In college I was a server at a local restaurant here in Holland, and one of the facets of my job that really fascinated me was the whole concept of tipping.

It started out that I was a host and would receive a portion of the tips (commonly called the server’s “tip out”), in addition to my hourly wage, for the work that I had done that evening. It was nothing much, maybe $20 for the 4-5 hours that I had worked, but it was certainly a reflection of the overall dining experience that our customers had received.

Then I became a server and the stakes were even higher because I was receiving a lower hourly wage and how I did on an evening was largely dependent on the tips I received. Obviously the better the service I gave, the better I did in tips. What I didn’t realize prior to becoming a server in a busy restaurant, however, it just how hard a profession it really is.

You have to be on top of your game at all times. Guests must be greeted promptly, orders need to be 100% accurate, beverages need to be refilled constantly, food must be delivered on time and as ordered… you get the idea. This job is not for the timid, and the more you embrace the fast pace of the job, the more successful you are.

I no longer work in the food service biz, but much of what I learned in that position I’ve really hung on to in my work in college admissions. Most importantly,

The higher the level of customer service you provide, the more you will be blessed in return.

Now, this probably shouldn’t be the main reason that you seek to serve other.  That should come from deep inside your spirit, the part of your heart that wants to give so that others have a better life. But nothing irks me more than the thought of a tippable (spell check indicates this is not a real word) employee not receiving what’s due for the level of service they’ve provided.

When we go out to eat (not too often, but frequently enough) this is always as the forefront of my mind. The funny thing is, because of my background, the bar of service for a great tip is probably lower than others’. It doesn’t take a grand affair to impress Julie and me, you just need to do as best you can.

In many ways, my tipping threshold starts at 20% and goes up and down based on the quality of service. So average gets you an above average tip, in my book anyway. Oh, but if you’re really spectacular, I want to bless you big time, because waiting tables is a hard job.

Positions requiring customer service usually pay less than they should.

Are you seizing this opportunity to bless another?
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Photo Credit: eprater // Creative Commons

We bought our house in December 2007, and from the first payment in January 2008, we’ve committed to one little step that we think will eventually make the difference.  It takes discipline, but it’s so simple at the same time: round it up, we say.  From day one, we’ve rounded up our mortgage to the next hundred.  The additional amount ends up being fairly small compared to our total payment, but it’s definitely changing the outlook of our loan.

Like many mortgages, ours is a 30-year, fixed rate loan.  If nothing changes, making this small additional payment each month will knock 5 years and about $28,000 in interest off the life of the loan. (Want to figure out what a change like this will do to your mortgage? We used the mortgage calculator at DaveRamsey.com.)

Now, here’s where things start to get really crazy.  Let’s say we spread that $28,000 over the 25-year life of the loan.  That’s about $93 per month that’s now available for investing.  Yeah, it will be smaller in the beginning and become larger as the amounts amortize, but for the sake of argument, let’s say we invested that in mutual funds over the 25 years.  If the fund averaged about 8% over those 25 years, it would be worth somewhere around $175,000 at the end of the loan.  (Oh yeah, Dave’s got an investing calculator, too!)

Okay, so this is a really basic way of looking at things, but it gets at a really important point.  The more aggressive you are about paying down your house, the more you are going to be able to make your money work for you in the long run.  We do plan to move at some point, and unless we are really fortunate, we’ll need to get another mortgage.  We’ll go with a 15-year, fixed rate loan, and we will pay it off as quickly as possible.  In the meantime, any extra principle we pay on this loan is well worth it!
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Photo Credit: wwworks // Creative Commons

Recently we lauded the virtues of using Mint for managing our financial accounts and transactions.  And while we still think it’s a tremendous tool, we’ve also been reminded of an important truth: you do get what you pay for (in this case, we pay nothing).

We use a local credit union for the majority of our financial life and when Mint finally claimed support for it, we were ecstatic.  At last, the opportunity to manage our finances “in the cloud”!  No more slugging through Quicken for Mac 2007, .qfx file imports, and the like.  Purchase decisions could be made on the fly, at the store, at the time of doing business.  But it was not to be.

Recently I came up against  an error when I went to manually update (a requirement) our credit union’s account on Mint.

It told me, “give it another try, hopefully it will work this time” (paraphrased).  No luck.

Then, “no really, give us another chance, we have a good feeling about this” (also paraphrased).

And then finally, “hey, why don’t you click this link, head back to your bank, and make sure you’ve got everything correct.”  Really?  You think somehow in this I’m unsure of my username and password?  Again, no luck.

To their credit, a representative from our credit union saw my post on the Mint support forums and gave me some suggestions on how I might rectify the situation.  I followed their recommendation, and submitted a direct support request to Mint.  They responded with some suggestions, but to no avail.  I don’t know if it was the complicated security authorizations that our credit union requires, too many Mint users logging on and backing up the servers, or just simple unreliability on the part of Mint, but nothing was working.

A side note

Yes, Mint is a free product, and so our expectations should be low, right?  We mean, if they’re going to offer the service and not charge for it, we shouldn’t complain… right?

I don’t know. There are tons of free services out there that really do work without a hitch, every single time.  Take Gmail for instance.  Free from the beginning, Google promised stable, ad-supported email that would be fun to use.  I think they’ve delivered on that promise.  So much so that my college (and employer) uses it for the entire campus (about 4,000 individuals).  Gmail has shown itself to be reliable.

And there are plenty of others that we use every day: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (faltered some in the beginning, but it’s been pretty good for a while), among others.  They don’t cost anything, and they just work.

The final word (for now)

We’re not abandoning Mint.  Many of the banks and companies we use seem to update with little hassle.  Our point is this: if you really can’t support our financial institution, please don’t advertise it as such.

Now we’re back to Quicken for Mac 2007.  The good news is that a software update has enabled quick downloads of our credit union transactions with no import process.  It feels like a fresh start to a dated process.  But we would like to go back to Mint, someday.

All Mint has to do… is work.

This one’s a little update on the way we’re managing our budget these days (read our first post on the subject).  Ever since Mint came on the radar back in 2006, I’ve been clamoring to make it our budget management tool of choice.  Here’s a quick look at Mint’s main features:

• Ability to import transactions from multiple checking, savings, and investment accounts (many, many banks now supported)
• Great budgeting and goal planning tools
• Mobile access to your Mint account on iPhone and Android
• Recommendations for new banking services based on the accounts you already have

It’s essentially a souped up, web-based version of Quicken that was eventually bought-out by Intuit, the makers of Quicken products.  The problem was that our bank (United Federal Credit Union, it rocks!) wasn’t supported by Mint at the time.  So we’ve been waiting and waiting for UFCU and Mint to become friends, and just recently, they did!

We’ve basically eliminated Quicken for Mac from our budget management process.  We still use a master spreadsheet to keep track of our income and expenses each month, but Mint does all of the heavy lifting for us.  Add in the iPhone app, and it’s a huge win.  With the ability to look at the numbers on my phone, we’re able to make purchase decisions while we’re at the store.

Now, we know what you’re thinking… this all sounds great, guys, but do you really expect me to hand over my bank account information to these guys?  Isn’t that totally unsafe?

That’s what we thought at first.  What’s to stop this little start-up from accessing our accounts and cleaning them out?  The truth is, while that might have been cause for concern in the beginning, Mint has established itself as the premier online tool for budgeting and money management.  Heck, they were even acquired by Intuit (makers of all those nifty Quicken products) for $170 million last year.  We think it’s safe to continue using Mint to manage our finances.

In the next few weeks, we’ll bring you some additional posts about how we use the various individual features of Mint.  Until then, why not give it a try?

Like so much of the country, we’ve been sweating through a heat wave in Michigan over the last week.  Seems like it’s been in the 90s every day, and to be honest, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it would be like if only we had… central air.  Our house is definitely suited up for it — with duct work in place and all of that — but with new windows stealing the financial spotlight this year, we’re not seriously looking to plunk down a couple thousand more just for some summertime comfort.

Not to worry, though, as we think we’ve got things under control.  So, without further ado, here is our hotter-than-hot summertime cooling game plan:

• Vacancy.  Both of us work, so the house is nice and sealed up during the day.  No reason to run the central air we don’t have when no one’s here.  Now, when a baby comes along, that may be a different story [someday, not now, read nothing into that].  Cost: nothing + we’re making $ at work.
• Fan-tastic evenings.  When we want to relax in our living room, it’s warm, but we get along just fine with a ceiling fan, floor-standing oscillator, and the windows cranked open.  Cold beverage not included.  Cost: $30 + electricity.
• Underground.  Like most people, our basement is as cool as a cucumber (never actually written cucumber in a sentence before).  We’ve got a nice finished room down there, so we grab our current read (Linchpin [affiliate link] by Seth Godin for Andrew, and A Painted House [affiliate link] by John Grisham for Julie), head down there, and just chill.  Cost: $0.
• Window unit air conditioner.  We wouldn’t survive the night without it.  (Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic.)  The sun goes down and our cute ol’ house heats right up as the bundle of hot air sinks from our attic, descending upon our 2nd floor boudoir.  Makes the room blanket-worthy at about 2 AM, and that’s okay with us.  Cost: $100 + electricity.

There you have it, the ways in which we cope with the 8 days of warm weather Michigan gets each year. That’s not to say that we won’t ever be plugging into central air, but we’re pretty happy with what we’ve got.

So, let’s face it — Earn Give Save has been on a little bit of a hiatus for the last two months or so.  We came back with our Carnival of Money Stories in April, but since then it’s been a whole lot of nothing!  We didn’t mean to leave you wondering what was going on, that’s for sure; we just kind of got to the point where it was hard to keep churning out new content and it was like running up against a writer’s block or something, we don’t know.

Maybe our goals were too lofty.  Maybe we were a little bit too concerned about posting on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.  Maybe we were too worried about the number of people who were seeing our posts.  Maybe we were hoping for more clicks on our links.  Maybe we wanted to be like our friends at Young House Love right out of the gate.  We’re not sure.

Whatever it was, it got us away from the original reason we started Earn Give Save — to share our thoughts and our story, and maybe even inspire a few of you to get excited about being successful with your money.  Money is powerful.  Our behavior with money can be our biggest blessing or our biggest liability.  We think it’s worth getting excited about.

So here we are, hoping you’ll take us back.  The “blogidal sons” (or son and daughter) return, hoping you’ll like what we have to say.  Remember, we don’t have all the answers, but we do know what’s worked for us, and hopefully it can work for you, too.  If you’re reading this, thanks. 

It’s good to be back.