money is just paper

I don’t know about you, but I have some crap that I don’t need hanging out at my house. And while I’m pretty good about putting the big expensive things (that I probably should never have bought in the first place!) on eBay and selling them, oftentimes, for the little things, it’s just not WORTH it. There’s the time factor, plus the cost of putting an auction up, then PayPal takes THEIR cut, and if you offer free shipping… forget it! In fact, I once sold a Disney Dollar AT A LOSS after I factored in those costs! (Thankfully, it was only a .25 or so loss. In any case, it taught me a lesson!)

Well, kids, there’s a new auction site in town that’s GREAT for those things that you know you couldn’t get anything for on eBay. It’s like a cross between Paperback Swap or Spun.com (two great sites for trading books and CDs/DVDs) and eBay. Via auctions you can trade your stuff (via credits) for stuff that you actually want — I highly recommend trading in your crap for gift cards!

If you sign up using the button below (which shows my current auctions), we will each get extra credits!

Over the next few days, I am going to be doing an in-depth review of the budgeting software You Need a Budget. This is an introduction to the series.

Remember how I said that I had found ‘the missing link between my mind and my money’? Well, this is it. That’s right, the B-word. A budget.

I can hear the groans already. I mean, every person in their right mind knows that they SHOULD budget, right? Budgeting is right up there with flossing your teeth everyday — everyone knows they SHOULD, but few people actually do it.

But what if… what if I told you that I found a budgeting tool that is so easy to use, that it will only take you 5 minutes per day to get a grip on your finances? What if by the end of the first month, you were able to pay all of your bills (including paying down those pesky credit cards) and SAVE money without even trying? What if I told you I had found a budgeting tool that could give you the strength of 10 men and the sex appeal of Brangelina? (Okay, I admit, that last one is a bit of a stretch, but I SWEAR TO YOU I’m pretty sure that I’ve been walking taller as a result of this budgeting tool!)

The budgeting tool in question is none other than You Need a Budget 3. In my not-so-humble opinion, I think YNAB kicks the $#!t out of its competitors. I have used Excel, Quicken, and Mint in the past, and, believe you me, YNAB pwns all of them.

There are three things that I think set YNAB apart, and I’m going to spend the next few days reviewing each of these items in turn.

Next: The 4 Principles of You Need a Budget.

Libra by Josephine Wall

I’m a Libra.  And, as a Libra, I am a firm believer in balance.  I feel a strong need for things to be equal, stable, and fair. However, like many young people (Librans especially!), arriving at balance often involves first oscillating wildly from one extreme to the other.

Such is the story of my personal finances.

One would THINK that I would have my finances together at this point.  After all, I read the first edition of the book Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties by Beth Kobliner when I was still a teenager living with my parents!  So when I look at the financial mess I am currently in, I can’t argue that I didn’t know about the dangers of credit cards, or the importance of saving!  I knew AND I understood — but I didn’t act accordingly.

Oh, sure, I maybe did a LITTLE better than my peers.  I delayed opening a credit card account until I was 20, being afraid that I couldn’t handle the responsibility (oh, and how right I was!).  And, as soon as I was eligible, I started contributing a very small amount to the 401k that I had available to me from my employer (Whole Foods, at the time).

But as soon as things got HARD (i.e. I changed jobs and my car broke down),  I did the EASY thing rather than the RIGHT thing; I spent the $1600 (which had been $2000 before taxes and penalty fees!) on  a car rather than roll the money over into an IRA… leaving me no better off than my peers (many of whom were busy drinking away a large portion of their incomes!).

(Side note: Where would I be now if I had done the ‘right’ thing?  Well, honestly, unless I had kept making contributions (which of course I ‘should have’), I wouldn’t be all that rich.  My $2000 would probably (if we forget about all the recent ups and downs of the market) be worth around $4750.  It’s more than double the original amount, but it’s nothing to write home about.  BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT!)

My early mistake of cashing out my 401k is long behind me.  I’m happy to tell you that I’m currently socking away 15% of my income in my company’s 401k (with an additional 5% from my company’s match).

The mistakes I’ve made with credit cards, though, keep coming back to haunt me. I have racked up over $10,000 in debt TWICE in the last 9 years.  (For some folks out there, that may not sound like a lot of money.  But to put it in perspective, my INCOME during those periods was only about $13,000 a year.)  And I have accumulated smaller amounts of debt (though still in the range of thousands of dollars), several more times.  Each time I snowball my way out of it, I tell myself it’s the last time.  But here I am again, with about $6,000 in credit card debt.

But I think I’ve found a solution. I’ve found the missing link between my mind and my money.  Moreover, I’ve found a tool that will help me bridge the gap between the two and bring balance — once and for all– to my personal finances.  Stay tuned.

Money is just paper…

…is my mantra when I’m overwhelmed with bills and don’t know where the money for rent is going to come from this month.  Unlike rock, paper cannot beat me, and this mantra helps to pacify my money anxieties.

Money is just paper…

…is my mantra when I’m so focused on personal finance that all I can think about is the future.  The end product of my goal — financial freedom — is to spend more time with my family, my friends, and my hobbies.  My goal is NOT to accumulate huge sums of money and become a reclusive asshole.  But when I choose to pay the bills at a time when I could be playing with the kids, or I choose to stay home to read a personal finance book instead of having dinner with friends, I am missing the forest for the trees.  There is a balance between enjoying life now and being able to enjoy life in the future, and my mantra reminds me of this.

The goal of this blog is to help others by sharing what I’ve learned about money over the last ten years of my life.  Some of my knowledge comes from the school of hard knocks (I’m a divorcee with two kids AND a former food stamps recipient!), and some of it has come from books, as I am an avid reader.  I’ve also found a lot of inspiration reading other personal finance blogs, and you’ll find a Blogroll on the right hand column which has links to the blogs that I like to read.  I highly recommend them!

‘Money Is Just Paper’ will chronicle the personal finance adventures of my family as we attempt to get out of debt, build an emergency fund, and retire early.

Not all of the posts will be about me, though.  I’ll also be posting reviews of personal finance books and financial tools as well as tips on saving money.  And if you have a burning financial question that you’d like me to try my hand at, drop me a line at andi at moneyisjustpaper dot com.

Have any comments or suggestions for the blog?  Then just comment below!