Lazy Man and Money

Giving Thanks…

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The annual Thanksgiving article has always been a difficult article one for me. I mulled this one until it’s almost too late to post. While I feel it’s important to reflect on all the things I am grateful for, each of them is very personal. I don’t think you gain much by reading my ramblings about how privileged I’ve been over the last year. When I give thanks for something, I realize that someone else reading it may not have that. That’s not much fun for anyone to read.

Because of that, I usually skip writing a Thanksgiving article. But here we are in 2020.

(And because it’s 2020, I can break all my English teachers’ rules about which words not to begin sentences with. Or even how not to end them.)

We are globally united by a common foe. Everyone’s experience with COVID is unique, but no one’s is good. There are a lot of people who have very good reasons to not be very grateful this Thanksgiving. I can give thanks that I’m not one of those people. There are about a billion ways that any of this could have personally worse for us. Fortunately, none of them happened. I only have minor nuisances to complain about (in comparison).

One of those complaints was teaching two curriculums, kindergarten and first grade, at the same time, on different floors of the house. We got through it, and the kids almost (almost!) seem to have grown because of the experience. In a normal world, learning to read and writing emails come in a different timeline. We learned some important life skills like cooking. A couple of times the 6 and 8-year-old surprised us with breakfast (usually cereal, but that’s because we like to supervise watching the stove being used).

The kids’ school has opened up this fall and so far everything has gone smoothly. The school had a planned, whole week off for Thanksgiving. The idea was to give teachers and kids a chance to recharge their batteries. With rising COVID cases, the timing couldn’t be any more perfect. With my wife still working, it was a long, long week. When the kids don’t have school, they feel like they should do nothing but sit and watch TV all day. Oh, they’ll fit in some video games too. I get frustrated by that, but they haven’t had much TV/video game time since school started in September. We always seem to have an activity like Boy Scouts or Karate. Both of those are paused for the rest of 2020 though.

Money Thankgiving

Because this is a money blog, I should write about money, right?

This is a tough year financially for so many people. It’s impossible for me to single each occupation out. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

My dog-sitting business has been terrible. I’m thankful that we don’t rely on that income. As much as I appreciate it, the money feels like a drop in the bucket. Our investments, like the stock market, are skyrocketing. It’s hard for me to write about money articles that aren’t around investing nowadays.

In February, I moved some of my retirement savings from stocks to bonds. It simply felt that after a 10-year bull market, I should try to preserve my investment gains. It was perfect timing. Sometimes it’s better to lucky than good.

As the markets dropped, I sold some of those bonds and bought more stocks. So now my retirement accounts are up 23% for the year. I was nervous about the stock market jumping back then. I’m at a complete loss on what to do now. Part of me wants to just sell everything. However, I know I have years until I can access the money, so it’s best to just let it sit and grow.

Final Thanksgiving Thoughts

With COVID cases rising and more things shutting down, I’m hoping the kids can get through a couple more weeks of school. After that, the winter break will kick in anyway. It’ll give the kids the carrot stick they need to put in those two good weeks. After the break, it will be 2021 and we can try to put some of 2020 behind us. By that time, vaccines may be able to start helping some of the spread. We get a good spring and summer maybe start to put COVID-19 behind us.

[The hope this week is to get back with a fresh personal finance article by Tuesday or Wednesday.]

Off the Beaten Path Black Friday-ish Deals

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Remember when Black Friday was fun and didn’t mean risking life and/or limbs? Maybe not, but somewhere around 15-20 years that was truly the case. I remember shopping with my mother to get an eMachines computer with her. There was still crowd back then, but everyone got most of their deals.

Damn I’m old!

Over the last several years, I’ve instituted the no-hassle Black Friday plan. The idea is to avoid the Best Buys and the Wal-Marts and focus on the easy wins. The closest I come to any of those stores is Staples. That’s because state laws prevent them from opening on Thanksgiving and there’s one close to me. I can usually stay up until midnight and be one of the few people there.

Unfortunately, Staples doesn’t have too many deals that are exciting to me. Others may find a few nice laptop choices, a great Dell monitor or two, and an 8TB hard drive for $150. The hard drive is tempting, but I’m going to try to get by longer with what I have. If I can get by another year, it will probably be $99 next Black Friday.

There are two items that I’m saving for Friday’s article. You’ll have to check back then to find out why.

So here’s what I’m looking at this year:

Note: Some of these links may pay me a small commission if you decide to buy from them. It won’t change your price though.

Amazon’s 10″ Fire for $99

CNET lies and calls this the best tablet deal in history. The truth is that the HP TouchPad for $99 liquidation was the best tablet deal in history. This is still a great deal. I have a 8″ Fire that went largely unused until recently. I pulled it out because I realized Amazon had Scratch Jr. in their Appplication HeadquarterWarehousePlaceOfPurchasing.

How good is it? Here’s CNET’s review.

I will spend another $50 to get the bargain Windows laptop deal below instead. This is based on my situation of being able to take advantage of the military-only deal and already having a Fire Tablet. Most people aren’t in my unique situation and might want to consider this.

Powerful Laptop Deal (Intel 8th Generation)

I’m finding a ton of laptop deals this holiday season. I’m going to highlight a couple as examples. There’s no need to bust any doors for the deals I’m seeing.

My Dell XPS with 4GB of memory is probably going to revolt by not letting me post this article. A little more than two years ago, I bought had some buyers remorse for only getting 4GB of memory. The store didn’t stock the 8GB version and it would have been a lot more money, because they bundled it with a larger hard drive. I didn’t want to wait for days or pay an additional hefty fee for overnight shipping.

I spent $800 on what I considered the best available option during my time of need.

Today, for the same $800, this Lenovo IdeaPad is a stacked 14″ ultraportable laptop. You get the new 8th generation i7-8550U processor (Passmark 8016). As Laptop Mag’s review noted, “If you’re shopping for a laptop and there’s a model with 8th Gen Core available in your price range, you should definitely prioritize it.” I’m not a gamer, but there is a dedicated graphics card too and all the latest ports (including Thunderbolt). The rest of the laptop is solid with 8GB of memory, a full HD screen, and a very fast solid state hard drive (SSD).

Similarly, this 15″ HP ENVY x360 can be configured to be around the same price with a little more memory, at a little more size and weight. I’ve grown accustomed to the lightweight laptops, so the Lenovo above is more interesting to me. My wife, on the other hand, really likes numeric keypads, so this would be a better fit for her (but extreme overkill for what she does).

We all know technology moves quickly, but either one is a tempting upgrade. I’d be upgrading from a 5th generation Core i5-5200U (3497 Passmark), that lousy 4GB memory, and a tiny 128GB SSD. That’s doubling or more in all those key areas. (I’m sure the SSD is much faster.)

I’m going to try to resist and wait for the next cycle. However, if you are in the market for a new laptop, I’d jump on these now. I think prices will only go up after the holiday season before they float back down throughout 2018.

MoviePass

I haven’t written about MoviePass yet, but it’s gotten a lot of buzz elsewhere.

MoviePass is an all-you-can watch cinema plan. When it was getting its buzz a couple of months ago, it was $10/mo. for unlimited movies per month (well limited to one per day). So if you wanted to live at the movie theater you could get your cost down to under a dollar.

Their deal now is $90 for an annual pass. That’s ~$7 a month, plus a small processing fee. So if you can see yourself going once a month (or more knowing that it’s essentially free), then this is a good deal.

I’m considering it, but I’m not sure if I have the time to take in a bunch of movies.

Old Navy For Jeans

(This is the most boring item, trust me.)

Old Navy is starting their Black Friday on Colorless Wednesday.

Their jeans are 50% off. I need to replenish my jeans. Sure, the jeans at Old Navy seem to only last a couple of years, but for around $20 I can live with that.

Kohl’s Technology Deals

Kohl’s has some great technology deals. Yes, it is the typical door buster routine, but are people really busting down Kohl’s doors? I’m surprised the place is still in business. Besides the great prices on many top items, you also get $15 in Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spend. It should be called Kohl’s Kash, because it isn’t real money and can only be spent during a limited time in the future. As CNET’s Cheapskate points out: “[The Fitbit Blaze will] be priced at $150, which isn’t extraordinary — it was $140 on Prime Day — but it comes with $45 in Kohl’s Cash.”

So, presuming that you can find a use for $45 at Kohl’s (which I always can), it is like a $105 Fitbit Blaze.

The Kohl’s Cash is for all items in the store not just a few door busters. So as long as you find some things you like, it’s almost like getting an additional 30% off. (Not really, but kinda, right?)

RiteAid – Yes RiteAid

RiteAid has buy one get one free for “As Seen on TV” items. We’re looking at Snuggie Tails for the kids as well as the Magic Tracks. They also have a buy one, get two cereal deal. That may be interesting if they don’t jack up the prices to $5 a box (which they probably will).

These are the kinds of deals I like. I don’t expect a lot of people to be waiting forming a line to pick up these deals.

In other news, I’m thinking of including the “As Seen on TV” logo on Lazy Man and Money. I’ve looked at my website on my TV connected to a computer through an HDMI cable. If everyone else does misleading marketing I can too, right?

Military Bargain Laptop Deal

The Navy base near me is posting a special $148 Asus 14″ Intel Apollo 32GB Notebook. That’s so vague that it could be worth anywhere between $100 or $350 depending on the missing information. It also says it is a savings of $72. I did a little sleuthing and I think it is an Asus R417NA-RS01-BL which just rolls off the tongue. Some of that missing information would be Intel Celeron N3350, 32GB storage, 4GB memory. NewEgg sells it for $242 and the reviews are good (and helpful)!

I have two main uses for this Asus:

1. The main use will be for my kids to play with ABC Mouse, PBS Kids, and Scratch Jr. This is much better than giving them Daddy’s computer.

2. In a pinch, it could be Daddy’s computer. Two and a half years ago, I was able to work on $100 computer that was less powerful than this. It was an emergency situation and it wasn’t great, but it did the job.

It’s worth noting that the 4GB of memory in this computer is the same as what I have in my Dell XPS right now. Yes, I’m very bitter.

Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish everyone out there a Happy Thanksgiving. I won’t bore you by being another blogger giving thanks for family, friends, and health, even though it’s all true.

Instead, I’d like to give a special thanks. I’d like to thank the lawyers who have helped me serve you. Over the last 11 years, there have been more than 11 million of you. When a company, in my opinion, isn’t operating in a way that serves you the consumer, I have called them out on it. I’ve never seen a company care unless Google’s algorithm decides my criticism is important for you to read. When that happens the lawsuits come because these companies are just protecting their reputation.

So I’d like to give thanks to Blish and Cavangh for representing me on writing my RainSoft Review on my family’s opinion of our personal experience. The case is still on-going, so I won’t comment on it.

Similarly, I’d like to give thanks to Mateo Fowler who stood up for me and my opinion of Le-Vel Thrive. We won as the courts ruled (by my understanding) that it was too frivolous to even be considered. The court even sanctioned Le-Vel for their actions.

Finally Joshua Koltun did an amazing job helping with the LifeVantage case. I wish that I wasn’t limited by the personal expense that further litigation would have entailed.

We’re finally winning the war against MLM as more and more law firms are realizing that the courts have ruled that these are pyramid schemes time and time again. There are some MLMs that have been sued several times this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Thanksgiving Day article is always the most difficult article I write every year. I’ve always been uncomfortable publicly talking about how well I have it. Many others in the United States do not have it so well. And the percentages only get worse when I look at it from a global scale.

I have an awesome wife and the proverbial 2.5 kids (though I count our dog as full kid, we’ll give him half credit). We have an exceptional degree of financial freedom and no health problems (knock on wood).

Professionally, I get a lot of satisfaction helping consumers with their finances. This year, I had many bloggers tell me that my website inspired them to not only take control of their own finances, but go on to influence millions of other people. Pat from Smart Passive Income seems like he’s going to be CEO of the online world someday. I remember when he was writing for eHow trying to make a few bucks on the side. Phil Taylor of PT Money said that I influenced him when he was starting out. He’s only went on to become the creator of FinCon, a conference that brings together over a thousand bloggers and financial company representatives each year.

As Hiro Nakamura in Hero’s Reborn might say, “So many butterflies from one blog…”

Nowadays, my interest is in helping people retire early and saving consumers from getting scammed (with a special focus on MLM/pyramid schemes.) Traffic to the website this year just passed 2 million page views, which is a huge amount of people. I’ll expand on this in the year-end review, but the macro-economics of advertising in online publishing are way, way down.

And that leads me to the final thing that I’m thankful for. There’s no non-pandering way to say this, but it’s you, the reader. I’m thankful that you keep coming back (and bringing friends). So let’s close out this holiday strong and blast into the new year.

P.S.

I’m also thankful that I’m not waiting in long lines for anything. I may pop into Old Navy which is having a 50% off sale on (almost) everything in the store. I could use a pair of new jeans. I’ve been scouting the online deals, but the best deals like Amazon’s $35 Fire Tablet and Amazon Echo are products that I already have or don’t need.

I almost want to pick up a $35 tablet for some fun hacking fun.

5 Inexpensive Ways to Decorate for Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is a holiday perfect for pulling out all the stops. But decorating for such an occasion often requires a seemingly endless budget. But there are plenty of great DIY projects that can transform even the most boring of tables. Here are my five favorites.

5 Inexpensive Ways to Decorate for Thanksgiving

Fall Garlands and Banners

Garlands and banners make a perfect way to set the stage. To create the perfect Thanksgiving garland, pick up some bright-colored plastic leaves at your local craft store. Then, use clear fishing twine or invisible thread to stitch through the leaves (usually about three stitches down the center will do). Leave extra slack to have enough room to tie around a window’s curtain rod or a hook on your mantle.

Save Money Thanksgiving Decorations

To make a simple “Give Thanks” banner, use a design program to make pendant shapes with a letter in each and print on cardstock. Then, using a hole puncher, make two holes at the top to thread a long bit of thick ribbon through. Alternatively, you can cut recycled fabric into the shape, write the letters out with fabric markers, and sew or glue onto the ribbon.

Autumn Centerpieces

Though centerpieces are a Thanksgiving necessity, large flower arrangements are not in everyone’s budget. But anything around the house can make a great centerpiece: clear jars, empty lanterns, even unused serving bowls. To spice them up, head outdoors to find acorns, leaves, stones, and pinecones (or purchase at the craft store).

Arrange your centerpiece by placing heavy items like twigs and stones at the bottom. Next, add texture (acorns, pine cones). Top off with color (leaves, plastic berries) for a great holiday look!
Frugal Table Linens
Sprucing up an old table doesn’t have to require a new, expensive tablecloth. In fact, you can reuse your old one by dyeing it in a harvest color such as gold or brown.

To do this, wash the old tablecloth, but do not dry it. Purchase fabric dye at an art store in the color of your choice. Use a tablespoon of dye in a large bucket and slowly add 1/6th cup of salt and six cups of boiling water. Mix with a paint stirrer or old wooden spoon until you no longer see the salt. Place the still-wet tablecloth into the bucket and stir for roughly 3-5 minutes every 20 minutes for an hour total and then let sit for 2-3 hours. When done, lay outside for 24 hours to dry. You’ll be impressed at how amazing your new table cloth looks when finished!

Candle Reboot

For the adult table, candles are essential. Luckily, they are pretty inexpensive decorations when you buy them at places such as dollar stores. You can also go thrifting for great, vintage candleholders that you can remove the rust or even touch up using spray paint.

If you’re going for a more DIY look, try spicing up your candles by wrapping around autumn staples such as twigs, cinnamon sticks, or leaves. To make a cute candle holder, use a large glass jar and insert the candle. Then, fill in the space with candy corn, berries, sticks, or stones. You can use plastic berry leaves and water in tall, thin pitchers with floating tea lights for an added, tall centerpiece effect.

Guest Creations

One of my favorite ways to decorate a table is to make interactive placemats. They are a great way to get people talking and sharing (while keeping them out of the kitchen). Purchase paper from the craft store and cut it into large squares big enough for plates, silverware, and glasses. Then, add a writing prompt such as “What are you thankful for?” or “Name this year’s turkey.” For kids, you can print theirs with games, puzzles, or coloring prompts.

Spending a fortune on Thanksgiving decorations doesn’t have to be on your holiday list. Instead, find simple, easy DIY projects that will create the atmosphere you love without overspending.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

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Like your typical Thanksgiving leftovers, this post is a bit of a mix of many small items. I wish I could make it as great as real Thanksgiving leftovers, but that’s a goal too lofty.

Music Deal of the Century

Let’s start with dessert first. What if you could build an entire music collection of hundreds of albums for free? Well Microsoft is giving you that. There are no strings attached with the exception of having Windows 8 or a Windows Phone. The deal is 50 free albums. It includes some top albums like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream and U2’s Joshua Tree.

While it requires spending a little money, but Microsoft also has entire box sets for $1.99. You can dozens of songs by the Doors (almost everything they recorded in a studio) for a one-time $1.99. The music comes in basic MP3, so take them everywhere, even your iDevices. For less than $10, you could build yourself a very good collection of music… saving you from having to rent music from services like Spotify.

This deal comes from Liliputing which is a website about portable computers that I’m loving lately.

Get this Ebay Gift Card

It’s not a huge savings, but you can get a $50 Ebay Gift Card for $45. If you are like me you’ll find a way to use $50 on Ebay in the next month. Why not save yourself $5? Or buy a few and save more.

Giving Thanks

I don’t know about you, but my RSS reader was clogged with thousands of bloggers writing about what they were thankful for this Thanksgiving. I question if readers really care to about it. I imagine some readers are having difficult times and reading about blogger’s success might not come off well. And if that blogger wrote about difficulties themselves… well who wants to read Debbie Downer?

For that reason, I’ve decided to skip sharing what I’m thankful for, but you people know it’s you, right?

Anyone Know of any Discounted Deals?

Is it just me or is there a deal on everything nowadays? It seems like every company and organization needs to have a Black Friday special. They start early and continue through Cyber Monday. It seems like most deals are A) saving $20 when you spend $150 on something that I don’t need or B) deals when you have to trample 7,000 people to get to. Neither one are very interesting to me.

Perhaps worse, it seems like everything I read is pushing these deals.

The reason the Ebay deal above is interesting to me is that I know I’m going to use it anyway. There’s no fighting with people as the deal is quickly delivered and instantly ready to use via email. The Microsoft music deal is similar… just a lot of value without much spending or work.