Queercents

I don’t have much experience with having a cleaning service. About 10 years ago, when I was single, lived alone and regularly worked about 50 hours a week I hired an aquaintance who was using housecleaning to make ends meet after quitting her corporate job. This arrangement worked out great for both of us and lasted about 9 months until she moved on to other employment.

Finances have felt too lean to hire someone to help clean since we purchased our home. And it always seemed silly to spend money on something that LaLa and I could do ourselves. After all our house is only about 1200 sq ft! But now that the debt is paid off, and our emergency fund is in place…we decided to investigate options for domestic harmony. Read the rest of this entry »

I used to buy a lot of electronics and computer equipment that seemed like great deals due to mail in rebates. Then I’d let that rebate slip get lost in a stack of papers, or lose the receipt, and I rarely followed through on rebates. Now we have a system that ensures we take advantage of any and all rebates that come our way.
Here’s what we did to wrangle our rebates:

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite loving the overall idea of podcasts and the subscription model potential they bring to the party, I admit to being slow in partaking of the bounty. I’ve just never been a huge “talk radio” fan and sometimes it’s fainful to admit to my friends that I actually do not listen to NPR.

However, I do have two podcast subscriptions that I feel are must haves: Battlestar Galactica and Scott’s Money Blogger Podcast. Scott’s podcasts put an even more personal face (er…voice) to the bloggers he interviews granting a peek behind the scenes of your favorite money blogs.

I was honored when Scott asked me for an interview a little while back and I had great fun talking with him about personal finance, technology and sundry other topics. He is now through with performing his podcasty magic and has published the interview. I hope I didn’t ramble too much…I admit I was a little nervous!

• My Money Blogger Podcast interview
• Subscribe to Scott’s podcast via iTunes Music Store (opens iTunes)
• Use WebJay to listen to Scott’s interviews through a variety of players
• Subscribe to the Battlestar Galactica commentary via iTMS (opens iTunes)

We started contemplating term life insurance about four years ago. LaLa had just been laid off from our company and we were about to close on our first house purchase. Oh, and having poured all our savings into the purchase, we had no emergency fund (can you tell the layoff happened after the purchase, and before the closing? It did.)

We thought about a modest policy to basically cover the mortgage in the event of my death. And then we kept putting it off. We were quoted at approximately $40 a month for what we wanted and though it was a reasonable expense, we just never made it a priority to follow through.

A year later I was unemployed (the company folded) and LaLa was working a part-time McJob because the bottom had fallen out of the MA tech market and there was a glut of web designers out there and no jobs. We literally felt we couldn’t afford $40/month at that time (you can save the penny-wise, pound-foolish comments for the end…I promise I have a point) Read the rest of this entry »

Debt Hater recently asked me how I paid down my credit card debt so quickly. First let me correct what I stated in that post about how much debt got paid off when. At the end of 2004 we had over $11,000 in credit card debt…most of it had been aquired in the preceding 3 months. By March I had it paid off, but I added $3000 in order to fund a Roth. This took another 3 months or so to pay off (at a very low promotional interest rate) so the net effect was paying off $14,000 *total* in about six months.

Clearly that’s not typical and I am no saving superhuman so let me explain the circumstances that led to the quick debt paydown and payoff. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a Costco membership you probably already know about the chickens. A hot, plump, juicy, rotisseried bird for about $5 that has a lot of rapturous fans. Including me. LaLa and I can typically squeeze about 5-6 meals out of one chicken using a few simple recipes. Now that we are attempting to concentrate our shopping during a month, this includes a montly Costco trip. So the 6 meal Costco Chicken is becoming a welcome monthly ritual.

We’re not the only ones using a pre-cooked chicken to jump-start our meals and we’re still scouting for more recipes. But below are our favorite uses of the chicken and I hope to post more in the future. These recipes feed the two of us, and the chicken is typically one of many ingredients (or else it wouldn’t last, right?). You will obviously have to adjust for your own portion needs, etc

The key to this not being an a$-ache is to get all the chicken off the bone asap (we usually do this right after the “first meal”) and preferrably shred it right away and store it in a container in the fridge already shredded. These meals then are very easy to make…trust me, I’m lazy! Read the rest of this entry »

MSNBC has an article on how ‘Generation Debt’ is Going Deep Into the Red. The increases in the cost of housing and a college education have far outpaced income increases while the typical job market for college graduates is shrinking in favor of an expanding sector that typically pays minimum wage. This leaves our youth facing the prime of their lives with crushing debt. It also leaves them unlikely to ever match their parents’ standard of living.

Sounds pretty gloomy. This situation isn’t anyone’s “fault” but I have to wonder what effect that boomer parents have had in all this. As a generation they’ve experienced some huge shifts in the financial landscape, and that has to play a part.

Don’t despair though. I do think there are many folks out there who aren’t sticking their head in the sand, but meeting and beating that level of debt head on (cheers to our younger PF bloggers decimating debt!). The article’s final page has several suggestions for grabbing hold of the financial reins including creating a budget, setting financial goals, saving for retirement and other helpful basics. Read the rest of this entry »

Purchasing refurbished items can be a great way to lower costs, but it pays to be careful. SmartMoney has some tips for buying refurbished merchandise.

So far we have received kale with each organic vegetable delivery. Luckily I have found a recipe for kale that LaLa actually likes. It’s based on my mother’s delicious Kale & Sausage Soup recipe but I tweaked it for no good reason other than I can’t even leave a damn fine recipe alone (honestly we were short on some ingredients). I also tried to keep dirty pots to a minimum because I’m a lazy cook! You can substitute any good quality smoked sausage or even try making your own to make this recipe cost even less to make.

Clutter2Cash’s Kale & Kielbasa Soup (Serves 4)

28oz beef broth (I chose Swanson Organic Beef)
2 medium potatoes
8″ Harrington’s Kielbasa
1 bunch kale - cut off stalks & shredded fine
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 large cloves garlic minced or put through a press
1/8 tsp. white pepper
Salt
Frank’s Red Hot sauce

1. Cut kielbasa lengthwise in half, then in half lengthwise again. Slice each of the 4 long pieces into 1/4″ wide pie shaped slices. Cook the kielbasa pieces in dutch oven or stockpot over medium-high heat until the fat has rendered and the pieces are browned. Drain and discard the fat, blot the kielbasa in paper towels and set aside.

2. Add olive oil to cooking pot and saute garlic over medium heat until fragrant and soft ~ 2 mins

3. Cut up potatoes with skin on (the smaller the pieces, the faster they’ll cook) and add broth and potatoes to pot when garlic is done. Bring pot to a boil and cook until pototoes are soft.

4. Mash potatoes in broth while still over flame and/or use a stick blender to break the potatoes down and fully blend into the broth.

5. Add kale, kielbasa, vinegar and pepper to the pot and cook at a simmer until kale is tender @ 15 mins. (you might add some water or more broth here if the beef broth has really cooked down)

6. Add salt and Frank’s to taste (I give it 10 good shakes for spicy vinegar goodness)

While I’m sure there are many less expensive recipes to cook (potato soup anyone?) this is still a very affordable meal to make - we get two meals out of it - and it’s a great hearty winter soup. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I fear we ate it too fast Enjoy!

Travelgnome alerted me to the news that google has finally launched a beta of their financial news service, Google Finance. They certainly have a long way to go to catch up to Yahoo! Finance, but I like the looks of where they’re going.

Right now, their initial offerings seem aimed at investors in research mode and not much else. But the “web 2.0″-ness of the integrated research tools are impressive to me as a n00b investor.

The chart of stock prices is particularly slick looking and my favorite feature of this view is that recent news items are pegged to the stock price so you can see the impact (if there is one). This doesn’t seem to appear on all stocks (yet?) … I didn’t see the news items represented on the price chart for CompuCredit (CCRT), but it was there for both google (GOOG) and Coca-Cola (KO).

Another feature that is technically “cool” is that when you hover over each person in management you might get a picture. I don’t really think that’s of value to the everyday investor, but it *is* pretty neat in a geeky-integration-of-data way.

After you have completed a few stock searches, the main page is updates with your recent searches and news that is relevant to those ticker symbols. The main page is pretty sparse and useless until this change…and even then it’s not terribly exciting.

The portfolio tool is sort of sad, but I’m glad they launched at least enough of it to enable data entry. At this point you can enter the symbol, cost, and number of shares and the portfolio will show you all the totals. I can’t wait to see what they do with this though, it is what I am most excited about. Google, get yer graph on and make that portfolio sexxxxxy!

I’m only just beginning to learn about investing so that has colored my opinions. More than anything I am excited to see how they improve the overall service, but I’m glad they got it out the door so we can all take a peek.