Young and Frugal

My wife and I have essentially been living as if we were making mortgage payments on our new house for the last 6 months, but instead of paying a mortgage (and taxes and insurance and Homeowners Association) it’s all been going into savings for our down payment.

We admit that we are stretching ourselves to buy our first house (I think that’s something that most people do), but as we are re-evaluating our budget (less than a month until we move in!) we have found ourselves looking forward to our raises in the fall (even if it just equates to a cost of living raise) because let’s face it…as much as budgeting is important, no one likes sticking to a strict budget, so we look towards the future at what we will be making and what we can spend (or save) at that point in time

I think our problem is that we are always looking to acquire more. We want more and don’t want to make sacrifices to get more.

As Mary and I caught ourselves looking forward at what we will be earning and what will increase in our budget I thought to myself, why not look backwards?

Why not live on last years salary? Say your salary was X last year and it increased to Y this year. If you live on last years salary and budget you inadvertently save Y-X all year. Then when your salary increases to Z you can live on Y and save Z-Y.

This concept allows you to save more and forces you to permanently (ideally) live below your means. It’s simple, but a great and easy way to save!

Tonight Mary and I had the chance to eat at a very wealthy person’s house in Dallas.  This house is AMAZING.  This house is probably 10,000 square feet, and they had a “mile of wood trim” throughout their game room.  It was very impressive, and it sits on one of the most visible places in North Dallas, on the corner of a busy intersection.  The house is designed like a castle, and sits far enough back where you hear no road noise and you can’t see any of the streetlights because of the size of the lot and how the house is situated.  I could probably tell most people in Dallas what house it was and they would know exactly what I’m talking about.

The couple who own it are definitely a “power couple,” he’s a doctor, she’s a lawyer.  As I walked through I was thinking about the ridiculous mortgage payment they must have for their $2+million house, until I heard the most amazing thing all night… THEY PAID CASH!    

They built what they could when they could afford it, and while this isn’t for everyone, I applaud them for being debt free and staying together for what I’m sure was a hectic process.  They started the house on January 1, 1990, they moved in to the garage apartment 3 years later, and the house was under continual construction since then.  They just recently finished about 5 years ago, and they really did a great job with it.

I took an investments class the during the Fall semester of my Senior year in college, and when I say “took” I mean that I dutifully attended every class, sat in the front row, and tried with all my heart to understand what the hell he was talking about.  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the material, I just didn’t understand how our professor could brush over things so fast.  Most of the rest of the students never attended because the professor was one of the few that “recycled” his tests every year and didn’t change anything except for the numbers (ie: you did not need to attend class, you just needed to know someone who took him last semester).  

Dr. Chucky (as he preferred to be called) is one of the most peculiar people I have ever met.  And this is what you need to know about him… He probably smoked 2 packs a day, he sweated like a pig, and he spoke 6 languages.  He was a professor because it allowed him to play with his portfolio all day and use his summers to travel.  He is an incredibly smart person, but the type of smart person who didn’t relate very well to less smart people.  He has been on over 10 game shows and won a great deal of money from them.

I have previously written about things that should be mandatory for every college senior to learn (My Mandatory Class Proposal) and this series is about what Dr. Chucky rushed through on the last day of class when he handed out a sheet with many jumbled and incomplete sentences.  The thoughts were broken into 5 different categories.  We then talked about a 6th.  I will try and decode his thoughts in this series. 

Purchases:

1.  ”1 hour search/study for each $1000 purchase”       

 What I believe he is saying here is don’t sweat the small stuff.  I write a great deal about frugality, and how I’m a bargain hunter, but usually what happens to me is that I over-research items and I don’t value my time enough.  If you spend 8 hours trying to figure out how to save 10% on a $1000 purchase is it really worth the time?   On the other hand, if you spend 20 hours researching a car and how to buy one it is probably a better use of time.  Or if you are looking to buy a house, spend as much time as you can, I don’t know if it’s possible to over-research a $200+ thousand purchase.

2.  “Think of all purchases in annual terms”       

 We live in a society that looks at things as “how much per month” without looking at the entire picture.  Sometimes it’s easier to finance things (not recommended) but we need to look at a bigger picture than just monthly, so look at how much you’ll be paying every year.  That should open your eyes, especially if you start to think about how much of that is interest and how much is principal.  Then look at how much you’ll be paying over the life of the loan…is it worth it?

 3. “Autos: go to fleet manager or internet managers”       

 Car salesmen are the pawns of the dealerships, the more they get you to pay, the more money they get.  Fleet/Internet Managers run the show.  They don’t get paid based on how much you pay, they get paid based on inventory turnover.  They don’t like to deal with haggling, they just want to get you in a car and out the door.  Mary and I did this when we bought our Volvo, it was a great experience, we got it for a great price, and we didn’t even need to haggle.  The internet manager agreed on our price, though the sales manager was royally pissed off (we heard him yelling at the internet manager).

 4. “Insurance, higher deductibles will lower premium rates“       

This pretty much speaks for itself.  Some people may say “but then I have to pay more if something happens,” true, but if you took the difference between the more expensive monthly payment, and the less expensive monthly payment you could be adding that difference to your emergency fund and earning interest on it in the meantime.  Pretty soon you’ll have saved enough to pay a higher deductible if something were to happen, and the rest is just more money saved.

 5. “Live below your means, save on : yard, car wash, cable TV, tipping”       

In other words, live below your means and don’t mindlessly spend.  There are plenty of luxuries that most people consider staples, Cable TV being at the forefront.  If you look for places to make cuts, you will find them.  You can wash your own car, you can take care of your own yard, and you don’t have to be known as a “big tipper.”

 6. “House purchase: Multiple Listing Service add-ons”      

  While I normally probably wouldn’t be able to decode this, I did jot down what he was talking about.  Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is the service that real estate agents use to search for houses.  What he meant by add-ons is to go to your real estate agents office early in the morning and map out which of the houses added to the list that morning you will go look at.  He was a big advocate of buy the cheapest/worst house on the best block, and he recommended that this was the only way to get it before someone trying to turn a profit by flipping it would.  Mary and I discovered that this really is the best way to do it.  When we were looking at houses we went by one that we really liked, on the day it was listed.  It was listed for what our agent believed was below market value, and the next day a contract was in on it for full asking price.  Two months later, it had been flipped and was back on the market for $100k more.

7.  “$1,000/month rent, buys a ~ $360,000 home after tax @ 5%”      

 This is one that I really can’t fully decode.  I believe he is essentially saying don’t throw away money on rent when you could be buying a house, but his math seems to be off.  By my math $1000/month buys a $225,000 house at 5% interest, if you put 20% down.  If you paid $1500 a month on mortgage you could do a $360,000 home after 20% down.  As someone in the process of buying/building a house, I’m still torn on the whole rent vs. buy thing.  There are tons of pros and cons to each, but I’m happy with our decision.  

As you can see, in Dr. Chucky’s list of incomplete sentences and thoughts on personal finances there is some great wealth of advice just waiting to be decoded and understood.  Stay tuned for more!

Mathematically being young and frugal makes a great deal of sense; save as much as you can now, and let the compounding interest build up over the course of your life. 

In theory if I were to invest $50,000 in a decent mutual fund at the age of 23, assuming it earns at least 10% a year (slightly less than the historical average of the stock market), I would have $2,262,962.00 by the time I’m 65.  That sounds great, and the numbers don’t lie, however it’s not that easy.

Achieving this goal, while feasible, means that we need to continue living the way we are now (very frugally) and save for over two more years before we would be back in good financial shape to buy a house.  We could do it, but it wouldn’t be fun, and we are already committed to the house.  

The fact of the matter is that being young and frugal comes with many opportunity costs; the biggest being a social life.  Personally, it’s in my nature to not be able to rationalize going out to bars and paying big bucks for a drink I can make at home for a fraction of the price.  Plus I’m not a big fan of loud crowded spaces.  I do however love hanging out with friends and meeting new people…who doesn’t?

In college I hated going out to bars, I would much rather have hung out with a few of my roommates or thrown a party at our house than go out.  As a bonus we would host the parties, charge a cover to get in, drink for free all night, and have money left over to pocket or pay the resulting tickets.  It was a pretty good setup :)…until we lost about 80% of our deposit when we moved out.  

I know there are always alternatives to going out to bars, but for the most part, when you are hanging out with friends, meeting new people, or even networking you will most likely be doing so while spending money.  Whether it be at a bar, a movie, the golf course, or over dinner, you’ll be spending money.  It’s called social spending, and it’s a fact of being social.

To be honest, this aspect of being young and frugal is less than fun.  It especially sucks in the office because everyone I work with goes out for lunch at least 3 times a week.  The frugal train of thought on this is to take your lunch to work and it will save you a ton of money, so this is what I do, and it does save a great deal of money.  On the flip side, I’m certain that I am missing out on a great deal of good networking (and the male bonding) that comes with going out to eat with the guys.  Also, I’m wondering if my being social with my bosses at lunch could have an effect on an increase in my salary, thus offsetting going out to lunch.

Mary and I have kept room in our food budget for us to each go out to lunch with our co-workers once a week.  At the time we set the budget it was a reasonable expectation, and while it is a reasonable expectation, it’s getting to the point where I feel bad telling them I won’t be going to lunch today.  I love that I am always invited, but I know that there becomes a point where you are turned down so much that you don’t ask anymore. I’m hoping that I am not approaching this point.

Outside of work it’s hard for us to make new friends right now because of our extreme frugality and location (both will hopefully only be around for the 2-3 more months).  We live 45 minutes away from work, and we are more than 45 minutes away from “uptown” where any sort of nightlife in Dallas occurs.  On top of that all of our childhood friends from the area no longer live here!

So with all this, is it possible to live frugal and still have a vibrant social life?  I’m sure it probably is, but for Mary and I, and our extreme situation, it seems that we have struck out.  Our saving for our house and preparing to be house poor is strike one, our current location is strike two, and being married seems to be strike three because all of our peers are still single. 

I am more than open to suggestions on how get our social lives back on track while still living frugally, so if you have any please post them in the comments section. I’d love to hear what you have to say!

I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades, never afraid trying to do something on my own, and always watching and learning how to do things.  I can’t help it, was raised this way. 

From a young age I pushed a toy lawn mower behind my dad as he mowed the lawn, in elementary school I spent afternoons with my grandfather who taught me about woodworking and tools as we built (yet never finished) a rocking chair, in junior high I hung out with carpenters and contractors everyday after school as they remodeled both my grandparents and my parents houses.  I was an early adopter of HGTV, yet This Old House remains my favorite home improvement show.  In high school I, like most teens, was infatuated with cars, and as a result I can, and have done just about everything on a car, short of body work.  Through all of this, I learned and did even more as I became an Eagle Scout.  I watched, I learned, I did.

I loved these aspects of my childhood, and these aspects built a foundation for me to know how to do an extreme variety of things, and as much as I love (and Mary loves) this about me, it’s a curse.

I constantly have internal struggles as three aspects of my life make it nearly impossible for me to make a decision on any variety of things.  These three things that alone are great, seem to deeply conflict each other.

1. I’m a DIY type of guy, born and raised, for the sake of being constructive, and seeing a finished product that I created, saving money is just a bonus.
2. I’m Frugal.
3. I’m a perfectionist.

As the saying goes, “jack of all trades, master of none.”  I’m a perfectionist that can’t do any of the things I love to do perfectly, yet I hate the concept of paying someone when I can do it myself, but since I know how things should be done (even though I can’t do them perfectly) I monitor to make sure things are being done right.  As Fat Bastard in would say “It’s a vicious cycle.”

This internal struggle is one of the major reasons that Mary and I decided to build a new house instead of buying an older home and having projects.  We’d rather move into a house already done the way we want it than have to live with imperfect DIY project after project.

JD at Get Rich Slowly, posted an interview with Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.  I have not read the book, but in the interview the concept of a “low information diet” is brought up.  Tim explains that the people who excel with this type of lifestyle don’t overload on information.  Instead they outsource what they can, and don’t feel the need to stay caught up.  Tim calls them “selectively ignorant,” not really knowing more than they need to.  In other words, they are the opposite of me.

I am going to try being selectively ignorant because in many aspects of my life I feel that because I know how something is done, I should do it myself.  As a result I have a handful of half finished projects, and quite a few that would look much better if I would have paid someone else to do it.

What it comes down to is focusing on the things that you truly thrive in.  If you can focus on these things, and outsource/outchore the rest to others, in theory you’ll be doing quite well in your career and in your life.  This concept is one that was first brought to my attention in the book Strengthsfinder 2.0, which has the reader take a personality test and then tells you the 5 things that you thrive in, and what type of people to surround yourself with in order to be most successful.  It is a great test/book and I highly recommend it, as it was the first publication that I read which focused on strengths and not weaknesses.

I have to begin accepting that just because I can do something myself, it doesn’t mean I should. I am excited that I won’t have any large or highly visible projects once we move, and I’m looking forward to being able to focus more on what I’m good at (like looking towards the future, advising, and teamwork), and getting better at a select few things I truly enjoy but am not great at (like writing).