I am still alive and hiking. Progress has been very slow so far due to my being terribly out of shape and battling varous sicknesses. This has resulted in lots of hotel stays so I’m spending a lot more than I had planned but I can afford it and my cost per mile should be a lot less once I get in shape and stay out on the trail longer.

Also, I don’t have much time to write new posts when I come to town since I have limited time on the internet. If anyone is interested in having a guest post or maybe even posting on a regular basis send me an email and let me know. Keep in mind that it might be a few days before I can respond to your email. Thanks.

I have moved the start date of my hike up to Monday 3/1. I’m flying from STL to ATL Sunday afternoon. That means I have from after work tonight to get everything moved out of my apartment, clean my apartment, take care of bills and mail, review and pack my gear, and probably some other things that I’m not remembering right now. This would be easier if I hadn’t procrastinated on getting much of this done but I knew everything would probably end up being done at the last minute. I never did get around to writing posts ahead of time to publish while I’m hiking so there won’t be too many new posts while I am hiking.

If you want to read about my hike. Go to TrailJournals.com and search for “Andy Hough.” That will bring up the journals for my previous hikes as well. If any of you happen to live near the Appalachian Trail and would like to meet up. Just send me an email and we can figure something out.

My next update should be from the trail.

Swag Bucks has just launched Version 3.0 and to celebrate they are having lots of new Swag Codes. I have been using Swag Bucks for about a year and have redeem my Swag Bucks for dozens of prizes-mostly $5 Amazon gift cards. It is easy to earn gift cards by searching through their portal and referring your friends.

Swag Bucks has sent me a special Swag Code worth 60 Swag Bucks that is good through March 4th at 6am PST. This code is only valid for new registers. The code is ANDYSCODE3. To use it just go to the SwagBucks.com home page and enter it in the box labeled Swag Code on the right hand side.

I am back from my Vegas vacation and I had a great time. The picture is at Red Rock Canyon where I went hiking with some friends. The trip didn’t start off too well as I lost $200 playing poker the first day. The last couple of days I had a good comeback though. On Monday night I placed 4th in a no-limit hold’em tournament at the Sahara which paid $310. After deducting my entrance fee and dealer toke that left me with a profit of $250. I had won a little bit since losing the $200 so this left me at about a $100 up on gambling for the trip.

My best luck was on Tuesday when I was scheduled to leave. My flight was overbooked, I volunteered to be bumped and scored a $200 travel voucher. It would have been even more if I wasn’t already traveling on a reward ticket. This gave me several more hours in Vegas and I used it to play more poker. I ended up winning $90 playing $4-$8 Omaha H/L. My total of gambling winnings for the trip was $193. Combine that with the travel voucher and I made $393 during my vacation. My expenses(hotel,parking,taxi,bus,valet)were only $252 so it was a profitable vacation. It is too bad I can’t go on vacation all the time and make money.

When I bought my 1997 Camry last October I decided to keep track of all my vehicle expenses so I would know my total cost of ownership.  I know that paying cash for a used car is the frugal option and  I thought it would be interesting to compare my total cost of ownership to that of a new Prius.  Some people claim that the total cost of owning a Prius is less than that of buying a used car.

I currently have a cost per mile of  $0.84.  That is counting the entire cost of my car as depreciation.  If I use a more realistic figure of $500 for depreciation my cost per mile is $0.28.

I used the Edmunds.com site for determining the total cost of ownership of a Toyota Prius. (I’m not sure if the effect of the recent recalls is reflected in their figures yet.)  By their estimates a Toyota Prius would have a cost per mile of $0.42 after five years.    Their figure included financing in the cost.  If you took out financing the cost would be $0.37 per mile.  Although if you paid cash you should probably consider the interest you would have earned on your savings that went for the car purchase.

I was surprised that the difference in the cost per mile wasn’t greater.  The Prius is one of the better car values for both operating costs and holding on to its value though.   With most vehicles there would be a higher disparity. Even if there is only a difference of $0.10 per mile that adds up to $1500 a year if you drive 15,000 miles in a year.  As well as the Prius did it is still more expensive to own than my Camry unless something happens to make the Camry almost worthless in the  few thousand miles which I think is unlikely.  Anyway, I won’t fault someone for buying a new car because if nobody buys a new car I won’t have a used car to buy.

I just finished filing my federal taxes.  I filed online using Tax Act which is completely free for your federal taxes.  It was pretty easy to use and best of all free. Did I mention I like free? The only thing I will change next year is not selling stocks.  It is a bit of a pain filling out all the stocks I sold for possible short term capital gains tax.  My federal refund is going to be $5.  Not too bad considering I had a lot of self-employment income and didn’t have any federal tax withheld.  The EIC and Making Work Pay credits saved me from having to pay. My refund is scheduled to be deposited next week.  I am going to do my state taxes manually because I don’t want to pay to file them and I am going to have to pay the state so I’m not in a rush to get the state taxes filed.  I did manage to file my taxes and make this blog post despite being drunk.   Probably not too smart but it seems like a good idea right now.

I am starting my thru-hike March 2.  That is why I decided it would be a good idea to finish off the fifth of vodka in  the freezer.  I have a lot of hopes for this hike.  I think I lost a  lot of readers last year when I failed to complete my hike or stay abroad as I had planned.  Hopefully if I complete this hike as planned I will regain some credibility.  I also need to get in shape.  This past year I have gotten into the worst shape of my life and have been sick much more  often than usual.  I have also felt tired and unmotivated most of the time.  I have suffered from clinical depression before but I don’t think that is what is bothering me now.  I think it is just laziness.  Perhaps hiking 15 miles a day with 30 pounds on my back will cure that.   I need to get in much better shape physically.  I also need to get better mentally.  I have a pretty good life right now but I should be doing more.  There is a lot more I could do online and towards volunteer work, etc.  that would improve my quality of life and the lives of others as well.  Here is to hoping the hike will help me develop that self-discipline.

P.S.  I am watching Lost right now and it isn’t making any sense which isn’t too surprising since I have trouble following it when I am sober.  Maybe I should start smoking weed and then it would make sense.

In January I stated that this month I would share with you all the foods I buy and what I pay for them and I would only eat out once a week and not purchase any chips, cookies, candy, crackers, ice cream or soda. We are now halfway through the month so I will update you on how I am doing.

On the positive side I have managed to avoid purchasing any chips, cookies, candy, crackers, or ice cream. I did have lots of chips and cookies when I visited my mom for super bowl weekend though. And I used some of my Register Rewards at Walgreens to get more soda. My rationalization at the time was that I wasn’t spending any money on the soda so it didn’t count as a purchase. That is obviously cheating though.

On the negative side I abandoned the goal of only eating out once a week. I’ve been having restaurant food almost every day. And I have been having soda with those restaurant meals.

Now for a complete rundown on all food purchased so far this month.

• 3/4 gallon skim milk
• 4.89 lbs bananas
• 1 box mac&cheese
• 48 oz vegetable oil
• 1 lb bag mini carrots
• 12 oz salad mix
• 12 oz salsa
• 6 Knorr pasta/rice sides
• 1/2 gallon orange juice
• 750 ml vodka
• 1 frozen pizza
• 2 bags of peanuts and 2 sodas
• 7 Burger King meals
• 1 Hardee’s Meal
• 1 Little Caesars Pepperoni Pizza
• 1 Pizza Street pizza buffet

The total spent on this is $53.65.  Some things that kept the cost down are: I had six free meals when I visited my mom, I had a freee $10 Burger King gift card from MyPoints, I received the pizza buffet for free as part of a mystery shop, and I already had some food at the beginning of the month.

Some things that inflated the cost:  I didn’t manage to finish either the carrots or the salad mix before they went bad, part of my half-gallon of milk went bad, and the Knorr sides are for my hike so I probably shouldn’t have included them in this month’s food budget.

As you can see there is plenty of room for improvement in my diet.   I don’t do very well with eating perishables before they go bad and I am still eating out too much and eating too much junk.  I have about as much food in my pantry now as I did at the beginning of the month.  I’ll be leaving for my hike at the beginning of March so I want to use up as much food as I can .  My plan is to not buy any; more food for the rest of the month except when I’m on vacation in Vegas.  I will have another update after the end of the month and let you know how it went.

photo credit: Smart Destinations

Next weekend I will be taking a short vacation in Las Vegas. Through a friend of a friend I was able to get a round trip flight for $100 which was too good of a bargain for me to pass up. Adding in my hotel room, parking, and ground transportation will be roughly $100 more. The only thing that could make this vacation expensive is gambling. And I will be gambling but I plan to keep it under control. I might even win. It has happened before.

I won’t spend all my time gambling. I’ll spend time hanging out with my best friend who is working a poker tournament there. I lived in Las Vegas for five years and I would like to look up some of my old friends there as well. Being frugal I have some coupons for various activities to use also.

Since I am leaving on my hike in March my original plan for February was to keep my expenses as low as possible. My frugality isn’t so strict that it would keep me from taking advantage of bargain vacation like this just because it wasn’t in my budget though.

To keep track of how I am doing in my quest for early retirement I have decided to add another monthly financial measurement. I will be tracking my passive income. For the purposes of this measurement my passive income will be my online income, interest, and stock dividends. My online income is only partly passive but to keep things simple I am counting all of it. Since I will likely keep blogging whether I need the money or not it doesn’t seem too inaccurate to include my online income in my passive income total. My online income, interest, and stock dividends can vary quite a bit from month to month so I am going to measure my passive income by my trailing twelve month average. This should smooth out the peaks and valleys a little. Hopefully the overall trend will be that of rising passive income.

Over the past 12 months my passive income has averaged out to $412.04 a month. My goal is to have this consistently over $1000 a month. At that point I will consider myself retired. Even once retired I will continue to participate in money-making activities of my choosing so it wouldn’t be the traditional form of retirement.

As you can tell from the picture of some of my movie ticket stubs from the last few years I love movies. Netflix is the greatest value I have found in movie watching entertainment. Yes, I could get DVDs for free from the library or an occasional free DVD from Redbox but neither of them have anywhere near the selection of Netflix. Now that I have the ability to stream movies over the internet as well as receive DVDs in the mail my other movie-watching options do not compare. I will always watch a few movies in the theater but now that I have Netflix I have cut way back on going to the movies. I try to limit going to the theater to those movies that will most benefit from being shown on the big screen.

Netflix is also a great way to watch TV series. I’m just about to finish the second season of “Veronica Mars” which is now one of my all-time favorite movies. I like the series so much that I almost went to see “When in Rome” just because Kristen Bell is in it but the previews made it look too awful so I will wait for it to come out on DVD. Now that I have unlimited movies available via mail and internet I can take a chance on movies I’m not sure about it. My plan comes out to $9.68 a month with tax which is about what I would spend in one trip to the movie theater. This makes Netflix a frugal entertainment option for me. As you can tell I’m a big fan of Netflix and have no reservations about including a couple of affiliate links for them in this post.