Goodbye

When I created this blog in 2008 it was sort of an aimless, mist of an idea. I had some vague notion about trying to make money on the web by writing, but it had to be on a topic I knew something about. As I plodded ahead my confidence grew and the blog began to take form, truly a “List” of money making ideas and frugal tips, “The Buck List.”

Close to three years later I have to say it was a fun, challenging and interesting ride. It is also over, and I have no regrets except that I will miss you. Not many people write just for themselves, never expecting their jottings to be read by others. Most of us want people to read what we have to say, and I am no different. If a post meant enough to cause one, or more, of you to leave a comment…that was the best part of writing this blog. That we strangers could get to know each other just a little, and share some common bond…I don’t think I can fully explain how much that has meant to me. Thank you so much.

As for why I am moving on, I think the blog has pretty much run its course. I have grown a little tired of writing on the same topic, and while I have really enjoyed it I want to experience new opportunities. I don’t know for sure what I will do next but I have a list of ideas and plenty of interests to pursue.

I enjoy spending time with family, antiquing, freehand drawing, foraging, writing, target shooting, photography, fishing, reading, gardening, hiking, camping, cooking, traveling, curbing and, of course, making and saving money. So who knows what lies ahead…and isn’t that part of what makes life interesting?

Best Wishes,

Buck   

Random Thoughts

I was poking around in my ideas folder for The Buck List and came across some notes and blurbs that never got developed into full blown posts for the blog, and I figured why not just combine them all into one article of random thoughts. Sorry…

Don’t Dis Great Grandpa   

I was reading something the other day about how lost our ancestors would be in the tech savvy world we currently live in. I don’t know if it was the smug tone that got to me or just the absurdness of making that kind of comparison but I got to wondering how well would we today fare if we suddenly had to live like our predecessors. While many of us today communicate with and are entertained by and even make a living using computers, watch lots of TV and can’t imagine life without a cell phone, most of our ancestors spent from before sun up to after sundown out of doors physically working. And while I imagine Great Grandpa would welcome a well deserved break to sit back and feed his face while watching American Idol he would probably soon grow bored and feel the need to get back to work and nature. Automation and technology have given we Americans so much leisure time that it is hard to imagine how much work our elders did and the knowledge needed to survive. Returning to the idea of having to do it that way again, here is a sampling of some skills needed just in the last 150 years.

Cooking on a wood burning stove, milking cows, plowing a field and harvesting crops by horse and by hand, making your own clothes, caring for and butchering livestock for meat, cooking three meals from scratch every day, living by lamp and candle light after dark, hunting for and cleaning small and large game, washing clothes by hand…the list really could go on and on.

I bet Great Grandpa wouldn’t have too much trouble learning to text or use a computer mouse, if his big calloused hands could even hold them. How well do you think you would do in his world?  

Momentazations

Some moments and realizations that I thought I could liven up some blog posts with by working them into similes or metaphors or whatever but didn’t end up using.   

The moment when you return home from a vacation and walk into your still house and take in the abandonment before it all comes alive again.

The moment while you are listening to music you have never heard before when you realize you really like it.

While driving the moment when you have almost been in an accident and then the realization that it did not happen.

The moment when, as a child, you see your favorite grandparent and anticipate the fun you will have, and the moment when you remember it years after they are gone and still feel the excitement.

While watching a rain storm coming your way the moment when the rain just begins to fall.

The Most Mysterious Things

This was to be the first installment of a monthly series that I thought would be fun and different, but I put it on the backburner and forgot about it. I only wrote this one, and I honestly was not consciously trying to imitate Andy Rooney. By the time you get to the end it’s pretty obvious why I decided not to use it.   

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” – Albert Einstein –

They say everyone likes a good mystery. While true for me as well, I also dislike a lot of them. Missing people, for example. I would rather know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Airhart. Missing links bug me too, such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. How hard can it be to find a gigantic fish-monster in a 20 square mile lake, or an 8 foot tall 500 pound ape-thing running around in the woods? Since most species on Earth take two to tango to keep procreating it would only make sense there would be at least a small population of these things to detect. And how about missing mysteries? Whatever happened to the Bermuda Triangle and spontaneous human combustion?

Pondering all this recently got me to thinking: what are the most mysterious things, phenomenon that truly cannot be explained? (Insert wife joke here. Or not.)

First up in this series: Dogs

My family had a dog when I was growing up, and as an adult I am now on dog number four. It is said we are genetically closer to primates but socially much closer to dogs than any other species, due to thousands of years of living with each other, as well as the fact that we created them from wolves. (For some fascinating reading on the subject Google “Jozsef Topal)

This intimate and ancient relationship between our two species still has its mysteries, though. Since most dogs can’t talk we can only speculate what might be the most mysterious aspect about us to them. My guess would be “Why can’t we just play and sleep all day?” If you ever get that questioning look from a dog, and you do every day if you own one, explanations of having to work or doing something else that does not involve them are met with sad eyes that show more pity for you than sadness by them.

There is no doubt what my mystery question would be for them: “Why, oh why, do you eat poop?” Every dog I have owned, from the first one that ate poopy diapers out of the trash whenever he could to the current dog that eats deer droppings in the woods, they have all ingested scat. To make an already disgusting subject slightly worse, they really seem to enjoy it, like a drunk eating sloppy Buffalo wings at the end of a hard night. Which is grosser is a tossup, but you wouldn’t want either one to lick your face when they are done.

Further Reading:

A Walk in the Woods

Weekly Roundup

Lifesta “is a marketplace for people to buy and sell deals from "daily deal" sites such as Groupon, Living Social, BuyWithMe and 300+ others. Missed a deal? Find it here. Need to sell a deal? List it here.”

Pick Your Own will help you locate a pick your own farm near you. They provide local listings of pick your own farms in the United States and other countries. They also offer crop calendars for each local area so you know what is available to pick throughout the year. If you need help deciding what to do with your pickings there are illustrated directions to show you how to make over 150 recipes with step-by-step directions to can, freeze, dry or preserve the harvest.

Use radiotuna to locate a radio station online playing your favorite genre of music.

This small business owner writes about how she learned to love bartering.

UbuWeb “is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.” This site is a huge, amazing resource that will be treasured by those who enjoy the unusual and underground arts.

Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.

This post lists the power of peroxide.

Make it a great weekend!

How to Save Serious Money on Vacation

Over the years my wife and kids and I have been fortunate enough to be able to afford, and take the time off, for some pretty memorable vacations. We have camped all over our state of Iowa as well as quite a few surrounding states. We have vacationed in the Black Hills, the Grand Teton Mountains and the Rockies, just for some highlights. During all these vacations (and the extensive preparations for them) we got to be pretty good at staying within a small budget. Following are some of the ways we learned to travel and lodge frugally while still having a good time. These tips are primarily for those that travel by car, so if you like planes, trains, bikes, busses or boats they might not work for you.

Bring Your Own Food – Depending on how long you will be gone, and how many there are, you might be able to cover the whole trip. We have been able to survive for a week with very few additional supplements to our menu (2 adults and 2 kids) before we had to break down and hit a local grocery store. We would take along food that didn’t need to be warmed such as salads, the fixings for sandwiches, cold chicken, chicken strips to make wraps, chips, fruit, etc. We would also budget in a few restaurant stops to break up the routine. Hey, it’s a vacation, not boot camp!

Cook Your Own Meals – This one is usually not a problem when tent or RV camping, but it is worth asking if it is allowed before booking a stay in a cabin or hotel. Most of the cabins we have stayed in would allow cooking inside (many had their own kitchens) while a hotel will usually only allow you to warm up food in the microwave, so plan accordingly. If we know we will be able to cook inside we always pack our electric skillet, in our experiences the single most versatile cooking appliance.

Stay In a Central Location – Many times when planning our vacations we would decide what attractions we wanted to see and then try to find a place to stay that was centered among them. That way we could stay in one cabin, hotel or campsite for several days and not have to move while making small road trips in different directions to take in the sites. 

Travel In the Off Season – If you have kids in school this might not be an option unless you can plan time off around teacher in service days or holiday weekends. If kids are not a problem you could save a nice percentage off of hotel and cabin stays, as well as some attractions. Check the web to find what the off season is for where you want to go.

Reward Programs and Membership Discounts – Reward programs and membership discounts are offered by airlines, hotels, gas stations and AAA. Also make sure to check Groupon for discounts to restaurants, museums and other attractions where you will be visiting.

Have Your Car Tuned Up – There is nothing like breaking down in a strange town, or worse, in the middle of nowhere to kill the vacation mood, and if it is something serious the time and money spent to fix it could even kill the whole vacation. While some things can’t be planned for budgeting for a tune up just before you leave is well worth the money. It won’t hurt to also tell your mechanic where you are going, as he might pay special attention to certain parts. For example: do your breaks have plenty of life left, because you use them a lot while driving in the mountains? Or, will your vehicle coolant be able to handle desert temperatures and do you have decent tires for inclement weather?

Related Reading:

Is AAA Worth It?

How to Camp on the Cheap

Frugal Lessons From The Past

Concerning finances, thrift, frugality and simple living there are tried and true bedrock principals that we should never forget. In this series we examined source materials for possible lessons from the past that we could learn to help us figure out solutions to today’s problems.

The Holy Bible – Provides lessons on stocking up our pantries, saving leftovers, working hard, staying focused, moderating our habits and to pay as we go.

Frugality in the Spiritual Life – This is an excerpt from a book that William L. Watkinson wrote. His plea from the year 1908 to open our eyes to the “common things” couldn’t be more timely, surrounded as we are today with so many distractions from what is truly important.

The Art of Gardening – This was written by Iowan and Pulitzer Prize winner Frank Luther Mott (1886-1964). He reminds us not only that gardening is a great frugal option to save money on groceries but also names some of the joys that come with growing your own food.

Soar Away from the Vise – Here is advice from a beat up little 46 page booklet I rescued out of a dumpster years ago. It was written by Fred Moller, Jr. and this passage is from the final chapter called “Our Secrets.”

Seymour on Work - John Seymour (1914-2004) was a soldier, miner, farm manager, fishing boat skipper, world traveler, author, radio and TV broadcaster, farmer, teacher, and protester and is known as the “Father of Self-Sufficiency.”

Hillard Green – In 1972 the first Firefox anthology was published. Here are a couple of excerpts from an interview with Hillard Green, who at that time was around eighty years old.

Economy in the Home - The following is taken from Book Two of The People’s Home Library, published in 1920 and written by Mrs. Alice Gitchell Kirk.

College During the Depression – This is taken from the book The Great Depression by David A. Shannon and is a list of some of the ways college students made and saved money during the 1930’s.

Old Mike - In the book “Little Heathens” there is a chapter on how the author and her family practiced thrift. After describing such things as homemade cleaners and health remedies and the many life cycles of socks she ends the chapter with a recycling technique probably not used by many anymore.

Carl Faber – This “desert rat” and artist describes his lifestyle and lack of need for money while living in a little house in the Mojave Desert.

Harlan Hubbard - In this excerpt from his book about drifting down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River to New Orleans in a homemade shantyboat Harlan explains why he wanted to undertake the journey.

Kate Sanborn - Kate Sanborn (1839 – 1917) purchased and moved onto an abandoned farm in Massachusetts in 1888 and here she writes of some of the pleasures and advantages of country living.

The Mail Order Catalog - Carl Hamilton wrote about history and his own memories of growing up on a farm. The following excerpts follow the lifespan of a mail order catalog on the farm.

Weekly Roundup

Cost Helper “is a growing online community which provides objective information on more than 1,000 products and services, and lists what people are actually paying nationwide.”

Idealist “connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives. Our work is guided by the common desire of our members and supporters to find practical solutions to social and environmental problems, in a spirit of generosity and mutual respect.” So what does that mean to you? Click to find out!

Clinical Trials “is a comprehensive resource for trusted information about medical research studies, also called clinical trials. Whether you’re interested in participating in a clinical trial or want to become a clinical trial investigator, find out how you can help advance health.”

This article addresses some of the financial mistakes newlyweds make.

Writer's Free Reference “was first published in August 1992 with 12 links to other websites providing free information for writers. Over the years, it has grown to over 200 links to a wide variety of information, not only for writers, but also for students, teachers, businessmen and women, researchers, and anyone looking for any type of data.”

Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.

This post explores how the older you get the better the deals.

Have a good weekend!

Increasing Your Net Worth: The Measurement of Real Wealth

The following is a guest post contributed by Tom Cleveland, who writes for Forex Traders.

Each year, Forbes magazine publishes a list of the wealthiest people in the world.  Of course, the names at the top of the list are household names—Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.  Forbes rates the wealthiest people in the world by their net worth.  Net worth is simply a person’s total assets minus their liabilities.  Although you may not be fighting to get your name on the Forbes’ list, chances are good that you have a definite interest in building your net worth.

Practical Step to Building Net Worth

Let’s return to the definition of net worth once more.  It is defined as a person’s assets minus their liabilities. Now, this is important to understand.  It doesn’t really matter how many assets a person has.  If they have too many liabilities, the inflated assets will not mean anything.  We see this play out in the business world all the time.  A company may have hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, but it attempts to expand too fast and takes on unsustainable debts, which are liabilities.  In corporate America, this eventually leads to bankruptcy.  A company that has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, but also has $2 billion in outstanding liabilities, is headed for total collapse.  Thus, the way to build net worth is not to necessarily focus on building assets or a forex account, but to rather eliminate liabilities.

Eliminating Liabilities

The three primary liabilities that most middle-class Americans have are a mortgage, a car loan, and credit card debt.  The real way to build true, lasting wealth is to focus on eliminating the most destructive of these three types of liabilities—credit card debt.

Credit card debt is a major hindrance of wealth creation.  Ultimately, it is wise to buy assets in order to build net worth.  When hundreds of dollars are being spent each month paying credit cards off, this money could be going toward purchasing those assets.  Thus, one of the first steps that must be taken to build real wealth is to pay off all credit card debts in order to eliminate this liability.

Adjust the Budget

The most practical way to quickly pay off credit card debt is to honestly analyze your monthly spending habits and discover every area that could be cut back and eliminated.  Once you find out how much can be eliminated each month, then decide to shift this extra capital toward paying down your credit card debt.  This will not necessarily be fun and exciting, but it will help put you into a place of financial strength once the liability is eliminated and you can direct that extra capital into purchasing assets.

Further Reading:

How to Fight a Credit Card Interest Rate Change

Should You Spend Money on Budgeting Software?

Frugal Recipe: Potato Salad

This side dish probably has as many variations as chili, and as with my own chili recipe I don’t use measurements for the ingredients of my potato salad. In my family it’s usually called into action for picnics and summer holidays, but we have been known to whip up a batch any time of the year we get the desire.

Ingredients:

Red potatoes, diced and boiled until tender

Vidalia onion, chopped

Hard boiled eggs, sliced

Mayonnaise

Ranch dressing

Mustard

Parmesan cheese

To taste: ground thyme, dill weed, black pepper, paprika, caraway seed, parsley, celery seed.

Directions:

Mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and chill until the big event. One note: I know some folks like to add bacon but I usually don’t, unless it is extra crispy. Nothing can ruin potato salad for me like the anticipation of a delicious bite only to find myself chewing on a big hunk of bacon fat. Yuck!

Related Reading:

Frugal Recipe: Mac ‘n’ Beef

Weekly Roundup

Deal Radar provides “a free, fast and convenient way to stay on top of great savings opportunities and experiences available in your city. Each day we follow, index and categorize local deals to create a simple, time-saving way to find great savings in your city.” Subscribe, follow or visit the site to find your own local deals.

Local Dirt “is your place to find and buy fresh, local food directly from the family farm.” Click the link to find out how it works.

Hotel Spy claims they can find the best deals on cheap hotels.

This article lists nine ways for parents to help their job hunting kids.

Recall Warnings doesn’t list just auto recalls, they include everything from toys to clothing and operating equipment to musical instruments.

Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.

This post gives advice on how to clean it before you replace it.

Have a good weekend!

My Favorite Personal Finance Sites

When I was pondering what kind of a blog I was going to start I of course first thought about what I liked to read online, and that included several personal finance blogs and sites. Considering my attempts at the time to make money since losing my job I guess the subject matter sort of popped right out at me. I don’t consider this a “personal finance” blog because there are gaps in the subject that I don’t write about because they don’t interest me as much, such as credit cards, insurance, taxes, investing. I personally am interested in taxes (If the subject is lowering them! Otherwise it’s nap time) and investing (I have a tidy sum in my old 401k, mutual funds and a Roth IRA) but not enough to write about it. So The Buck List was never a traditional personal finance blog, just what interested one guy enough to want to share with others. Some of the sites on my list are like that, and others are a little more structured.

If you have any to add I would love to know about them!

The Dollar Stretcher – I found this site not too long after getting online in 1996 and I have been a newsletter subscriber ever since. The simple design and ever changing reader contributed content have kept this site at the top of my list. And to top it off editor Gary Foreman is a pretty nice guy, too.  

Yahoo Personal Finance – They cover it all, and also offer calculators and how to guides to go along with their catchy, clickable headline stories.

Wise Bread – You just never know what to expect in your inbox from this group of close to fifty contributors. With that many points of view you can be assured that they keep it fresh and interesting.

Unusual Ways to Make Money – Steve Gillman is all about marketing, making money and self-promotion…all of which he shares with his readers. I have lost track of how many sites he has but I have bookmarked some of them, and I think this one was the first I came across. Beware: reading his stuff is VERY addictive.

Personal Finance Blogs Aggregator – As of this writing this free aggregator of personal finance blogs has 22,150 entries from 716 blogs, and counting. If you are looking for something new to read or a different voice in the field take some time to browse this site.

Further Reading:

Politics and Personal Finance: What Can One Tell Us About the Other?

Does a Financial Education Matter?

    

Quick and Painless Ways to Start Saving Money Regardless of Income Level

The following is a guest post by Mick Archard.

With gas prices rising and the job market and economy unstable, most people are doing whatever they can to save money. There are some big changes people can make, such as renting a cheaper apartment, or small changes such as brown bagging lunches instead of eating out. Even people with small incomes can usually find a way to save, and small savings add up. Even just $10 per month adds up to $120 per year. The savings add up even faster if they are earning interest in a savings or investment account.

Rent a Smaller Apartment

Renting an apartment is a great way to save money. Renter's insurance is usually way cheaper than homeowner's insurance. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners reported that rental insurance in Michigan costs an average of $164 year. This breaks down to just $13.67 per month. According to the Insurance Institute of Michigan, average premiums for homeowners insurance in MI were $797 in 2004. This breaks down to about $66.42 per month. If you are already renting, moving to a smaller place will usually result in lower monthly rent and lower utility costs because there is less space to heat and cool. There are many Edmonton apartments for rent that are in great locations and have low monthly rental fees.

Budget

Creating a budget is important whether the income level is $1,000 per month or $8,000 per month. Listing all monthly bills with amounts and due dates paints an accurate picture of your finances. Treating savings like a bill is important. There should be a line in the budget for savings, even if it's only $25 per month. Budgeting also gives consumers an idea of how much money they have available after the essential bills. It helps people to not overspend when they know there is only $75 a week in the budget for groceries, for example.

Pay Off Debt

According to Outlaw Finance freeing yourself of debt is one of the first steps you should take. Paying extra on your debts is will free up money faster and you will pay out less money in interest and fees. When one credit card is paid off, the payment you were making can be put toward the next debt to get it paid off sooner. Talking to credit card companies may not help, but it won't hurt. The companies may agree to lower interest rates or take less money than you owe in a lump sum payment. Credit card companies can be difficult to work with, but they don't want you to go bankrupt, so they will sometimes work with you on a payment plan.

Taking back items that still have tags on them or having a garage sale is a quick way to make money for debt payment. Many people are selling used items on online auction sites for extra money. It may not seem like much at first, but any payment that is more than the minimum usually goes straight to lowering the total amount owed.

Invest in a 401K

Having money taken out of each paycheck before it's deposited is a great way to save. This money is not part of the budget, so it's easier not to spend it on something else. Increasing 401k contributions with each raise adds even more money to savings without making a dent in your monthly budget. Many companies have a fund set aside to match the amount of money that employees deposit into their 401k accounts, up to a certain percentage. Talk to the human resources department of your company if you're unsure about a company match. This is free money that employees often turn down by not investing.

Set Goals

Saving money can be difficult, especially for people who need most of their income for necessary bills like rent, food, and gas. Setting a goal to save for something you really want makes it easier to save money. For example, people may be faced with the decision to buy a new pair of shoes or save that $75 toward the car they really want. Having pictures of the savings goal in prominent places will remind you what you're saving for. It's also helpful to break down the goal into manageable amounts per month. If the goal is to have $5,000 saved in a year from now, this breaks down to $416.67 per month or $96.15 per week.

Trim Expenses

Even small amounts of money add up. If someone spends $2 every week on movie rentals, this money adds up to $104 after one year. Switching to a cheaper cell phone or TV plan is another way to save money. Many people are not using the services they are paying for and can easily make cuts.

Eating out is one expense that most people can cut. Bringing lunch to work instead of buying lunch every day can save most people around $50 per week. Eating out is a social event for many people. Inviting friends over for dinner or drinks and rotating houses each month is a fun way to spend time with friends and save money. Soup and bread is a meal that feeds a large amount of people on a small budget. It's also nice to not have people you don't know interrupting the conversation of your group. Your house never closes, so friends can talk all night if they want to.

Additional Reading:

How to Avoid Crisis Living

Saving in 2011

Weekly Roundup

June is Great Outdoors Month, National Camping Month and National Rivers Month. You know what that means…get outdoors and camp by a river!

There is something about signs and symbols that are intriguing to all of us at some level. Check out Symbols for “more than 1,600 articles about 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics.”

Yipit “aggregates and recommends the best daily deals in your city. We collect all the great daily deals from 528 services including Groupon, LivingSocial, Buy With Me, Tippr, Yelp and many more. We recommend the best of the daily deals to our users based on the preferences they have expressed to us.”

In his last Cheapskate column Neal Templin says goodbye to all that penny-pinching.

Thrifty Times offers all kinds of articles about how to save money, budgeting tips, finding free stuff, coupons and even inexpensive recipes. Worth a peek!

Weekly Reminder – A reminder of a useful article you might have missed.

This post explores what to do when coupons aren’t enough.

Have a good weekend!

Happiness Is a By-Product

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) wrote this short but insightful line about how we achieve happiness.

“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”