Life on Snow Hill

For years, I’ve made mental notes to sit down and set up something to track and hopefully trim down my spending. Even more importantly, I’ve needed to just set up a budget and stick to it.

Yesterday, I ran across an article over at Cents to Share explaining how you can set up a budget in Excel (or any other spreadsheet application). I’m a Mac user, and although Microsoft Excel is available for Mac, I prefer Numbers, part of Apple’s iWork suite.

To follow along with the article, you’ll need a basic understanding of spreadsheets, cells, and how to reference cells in formulas. Just understanding the concept is fine – the article explains the formulas in great detail, although the formulas themselves are not complex in the least. That said, I’d like to stress again that although the article is written about and references Excel, the formulas will be identical in any spreadsheet application I’m aware of – it only uses simple =SUM(CELL:CELL) formulas.

I ran across the article, and it looked like a simple task. The hardest part was categorizing everything I have expenses for – the rest was simply following the instructions and logic of how the spreadsheet was structured. Once you have that, it’s a breeze.

I encourage everyone to go take a look at the article. I plan for this to be a simple, but effective financial tool for my wife and me to use to better manage our finances. I even added a chart to give me a picture of how our income looks, compared to our accounts and expenses.

When you’re finished, you’ll have a result that looks something like the following (taken from the linked article – the numbers are not real..oh, and click for full size):

We’ve all seen them, or at least heard about them. Some scammer sends out spam emails to every imaginable address saying he has inherited millions of dollars, but it is only accessible if it goes through a bank in the US. For your willingness to help, you’ll be given a large percentage of said inheritance. All they need is your bank account number and personal information to complete the transaction.

I always promised myself that if I was ever presented with the opportunity to have some fun with one of these scammers I would. Replying to one of those emails, though, would raise red flags with them and they’d just move on.

But yesterday, I had my chance. I’m publicly listed on Skype, and I get spam messages once in a while. Yesterday was one of those times I got a scammer sending me spam on Skype’s instant messaging service. I was promised a large sum of money if I would provide the means to transfer the inheritance.

I replied to the message asking the sender if he would call me to discuss the details and provided the phone number. He asked me if it was my mobile number, to which I replied it was a land line. He asked again would I help, and my reply was to just give me a call.

Of course, the number I provided was to the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Maybe next time I’ll be brave enough to have them call me directly and I can get some information to send to the FBI myself…who knows. That was enough fun for my day though.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, July 16, 2008) is the 17th Annual Ride to Work day.  Basically, the idea is to promote motorcycling as a legitimate means of transportation, not only on the 3rd Wednesday of every July, but each day of the year.

There are tons of facts and information on traffic congestion, gasoline usage and parking space, and how riding motorcycles rather than driving a car really help out in those areas.  For example, in cities where a parking space is a real pain to find, riding a motorcycle can help simply because 3-5 motorcycles (depending on their size, of course) can fit in the same space as a single car.

I’m already doing my part, because I ride to work and anywhere else I can get away with.  As long as I don’t have to haul something that I can’t handle on the motorcycle, I’m riding it.  I calculated my MPG one day, and my bike gets right around 44 MPG.  My truck (my only other vehicle at this time) gets about 15 MPG.  You can see a huge cost savings right there alone.  Especially since I drive 30 miles one way to work.  That’s 60 miles every day – 300 miles a week!  That’s a savings of just over 13 gallons of gas each week, and at around $4 per gallon (I picked an even number, but it’s close), that’s a savings of $52 a week, or a little over $200 a month!  Yep, I’ve just paid for the new set of tires for my bike just by riding it for a month.

Apparently it costs more than 1 cent to make a penny these days with the rising costs of metals.  I wonder if the metal in the penny is actually worth more than 1 cent, though.

Congress is talking about bringing back the steel pennies they used back during World War 2, and maybe even using steel for nickels.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a steel penny, but if it costs me, the taxpayer, less, then I’m all for doing it.

By now, everyone in the USA has heard that they’ll be receiving an economic stimulus check from the IRS this year.  Some of you may have already received yours.  I’m still waiting for mine to come – it should be soon though.

I’ve been excited about getting this money ever since I heard the plan was even being proposed.  I believe, however, that for the most part it will not be used as the government had hoped for.  First of all, with the rising gas prices, OPEC will be receiving a lot of it.  Credit card companies will more than likely be next on the list of the beneficiaries of this government program.  Third will probably be Walmart – yes, I’m that specific.  I say Walmart because they’re only the largest retailer in the US, and they generally have good prices.  So, if someone needs to buy something with that ‘free’ check, why not get it at Walmart so that they can get a good value for their money.  Now I’m sounding like a Walmart advertisement…

Walmart will probably not see a dime of my stimulus dollars.  The first thing I’ll be doing is buying a set of new, much needed tires for the truck.  The remainder of the money will be used to pay off some debt that I’ve yet to recover from since Christmas.

What will you do with yours?