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Three Dreams, Two Household Tips, and One Merry Christmas

December 24, 2019 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

Money Gift

Last week, I wrote an article that was tough to publish because I was feeling very depressed. Tasks everywhere just caving in on me and I was getting buried… and I don’t even have a traditional career. Turns out that much of the cure for those feelings may have been just writing about them. Or maybe is was all the heartfelt comments I received. I’m sure the passing of time played a role as well.

Whatever it was has had a very interesting side effect. After years of only remember one or two dreams per year (at most), I now have a 3 day streak of very vivid dreams. It’s been years of since I had one vivid dream.

I wanted to share them, because they give a little peeks into myself, this blog, and have a little money mention in them. (I wouldn’t blame you if you just skipped down to the two household tips.)

  1. My MLM scam exposure stories haunt me (and Tom Brady)

    In this dream, one of the old MLMs that sued me into silence was upset about some kind of new story that was being done by a journalism student, Mary Higgs, on the Boston College campus. I guess she uncovered all my previous findings and wrote it into a story. No one would give me a clear story, but the lawyers were fighting and demanded I come in.

    Tom Brady happened to be taken a master’s course there for some reason. In fact, the Patriots had a whole satellite office there. All of it was connected, but no one would tell me how. When it finally came time watch the video of Higgs’ exposé, Tom Brady came in and asked if could talk to me for a few minutes. It was a clear distraction tactic. I don’t have many rules, but one is, “If Tom Brady wants to give you a few minutes of his time, you don’t say no.”

    Of course, I woke up before talking to Tom Brady or uncovering the mystery of the reporting and the connection to the Patriots. I could only assume it was like when the Red Sox players were caught in the MonaVie pyramid scheme.

  2. I sailed around New York City

    I’ve been sailing exactly once in about 10 years. However, I live in a sailing community, Newport RI, so that will change. On this day it changed really quickly as I hopped a quick flight to NYC (not sure how that’s quicker than driving) and rented a sailboat. I took it around the sea a few times and got a picture of the Statue of Liberty through some kind of arch.

    Since I was wet, I got a hotel room and showered. Then it was too dark to sail back to the rental place. A fine Japanese young man who happened to have a sail planned in my direction offered to guide me. I got the sailboat back safely. Then I rented a car and drove back home only with the fear of having to explain to my wife that I spent a few thousand dollars.

    In the morning, I checked my phone for that picture of Ms. Liberty, just to make sure that it didn’t happen.

  3. Barstool Sports makes my son famous

    I posted something on Lazy Man about my son’s scooter not being charged for school. Very mundane stuff. Barstool picks up the story and uses their traditional sarcasm to explain that he must have a howitzer to get girls with such a terrible ride. (Howitzer, is a reference to an old Barstool scandal.) I don’t know if they knew he was 5 years old, but the media jumped on them for that.

    All of this time, traffic to my Lazy Man story was going through the roof. The only thing is that I don’t check traffic very much and I had a full day of real world errands to run. I missed the whole media circus until everyone had moved onto the next interesting thing.

    Come to think of it, that very much sums up everything you need to know about blogging. (Also, I haven’t read Barstool in years.)

Hopefully those weren’t too long or boring. I promise not to give up personal finance writing for dream writing.

Two Household Tips

I realize that you don’t come here for the above stuff, but I didn’t think Christmas Eve was the right time for a deep analysis of the SECURE Act and stretch IRAs. As a compromise, I’ll leave you with two random household money saving tips that I’ve been saving up for years because they don’t fit anywhere else on the blog:

  • Fogless Shaving Mirrors Forever – I NEED a fogless shaving mirror in the shower. It’s the best thing ever invented. The only problem is that they lose their foglessness as you clean them. Sometime they give a 1/10 of an ounce cleaner and ask you to buy more. A better plan is to get RainX anti fog repellent for car windshields. I put a couple of drops on a piece of toilet paper and any old shower mirror is anti fog for a few days. A bottle will last you for years and years. It’s usually about $5, so Amazon’s pricing is very weird today.

    They seem to realize that people have discovered this trick and added that it works great on bathroom mirrors on the bottle. I’ve been on my same shaving mirror for 15 years now and before I had to churn through them every year or two.

  • Bullion Cubes – This is further proof that moms are the smartest people. My mom used bullion cubes fairly often, but I’m mostly self-taught cooker. I bought chicken broth in boxes. Then I’d throw half the box away because it was too much. Then I bought cans because I was less wasteful of broth – but probably more wasteful in creating trash.

    At Aldi’s I discovered bullion cubes on just a random glance on the aisle. It was about $2.00 for the equivalent of 25 cans of broth… in 1/25th of the space! It’s a perfect replacement. I don’t know if tastes the same, but fortunately my cooking is bad enough that no one will the notice the difference.

I hope you got something out of your time reading this today. If you have a favorite household tip, please share it below. Maybe we can compile a greatest hits and turn this into a valuable resource (minus my weird dream stuff).

Finally, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. The plan is to do a financial year in review before the New Year.

Filed Under: Sundry Comments Tagged With: christmas, dreams, house tips, saving money

Reminder: Use Dobot to Save for the Holidays Now!

May 5, 2017 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

Editor’s Note: This article was originally written about Digit, but they charge a monthly fee now. I suggest you use Dobot which works almost the exact same way, but without the fees. You can read my Dobot review here.

A few days ago, I was in the car with my wife picking up the kids and this song came on the radio. I turned to here and said, “I guess it’s time to wake up.” Fortunately, she got the joke right away.

October hits me in the back of the head like this song. Metaphorically, of course, because I’m still typing this article. It’s the start of the last quarter of the year. Everyone is in a rush to put up Halloween decorations, while I get advertisements from my local grocery store to plan my Thanksgiving through them. I bet some of the warehouse stores already have rolled out some of the Christmas stuff.

In other words, this song is going to happen soon. And if you celebrate another holiday that might be around the same time.

(I promise that this article won’t have reference any more song titles… or maybe not.)

Years ago, before credit cards, people turned to Christmas Clubs to save money for the gift-giving season. If you aren’t familiar with Christmas Clubs, I won’t hold it against you… they were before my time too. Here’s how Wikipedia describes them:

“The Christmas club is a savings program that was first offered by various banks in the United States during the Great Depression. The concept is that bank customers deposit a set amount of money each week into a special savings account, and receive the money back at the end of the year for Christmas shopping.”

I don’t know how much money you are you going to spend this Christmas, but the average is around $900. You could spend more or less, but can’t we agree that it’s best to put aside money now?

I’ve found that easiest way to do this is with a Digit Dobot account. Regular readers know that I recommend EVERYONE get a Digit Dobot account. I even recommend personal finance bloggers get it. One said to me, “I save money all the time and I’m great with it. I don’t need that.” He ended up following my advice and saved around $4000 for an expensive international trip. He said he didn’t even notice that the money was being saved.

What is Digit?

Digit was a FREE service (it isn’t anymore) that squirrels away money from a savings or checking account. It analyzes your account balance, spending, upcoming income, and upcoming bills to figure out how much it can safely move to the Digit account. It does a little at a time so you don’t even notice it. You can always tell it to squirrel less, but I set it at the maximum squirrel rate. (If you think I’m trying to set the record for using squirrel as a verb in a paragraph you are correct.)

Digit accounts are bank backed, safe, FDIC insured, blah, blah, blah. It’s got Google Ventures and other big names as investors.

Perhaps the worst part of Digit is that it will take you 3-5 minutes of your day to set-up. I’m being sarcastic. The worst part is that you earn minimal interest on your money. There aren’t a lot of banks paying significant interest nowadays. I’m used to ignoring interest after years and years of receiving almost none from bank accounts.

I’ve had my Digit account since March or April of 2015 and I’ve only saved this much:

Digit Stats

I should have waited until I got that “snowman” for the first digit, right? Oh well.

Keep in mind that I’m saving the maximum amount and my finances might are different than yours. You can customize it to save what works for you. That’s why I feel it will work for everyone. No one has given me a convincing argument NOT to sign up for a Digit account other than, “I’m comfortable with my savings process.” That’s fine, but I’d challenge the person to try something new. They might just find out it was better than their existing way of doing things. I did.

I also have withdrawn money from my Digit account. My car needed new brakes, so I simply sent off a text to withdraw the money and it was back in my account in a day or two. If I hadn’t set up Digit, there’s a real chance that I would have spent it.

Forced savings is one of the most powerful forces in personal finance.

My recommendation is to Digit Dobot now so you’ll be prepared for the holidays.

Filed Under: Money Management Tagged With: christmas, digit, Dobot, holidays

Last Chance Christmas Shopping

December 21, 2013 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

That title feels a little weird to type on the 21st. I’m sure that many people still have some shopping left to do and can pick up what they need locally. Truth be told, I’m in that position myself. I need a couple of gift cards to finish up my shopping too.

However, if you are like me, you do much of your shopping online. I really don’t like dealing with the crowds. Unfortunately, for most shopping online, time has either run out or is just about to run out. The “just about to run out” is what I wanted to write about today. With tomorrow being Sunday, there really isn’t much time to get something shipped to you for next Wednesday.

One of the options left is to sign up for Amazon Prime and order by tomorrow, Sunday. The free two-day shipping on millions of products* will have you sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning: “It’s not too late!”

If you need a little inspiration on what to get people this Christmas, I humbly suggest the Lazy Man’s 2013 Holiday Gift Guide.

* I thought millions was an exaggeration, but it isn’t according to Amazon.

Filed Under: Spending Tagged With: christmas, shopping

Lazy Man’s “Guide” to Black Friday

November 27, 2013 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

It seems like there’s an important holiday coming up this week. If you watched any television you can’t miss the commercials for Black Friday. Car dealerships around me are having Black Friday sales for 10 days. That doesn’t even make sense.

I’ve noticed that many of the retailers are starting their Black Friday deals the Thursday before. And why not? It’s not like we have anything better to do that day. And we all know that if you want to participate in the deals you have to be present when the deals start.

So my “guide” to Black Friday is simple this… skip it. Is it really worth camping out for hours in the cold for a chance at saving $50 or $100? For me it isn’t. Is it worth getting trampled in the mad rush to grab a deal? Again no. Last year a family near me got in a car accident and two people died. The sleep-deprived driver fell asleep on the way home from Black Friday.

We are losing Thanksgiving. We may have already lost it.

It’s not just Black Friday killing Thanksgiving. As I write this, two days before Thanksgiving, I’m watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Why, my 1 year old seems to enjoy it? Days ago, some of the local radio stations changed their format to 24-7 Christmas music. My neighbor was putting up his Christmas decorations this afternoon.

Why on Earth would we do anything trivialize one of the best holidays of the year? Are we in that much of a rush for the holiday season that we need to skip over parades with amazing floats, turkey, stuffing, gravy, and copious amounts of football? I don’t know about you, but I want to spend that time with family. I want to take some time and actually give thanks for all the wonderful things I have. I don’t want to spend that time thinking about how I have to get in line to get the latest tablet.

If you’ve read all this and are still going to participate in Black Friday, I can’t stop you. So I might as well you give you the one deal that I would take advantage of if I was going to participate. Wal-Mart has a one-hour in-stock guarantee on 20 items. The best bargain I can see is the 60″ Vizio LED Smart HDTV that has very good reviews at Amazon. At $688, it’s a much better deal than the nearly $1000 that Amazon is charging today. Most importantly, you are guaranteed to get it. Some might be enticed by the iPad Mini with the $100 Wal-Mart gift card for $299, but I’m not. It looks like last year’s model, and the gift card brings it in the price range of this year’s Nexus 7, which is faster with much better screen resolution. (I probably should have said that, because I’d like to spend my Friday looking into how to sell shares of Apple I bought awhile back for big gains.) The 32″ television for $98 looks like a steal for a bedroom or dormroom, even though it is 720P. At that price, I’m okay with the television thinking it’s 2006.

You might find better deals elsewhere, but I prefer not to gamble when Wal-Mart is giving me a guarantee. I want to vote with my wallet to support this type of promotion, even if the retailer itself is one that is infringing on Thanksgiving.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: black friday, christmas, thanksgiving

Solving the “What do to I get my Husband/Wife for Christmas?” Problem

December 13, 2010 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

It’s that time of year again. Time to engage in hanging stockings and mistletoe. Time for dreams of Kris Kringle and Super Bowls. Wait, something is off there. I’ve given up on my typical holiday-neutral stance and added a little football to the mix. It’s the time of year where things get all mixed up anyway, so I figure, let’s go with it. I get a lot of questions this time of year, but there’s one question that I get more than the others… “I need to buy a gift for the husband/wife… and I can’t come up empty handed?” What do you suggest?

I got one of these questions on Friday, my second of the season. I am always quick to suggest that you can never go wrong with hair clips and watch chains, especially because I often get asked by both spouses. When I get serious, I can occasionally be helpful, but it is always hit or miss.

It occurred to me that my wife and I typically don’t have this problem. We accidentally developed a pretty good system. Throughout the year when we want something we put it on our Amazon Wishlist. (Yes, I know you’d think this is Jeff Bezos’ blog lately, but it seems appropriate during the holidays.) Since Amazon allows you to put little notes on your list, we leave little hints like, “I don’t need this exact hair brush” or “You can get this cheaper at Target” (I’m sure Amazon loves that note). The items for me range from things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 comic books graphic novels (note that I can be all adulty about it) to the aforementioned hair brush (Jacoby chews through mine a couple times a year). When Christmas rolls around we both look to the list. On Friday, when thinking about how to answer the hubby/wifey question, I realized that this is a double win for us. It not only solves the Christmas problem, but it limits our spending throughout the rest of the year.

One thing you don’t want to give your spouse… a $60,000 debt. You know how I feel about those. Oh and add bungee cords to the list of things not to get. Even if your wife loves to camp and the bungee cords are very close to free, so it could be considered an “extra” thing to open, don’t do it… seriously.

Filed Under: Couples and Money Tagged With: christmas, couples, gifts

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