Guest Post at Young Cheap Living

Later this morning while Kraig is on business travel I will have a guest post featured at Young Cheap Living about Why To Continue Living Like a College Student. If you haven’t read it yet please head over there and check it out!

If this is your first time here at Money Life & More please take a look around. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me or leave a comment on this post down below!

If you like what you see please subscribe to my RSS feed,  follow me on Twitterlike my Facebook page or subscribe through email in the box on the right side bar to keep up with my latest posts!

Here are a few of my favorite posts so far:

Passive Income: Not As Passive As You Think Part 1Part 2

I Got a Crazy Deal: Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket

Buying a Dryer – Consider Clearance and Open Box Items

How I Paid for My Hobby

Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

What Would You Do?: I Won One Million Dollars!!!

Welcome to the third edition of “What Would You Do?”! If you have a question and would like to know what others would do please contact me and I’ll keep it in mind for future editions of “What Would You Do?”. In the first edition I asked Should I Buy a Smartphone… and I ended up getting it! In the second edition I asked Should I Buy the NeatDesk or NeatReceipts Scanner and I got some great feedback that I am still considering! Now on to today’s What Would You Do…

I Just Won One Million Dollars!!!

Two words. I WISH! But it is fun to dream so let’s continue with this theoretical situation… We have to make assumptions so everyone is on the same page when they share what they will do!

  • You just won One Million United States Dollars so convert to your own currency if necessary to find out its buying power.
  • The taxes have already been paid so you can spend every penny of it if you wish.
  • You are in the financial situation you are currently in, not in my financial position.

So What Would You Do with One Million Dollars?

While I can’t say what you’ll do (that is for you to determine in the comments below) I can tell you what I would do  so here it goes.

Starting Amount: $1,000,000

I’d Put Aside Enough to Pay Off My Girlfriend’s Student Loans

I’d do this so that when we get married we could pay them off. Amount Spent $64,000 Remaining Amount $936,000

Finish Remodeling Our Townhouse the Way We’d Like It.

This involves remodeling our kitchen ($15,000), a full bathroom ($2,500), a half bathroom ($600), replacing the carpet upstairs ($1,500), replacing the tile downstairs ($3,000), replacing the windows (no clue but I’m going to guesstimate $2,500 for three windows), replacing a sliding glass door (also a guesstimate, $1,500) and painting the outside of the townhouse (guessing again, $600). Amount spent on remodeling $27,200. Remaining Amount $908,800.

I Would Buy Our Next House!

Wait a second, I thought you were remodeling your current house. We currently live in a two bedroom one and a half bath townhouse which will be the perfect size for us for the next 10 years. Problem is once we have a kid or two our townhouse will be feeling a bit tight. Kids are a ways off but we still are planning ahead for our next place.

We’d like to be more in town rather than at the beach and there are some great deals right now. We’d likely buy an affordable 4 bedroom 3 bath house for around $150,000. I’d still take out a mortgage so we’d pay 20% down plus closing costs.

We plan on renting it out until we decide we need the extra room. At that point we will rent out the townhouse so that we can return to it many years later after the kids move out. Amount spent $40,000 (just to be safe, any extra above closing costs would be put toward down payment). Remaining Amount $868,800.

I’d Take $68,000 for Our Fun Money.

We could use this on whatever we want to prevent us from making some huge purchase that we really shouldn’t do. Chances are we would go take a few vacations to places we’ve wanted to go and buy some gifts for our close family but we wouldn’t do anything extravagant that would raise our current standard of living.

We don’t want any lifestyle inflation sneaking in so this amount definitely would not be spent all at once. I imagine it would last us a couple years but we would definitely want to enjoy it. Amount Spent $68,000. Remaining Amount $800,800.

I Would Invest the Rest!

However, first we would go talk to a fee only financial planner and make sure we have all of our bases covered. I’d like to think this wouldn’t cost more than $800 as we would go into it very organized so they didn’t have to do a ton of digging to get the answers they would need. Amount spent $800. Remaining Amount $800,000, all invested!

So there you have it! That is what I’d do if I won a million dollars. If you were paying attention there were a few things I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t quit my job, I wouldn’t pay my mortgage off and I wouldn’t buy a new car.

I don’t have any recommendations for what you should do if you do end up with one million dollars and you shouldn’t take my ideas as a recommendation or advice for what you should do.

So, what would you do if you won one million dollars? I’m interested to hear both what you would and what you wouldn’t do with the money!

Random Thoughts, Round Up and Carnivals #14

Housekeeping

Just wanted to throw this out there before the price goes up $10. This is the last weekend to buy the How I Make Money Blogging eBook by Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff for just $17! On August 1st it goes up to $27. Read my review of the eBook here.

Random Thoughts

Last night I decided to join up to one BILLION other people and watched the Olympics opening ceremonies. The beginning was pretty neat and very well put together but I am a perfectionist at times and always notice all the little things that go wrong. There were a few things that really stuck out to me like the sparks that went off early on the rings converging in the air as well as the ones that didn’t stop when they separated. There was also the light up blankets that seemed to malfunction and not light up properly. It was just a small thing here or there and in the massive scheme of everything they did I’m surprised there weren’t more little goof ups.

I vaguely remember the Beijing opening ceremonies from four years ago but China seemed much more prepared and was more impressive in my mind. I don’t know if it was the friends I was watching it with or the things I had never really thought could be done that impressed me but there wasn’t anything that stuck out this year in the London opening.

Granted I couldn’t put together anything that comes within a thousand miles of what these countries did preparing for these ceremonies. I think I need to cut everyone a lot more slack, myself included, and just slow down, calm down and enjoy things more instead of always look for what is wrong with things… on to the Round Up!

Round Up

Andrea used to write at So Over Debt… until she killed it! This week she posted RIP So Over Debt at her newly rebranded blog So Over This! Check it out!

Squirrelers wrote about 5 reasons why we retire sooner than we plan. These are all very valid reasons so if you aren’t saving to retire because you don’t think you ever will please read this article… you need to start saving today!

An interesting thought was posted at Modest Money this week… Does Everyone Need an Emergency Fund? I posted my thoughts in the comments but I believe most people should have access to guaranteed money in case of an emergency. Then again, personal finance is personal so maybe you don’t need one…

Life and My Finances poses a personal question and wants to know if he should buy a house on the beach or not! I personally said it wouldn’t be wise to tie up all of your assets in real estate but what is your opinion?

After realizing he was spending way to much money on food this week Thousandaire posted that he significantly cut his food expenses last week! Great read and it shows the power of paying attention to where your money is going.

Carnivals

Below are all of the carnivals that I was put in this week that I could find or got ping backs on. If you hosted a carnival that I was included in this week and I missed it please let me know and I’ll add it below!

Yakezie Carnival, Carnival of Money Pros and Carnival of Financial Camaraderie  included my post Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses: How I Made $443 in 5 Minutes.

Festival of Frugality included my post Passive Income: Not As Passive As You Think – Part 1.

The Carnival of Personal Finance included my post Passive Income: Not As Passive As You Think – Part 2.

Enjoy your weekend!

What’ve you been up to lately? Anything noteworthy to share?

It Pays to Ask For More – Coke Zero Commercial “And…?”

Have you seen the Coke Zero commercial where a kid asks “And…” whenever he gets something and then he gets something even better? If not, here it is!

Skip this section and head to the next headline if you watched the video! Can’t or don’t want to watch the video? Here is a quick recap but keep in mind if a picture is worth 1,000 words then a video is probably 1,000,000…

A kid gets an ice cream cone and when it is handed to him he says “And?…” and then he gets sprinkles and a cherry added on top. A dog rolls up next to the kid (now a teenager) on a skateboard and stops. The kid says “And?…” and then the dog goes into the skate park and does tricks on the skateboard. Fast forward to the now college graduate’s job interview and the interviewer says “Congratulations! You got the job.” to which the graduate responds “And?…” and the interviewer adds stock options. He then goes clothes shopping and tries on a pair of jeans. A seductive woman then says “Those are nice jeans” to which, you guessed it, he replies “And?…” and she says “I get off at 4:00.” Finally he sits down at a table (and this is the advertisement part) and gets a Coke Zero. After taking a drink fireworks go off and he looks at the can about to say “And…” and the Coke slogan Great Taste AND Zero Calories catches his eye and the word “AND” sparkles.

Well apparently it is an effective advertisement if I’m blogging about it but I’m not here to sell you Coke Zero. The advertisement has a point.

It Pays to Ask For More

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten something more simply because I asked for more. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t just say “and…” with no reason to back it up and have someone give me free money. You always need a reason and shouldn’t just expect a hand out.

If you have a reason it is so simple to do yet so many people are scared to ask for it. I have saved $120 off my cable bill. After asking my readers Should I Get a Smartphone I decided to go for it and negotiated a $150 Smartphone plus $36 activation fee to $0 and saved $186 in the process. All I had to do was come up with a valid argument and ask. If their first offer wasn’t good enough I asked for more.

What is the Worst Thing That Can Happen?

The sales rep might tell you no. You might end up losing one single business transaction. These results are normally worth the small risk but PLEASE use your own judgment. I don’t want you to be unreasonable or greedy but if there is more on the table I feel like you should go and get it.

Which would you rather do? Sell 6 items for $10 each and lose no sales or sell 5 items for $20 each and lose one sale? You don’t want to lose the business deal of the century because you are being greedy, but losing one $10 sale when you can land 5 other $20 sales and double your money is a clear choice to me.

PLEASE Don’t Be Greedy

What I don’t want you to do is be greedy. Please do not be greedy. Be reasonable and have backup for why you’re worth or deserve more and things should work out. Know the market and know what you, your product, or the product you’re trying to get a discount on is worth.

Do you have an example of when you asked for more and got it? What was your reasoning and was it worth it?

How to Pull Your FREE Annual Credit Report

I’ve seen a lot of talk on personal finance blogs about buying credit scores and credit reports. If you don’t care what your credit score number is and just want to make sure everything on your actual credit file disclosure (commonly referred to as a credit report) is accurate this post is for you.

Don’t Pay For a Credit Report If You Don’t Want Your Score

If you live in the United States you are entitled to one free credit report each year from the three credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Equifax and Transunion. This report will not include your credit score but will contain all of the information that they use to calculate your credit score so it is imperative you verify that everything is correct and nothing seems out of line.

Since you essentially can receive 3 reports a year (one from each bureau) I pull one every four months just in case an identity thief ever tries to take over my identity. You can also pull all three at one time if you’d like. Whichever way you pull your reports I highly recommend setting up a reminder on your calendar application of choice a year from each credit report pull. This way you won’t forget when you can pull it again. Let’s continue to how to pull your free annual credit report.

1) Go to AnnualCreditReport.com and select your state from the drop down menu. Click Request Report.

Pull Credit Report Step 1

2) Enter all requested information and click CONTINUE.

Pull Credit Report Step 2

3) Select one or more credit reporting companies you wish to pull your credit report from and click NEXT. (From this point forward I will be going through the steps for Experian.)

Pull Credit Report Step 3

4) Click NEXT like the website says…

Pull Credit Report Step 4

5) Enter the last four digits of your social security number and click submit.

Pull Credit Report Step 5

6) Click Annual Credit Report

Pull Credit Report Step 6

7) Click Submit

Pull Credit Report Step 7

8) Answer the Identity Verification Questions and click CONTINUE. I have whited out my questions to protect my personal information. You will see questions and multiple choice answers next to each number.

Pull Credit Report Step 8

9) View your Report Summary. To see your entire report on one page click the Print Your Report link under Credit Report Toolkit.

Pull Credit Report Step 9

Congratulations! You now have successfully pulled your credit report! Look through the report and make sure you don’t see any erroneous information. If you do make sure to report it. I found an incorrect address listed and promptly reported it.

When was the last time you pulled your credit report? Did you find anything that was wrong?