A Way to Balance NOW and NO

April 28, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Why is it so hard for us to say no to ourselves? My friend Joe wrote here that No Equals Yes and saying no to stuff is actually saying yes to more important things in the future. I wrote similarly about the same subject here regarding a quote I heard on The Biggest Loser about saying no to instant pleasure really meaning yes to long term health in body or finances. It is apparently something we all have to think about – saying “NO”.

Here are some scenarios I see in families that make life difficult for spouses to say “no” instead of “now” when it comes to financial decisions (I’m using Joe’s list of examples):

The kids don’t understand why their college fund is more important than the game, so we’ll say no to our own well being much less a college fund so the kids can be happy NOW.
The wife has to drive a new car for “safety” reasons, so that is more important NOW than the retirement account.
The kids are being deprived of family memories and relationships if vacation isn’t at least a week at the nearest beach every year, so small vacations NOW become more important than saving for big-once-in-a-lifetime vacations to Hawaii or Europe.
The kitchen is so embarrassing we can’t invite people to our house so it needs to be upgraded NOW even though we’ve been called to give that money to a worthy cause.

The list of scenarios like this could go on and on. As you’re reading this don’t let it cause a spontaneous conflict with your spouse. Instead consider a method of managing it. What if you both made a list of things that are important to each of you. Stagger the list with one thing that is more important to her followed by one thing that is more important to him then repeat her, him, etc. Any time a NOW want comes up that will interfere with that list of priority you both have to agree where it will interfere or IF it will be allowed to interfere. It has to be ok to say NO.

For example when a weekend getaway or painting the bathroom becomes a NOW desire a decision has to be made where the money will come from or if the NOW is going to be NO. Refer to the list of priorities and you have to both agree where it’s coming from or the NOW becomes a NO. I’m not saying this happened at my house recently but….. it came down to taking it from the car repair savings or the Christmas savings. We agreed to take it from the Christmas fund and we have a plan for paying it back. That puts us in debt to our Christmas fund but we’re ok with that because we’d rather be in debt to ourselves than to anyone else. The answer was NOW this time but there are plenty of NO moments too. Let’s just say we’ve been wanting hardwood floors for a long time.

How do YOU manage these decisions effectively and keep the peace in your marriage?

Filed Under: Family, Money, Relationships

Debt Freedom Microwave

April 19, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

What's in your debt freedom microwave?

We’ve probably all heard the analogy “microwave fix”, “microwave culture”, or some variation of the word microwave with regards to how we impatiently want what we want and we want it now. It took me 10 years from the time I started accruing debt until the time I had enough, but I wanted to be out of the mess overnight. I wanted a microwave fix. If I look at every dollar of debt I had as a pound of frozen ground beef being thawed in the microwave then the four years it has taken me to get rid of my debt is probably about right. Thawing ground beef seems to take forever in the microwave, and it has to be checked on and turned every few minutes – sorta like having to review our debt payoff progress regularly. Think about that the next time you hear the microwave analogy. Getting out of debt is not like re-heating a donut. It’s like thawing out a bunch of frozen ground beef. It takes time and attention.

Filed Under: Money

A Tale of Two Checkbooks

April 18, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Many couples have decided that it is better for them to manage their finances separately because they just can’t come to agreement on how to manage them effectively together. From observations I’ve made of those couples it always seems to be working better for one of them than the other (I’ll just leave it at that for this post). Even older couples who I thought would have figured it out by now and must be at least in agreement to disagree and be ok with it really aren’t. On the surface they seem to be ok but when I happen to talk to them separately I can clearly see that they are completely broken by the situation.

This breaks my heart. I can’t say that I relate to attempting to manage the money separately, but I’ve felt the pain of the struggle. It seems impossible to agree on anything related to money and it seems that almost everything does relate to money in some way. The constant struggle causes a feeling of hopelessness to begin taking over. I thank God every day for blessing Shawna and me through our struggles. Now I observe others having the same struggles and occasionally I actually have bad dreams about it.

The most vivid bad dream I had involved a very heated argument. There in my dream stood this couple fighting about money in one of the most irrational ways one could possibly imagine.

They were both in the kitchen – a place where much family bonding or breaking normally takes place. She was infuriated by what he had done. He had had enough of her selfishness. She couldn’t believe how he was acting. After all, they would be able to manage their money wisely if he was able to control his spending. In his mind he was totally justified by what he had done to become more frugal. After all, that is what she wanted – right?

They had previously decided since they couldn’t manage their money together that he would be responsible for bills A, B, & C and she would be responsible for bills X, Y, & Z. It just so happened that one of his bills was the electric bill and the amount of the bill was ridiculous. So he had to find something to sell in order to pay the bill. He chose to sell something not only worth enough to pay the bill but something that would lower the bill in the future by getting rid of this one thing. It was something she used almost every single day and he viewed it as THE primary reason for the high electric bill. The electric bill was his responsibility so he accepted it as his DUTY to make it affordable. So he sold the oven.

I’d say managing money separately is not working for this couple. If you’re thinking “Good for her – now she doesn’t have to cook.”, then you’ve missed the point. I know this is a ridiculous dream, but we all could probably think of a moment in our own marriage where we acted just as ridiculous towards each other about a money-related issue. What would be the oven if you were the couple in my dream?

Filed Under: Money, Relationships

Kohl’s "Savings"

April 11, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

There is a true saver inside me, even though I have my spending moments – as shown on this receipt from a recent date-night shopping outing with my wife. Look how much I “saved”, but look how much I spent too. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like the use of the word “savings” when it comes to store discounts. It is understandable why the word is used in that context. If while shopping one receives $100 worth of stuff for $50 the perception is they “saved” $50.

The problem I have with calling this “savings” is the fact that this is not money being added to my savings account. It is ALREADY IN my account. I already worked hard for it, put it in the bank, and disciplined myself NOT to spend it until this transaction. All I’m doing is spending less, which means “DISCOUNT” to me, not “savings”. And I would rather Kohl’s put “Total Discount” at the bottom of the receipt because when I think of savings I think of my own hard work and effort to earn and save. But when I think of discount I relate it to someone or some business that had to GIVE me a discount. Then I would think of Kohl’s as being generous to me by GIVING me something – a discount.

Shawna, my wife, is more of the spender in our house. She argues with my thought process on this saving vs discount issue. It is a peaceful and light-hearted disagreement about the legitimacy of “saving” money by spending it. Shawna would say I COULD have spent $213.72 on the pictured receipt, but I didn’t – I only spent $66.19. Therefore, according to her, I “saved” $147.53. The thing is I would have NEVER spent $213.72 for the stuff we got. It would have gone back on the shelf and stayed there as I left the store. But since Kohl’s was offering us such a great DISCOUNT on those items I chose to spend $66.19 for them. Shawna still doesn’t agree 🙂

The items we bought at Kohl’s were TOTALLY discretionary. We could have put them back, waited, bought much cheaper alternatives at Goodwill – whatever. We did not HAVE to spend that money by any means. So I refuse to say I “saved” anything. I just prevented spending $147 from the money already in my savings account. HOWEVER, had we been starving to death, nothing in our cupboards, and desperately shopping at the grocery store to where discount or not we were going to leave there with something to eat, and we happened to spend $147 less than full retail, then I would feel like we actually “saved”. In that scenario the money was gonna be spent with or without the discount/savings because I’m gonna eat one way or the other.

I guess spenders would go a couple weeks without eating anything as long as they could have that next fun spending experience, but that just isn’t the case for me. I’ll wear the same clothes every day and holy underwear before I go hungry.

This argument is all in good fun spenders – try and see it from the savers point of view for a minute and realize that having money in the bank is just as important to us savers as having fun is to you spenders. What fun and light-hearted spenders vs savers arguments would you offer up to this discussion between Shawna and I?

Filed Under: Money, Relationships

Understanding WHY?

April 5, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

The question “why?” is asked at our house a lot because we have three small children. But I’ve noticed we don’t ask “why” enough as adults. Sometimes we just want to shake the kids and say “BECAUSE I SAID SO!”. We’ve told them WHAT to do and don’t want them to focus on understanding WHY. By the time we’re adults we’re conditioned to not ask why but inside we’re still wondering and we’d really like answers. Sometimes a healthy respect for authority is a good lesson to teach, but what I’m talking about is when a healthy understanding of WHY would improve the chances of the WHAT happening.

As leaders of people (bosses, teachers, etc) we might tend to give direction without providing full understanding of “why”. It is just easier to tell someone to do something and not explain to them why it is important or what a difference it will make. The boss gets frustrated because they feel like they’re constantly having to remind people to do something. Sometimes the problem might be the boss doesn’t have a good reason or explanation for what they’re telling people to do. But that’s another discussion.

When I’m teaching personal finance principles I’ll talk about reducing debt or saving and I tend to give people a list of actions they can take or a process they should follow, but I don’t do a great job diving in to the “why” for doing the things I suggest. Three months later when they haven’t made any progress I scratch my head wondering……”why”.

People know WHAT they’re supposed to do, but they might lack understanding the motivating WHY they should do it. We need to stress the WHY as much as the WHAT more often than we do. A person might be more willing to do a “pointless” daily report if they understand the report is actually one that could validate the need for their job or get them a raise. (The motivation needs to be positive by the way). A person might be more willing to become disciplined with their personal finances if they know and understand the goals and dreams they have for their life that will be positively affected by financial discipline. Knowing the WHY helps us endure the WHAT.

Do you have any examples of when you should be giving a better WHY explanation or a question of WHY you’d like a leader/boss to answer for you about a particular thing? Get an understanding of why and remind yourself of it often so that you are willing to do the what diligently.

Filed Under: Money, Personal Growth

Under Suspicion – Movie Quotes

March 31, 2011 by Mark Asbell 1 Comment

Recently I watched the movie Under Suspicion. I’ve always enjoyed watching movies, but it seems the more life experience I get the more I pick up on things I hear in movies that are good truths or realities in life. Here are some quotes I thought were very interesting and true in the movie.

“We tolerate when a celebrity or star athlete achieves great success and wealth, but when it is one of our own we feel like some injustice has occurred.”
“Jealousy is all the fun you think somebody else is having.”

Aren’t those so true? We’re ok with people we don’t know being successful, but when someone we know and feel “equal” to becomes successful we get jealous. It is our selfish nature, the same selfish nature that causes us to “keep up with the Jones”.

If you are one that has risen to a place of leadership or success you might have been the target of some of the jealousy. I could write an entire series on humility and I hope you have it, but chances are if you’ve succeeded at anything then there is someone who silently or blatantly wishes you hadn’t and would like to hold you back. For most people it is as simple as a naysayer who seems to always doubt your ability to accomplish something. They might not even mean to do it, but they do. Watch out for these people because subtle or not they can crush your dreams.

Filed Under: Money, Personal Growth Tagged With: quotes, suspicion, under

Start By Working With What You Have

March 30, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

When I help I Was Broke. Now I’m Not. teach personal finance I hear questions like these:

“What if I don’t have money?”
“How do I budget on disability?”
“How do I budget on unemployment?”

Normally the person asking one of these questions is looking for an excuse to continue making poor decisions, refusing to make sacrifices, or to just plain feel sorry for themselves. Every time I am approached with one of these questions I think of people I have coached.

A lady bringing home $750 per month has found a way for her and her son to live on that. A couple with no more room in their budget found a way to make up the $350 per month gap by turning a hobby into a small income stream. A person years behind on taxes finds the courage to open the statements and make the calls. A person with 50 years of debt payments ahead of them becomes determined to do what they can and pray for a miracle.

I don’t take the ‘woe is me’ mentality from people who aren’t willing to do what they’re capable of where they’re at rather than hoping something will just happen to get them what they want without their effort. Show me what you’re willing to do for yourself and I’ll help you see what can be accomplished with what you have.

Filed Under: Money

Lesson From the Biggest Loser About Saying No

March 29, 2011 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Shawna and I like to watch the Biggest Loser. It has something to do with life change and we all somewhere inside want to be healthier people no matter what our weight. I heard an interesting comment on the show the other week that caught my attention.

One of the contestants said something like “Saying no to junk food is saying yes to myself” and they were referring to the positive health benefit. It struck me as a very strong statement. Think about that for a minute and consider all the things we could put in that sentence in the place of junk food.

Saying no to the brand new car, or house, or boat, or whatever THING is saying yes to my future financial position.
Saying no to watching 4 hours of TV per night is saying yes to more quality family time.
Saying no to porn or facebook is saying yes to relationship with spouse.
Saying no to “me time” is saying yes to having time for God.

Anything you put in the place of the no and yes position is ultimately a benefit to you. It is a discipline issue.

What other ways can you think of to make a no a yes for our own good?

Filed Under: Faith, Family, Health, Money, Personal Growth, Relationships

Where’s The Adventure?

December 13, 2010 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

In going to work every day to earn enough money to pay the mortgage, insurance, dance lessons, cub scouts, and cell phone bill?

In being spoon-fed your whole life, never knowing what it is like to wonder how you will pay for your next meal?

In going to the beach every year for your 1 or 2 weeks off from the job you’ve had for years?

In never seeing new places or experiencing new things?

In living life alone, without a spouse or family or friends to share life with?

In living life without God, depending on him for our every need, spreading his gospel every chance we get?

Filed Under: Faith, Family, Money, Personal Growth

My Simple Car Buying Strategy

September 20, 2010 by Mark Asbell 1 Comment

In this post I went over some numbers that illustrate the favorable odds of gambling on used car purchases. That was just an example using averages. Now I’m going to share five of my real-life car buying scenarios as I’ve bought and sold cars for my wife and I.

1995 Mitsubishi Galant

Purchase price = $6000 (bought it on a payment plan)

Mileage at time of purchase = 60,000

Mileage at time of sale = 170,000

Approximate repairs over entire time driving = $500

Months we drove this vehicle = 84

Cost per month = $77

We hated this car but it ran great without giving us any trouble. I sold it to a college kid for $1000.

1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Purchase price = $12,000 (bought it on a payment plan)

Mileage at time of purchase = 80,000

Mileage at time of sale = 205,000

Approximate repairs over entire time driving = $1500

Months I drove this vehicle = 60

Cost per month = $225

I loved this vehicle. It was loaded and so nice, but I bought it on payments which wasn’t wise It didn’t cost much in repairs over the life of it but because I paid so much for it the cost per month is a little high for my liking. I sold this vehicle to a college kid for $1850 when it needed a fuel pump.

2000 Dodge Grand Caravan

Price = $3000

Mileage at time of purchase = 130,000

Mileage at time of sale = 225,000

Approximate repairs = $1000

Months driven = 72

Cost per month = $56

This is one of the most reliable minivans ever and the model year 2000 was THE most reliable year for this make/model of van. We got such a great deal on this vehicle. When it started giving us transmission trouble we gave it away to someone who wanted it.

2000 Cadillac Catera

Price = $5000

Mileage at time of purchase = 105,000

Still driving this vehicle.

Approximate repairs = $2500

Months driven = 65 so far

Cost per month = $115

This has been a good vehicle with luxuries that aren’t necessary but are nice to have. It has cost quite a bit in repairs so I’ve learned the hard way that luxury-name vehicles are more expensive to keep up. I’m still driving this car and plan to drive it a lot longer. It is still a nice car – not perfect – but I like it.

2004 Mercury Monterey

Price = $5000

Mileage at time of purchase = 108,000

Still driving this vehicle.

Approximate repairs = $1000

Months driven = 10 so far

Cost per month = $600

We really like this van. It is loaded with nice luxuries we weren’t used to having with our first minivan. We’ve only had it for 10 months and it has already cost us a considerable amount for repairs, but I believe we will make up that cost with many months of no repairs. At least that is what we’re praying for.

So here is My Car Buying Strategy:

Look for vehicles 3-5 years old with approximately 100k miles
- Most of the depreciation has already occurred
- 100k miles in 5 yrs usually means the vehicle got a lot of highway miles which is better than the wear and tear of stop-and-go city miles.
- If there are no obvious signs of problems with the vehicle the chances of winning on a cost-per-month basis are pretty good for a vehicle that is 5yrs old.
Look for the $5000 or less price range.
- There are a lot of decent vehicles at 5yrs old & 100k miles for a $5000 price range.
- It is easier to find these deals buying from individuals rather than dealerships or used car lots.
ALWAYS research reliability and car history.
- I prefer Edmunds.com for reliability. KBB.com is also a good place to do research. It is amazing to me how reliability ratings for the same make of car can be drastically worse from one year model to the next because of design changes.
- Carfax.com is worth the investment. If you’re going to shop pretty serious for a month or two it is worth it to go ahead and pay for unlimited reports for a month or two. Look for red flags such as wrecks, flood damage, major breakdowns, and routine service records.

My approach isn’t rocket-science but it is simple enough for even a normal busy person to do. The bottom line is have a plan/guidelines for your purchase, and have the discipline to stick to the plan.

Filed Under: Money