Daily Prayer

This is something God put on my heart this morning as I was praying that pretty much sums up where I'm at and where I want to be, thought I'd share in the event it's helpful to someone else! (links go to related verses/songs)

Lord I thank you for all you’ve done for me and all you’ve called me to.  Please draw my focus and heart away from the burdens of this world--work, car troubles, projects (insert your own here)--and towards the future-Heaven, ministry, the work you’ve called me to.

I pray you’d help me to be confident and persistent in those things and carry out the mission you have for me here at home, work, and in the Church with my eyes focused on you and what you’ve done (the Cross) and what you want (my Heart) for me and from me.

I pray you’d help me to seek first Your kingdom and not my own on a daily basis, to give grace to myself and those around me, to live with joy, purpose and love for others. To cast off the weight of this world and the burdens that come with it and live freely with my eyes focused on You--the author and perfecter of my faith and life. 

Amen

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40,000mi Prius Update

Figured it was time for a long overdue update on our little white driving appliance.  Since making the trade for our Sequoia April fools 2014 we've logged over 40,000mi, including a 3800mi road trip to the east coast and a whole summer of baseball on the road this year bringing our total fuel savings to over $5000.  Maintenance thus far has been minimal, oil changes, a set of tires (a little over $200 thanks to being a super common size) and a battery (regular not the hybrid one) summing to probably <$500 over almost 2 years.

She has started burning some oil but only ~1qt between 5k mile oil changes which is common on higher mileage Priuses (or Prii??) and doesn't stop 'em from running north of 300k miles so no big deal there.  As far as "upgrades" are concerned, we still get a ton of use out of the cargo box and a set of craigslist roof racks has allowed us to haul everything from bikes to lumber and a screen door without the need for a pickup truck.

All in all, although we do occasionally miss the Sequoia, we've been very happy with the Prius and it has certainly cured any pride issues resulting from vehicle ownership.  From a payoff standpoint, the Sequoia was worth about $7k when we traded it so we're not far from the Prius completely paying itself off in gas savings which should be attainable by it's 2yr anniversary in April assuming it doesn't end up on the chopping block to fund a minivan. It's not cool but it sure is awesome...

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Carpet for the Cure

After a month of waiting and living with the stench, our new carpet arrived last week along with some pretty pink surplus padding courtesy of our installer.  Curious of its origin, I Googled the part number on the label and discovered it was Mohawk SmartCushion (Memory foam!) and also that the color was due to a portion of proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen foundation.  All that aside, I'm still learning when and when not to do it myself but when we remodeled the master bath in our last house I made the right choice (with some persuasion of course) to pay someone to do the tile work. 

I'm not much of an engineer in the traditional sense but do have perfectionist tendencies when it comes to cut lines and grout gaps and after helping a friend lay tile in his entryway I quickly learned my skills cannot match my expectations (best way to learn something like this is definitely in someone else's house!).  We got quotes from a few installers and ended up with a wide spectrum of prices, the highest being over 2x the lowest.  In the end we landed on a guy named Alex who runs the aptly named "Alex's Flooring" and after seeing 3 professionals spend almost a week laying tile I was pretty confident in my choice to outsource this particular job.

I bring all this up just to say that shopping around and knowing where/how to find resources is key, especially when labor is involved as quotes can vary wildly and it's important to have a good way to sift through the options, whether it be recommendations from friends and co-workers or good 'ol Google.  I've also found that little old ladies on your street are a good source.  They're typically picky, frugal and have oversight skills that would make most professional project managers sit up and listen.  This is how I found my yard guy (an expense I'm currently justifying by the cancelling of our satellite tv and baseball tournaments for 7 weeks straight this summer) , who keeps our grass looking great for a mere $50/month because he already comes by every other week to do my neighbor's yard.

Anyways, back to the carpet.  We shopped the big box stores and found some decent deals but in the end saved over $700 doing a little more leg work (and waiting).  We saved almost $200 on the pad alone by purchasing it through a guy our installer know who sells job leftovers, the other $500 coming from buying the carpet from a wholesale retailer.  It took a little longer but the extra cash was well worth it, especially considering the number of things still left on our house punch list...

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Shorts to the forts, jeans to the teens

I've had this post drafted for a while but didn't quite piece it all together until my brisk bike ride into work this morning when I coined my new bike attire mantra (possibly spawned by the freezing of a majority of my brain cells).  Originally inspired by a Mr Money Mustache post on necessity, I struggled to really classify any of the applicable things in my life to the term when drafting the post as it's not like I have to go out and hunt for my food or scrounge for things to build a shelter out of.  That said, necessity is an interesting term in today's society, usually brought on by personal choices leading to mounting debt, an expanding waistline, or say a growing family.  It's with this point I realized that even a created necessity like those listed above really captures the intent of MMM's post and criteria of "determination and persistence in the face of difficulty."

It's taken the good part of the past year to not only physically master riding the 11 or so miles from our house to the office but also push myself mentally through fatigue, laziness, and excuses like "it's too cold" or more often here in central Texas "it's too hot."  Obviously this is a created necessity as I own a perfectly functional (most of the time at least) car but it's also driven by a need to cram a workout into already packed days as well as save some gas money to facilitate budget shifts necessitated by our expanded family, a necessity that has driven the financial changes we've made over the past year.

Through the whole process I've been reunited with my love of riding bikes and have also been able to overcome potential stressful situations like not having a functional car (the downside of going for quantity of vehicles over quality) as well as the day that I forgot my keys and ended up "having" to ride 30+ miles. Sure I could have skipped my lunchtime pump track session but thanks to my improved leg and cardio strength I didn't have to and was able to reap all of the benefits of getting out of the office.  Plus I now know I can manage a 22mi round trip commute plus a 10mi lunchtime ride, which I've started doing a few times a month.

Biking isn't the only change in the list of life improvements linked above, my new job (as of a year ago at least) is pretty much characterized by "determination and persistence in the face of difficulty," but I'll spare you the discourse since I already wrote about that here.  Other more mundane and basic things have reaped large rewards as well such as the switching of our cell plan to Ting.  Sure we now have to be cognizant of data usage and there was some extra mucking with settings along with not being able to receive picturemail and group texts from iPhones (which is apparently a big deal to 14yr olds) but we were rewarded with an extra $156/month in our bank account as a result of those "inconveniences".  There's also "cramming" in a Prius, something that required some creativity with 5 people and lots of stuff but again the reward was $300 in monthly fuel savings to be spent on more meaningful things, plus we've come to love our little white driving appliance (as much as I hate to admit it) and it's actually quite comfortable even for a 3800mi road trip.

Anyways, the point is that necessity, whether created or not, can actually be a positive when approached as an opportunity for growth.  We can view our circumstances as a means for complaint or get up and do something about them.  As Mr Money Mustache so eloquently stated  "Plunge in over your head and do something you’re not quite ready for. With the right attitude, you can only come out ahead."

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Stay the course

I've been on a bit of a life and work forced break from recording what the voices in my head are saying on this page but was doing some lunchtime reading the other day and ran across a post that is very relevant to where my thoughts have been lately.  The budgetary pressure valve has gotten some relief (at 10 instead of 11) lately thanks to all of the changes we've made over the past year or so and with those things somewhat on autopilot the temptation to slip back into old wasteful ways has started to creep back in necessitating some readjustment and refocusing.

As I've mentioned before, I have a bit of an addiction to Craigslist and 15+yr old Volvos and typically scan the 'List on a daily basis which can be both profitable and expensive depending on what I happen to run across.  A week or so ago one particular vehicle that had been posted for a while hit the magical "I must go see it" price and a few hours and $300 later and we had the beauty you see above in our driveway bringing the total car count to 6.  Excessive yes,  but I'll excuse it by saying it's an opportunity to spend time wrenching in the garage with the boy and we'll hopefully make a little $ when it's all said and done. 

I've also been doing quite a bit of mountain biking lately and my 15yr old bike is starting to show its age in creaks, groans, and broken parts.  While I could easily justify a shiny new 29er under the guise of facilitating fellowship and exercise, in reality a little elbow grease and a few $ in replacement parts would probably have 'er ready for another 15yrs of service.  That said, I've been fighting the urge to go on a bike research/deal finding bender which I have neither the time or money for (thankfully).  
 

One of my favorite verses is Matthew 6:21 and it's one that's helpful in just about any circumstance,  especially those requiring a refocus of priorities: 

"Where your treasure is there your heart will be also"

I also really like the Thoreau quote in the post linked above and it ties in well with the Simplify study we've been doing in our small group: 

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

The idea of transcending to a point where you're not constantly having subverted desires for stuff but actually training yourself to not want those things at all even if you can afford them is very appealing and I'd like to say I've risen to Thoreau-like levels but that's far from the truth.  Killing off our Amazon Prime membership has helped some in the area of convenience driven unnecessary purchases but there are still plenty of other ways to blow money on things we don't need.  

The real key, and I think what both Thoreau and Mr Money Mustache are getting at, is that clearing your mind of such things cuts the noise and leaves you free to focus on the more important things in life.  The less your mind is filled with desire for things you don't have, the more you're focused on the present and enjoying what you do have, whether it be people,  experiences,  or even things.  Plus as Mr Money Mustache says "wanting less is an age-old recipe for having a much better life." 

If nothing else, I'm thankful for the occasional reminder of where my money and time should be spent,  regardless of whether it comes from a cheeky blog or the Word of God. 

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Bromance

As you may have guessed after my last post, I'm on a Killing Lions kick.  I've never read/watched much John Eldridge stuff but this YouTube series has really hit home for me, the latest being the segment on The Friendships of Men.  One of the biggest struggles we had at our last church was finding and connecting with others, the combination of our introverted personalities, a "busy schedule", and an overall lack of effort on our part led to a couple of years of seeking but not finding lasting relationships.  Looking back, some of that was likely because it wasn't the right place for us and to some extent we didn't find others at a similar stage in life with similar interests but I also think we became part of an all too common trend in today's world where we're connected in every way we don't need to be but disconnected from each other and God, even in a church setting.

Since finding a new church home we've been blessed with relationships and a small group where we've really been able to connect.  Whether it's play dates, trips with kids to the zoo, beer and cigars around the fire pit, or the occasional lunchtime bike ride, we're surrounded by people who we can invest in and are invested in us.  The temptation to skip our group and stay home on Sunday night after a long weekend is strong at times and it takes a conscious effort to prioritize through the same challenges (careers, family, finances etc.) but the rewards are endless and being surrounded by people intentionally doing life together is encouraging and uplifting and gives more energy than it takes every time.

For me personally, having dudes to rely on, pray for, and get out in the dirt with is what I need and crave despite what my calendar and time-selfish mentality may say otherwise.  As mentioned in the video linked above, men need other men in our lives to keep us on track and challenge us to go further, intentional investment that leads to deep friendships that will be there for life.  "Bromance" is often used in a joking manner but I think us guys would be much better off if we approached friendships in that manner.  

This is a lifelong journey and we've only scratched the surface but a small taste is all we've needed to seek, grow, strive, and continue on down this path we've been led to.  For now my mountain bike rides are limited to an hour or so on the trails near my office but I'm hopeful that an epic journey on the White Rim trail is in my future...

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Tax free bike parts

I was pretty stoked to find an email from my employer in my inbox after the holiday weekend highlighting some new benefits effective September 1st, namely the availability of new commuter spending accounts for biking and public transportation.  Employer transportation benefits have been around since 2009 when they were added to IRS Publication 15-B to help promote more environmentally friendly ways of getting to work and allow companies to set up flexible spending accounts for select commuting expenses.  These accounts work similar to how an HSA does for healthcare expenses and the transportation benefits fall into 2 categories, public transit and bike commuting.

Public Transit
For those who commute via bus or train, you're allowed to contribute up to $130/month via payroll deduction to a transit account (debit card) that can be used towards fares.  Like an HSA, these are pre-tax funds that you can bank up over time and use as necessary for eligible public transit expenses.

Bike commuting
Being a recent convert to pedaling my way to work, I was excited to find out I too could sock away tax free cash for commuting expenses.  I've logged close to 2000miles thus far this year and will likely need to replace wear items on my trusty steed in the near future and not having to pay taxes on these parts elevates bike commuting to hat trick status when combined with calorie shredding and gas savings.  The max contribution to the bike account is only $20/month but assuming I don't have regular run-ins with tire shredding debris or increase my bi-monthly cadence of wipeouts, a couple months of accrual should put me in good shape for the occasional maintenance item.

Also to note, this is an either/or type of deal so those who commute via a combo of bike and train/bus will have to pick their poison but transit is the more obvious choice as you can sock away quite a few more tax free Benjamins going that route.

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4 Months, 10,000 miles, $1400 saved

I figured it was time for a Prius update as last week marked the 4th month we've owned our little white driving appliance.  In that time we've logged over 10,000mi, including a 3800mi road trip to the East Coast to visit family and get some R&R.  Similar to what I reported in month 1, we've saved a ton on gas and maintenance and have yet to find a situation where we needed a bigger vehicle (although as you can see we pushed the limits of that on our road trip).

In that time we've averaged 43mpg (42 on our trip with the car fully loaded running 70-75mph) which amounts to about $1400 in gas savings over 4 months compared to the 15mpg we were averaging in the Sequoia.  Even factoring in $300 in tires (2 of which were emergency replacements on our trip) we've still ended up with quite a bit of extra cash in our pockets.

Aside from being excited about the Prius having a timing chain (Sequoia was due for a timing belt which is a massively painful job on a quad cam v8 and took me 2 weekends to complete on our LS400), maintenance costs are another area of savings I hadn't considered as part of our purchase research. That said, having about the same mileage, both the Sequoia and Prius were due for a helping of fresh $8/qt Toyota WS ATF transmission fluid, the difference being that 16qts were required for the Sequoia vs. only 4 for the Prius!  Even things like oil changes are quite a bit less expensive as the Prius only takes 4qts and doesn't require synthetic due to the fact that the IC engine doesn't have to work very hard being supplemented by the electric motor, something that hopefully also leads to a long life because we plan to drive it until the wheels fall off...

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KISS: DIY Sandbox

Part of our back yard master plan was multiple things to keep the kiddos occupied.  The revA concept for the sandbox was elaborate and hand-built but time constraints and the sight of our old plastic pool languishing in the bushes steered the project elsewhere.

My original plan was to use the 5' diameter pool covered by a tarp secured with tent stakes and ball stretch cord purchased during an impulse trip to Harbor Freight (hypocritically ignored the rules I laid out here) but I quickly realized it required too much sand (even after correcting math using diameter instead of radius to calculate volume of sand needed, doh!) so we procured a 3.5' diameter pool that was sufficiently filled with 4 bags of sand ($10).

A little dressing up with some leftover limestone and the project was complete!

I can anticipate the next question--What about that old pool that spawned the idea in the first place???  Fear not, it now serves as a cheap and easy to use cover!

 

Total cost $21 (would be about $30 if had to buy 2 pools, not including limestone cost since it's not a functional part of the sandbox system), total time to "build" about 10mins, including time spent drinking a beer watching our 13yr old carry the sand to the back yard.  Success!

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Making a small car big: Prius storage!

Time to put some Fab(rication) back in the lab before everyone starts to think it was short for Fabulous instead.  I've been teeing it up for quite a while and I'm sure all 3 readers of this blog have been waiting with great anticipation for this moment since I first posted about buying a Prius and how we'd fit 5 people and all of their associated stuff in it.  

After months of procrastination our 3500 mi roadtrip was looming and I had to get to work, something that was aided by my father's day present this year.  The end result of all of that buildup and planning is what basically amounts to a home built trailer hitch, a Harbor Freight cargo carrier and a locking storage box.  Sorry for the letdown.  

I toyed with many ideas including something along the lines of what Mr. Money Mustache did but I have a proven track record of being terrible at carpentry (and in general anything requiring craftsmanship) and as GI Joe so eloquently said, knowing is half the battle so I stuck with things I was at least marginally good at and put some random stuff together to make something cheap and functional.  As a side note, this project could have been completed without any fab work at all by using an aftermarket trailer hitch but they're expensive (~$100 w/40% off at Advance Auto) and the Class I hitches for the Prius are known to bend with just the weight of 2 bikes on them so I decided against that route, plus what's the fun in a project with no fabrication!!??  On to the creation of this storage masterpiece...  

I leveraged Mr Money Mustache's idea of tieing into the tow hooks since they were there and are designed to handle quite a bit of force.  The aftermarket hitches bolt in the same spot as well so I knew the frame in that area was up to the task and should support the amount of weight I was planning to load on the carrier.  After some of my signature chicken scratch sketches (which will not be posted for ridiculing) I headed off to Harbor Freight for a 2" receiver tube and then to the local metal supplier where I scrounged 8' of 14ga 2" tubing out of the scrap pile.  

Quite a bit of cutting, tacking, fit checking, cutting tacks, re-aligning, hammering etc. later (did I mention I'm not good at things requiring craftsmanship??) and I ended up with this:

A few gussets and some paint (and moments wishing I had a chop saw to make nice straight cuts) later and that part of the project was complete and it was on to the storage solution.  

Some searching of the interwebs and a few weeks of price matching and deliberating led to the purchase of a Contico 55 gallon locking box for waterproof, secure storage.  These things are light and built to withstand the rigors of the jobsite which make them perfect for this type of use, plus I can throw it on the deck to store things when not in use behind the car.  There are other options like waterproof cargo bags that could also be used as an easier to store alternative as well if you don't have the storage space.

Now on to attaching the box to the newly built hitch. I had a hitch carrier sitting in the garage that I picked up from Harbor Freight a few years ago so it was used as the base after some modifications courtesy of a 1987 vintage Toyota bottle jack:

Once the carrier was stretched to the proper width the box dropped right in and was secured using some u-bolts I had laying around:

Project complete.  Here's the final cost tally:

Contico 55 gallon locking storage box: $50.12 (w/coupon and free shipping from zorotools.com, also carried at your local Lowe's for ~$70)

U-bolts: $0, already had ($5 or less from your local hardware store)

Hitch cargo carrier: $0, already had it ($60 w/free shipping on Amazon)

12" receiver tube: $12 (w/20% off coupon at Harbor Freight)

8ft 14ga tubing: $16 (scrap pile at local metal shop)

Grand Total: $78 (or ~$140 factoring in the stuff I already had)

My hope was to be able to use a couple of Thule bike trays I had from an old roof rack to carry bikes as well but unfortunately they hung a bit too much off the back of the car and I was worried about taking out bikers and pedestrians (how ironic would that be??) so more development will be happening on that front and I'll be sure to post an update once I figure it out!

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Glyde your way into even more wireless savings

Time for a followup to my post about MVNO cell phone plans (no Urban Dictionary inspired title this go-round as everything I came up with was a bit inappropriate).  As I mentioned, an impulsive purchase of a closeout priced Google Nexus 4 left us with an AT&T/T-mobile device along with our 2 Sprint devices.  While managing 2 different plans was only a minor annoyance, it also left some savings on the table as Ting only charges $6 per phone attached to the account and all share data, minutes etc.  Initially the savings wasn't quite enough to justify selling the Nexus and buying another new phone for a couple hundred bucks but then I discovered Glyde via this post on Ting's blog.

Glyde is a service that acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers of used devices.  They handle all of the paperwork and even provide you with packaging and a prepaid shipping label when your device sells making "selling as easy as throwing it away" as they state on their website.  Buying is just as easy, just search for what you want, select the desired device condition and after a few more steps your new device is on its way.

We decided to take a bit of a gamble and picked up a Samsung Galaxy SIII listed in "Good" condition (looked brand new when we received it) for $135 prior to selling the Nexus.  After getting the Galaxy all set up on Ting we listed the Nexus 4 on Glyde for the suggested $143 list price and it sold less than a week later.  The next day the shipping kit arrived and off it went, we'll net about $125 after shipping and transaction fees leaving us with a $10 delta that we'll make up in about 2 weeks in plan savings, not too shabby!

The final tally:
Sprint Unlimited "family plan" with 3 devices: $202/mo
Ting/Ptel service combined cost: $62/mo
Ting cost with 3 devices: $46/mo
Savings: $156/mo!

Figured I'd post a first month update, even with the added data usage from 2 weeks on the road we managed to come in just shy of $60 with all 3 phones on Ting.  I'm confident that we'll be in the sub-$50 range this month considering we're not planning to spend 52hrs in the car in August...

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From Dust to Glory: A Story of our back yard

While not quite a direct compare to Baja, our back yard has historically been a huge dust bowl that was certainly not conducive to family fun.  The shade provided by the large live oak (one of the big selling points of the house along with the 2.5 car garage) is a nice respite from the hot Texas sun but also prevents growth of any sort of vegetation requiring sunlight.  Once our little ones became mobile it was very apparent they needed a place to run free (and we needed a place for them to go while we cleaned up the wreckage left in their wake), so our first project of 2014 was to create a space where we could all hang out and enjoy the outdoors, on a budget of course!

Plans were drawn up and jokes were made about my drawing capabilities (including some by those genetically responsible for my lack of artistic skills) and off we went.

The original plan called for a small section of grass but after pondering upkeep (running my own landscaping business in high school killed any desire I had for yardwork) and the condition of our lakes/reservoirs, we stuck with rock and mulch, the amount of which was a result of "while we've got a trailer" syndrome.  We also ended up with a whole pallet of 6" sawed/chopped limestone because it was much easier to have the forklift operator load the whole thing on the trailer than load it piece by piece myself.  Despite the cost of the extra limestone (laziness that later resulted in more work carrying it all to the back yard) we ended up only $40 over our $600 budget and a pretty sweet looking and functional back yard, if I do say so myself!

Here's what 3 tons of rock looks like after being put in place by friends and family bribed with food:

And 4 yards of first grind Cedar for a little cushioning (and hopefully bug repelling) in the play area:

Once we had the mulchy/rocky foundation laid, the first addition was a plastic see saw (which facilitated the learning of the phrase "rocky, rocky") and some chairs which were initially a tipping hazard but are now used for moments of contemplation and sipping of "wai wai" along with a hammock for dad to nap in, I mean supervise.

We also scored a free playhouse on Craigslist from a guy who was also kind enough to drop it off (if 'ol Craig only knew how much he's enriched our lives!) which has provided hours of fun and an infinite ROI.

Future projects will include a sandbox, fire pit, and some sort of comfortable furniture so stay tuned!

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The nitty gritty

Looking back over the past few months, it seems we're hitting the same stage in our physical and financial weight loss journeys--the nitty gritty day by day, pound by pound, dollar by dollar fight for progress.  The easy weight is gone and now it's time to buckle down and break on through to the other side.  After blowing our food budget while simultaneously gaining weight last month, I've also realized the two are rather tightly coupled. There was a birthday in there and a couple extra opportunities for dates thanks to family members that were brave enough to babysit for our dynamic duo (something that sane parents of toddlers would never pass up on) but the fact of the matter is we set goals in both areas and didn't meet them.

That said, it's easy to get discouraged as household budgets, like weight loss journeys, have ups and downs and we must keep our eyes on the prize while maintaining a long-term vision of retirement and clothing sizes we haven't seen since high school.  Sure, my size 34 jeans may temporarily feel like sausage casings but that's just a healthy reminder to stop stuffing my face and get on my bike and shred some calories.  As with all things it's all about balance and the important thing is to get back on the horse and keep on truckin' while reminding ourselves that we're somewhere just south of 100lbs lighter combined since this time last year and we're spending an average of $2000/mo less (there is NOT an extra "0" in there!) compared to a few yrs ago when we started the journey I discussed here.  We've come a long way but there's still much work to do! 

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Little Things: 1.5 GPM Showerhead experiment

There's more than one way to slice an egg and multiple small changes can make just as much of an impact as a large one (like killing off your bloated "family" plan).  Now that we've convinced our teenager to shower daily, water usage is up a bit in our home and after reading this I decided to throw caution to the wind and blow $15.82 on a pair of fancy 1.5 GPM shower heads for our 2 full baths.  I didn't really expect much (other than maybe complaints from tenants) but since the existing heads were old and rather crusty from hard water I figured what the heck.

A couple days later (thanks Amazon Prime!) and I had 2 shiny new chrome coated plastic do-dads to install.  I'd love to say that I was so eager to save some dough that I immediately spent the 5 mins it took to install them and started putting cash in my pocket one shower at a time but the reality is I finally got around to it about a week after they were rush shipped to our house. 

A couple of observations--there were some complaints about reduced pressure on the wide spray setting but there is also a jet setting that could easily chip away shower tiles one layer at a time if that is your preference.  Also, we've noticed that it takes longer for the water to heat up since lower volumes are being drawn through the system which results in more time being required to purge the cold water from the pipes, an effect which is most pronounced in our master bath at the opposite end of the house from the water heater. 

I feared the longer warm-up time would kill any savings but fortunately that wasn't the case. Our water is pretty cheap (especially considering the inequality of demand and our currently dwindling supply) and the bulk of our bill is usually sewer and trash so I was pretty surprised to see a reduction equating to $6 in water savings the first month after installation. 

May seem insignificant but that's $72/year for $16 and 5 minutes of effort, a 450% annual ROI and another grand in the retirement fund every 10yrs using Mr Money Mustache's 173 multiplier for monthly expense savings!

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Because YOLO: MOLOs, MVNOs and what you need to know to DESTROY your cell phone bill

Congratulations, if you got past my terrible attempt at an acronym-based joke and actually clicked on this post after reading the title your reward is the potential to save some serious cash on your cell phone bill.  MVNO and MOLO are abbreviations commonly used for wireless communications service providers that lease infrastructure from the big boys and provide cell service to you at a highly discounted rate.  These types of services have been around for a while and were born out of regulations to keep the market competitive as well as large providers having extra capacity on their networks available, both of which benefit you by having lower cost options available that leverage widely available infrastructure that's already out there (ie more bars in more places for less dead presidents). 

The other component of the savings is the fact that devices are not being subsidized by the plan (ie no free phones or $300 iPhone with a 2yr contract), you either bring you own (most services have a list of supported devices) or purchase an unlocked phone directly from the service provider.  I figured I'd put that caveat up top for the "I must have the latest iWhatever" crowd so you don't waste your time reading the rest of this, although I'd recommend you think about the fact that you could be paying over $1200/year for that hunk of plastic and fancy glass that you can buy outright for $700 (which leaves you with $500 for fancy cases and headphones!).

There are many of these types of providers out there but I will only speak to the 2 we have experience with, Ting (uses Sprint CDMA devices/towers) and Ptel (uses Tmobile GSM devices/towers). I'll start out by saying that I am way too reliant on (and distracted by) the computer in my pocket and probably wouldn't have ever considered this change had I not had a couple of friends who started tinkering with this idea and Google Voice about this time last year,  which along with using Wifi every chance you get, is the key to this money saving equation if you're a heavy texter. 

By setting up a Voice account and installing the App on your phone, all of your texts travel via data (or wifi when available) and there are no per message charges typical of most MVNO plans.  You can also text and call (like a VOIP service) from any computer which is an added bonus.  Calling via the data connection used to be an option with 3rd party apps as well but has gone by the wayside recently although I heard Google will be incorporating this into Hangouts in the near future so one could presumably get away with only paying for data, which is incredibly cheap with Ting.

Ting
The boy and I had fairly fresh Sprint devices when this experiment began so Ting was our service of choice.  Ting's model is quite unique, they have buckets of varying sizes for minutes, data, and texting and you just pay the amount for whatever buckets you fall in at the end of the month along with a $6/phone base charge.  For us this amounts to an average of $27/month for 2 phones using 100 minutes and 500mb or less/month (no text charges since we use Google Voice for that).

They have a handy calculator you can use to figure out how much you'll save based on your current usage and will even pay up to $75 towards your Early Termination Fee (ETF) if you have an existing contract, which for me led to the decision to end my Sprint contract a year early as I'd pay myself back in less than 3months due to the savings.  Service has been flawless thus far (same as when we were on Sprint which makes since as they use the same infrastructure) and they've even lowered their rates since we signed up, when's the last time Sprint or AT&T did something like that??

PlatinumTel (PTel)

Our original plan was to move the whole family from Sprint to Ting but a cracked screen and an impulsive purchase of a sale-priced Nexus 4 right before the new models came out left us with a GSM device that wouldn't work on Ting's network.  The Ptel recommendation came from a buddy who is a true Mustachian and spends less in a year on phone service with their "Real PayGo" plan than most people pay monthly. 

The Mrs started out with PayGo and we were spending <$20/month early this year when she was still cooped up in the house with the little ones and on wifi but once baseball season ramped up and she starting doing mom's outings her data usage increased and we switched to he $35/month unlimited plan.  Sure it's only 3G but you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference and for $35 (about 1/2 of most other "unlimited" plans) who cares!  If you must have 4G data they also have $40 and $50 fancypants plans if you can't wait a few more seconds for pictures of your friends' dinner to load on Facebook...
 
The end result for us is a 70% reduction in cell phone related expenses, from $202/month for our ridiculously priced Sprint "Family Plan" to a $62/month average with the new setup for 3 phones.  I'm not sure what Sprint's idea of a family value is but I can think of a lot more productive and rewarding family related things to spend $140/month on.

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Electricity: The power (may be) yours

It's one of our biggest expenses (other than food and baseball), but our choices in electricity retailers is something I (stupidly) hadn't looked into until this year.  Here in Tejas our energy was selectively deregulated in the early 2000s opening up the marketplace in some areas to hundreds of "retailers" who resell energy delivered to homes via a service provider (Oncor energy in our case).  In a nutshell, the service provider creates and maintains the infrastructure and sells the energy to retailers who handle the customer side of things.  More info can be found here, including a map indicating which states have deregulated electricity and/or natural gas: http://www.deregulationofenergy.org/

Until one May evening last year when one of those annoying solicitors knocked on our door (at dinnertime of course) resulting in dogs barking and babies crying, I hadn't thought much about what we were paying for electricity.  We were on a plan I signed up for with TXU energy when I moved into our house in 2005 and had long since forgotten what the rate was, but this young man (who was probably in high school and had never paid for his own electricity) reminded me that I had the POWER to CHOOSE!  

I don't buy anything from someone who knocks on my door, especially the guy selling $100 magazine subscriptions for "charity", but the brief interaction led me to the interwebs where my research (and spreadsheets began).  After spending an hour one evening parsing through 2 years of emailed electricity bills while sipping on one of my favorite brews, I had enough data to conclude that we were paying way too much for electricity at an average of about $.12/kwh and at times up to $.135/kwh when our usage was low!  Our typical usage is under 1000kwh/month 9 months out of the year (we have gas heat and hot water) and ~1500kwh July-September when our A/C is battling the 100+ degree Texas heat although we did eclipse the 2000kwh mark a couple of months in 2012 when the temperature was over 100 for a record number of days and my wife was incredibly pregnant with our twins. 

Armed with my newly collected data I headed over to powertochoose.org to find our new money saving electricity plan.  Understanding your usage is a very important part of shopping for electricity, there are big differences in pricing depending on which bucket your household falls into and you need to find a plan that best matches how much energy you use.  Some quick math (usage * rate = monthly usage charge) will give you a good idea of monthly savings, for example our 1000kwh/month usage at our old plan's $.12/kwh = $120/month whereas a new plan at $.09/kwh would only cost $90 ignoring taxes, fees etc. leaving us $30 for Redbox movies and $1 drinks from McDonalds (can you say date night??)

Some plans will also charge a base fee if your usage drops below a certain threshold so be aware of that and check the fine print if you're a low energy user.  This is something I looked closely at since were the (fortunate?) recipients of a new HVAC system last November and I'm betting we can beat those numbers supplied by our 25 year old system this coming summer.  That said, in our case focusing on the lowest cost for the sub 1000kwh bucket while balancing costs above that was the best route.  There are also options for fixed, variable and market plans as well as contract durations, earlier this year we signed up for a 3mo contract with a new company to test them out and got a $.0525/kwh rate to boot!

There are lots of fees and other variables associated with energy costs so be very careful to review and understand them all, having a good understanding of the Electricity Facts Label is a good place to start and gives you a good way to compare plans you're considering giving you a good understanding of what the average cost will be for each usage bucket including fees etc.  It's also a good idea to monitor pricing in your area over time, here in Texas rates usually go up in May and can skyrocket over the summer (be careful with market and variable rate plans!) but are typically pretty low in January.  I'm kicking myself a bit for not doing a 1yr plan instead of a 3mo earlier this year but the $.0525 rate was too hard to pass up and I was a little weary about locking in for too long with a retailer that didn't have any reviews.  In the end, after our 3mo plan ended we locked in a plan for the next year at $.096/kwh which is about 20% lower than the 6 month plan we were on last year, not too bad for a few minutes of poking around on a website.

One other thing to note, you have access to special promotions using websites like powertochoose.org and in my experience you'll see higher rates when going directly through a given retailer's website so keep that in mind as well!

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Cash in our pocket: The 1 month Prius update

It turns out we picked a good month to trade our Sequioa for a Prius (which as you can see is very conductive to family tailgate parties at baseball practice).  We had quite a bit of unexpected travel this month and ended up driving close to 2000mi (that's including me bike commuting which would add another 400mi to the total!), quite a bit more than our already excessive 1400mi/month average.  In the Sequoia days this would have cost us about $450 but due to our newfound automotive badassity we spent a "mere" $150 on fuel traveling all those miles.

Hopefully this isn't a continuing trend and we aren't experiencing the "hybrid effect" (added non-necessary driving due to reduced fuel cost) but regardless we're well on our way to beating the savings and ROI numbers I originally calculated with my fancy spreadsheet (it's pretty basic and tailored to our key metrics but I'd be happy to share with anyone interested):

The little Prius has been very versatile and we've yet to run into a situation where we needed more space, whether it be on tournament weekends loaded up with the double jogging stroller, baseball gear, and enough food to sustain us all day to avoid the temptation of ballpark hotdogs and fast food:

 

Or our monthly Sam's Club trip, which after looking at this picture seems to be heavy on dairy products:

   

The back seat is also very cumfy and has plenty of space for 2 compact carseats and an adult (even my broad-shouldered and wide-wasted frame) and gives multiple sleeping options from the padded c-pillar to the adjacent car seat, the top of which is the perfect height for a nap on the way home from Easter Egg hunting:

 

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I suspect we'll need a little more space on our 3500mi road trip to the East Coast this summer and am in the process of designing/implementing my external storage solution which I'll provide the details of when complete.  Stay tuned!

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Worth the wait?

Probably not what you were expecting (sex education is not something I plan to cover in this blog although I can recommend this book for dads of teen boys) but a conversation with my wife this morning prompted some reflection about how we kept our miscellaneous spending in check this month for the first time, well ever.  Misc is the bucket all of our non-necessary spending goes into, which you would think would be the easiest to control but it always seemed to be the most unpredictable.  

A while back we started planning out expenditures in this category a few months in advance but still struggled to stay on budget, mainly because the anticipation of waiting led us to buy everything on the list as soon as the month started and other things inevitably popped up later on.  Realizing that, we decided to wait until the end of month this go-round, a change that seems to have helped quite a bit.  We also started giving ourselves a little fun money for guilt free spending that had a nice side effect of actually reducing the budget since we were splurging on ourselves more than we realized in previous months. 

A few purchases ended up being put off due to unexpected expenses, but even more interesting is that by the time the end of the month rolled around there were a few things we realized we really didn't even want or need. It seems waiting is a good litmus test, a phenomenon discussed in this post and also highlighted in item 4 here. My personal expenses aren't typically clothes and shoes, although I did buy a pair of fantastic $10 padded bike underwear off Amazon a few weeks ago (much to the delight of my backside), but I think the same principle applies to anything you're prone to buy impulsively. For me, anything that appears to be a deal is a temptation,  a genetic trait inherited from my frugal father who's kryptonite when I was growing up was Open Box Buys at the now defunct Circuit City. 

As I mentioned here, we (ok I) typically research and price match for quite a while before making large purchases, but the same logic can be applied to smaller non-necessary purchases as well. I tested this using our shared Amazon cart this month and everything I put in at the beginning of the month went unpurchased except for the aforementioned bike undies.  The added benefit of this method is you get to see the price swings of your items of interest,  something the Mrs used to her advantage to optimize her fun $ on some fancy new cosmetics. Some sites will even send you a discount code to entice you to compete your order as an added bonus. 

Nothing ground breaking here and probably common sense to most, but figured I'd share since we saw some immediate results putting these things into practice this month.

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Back to my Roots: The Legend of Tree Trunks

Last Friday marked the 1000th mile of pedaling my oversized backside down the road on a chunk of aluminum ~4 days/week (dependent on tolerance for mass quantities of pollen intake).  I thought about crafting a clever title claiming I traded my V8 90s Lexus luxury machine for a bike, but that's a bit of a stretch since a couple of Volvos came and went between selling the Lexus and buying my "new" bike (which was more of a Craigslist impulse buy since I had a perfectly functional mountain bike) so I stuck with the nickname I had when I was a kid.

I've been a 2-wheel junkie since before kindergarten, amassing large quantities of BMX trophies and ribbons primarily due to being the only privateer in my class (hence my Chinet number plate in the picture to the right).  I think on one occasion I was leading a race until my jeans got caught in my chain causing a spectacular wipeout shortly before the finish line, an event which prompted my dad's Cuban Redneck engineered ace bandage pants retention solution (revB of the duct tape solution which was found to lead to numbness of the foot).  The 1985 Mongoose Expert Pro (which hangs on the wall of my garage to this day) that I got for Christmas when i was 5 became my primary mode of transportation until I bought my first car (which I also still have, although it's too big to hang on the wall).

I dabbled in mountain biking through college, but even after moving to the land of Lance Armstrong wannabees I'd never had an interest in the asphalt form of cycling.  I also couldn't fathom why someone would choose to ride a bike to work when they had a perfectly good air conditioned car that would get them there in half the time without all the sweating.  All this, combined with the fact that my end of day stress relief revolved around RPMs and the occasional tire smoke led me to never consider commuting on a 2 wheeled vehicle.  I'd even written of those with motors after a few close calls with heat stroke and  near death experiences involving soccer moms and school buses, although I'd jump at the chance to own my dad's one-owner '75 Norton Commando 850 (which I fit on a little better now)...

There were always tons of bikes on the rack at work but I never paid much attention until a buddy of mine (who of course got teased relentlessly by our group of gearhead friends) started bike commuting.  Over time, life had gotten busier and I found myself having less and less time to get exercise in. Our area had also grown quite a bit and my 10mi commute started becoming more stop and less go contributing to added fuel cost and frustration. Once I realized I could save $60/month by biking to work, the pieces came together and the wheels really started turning.

Biking 11 miles on hilly roads is no small feat, and although I was in better shape than years past from a few months of Insanity workouts, I decided to take a staged approach beginning with a mixture of biking and riding the train.  The commute required a 3mi ride through our neighborhood to the MetroRail station (bringing flashbacks of near death experiences involving school buses and soccer moms from my motorcycle days) and ~2mi from the dropoff point to work separated by a much needed 20min train ride for leg recovery.  The downside was that the total trip took almost an hour and cost almost as much as I was spending in gas.  Departure times are also separated by 50mins (thanks to a lack of rail use due to a terribly thought out system) leading to a few mad dashes from meetings that ran late and close calls with not making it home in time for dinner, which is of course the most important end goal of any commute!

Once I tired of the schedule challenges of train riding, I started researching a route all the way to work.  Even with Austin being a very bike-oriented city, finding routes in the burbs was a bit challenging. Fortunately, there are quite a few local bike shops with resources and the interwebs are full of information and maps, something I'm sure is true of most urban areas.  For me, figuring out the route was probably the most critical piece of the bike commuting equation and made the difference between my commute being energizing stress relief and a fear inducing white knuckle ride.  Once I'd picked my route (the details of which including speed limits will not be disclosed to protect the innocent) I studied traffic patterns at different times of day and looked for areas that may be tough to navigate and found solutions around those concerns.  

Once I was confident I had the route down and the endurance to make it all the way, I set off on my first trip over the holidays in December when traffic (and my schedule) was a little lighter so I could take my time and enjoy the ride.  The first few trips were full of adjustments and breaks (as well as light-headed mornings at work while my body adjusted) with an average speed of ~13mph and a travel time of a little over an hour, about double what it took in a car.  This was a little disheartening but I decided to take the advice of Sergeant Smith and channel my inner Cru Jones to "remember the lumber yard and go balls out," advice that when paired with playing John Farnham's Break the Ice over and over in my head proved to be very helpful.

Over the course of the past 4 months I've saved quite a bit on gas (which I of course offset with my new bike and accessories) and have dropped 15lbs (probably could have lost more if it weren't for beer and mexican food), somewhat due to calorie burning but also diet changes to include more energy producing good fats and proteins to avoid bonks.  I've also been able to increase my average speed to ~17mph (unless the stinkin wind is blowing in my face) and my commute time is running 35-40 minutes which is only 5-10 more than I spend in the car on the days I drive, with the added benefit of whizzing by all the suckers sitting in traffic in the bike lane.  I've survived sub 20 and mid 90s temperatures but time will tell whether I can hang when temps eclipse 100 here in a couple months...

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Contentment

Contentment.  It's not something inherent in most humans I know and certainly isn't built into our culture.  Whether it's the newest gadget filled 600hp car, designer handbag or upscale material for a countertop we're all subject to desire for the fancy things our world tells us we need.  This desire usually doesn't stop at material items, our education and career systems are centered around progression and we put ourselves in debt up to our eyeballs to get a degree that for some results in years of stress through constantly striving for the next rung on the ladder.  Even in the spiritual realm there is temptation to compare yourself to others, how much they serve, what Biblical verses they can quote off the cuff, how many minutes they spend in prayer etc.

The dictionary definition of contentment is "a state of happiness and satisfaction." It's a conscious choice of these two things,  a fact proven by joyful people all over the world that most of us would consider poor and uneducated.  One of the most impactful commentaries I've heard on the subject was this sermon (which I need to save to my phone and listen to regularly).

To me contentment means being happy with who/where/what you are and the circumstances surrounding you.  The crux is, for people with obsessive tendencies like myself, the quest for contentment can drive us (and the people around us like our spouses) mad.  As I'm typing this actually I realized there's a fundamental problem with using "quest" and "contentment" in the same sentence implying that some action is required to be content thus showing how off base my thinking can be at times!  In fact, on many occasions I've managed to turn efforts at life improvement into things that destroyed contentment and my overall outlook, how's that for a paradox?

My questing for knowledge and understanding (sounds much better than obsessiveness) can be helpful (at least in my opinion) and the resulting detailed research has helped drive many decisions that otherwise may have fallen victim to indecision or incorrectly driven by emotion.  My internet history usually tells the story, page after page relating to whatever it is I'm on a quest for knowledge about.  On a side note, what the heck did we do before the internet?? I guess everyone was too busy plowing their fields and milking their cows for sustenance to worry about investment strategies and how many pounds of boost the stock bottom end of a Ford Festiva can take. Maybe I should find a time machine, a lack of research tools would certainly give me time to focus on other things...

Anyways, my current questing process is much the same but my focus has shifted over the years to things typically more useful for my current stage of life.  Don't get me wrong, Craigslist is still #1, but searches in the car section which in the past led to car forums, parts sites and sometimes a spreadsheet as an electronically built project came together now lead to evaluation of mpgs, cargo space and rear hip room on the quest to find a money saving driving appliance to haul the gang around in.  There was also the recent bender on investing (which also used to be a Craigslist-based activity that has become less profitable due to shifts in supply/demand of 20 year old Volvos), living in a world of value averaging, REITs, discount rates and the time value of money trying to get a phD in finance in a few days and driving myself nuts in the process. This endeavor also led to stressing about not having the capital to put newfound knowledge to work but that was probably for the best since it would be better to learn via funny money tracking on Etrade or Motley Fool than losing actual cash due to false confidence.  I did find some handy resources like ERE and the Mad Fientist that helped me realize that "early retirement" for me is looking more like "hopefully before I'm dead".

My latest craze has been career-related, stemming from prep for a mentor program at work.  A seemingly innocent "Mentee Prep Packet" led to career development questing--taking multiple personality tests, annoying my boss with questions about what he'd like me to achieve and what steps I should take to get there, reviewing my job matrix to see where I can improve (turns out at only 9mo into new role that's pretty much everything and I began to question if I was in the right place) etc.  Fortunately that was all short lived and interrupted by actual work needing to be done and in the end I realized I overkilled it (as usual), drove myself (and probably my wife) nuts (as usual), but I guess not my boss since my badge worked when I walked in the building Friday. I also came to the conclusion that I have a great team, lots of opportunity, management that has some level of confidence in me (we'll see if that backfires on them) and I have it pretty darn good.

I'm not sure what the takeaway or really the point of this post is (other than to maybe give myself a place to come back to for an occasional reminder) but I do know that when left unrestrained my questing can steer me away from my center, distract me from devotion and focus on my family, friends, job etc.  Ultimately, satisfaction and fulfillment only come from God, as I was reminded by this week's reading from Chuck Swindoll's Parenting: From Surviving to Thriving for our small group.  There's also a fine line between contentment and complacency and you have to know your inclinations to know which you need to be aware of at any given time.  For me, when find myself (or someone points it out for me) immersed in research on my phone 24/7, fodder for my Beer Me section being collected faster than usual or I find the need to zone out to TV to shut my mind off I know I need to step back, take a deep breath and enjoy my circumstances.  As the Strengths Finder says (might as well get some use out of that new knowledge), you have to know and focus on building your strengths and be aware of weaknesses and don't let em slow you down...

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