Managing personal finances from the perspective of a relatively poorperson who is moderately adept at technology

Life seems to revolve around the ability to buy stuff. The only people who don't understand how important money is are those who have more than their fair share of it.

And maybe idiots. Idiots fail to understand things as a matter of their defining characteristic.

Traveling costs money, as does food, health care, education, entertainment, clothing, transportation, housing, utilities, security, convenience, loan interest, phones, and internet. Money can buy political sway, enhance social standing, advance technology, make the world a better or worse place, and (arguably) make a person more attractive. Money enables the creation of art. Life expectancies are higher for the wealthy, and quality of life is substantially higher on average.

Perhaps I should have started with a list of what money cannot do. That list is shorter.

Despite all of the great and tremendously useful things that money can do, a lot of folks don't have much of it, myself included. The little I manage to scrape together just tends to evaporate like some sort of cruel magic trick.

Further evidence to support my theory that rich people are wizards.

So, what can be done about that?

1. Make more money.

This is what money someone literally made themselves might look like. I don't mean counterfeiting currency, although technically that may be a (terrible) option.

Making more money is perhaps the most obvious suggestion possible as to how someone can improve their financial situation. Unfortunately, this is often not the simplest option, if possible at all depending upon the situation. And even when the option to supplement incomes comes along, it is often accompanied by additional expenses.

As I assume Ghandi or someone else known for being wise famously said, "mo' money, mo' problems." Oscar Wilde, maybe?

But here are a few options, assuming you have a full time job already:

a) apply for a part time job
b) apply for a better paying job
c) try to negotiate a raise from your current employer
d) get an education so you can get paid more in the future
e) sell things you don't need or use
f) monitize your social media (like how this blog uses Google Adsense)
g) do online surveys for a little extra cash when bored
h) refer friends to companies you've done business with that offer referral bonuses
i) try to take whatever talents you might have and market them to strangers (in person or internet business, like through Etsy, eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Craigslist, or whatever)

2. Spend less money.

Folks who spend little to no time looking into their own personal finances waste ridiculous amounts of money, like with subscriptions to rarely used services or by paying more for the same thing at convenient, well-advertised retailers.

Here are some key tips for how you can spend less:

a) Monitor spending

Similar to how weight loss experts encourage calorie counting, you should definitely try to record every cent you spend. I personally use Mint, a very detailed and advanced software tool for monitoring spending. You can even set budgets and categorize expenditures to see what kinds of things money is being spent on.

I discovered that I spend WAY too much on coffee. While not a total surprise, the sticker shock motivated me to seek lower cost alternatives to regular $5 Starbucks lattes.

b) Prioritize entertainment expenses

Video games can be very expensive. The systems or computers used to play them cost hundreds of dollars. A new individual game runs up to $60 (or more with DLC). Online games often require subscriptions and higher speed Internet access. Accessories aren't cheap, either. Plus, resale value for used games generally sucks.

Purchasing older games, non-subscription based games, or just finding a less expensive way of having fun are all solid ideas. There are even a fair number of free games out there that can run on about any platform.

Cable, satellite TV, and premium channels, will burn through a paycheck very quickly. Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime can serve as lower cost alternatives, each with tons of quality stuff to watch. There are even free alternatives available. (See projectfreetv.so - although there may be annoying ads or legal/ethical issues involved with that). Perhaps you have a relative with premium cable? If you can borrow their account details, you can watch online under their account (see e.g. HBO go)!

Protip: buying a movie is a really poor investment and kind of a waste of money. If you just love collecting or owning films and you don't mind the cost, that's cool. I'm not judging you.

Going to movie theaters can be expensive, but really fun. Same with going to concerts or other kinds of live performances, as well as many other kinds of things. Obviously you wouldn't want to ruin your life for the sake of pinching pennies, but there are ways to cut costs when going out. Eating before a show or game (or getting your drink on before going out) can cut near-universally outrageous concessions costs.

The key to reigning in your entertainment expenses is to just simply monitor them, create a budget, and prioritize your fun. Refer above to point (a).

c) Reduce Food/Drink Costs

Cooking at home is generally the cheapest way to eat, so long as you aren't buying super expensive ingredients and totally ignoring sale prices. Delivery is NEVER a good idea from a financial standpoint. Fast food is terrible, but if you have to, check out the dollar menu.

Every once in a while, everyone goes to a restaurant, perhaps for a date or to meet some friends. Fancy cocktail menus should be avoided, unless you are okay with dropping the cost of a month's groceries budget for a single night of indulgence. Some knowledge of drink mixing can be useful for having cheap (yet still tasty) drinks made at a bar from much more reasonably priced well liquors. Beer is usually less expensive than wine, especially beers on tap or on special. 

Don't forget: water is always good. And although it may not be as much fun, everyone appreciates the designated driver.

Most grocery stores will have coupon deals or price matching services of some kind. If you are able to take the time, you can save a lot by careful shopping. Extreme Couponing levels of commitment are not required to shave off hundreds of dollars per year.

d) Pay Bills Smartly

Cell phone carriers work very hard to try to snipe competitors' customers away. Make sure you know all of the charges and fees involved, but switching carriers has the potential to reduce costs by a significant margin. Don't forget to factor in where and how much you use your phone, or else risk overage charges and chronic dropped calls.

Some companies offer incentives for establishing electronic bill delivery and auto-withdrawals. These can lower monthly payments sometimes or provide you with other incentives. Keep an eye out for special offers like these.

AVOID FEES. Do not pay bills late. Do not overdraw your bank accounts. If you do accidentally make one of these mistakes, however, all is not lost. Companies will sometimes forgive penalties if you call their customer service lines and explain the mistake.

Credit cards can have extremely high interest rates. Pay off credit cards before you put money into savings or pay off installment loans (auto, home, student loans, etc.), and pay off higher interest cards before lower interest ones. Banks may lower interest rates on cards every six months to a year if you call or submit a request online based on improvements to your credit score.

Some cards will offer low or no interest introductory rates that go WAY up if you don't pay the balance off within a certain amount of time. In the words of Admiral Akbar, "it's a trap!" Making minimum payments will still result in huge fees. Do everything you can to get these things paid off before promotional deadlines pass.

Sometimes if you threaten to cancel a service or go to a competitor, you can get more favorable rates. This is especially common in the telecommunications industry (e.g. cable, internet, phones), but this may be an option for other kinds of businesses too. It never hurts to try, provided you have the time to wait on the phone for a couple hours.

e) Quit buying stuff you don't need

Also pretty obvious, but really hard to do.

I like to imagine all of the things I want but can't afford before I spend money. Like, a trip to Italy.

1. See thing I want to buy. Oooh, fancy shampoo. This looks nice.

2. Think about unobtainable thing I really want to buy. Do I want to purchase this fancy shampoo if it means I can't go to Italy? No. I think I will put this fancy shampoo back.

3. SAVINGS ACCOMPLISHED.

Conclusion

Those are just a few tips for getting personal finances under control. It is by no means a comprehensive list, but just a couple of ideas that I've found useful either through my research and personal life experiences.

Most importantly, never stop educating yourself on personal finance and consumer protection issues. A wealth of info is out there, some more useful than others. 

And do not pay for money management advice! Folks who advertise that are tricky tricksters trying to take your money, and may even be scammers themselves (especially online ones). There is plenty of free advice online and through various state institutions.

Good luck, folks.

Buying a cell phone from Best Buy is a terrible idea

This past weekend, my fiancee decided that it was time to get off of her parents phone plan (Verizon) and switch over to a family plan with me (Sprint). I was hoping to buy a screen protector for my phone and a few other things, and I had a $5 Best Buy gift certificate. So I thought, hey, let's go to Best Buy. They have all of those things and we can switch carriers there.

BAD IDEA

I pay $83 and some change for their iPhone Forever plan and unlimited data, including all the fees and whatnot. I get the newest Apple phones, and I'm able to use it as much as I want regardless of whether or not I can get Wifi. Wonderful.

Although admittedly, service sucks in many areas of rural or rural-ish Kansas compared to other carriers. But I'm paying substantially less than I did with AT&T when I made the move like a year or so ago.

The idea was that my fiancee would just add a line, get on my plan with the same features and options as I've got, bringing the total to probably a little less than twice my existing $83. Instead, Best Buy decides to set me up with an entirely different plan that is about $50 per month more expensive than what I would have otherwise and without the lease plan.

Now, I understand that if a leased phone breaks, that would cost a bunch of money out of pocket. At the same time, if an owned phone breaks, that has to be done anyways. Phones are expensive. I also get that we won't be paying equity into a phone that is leased as we would if we got it on an installment plan. But the damn things depreciate in value so rapidly, not sure that matters. For every $50 we pay on the phone, we get like $5 in value when we will be ready to resell it for an upgrade. Plus, lease payments are less than 1/2 the price of installment payments. So, like, why would I care to own the phone? That is stupid.

The entire transaction at Best Buy took about 2 hours. The employee was unable to successfully port her Verizon line over, so we ended up just getting an entirely new line - at least until we returned it the next day. The return took another 2 hours or so.

In total, I wasted about half a day of my weekend trip to Colorado standing around in a Best Buy. For nothing.

We then went to a Sprint corporate store and took care of everything without issue. Payments will be substantially cheaper, and we will more easily be able to upgrade our phones when the new models come out.

The point: DO NOT purchase phones or switch carriers from Best Buy. I strongly recommend going to the carrier's actual brick and mortar stores, or just doing everything online.

Fallout 4 The Silver Shroud Save Kent bug

When playing through the final mission of the Silver Shroud quest on Fallout 4, I ran into the issue where Kent Connolly would automatically die after entering Milton General Hospital but before I was able to get anywhere close to Kent.

Apparently, some robots spawn in the building that aren't supposed to, aggro the raiders keeping Kent hostage, and cause Kent to die prematurely. This was impossible to prevent except through console commands, which isn't helpful on the PS4 or XBox One versions of the game.

WHAT IS THIS GLITCHY BULLSHIT, I said to myself. The Intertubes appeared to acknowledge that this was an issue but offer no solutions. I FOUND THE SOLUTION! HUZZAH!!! Internets be damned.

Solution (as of Update 1.6): 

1. Complete the quest stages, but DO NOT complete the stage where Kent gets captured.

2. Travel to Milton General Hospital

3. Destory or deactivate the robots

4. Complete the quest

Other things to note:

- Internet rumors state that you have to wear the Silver Shroud costume during the mission, use the Silver Shroud dialog options, or make sure you drop the calling cards after each of the quest kills. Not sure if this is true.

- Internet rumor also states that throwing a grenade into the area where a robot (Protectron) is located on the first floor will solve the issue. I do not believe this is true, as the robot that aggros the raiders is located further down the tunnel (and is a Mr. Handy model).

- Something about VATS targeting stuff? I don't know if this impacts anything.

- Finally, when approaching Kent's captors, make sure your weapon is holstered. They will try to talk to you if the quest is working properly, but not if you are shooting at them.

This was a very frustrating issue.  YOU'RE WELCOME, INTERNETS.

Bluebook, a.k.a. the fictionally uniform legal citation text of sadness

The Washington Post published an article discussing Judge Richard Posner's criticism of the Bluebook, which - for those of you who have not attended law school and therefore likely do not know - is a collection of uniform rules for academic and professional legal citations.

“The first thing to do,” Posner writes, “is burn all copies of the Bluebook, in its latest edition 560 pages of rubbish, a terrible time waster for law clerks employed by judges who insist, as many do, that the citations in their opinions conform to the Bluebook.”

Law students everywhere agree that the Bluebook is a frustrating mess of stupid pointless rules that are difficult to learn and occupy an inordinate amount of class time in their legal writing courses. Yet, law schools continue to teach from it presumably because there is no clear alternative method of teaching students how to properly do cites.

I take a rather controversial position amongst law grads: the pro-Bluebook position.

It's easy for experienced attorneys and jurists like Judge Posner to say that legal citations are easy and don't need to be so complicated. And sure, a five page list of basic guidelines may serve to sufficiently educate attorneys who already know how to cite effectively under a more complicated regime. But most students go into law school with minimal familiarity with technical writing. I can attest from personal experience as an instructor and recently former student myself that a surprising number of first or second year students, absent learning from the Bluebook, will just copy and paste a URL and consider that "good 'nough."

That is not good enough, fyi.

It may seem a bit overly complex. I mean, 560 pages? But that number is misleading. Most legal citation rules pertinent to practicing attorneys can be found in the first couple dozen pages, known as the "blue pages." The bulk of the book consists of complex rules for particular circumstances most useful for academics, referred to as the "white pages." A couple dozen pages is not unreasonable, especially when the text explains in much clearer detail how to format various kinds of citations than Judge Posner's five page guide. The blue pages are designed for academics, and are not relevant to a criticism of the Bluebook's complexity from a practicing perspective.

The Bluebook also serves an important teaching function. It teaches prospective attorneys attention to detail, an important trait for legal professionals to possess. Evaluating large complex drafts for adherence to a strict and even more complex rule system sounds like exactly what an attorney does for a living, and that is precisely what Bluebooking teaches law students to do.

How many times have law students asked themselves "is that comma italicized?" Probably more than a few. But how many judges have discounted or undervalued arguments due to poorly drafted briefs and grammatical errors? Probably more than a few.

The system of citing to sources within the legal profession is far more complex than in other disciplines, but similarly, the legal profession plays a radically different role than other academic disciplines. Effective use of time spent validating cited sources is far more important for judges reviewing thousands of cases than for a sociologist or other academic trying to make sure folks can find the sources she might rely upon. Fundamental rights like property, freedom, or even life are regularly placed in the balance for legal professionals, something not often the case for, say, geology professors.

So back off the Bluebook. It may seem unnecessary and overly complicated, and learning it is undeniably painful. But as they say - no pain, no gain.