No Debt Plan

No Debt Plan is a blog about living a debt-free life. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed (e-mail subscription also available). Learn more about me, or read some other popular articles. Thanks for visiting!

I am honored that 27,000 people have come from various parts of the web to visit this blog since January of this year. Stumble Upon has brought in a huge boost of traffic — and I hope you guys stay.

I hope you find the articles engaging and interesting… and that you take something away from each and every one.

If you enjoy the blog, tell a friend. If you hate the blog, tell a friend and tell me. I’m not a professional write. Make me improve.

Cheers.

PFBloggers.com:

• Pinching Copper has a hilarious entry on “What GTA IV Taught Me About Personal Finance.” I’ve seen it all when you can compare a video game to personal finance, but it does make sense… just think in any game you’ve ever played, there is no “credit” (at least usually) that you can use to buy upgrades or weapons. You have $X and you can only spend $X.
• Saving Savy thinks The Little Things Make a Big Difference.
• Master Your Card tells us about the first biometric credit card and wants to know what we think. I think it’s kind of scary. I don’t know if I would trust the credit card networks with my biometric data…
• Living Almost Large shares a sad story about a med student just piling on extra debt because really, it doesn’t matter.
• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds asks how we are all coping with increasing gas prices. To be honest, we haven’t changed much because we weren’t overspending to begin with.

Elsewhere:

• The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Money Under 30 and my post 10 Steps to Avoid Becoming a Millionaire is an Editor’s Pick! This is my first time ever having an editor’s pick, woohoo!
• Get Rich Slowly talks about Rescue Time, a program to help you track where you spend your time. I’ve afraid of installing this program…
• Free Money Finance discusses an article where a family of four eats on $300/month. Impressive!
• The Simple Dollar gives us the Debtor’s Toolkit.
• Brip Blap gives the details on how to make money even without a job. He thinks we should all do it. I agree — in the past 3 weeks, I’ve earned $200+ blogging through various blogs.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, so if you haven’t already, reach out to your Mom and thank her! You’re already in deep trouble if you forgot, but at least try to make up for it.

Debt Kid has an interesting article up about what he would tell his 18 year old self if he had the chance. That’s a very interesting take on things and sounded like a great kick off to a new article.

Six years ago I was just about to graduate high school. It’s nuts to think about that as it seems like a terribly long time ago, but at the same time it feels like no time has passed at all.

A Recap of Major Life Events, 2002-2008

• I graduated high school in 2002, and graduated college in December 2005.
• I got engaged October 2005, and married the woman of my dreams in January 2007.
• I’ve worked two real-world career jobs.
• We bought our first house last summer (remind me to write about this at some point).
• We got a dog two weeks ago.

What I Would Tell My 18 Year Old Self

These are in no particular order, lest you think me a cold hearted man.

• Get an internship for every summer between school, even if you have to pay out of pocket.
  • I turned down an internship with BMW USA in New Jersey because it didn’t pay enough to even pay rent up in New Jersey. In hindsight it was a great opportunity, but the program seemed very unorganized (no list of available corporate apartments for interns, etc.). I may have missed the boat with my favorite car company.
• Network more.
  • I was brought up to believe that hard work and good grades were what it took to succeed in life. I’ve learned over the years that a significant portion of life is who you know. It may not be fair, it may be kind of cynical, but it is definitely true. I would network with more people and put the books away more often.
• Be appropriately frugal.
  • I’m definitely pro-frugality. Just don’t let it affect your life. (Psst… take your spouse on a date.)
• Walk in the rain with the one you love.
  • Be silly. It can be fun. Branch out a bit.
• Life is short.
  • You will know people who die young. Your family isn’t getting any younger, either. Call your parents. Call your wife’s parents. Stay in touch with friends.
• Figure out how to get organized.
  • By far one of the most important things you can do. Come up with an organization system and stick to it.
• Get engaged later or marry faster.
  • You and your future wife will both agree waiting 14 months to get married is far too long, you impatient jerk.
• You can do a long distance relationship and make it work.
  • When it becomes a short distance relationship, you will truly appreciate it more. It sucks for now, but stick it out. She’s a winner.
• Don’t forget how to dream and thank God for every day. Repeat: Life is short.
• Take risks. Repeat: Life. Is. Short. Live a little.
  
• In fact, don’t forget to live.
  • You’ll end up writing a personal finance blog and focusing on money a lot. Don’t let it take over your life. Life each day to the fullest. Take her to Brusters. Get ice cream. Rent a movie. Don’t be an old fuddy-duddy.

That wraps it up for now. What if we turned this into a meme?

What would you tell your 18 year old self, Cash Money Life, Being Frugal, and Master Your Card?

Is it May already? Good grief! Time flies…

PFBloggers:

• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds had an expensive weekend. At least she got a cat out of the deal.
• Get Rich or Die Trying is fighting the urge to invest. That sounds backwards, but makes sense for his situation. And congrats on the house buddy!
• Master Your Card starts a new series called Life or Debt: The Psychology of Consumer Debt.
• Our Fourpence Worth explains why she and her sister share an AMEX card. We started the discussion on No Debt Plan, switched to e-mail, and now she gives a full explanation.

Elsewhere:

• Yawns: Young and wealthy, but normal (USA Today)
• The Carnival of Debt Reduction is up at Rocket Finance.
• Free Money Finance had a reader question regarding insurance for rental properties. A very good discussion in some of the comments took place regarding LLCs, S-Corps, etc.
• Gather Little by Little has some money saving tips from his readers.
• Broke Grad Student is sporting a new look for the blog, take a look.

There were a bunch of other great posts out there this week, but I’ve only got time to put these together. Cheers!

Overview

April was my second really good month for No Debt Plan. Thanks to my article about using a Roth IRA to retire with $1,000,000 getting popular on Stumble Upon, I saw another rush of visitors. I didn’t quite beat March’s visitors number, but I’m still very happy overall.

The Monthly Stats (vs. 1 month ago):

• Posts: 51 vs. 43 (18.6% increase)
• Comments/Pingbacks: 175 vs 103 (69.9% increase)
• Visits: 6,578 vs. 7,369 (10.73% decrease)
• Page Views: 10,014 vs.9,636 (3.92% increase)
• RSS Subscribers: 112 vs. 75 (49.33% increase)

I’m very happy with 6,500 coming to visit this blog in the past month… that is over 200 per day. The number I am most happy with is the RSS subscribers. Let’s keep up that growth!

Popular in April:

These posts were popular this past month:

• One Easy Step to Retiring with $1,000,000
• Should You Invest in Visa?
• Reader Question: Roth IRA Minimums?
• The Carnival of Debt Reduction: No Debt Plan Edition
• My First Place Shows Off Poor Decisions
• A Risky Question

Subscribe to No Debt Plan:

Join your fellow readers in subscribing to No Debt Plan. Any help you can provide to me is greatly appreciat. This includes subscribing to the blog, adding me as a favorite on Technorati, and adding me to your del.icio.us account. Here’s how to do a few of those things:

Try it via e-mail…

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You could also add me as a favorite on your technorati account:

What’s Coming in May:

• Continuation of the No Debt Plan series (I have slacked off on this and plan to knock out the next two steps this month.)
• More green house/living articles
• A few more Dumb Money articles

Thanks!

Thanks for making this blog the success it is thus far. You’re helping me live out something I truly enjoy doing. If you enjoy this blog, the honest to goodness best thing you can do for me is to e-mail five of your friends and tell them about this blog. Here’s a quick e-mail you could send:

Hey! I’ve discovered a new blog that I enjoy reading and thought you might, too. The blog is No Debt Plan and the author focuses on helping people get and stay out of debt. Why don’t you take a look, or try subscribing to the RSS feed?

Or something like that (maybe that was a bit cheesy for you). And hey, if you’re feeling generous, tell more than five friends!

We had a lot of good discussions over the past few weeks that I wanted to highlight and respond to.

From Our Homeowners Association Was Worth Something This Week:

Wide Open Wallet: You would hate our association. We pay $1,200 a year. They maintain everyone’s front yard which is nice cause it cuts down on yard work but it stinks too cause you can’t make any changes at all to the landscaping in front of your house. We also have to have a parking sticker to park in our own driveway!! How dumb is that?! We are rebelling against that one. I would like to see them try to tow my car off my own property.

devil says: After being part of an HOA for ten years, I will NEVER do it again. It’s the only time American citizens are required, in their own country, to waive their constitutional rights. Even convicted criminals don’t have to do this.

$1,200 per year for a HOA is absolutely nuts, plus car stickers? No way. That really plays to devil’s point about people giving up their rights. Good grief.

From the discussion of how much money we’ve earned from AMEX:

Our Fourpence Worth: My sister and I have this card too (we share an account) and we use it everywhere AMEX is accepted. I even used it to purchase a single postage stamp once. Every little bit adds up.

We earned $316 last year. But I we’re earning a lot less this year (so far only $78 since July or August) because we’ve cut out almost all non-necessity spendings.

MyMoneyAdventure: I agree! I use my citi card to help pay off my student loan! So far, about 220 in 3 months!

That’s the way to do it … we do the same thing and use it on every purchase. We love that cash back!

From Marginal Propensity to Consume and Your Rebate Checks:

Jonathan and JB had the same question: Is it possible that America could actually have an mpc of OVER 1, after taking into consideration the massive levels of consumer debt (and as you say, the negative savings rate)?

You guys are absolutely correct. It can be greater than 1. It really shouldn’t be so, but unfortunately you can finance that level above 1.

Thanks to everyone for the comments recently. Let’s keep the discussions going!

I’ve been out of it for a few days and am still not caught up. These are some articles I’ve seen thus far in my RSS reader and elsewhere that were really enjoyable.

PFBloggers.com:

• Living Almost Large wants to know what we would do if we came into $1,000,000. I’d love to expand on this post in the future. Long story short? We would pay off the house
• Girls Just Wanna Have Funds has an excellent guest post from Master Your Card about stretching your food budget during hard times.
• Pinching Copper wants us to calculate how much our purchases are actually costing us. We pay for our groceries in about 7 hours worth of work per month.
• Savy Saving calculated her net worth and has cracked the $100,000 mark — congrats!

Elsewhere:

• Darren Rowse knows that PR is being updated, but has a key reminder for all us aspiring blogging millionaires.
  • If some of the toolbars I’ve seen are correct, No Debt Plan has jumped from Page Rank 0 to Page Rank 3! Awesome!
• FIRE Finance has updated their list of the Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs. I’ve finally made the list at #91 overall, and #41 via Site Meter. Woohoo!
• Wal-Mart is going to offer free rebate cash checking and discounts on specific groceries. I think this is a brilliant business move. Bring those customers into your store, give them something for free, put money in their hands, and have them go spend it in your store.

I didn’t get a chance to write anything up for Saturday or Sunday. I think that’s the first time in a while where I haven’t had a post ready to go. I don’t think I’ve ever gone two days in a row. My apologizes. Hopefully you can forgive me…

Holy cow we got a dog!

Yup, Saturday we set out to do the following things:

• buy some car tools from Harbor Freight
• visit the humane society
• go to a local discount home decoration store
• go to Lowe’s to buy garage storage and perhaps some patio furniture

Here’s what we ended up getting done on Saturday:

• adopting Maggie from the Birmingham Humane Society

What can I say? She stole our hearts…

Why We Got Her

It’s been in the cards for quite some time that we would get a dog of some sort at the beginning of summer. My wife is a teacher and will have all summer to train the new addition to the family. I had a cat growing up, and her parents still have the family dog. We’ve been wanting to have a companion for quite some time, but managed to push it off until the summer of this year.

Dogs are Expensive

As Free Money Finance consistently tells his readers, having a pet is not only a serious emotional and time commitment — they’re expensive too. I completely agree. The cost of owning a dog on average is $1,200 or so per year.

We went into this with eyes open… an understanding of the cost and time required of us to take care of any dog we adopted. We have the money available, we have built up two months worth of an emergency fund, and “dog expenses” is an actual category in our budget. We felt not only emotionally ready, but financially ready too.

How It Happened

We got to the Humane Society around 11 Saturday morning. We looked at two dogs. The first was a one year old Shepard mix named Camey that was very, very timid. The adoption counselor said she hadn’t been abused, but was just very nervous and probably not good for a home with kids. She said she would warm up.

The second was this little furball named Lima Bean. She was also very shy and kind of skitish, but also very cute. Of course, this is a puppy. Not many puppies lack the cute factor. We spent some time with her, left to discuss the options, and ended up deciding on Lima Bean. We signed the paperwork and went home to puppy-proof the house as well as get the leash and collar we had already purchased (Tennessee Vols garb, no doubt) before coming back to get her. We walked out with her at 4pm, ready to face a new adventure.

To be frank, we thought the name Lima Bean sucked. So Lima Bean is now known as Maggie. Maggie is a Labrador Retriever mix… they thought mixed with Shepard. Only time will tell. She will get big, and we have a relatively small yard without a fence. We have made a commitment to exercising her twice daily, rain, snow, or shine. It is a monumental task, and we understand she won’t be a puppy forever. She is likely to get very large. It should be fun.

So! That’s the big news for us. Regularly scheduled programming comes back tomorrow. Too tired from

I missed having a post for today, and it is doubtful I’ll have one ready for tomorrow.

But I have some exciting news to share on Monday morning.

More later! Appreciate your understanding.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction will be hosted here tomorrow. Get your posts in!