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Thrift - Tips on Saving, Scrimping and Being Thrifty

Thrift is not a four letter word, although some people treat it as such.  Thrift is a way to maximize your dollar and have more wealth stored up for tomorrow.  Rarely do Americans these days put the proper amount of stock in being thrifty.  The idea of it is almost repulsive, because being thrifty means [...]

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Thrift - Tips on Saving, Scrimping and Being Thrifty

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅July 21, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Thrift is not a four letter word, although some people treat it as such.  Thrift is a way to maximize your dollar and have more wealth stored up for tomorrow.  Rarely do Americans these days put the proper amount of stock in being thrifty.  The idea of it is almost repulsive, because being thrifty means not leasing a car, not buying a new MP3 player every year and not eating out every week.

Wealth is not defined by how many toys an individual has, rather it is defined by how much control an individual has over his/her economic freedom.  A person could have a great house, great car, take vacations every year, and own a boat, but if they’re mortgaged to the hilt and can’t retired until they’re 130, then they aren’t wealthy.

Here are some basic tips on how to be thrifty with your dollars:

• Find places to save - Why buy underwear at Macy’s when you can buy it at Marshalls?  Why buy cans of soda when drink mixes are available?  Little tricks such as these can save you hundreds of dollars a year.  Think of items that don’t need to be new and shiny, these are the easiest places to cut back spending.
• Restaurants or Fast Food, pick one! - Do you like eating a nice steak at a French restaurant or a hamburger at McDonalds?  Take a three month test and forgo happy meals for fine wine, or vice versa.  Find out which you like more and ignore the other.  This can teach you to choose where and when to spend money.
• Why buy from Pottery Barn? - Label whore is a strong term, but we all have a little label whore in us.  We want labels to show people our status, but status and wealth are often complete opposites.  Status is fleeting, wealth is long term.  If you shop at Ross or Marshalls for dishes or home furnishings, you could save tons.
• Put Down the Latte - $5/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks = 1300.  That means if you buy a latte and a cookie every weekday for a year, you’ll spend $1,300 on shoving around 700 calories down your through.  That makes no sense for your diet or your budget.  Make the latte at home and burn some calories steaming the milk; make yourself a regular cup of coffee at home and eat a piece of toast; or, drink tea.  The idea that five dollar latte’s are normal or a right is false, they are a privilege.  Your are not responsible for making sure Howard Schultz’s stock stays in the black.
• Leave your wallet at home -  Don’t take your debit card with you, it’ll only help you spend extra dollars every day.  Try leaving your debit card in your dresser and give yourself $20 in cash for the week.
• Don’t try cold turkey - Failure can lead us to give up, to quit.  Setting ourselves up to fail is like trying to learn Japanese without a teacher.  Learn bit by bit, start small, make a budget, look for ways to cut back and then move forward.  Trying to end years of learned behavior all at once is foolish, but unlearning it bit by bit will lead you down the right path.

Treat Your Savings Like a Plant and Watch It Grow

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅July 14, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Your savings account, your IRA, your 401k and your savings in general should be treated the way a farmer treats his crops.  Farming is the perfect analogy when it comes to developing healthy savings, because it takes time, dedication, patience, persistence, discipline and sacrifice to make crops and savings grow to maturity.

Here are a few tips on how to farm your savings:

1. Early to Bed, Early to Rise Makes an Account Healthy, Wealthy and Wise



Start your savings yesterday, if not sooner!  The earlier you start putting money away, the better.  Don’t think that you can just start when you’re 40, the older you get the harder it is to save.  Just like the later you plant crops, the less your harvest will be.  The older you get, marriage, kids, buying a house, medical bills, etc. pile up.

2. “We Don’t Eat the Sweetest Corn”

An old pastor told me a story once about a farmer who used all the tallest ears of corn (tallest = best) as the seeds for the following year’s crops.  This farmer never ate the best corn, and so his crops were the best.  Translation?  The first part of your check goes to savings; make putting money away THE priority.  Not getting dinner, not buying a nice shirt, not even buying season tickets.

3. You’re Going to Have to Sacrifice

If you insist upon eating out every other night, you might be eating cat food when you’re 70.  Keep in mind that no one who is poor and old intends on being that way, they find themselves there by lack of foresight.  This means limiting your restaurant trips, cutting down on Starbucks, washing your own car, buying socks at Marshalls and so on.  Look for easy places to cut back though, this will make sacrificing easier.

4. “Through discipline, the repetition, you become free.” - Pete Carrol

Okay, Carrol’s a football coach, but farmers wake up and do the same thing over and over and over.  Each little thing has a purpose, a reason, and even if they aren’t “feeling it” they do what is necessary to make sure their corn, soy beans, wheat or whatever is harvested on time.  Saving isn’t something you do once in a while, it’s not a “feeling” it’s a discipline.

5. Oil and Water Don’t Mix

Banks may give you savings and check accounts together, but they are vastly different animals.  Money should flow in and out of checking accounts like a river in order to cover bills, food, utilities and all your other needs.  Savings accounts should be lakes, money should only go in.  Barring medical tragedy or ransom demands, your savings account should only grow, never shrink.

6. You Reap What you Sew

Okay, that’s more Biblical than farming, but true in both.  Sew/plant/save once in a while without learning about the market, then don’t expect much when you’re older.

7. Know Your Soil

Seeds are planted in dirt, good dirt brings good crops, bad dirt brings bad crops.  Know your market, know stocks, bonds, interest rates, inflation, and taxation rules; if you know your soil then you’ll know what seeds to plant when.  Corn is brutal on soil, so planting corn constantly, season after season will eventually wear down the dirt’s natural nutrients and minerals.  Similarly, the stock market is brutal on money and your nerves.  Living and dying by stocks will wear you out, and unless you have millions, and really hundreds of millions, your life will be hell.  Know when to buy, when to sell, when to diversify, and so on.  Take courses, buy books and read them, ask your financial planner for advice, read the business section on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week to get a sense of the market.

8. Don’t Eat Your Seed

Your money isn’t what empowers you to buy food; in fact if you read the fine print, all your money represents is debt.  Treat your money like you would a seed, that it should be planted in order to bring forth food.  Plant your dollars in places where it will grow, savings accounts with high interest rates (HSBC, E-Trade, WaMu, ING), in stocks that will yield long term growth, in mutual funds that will bring back a conservative but trustworthy return on your investment and in bonds that are government backed.

Truth About Bottled Water

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅July 2, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Part of the search for personal development is a search for the truth.  As the saying goes, “The truth shall set you free.”  When it comes to bottled water, the truth will set your wallet, your mind and the environment free.

Here are some truths and some tips on bottled water:

• In 2003, Americans spent $7 billion on bottled water.  If you spent $10 a week on bottled water, that’s over $500 a year.  Put that into a high-yield savings account or a 401k and you can save yourself a bundle.
• In a study done on bottled water, it turns out 25% or more of the water in each bottle is actually just tap water.
• In a blind taste test done in New York, 75% of people preferred tap water taste to bottled water.
• In another test of 1,000 bottles of water, 33% of those bottles turned out to be contaminated with bacteria, synthetic organic chemicals and/or inorganic contaminants such as arsenic.
• The plastic bottle your water comes in can actually decompose over time and contaminate your water.  The longer the water has been in the bottle, the greater the risk of decomposition and contamination.

How’s that Aquafina taste now?

The Wizard of Oz and 3 Tips on Personal Finance

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅June 16, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

When it comes to money and investing, there are a million challenges to properly securing your financial future.  Most of these things you have no control over, such as inflation.  However, the cinematic masterpiece “The Wizard of Oz” has a few nuggets of truth that can be followed in the financial world.

1. Follow the Yellow Brick Road - Gold is always a sound investment, if for no other reason than it is a physical element.  Investing in a company, mutual fund or bond is investing in an idea essentially.  Gold exists and in times when economies can go batty, gold is always there.

2. Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My! - The market is going to scare you, incredibly, but that doesn’t mean the market should be feared.   It’s unstable, but if you leave your money invested long term, your individual wealth will increase.

3. There’s No Place Like Home - Your house might be your best investment.  Again, it’s a physical thing, not a stock in a company that you can’t see.

Life After Failure

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅June 4, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

The hardest part of life is failure, other than death of course. Failure is something that has plagued mankind since the beginning. Even in the Bible, Adam had to deal with his own failings while still protecting and caring for his family.

George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright, once said “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

It’s easy to give up on an endeavor, a person or a situation as failure, or failures, mount. But, if we allow failures to stop us then we should completely throw away any notion of success, development and hope.

Failures are our learning opportunities, even if it’s a major failure. Failed marriages can teach us things about ourselves and our desires that we didn’t know before. Failed attempts at losing weight can allow us to figure out how our bodies work. And in truth, history is filled with people who achieved great things in part because they failed so much.

• J. Paul Getty was an extremely wealthy and successful man, yet was married and divorced more than five times. His business success and acumen wasn’t something he could bring into his personal life.
• Abraham Lincoln lost multiple elections and was often berated for his stances against slavery.
• Jim Plunkett, who led two Raiders teams to victories in the Super Bowl was considered a failure during his days as a quarterback with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers.

Dealing with failure is hard, it’s not easy to look into the mirror after a terrible loss and try and believe that success is possible. It’s easy to use all sorts of cheesy sounding sayings and terms and then let failure sit in your belly. What’s difficult is taking time to examine your failure, learn from it and fight to get over your fear of it.

We’ve all been dumped, fired, yelled at, fallen down during a big event, allowed a bad habit to get the better of us and simply failed at something that seemed easy. However, if we’re going to succeed in life, achieve our goals and do anything of merit, than we have to allow these things to make us stronger.

Success and the New York Yankees: Emulating the Bronx Bombers

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅May 27, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

You may not be a fan of the New York Yankees, but it’s hard to deny their success over the decades in building perennial playoff contenders and championship teams. Here are some of the ways the Yankees have defined baseball with their success over the last 100 years or so:

1. Confidence - Granted, it’s easy for a team with such historic players as Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez to be confident, but even in the lean years the Yankees always acted like the first place team was simply keeping it warm for them.

2. Create History - Sometimes children who didn’t know their parents, or who didn’t want to know them, have a hard time being successful because there is no history of success. History begins now, and starting your own legacy will hold you responsible to a cause and a goal.

3. Know When to Spend Money - Whether it’s buying a stock, a new home or signing a big free agent, you have to know when it’s important to spend money and when it’s not.

4. Collect Monuments - In Yankee Stadium there are monuments of the great Yankees of the past, and that helps the new guys know what is expected of them. Keep pictures, sayings and other monuments of great people around you to keep in your memory what it takes to be successful.

5. Dress for Success - The Yankees invented pinstripes in Major League Baseball. You’ve got to invent a successful you, so ditch the sweat pants and dirty t-shirts and start to look successful. Don’t break the bank, but remember that image is vital.

Personal Development: The Truth About Being Your Own Boss

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅May 14, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Many movies often include a major character beginning their own business after years of frustration with their boss or company, and many Americans fantasize with the life they could lead if they only were their own bosses.

If becoming your own boss is your goal, or even the next step in your life, here are some tips that’ll help you both get off the ground and to keep in mind, given by a small business owner:

A. Don’t have a business partner

It’s easy to think that having a partner can minimize risk and bring a variety of ideas, but it can also bring headaches, failure and lawsuits. Ownership is a tricky issue, parents often butt heads about how to raise kids, and they’re in love. Imagine owning a store with someone you violently disagree with?

B. Get payment before delivery

Trust is a tricky thing. It’s important to trust your customers, but you can only trust them so far. Everyone has their priorities, and no one’s priority is to make sure you get your money. If a client has needs at home, or if their business is going under, they probably aren’t going to make sure you get paid. Keep that in mind as you deal with individuals.

C. Don’t be afraid to fire clients

Desperate times make for desperate people. Whether you’re a web designer with a large client or a t-shirt maker with a few small clients, even the most annoying and obnoxious client can look attractive when the checks roll in. However, headaches, stomach aches, lack of sleep and more aren’t worth one idiot’s money. My father actually had a client call on Christmas Eve to complain about something, something that could have waited two days. He was too desperate to fire the client, but he should have cut the chord right then and there.

D. Word of mouth is king

Buying marketing materials, advertising space and web designers is all fine, well and good, but when it comes down to it, a suggestion from a friend outweighs them all. Whether you’re starting your own medical practice or law firm, relationships are vital and referals are the mother’s milk of a successful business.

Youtube And Facebook Are A Waste of Time

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅May 6, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

All offices have downtime. Whether you’re in marketing, administration, office management, human resources or whatever, there’s always about one hour each day (not counting lunch) when you’re seriously hurting for something to do. It’s the nature of the beast, as corporations and companies get larger, jobs become more segmented and specialized which leads to downtime because it’s not always necessary to have a proofreader, an office clerk, etc. This downtime has helped the success of such sites as Youtube, Facebook, MySpace and other Internet sites that exist almost solely for the purpose of wasting time as you wait for 6:00 pm to role around.

While it seems like there just isn’t anything to do during your downtime, you’re probably missing an opportunity to either get work done, get personal stuff accomplished or brave a new horizon. Here are some tips on how to use your downtime at work:

1. Ask for more responsibilities at work. This should be where you start. Instead of becoming the best Bejeweled player on planet earth, try asking your boss for increased responsibility, even if it’s in a different department. It’ll show initiative and even if there’s nothing more for you to do, a good company will reward your attitude either at bonus time or in not selecting you to be downsized should that time come.

2. Handle personal business that isn’t painting your nails. If you have your own office, or a cubicle that you can hide in, pay your bills online, balance your checkbook and manage all the minor details that you usually handle in the evenings or on the weekend. It’ll save you personal time at home, and paper work can simply look like paperwork to passers-by (thus thwarting any nosey managers).

3. Start your own blog. You’d be surprised at: a. how easy it is to start one, even if you’re clueless as to the whole “Internet Thing”; and b. how much of a fan-base you might start. Blogging can be a fun hobby that you look forward to and it could make your regular work more fun, because it’ll give you topics to blog about. If you really want help and want to do it professionally, check out the designer of this blog and other successful blogs: Digimander

Overall, if you’re going to develop as a person, you need to make the most of the moments in your life. Being just another bored office worker isn’t going to help you or anyone else. Being an out of the box thinker could help you develop your career and your life at the same time.

Personal Finance Tips: Which Bank is Right for You

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅May 1, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Banks get bigger, they promise more, but who delivers? There’s the major establishments: Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Citibank, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, Chase and HSBC. There are your local banks and credit unions and of course, your sock drawer. But, in a world where banks are almost too desperate for your business, how do you pick what you need?

Well, in developing yourself personally, finances play a big part, and analyzing your goals and your current situation is vital. Here’s a quick look and which bank might be right for you:

1. Bank of America

No bank has had more complaints about it than BofA. Poor customer service, hidden fees and more profligate the comments section of blogs and websites set up to discuss this bank. There are quite a few branches, and it is the largest bank in America, but the availability simply doesn’t seem worth the hassle to let them watch your money. In a survey of poor customer services, this MSN article highlighted BofA specifically as one of the worst customer service providers in the nation.

2. Wells Fargo

This is a regional bank with most of their branches on the West Coast. They seem to be better than Bank of America, and having banked there I can say they aren’t that bad. The challenges however are many. Despite being a West Coast bank, their computers switch over after 3:00 or 4:00 pm EST and all deposits made after that aren’t cleared until the next day. This is extremely frustrating. They were ranked as the number one online bank by one survey, and I can attest to their prowess in online services.

3. Citibank

If BofA is the Devil, then Citibank is the anti-Christ. I’ve had my money with Citibank since my wife and I started saving for our wedding, it’s been about 2 years now. I haven’t really had a problem with them, but we’ve made sure never to let our account get close to zero or god-forbid, overdraft anything. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to though has nothing positive to say about them, except that they are everywhere. Opening an account in Los Angeles was very frustrating as their bank people are morons for the most part. Between spelling my wife’s name wrong on her debit card and then not shipping the card at all, they scored major idiot points with us.

4. Washington Mutual

I banked with them for a while, but WaMu plays themselves off as the anti-bank, the bank that has free checking, that cares about its customers and so on. However, as shown here, that’s not always true. Reality is, they’re a business just like everyone else. Their free checking isn’t necessarily free, they used to offer a program that would allow customers a $500 negative balance on their account (complete with fees of course) and other items that seem great but turn out to be very dangerous. Washington Mutual does offer a favorable savings account interest rate however, but unlike HSBC you need to have a checking account lined to your savings account. Otherwise it’s no good.

5. Wachovia

Beyond the fact that this bank’s name is unpronounceable, its 50/50. Not everyone is happy with them, and their branch and ATM locations are spotty, but they seem to get the job done and at least they aren’t BofA. I recently opened a Wachovia checking account to link with my Paypal account so I can transfer money. We’ll see how easy they are to work with. I hate their website, but opening the account was easy enough.

6. JP Morgan Chase

On a recent Marketwatch.com survey, Chase was second only to BofA in complaints. Their lack of responsiveness is terrible, and although I’ve heard some good things about their savings account interest rates, they don’t satisfy their customers at all.

7. HSBC

We have a savings account with this bank, which we started online. There’s no checking account necessary, and while they don’t pretend to be the friendliest bank, they seem to have the online banking thing mastered. Their complaint rate seems to be the middle of the road, and everyone who looks into their online savings account seems really enthusiastic about it.

Here are some basic banking tips:

1. Banks are a business

They aren’t going to take care of you, they not only want to hold onto your money, but they want to take it for their own. Be prepared to fight with them and get everything from them that you can.



2. Large Banks Suck

Whether it’s WaMu, BofA or whatever, they’re terrible. They outsource customer service overseas, they are impossible to talk to, they mismanage your accounts and in the end the guys who run the bank only care about stock prices and dividends, not your happiness.

There’s a wonderful episode of the show “The Office” where two characters (Dwight and Jim) show a business owner how bad the big company’s customer service is. That being said, credit unions are local and are limited in their abilities. Keep all that in mind when banking with them.

Tips of Developing Your Confidence

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅April 29, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Developing your personal confidence can be hard, especially if you’re not naturally a person who is confident or who thinks about confidence as an asset. However, everything from the Bible to Tony Robbin’s tapes discuss the issue of believing in yourself. Here are some easy tips on how to grow your confidence, which will help grow your personal development:

1. Make a decision. Don’t sit back and wish you had a stronger belief in yourself. Make a decision to become more confident and then make life changes to back up that decision.

 2. Spend time with positive people. We all know a “Debbie Downer,” someone who has nothing positive to say about the world around him/her. People like this should be left in the dust. Get around those who see themselves as strong, bold or otherwise confident. Their attitude will rub off on you.

3. Allow for mistakes. The biggest blow to confidence is failure (obviously), but the greatest success stories are riddles with failure. Noah’s ark was only filled with seven people to go with all those animals (not a very good preacher), Abraham Lincoln was defeated in all sorts of elections before becoming president and Steven Spielberg was rejected from the USC Film School before becoming an Oscar winning director.

4. Find something your terrible at and get better. It’s easy to get better at something you love or something you care about. But, as a training ground, find a sport, hobby or activity that really is just a palate that’ll help you learn principals. When your passionate about something, it’s easy to lose focus. But, if you’re taking a cooking class just for the heck of it, you may learn that you’re impatient with carrots, which may give you insight into other areas of your life.