Festival of Under 30 Finances #20

Welcome to the 20th edition of Festival of Under 30 finances! I recently returned from a much-needed family vacation, and so my question was:


"How has your family contributed to your current financial position and attitude? Do you plan to follow that example with your own younger relatives, or chart a different course?"


We received some very interesting responses to this question, including some full posts!


Family Lessons


Wanda at Well-Heeled says: "Mom helped me alot - in terms of paying for the bulk of my college tuition to teaching me about the importance of saving. I am probably more interested in mutual funds investing than she is, whereas she is focused more on generating cash flow from real estate - but the tenets of personal finance (spend less than you earn and save save save) I got from her."


Silicon Valley Blogger atThe Digerati Life notes: "Interestingly, I grew up without money being discussed much in our household, but we had no money problems either. So I don't believe my family had much bearing in how I turned out financially as far as my mindset was concerned, but they had a big impact on how my finances today turned out because without their help and past assistance, I doubt I would be worry-free today. My family is fairly generous with finances but did not really instill education in me, so I had to go and learn about finances myself. However, I hope to teach my children about finances as they grow up and impart in them lessons I learned on my own."


We also got long responses from the following posters:

plonkee mentions a lesson that she didn't learn from her family in Not A Money Script: Investing posted at plonkee money.



Aspeth shares the "lessons of a Depression-era grandparent" about frugal living in Whatever Happened to Frugality? at TwelveYearsOfBeingAnnoyedByChloeSevignyDotCom. This entry is one of the Best of the Festival!



Living Almost Large says that "I think I learned the most important skills from my parents about personal finance..." and that foundation helped while she learned some more lessons in Learning my financial skills at Living Almost Large.



And Big Cajun Man learns a lesson from his son in Zen, Thomas the Tank Engine and the Art of Financial Planning posted at Canadian Financial Stuff.


Family Finances

ISPF shares some guidelines on managing independent accounts toward common goals in Relationship Hack: “Independent Money Management, Common Money Pool” - How to Make it Work posted at Grad Money Matters.


Education



Silicon Valley Blogger lists the pros and cons of jumping on to the entrepreneurial track before graduation at Should You Quit School Because You’re Brilliant? posted at The Digerati Life. This is also one of the Best of the Festival!



Laws of Finance shares some frightening exchange rate figures at Studying in Europe is Getting Expensive posted at Laws of Finance.



Matthew Paulson reminds students how to manage limited school funds in Five Great Money Saving Tips for College Students posted at Getting To Graduation.



Michael Cook provides an overview of The College Loan Process posted at Suite101: Mortgages/Loans articles.


Saving

Wanda considers alternatives to traditional emergency savings in Maybe I don't need such a big emergency fund after all posted at Well-Heeled. And this is my final pick for the Best of the Festival!



Bryan C. Fleming suggests that saving for repairs lets a driver get a better car in How to Drive a Mercedes Benz instead of a Hyundai posted at Bryan C. Fleming.



Super Saver explains why young people will need to save so much for retirement in The Impact of Inflation posted at My Wealth Builder.


General Personal Finance

Larry Russell suggests ways to make the expense of a financial advisors worthwhile inFinancial advisor costs and the value of their investment strategies determine your return on investment from these investment advisor services posted at THE SKILLED INVESTOR Blog.



tc offers some basic reminders in 8 tips on How to make a million dollars posted at Investments & Loans.



He Just Laughs plans on becoming American Airlines' most valuable customer at A Million Miles Begins with the First Mile posted at Endless Gibberish.



Finally, Priya Jestin offers a long list of tips for money and life management in Starting Early: The Young Adult’s Guide To Personal Finance posted at Debt Consolidation Lowdown.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of festival of under 30 finances using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

March/April Net Worth

Personal Items

I left all valuations unchanged this month. My car mileage is inching up, so I suspect I'll be retooling my car's value soon (I already keep it below the KBB market value for fair condition vehicles).

Cash and Cash Equivalent

I was reimbursed for some of my vacation expenses by my grandparents, because they are very generous. So I was able to keep from pulling out too many funds.

Investments

My accounts rebounded from February nicely. I finally hit one of my "round number" targets for my retirement fund, as well.

Loan Balances

As always, I keep making my scheduled payments on these loans.

Other Debt

My travel reimbursement meant I was able to pay off my statement balance in full (which I was already prepared to do), as well as a good portion of my next statement's charges (which I normally don't do). My charges should be more "normal" this month.

The Month Ahead

I have one concert to attend, but the ticket was purchased long ago, and I have a gift card that should help cover some of the related food expenses. I have one other play in mind, and may try to volunteer usher rather than pay for it. My auto insurance premium is going up slightly; my accident from last October was priced into the premiums for this cycle. So I expect I'll be weighing purchases carefully for the month.

In other news, today is the last day to submit to the Festival of Under 30 Finances! I've gotten a few good submissions, and six that I've had to toss out for various reasons. So if you want to send a submission in, please don't duplicate other carnivals, or go completely off-topic, and CERTAINLY don't recommend illegal activity as a personal finance strategy. Sheesh.

Okay, so I'm not *completely* immune to psychological effects.

The leading digit on my consolidated Federal loan, by far the largest balance (and lowest rate) of all my student loans, has just dropped by one.

I know this is not as important as, say, improving the ratio of interest to principal for each succeeding payment.

But still. It's nice to see that tangible sign of progress.

Tomorrow, I am off for my much-needed long weekend with my grandparents.

When I return, I get to do that stuff I said I needed to do ten days ago.

And then I get to look at carnival submissions for the Festival of Under 30 Finances! People have until April 4 to submit, but people who send things in early will make me smile.

People who send in entries that have only a tenuous connection to the festival topic (it's "under 30" finances, not general personal finance, investing, or other consciousness-raising) will NOT make me smile. I reserve the right to ignore any submission that doesn't meet the submission guidelines.

At any rate, have a lovely weekend. I fully expect to.

Disorganization Dinged Me But Good.

1) Sometime during the course of this weekend, I lost my work ID badge. It may well be in my house, but I've moved around all the papers that clutter my entryway. I still can't find it anywhere.

I was able to get a temporary replacement without a problem, but I only have until the end of the month before I need a permanent replacement. And that requires a new employment eligibility form, with the standard two pieces of ID. Again, seemingly not a problem, but one of the ID types must be a birth certificate, social security card, or passport, and all of those are locked in my safe. The key to which was lost months ago.

Did I call to replace the key before this? No.

So in order for me to get a replacement key from the safe company in time to get a new badge, I'll have to pay for expedited shipping. $25 for being disorganized.

2) I was so flustered yesterday with all my work projects that I never properly thanked Lazy Man for hosting the Festival of Frugality. I particularly noted Elizabeth's glee over cheap chocolate and David's pledge to buy used for a year. And of course, there was my own post on Saturday's $30 Oscarfest.

3) And finally, I forgot to remind people to enter my movie quote quiz. The prize is a post on the topic of your choosing (I don't have tons of publishers sending me review copies of books or free software, so I give what I can). Technically, the contest was over on Monday, but since Michael and Ellen are tied with 3 and since I didn't post any reminders, I'm giving it one more day. There are 20 quotes. Good luck!

From business to pleasure.

First off, I would like to thank mapgirl and Golbguru for highlighting my post about financing a child's college education. It actually pushed me to submit to this week's Carnival of Personal Finance, something I rarely do. 2million chose, appropriately enough, a Carnival theme. (I'm picking up my king cake in a week, so I'm all over this.)

Other than the highlighted posts, I noticed:

Ask Uncle Bill's Thinking outside the box. This is a pretty clever tactic to get around admissions requirements.

DDL from Make Your Nut's an idea to save money by patronizing crappy movie theaters. I'm not sure I could deal with this kind of disruption. I patronize my local second-run movie theater to save money instead.


And speaking of lists and bloggers, Michael has asked all bloggers to give him a list of their top 5 movies. I'm bad at doing precisely what I'm told, however. (If only because asking me to pick a top 5 is well-nigh impossible. Top 2? Okay. Top 15? Maybe. But in between those, the differentials don't mean much.) Instead, I'm going to take a similar meme I did elsewhere last year and repurpose it for this.

I'll give out twenty quotes from twenty of my favorite movies. Whichever blogger identifies the most movies by February 19 wins! I'll then write a post on a topic of his or her choice. (I reserve the right to ask for alternate topics if the initial request would require either more knowledge on the subject, or more provision of personal details, than I am able/willing to offer.) I'm putting all of you on the honor system; don't look at the comments before replying!

1) As the producer, I can fire anybody I want, and I am f****** fired!

2) Is that related to a Corolla?...Like the car?

3) Death is... whimsical, today.

4) You should be very glad I'm not 12. I was a very straightforward child. I used to spit.

5) The French have said au revoir to the franc, the Germans have said auf wiedersehen to the mark, and the Portuguese have said... whatever to their thing.

6) Some think he imagines us. Others that he sleeps, and we are his dreams...

7) F*** you, quality of mercy.

8) You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure, only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times... the other times, you're just a stinker.

9) The man who folded this tube of Crest is looking for someone meticulous, refined. Anal. ... What?

10) Double negative? You mean you have photographs?!

11) Am I getting worse? Am I improving? I don't know. When I was younger, I was healthier, but I was, uh, whacked with insecurity, you know? Now I'm older and my problems are deeper, but I'm more equipped to handle them.

12) I took a course in art last winter. I learnt the difference between a fine oil painting, and a mechanical thing, like a photograph. The photograph shows only the reality. The painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it.

13)I warn you, madam - I know the entire Geneva Convention by heart! / Oh, how nice! You must recite it for me some evening; I play the harpsichord.

14) But I don't want to believe in something or not believe in it because I might feel bad. I want to believe in it or not believe in it because I think it's true or not.

15) I could put... I could put... strychnine in the guacamole.

16) I never did like the idea of sitting on newspaper. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level! It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news on the seat of my pants.

17) Everybody's sin is nobody's sin, and everybody's crime is no crime at all.

18) PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers.

19) What do you do for exercise? / I pace.

20) With music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's a perfect harmony!

It's funny because it's true.

From last week's Carnival of Education:

The best summary of the college application experience EVER.

I laughed a lot.

Belated links and lemmingdom.

Thanks to Penny Nickel at Money and Values for hosting the recent Festival of Under 30 Finances. I'm included, along with many other interesting posts. If you haven't already checked it out, stop by.

That "5 things you may not know about me" meme is also going around. And I don't mind an excuse to talk about myself, so I will ignore the tagging part and encourage anyone who wants to join in to do so.

1) HC does not represent my initials. If you can figure out why I use that as my nom de blog, then I'll give you a cookie if we should ever meet in person.
2) Although it has been over a decade since they were released, I can still sing nearly every word of the Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen and Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. Any correlation this may or may not have with my romantic history is left as an exercise for the reader. [grin]
3) I had the opportunity to live in Japan for two years after college as part of the JET program. I decided not to go. Some people would regret this, but I think it is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
4) I've eaten a lot of good food in a lot of fine locations, but thoughts of this place still make my mouth water.
5) I have not had a proper vacation this entire year, and am looking forward to 11 days away from work like you would not believe. It starts this Friday!

I have been REALLY sick.

As in, I had last Friday off. I could theoretically sleep in and knock out the cold. I was STILL on the couch for most of the weekend and stayed home Monday and Tuesday as well. And then I spent the rest of the week trying to catch up, and am still only about halfway there.

Sigh.

On a brighter note, I managed to get a submission into the Carnival of Personal Finance over at A Geek's World. I'm not the most regular contributor to carnivals. I'm forgetful, but I also don't want to contribute a less-than-personal-best post just to get some link traffic. But I felt that my post on life lists as shortcuts to estate planning was sufficiently on-topic, specific, and actionable to send on in. I also really liked The Finance Buff's post on Open Enrollment (as I'm dealing with it myself), Dogberry's comparison of 529 plans for the Dogberry family's OWN tax situation, and Tired But Happy's feelings about (not) planning for inheritances.

Also, I had my full annual review a few days ago. Despite receiving a mid-year (and completely unexpected) promotion, I still received a raise and a small bonus. Two raises in a year is quite all right by me. The bonus is mainly going to be funnelled back into my emergency fund. While ideally I would replace ALL the money I took out for my car repairs, if I can get $800 from "extra sources" (bonuses, gifts, and tax returns), I'll probably let myself go back to a normal contribution schedule and focus more on my downpayment fund.

And now, to catch up on still more work.