Hitting the Reset Button

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Posted by Man on the Door on February 5, 2010 – 1:00 am
Filed under Uncategorized

Back in 2004, we started Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Class. After a bit more than 2 years of skrimping and saving and cutting back, we paid off all of our debt. We were debt freeeeeee. We even called Dave’s radio show and screamed. We kept working on his baby steps and didn’t even get all the way through the next one before we “fell off the wagon.” The plan was supposed to work like this: we take all the money we had been putting towards our debts and save up 3 to 6 months of expenses.

It worked for a little while. We got our savings up over 5 digits! But, it got too easy to start sniping off some money from the monthly savings. Grab some of it here, throw some there. Then we started using our credit card a bit again. We had this money available in the budget for this and just paid off the credit card each month. The expenses were not planned each month. They weren’t necessarily impulse buys, but just not planned.

We ended up piddling away all this extra each month to eventually incorporating it into the budget and spending it. We then made the decision for the Mrs on the Door to stay home with our newborn. That would mean her income would be taken out of our pool o’ money and we would have to make it off my income. Well, it ended up that we were about $200-$300 short each month. That was quite a hit to my ego. It brought up all the “I can’t provide for my family” feelings and to make ends meet, we started pulling some cash out of savings each month.

Eventually, the Mrs on the Door decided that she would have to go back to work. This was hard for us. It was important to us for her to be home as much as possible with our child, and luckily she was able to get back with the same company she was with before, but in a different position that she was able to partly from home.

So now we had more income coming in, but still didn’t have the right mindset towards savings and, of course, life happened — a couple of times. So now we are restarting Financial Peace this weekend. It will be good to get a refresher course and get us back on the right path. We’ve already taken one fairly big (drastic?) step and hopefully it will keep us going in the right direction.

Randy Moller Goal Calls

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Posted by Man on the Door on December 29, 2009 – 10:41 am
Filed under Hockey

These were shown to me and are too funny to not pass on. (To whom exactly, I’m not too sure.)  I can’t come up with a better intro than Puck Daddy over at Yahoo, so I’ll swipe his a bit:

Moller and Dan Le Batard, who hosts a sports-talk show on 790 The Ticket, conspired on a little experiment this season: Callers to Le Batard’s show would suggest pop culture references for Moller, and he would then use them during his goal-calls for Panthers games. The following video put together by Le Barard’s producers shows just how far this experiment has gone, and how hilarious its results have been:

More after the jump

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STID, Vol 3 – Panic Purchases (part 2)

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Posted by Man on the Door on December 18, 2009 – 6:15 am
Filed under Uncategorized
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face-palm-300x300This is the second part of a series of posts. Click here for part 1.

Let’s go ahead and stick with the home buying theme here. I mean, the first one wasn’t really a “panic” when we bought it.

After we lived in the townhouse for a year or so, we decided to start looking for a rental house again. But this time we finally found one from a nice husband and wife. It was a nice place with a giant backyard – deck, big trees, on a cul-du-sac, quiet – you get the point.

We had been in this place for probably 3 years when we had a knock on our door one morning just before Thanksgiving. We usually didn’t get anyone knocking on our door so it was incredibly unusual let alone at 7:30 AM. I was getting ready for work and wasn’t dressed at the time, so my wife hands me the baby and I stand around the corner while she answers the door. It was the wife of the couple we were renting from and she was visibly upset when the door opens. Read More »

STID, Vol 2 – Panic Purchases (part 1)

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Posted by Man on the Door on December 16, 2009 – 6:00 am
Filed under Stupid Things I've Done
Tagged as , ,

face-palm-300x300Welcome to Volume two of STID – Stupid Things I’ve Done.

It seems like we have never been able to make a large purchase without having to do it in a panic, be it real or imagined. “Never” actually might not be the appropriate word, but let me explain. I’ll describe the purchase itself and what led up to it and then what the consequences were for our family – either positive, negative, or neutral.

It started with the house we bought in Wichita after college. This “panic” was self induced and not real. We were married right out of college and decided to move away from our home/parents to get started off on our own two feet. We started off renting an apartment on a short-term lease of 6 months. And after living below an apparent herd of elephants for those 6 months, we decided it was time to move. “Rent a house, that’s the way to go” we thought and we were right, but that’s not what we ended up doing. After looking for a rental for a while didn’t really come up with anything we liked so we made the mistake of walking into a realtor’s office and asking if they managed any rental houses. “Oh, why would you rent when you could buy?” the realtor asked.

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Knocking Them Out

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Posted by Man on the Door on November 25, 2009 – 8:00 am
Filed under Debt
Tagged as , , ,

visa debtOK – so we are in the first month of working on our new debt and re-looking at our overall financial situation. Well, we started out with a bang. We knew we were getting into the ring with a formidable opponent that we had created. Our poor spending decisions, laziness, and vacations fed this beast. And he was looking to take out his pound of flesh with around an 8% interest rate. And really, in the world of credit cards, that definitely isn’t a usurious rate, but it’s still sucking money away from us.

So, while we’re putting our first opponent through boot camp, we were getting fat and living the high life.

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Getting The Door in Order

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Posted by Man on the Door on November 21, 2009 – 9:14 pm
Filed under Debt
Tagged as , ,

Here at The Door, we need to get out financial house in a little better order. We’ve gone through a lot of ups and down, paying attention and not, spending and scroogery when it comes to our finances. We’ve even gotten to the point were we could call the Dave Ramsey Show and scream WEEEEEEEEEE’REEEEEE DEEEEEEBT FREEEEEEE! After kicking it for a while and starting to save up a pretty good nest egg, we had our first child and got complacent. Now we find ourselves in credit card debt and having car payments. This is just really unacceptable and we are starting to get re-focused so we can try to get to some of our goals and maybe send our child to college in 16 years! Here’s what we are going to do.

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Does This Make Me a Fanboy?

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Posted by Man on the Door on November 11, 2009 – 1:22 pm
Filed under satisfaction
Tagged as , ,

my apple icon

Well, I did it. Actually, I’ll say we did it. The Woman on the Door and I were due to upgrade our phones, so we re-upped with AT&T and took the plunge on some iPhones. I’m really not sure if I’m completely sold on it yet, though. I mean, I like the thing and all, I’m just really not sold on the forced data plan. My wife’s company will pay for her data plan, so that helps, but I’ve yet to ask my company if they’ll cover mine (my hopes are low but I’ll ask anyway).

[I'm trying something new, click below to keep reading this post...]

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Dude, Weak

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Posted by Man on the Door on October 14, 2009 – 8:42 am
Filed under Hockey, satisfaction
Tagged as

img177So I’m recording the Colorado Avalanche last night on the TiVo to watch when I get home. It’s sometime in the middle of the third period, so I rewind to the start of the game and I see this on my screen.

Sure, it is the preview of Center Ice, but come on. I was able to join the game about 1 hour behind ‘live’. It’s my understanding that the NHL would have the final say as to what TiVo can provide, but that’s pretty lame NHL & TiVo.

Also, with the TiVo I’ve got cable cards so buying Center Ice isn’t an option (only have 1-way cards around here). Seeing this just makes me even “happier” I will be saving $160 bucks again this year. What’s the point of being able to record something if it won’t even let you watch it later.

Been to Denver and Back

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Posted by Man on the Door on October 7, 2009 – 7:58 pm
Filed under Uncategorized
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Welcome visitors from Jibblescribbits. Take a look around and let me know what you think of the place (other than my, um, lack of content). Maybe there’s an ad that catches your attention (cough cough *ahem*).

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So we finally did it. We loaded up the whole family and a friend’s family and drove from OKC to Denver. We went to watch our hometown boy Tyler Arnason the Joe Sakic retirement ceremony/first game of the year for the Colorado Avalanche. It was a great trip, but was way too quick.

We ended up leaving Wednesday morning at 3am hoping the toddlers would sleep in the car. Well, one of them did and it wasn’t mine. Well, eventually he fell asleep and got some restless sleep, but not before my buddy’s toddler looked over at him and said “Shhhhh, I’m trying to sleep!” We made pretty good time all said and done. We stretched out the lunch stop to let the kiddos play for a while. It was pretty obvious they needed the energy release and it was good to get out of the car for an hour or so.

There was a storm coming in over the mountains and there was some wicked wind that hit us somewhere in western Kansas. If it wasn’t 60-70 mph straight line winds, I would be surprised. This was ridiculous! There were flagpoles bent over, semis swerving all over the place, and it was hard to get out of the car when we stopped for gas. The amount of crap that blew into my eyes in the short time I was out of the car was just astounding.

I’ve got a friend in Denver that urged me to try to get into town before 4 or after 6 or we would be stuck in traffic for that length of time. We barely made it on the front end and got to the hotel with uh, minimal incident. We relaxed for a bit and let the kids run wild and then made the mistake of trying to make them sit still in a restaurant to eat dinner. That didn’t go well. The kiddos were so tired and stir cray that trying to make the sit still for any length of time was just mean on our part. P1030713What we finally decided on was letting the wives walk back to the hotel with the kids (just a couple of parking lots away) and my buddy and I went off to the drug store to pick up some decogenstants that my son was in desperate need of. Eventually we got them back to the rooms and they crashed hard – even on the pull-out sofa bed.

Thursday was the day of the game and I ended up leaving my wife and kid with my friends and went off to see my friend that lives in Denver. He just bought a house and I thought it would be a really good thing to go and see it. So he took me to some burger joint that was spectacular but unfortunately I can’t remember the name. We then went off to his new place and he had me try to play Madden on his Wii. That’s my first time to try to use the thing and it is pretty cool, but it sure was hard to actually use. Made me think too much to play a video game.

Then back to the hotel to get ready for the game — the whole reason for the trip. There was a meet up with a bunch of the posters off of Mile High Hockey (the friend that we went up there with writes for them). That was a bit strange — a little too much like a Star Trek convention. I had to introduce myself as my avatar and then “you can call me Chris”.  That went pretty well though. The room the restaurant had reserved a side room for us and there was a small raised platform area that we were able to let the kids run on and not disturb too many people. Then we walked back to the Pepsi Center for the retirement ceremony.

The ceremony itself was really nice. Our seats were in the lower bowl and there was someone sitting above us in the “club” level (I think) that kept yelling “I/We love you Joe!” His man-love for Sakic was a little too much.

Goal #5 (I think) - you can see the puck in the net!The game was great. The expectations for the team are pretty low this year and they were playing the President’s Cup (regular season champs) winning team (regular season champs) from last year. The Avs are full of young guys – coaches and players – and they actually looked organized and played actual good hockey! I was trying to take pictures of some of the action and actually pulled this picture of a goal – you can see the puck in the net!

We turned around and started heading home Friday morning – way too soon. We should have stayed a little longer and gone to the mountains. We were sooooooo close and my wife really wanted to make the detour, but we ended up not adding the time to the trip.

Heading home was uneventful all said and done. Parents were tired, and so were the kids, so the DVD player got a whole lot of use. We fortunately found an outlet in the back of the van to plug in the car charger. The batteries ran out on the way to Denver and the kids were much less than thrilled about it.

We had borrowed my mom and dad’s minivan for the trip and once we got home and got unloaded (around 11 pm), I had to go and get gas and wash it because my folks were going to take it on a trip the next day. Guess we got the engine warmed up for them.

All in all, it was a great trip. The price we ended up paying for the tickets was well worth it. The price we paid by sitting in a car for that long and not enjoying the city – not so much. We’ll do it differently next time – and there will be a next time.

Petey’s Teeth

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Posted by Man on the Door on September 12, 2009 – 12:13 pm
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Tagged as
Petey's Teeth

Well, it’s time to get my dog’s teeth cleaned. It’s been a while for him and they’re pretty grimy. A vet we used to go to tried to get us to put some polish-like stuff on them after we had them done last time, but that didn’t last long at all. So, now we’re back to paying to get them cleaned.

More than anything, I just wanted an excuse to post this picture.

The last vet we went to was the one located in the local PetSmart. They (of course) are good at sending out the reminders that we need to get a booster shot of X and a dose of Y and a couple of Z whenever it gets close to time.They for sure want to remind you to come and spend some money! We had to get the shots and were planning on getting his teeth cleaned up already so they talked me into their yearly plan. Now I hope they keep sending me the cards to get the services I will be paying for.

We had our 2 dogs under out name at the vet, but when I went to the vet last time I had to tell them that our female went to live on the farm. And that’s not a metaphor — she’s out living on my in-laws farm now. She was just a little jealous of our toddler and we just didn’t have the time to give her the attention she needed. So, now she’s a farm dog and has a pack to run with.

Anyway, it really is amazing how the small costs of a pet adds up. From food to shots to the time-cost of training and exercising them. I wouldn’t change it though — it’s really amazing how fast a dog becomes part of the family.