I know I’ve been MIA for a while, but I’ve had quite a few weeks. My car was broken into at the gym, I had to cancel my Christmas vacation plans, and then I got sick with a massive sinus infection. Blarg. So now we can continue the scheduled craziness.

Actually, I’m done with 2008. I will say it had it’s moments, both good and bad, but you all know what happened and how everything went down, and how you responded to it. We’ve all made it through one more year together, and 2009 looms ahead as our next challenge. I will say that between the housing market, the bust of the 401(k)’s, and the extreme job loss, all of which I could have been affected by immensely, I came out relatively unscathed, because I wasn’t stupid about the way I chose to live. I feel fortunate about that. In fact, I did better in 2008 than I did in 2007. Good for me.

2009. Wow. 9 years into the new millennium, and I’m still not sure where the time went. It seems like just yesterday that I was spending the 1999-2000 new year in my friends basement having a lan party, bridging networks over the cable modem, playing Quake 2, and downloading at incredible 100k speeds through napster with cross-over cables because “what’s a router?”.

Time flies, I guess, and a lot of us have accomplished a lot of things in the time that has passed. I’m looking forward to 2009, which is going to propel me to the big 30 in 2010. It seems so close too, when I’ll be entering my “prime earning years”, and yet, I’ve already got a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to have for a few more years yet. I would like to be a bit better off, but I’m learning now how to do that.
I expect great things in 2009, because I’m going to make them happen. Good luck everyone.

Haven’t posted much. Haven’t had the heart to, really. Lets see… this week..

I got hit with the flu:

I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest:

And then tonight I had my wallet, phone and stereo stolen out of my car.

Needless to say, I’m starting to find I like mspaint. It’s very theraputic.

Things are progressing slowly right now. Over the past few days I have been filled with apathy and sloth, and I’ve had a hard time starting the motor, so to speak. Actually, it’s been going on for about a week. So I’m trying to force myself to write.

One thing now as we encroach on the 2 week mark that I’ve noticed is, damn, whoever said money can’t buy happiness is flat out wrong. Either that, or money helps stave off complete and utter boredom. I guess you could say I’m coming down off the high of the main idea, which of course, was to live as frugally as possible for 2.5 years to pay off the mortgage. Being as excited as I was at the prospect of being able to do it and to catalog my thoughts and such through this website, I didn’t really think about the mental toll this was going to take. However, I will endure.

I have noticed that a lot of websites that concentrate on writing about various social projects and such tend to give ideas and information based on experience of living to the extreme of their particular conditions. Zen Habits is one of those blogs that immediately comes to mind. Leo’s a good writer, with some pretty amazing articles who makes a living preaching what he practices, but I think what a lot of people who write realize is that while they’re taking their ideas to such levels, it’s not possible for everyone else to follow suit. I suppose then that a blog like this can act as a guide for those people who would like to cut back on spending and find alternatives to things they spend money on, and through my own extreme lifestyle change to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible, that information becomes available.

It’s nice to think that possibly, I could help people is pretty awesome.

Oh, also, on Tuesday, I got served court papers for an auto accident I was involved in back in 2007. That was pretty sucktastic. Fortunately, I guess Geico is being awesome and handling everything. We’ll see how that all turns out.

So new ways of getting things for free – I’ve signed up for a local radio station called KTAR which is giving points for doing things like taking surveys, listening to the station, and referring friends, among other things. I’m hoping people will help me out, sign up (use a temporary email address if you want) and put me down as a referral. I’m using nailzebay at gmail dawt com. I’m going to see how many points I can wrack up. See what I mean about living the life to the extreme?

I think the doom and gloom that started to settle over this whole idea is going to be something I need to ride out, and that I will, and this project is going to force me to find new ways to entertain myself, and frankly, I don’t think that’s a bad goal for anyone.

Ok, sue me, I missed the “one week” post. I couldn’t even keep on it for one week. Ah well, I’m back now with some new information on saving money.

So this weekend was bad. We didn’t do anything except sit around and literally kill time. Michael played Warcraft all weekend and me? Well, I watched a lot of internet TV and some videos, while playing some Fable 2. Oh, also, I reorganized my Hard Drives. Yah. What a scream. I did manage to find, however, that I missed 90’s alternative music more than I realized. Here’s a list of some songs I threw onto my Creative Zen to jam too. There’s some stuff from the early 2000’s too, but that’s OK, it’s all pretty similar. Sometimes you forget good music exists from the past, or beyond your current listening scope, so I guess I can’t call the weekend a total wash. At the very least, it shows me that I need to find out some cool, free things to do in Phoenix, or anywhere really. That should make for a good post soon.

However, I do have something interesting to report. Over the weekend, we made our weekly meal plan, and went to the store to aquire sweet and savory goodness. This is the first time we set out with coupons in tow as well. After picking up all the necessities, making sure everything we bought was actually marked down through the use of the store’s club card*, we owed approximately $80. Not a bad deal for picking up about 3 boxes of cereal, toothpaste, shampoo and body soap (hey, that stuff adds up with normal produce and juice). Handed over the coupons and the bill went down another $15! Man, had I known coupons could save me this much money on things I buy anyway I would have started using them a long time ago.

All said and done we saved over $50 between coupons and the “club card”. Which I don’t really consider savings at all, except that we bought the stuff on sale.

So you can get coupons from the Sunday paper, obviously, but there are more unconventional means to getting them. If you don’t mind websites that install programs, I’ve been using Coupons.com and I’ve found some good deals. I’ve used the coupon dispensers in the stores for products they want you to buy. They don’t double those, but hey, they add up too, and you can take one and wait for a sale to add to the savings. Especially if it’s something you buy regularly. Even the registers at most places spit out coupons based on what you buy. Normally? Junk. Sometimes you can score big. I got 50% off Benefiber (comes in handy when you’re trying to eat healthy, believe me). Turns out the coupon was worth $5. Not bad for a piece of paper, yes?

This isn’t just limited to grocery shopping either. If you plan on buying anything online, you can probably find some kind of promotional code for almost any store. They’ll change every so often, so you have to search, but a lot of times you can find some kind of sale for “members” which get leaked to the interwebs. Keep an eye on the sales and you’ll be shocked on what you can find.

Some websites I like for these particular sales are:
Ben’s Bargains
Slick Deals
Price Watch
and to a lesser extent: Woot.com

*Shoppers Club Cards can, in fact, track who you are and what you buy. However, you’re not absolutely required to be honest about your name, address, and phone number when you get them. Most times, you won’t even have to fill out the form for one. Just take the card and go. I have never provided my name and phone number for any of the grocery cards I’ve carried.

Thought I wasn’t going to make it didn’t you? It’s 10:45, and I don’t have much to say today. Thanks to some hard work my Myco my links on the page are no longer a horrendous blue on black. Things should now be much easier to read.

Man, not having TV has sucked today. But that’s just today. So I’ve been cleaning up my HDD (I have files all over the place.) which has given me a chance to go through some really old pictures and rediscover some music I had totally forgotten about. Let me just clarify that without any amount of doubt in my mind, the late 90’s and early into 2000’s was by far the best time for music.

I’m definitely going to have to post more on this later. Still trying to work on something for the site. Will re-attempt tomorrow.

One of the things I have to worry about in an economy like we’re facing today is that it’s very possible that my job could be cut at any moment. Fortunately, my position is safe as it’s funding itself and I have entrenched and endeared myself to those I support, however, one can never say never, right?

So how does one make sure you’re indisposable to a company? In my case it’s not terribly difficult. You see, not only do I have a State Job, but I support the people who run the largest College of the largest University in said state. It’s no fewer than 70 people. I’ve been doing it for a little over a year and a half now, and I made it a point to be friendly with everyone. Not that it was particularly hard to do, as everyone I support is extremely high quality. I’m pretty confident I’m going to be OK.

But I’m not sure. So I’ve taken some precautions. I’ve updated my resume, I’ve talked to my boss about the situation involving the budget cuts we’ve been seeing throughout the school, and asked point blank what we can expect in the future. I’ve started in on advancing my knowledge base. I’ve taken up and gotten really into persuing more computer certifications, Server+, MSCE, CISCO. One of my co-workers commented on the fact that I had recently, after much procrastination, spearheaded the charge ahead to greater education. I responded with “well, if I don’t do it now, someone else will and then come for my job.” It was a pretty profound statement that was a spur of the moment thing, but it kind of made me stop and realize I was right.

We all have to take the necessary steps to make sure the company know’s we’re irreplaceable. The problem in most of the industries, is that there’s no company/employee loyalty with the elimination of pensions and the start of 401k. Now, because things are the way they are, we have to suck it up and re-sell ourselves every day to our employers. I will do that, but I will make myself marketable should the unthinkable happen.

Good luck out there.

Today I returned the Cable box to Cox and upped my internet bandwith speed from 1.5 to 20 mbits. I figure it’s worth the extra monies since we’ll be relying on it for all of our vegetable-type entertainment. Streaming video is now in full effect from the post i made earlier and it seems to be working out pretty well! I don’t think I’ll be going back to cable. Maybe ever.

Being that we’ve discontinued the cable but continued the cable internet, I moved the cable modem to the living room so I could hard-wire the Xbox 360 and the Media Center computer (just a spare we had lying around, I bought nothing) to the router-to the cable modem. The less things wireless on my network I’ve got going the better, as it keeps the speed up. The added benefit is that I can now play DVD ISO rips from the computer in the bedroom (where my dvd collection is backed up) via the network! AWESOME. That right there is some High Quality Shit. I think my future may include some climbing around and wiring the house with Cat 5.

I know what I’m going to give my mom for Christmas that won’t cost anything. I’ll probably post about that at some point. Just not now.

This live cheaply thing. It’s working. I know I’m only into day 4 here, but I really think this might be the start of something.

Not much to report in on. Shut off the cable yesterday soon after I posted and threw in a DVD to watch as all of my pre-recorded shows were now unavailable to me. (Who knew?). Not a big deal as I’ve caught up with most of them through the Online sites I mentioned yesterday.

Today I posted my Bose Lifestyle 50 system on Craigslist. I’m hoping that it sells, because it would be a nice chunk of extra change for me. Also, I asked my parents for tickets to the Sabres/Coyotes game in January since I can’t buy the tickets myself. I’m sure the family will get them for me.

Tonight I have plans to go to the gym (one luxury I will not give up), and futz around on the computer a bit more, do some behind the scenes for now work on the website. I did manage to do some research today about living on the cheap, so I’ll be reviewing some articles and seeing how things go.

I was going to write up some stuff about how to save some money via not driving as much and telling your car insurance company, but apparently, Esurance.com doesn’t offer anything in the way of discounts for this particular. I imagine this has to be a foolish mistake, as other companies I’ve gotten quotes from have distinctly mentioned they do this. Well, 4 days until my insurance cost lowers and I swap companies. I’ll write about it then.
Until tomorrow: Spend wisely!

So yesterday was the beginning of the adventure, and now we dig into the first bit of fun. On tap today is cancelation of Cable (save broadband internet, to be written off for work as I work from home once a week), and calling my car insurance company to let them know I will be driving less.

Cancelling cable is a decision we made based on the fact that with Cable TV and the internet, we spend $110 a month! We have extended cable, and one DVR box. TV is just too much money to watch. I’ll definitely miss Cartoon Network (shut up, all of you. Cartoons rule, and if you think it’s childish, I just say that I have more fun than you still!) and the Food Network, but I don’t really value them at 70$ a month. I have an old computer and an extra 300GB Hard Drive I can set up to function as my tuner box and DVR with an over the air HD tuner for a one time cost of $60. Which I will have to find a way to get for free.

For those of you who’re looking to get rid of your cable, but feel like you’d either miss out on too many of your shows or whatnot, I would like to inform you that many of your favorite shows can be watched FOR FREE on the internet! Legally! Not only that, but you’d also be able to watch far, far fewer commercials. There are several sites out there that will accomplish this feat for you. For example, I stumbled across Hulu.com at work recently, and have found, much to my delight, full episodes of some of my favorite shows, such as Family Guy, American Dad, The Simpsons, Firefly, and Fringe. There’s a list of all TV shows with full episodes, not just short clips, though it does offer those as well.

Combine this with an RSS feed for each show which alerts you to new shows uploaded to Hulu and a good RSS feeder (I use Outlook, but there are multiple ones out there), you’ll never have to worry about finding it through their sometimes convoluted interface. Shows are typically available the day after they air, and some are carried in 480p resolution (which for the internet is pretty good).

For those of you who try Hulu and can’t find what you’re looking for, the major networks do carry their shows on their website, ABC.com, NBC.com and CBS.com are good places to start for the network shows. Though CBS is severely lacking in full episodes of their programming, you are likely to find whatever you’re looking for, and will only have to watch around 4 commercials through the whole show.

What do you need to do this, if you so choose to do it in your living room, is a computer with a broadband internet connection. This can be shared with other computers throughout the house using any one of several residential grade Wireless Routers. Chances are you already have one set up. That, and a web browser, and you’re pretty much all set! If your TV is capable of VGA Plug (which looks like the plug that attaches your monitor to your PC) or has an HDMI input, you can purchase a cable REALLY cheap online from My Cable Mart. For those of you who need VGA, you can pick up a 6 foot cable for $7. A far better price than something from a local bestbuy. A DVI to HDMI cable, which you would need for a HD TV will run you $8 for a 6’ length. Buy it in stores, and you’ll be paying 5 times that much!

On a separate note, none of these companies are paying me to link to them, but if they want to send me some free stuff or whatever, I’m all for that. I’m merely linking to them because they’ve EARNED my respect. Well, the ones that sell stuff, anyway.

For those of you who really want to keep your local channels, it’s a little known fact that HD channels are broadcast over the airwaves for free, much like your normal channels, and can be picked up by an HD Antenna/Tuner, which can be installed into your computer as well! I’ve heard it works surprisingly well, but I will have to try it myself. You won’t get extended HD channels like ESPN and Food Network (boo!) but, it’s a start! Look for internet TV to become more popular in the future.

I would be happy to price out a media center computer that would be TV-in ready and internet capable for under $700. If you’re truly interested, I’m willing to build it for you (if you buy parts) for a barter of something I need! WITH a Blu-Ray DVD drive! I worked up the information for my cousin recently, and he loves it.

942 days is a long time when you think about it. It looks a little longer when you put it into days than if you say 2.5 years, but it’s easier to count the time down when you can subtract from it more often. 22608 hours would seem like a joke. And it would be difficult to update that often. I’ve won my battle with Credit Card debt. I am officially credit card debt free right on schedule, as aggressive and insurmountable as that was in the beginning, but I did it. It feels great to finally after so many years get out from under that mess.

The next challenge is going to be a 2 person effort: Paying off a Condo in record time. 942 days, to be exact, starting today. I am hoping to be able to keep writing updates, blogging on a daily basis on how it’s working out, to pass the time, but also chronicle the adventures for anyone who could use some financial inspiration of their own. This is truly going to be a nearly impossible task to accomplish, but I think we can do it.

Some history:

We purchased a condo back in November of 2005 in a lower middle class area for $135,000. It was, in hindsight, a move born of ignorance and fear, as house prices continued to shoot up at what seemed like 10,000’s of dollars every day. We were afraid that if we didn’t act quickly, we would be shut out of the housing market forever. A lot of people, no doubt, were feeling the same way. Fortunately, I was not prepared to spend $250,000 on a house I didn’t like. Long story short, this place was excellent for the price at the time, and we bought it for asking. With an interest only 80% mortgage. On stated income. And financed the rest of the loan on a 20% HELOC. Oh yes, we were young and stupid. Go us.

It doesn’t end in tragedy, however, for though we purchased a property by, essentially lying, and succumbing to the lure and promise of a low low payment, I did make the correlation (thank you, mom!) that by paying the minimum payment requested, we would be paying nothing towards the principal of the house. Tight as it was, I insisted we pay a large chunk more. Continuing on good luck, our interest rates have dropped significantly, and while we owe 100% of the first mortgage, we have paid off, in 3 years, $7,000 of the HELOC loan. Not bad, if you look at the record around the USA, and especially in Phoenix!

The bad news is that other owners in the complex weren’t so diligent, and subsequently, prices have dropped along with the rest of the State, and Country to a devastating median selling price of $60-$75000. Ouch. Walking away and letting the bank deal with it had been considered quite often. Neither of our jobs are on this side of town, we’re not overly happy with the clientele of the neighborhood (our 3 neighbors, however, fortunately, are pretty amazing.) and well, shit, I feel like I can do better than this. However, I have somewhere instilled in me a sense of moral obligation to not walk away from bad choices I make. After all, someone else is just going to have to clean up after me. (Thanks again, mom!) And I vowed to see this through to the proverbial end.

I spent a little over a week running through different pay off scenarios, trying to figure out how fast we could feasibly pay this place off. I went to Suze Orman’s (who’s show I watch regularly) website, downloaded the Financial Budget Spreadsheet (requires Microsoft Excel Compatible Viewer to view, Excel to edit) and plugged away for around an hour. 4 years and 11 months was pretty close to a payoff date as I could come up with if we continued to spend like we have been. I was told to find a way to make it happen in 2 years. “Impossible!”, I said, and so the challenge lines were drawn. Cutting out every extra expense (except netflix, and cable internet), cutting out eating out, strict grocery/toiletry budgeting, and foregoing trips that were planned or looking forward to, and cutting way back on driving (for me, that’s easy, ASU offers an intercampus bus (it’s a freaking TOUR BUS) which is easy for me to get to), And devoting every extra red cent to it, we came up with a 2.5 year plan, and that is what we are going to do. After, of course, we save up a bit of an Emergency Fund.

Once the condo is paid off, the plan is to rent it out for a 500-650$ a month profit.

So expect some changes to the blog page. I’ve got some interesting ideas to start implementing.