PF Under 30

Paying off debt and finding my financial lifestyle

Archive for category Mac

Irregular vs Regular Expenses

Aug 12

Posted by kiki in Living Expenses, Mac | No Comments

I’m about to start Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University tomorrow and it’s already got me thinking about the ways I’ve been managing my finances over the years that may not be so helpful. One of which is my attatchment to my credit cards that provide little to no value to me (and that I don’t charge on anymore) and how I handle regular vs. irregular expenses.

For example, my auto insurance, backup service, gym membership, online fax account, tanning membership, and Tivo service (for my dad) are all setup to auto pay from some credit card or another. My weekly contribution to my church on the other hand comes out of my debit card.

The funny thing is, I budget for the debit charge (I need to make sure there is money in the account to cover) but not the rest of it. The rest of it I just pay whenever my credit card shows a balance due. I couldn’t tell you how much all that auto-pay by credit card adds up to, which means money I’m spending every month that I have no idea of how much.

Irregular expenses on the other hand, are anything that isn’t defined monthly. For me, this includes life insurance (yearly), health insurance (quarterly), home warranty (yearly), auto registration tags (yearly), and anything else I forgot. Have you ever added all this stuff up to figure out what you really spend?

That brings me to my first Dave Ramsey fear… BUDGET (gasp!) Though I’m afraid of seeing the numbers, I really am interested to find out how much I spend on gas, food, online expenses, etc per month. (Oh yeah, I forgot my website hosting account (yearly) in irregular expenses, and Sirius satelite radio. Oops.)

Membership dues, warranties, what else do you spend irregularly that you don’t realize?

Last night while opening my mail I got a notice from Apple stating that the warranty on my Mac Mini is about to expire – and for $149 I could extend it for an additional 3 years.

  1. I pay $5/month to backup my files online. This will mitigate any hardware or data loss issues.
  2. I only paid $450 for the Mini in the first place. If it dies, it’s a good excuse for a hardware upgrade.
  3. I have already broken open my mini twice to upgrade the RAM and Hard Drive. This voids the warranty anyway.

So why would I pay another $150 for a useless piece of paper? I won’t. I think I’ll take that $150 and apply it to my debt snowball (or in this case – savings snowball – I’m on Baby Step #1)

USAA ate my Bonus

Mar 27

Posted by kiki in CC Debt Progress, Mac, Refunds and Rebates, USAA | No Comments

So I just realized it’s the end of the quarter, which means my quarterly bonus is right around the corner. Cool!The other not so good news (or good, depending on how you look at it) it’s almost all going to my USAA Amex. Good news – that credit card will be paid in full. The bad news – I still have a long way to go. (Particularly with my Costco Amex oops - my biggest credit card debacle to date.) Still…. it feels good to make progress.Enter the DEBT SNOWBALL!  $1000/mo previously going to USAA Amex   —>  $1000 to Costco Amex$783.70/mo going to USAA Amex                   —> $783.70 to Costco Amex$416/mo going to Roth contributions            —> $416 to Costco Amex$220/mo minimum payment                          —> $220 minimum payment$2419.70 Debt Snowball Payment At this rate, I should be well ahead of the game @ paying this debt off by the end of the year. However, I would like to spend the extra time maxing out my Roth as well. I made a bold move by stopping my Roth payments until this was PIF. I need to put that money back (a little under $4000 left – same as every year.) Go figure!I estimate my bonus to be a little over $2300 (after taxes). While this one will mostly go to USAA, I expect the July version to go to the Costco Amex too.April will pretty much look like a money tree in this blog – between the bonus, the rental income, regular paycheck, and my expense check. However, besides my recent purchase of .Mac, I’m continuing to live frugally. On the flip side – my debt progress bars are kicking a$$! 

dot Mac discount $59.88 – maybe I’m not “too cheap”

Mar 25

Posted by kiki in Mac, Online Access | 2 Comments

As many of you know, I have recently fallen in love with Macs. The “It Just Works” mantra is really true. It allows me to easily do the things I’ve been buying PCs to do over the years (but never actually did them.)That’s why I’m re-thinking the whole idea of not buying a .Mac subscription. Especially since Amazon.com sells them for $69.99 (No tax) and Free Shipping.  Found a cheaper price: $59.88 thru MacWorld Price Grabber.

  • Sure – I can use Picasa Web Albums instead of .Mac. Picassa even has a nifty iPhoto Uploader. But it’s not as well integrated as .Mac.
  • I will probably continue to use my Gmail account for mail – though I may switch the configuration to IMAP on my Crackberry. (Currently I’m using the web version of Gmail which doesn’t allow me to email stupid pictures I take with my phone.)
  • Bookmarks sync can be done thru the Google Toolbar, but only if you’re on Internet Explorer or Firefox. As much as I have tried to use Firefox for both PC and Mac – I really like my Safari. And Safari has a PC version too.
  • iDisk can be replaced by a FREE 1GB version of Box.net (an  online WebDav server). Dreamhost offers a killer 500GB WebDav server too, for $7 a month – a service I will probably look at instead of buying a $400 TimeCapsule.) The benefits are offsite backup instead of on-site. I really want my Pictures and Files backed up off-site (not as much for my iTunes collection). However, now that we’re starting to look at alternative lifestyles where we live on a boat for 3 days a week, I want to make these things readily accessible to my MacBook if necessary.
  • I also like the idea of a web gallery of videos that works seamlessly w/ .Mac. I would love to show off the videos I made for my mom and my best friend for Christmas. This can be done for free via YouTube too, though I don’t really want it that public.
  • Bac to My Mac – another valuable feature that can be nabbed w/ a Dynamic DNS subscription plus some complicated config. The cost? $25 a year. I would certainly love to be able to login to my home Mac Mini right now – would love to see how big my iPhoto album really is. This will be a key player in deciding whether the 10GB .Mac subscription is sufficient enough for me.

In all – now that I’ve found the $40 discount thru PriceGrabber, I’m wondering what’s holding me back. The $60 version you can buy every year so that you’ll never have to pay the $99 version – ever. Like everyone else in this PF blogsphere, I want to make sure whatever I bring into my house, I’m going to really get good usage out of. It’s yet another thing to manage in my life, and I need to make sure the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.$59.88 / 12 = $4.99 a month. Yeah – pending my iPhoto library will fit in there, I think I’m going to go for it.