Excuses

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It seems lately that whenever I read a personal finance article dispensing financial advice people are quick to leave comments as to why the advice won’t work for them. Since I don’t know the people leaving the comments I don’t know if they are legitimate excuses or not. Financial advice is not one size fits all and you can’t expect what works for one to work for everybody. That being said I still think there are a lot of people just making excuses for why they can’t improve their finances. It appears when they read financial advice they think of why that wouldn’t work for them rather than how to make it work for them. They may want to improve their finances but they don’t really want to make any changes in their life.

I am guilty of this myself. I have done a poor job of meeting goals I have set for myself this year. Making excuses to yourself doesn’t work very well since you know they are BS. With that in mind I’ll be making some more goals for next year that I’ll post soon. And next year there will be no excuses.

Sold My Car – I’m Now Car Free

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It had been my intention to sell or donate my car before the end of the year.  I finally got around to putting my car on Craigslist today.  Within an hour of listing it I had five calls from people interested in purchasing it.  Maybe I underpriced it?  It seemed like a reasonable price based on other listings.  I’m not going to worry about whether I could have sold it for more.

The first guy to look at it bought it and paid for it with cash.  He had a Toyota dealership mechanic with him so the car must not have been in too bad of shape mechanically.  It worked out very well.  I had my car sold and cash in my hand within three hours of listing my car.  Now I need to call my insurance agent and cancel my insurance.

Eating on $1 a Day

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There has been a lot of press lately about a couple who ate on $1 a day for a month. This is an interesting project that has been done by several people before.  I’m not sure why this one has been getting so much attention.  I did a similar project last May and spent $31.60 on food for a month.   I got the idea to do so from Hungry for a Month that did the $1 diet in November 2006.

The results of both projects were similar.  They were able to eat for that amount but it wasn’t easy.  They also remarked that they weren’t able to eat very healthy.  Looking at their menus though I think they probably ate healthier than the average American.  It definitely isn’t easy to eat on $1 a day and I’m glad I don’t have to.  Next year I’m going to try to spend $0 on food for a month if I can get it planned out.

Law School Loan Forgiveness and Income Based Repayment

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I wrote a post about law school loan forgiveness and income based repayment back in March. At that time both were still proposals but back in October they became official after being passed by Congress.

It is nice to know that if I do 10 years of public service that my law school loans will be forgiven. It is even nicer to know that my loan payments will be capped at 15% of my income above 150% of the poverty level and any remaining balance will be forgiven after 25 years. I hope I’m not still paying on my student loans in 25 years but it is good to know that my payments will be capped at a level I can easily make.

The only drawback is that if I have loans forgiven they will be treated as income for that year. That would most likely result in a huge tax bill. I’m not going to worry about that for now though. If it appears likely that I will have my loans forgiven than I’ll come up with a strategy for dealing with the taxes at that time.

Frugality and Relationships

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A commenter yesterday asked how my girlfriend deals with my lack of spending. My reply started to become rather lengthy so I am posting on the subject as well.

My GF is relatively frugal when compared to how most people spend their money. Compared to me she is not that frugal. I realize that my level of frugality is not what most people are accustomed to. I’m not going to change my frugal ways though. At least not much. In any relationship you have to compromise some and we have both made some compromises. She has become slightly more frugal and I have loosened up on my spending a little. Money hasn’t been a problem so far because we keep our money separate. It could become an issue eventually depending on what happens with our relationship.

Since I am now living with my GF money is more of an issue than when we were just dating. I pay her an amount roughly the same as I was paying for my apartment towards our household expenses and she pays all the bills. I suppose some could question whether this is a fair arrangement since I’m paying less than half the household bills. I do pay more than what my living with my GF is costing her though. We are both happy with this arrangement and that is what counts.

I don’t think there is a standard formula for dealing with money for couples. Couples just need to discuss the subject and come up with their own solution.