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The Day the Internet Stood Still (Infographic)

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 10:09am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

As a blogger, I’m deeply concerned about our rights to say and share what and how we please online. Now that SOPA and PIPA are tabled in Congress, it’s easy to forget how close we came to a government-controlled web. Consider the that bills seek to lay full copyright burden on site owners—this means sites unable to police enormous amounts of user generated content, sites like Facebook and Wikipedia, could be subject to infringement charges and government shut down.

The Jan. 18th protest was the largest in U.S. history; our new graphic recounts that momentous day for social media users in tweets, emails and calls. We invite you to pay respects to this online movement that inspired/pressured 13 SOPA-supporting senators (and 3 co-sponsors) to issue statements against overly-strict online privacy measures. And as exciting as the success of this online mobilization has been, our efforts only tabled two of the worst censorship bills to ever face the web.
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Source: frugaldad.com

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Source: frugaldad.com
Shopping at Warehouse Clubs: Frugal or Not?

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 6:06am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Over the weekend we visited a nearby Sam’s Club, something we haven’t done in many months. My wife and I agreed it is something we should consider doing on a regular basis (maybe monthly) to stock up on a number of staple food items and paper products.

Naturally, we both wondered if shopping like this was really saving us money, or just saving us from more trips to the grocery store, which in turn would likely save us money.

The problem, for me, with shopping at places like Sam’s Club is that there are so many shiny things to distract you. If you manage to steer clear of the electronics section, bypass the rows of discounted books and outdoor equipment, you will eventually make your way to the food, where the occasional deal may be found.

We like to stock up on things like ground beef, which comes reasonably priced in big “family pack” packaging. Once home, we separate the ground beef into roughly 1 pound portions and freeze them for future use in various recipes and regular dishes (tacos, spaghetti, homemade burgers, etc).

We also typically like to stock up on certain non-food items – paper towels, toilet paper, kitchen trash bags, over-the-counter medicines and vitamins, etc. The bulk pricing is not always a deal here, and I’ve occasionally found that I can often save more by coupling a store sale with a manufacturer’s coupon.

Still, the idea of stocking up on paper products for the next month or two, and not having to contend with those items in your weekly grocery store trips is appealing.

Shopping at a warehouse club like Costco or Sam’s can drive down your unit costs for items you regularly use, but there is one thing to consider: storage space. I would not suggest shopping at a warehouse club if you are short on space, including plenty of freezer space.

For storing paper products, consider a closet shelf in an guest bedroom, or under-cabinet storage in a guest bath. Naturally, places like basements and garages make great storage locations, but consider fumes, humidity and temperature and only store items that may be safely exposed to those elements.

On the Way Out: Top Off the Tank

Before leaving Sam’s Club we typically top off our gas tank, as the cost of fuel is a good $0.05 per gallon cheaper than it is in our town. Obviously gas pricing is regional, and you may or may not experience similar results in your area. However, we have found the gas prices at warehouse clubs consistently beat those of surrounding stations.

Consider the Costs: Membership Fees

Though warehouse clubs do occasionally allow non-members to shop on special days, it does cost money to shop. Do a simple break-even analysis to make sure you aren’t giving away all of your savings in membership fees each year. Divide your annual membership costs by 12, and then estimate how much you are saving each visit over shopping at your local grocery store with coupons.

If the cost of the membership is more than the amount you are saving each monthly visit, then it probably doesn’t make sense to sign up. Remember, bulk shopping is not always cheaper shopping.
Toying with the World (Infographic)

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 11:23am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Of course it’s important to treat kids occasionally with the newest toy or the latest game. But as the economy sinks and money gets tighter, it seems to me these types of purchases are also some of the first to cut back on. So I’m extremely surprised that even as families would reduce spending on groceries and school supplies, our toy budgets swell: Americans reduced average supermarket spending by about .5% from 2009 to 2010 while in the same period, toy industry sales grew by 2%.

I’m familiar with the temptation to overspend on kid’s toys. And I know the problem with buying for your kids is that usually the most popular game or specific remote controlled car is just the only thing that’ll do. It’s hard to keep your consumer sense in the midst of the trends that keep our kids and tweens primarily wanting all the same things.

My latest graphic on U.S. toy spending should remind you to check loose spending on that latest video game or too-frequently updating kids’ collections of non-necessities. Check out the surprising cost of our kids’ whims:
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Source: frugaldad.com

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Source: frugaldad.com
America’s Pawn Empire (Infographic)

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 12:15pm MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

It’s hard for me to shake my prejudices against pawnshops. I can’t help but alternately associate them with George Lucas’ Watto and those Frontline episodes labeling pawnshops as your neighborhood drug money repository. Still, recession-era shifts in consumer attitudes are reinvigorating America’s formerly underground pawn economy and it’s worthwhile to take note of the swelling pawn empire: who’s borrowing, who’s buying and why?

We all know that charging high interest rates on brokered loans allow pawnshops to cut great deals on just about anything, from high quality jewelry and sports equipment to consumer electronics. And just this year, stores here in Denver reported holiday sales spikes of 40% and the 3 publicly traded U.S. pawnshops reported net incomes up at least 25%. It makes sense that those of us looking for ways to save have found ourselves checking the pawnshops for our kids’ band instruments or anniversary gifts.

As always, I’d recommend staying aware of predatory lending whether it’s a bank or a pawnbroker. But check out my latest consumer infographic on the trend you might be missing out on:
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Source: [frugaldad.com]

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Source: [frugaldad.com]
A Shift in Perspective: Micro-Budgeting to Big-Picture Finances

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 12:15pm MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to simplify the way I budget. Over the years I have grown consistently obsessive over every aspect of my finances. It was beginning to become a problem.

So after many months in a row of daily updates, fretting over the categorization of expenses (should paper towels purchased at the grocery store go under Household, or Food, or should I create a new Paper Products category – ugh!), I have decided on a new approach.

Using Two Checking Accounts to Manage Big-Picture Household Finances

From now on, I will simply have my paycheck split into two checking accounts. The majority of the money will go to a “Bills and Savings” account, where I will have regular expenses and savings contributions (Roth IRA, DRIP stocks, etc.) automatically deducted.

Things like the mortgage, utilities and any subscriptions of services we pay for on a monthly basis will come from this Bills and Savings account. What’s left in the primary checking account will be ours to spend – our “What’s Left” account. That’s it; that’s all there is to it.

Don’t worry too much over the “split” either. It doesn’t have to be exact because you can theoretically move money from one account to the other.

Add up all of your regular bills, plus your monthly savings contributions, and have roughly that amount taken out of your paycheck and moved to your Bills and Savings checking account. And when estimating for this account, round up just to be safe.

For most people, that split might look like a 70/30 split between your “Bill and Savings” account and your “What’s Left” account. So if your take-home pay is $2,000 a paycheck, have 70%, or $1,400, transferred to your “Bills and Savings” account.

Then make it a goal to live off the remaining $600 left in your primary checking account. Things like gas and food and entertainment expenses are deducted here. If you run out of money in the “What’s Left” account, you better start searching the pantry for food and giving up on entertainment until your next paycheck replenishes the account.

Tracking the “What’s Left” Expenditures

I am no longer tracking every penny I spend on food, or gas, or paper towels, or books and movies. I will still try to spend as little as possible on those things, and have vowed to renew my interest in using coupons where possible. However, I am not going to invest my time in tracking all of our expenses to an infinite detail, because quite honestly, looking back I can’t see what we’ve gained from that exercise.

With several months of detailed tracking available at Mint.com, and in our household ledger, I can see that we spend more money on gas than we did a couple years ago. Duh, that’s because gas prices have gone up.

I can also see that we pay a little more each time at the grocery store, and that thanks to new fees, our cable provider has increased our services. But what can I do with this information?

Focus on “Big-Picture Finances”

More important to me is the fact that we have spent less than we’ve earned. We’ve increased savings. We’ve paid off our debts. We are saving for retirement, and college, and we are funding a few sinking funds to cover those once-or-twice-a-year expenses like car tags and vacations.

We are winning over the long term. We are winning the big picture. That’s what really matters – not how much I’m spending on dog food or fast food from one month to the next (no, it is not a coincidence those examples were found in the same sentence).

Now, I don’t mean to completely knock the process of tracking expenses. It can be a very important exercise, particularly if done on a short-term basis (for 30 days, for instance), to get a handle on where your money is going. However, it isn’t something I would spend a lot of time on every single month, or in my own previously obsessive example, every single day!

Life is short. You can spend it meticulously going through receipts to split costs from your last grocery store visit between paper products, baby food, and the Redbox rental you grabbed on the way home, or you can look back at the end of the month and reflect on your increase in savings, your reduction (or avoidance) of debt, and your time spent doing things other than updating your elaborate budgeting program.
The Anatomy of A Cupcake (Infographic)

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 10:21am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

When this gourmet cupcake boom took off a couple of years ago, I couldn’t believe it. The cupcakes I’m used to are home-baked, hastily frosted and pocked with thumbprints. And before my family discovered a local cupcake café, the idea of shelling $4 dollar for a lavender lemon verbena cupcake would have made all of us laugh. Now, we do occasionally find each other lingering on the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars” (now into it’s 4th season). And I’ve only softened somewhat to the idea of cupcakes-for-purchase, but I’m definitely done holding my breathe for the cupcake bubble to burst.

It’s the ingenious image of the sweet and simple cupcake that propelled the treats into a $6 billion industry. We’ve all made cupcakes a thousand times. The ingredients are familiar, pronounceable items we always have on hand. Their authenticity helps us feel better about buying our kids and ourselves a $4 cupcake over a lot of other fast food snacks. But really, like most anything we eat nowadays, the cupcake represents global effort of laborers and products from places we don’t tend to think about. Check out this new graphic weighing the ingredients of this trendy personal treat:
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Source: [frugaldad.com]

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Source: [frugaldad.com]
Save Money on Groceries by Being an Intentional Shopper

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 6:11am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Over the weekend I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things. Since we were set on meats and produce, I found myself wandering the aisles more than usual – seeing what was on sale and checking prices of a few of our favorites.

Before I knew it, my shopping cart was half-full, and I knew my trip to the store to “pick up a couple things” would likely cost much more than the mission name implied. So it goes when shopping without a list.

$38! I spent $38 essentially on junk. Well, it wasn’t all junk, but the very large majority of it was junk. And by junk in this context I mean things that can’t generally be used to make a meal – sodas, chips, a couple dessert items, some frozen items from the “Snack” case, etc. No ingredients, no staples, no meats, no vegetables.

I loaded up the items in my truck and reflected a bit about the grocery trip, wondering how many times I’ve shopped like this in the past and thought nothing of it. I violated nearly every rule in the book of frugal grocery shopping – I didn’t have a list, I had not planned any meals, I was hungry, etc, etc.

I decided from now on I would try to be an “intentional grocery shopper.” That is, I would do a better job of planning before I went to the store. I would seek out only the things I needed to fit my meal plan and nothing more.

How to Become an Intentional Grocery Shopper

1. Plan meals a week (or two) in advance. One of the easiest ways to plan a shopping list is to work backwards. Start by planning a few meals you and your family would like to have over the next several days, then list the required ingredients for those meals. Check your pantry to see what you have on hand and add any missing items to your grocery list.

2. Always shop with a list. I can’t cite any official study, but experience tells me that when I shop with a list I save money. I also forget less things, which requires a return trip to the store which offers more opportunity to spend unintentionally.

3. Shop once a week. The enforcement of this rule alone will make you a more intentional grocery shopper. If you know this is your once-a-week visit to the grocery store you are more likely to plan and make a complete list so as to avoid a trip again later in the week.

4. Use coupons. I am not the best coupon sorter. Some people seem to have it down to a science – it comes naturally to them. Not me. Still, I could probably save $5 – $10 per trip to the grocery store without even trying just by using the coupons in the current Sunday paper. Imagine the damage I could if I actually invested the time to collect and sort them EVERY Sunday.

Speaking of coupons, have you checked out our Coupon Directory lately?

5. Stay away from the inside of the store. On my most recent trip to the store I did the exact opposite. I avoided produce, meats and dairy and instead wandered the chip and cookie aisles for half an hour. Big mistake – unless I was targeting something very specific. From now on I will stick to the perimeter of the store, for the most part, stocking up on meats and fish, dairy and produce.

What are some tips you use to save money on groceries?
Why The Airlines Are Bankrupt (Infographic)

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 10:50am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Like many of you, I often find the need to fly to see family, take vacation, or go on business trips. And each time I’m struck by how little I get on the flight and how much I end up paying for the pleasure. So when I saw that American Airlines was filing for bankruptcy, I was shocked. Turns out 20 airlines have filed for bankruptcy in the last 10 years, and the future doesn’t look any brighter for the remaining ones.

We put together this graphic looking at the airline industry and its struggles since deregulation in 1978. It may not be obvious to the average US domestic air traveler, but prices are A LOT better now than they were 30+ years ago. In 1974, a round-trip flight from New York to L.A. would have cost almost $1500 (adjusted for inflation). Today, that flight can cost under $300. Still, air service is worse in a lot of ways, with smaller seats, less in-flight food, and more delays and cancellations.

I hope you find this graphic as eye opening as I did. While it won’t make paying “baggage fees” any easier, it should help you understand exactly why airlines have decided to price gouge us – and what might happen if they didn’t.
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Source: [frugaldad.com]

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Source: [frugaldad.com]
Redefining Action Hero: Bill Gates is Better Than Batman (Infographic)

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 7:52am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates. Not just because he’s been wildly successful, but because as far as I can understand, he’s kept a steady head about him in spite of his success. As one of the wealthiest men in the world, he’s also making a name for himself as one of the most philanthropic.

Obviously most of us don’t have the kind of capital that Bill Gates has to work with, but I feel that everyone could learn from his philosophy towards philanthropy. I admire that his approach is both compassionate and practical. He sees charitable endeavors as something well worth investing in, because ultimately everyone benefits from an overall better quality of life around the world. He sums it up himself pretty well: “[The] hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone.” I feel like that’s a refreshingly balanced philosophy. Not only that, but as this Infographic shows, there are direct results that speak to just how powerful a well-informed and carefully invested philanthropist can be.

Read on to find out more about the powerful things happening at the hands of Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the legacy of philanthropy started by some of America’s most successful and most innovative figures. It’s nice to remember that success doesn’t always create greed — it can enable a powerful force of giving and problem-solving.
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Source: frugaldad.com

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Source: frugaldad.com

Update Much thanks to Matthew Herper at Forbes for pointing out that the vaccine Bill Gates spent $200 million to rescue was in fact for malaria, and not for polio as the infographic previously stated.
Better Than the Average Man (Infographic)

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 7:53am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

I probably could have told you that American men were in bad shape (both financially and physically) but I didn’t realize just how bad until now. The average guy has almost $15k in debt and only $3k in savings, and 16% of guys rarely pay off their credit card bills. If this isn’t why Frugal Dad was founded back in 2007, then I don’t know what is.

But my blog has always been about how to improve with a few simple steps, and this graphic is no different. I’m excited about this one – it’s useful in looking at the average American guy, and it gives sound advice for improving your finances and getting active. Enjoy!
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Source: [frugaldad.com]

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Source: [frugaldad.com]
Resisting the Urge to Step Up in House

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 12:09pm MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

The other day I was talking with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years. He shared with me that while things were going pretty well, he regretted the decision to buy a new house early last year.

I was puzzled too, because not long ago I remembered them buying a home, which at the time (maybe three or four years ago) was a major step up for them. It was a very nice home, and one that offered the space they needed for their growing family. I just assumed they would be there for years – maybe decades.

Somewhere along the way my friend got a promotion and his wife returned to work. They had some new-found cash flow, and felt some temptation to step up in house again. Rates were nearing an all-time low, and prices had been knocked down a bit in their area (though not quite as bad as in other parts of the country).

They decided to, in his words, “stretch a bit” to buy a much larger home (around 1,000 square feet larger), with a bigger lot and many more high-end features. They considered it a smart investment.

Fortunately, they sold their old house relatively quickly, and for the first couple of months they were tickled with the new place. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

They soon realized that the new home came with larger bills. I guess they always knew that would be true, but now they were feeling it. They were paying more in utilities each month. Their payment was significantly higher thanks to higher taxes (they now owed city and county taxes since they moved closer to town).

My friend’s wife saw her hours cut at work, which was a mixed blessing since she missed spending more time at home with their kids. On the other hand, they counted on her earnings to help cover the mortgage. He said they were starting to feel “squeezed.” Looking back, he confesses, it would have made more sense for them to just stay put and find something else to “invest” in.

Finding Contentment

I can relate to what my friends are experiencing, and his story was a timely one for me. My wife and I often wish we could relocate to a different area. Houses in the area we desire are significantly more expensive than what we owe on our current home.

We feel like a move there would mean depleting our cash for a down payment on a larger debt. At the end of that trade we wind up owning less (savings) and owing more debt. That just doesn’t fit with our financial goals.

Since becoming debt free but the house our goal has been to acquire assets – things that go up in value, or add value to our lives, or create a passive income. While you could make the argument that real estate meets these qualifications, I don’t necessarily want to put all my eggs in my primary residence. I’d rather buy rental property, or land, or invest in REITs for real estate exposure. My home is my shelter; it’s not an investment.

When I start feeling a little house fever, I remind myself that all the granite countertops, square footage and stainless steel appliances in the world can’t change my fundamental feeling about new debt.

I don’t want to take on more debt. I want to pay off the remaining debt I have (the mortgage), and be free from debt altogether.

I don’t want to buy something that will cost me more to maintain, draining more money from future earnings.

I don’t want to buy a fancier roof over my head if I think one day I may not be able to pay for that roof, a roof that keeps the rain and the wind and the cold away from my family.

So for me, curing house fever is relatively easy. I take a walk around the outside of my home and think of the blessings I have inside, beginning with my family. Everything else is just stuff. And I don’t need a bigger box just to hold more stuff.

If I lost everything inside that house, but still had my wife and kids, I’d still be a blessed man. Anything else is just gravy.

As for my friend, he said they are looking to downsize, but are now having trouble selling their home – one of the larger ones in his neighborhood and significantly more expensive than the short sales happening around him.

As he put it, “We may never find someone dumb enough to take this house off our hands.” I told him to be positive, because after all, the previous owners did.
The 7 Reasons Nothing Leaves Las Vegas (Infographic)

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 9:08am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Las Vegas is famed for its sin and sleeplessness. But really, the city remains one of America’s last affordable indulgences. Off-season rooms at Circus Circus drop to $23/night so it turns out cheaper to live on the strip than to rent a two-bedroom Vegas home! Affordability and convenience make Vegas a hotspot even during a recession.

Check out this Infographic scaling Sin City’s crazy tourism industry:
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Source: frugaldad.com

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The Problem With Patents (Infographic)

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 11:29am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

There’s no question that software and technology represent some of the fastest growing industries today. The internet has fundamentally changed the way we interact, do business, and spend money—without it, Frugaldad wouldn’t exist. That said, I always try and keep abreast of what’s happening in these sectors, and to be aware of how the online and tech industry makes its money.

I recently listened to an episode of This American Life called “When Patents Attack!”. Something that surprised me while listening was that while I think of patents as being mostly for gadgets and the kinds of products you see on infomercials, patents have become a huge factor in the software and online industries, to the tune of billions of dollars.

This infographic discusses some of the facts behind the patent industry and how it’s changed as software, technology, and the internet have developed at an incredible pace. I find the information to say a lot about the state of development and innovation; both how important it can be to everyday life, and the problems it can face on a larger scale.
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Source: [frugaldad.com]

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Source: [frugaldad.com]
Retirement: Are You Just Throwing Money at a Number?

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 6:03am MST by Jason (Frugal Dad)

Have you seen the commercial from ING where the guy is out walking his dog carrying a sign with something like $1,086,532 in cut-out numbers? A neighbor stops to ask him, “What you got there?”

The man explains it is his number – the amount he “needs to save to retire the way he wants.” He notices his neighbor has a sign of his own…”$ GAZILLION.” “Is that your number,” he asks.

“How do you plan for that?”

“Oh, I blindly throw money at it…hope something good happens.”

Here’s a look at the commercial:

While it is sort of humorous look at retirement planning, I suspect it represents the sort of planning most of us do when it comes to far off goals. I have sat down a time or two to attempt to arrive at my own ”number,” but it is rather difficult to predict what life may be like a few decades from now.

Save as Much as I Can

Up to this point my retirement strategy has been to “save as much as I can,” which reminds me a little of the gazillion guy. “Saving as much as I can” is not a viable strategy for retirement planning.

Instead, I should come up with a goal amount, a number, based on our current living expenses, project what our retirement income needs may be, and factor some unknowns like inflation, health care costs, etc. Now you see why arriving at a number is so difficult.

Then there is the daunting task of developing a savings strategy for reaching your number. The dog-walker in the video is a little older than me, so for simplicity I will double his number for example purposes.

Let’s pretend my number is $2 million. I’m roughly 25 years from traditional retirement age, so I’d need to save about $3,500 a month at 5% rate of return and 3% inflation, assuming I had no savings right now, to reach this retirement savings goal.

Just $3,500 a month, huh? No problem…just have to set aside a little after I pay the mortgage, the food, the utilities, put gas in the cars, etc, etc. Nothing to it. Yeah right.

You see why this gets overwhelming.

Now let’s assume I’ve been reading Frugal Dad the last four years and socking way a huge amount of savings. I have $100,000 saved towards retirement. With this starter savings amount in place, I only need to put away $2,800 a month to reach my goal.

That’s still a decent chunk of money, but I suppose if I pay off the mortgage early, take on a second job, and/or forgo things like eating and lights I might could scrounge up the money some years down the road.

By now I hope you understand the importance of starting early – particularly if you are reading this and your age begins with a 2!

This is how the exercise usually works for me. Rather than coming up with a goal number, I plug whatever seemingly small amount in I can afford to set aside each month for retirement, extrapolate out 25 years and see what the balance will be. The problem is, using this method I come up woefully short of my “number.” Sigh.

Determining Your Number

Much of the success or failure of this exercise comes from the first step – determining your number. There are plenty of retirement calculators out there that will help you arrive at this number. My suggestion is to use three or four of them and take the average. Most brokerage websites have calculators freely available, as do most major financial sites – Google is your friend here.

One drawback to these online calculators is that they make some pretty broad assumptions. It’s difficult to personalize the assumptions based on your lifestyle, your appetite for risk, your frugality, etc.

I often find the stated income needs in retirement to be much higher than what I really believe I could live on with no debt, no mortgage and a relatively simple lifestyle.

Take the results for what they are – a ballpark figure from which you can make adjustments to arrive at your “number,” or even better, your “Goal Retirement Range,” or GRR, an acronym I use to represent the range I’d be happy retiring on (and an acronym that adequately represents my feelings when trying to perform these retirement planning exercises – GRR!)

Your GRR may look like $600,000 – $800,000. Your neighbor may prefer a GRR of $1.2 – $1.4 million. It all depends on a variety of personal factors.

Just don’t let your GRR look like “oh, somewhere between $1 and $2 gazillion.” How do you plan for that?