessed with retirement that you forget the present moment. Travel when you’re young AND when you’re old. The world will change a lot in the next few decades. You’ll get to watch it happen.

But don’t forget that packing your lunch to work, brewing your own coffee, driving an old car – that’s not really a sacrifice, is it? Not compared to what you’ll gain."

Enjoy today.  Travel, Explore, do what you enjoy the most.  Just remember that you should not do it with a credit card, cash advance, personal loan, or anything else that requires you owe someone especially the bank.  The last statement really hit home, especially with my Saving for Vacation with Grocery Money  I really don't mind packing my own lunch, brewing coffee at the house, and taking the bus or train.  It certainly can be tempting living in Chicago with all the great places to eat and drink, but like Afford Anything said it's not really a sacrifice is it?