We love a good garage sale.  You get up early on a Saturday morning, brew a pot of coffee, and out in the driveway you set up those folding tables you borrowed from church.  Then you start hauling up tons of junk from your basement, out from underneath the couch, from the shelves of that one closet — heck, maybe there’s stuff in the bathroom you can sell, so you bring that outside, too.  You then get the pleasure of arranging those items on said tables, figuring out the most that anyone would spend on them, and then writing that amount on those stickers that you would never buy unless you were having a garage sale.

You then plunk yourself down in one of those camp chairs that sport the moniker of your favorite sports team or the bank that gave it to you when you opened a checking account with them (it was either that or the cooler).  Folks come around throughout the day, and you get the opportunity to haggle over that favorite piece of Tupperware or the Amy Grant CD you bought in 1992 (no, wait, it was actually a cassette tape).  At the end of it all, you have to do everything that we talked about in the first paragraph (backwards this time), and really, what for?  A couple of hundred bucks (maybe) and the sense that the Saturday you lost will never, ever be returned to you.

We’ve never had a garage sale.

Okay, now that we’ve removed our tongue from our cheek, we should really be straight with you: we have nothing against garage sales.  It just seems like a whole lot of work for what you actually end up with.  And when it’s time for us to unload some old books or musical favorites like Blues Traveler and Blind Melon, we think we’ve got a better plan: Amazon.

Isn’t Amazon always the answer?

We’ve had a ton of success selling items on Amazon, and here’s how you do it:

• Log in to Amazon.com, and click on “Your Account” (it’s in the upper right hand corner).
• Now, on the right hand side of the page, click on “Sell Your Stuff.”
• Here’s where it gets kind of cool — Amazon takes advantage of the fact that it sells almost everything and lets you search for the item you are trying to sell.  If you can find it (you will), you’re done.  Whenever anyone searches for that item on Amazon, they’ll be able to get to your listing under the “new” and “used” sections listed with that item.
• When your stuff sells, it sells.  You can see what similar items are selling for, and price them accordingly.
• All you then have to do is ship the item, and Amazon provides you a credit for the shipping costs.

It might just be us, but we like this plan compared to what we described earlier in this lengthy narrative.  There are other options for selling your stuff online, but we’ve found this to be one of our favorites.  So, the next time you call the church or VFW to borrow those tables, you might give Amazon a try — oh, and you won’t have to buy those stickers, either.

Each year we make a pilgrimage to Julie’s parents’ house to complete our federal and state income tax returns for the prior year.  They generously provide us with use of their TurboTax [affiliate link] software, and with our less-than-complicated life, it’s a fairly quick and smooth process.  We usually do this around the first week of February (relatively early in the tax season), but we won’t be heading out there this year until late February or early March.

With the influx of W-2s, giving statements, and the like, we have just been itching to get some idea of whether we’ll be cashing a refund check or paying the piper (we’d rather pay, but that’s another post altogether).  Then I stumbled across TaxCaster Mobile, a free iPhone/iPod Touch application from Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Quicken personal finance software.

The app is relatively basic, but it allows you to input your income and deductions (with specific categories and suggestions included), and then receive an estimation of whether you’ll be owing the government or receiving a refund.  We should not that this is for federal tax estimation only, the app does not include a state-specific tax estimation tool.

Don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch? No worries, TurboTax offers an online version of TaxCaster which will work in pretty much any web browser.  They also offer a variety of other tax tools to get you going in the right direction.

Online version of TaxCaster

Our advice?  Don’t wait to get started with doing your taxes.  It might be a little painful, but you’ll be glad you’ve gotten it out of the way, instead of waiting until the last minute on April 15.

We woke up this past week on New Year’s Day to no less than 8 inches of snow on our driveway!  Such is the life of those who live on the west coast of Michigan, where so-called “lake effect” snow is about as prevalent as the mutant black squirrels that populate our area as well.  We’re used to it, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying to clean up, particularly when you’ve got company on the way and a wedding to attend.  Nonetheless, Julie and I trekked outside to make quick work of the fluffy white stuff.  And we did—it only took us about 45 minutes to clear the driveway for our guests and for our own convenience during the weekend.

About halfway through the job we were both looking up and down our street to see no other shovels, but plenty of snowblowers.  Jules and I looked at each other and realized we needed to add our own snowthrowing machine to our arsenal (which at the time included just one shovel and the one our neighbors let us borrow).  After all, we had already been thinking about purchasing one for a fair amount of time.  We headed out to Menards after lunch that day, hoping the prices hadn’t mysteriously been doubled in light of the recent snowfall.  Nope, everything appeared to be for sale at regular price, we found.  No preseason deal, but hey, we were mildly desperate at this point.  We put one in the cart and were quickly on our way.  (It runs great, by the way.  Now we just need some more snow.)

The point here is: situations happen (do you like the delicate way I put that?).  If you’ve got some cash money saved up, you’re going to be prepared when the sky (or snow) falls.  We felt the freedom to be able to go out and make that purchase with little concern.  Now, were we in a spot where making that large of a purchase wasn’t going to be feasible with just cash, you can bet you’d find us shoveling when the next snow falls (probably 5 minutes from now).  Be blessed by what you have, and don’t be afraid to make an investment if you have the ability to do so.

We’re nearing the end of December, and as we do, Julie and I are preparing to revamp our monthly budget for 2010.  One of the biggest changes that we’ll make will be to add a “retirement contributions” line-item.  We’ve completed Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step #3 (a fully-funded emergency fund), and up next, we’ll be figuring out what portion of our income will be dedicated to investing in retirement.  With that in mind, here are the main points from Chapter 9 in DR’s The Total Money Makeover (affiliate link):

• Once your emergency fund is complete, don’t blow the extra money you’re saving by not contributing to it—it’s time to put that same energy in a new direction.
• Retirement is about having security, and having the opportunity to choose what you’d like to do during that time of your life
• 15% of your annual income is a good goal for retirement investing, and it leaves room to fund college education for the kids and to start thinking about paying the house off early.
• Invest retirement funds in growth stock mutual funds, equally divided among the following types of funds:
  • Growth
  • Growth and Income
  • Aggressive Growth
  • International
• If your company offers a match to you 401K or 403B, do that match first.  Then, invest in a Roth IRA to gain the advantage of the investments being tax-free.
• The rest of this chapter includes some excellent worksheets for calculating retirement goals.

Our advice? This is just one way of thinking about the business of planning for retirement, and we certainly wouldn’t recommend that you simply take our endorsement of it simple at face value.  Do some research for yourself and continue to become financially literate.

However, if this approach is making sense or is exciting to you, Dave’s book is really a must-read and a must-own.  The principles he suggests have changed the way Julie and I think about our money (this may be obvious at this point ).

If you have additional questions about any of the terminology included in this summary, you’ll find it well-explained in the book.  You might also consider enlisting the services of a financial planning professional.  There are people out there who have made these issues their career, and some are even endorsed by Dave Ramsey himself.

Have thoughts on this topic?  Leave a comment below.  We’d be glad to hear from you.

We’re in the process of wrapping up our Christmas shopping for this year, and we thought it would cool to share with you our process for staying sane (mentally and financially) during the holiday gift-giving season.  So here’s a quick overview of the tricks and tools we use to ensure materialistic success!

Step #1: My Christmas Wish List

Julie’s family had been using My Christmas Wish List for some time before we met in 2007.  It’s a website that allows you to create your own Christmas list to share with others, who then have the opportunity to mark items on your list as purchased or as something which they are planning to purchase.  It essentially eliminates duplicate gifts and also ensures that the items you receive are things you actually want.

We use MCWL in a “Secret Santa”-style format.  We draw names (on both sides of the family), set a monetary limit, and go to town!  With a total of 8 siblings + spouses + kids on both sides, this also means that everybody doesn’t have to buy gifts for everyone else.  This makes sense to us, as most of us are working professionals and don’t necessarily need anything when Christmas time comes around.

Step #2: Google Doc

We do an all-cash Christmas, so we try to keep pretty good track of what we plan to spend (our budget) and what actually gets spent.  To that end, each year we create a Google Document with the following columns:

Person   |   Target Price  |   What?   |   Where?   |   Actual Price

It’s the same principle that guides the way we do business regularly: make sure we know where our money is going before it even goes anywhere.

Step #3: Never pay full price (if possible)

‘Tis the season for deals, right?  We take advantage of sites like Retail Me Not (coupon codes for online shopping) and Beat My Price (set a price target for an item, and they’ll go out to the major sites to make sure you find the best price) to ensure that we are getting the very best deal possible.  We also plan to make one big Amazon order every year, since people are usually asking for books, music, and movies and TV shows (affiliate links), although increasingly we’re getting closer and closer to being able to order our entire Christmas list from Amazon!

So that’s our plan! It’s a lot of fun to bless our friends and family during this time of year, but more importantly, the time when we remember the One to came to give us His ultimate blessing.  Our obedience should be reflected in blessing others all throughout the year, not just at Christmastime.  This obedient heart may best be summed up in Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel, found in Luke 1:38,

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”

Blessings from Julie and I for an awesome Christmas holiday!  We thank you for being a part of ours.

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It doesn’t matter if you’re single or married, there are going to be things that come around throughout the month that just aren’t in the budget… music you want to download, a book you’d like to add to your bookshelf, the opportunity to hang out with the guys or have a ladies’ night out.  Some of these examples might fall into specific categories in your particular budget, but some may not.

So, you’ve got to find some place to put these items or activities within your daily budget, otherwise you just might go crazy!  This is where something we call fun money comes into play.  You’ve probably heard it referred to in some other ways as well: “blow money”, “allowance”, “free money.”  It’s a designated portion of your budget that will allow you to buy things or do activities that you simply don’t need on a consistent monthly basis.

For us, this has been really important, because we consider our finances a joint venture.  We generally don’t make purchases (large or small) without consulting each other or at least considering thoughtfully how the other person will respond.  This usually works well, but when it comes to purchases which we’d put in the fun money category, more than likely the other person is going to be less interested, and that’s okay.  For instance, notice the difference between mine and Julie’s typical fun money purchases:

Andrew’s Picks

• iPhone applications (I gravitate toward 99 cent games)
• new music from iTunes or Amazon
• magazine subscriptions like Mac|Life [affiliate link]

Julie’s Picks

• Lattes with friends (caramel macchiato, anyone?)
• Jewelry (Target is her favorite)
• Lunches out (her favorite is a local taco place called Baja Grill)

In some cases, these items are going to be of different priorities for us, and we’re definitely going to agree that they don’t really fall into other necessary categories in our budget.

More than anything, having a “fun money” category provides us with freedom.  As important as it is to have a monthly budget, you can potentially become bogged down by those guidelines.  Having some money to burn each month provides for some nice breathing ro0m.  What’s interesting is that although Julie and I have this money available to us, we typically don’t even spend our allotted $30!  So maybe there’s even more to this little idea than we thought