tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54695222955592916072024-10-18T00:30:33.375-04:00and largely frugalLLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-91299096401488033642012-09-05T09:33:00.001-04:002012-09-05T09:34:39.184-04:00

I have been away for so long.  It's been so busy this past year. Back now to save some money. Over the summer, I didn't feel like packing lunches.  However, I saw my CC bill and regretted it.  It was getting a bit ridiculous how much money I spend on lunches and it was not helping my waist line.  So I am starting pack my lunches again along with the BB. I spent some

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-33337337002371220652011-10-27T11:29:00.002-04:002011-10-27T11:30:14.313-04:00

I took a look at the average beauty routine that most women have and noted some of the expenses that comes with "looking good".  There are 2 categories I consider: basic is what you can get a drug stores or low end salons, premium is boutiques, dept. stores, or nicer salons. Here are the basics that everyone will need, and let's say you replace these once every 2 months: Soap/shower

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-27930504603162419912011-10-25T09:51:00.003-04:002011-10-25T09:52:30.151-04:00

There are some many ways to spend or save at the grocers.  Not all of them work for everyone.  Here is a few ways that do and do not work for me. Don'ts: 1) plan out what I want to eat for a week, because things change during the week, and if I have to buy stuff for just one meal it gets more expensive that way 2)only look at on sale items.  sometimes they are not cheaper than

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-42533728783067850302011-10-13T10:05:00.000-04:002011-10-13T10:05:41.692-04:00

A while ago I mention that I was going to refinance my home.  We had a 4.675%  fixed for 30 yrs.  Good rate.  A month ago the rates dropped again and we decided to refi.  Why?  Because it was a no cost refi, meaning we don't pay a dime.  So now our rate is 4.125% fixed for 30yrs.  It's only a .5% drop, but it's still worth it.  $100 a month in the bank

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-17363206780660410452011-10-11T11:24:00.001-04:002011-10-11T11:24:38.155-04:00

OK I have to make a confession.  I posted previously about the cost of having extra things.  I just bought one of those: a smartphone.  Yes I have succumb to the temptation after holding out for so long.  I have wanted a smartphone for a long time.  The reasons that stop me from getting one so far  has been 1- my previous job did not allow me to have my phone

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-53467567904345215512011-10-05T09:15:00.000-04:002011-10-05T09:15:15.105-04:00

There is huge gain this month, again.  I had "loaned" some money to family and now some of the money is being returned.  Yay for returns!Here we go:Liabilities: $719,804loan from mom - $20,000 (nothing has changed, I know I really should pay that off  and soon)House Mortgage - $335,732 (mortgage has not come out of account as of yet)Rental #1 Mortgage - $138,328Rental #2

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-51939267841280888492011-10-03T09:30:00.002-04:002011-10-03T09:33:57.025-04:00

I am so happy and excited for my sister.  She's starting her first teaching job next Monday.  It's been a nervous summer beginning of school year.  Now, she's got a job and all the benefits to go with it.  She asked me to sit with her to go over hrr benefits(actually, I asked to sit with her first when I hear she got an offer).  Here are a few HR things that I

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-48254015495864591292011-09-28T09:23:00.002-04:002011-09-28T09:23:46.822-04:00

Recently, there has been a push to go car free.  The alternative is bicycling around town.  This is a great thing for the environment, the wallet, and health.  I am 100% behind this movement.  However, I got a bone to pick with the bicycling culture.  It's about the basic of bicycling that people either are not familiar with or forgot.  1) get a bell/horn - 

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-21921525610031486372011-09-26T10:54:00.002-04:002011-09-26T10:54:30.814-04:00

J$ has posted about paying off his mortgage with a plan.  He used a calculator for  looking at how much he can save interest by putting extra month every month.  I am much more of a spreadsheet addict.  I track my mortgage payment with the mortgage amortization spreadsheet.  This way, I can look at how much extra i put in and when.  At the top is

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-41981181144122409782011-09-21T16:03:00.000-04:002011-09-26T11:01:51.523-04:00

Remember when life was simple?  There was once upon a time, not long ago, when life was not run so much on electricity.  There were very few television stations, so TV watching was limited to a couple hours, same with music.  There were not personal music players, no cell phones, no GPS, no laptop, no game systems.  I really think living in that environment

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-54440988316912171262011-09-19T12:56:00.001-04:002011-09-21T16:03:48.576-04:00

For the past year, I have been looking at my expenses.  For the alst 3 months I have been tracking them on a spreadsheet.  Every month, I notice that there is a one-off expense.  By these one-off expenses, I mean appliance replacement holiday shopping, house maintenance, or refinancing costs.  Most of these are not recurring every month or year.  However, they seem to

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-3490571746073686782011-09-15T10:17:00.000-04:002011-09-28T09:24:22.580-04:00

This is a rant so I apologize in advance if I am going to be offending those who don't have a job right now. Recently, my sister graduated from college and is looking for a teaching job.  Over the summer, she went to a few interviews, but did not hear back from those places.  I asked a couple of people that I know who works as teachers about the hiring.  I was told that the school

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-50898017955310303762011-09-13T13:16:00.000-04:002011-09-13T13:16:41.133-04:00

This post is not to discourage anyone from going to college or to get education.  However, I don't believe that college should be for everyone.  I would be the first to tell you that learning and education should be the priority of anyone who is under 18 (age people who usually graduate high school).  Continual learning through a lifetimes is and will always be a personal value.&

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-19378689674736980532011-09-08T10:28:00.000-04:002011-09-28T09:24:37.494-04:00

Last week, I was reading some financial news and came across an article for Tiffany's quarterly earnings report.  It was up 25%+ every quarter the last 3 quarters, domestically and worldwide.  With the domestic and world economies in near crisis every other week, how is that possible?  There are only a couple of possible explanations 1) the truly rich people are unaffected by

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-24378753034372506262011-09-06T10:03:00.000-04:002011-09-06T10:03:02.120-04:00

Recently, the mortgage interest rates have been very very low.  We decided to refinance out home loan, because the broker we know can get us a deal for no cost.  Awesome!! There were 2 options 1) 15 yrs fixed @ 3.75% 2) 30 yrs fixed @4.125% The total interest for the 15 years loan would be less than $100k, while the interest of the 30 yrs will be $200k+.  However, the month

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-67107099371929537222011-09-02T09:10:00.000-04:002011-09-02T09:10:49.229-04:00

There is huge gain this month.  I had "loaned" some money to family and now some of the money is being returned.  Yay for returns! Here we go: Liabilities: loan from mom - $20,000 (nothing has changed, I know I really should pay that off  and soon) House Mortgage - $336,182 (mortgage has not come out of account as of yet) Rental #1 Mortgage - $138,727 Rental #2 Mortgage - $

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-65804729656406904162011-08-31T09:06:00.000-04:002011-08-31T09:08:07.685-04:00

Recently, my sister graduated and is looking for a job.  It's been 3 months and she has yet to get an offer.  Granted, she's looking for a teachinc job at elementry schools.  So the hiring is still going in at the beginning of the school year.  From my personal experience, there are a few things that all grads need to remember: 1) Interviews are great experiences. 

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-30193961907385499122011-08-30T12:13:00.000-04:002011-08-30T12:13:53.529-04:00

Last week there as an earthquake and a hurricane in our area.  Luckily, there weren't any damage to our properties as I can see so far.  However, other people did not fair as well.  From the images of the earthquake, some homes were pretty badly damaged in the earthquake.  On top of that, the hurricane come a few days later and battered those homes even more. Even though the

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-34749762955997044582011-08-24T13:12:00.000-04:002011-08-24T13:12:17.042-04:00

Yesterday's little earth quake on the East Coast was quite thrilling.  It got a lot of people worked up, nervous, and frustrated that there's a lot of traffic going home.  Even though it was small comparing to what happens on the West Coast, I got to thinking about emergencies that no one anticipates. I know there could be a number of emergencies that would effect my life and my

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-37293498302717879862011-08-22T09:26:00.000-04:002011-08-31T09:08:07.685-04:00

Punch Debt's post today asked a very poignant question:  What if you lost your job today? I think most people don't want to think about that possibility.  That is understandable, considering the topic being depressing and nerve recking.  However, regardless of the economy, that possibility is very real.  At any given time, some one could loose their job, whether

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-76087615353014229782011-08-19T08:13:00.000-04:002011-08-19T08:13:25.396-04:00

A friend told me about a dilemma the other and got me thinking about gift reciprocity.  The background story:  There is a CAO that is family.  When this CAO attended 3 weddings of my friend and his siblings, the gifts were very very cheap.  How cheap?  Not the cheapest-thing-on-the-registry cheap.  It's the not-even-on-the-registry-I-know-you-got-it-for-$

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-24647194698813766932011-08-17T12:45:00.000-04:002011-08-17T12:45:29.589-04:00

Interest rate at again very low.  So the question is to refi or not to refi for the investment property?  The mortgage on the investment is at 6.5%, I know it's crazy.  I can potentially get it down to 4.5%.  My rent does not cover the mortgage and expense for the place.  My cash flow is not $-1000 per month.  All signs point to yes. With the refi, I could have a

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-79331994365077472142011-08-16T13:16:00.000-04:002011-08-16T13:16:51.928-04:00

The LLF family went on a weekend trip to the beach this past weekend.  It turned out to be a lot cheaper than I expected.  We left Friday and come home on Monday.  So that gave us 3 nights of dinning out, and 4 days of lunch.  We opted to bring some food and buy some at hte grocers there, as well as dinnig out.  Breakfast is usually cheap, consisting of mostly cereal and

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-27319878430423596692011-08-09T11:20:00.000-04:002011-08-09T11:20:18.973-04:00

Previously I posted about retirement planning and lowering cost of living options.  Here is a further look into another one of the alternative living arrangements to lower the cost of living:  reverse mortgages. Here are the pros and cons to reverse mortgages: Pros: -you can still live in the home that you have bought -you still own the home -you have a set amount of income

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5469522295559291607.post-18615603851062759862011-08-04T10:27:00.000-04:002011-08-04T10:27:04.124-04:00

This time, the numbers are closer to what they really should be.  It looks like a big gain, but it's really not since my tax assessment came back higher than what I estimated.  Here we go: Liabilities: loan from mom - 20000 ( forgot this one last month, this was from few months ago for help with buying our house because we came up short on the closing cost) House Mortgage -

LLFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02000886324539983050noreply@blogger.com2