Happy 7/11 Day!

If you didn't know, every year, 7/11 stores around the country offer a free 7.11 ounce Slurpee to anyone who comes into their shops on 7/11. That's today!

This is a tradition that I love every year. It's time to head out and get some of that sweet, sweet Slurpee goodness.

Weekend Links

Here are some helpful articles that have caught my attention over the past week. Enjoy!

Might Bargain Hunter wrote about taking advantage of financial loopholes (before they get closed down).

Squirrelers makes the case for putting more money in your emergency fund.

Walletpop describes how to simplify your summer finances.

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary questioned whether some students should be discouraged from attending college.

Couple Money listed which government cutbacks will likely affect you.

Saving Money Doing What You Like to Do #3 - Eight Ways to Save Money on Books

I love reading, and, as a direct result, I have something of a love affair with books that goes beyond merely reading. I love holding them, touching them, smelling a newly opened book, and, more than anything, I love having them around. As a result, I have developed something of an extensive library (particularly scripts and books about theatre and drama).

If you have been bitten by the book bug (book worm?) as well, then you know that developing a library and/or being surrounded by books can be an expensive past time. However, being a book lover doesn't have to cost a fortune (or cost all the available shelf space in your house). Here are some ways that I've managed to cut down on my own book costs.

1) Develop a book-buying philosophy - In my younger and more vulnerable years, I purchased nearly every book that I wanted to read, which I found left me quite short in the pocketbook. Wanting to be able to save more money and not overflow my condo with books, I have recently more or less decided that I only really need to purchase books if I'm going to need or use them as a reference. As I have been working towards, and recently completed, my M.A. in Drama, most of those reference works have been plays or other books on the theatre. In general, I now only purchase books of this type.

2) The library - Yes, I know this one is the most obvious place to get books on the cheap, but it bears repeating. For a long time, I had a difficult time wanting to get books from the library because I wanted to be able to read them at my leisure, and the three week check-out time (plus an additional three weeks for a one-time renewal) was totally harshing my book-loving buzz, man! Those fascists! Nevertheless, after moving a couple of times in the last few years, I couldn't help thinking that maybe I didn't need so many heavy boxes of books to cart around anymore, particularly for those books that I might only read one time. For example, Tina Fey has written a deeply hilarious book in Bossypants, but after reading it once, will I really need to have it on hand in perpetuity? Probably not.

3) Other free books - Outside of my local public library, there are a couple boxes of free books that people can take home. While these boxes are usually filled with books that no rational person could possibly want nowadays (anyone up for a copy of the Dummies Guide to Windows 95? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?), I have found some choice picks in the past. For example, the other day I looked through the box and found an anthology of plays which included some that I haven't read but that I had been meaning to. There are also some free books on Craigslist if you look under the "free" section, but these are generally not the sorts of books one might want to read (similar to the free boxes at the library).

4) Commercial websites - There is, of course, also a book buying section on Craigslist, which can have some good deals. I recently purchased the beautiful, hard cover, three volume Calvin and Hobbes collection that I've had my eye on for several years after I found a seller on Craigslist who was looking to get rid of it for $25 (which is an absolute steal, especially when you consider that it still goes for around $100 used on Ebay). While I'm on the topic of Ebay, Amazon.com is kind of the obvious choice for books with nearly everything it has in stock having deep discounts off of the cover price, but sometimes Ebay has still manages to have better prices (particularly for used books). I have found that it pays to check both sites. The downside to buying online is that you generally have to pay for shipping; however, if you are a student, you can sign up for Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day shipping. I signed up as a student, and they haven't kicked me out yet, so I still take advantage of that offer from time to time.

5) Non-commercial websites - If the book you're looking for is an older title, then you should be able to find it for free at sites like Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg compiles etexts of books that have fallen into the public domain. Further, you can download the files, and you should be able to upload them onto your ereader (such as a nook or a kindle) if you have one.

6) Used book stores - These are some of my favorite establishments on earth. I really enjoy lingering for an hour or more at a quality used book store with a good collection. If you live in a city that has a university, it may be worthwhile to see if they have a friends of the library book sale room on campus. San Francisco State, for example, has one where all of the softcover books are a dollar and all of the hardcover books are two dollars. While the selection is limited, you can't beat those prices with a stick.

7) New book stores - These stores, like Borders or Barnes and Noble, are usually my last option. Still, Borders has a program that frequently sends out coupons through email that give you 20 to 40 or 50% off the cover price of a book. If you are the sort of person who likes browsing in a bookstore, than it's certainly worthwhile to sign up for the free coupons. As an FYI, for what it's worth, Barnes and Noble tends to be stingier with their coupons. I very seldomly see online coupons for Barnes and Noble, and when I do see them, they are usually only for 10% off.

8) Ereaders - Sure, there is the start up cost of actually buying an ereader (which are still going for better than a hundred bucks for a brand new one), but generally, the books that you are able to purchase for your ereader are going to be less expensive than physical copies of the books. This isn't always the case, however. As a point of reference, I own a Nook from Barnes and Noble, and nearly all of the titles are $9.99.

Those are my ideas of saving money on books. To all of you readers out there, how do you save money on books?

Mid-Year Resolutions

Yesterday was my wife and I's third anniversary. This seems to be a recurring theme among those looking back on periods in their lives, but it is very true for me as well that those days, weeks, months, and years have just flown by.

On a not-immediately-obviously-related note, in Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, one of the main characters passes away between the second and third acts. As she sits among a group of ghosts and looks upon those who have come to her funeral, the idea that the living don't realize how wonderful and amazing life is occurs to her. Only from her vantage point of being beyond the grave does she truly realize how much she has missed, both in terms of opportunities and in terms of details that didn't seem important at the time.

So, I guess a combination of me recently seeing that play and the occasion of my anniversary have put me in something of a thoughtful mood. If life flies by, what marks am I leaving? To paraphrase a quote that I heard frequently as I went to a Christian school as a boy, how exactly am I redeeming my time?

Those questions are what prompted this list. Many people make new year's resolutions, but I have not really seen mid-year resolutions. Some of these are directly in regards to money, while others are more indirectly related, but I think all of them affect my financial situation.

1) Losing weight: if life is short, than I ought not do things that will hasten its end. I carry a significant amount more weight than I should. My concrete goal is to lose thirty pounds by December 31.

2) Writing a play: one of my goals in life is to have another play that I've written professionally produced. My first play met with some success last year, and I am tremendously thankful for that experience. That taste of success, however, has whetted my appetite for more. One promising opportunity is a playwriting contest that is run through UC Santa Barbara. The contest's deadline is December 1, and my concrete goal is to have a play submitted.

3) Fully funding my Roth. This should be a relatively easy goal as I will be unable to put money into a 401(k) for the rest of the year (so contributing should not be too much of a hardship). The company that I am starting my new job with doesn't allow employees to join the 401(k) program until the employees have worked for the company for six months. While that is disappointing news, once I have reached the six month mark, my company fully matches, dollar for dollar, all contributions up to the federal limit. So, my goal for next year will be to also fund my 401(k) fully, but for this year, it's just a matter of finishing off my Roth IRA. I'm better than halfway there already.

4) Start paying back a personal loan. A few years ago, a family member loaned me some money, interest free, in order to pay off some credit card debt. There were no strings attached, and that family member has even said that I don't need to pay the money back, but I still feel that it is important to do so.

5) Applying to a Ph.D. program. I still have some research to do, but I'm planning on applying to at least the Ph.D. program at the UC close to where I live. I believe that I would be able to do the classwork part time, while simultaneously continuing my day job. Earning a Ph.D. is something that is important to me, and, even if I'm not accepted, at least I won't be not going to school because I didn't try.

Looking back on the list, I've realized that those are five very high-minded goals. Now I've got them listed, however, and now that I know the finish line, I just need to plot how I'll get there.

I'll redeem my time yet.

3 Personal Finance Lessons from the Dodgers' Bankruptcy Debacle

The Dodgers are among the most historic and beloved teams in Major League Baseball.* From team executive Branch Rickey hiring Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in the majors, to Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965 (27 batters up, 27 batters out!), to Kurt Gibson hobbling up to the plate in the 1988 World Series with the game on the line and smacking a home run over the right field fence, the Dodgers have had more than their share of exciting moments.

However, in more recent days, the team's prospects have looked bleaker. There was Manny Ramirez, the team's big dollar acquisition, who missed a huge chunk of the season a few years back for violating the league's drug policy. Earlier this season, a couple of Dodgers fans severely beat a visiting Giants fan and put the man into a coma. And to top it all off, last week, the Dodgers' owner, Frank McCourt, announced that his team was filing for bankruptcy in order to free up some money to pay for the team's day to day expenses.

Now, anybody can get into a tight place, but I'm sure a lot of people think that professional sports teams that have the recognition that the Dodgers could never find themselves so far behind the 8-ball that they need to declare bankruptcy. As I looked at the story a little more closely, however, I found three key areas of the Dodgers' money woes that translate directly into a personal finance discussion.

1) It appears the genesis of the team's money issues stems from McCourt's divorce. If the McCourts are trying to split assets right down the middle, things become pretty easily muddled when one of those assets is a team of living, breathing ball-players. In fact, McCourt's recent television deal (that was rejected by league Commissioner Bud Selig) was, in part, an attempt to raise funds for a divorce settlement.

Personal finance lesson? Divorce Is Expensive. Ideally, when you get married, you are planning on spending the rest of your life with that person (though, as Flexo at Consumerism Commentary recently argued, there are times when a pre-nuptual agreement might make sense). In any case, it is worthwhile to really evaluate the person you are considering marrying to see if you think that a life-time commitment is something that you think is possible. If not, the consequences to your finances (and your personal well-being and happiness) can be dire.

2) As I mentioned above, the Commissioner rejected the Dodgers' television deal. He did so because he didn't think it was "consistent with the best interests of baseball," and that he thinks that "the action taken ... by Mr. McCourt does nothing but inflict further harm to this historic franchise."

Personal finance lesson? If You're Not the Boss, You Can't Make the Rules. If you are trying to advance your career, make sure that the work you're doing is making your boss happy. McCourt is unable to effectively run his team efficiently, and so Selig is denying him the opportunity to make money from a media deal. If McCourt had been responsible with his primary task (running the Dodgers), it stands to reason that Selig would have been more responsive to McCourt's branching out.

3) Remember Manny Ramirez? The player who was suspended for violating the league's drug policy and missed 50 games on the 2009 season? Court documents released last week show that the biggest single amount that is owed by the Dodgers is $21 million dollars, which they owe to Manny Ramirez. Oh, also, Manny Ramirez retired from baseball in April of this year (many people think it was because he was likely going to be suspended again for another drug violation). So, to put that more plainly, the Dodgers owe a huge sum to a player who doesn't even play baseball anymore. The Dodgers signed Manny at age 35, which is well into the winter of most baseball players' careers. He repaid the Dodgers for their generous contract by getting suspended, followed by leaving the team, followed by leaving baseball.

Personal finance lesson? Be Careful of Buying Too Much at the Wrong Time. It is true that Manny had had an exciting career with the Red Sox, but the Dodgers should have realized that age wears a body down. Still, people like to be optimists. Consider the run up in housing prices in the mid-2000s; everybody thought prices would keep going up forever, and very few people realized how over-valued real estate was actually getting.** Just as the Dodgers face bankruptcy, so too do many people who bought into a market that just couldn't seem to stop going up. Until it did.

In short though, I sincerely hope the Dodgers are able to overcome their monetary problems and get back to focusing on baseball for a variety of reasons. One of the most compelling reasons to me personally is that my favorite baseball player when I was a little boy was Don Mattingly, who is now the manager of the Dodgers. Maybe McCourt should take a lesson from Donnie Baseball, and learn to keep his eye on the ball, and focus on what a baseball team should focus on: baseball.

What do you think? Are the above reasonable points? Leave me a comment; I'd love to hear your feedback.

*And that's coming from a Padres fan, so you KNOW it's gotta be true!

**For more on just how few people realized it, check out Michael Lewis's The Big Short, which is an excellent book on the real estate crisis.

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone who reads this has a wonderful 4th of July holiday. The mrs. and I will soon be off to a barbecue with a friend's family, followed by watching the night sky erupt with streams of light.

Happy 4th everyone!

June 2011 Retirement Status

One item that I am planning on making a recurring part of my monthly posting is the inclusion of where I am at with my retirement savings. Over all, my retirement savings and investments are less than where they should be for a couple of reasons:

1) I raided an old 401k to pay off some debt (which, I know, is frowned upon in personal finance circles. In one sense, I do regret it, but in another sense, I can't help but be pleased that I pulled it out in early/mid 2008 before the economy fell in the toilet*).

2) I have been working temp jobs for the better part of two years while I was in grad school.

Nevertheless, here are my current totals:**

Overall, I am fairly pleased; I'm only 29, and I have a sneaking suspicion that even with the amount I already have, I'm still in a lot better place than a lot of my peers. I've been forcefully putting money into my Roth since I opened it in April, and I'm already better than halfway to the limit for 2011. Further, the market over the last couple of days has really helped. Some of my individual investments in the Roth have grown 3-4% in the last few days alone (the fact that this is just bringing them back close to what I paid for them is a fact that tempers my enthusiasm).

My old 401k is an account that I just remembered that I had as I was talking to the company's HR person. On my to-do list in the coming month(s) is to fill out the paperwork to roll that money over into an IRA (probably through ING Direct, through whom I opened my Roth).

The new 401k that I have isn't great as there is no employer match. Still, I wanted to put some money into to try to make up for some lost time over the last couple of years. This 401k is through the temp agency I have been working through for the last several months (though I only started contributing in May). The good news for me is that I am set to be hired on by the company that the temp agency assignment has had me working for, and their 401k plan is amazing (it's a 100% match up to the federal limit). The only problem with my soon-to-be-employer is that I am ineligible for their 401k until I have been with the company for 6 months, so I won't be able to get that amazing benefit until 2012.

I will probably add more to this month-end review as time goes on, but this is a good starting point, I think. How are you doing for retirement?

*Yes, I am aware that nearly all investments have recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, but still, I remain pleased by the coincidence (it was through no sheer intellect on my part that I knew the market was going to tumble and so I pulled out; it was just dumb luck).

**I am pretty positive that I have ~$5,000 in a rollover account. I will update that portion next month when I get my quarterly statement. I will also, at that time, figure out how to monitor that account on line.