Still Cheap in March

K-Mart Jimmy Smits reacting to Loudmouth 45
(mercurynews.com)

For those of you in warmer climates, Seattle is still scooching along with 40F/4C degree days that are deceptively sunny. For those of you who recently invested, you might have gotten a recent shock when our illustrious president flapped his mouth about the economy and trade deals, and confused his Koreas. The news, as usual, blew the falling stock market out of proportion, and, while the cowards panicked and withdrew, the steadfast survived the...week that it took to recover. The more opportune took that window of vulnerability to buy some stock at a discount! Then everyone woke up and realized that when it comes to Wall Street quakes, people like us who don't need their investments until decades later should completely ignore the newsfolk who speculate on a hiccup in the market. I'm not calling it fake news, mind you. All of that shit is irrelevant until you need to draw on your investments.

Weakness!

My man here has the right idea
(ngopulse.org)

How have I stayed frugal lately? Same old story: keeping on top of subscriptions, knowing good alternative brands, cooking for myself, making my own coffee, and inviting friends over instead of going out. Same old story, right? Well, I've been putting in more time with friends and driving more as well as changing snacking habits to nuts, which are much more expensive than sugary stuff from the overstock grocery store. I also went hog-wild with the latest PSN sale, spending a whopping $60 on games to stock my Women's Games Months (Jan and March). All of this is overshadowed by $100 heating bills for the last 5 months, and that can shake the faith in frugality a bit.

The point? Just like cheat days on diets being necessary to go longer, you're going to have periods where you feel like you're hemorrhaging money. If you're already pretty good at saving, don't feel too bad; just try and limit it. I was raving all about triple-paycheck months, and these are definitely the best times to have a little fun. This might run a bit contradictory to a previous post, but the point here is that you should also have fun adding some of that "extra" cash to your investments, too. Just don't blow the whole check on silly shit.

Fill your belly in the house and heat that home!

2018 set your goals now!

I spent most of 2017 with unpredictable income, due to both unemployment and a sporadic work schedule. I closed the year with a full-time job and now I have a steady paycheck. For those of you who are fortunate enough like my recent self to have predictable income, you should set your sights on some financial goals for the year. I'd set my goals quarterly, rather than waiting until the gifty Christmas/Chaunnakuh/Kwanzaa season to try and tally everything for 2018. So, if you've never saved before, and make $15-20 hourly, start with $100 by the time your favorite flower blooms in April. Double it for the quarter after that, and build up to 10% of your annual income. The average person in my age group saved -1.8% in 2017, so you can be that much better off! I'm personally aiming for 30% this year, on the $2000 monthly (Seattle minimum wage), but I've been living frugally for 3 years. Two years ago, I saved $3000 of my total $17,000. That was 17%. You can do 10%.

If you are wondering how you can put aside that much money, click on the label 'frugality,' on the right side of this blog, and you'll see all my posts with suggestions how to live dat frugal life. Some of my favorites that I actually live by are: cooking for myself, driving minimally, eliminating unnecessary subscriptions and buying a year at a time instead of going monthly, knowing good 3rd-tier brands, making my own coffee, and regulating my hobby by completing more games than I buy. Also, if you get paid every 2 weeks, there are bonus treasure months with 3 paychecks. That does not mean shopping spree, unless it's splurging on a decent coffee maker to ween off your thrice daily $4 coffees, or some good tires to make driving safe.

The last huge financial decision is that I live outside of Seattle proper. This means I get to take advantage of the $15 minimum wage, which is about 30% higher than my local suburb. This means that I am a good 15 miles from work, and take the bus because parking is unreasonably high ($20 per day). The commute is roughly 8 hours per week, which is a lot of reading time. Another advantage of dat suburb lyfe is that there's a supermarket right across the street that I don't need to drive to. I'm also not paying downtown rent in my food prices, so things are cheaper in general.

The finest brrrrick wall! I've ever seen...

I usually put people to sleep talking about this stuff, and yet others will brick wall me and say that saving $8000 in a year is impossible, or that they can't make sacrifices. Okay, so save $1000 this year and you'll still be ahead! That statistic of millenials going 1.8% further into debt last year was for people making $52,000 ($26 hourly at full time)! Avocado toast indeed! If you're in this income bracket, I double-dog dare you to do the $8000 that I am shooting for. Even if you're raising a family, I think you can still follow some of my suggestions and come out ahead.

A little patience paid off immensely

What to do with your nest egg? I strongly urge you to do some research on investing. Investopedia allows you to create a fake stock account with $100k that simulates investments on the actual market. I did this for 3 months before determining which stocks I'd buy with real money. I've personally had great luck investing in Vanguard S&P 500 stock and I'm not the only one. My thoughts are that if American businesses are as ruthless as they are, they'll know what to do with my money. Worrying about market crashes is silly because if it happens, we're screwed anyway, but temporarily. Don't invest money you need now; that way you can be patient with the returns. 4% may not look like much, but once you make it to your first $10,000, that's a brand new yearly PS4 Pro you've earned yourself (though hopefully you'll just add that money to the pile.)

Cold, hard, cash-saving

Time to dust off the space heaters and buy that bucket of Swiss-Miss! If you haven't already, you should completely ventilate your house once a week so all your cooties and heating system junk can go play outside rather than in your lungs. The 25 cents or so to heat your space back up is worth what you'd spend treating your sick self. Make sure to check your windows and sliding glass doors and tell your landlords ASAP so that your expensive heat isn't all seeping out. I still have to remind my girlfriend to wear a hoodie around the house if 65F isn't warm enough. You all must think I'm a monster, but I am a firm believer in the human body's ability to adapt, rather than needing certain comforts. I am also frugal af.

In terms of energy efficiency, one major difference I made was buying curtains. Most apartments are cheaply made and come with a set of white blinds. With a few screw and nail holes, I installed additional curtains, most of which I got at my local secondhand shop. For $50, I covered 3 large windows, controlling light and screen glare, and more importantly, temperature. I did this last year and have since had less issues with the sun heating up the place, and the cold freezing the place. While you wait to get curtains, you can at least make sure to open your blinds for heat and close them at sunset to get the most of natural energy. This might be obvious info, but lazy me always left them closed and ended up needing to crank that baseboard heater a little more.


We're also in hot drink season, folks. My workplace is connected to a Starbucks, which rakes in all the extra business of lazies who don't take the 2 minutes to make their own cup of their favorite hot beverage. Taking time to make your own drinks lets you step away from your workspace for a moment yet continue to be productive. You may even surprise yourself by making something you like more than what you'd buy.

Bad choice to have to make at 7am...

Also, the worst part of those cafe trips is the glistening, perfectly-cooked pastries that charm another $4 onto our cards. Then, there's the $6 yogurt, economizing your guilt; the 'healthier' option (until you read the nutrition label) is more expensive. I avoid this by eating two (2) packets of instant oatmeal, which currently totals 20 cents. I am far from immune to the charm of a good breakfast, though, as the weekends always bring something more elaborate. Once a month I hit breaking point and just have to go to a good local diner and over-eat myself into blissful oblivion. But $6 yogurts and $10 salads is just something you should only get in absolute desperation, if you're on a budget.


And finally, Christmas. It's a barrage of should-I, shouldn't-I emotions and the guilt of giving cheaper gifts or no gifts just might not be worth it for some of you. I would say that in the very least, make sure your Thank Yous are genuine or practiced. If you're in a situation where you receive but not give, the givers probably want your positive reaction more than to simply exchange stuff. As a side note, I personally think the majority of gift giving should happen on birthdays, rather than this predictable season.

If you are going for purchases, remember that you can switch over to https://smile.amazon.com and donate a portion of your purchase to a charity of your choice. I chose one of the Internet rights advocate groups, since the bored FCC decided to stop doing their jobs and sold us out. You can just as well choose animal shelters or help sick kids. Anyhoo, switching URLS (to smile.amazon) will preserve your cart, too, so you can do it just before checkout. Amazon didn't pay me to say this, I just figure you can support a good cause with literally 24 keystrokes or a mouse click.

FPMC: Fall Passive Media Consumption

Well, before Demonspawn Ajit Pai, Comcast and the FCC totally ruin the internet as we know it, I might as well continue to reflect on some entertainment with no major spoilers.

You can pretend like you don't hear the title music playing...

I blew through Stranger Things 2, and was glad to see every character have something to do; instead of the 4 boys working on one thing together, the teens their thing, and the adults on another, they were divided and mixed and the parallel storytelling was awesomely done.

I saw a chart earlier in the year that explained how sophisticated television is now compared to what our grandparents grew up with. My only gripe with shows/movies with multi-layered storytelling is when the smart-ass creators also try to time warp. Cloud Atlas, anyone? Not everyone can direct a Memento, and when the visual communication gets lost, so do the poor suckers that have to watch it. This makes me think of my first gripe with Justice League 2017.

Who turned out the lights on all of these movies?

The first hour or so of Justice League is like reading the first paragraph of 5 different essays with no transitions. That would result in a B- in English 090. You still pass, but that paper ain't being put up on the fridge. It's hard to have 5 different characters intersect, but that movie cost $300m. Perhaps having a director could have helped. Anyway, an hour in, the movie gets to the good stuff, and has its funny moments, a few awesome brawls, and was more enjoyable than I'd imagined. I wished the score was better and the heroes didn't dumbly let the bad guy steal a really important weapon, but I thought it was cool.

Next up: Disney/Pixar's Coco, the movie set in Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival. Disney's stepped up its culture game fo sho. Moana had Polynesian voice actors and was based on Pacific Island mythology and Coco's main VA cast had Jon Ratzenberger, a Pixar staple, as the only non-Hispanic. The movie was gorgeous as expected, and I hadn't seen any previews to tell me what to expect. The only gripe was the neglectful parents nearby who let their kids wander the dark theater while they were on their phones, as well as the too-long-for-a-short-film Winter Special about Olaff from Frozen trying to find a new "chra-dish-shin" (tradition) for that time of the year. The last Pixar short I saw was the Hawaiian Islands lava video before Inside Out that had my eyes...err, sweating.

no te metas con la abuela!

Most importantly, I got to see the culture's views on the afterlife as opposed to sometimes gruesome, immediate and sad elements of death I'm used to seeing. Dia de Los Muertos has a lot in common with Japan's Obon and Korea's Chuseok, visiting family graves, making shrines and offering food to the dead. In the US, we have Memorial Day, which I've never seen more than a visit to a deceased serviceman's grave, some flowers and kind words. It's easy to feel like there's no culture in the US when our sparse holidays are more about the general concept of family togetherness than anything purposeful. By contrast, every Korean and Japanese person I've ever met could describe their family's rituals in great detail, adding where their family differs from the cultural norm. Ahh well, I still enjoy the togetherness.

'Ey, man.

I also saw Thor 3, which was delightfully weird and funny. The planet most of the movie took place on was eclectic, somewhere between The Fifth Element and Tron. The movie's director and voice actor for Korg (the blue rock dude), is none other than Taika Waititi, who makes really funny movies like The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I also watched recently.

UPDATE: How could I forget the most off the chain show of them all. I am 100000% a Trekkie after re-watching The Next Generation earlier this year. Now I understand a bit of the sting of watching the occasionally corny, clever insight into humanity and philosophy the show would drop on you went to the flashy sci-fi action flicks that JJ Abrams brought us. Take this aesthetic (the show looks absolutely gorgeous), add back the humanity with some witty quips and smart shit and you get my new favorite thing in the universe: Star Trek: Discovery.

She's thinking of some clever shit.

This show is badass. Michael Burnam...half a season hasn't explained her name yet...is passionate to her own demise, and puts a lot of people in their places. I love watching Sonequa Martin-Green perform. I am upset to read that she is already married. She's gorgeous, but this is a case where I admire both the actor and the character. The captain she serves ends up sending your mind thinking the worst only to have something else happen. Get caught up, y'all. There are 11 episodes right now, as it's on its mid-season break til January.

Grey Friday: Know your brands

Dudes. Chicks. Calm that consumer rush. This is a hard one, cause I try harder than the average Joe to be frugal and not financially wasteful, but I do get an extra blood rush during November's consumer push. It's no secret that Black Friday deals are businesses' chance to get rid of old inventory. While that's no problem in itself (that's a good frugal direction to be headed,) be careful of overloading on junk.

My best advice for thriving frugality is to know your good third party brands. Spend a few minutes on Amazon or CNET to learn some known flaws with big brands or product lines. For example, none of the LG tvs I've seen are not very good at handling black levels...shadows, facial hair and the letterbox lines all look "neon black," instead of having varying levels of depth. Samsung has a track record of terrible customer service. Stores used to use different types of cables to sell different tiers. HDMI (the current standard) for Samsung and Sony, and component cables (extremely limited in color depth and resolution) for Vizio and Spectre. I haven't seen this practice for at least 5 years, though. The stores may have realized that some people don't have the $200 extra to get the name brand; or maybe they realized it was a shitty underhanded practice. Ultimately, custom settings can make your cheapie TV look much better.

And please, please adjust your picture settings...a 2nd-tier TV is very capable of looking like the picture on the left.

Sometimes, foreign brands are as cheap as third party, but have amazingly high standards. For headphones, Beats are overpriced and bass-heavy, and you're better off getting the German-engineered Sennheisers and spending the extra cash on something else. Logitech, Swiss, makes great, affordable products that last forever. In the realms of computers, Acer and Asus, Taiwanese, sells laptops with better hardware than HPs that cost almost half as much.

I won't weigh in on fashion-related Black Friday sales because part of my frugality means I'm crisp, but not current *brushes off shoulder.* I also won't say what stores to avoid, though 'doorbuster' sales make me imagine the worst, and I'd personally just order online at my own pace. Our favorite retailers are doing sales all month long, so there's no need to skip out on your loved ones Thursday night after the Martinelli's is still washing down the third piece of pie you crammed down. We aren't drinking and driving, after all.

If you're only looking for a few things, the amount you save in not paying tax on Newegg.com, or the free shipping from many sellers might cancel out the lower-priced local deal if you factor in your personal time, gas, and hospital bills associated with stick fighting over the last SNES classic at store price. (Damnit, Nintendo, just make more; it's not that hard of a concept.) Year-round, consider DealNews, TechBargains and woot for daily deals; there's no reason to pay big box retailers' rent, line Shell Oil's pockets with money, and miss out on your cousins' cracked-voice rendition of Poker Face when you can have stuff sent to you.

Muh-muh-muh-mahhh

Last warning, stores will probably try and getcha with one of their store credit cards that gives you 5% cash back or 10% off every purchase. Often, you can find a better deal on the items themselves online with a little bit of searching, and just not spend the 5 or 10% in the first place. That means you're not paying interest on it, or forced to spend said rebate at that very same store! Besides, I have a hard time cancelling unused, unneeded lines of credit, and that doesn't help anyone! As always, keep your spend demons in check, and think about that debt you have to pay back at the end of the month for that chocolate robot frog that was 30% off. Have a good Black Friday, but more importantly, a great Thanksgiving.

Credit Cards

Well, folks, we got Equi-f***ed. I read somewhere that 130 million Americans' info was vulnerable in September 2017's data breach. SSN, addresses, names, the whole shebang. If the population is 330m, then maybe it's a time to revamp the system? A social security number is basically your national ID (since not everyone gets a passport) that has no photo attached, stays unchanged and has no letters or special characters to mix things up. Your email password is more secure, and you even give part of this number over the phone pretty often. My immediate thought was how ridiculous it is that we spend trillions of dollars on 'defense,' yet the average US citizen isn't protected from information security hacks. These thieves can do a lot with your SSN, name and address because of the convenience of electronic forms. Think about how many important things you've signed up for without a photo ID and it gets pretty darn scary.

What to do? The FTC says to check your credit reports for free, monitor your accounts, and consider a security freeze, which makes it harder to open accounts without your consent. Freezes for the big three credit report agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) will cost you up to $30 (fees depend by state), but you'll be that much more secure. As of 9/15/2017, the websites are overworked and I'm getting errors, but it's worth it to keep trying.

Now that we're all secure and confident to continue our lives (with a weekly check of our spending), let's talk about the borrowing part of credit. I know people that are super proud to always use cash, never have debt, and avoid loans like the plague. They are all super lucky but are missing out on a few major benefits of using credit cards.

The biggest and most obvious double-edged sword is the deferred payment: if you need a car/bike repair and payday is far off, you just have to wait. That might mean you can't get to work or school! (I can't use hospital emergencies in this case because even if our healthcare system is a crisis, it's pretty standard that they bill you after setting you right.)

Next obvious is that credit card companies protect you from fraud, and this is taken for granted until it happens to you. It's happened to me twice so far. I've had my card info stolen before and Capital One was on that ish like fur on a mouse. Credit card companies make so much money off people who neglect (or unfortunately can't keep up with) payments that they can afford to have our back at the drop of a hat. Those banks also often credit your account before they roll up their sleeves and go after the fraudster or company that shafted you!

Except when they don't. Story Time! A few years ago, I found a debit card on the street and called Chase customer service. I gave them the digits and told them I'd found a card on the street, and that they should close it because it's obviously not in the owner's position. Well, Chase bank, whom we so generously bailed out in 2008 asked my name, city and phone number in response. I got about 5 digits in when it occurred to me to ask why I was giving them my phone number. The associate told me that they were going to give the card owner my number and have me meet them to return the card back. This resulted in me closing my other Chase account and moving over to a credit union because of an absolute loss of confidence. Security means nothing to those people.


Anyway, it was a debit card that I'd found, and here's an important point about credit: since it's magic money, you're not completely screwed over when Klepto Chris cops your card. Cash can blow away in the wind, and debit cards are directly connected to your bank account. You might not be able to pay for your internet connection and read my blog if your debit card is compromised.

The last reason credit cards are dope is the permanent discount you get when you get cards like Capital One's Quicksilver that give you 1.5% cash back. Until they recently added a 2.5% charge, I paid my rent and utilities with this sucker, which was basically a free $100 per year!

So, while your peace of mind in not borrowing and always using cash on hand could be worth more than these benefits, think about each of these points and consider getting yourself a credit card. Check out nerdwallet.com for recommended cards.

My first experience with Amazon Flex

Amazon Flex is when you deliver items for the retailer, using your own car.

My amounts were different

How it works: Download their app and consent to a background check; you're good to go in a few days. This isn't offered everywhere, but Amazon is expanding rapidly, and this works in a lot of major cities. The night before my route, I accepted a block of time for the advertised pay. In the app, it says "3 hours: 8:30 - 11:30 AM, $54." Next, I arrived to the pickup location at 815, started scanning and loading packages. This took me about 20 minutes trying to load my sedan and not thinking ahead very well. After checking out with an attendant, the app's GPS started me on the route, making it the most time-efficient.

How it worked for me: My addresses were all within 2 square miles, but I wonder how much gas I burned up idling and running the AC. The current pay works out to $18 an hour if you complete the route in the allocated time. However, for my first delivery, I actually had until 9pm to deliver everything. I had a few issues so the actual delivery took me almost 6 hours, so I effectively made $9 per hour. My first issue was that I hadn't brought my car charger for my phone. Luckily my delivery route was only a few miles from my apartment, so I broke off and spent 30 minutes going to the house and rooting around in boxes to find it. My bad. The second issue was that I hadn't organized the packages when I received them. The attendees will tell you how to stack your morning stock so that the last items are packed in the furthest, but all bets were off when every package pretty much filled my sedan. The third holdup was a particular apartment complex spanned 3 different addresses, and had secured doors. I delivered 2 packages, waiting to be let into the buildings before remembering that everything for the complex was supposed to go straight to the rental office. Also, with 3 different addresses, that meant I circled back to it two additional times, wasting at least 30 minutes.

The final time-waster was that my morning scan was one package off from inventory. The attendees told me that was fine and that if I found out which package it was, I could manually add it to my route before delivering it. The kind people even showed me how to do it. Well, when I got to the end of the route, I finally realized which package was left over, but made the mistake of marking the last one I'd added as delivered, and the app closed the route. A closed route cannot be edited, and customer support can't be contacted except by email. So, I drove 30 minutes back to the warehouse to get an actual phone number to call for help, and made my final delivery.

My advice for Flex? Phone charger and extra battery. Next time, I will make quadrants where the passenger seat is 1st - 50th street, the rear passenger is 51st - 100th street, and so on. However, you'll have a different breakdown every day: maybe it makes sense to organize your deliveries by zip code. Lastly, get a help phone number from the attendees because the app either doesn't provide it, or only provides it while your delivery route is open. Unfortunately, I got a notice a few days later that a package wasn't received, but Amazon is open to letting me try again. All in all, I can recommend Amazon Flex as some great extra income that pays weekly.

Resources: I was worried about data usage, since my free phone plan (freedompop.com) limits me to 500MB per month. Luckily, one delivery route was about 40MB. My odometer says I used 60 miles, but the warehouse is 14 miles away, but I went to the warehouse twice. However, you'll use additional gas from idling and AC/heating. So, because of my mistakes and partially because of how the help/support function works (i.e. providing no phone number), I made out with roughly $9 an hour for delivery. However with this valuable experience, I will probably make closer to the advertised $18 per hour next time.

Ohh snap! I need money...

We've all done our best to avoid frivolous spending and to politely decline "sales" of stuff that was originally marked up 400%. Even with a few hundred in your savings account to maximize interest (my credit union gives 6% on your first $500), and hopefully the rest invested in a Vanguard ETF, sometimes you have emergencies.

Now, I am confident that any expensive emergency is going to be able to wait the week for you to cash out a portion (and not a cent more) of your investments to cover it. Right? No hospital on this planet is going to refuse to stuff your jutting bone back into place until seeing cash first. This is why I ignore the common advice to keep a big savings account; also, the piddly interest is insulting. Money is constantly losing its value: why the hell would you keep it around and not put it to work? Also, unless your jar of change has a specific goal like gas money or one month of health insurance at the end of the year, it's also uselessly taking up space. You can usually avoid the ~10% fee at Coinstars by getting a gift card for the local store or Amazon, which hopefully has something you need. However, whether it's unplanned dental work, a minor car accident, or Nintendo selling its limited edition mini classic system and their deliberate BS underproduction is causing the street price to quadruple, sometimes you need more money than you have that month, but not enough to disturb your investments.

There is a lot of advice on how to make money quick that depends on luck, unpossessed skills, or illegal activities. I offer two suggestions that can get you money within a month: Amazon Flex and Unclaimed Property.

Amazon Flex is when you deliver items for the retailer, using your own car. After you download their app and consent to a background check, you're good to go within a day. This won't work for every major city in the US, but Amazon is expanding rapidly, and this will work for Seattle and Everett. I wrote a separate article about my first experience Flexing.

My advice for Flex? Phone charger and extra battery. Also, your initial package loading is important. Next time, I will make quadrants where the passenger seat is 1st - 50th street, the rear passenger is 51st - 100th street, trunk is large packages, and so on. However, you'll have a different breakdown every day: maybe it makes sense to organize them by zip code. Lastly, get a help phone number from the attendees because the app either doesn't provide it, or only provides it while your delivery route is open. All in all, I can recommend Amazon Flex as some great extra income that pays weekly. Uber customer service failed me when I got an error after signing up that 3 emails later, they still couldn't solve for me. Door Dash wanted me to complete registration in a city 30 miles away, so that's why I can't personally promote those other options.

The first celebrity name I could think of. Sorry if I exposed anyone...

Unclaimed Property (via the WA State Dept of Revenue - search for your own state) is old bills and rebates that never made it to you because you moved or fudged the address. You enter your name, create an account, and upload some documents that prove you were at the previous address. Old driver's license, utility bills, old bank statements and tax documents are the most common types. For me, the addresses were so old that I had to use the comments section to appeal to them for having no proof I lived there. I'll let you know how it goes, but I should have a claim for ~$150 processing.

Think of these suggestions as the monthly equivalent to lifting the sofa cushions or raiding your car's ash tray (does anyone smoke anymore?) and scrounging for pizza.

Out with August!

It's been a while since I talked about good money habits, and school month looming is as good a time as ever to start preaching! A few months ago, I joined a gym, and it's been going really well. An ideal balance between frugality and practicality would be if you can work within walking or biking distance and get some good exercise every workday without thinking too much about it. The problem for me was that the work I've been doing since February changes location daily, and walking long distances got to be boring with the same starting point. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind when joining a gym.

Reading my kindle for an hour burned off that burger!

Math: My public gym charges $4.75 per visit, and most gyms (that arrogantly call themselves clubs) have an ugly, disgusting and painful $50-100 initiation fee. I hate this. This was the number one barrier for cheap ol' me. LA Fitness wanted that $100 startup, and $30 per month to use their gym. The monthly part is fine, but the rationale for the startup fee is completely unraveled when you take the option I took: 4 months for $129. While a yearly option would have been even more of a savings; I still pretty much dodged that silly initiation fee. Math tells me I have to go at least 27 times over 4 months to make it worth it. Luckily, I've used the gym 3-4 times per week and got my value about 2 months into the membership. I think I'm at the point of my life where the desire to stretch my dollar is enough to get me out of the house and into the gym, unlike previous attempts. Also, the gym is a 20-minute walk to and fro.

Guru of gainz: While I'm not an expert, I have some advice: slow the hell down! While there are dozens of techniques and workout plans, it's pretty universal that you need to wait between sets. Most of the advice points to a whole minute, but perception of time is funky. Setting a watch every time is a bit annoying, but a minute is longer than you think. A rule I use is the time between choruses of whatever song is playing. Most pop music is 3 minutes and has 3 choruses, and if you're listening to something more sophisticated *adjusts tie and brushes off shoulders,* the choruses are probably spaced even further apart, which is good for your resting.

Also, slow your rep roll. Quick, jerky motions don't help as much as long, confident, even strokes; I follow the advice to do one count up, two counts down on bench press, for example. Other than that, follow your plan to your heart's content!

This is all I need...substitute the gnarly sponge for a carafe and half and half, dho.

Lastly, since school is starting for some of us, let me remind you that your habits are about to change. Check those subscriptions before you start the next chunk of the year with a lot less free time and trim the fat! Game of Thrones is over, and that HBO.com subscription is $15 per month that could go into something else. Well, make sure you've watched The Wire, first. Also, pumpkin spice lattes are around the corner: you've done without them for most of the year, why start this $5 per drink habit again? Now is a great time to grab a bag of beans/grounds (I prefer LaVazza), dust off your coffee maker or espresso machine, and wake up 5 minutes earlier. You're saving yourself $50 per hour of labor after cost of good coffee and your favorite accouterments (<--spellcheck told me its spelled that way).

This 2017 administration is a giant mound of trash

2018 will be the first year will I will not hand over my income tax willingly. I think of the benefits I got from a public education, hospitals. More recently: the ease of voting and well-maintained roads. At the same time, between the local police being worthless and my 2 calls to our inept city hall to try and tackle my apartment's water issue, I have come to really resent paying both local and federal tax.

The events in Charlottesville over the August 12-13 weekend were a tear in American fabric. The President had an easy pitch to hit a home run and simply condemn the troublemakers and denounce the obvious evil at work. Instead, he screwed it up, as he screwed up his major platform promises of building a wall, restructuring healthcare, and making America great again.

Republicans and traditionalists like to look to the past for inspiration, usually while failing to handle the present and of course ignoring the future. Building a wall along the border of Mexico ignores the recent slowdown in immigration because their economy and quality of living are improving quickly. Repealing a past change that a nontraditional president (Obama) made, not giving a shit about the tens of millions who would lose their coverage. And obviously, Republican/nationalist/traditionalist slogans like "Make America Great Again," and "Take XYZ back," are calls that current conditions suck and going back in time will solve today's and tomorrow's problems.

You know what else was back in time? Blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious elitism. Obviously, the majority supporters of this won't come out and say they want this, and instead are building a backwards path that is super vague about the future. Under the elephant party's fetishism of the old days, they ignored the fact that a ton of corporations didn't really share their tax breaks with employees, and people were independently allowed to fall on their asses and spent generations trying to crawl out of the muck.

What I'm saying here is nothing new, but it obviously still works. The 2016 election was split pretty close down the middle, despite the vile collection of candidates that ultimately chose the "most successful" of them all to represent the party. But if that's the case, what the hell does success mean? #45 inherited wealth built on denying minority tenants, not paying people back, and lying out of his ass. He sure made a ton of money doing it, though.

And now a huge amount of tax-payers are hoping against hope that he gets nothing done, as his agendas are all crap. The alternative? If #45 gets impeached, we have to deal with a real Republican who will get worse things done. This. Really. Sucks.

While America holds its breath and keeps politicians busy countering the administration's terrible business and political ideas, we're completely blocked from progress. Every 6 months, these cockroaches try and slide in a business proposal that ultimately undermines internet - the sixth human sense - functionality. The Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is burning up resources for how people get into school, rather than focusing on making it worth going to school. The EPA is just a castrated, gutted, ineffective mess. The Department of State is being replaced by inexperienced yes-men, as the existing employees are cut off from advising Rex Tillerson. The list of crimes-against-Americans goes on and will keep coming. Just wait half a day and you'll find an article about who isn't doing their job, but still making more annually than what the average citizen makes in a decade.

#45 appointments have been highly successful at minimizing the government - the heads are all pretty much the antithesis of their departments. As a result, I don't want to pay taxes towards these government bodies that are just dismantling their ideals. These people do not deserve to be paid, and they are not working for the public's interests. Ultimately, I don't want to go to jail, so I will pay my goddamn taxes, but I will stretch that shit to the legal limit, so the money will have a chance to devalue and inflate. I'd love to pay with pennies, but that would have to be mailed, and postage would cost a grip.

Frugality: How I stay ballin'

In light of my recent employment, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. At the highest point of my career, I had a salary of $36,000 - $53,000, depending on the JPY - USD exchange rate. This was the most money I've ever made by far.  Unfortunately, I only took advantage of the higher-end of that exchange for a few months in 2013 before the USD started getting stronger, shrinking my fund transfer amounts to 60% their value. Despite the fluctuations, in 2 years of saving half my salary, I paid off all credit card debt and invested about $30,000 into the US stock market via Vanguard.com. In 3 years, that $30k became $40k because the stock market is awesome. Because I live cheaply, I could essentially take 3-4 years off, if I really wanted. All these details are here because I know a decent amount of you have resources like this to save aggressively and get similar results. So, take this less as bragging and more as encouragement that you can do your own finance-fu too.

My middle-class salary days are over, though, folks. For the last 2 years, I've been working customer service work, making $12 per hour, mostly full-time. My New Years post shows that in 2016, I made $17k and socked away 17% of it, or $3000. I have since hit lean times and have had to start drawing on my savings. I still keep all of my frugality about me, and it's really important with little-to-no income.

Here are my conditions: I live by myself in an apartment 15 miles outside of Seattle, had no car for most of the last 2 years, and have a very small social life with partners and friends who pay their own way. I still give gifts, tip and go to birthday parties, I just don't have the latest phone, car or clothes. This lifestyle may not be for everyone, but here are some habits that will fit anyone.

Then it ejects a puck if you got pressing skills.

1) I almost never buy coffee to go. $2 here, $3 there for just the basic stuff might be fine for some of you, especially if you make more than minimum wage. 3 times a day, I use an Aeropress to produce some of the best coffee I've ever had. I personally use LaVazza, an Italian import that comes in a handful of flavors. The best coffee I ever had was in Italy, so why not keep it going? Also, here in Washington, LaVazza goes on sale for $6-8 every other week, plus Amazon sells bricks for the cheapest I've seen. Probably works out to 25 cents a cup, a lot less than the hot brew that comes out of those awesome vacuum thermoses. So that's $22.50 per month for something I can't live without, that also tastes amazing. Not going to cafes certainly miss out on a lot, though. No cute girls; no standing in line, listening to the comforting sounds of the machine (one of my biggest losses); and if the cup isn't satisfactory, it's your fault and there's no free replacement.

I just can't make that...

2) I try not to order food that I can make a satisfying version of. Satisfying, not better. I am not a steak person mostly because paying a week's worth of groceries for one main ingredient and several others pushes me away. Obviously, the chef's expertise, restaurant atmosphere, and freedom to enjoy such a high class meal makes the difference and is worth it for most other people on planet earth. Other forbidden foods: I try not to eat at restaurants with cuisine of countries I've been to. This is a weird one. I generally try not to eat at Italian restaurants because I've had it in Italy (and good stuff in New York) and I feel like having regular access to really good Italian food will diminish my desire to want to visit Italy again. Plus, I really enjoy the pasta I make, even if it's nowhere near authentic. There are purists who don't like cultural cuisine because it's not authentic, and that fact alone keeps them from ignoring the good food in front of them. I never eat Japanese food because I go there so often, I'd just rather save up a couple restaurant trips (it's so @#$#^ expensive) and buy a ticket to Home 2. I'm sure it tastes great, but each bite would make me want to go back that much less. However, I totally suck at making pizza. Even then, I doubt I could make a decent pizza for less than the cost of the $8 carryout that 3 local pizza chains offer. Once again, these aren't the most social of choices, but that's why you invite some friends over and enjoy it all together!

Side note: I try and make traveling sound trivial so it doesn't get written off as too expensive. I've visited 8 countries because I was either working there or stayed with a friend and cut major expenses like food and accommodations. Use any connections you have!

3) As mentioned previously, I get carryout rather than delivery most of the time. Even after a tip, I still save $4 delivery charge and $2-8 tax, depending on the size of the order. I'm out in the burbs, though, so hangouts are rarely more than 10 minutes from a pizza place.

cheap sirloin attack! 

4) Buy reasonably large. Since meat's sold by weight, buying more at once isn't necessary, unless it's a short-lasting sale. In that case, do what I did in the pictures and freeze!

5) I am on top of my subscriptions. I know which months my cable, Playstation and Amazon subscriptions renew. Every once in a while, I canceled Netflix for a few months after I've seen everything I'm interested in. My yearlong $50 internet (50Mbps) promotion was about to expire, so I called Comcast. 4 minutes later, I was rolled into the next year's $60 for faster internet (100Mbps) for the year, rather than the regular-priced $80. I know the customer service there is supposed to be Hell, but I had the best phone call that particular day. Sony raised the annual fee (which pays for online play and a dozen free games per year) by $10. I agree the service is worth every penny, but I still know that September is my month to browse CDKeys.com and find that membership for $48. For those of you that have a subscription of a service you know you love, never ever pay month to month. This might be obvious, but I know someone who pays $8 per month for his gaming service because he doesn't notice the little fee monthly. He's paying $96 per year for the same service! It withers my shriveled, tormented soul every month.

6) Host get-togethers before your friends with money suggest going out. I can hear your eyes rolling. The tactful way to do this is the day or morning before Friday night when your buddies are wondering what's going down that night. That way, you offer the cheapest but most intimate default, and only the most passionate will argue their way out of it. My friends are definitely on to me when my apartment is the second or third suggestion, but making fun of dumb movies and consuming adult beverages is a cheap way to chill.

These suggestions are how I navigate minimum wage and keep afloat. I'll have more tips on how I stay ballin' in the future, stay tuned!

My 1500 cents

Call me naive, call me a lunatic, but more businesses need to pay more than market minimum. Workers are more productive than ever. Think about that drive-thru employee is listening to your order while transacting with the person ahead of you. Now that that's in your head, do you remember what it's like to talk to two people at once about different things? Granted, you're not exactly discussing the merits of universal healthcare and basic income with the drive-thru associate, but multitasking in that way requires practice. Now, add money handling and some spot reading for entering these items into a console. Is that skill really only marginally valuable? Is that really what fast food workers did 20 years ago?

What about clerical work? It's true that certain types of knowledge are left to your supervisors and co-workers, like processes, policies, and management. However, so many questions can be Googled verbatim and avoid the labor of old school research. During my telephone customer service job at Zumiez, 15 of us (in shifts of 8-10 people) handled website issues, orders and store feedback for 600 stores across the nation. One phone call could have me using up to 8 different applications. This could not have been done at this level of efficiency 25 years ago, plain and simple.

Most of those store owners and CEOs didn't have to work at that capacity in that position in their time. I'm not saying they didn't have their challenges, but there needs to be a lot more empathy for raising the wage floor. The workforce asks a lot of their employees, and it's insulting to argue against raising minimum wage.

Obviously, opponents of raising minimum wage aren't against paying employees more. You'll hear reasoning that higher wages mean higher prices in general rising. Well, maintaining the status quo has screwed us over. Also, products aren't going to cost $6 per hour more. That is impossible. People might have a few years of tight wallets while the markets adjust, but I am positive about the outcome. Hopefully some opportunists will sock away their extra funds in this period of adjustment.

A restaurant in Seattle did away with tips after making the change in wages. So, while their menu prices have gone up, customers who are satisfied with their servers making a living wage won't be shelling out that much more to eat. Of course, frugal peeps like you and me say they should be cooking at home, and that this is a luxury anyway! However, I don't want that to detract from the case I'm building that the conscientious customer force is growing; there are lots of people who pay more because they know workers get more. This doesn't have to be just restaurants. Consider the consumers who make an effort to buy products made in America because the goods are likely produced under fair work conditions. Whole Foods and Costco don't show any signs of slouching on prices or employee pay. These businesses are certainly targeting those who have the money for it, and the $15 minimum would welcome some people into this group. That oughtta do some good, eh?

Then there are others who currently make under $15 and more than minimum wage, and fear they'll suddenly be out-earned. Are you kidding me? Do you really think your profession's unions and employees won't demand more once they see the world still standing after such a dramatic change? If not, quit your job and apply for the new minimum wage!

One last common argument against raising the minimum wage is that there will be less work to go around. Automation is coming anyway, and businesses have long been shafting employees of benefits by keeping them under full-time status. Also, I've stitched together 3 jobs to make a living before: this new minimum may mean people in that position only have to work 2.

So that's my 1500 cents on minimum wage. Cost of living is going up anyway, and we all work hard and so deserve it. If you are in Seattle, you're all set cause it's coming. Maybe we can next focus on the stingy bullshit 2 weeks annual vacation, or ridiculous heavy-handedness in giving managers bonuses that they don't pass on to their underlings next. Maybe we can abolish or limit exempt (overtime without pay) and keep the deserving managers a little happier.

Welcome to 2017: New Horizons

It's been a while since I wrote about my frugal ways, and I wanted to assure readers that I'm still cheap. What's more: I survived Christmas and actually gave gifts this year.

Let me remind everyone here of certain conditions: For all of 2016, I made $12/hr, working full time. I took off 6 weeks between jobs, and still earned just over $17k last year. I've lived in my own one-bedroom apartment and currently pay rent of just under $800, plus power and internet. Financial vices: I order pizza or go out to eat once a week (I still give tips!), I spend about $20 per month on coffee beans, and there are some video game releases that I just can't wait for.

So with no packaging, and the
console store directly selling it
...why isn't it 25% cheaper?

I still make impulse purchases and have a sweet tooth just like everyone else. However, (my girlfriend and) I cook, I don't own a car, my phone plan is $2.50 per month, I don't order coffee, I shop at thrift stores to furnish my apartment, and I look at investing and frugality as exciting challenges, a little like trophy hunting in video games. I also don't have children, and my partner doesn't expect lavish gifts (poor girl, hang in there :) ) Almost all of my friends drive, so I still get a social life. Also, we all have PS4s, which means we don't have to individually buy every single hot title. Side note, don't buy digital game releases! No one can borrow them, and they're still stupidly priced the same (or more expensive) than a disc that took material to produce. For the most part, Amazon sells hard copies of new releases for $48 + tax, where the digital versions will cost $60 + tax. Why?

Again, my 2016 income was $17,000, which is certainly above the federal poverty level, but also 1/3rd of the US median income. I have managed to sock away $3000, or 17% of it. I'm bragging about this because I think it was hard-earned, but it's also a reminder of all of my readers and their friends to go over their finances every once in a while, and really think about where your income is going. I even made a spreadsheet of all my paychecks and investments (into Vanguard ETFs), and subtracted stock bought with money I already had invested. Just imagine how well I could do when minimum wage jumps to $15/hr, or if I land a better-paying job!?

If you stopped reading and saying, "I can't do this!" or "He's full of shit!" at me having no children, or you just can't give up your daily coffee trip, that's fine. But don't quit before you start! You can still get on the path to being financially fit by reducing some of your vices rather than cutting them altogether. Maybe some of the other suggestions can help you create savings to invest, or limit your spending. Either way, next time you hear someone who makes $40k or more griping about their finances, you send em on over to this here blog post.

Why is this such a big deal? Post your thoughts, or chat me up next time you see me. I'll let you know in a future post why I'm sold on saving.

October TV brown-out!

My media consumption was at an absolute maximum this month, as I had the pleasure of watching Luke Cage, and starting The Get Down, two very different shows with a whole lotta brothas and sistas and chicas. There are no blatant spoilers here, and any info is revealed in the first episode of either show.

Love the cast of Luke Cage.

The first season of Luke Cage was a great pro-black experience, and you see that first and foremost in the language and music. While The Wire (HBO) still holds the crown for most authentic dialogue, Cage has some points. There's street talk for sure--they are in Harlem--but that's not the only kind of voice you hear. Luke actively discourages the use of the n-word by calling it out every time, and is very less-than-smooth with the ladies. You have to look pretty hard to find an uneducated thug or smooth-talking archetype in this show.



Another favorite thing about the show is the music. One of the main locations is a nightclub, and most of the episodes give us a chance to see some really great funk, jazz and hiphop artists perform as we get into the mind or a witness a key conversation of the antagonist, who owns the nightclub.

My last point is about how strong the women are in Luke Cage. While Cage himself can certainly punch through walls, the strongest and most vicious characters are all female, and they're very convincing. Mariah Dillard has a dark side that's quite scary. This strikes me because I've never seen the actress Alfre Woodard in anything but lighthearted comedies and dramas, but I certainly believe her. In Luke Cage, she's trying to make Harlem a better place through politics, has to shed her family's gangster image. The Dillards run shit in Harlem, but outsiders wouldn't see that as something to respect.

If you're also familiar with the show Jessica Jones (Netflix), or at least know the actress Krysten Ritter, it's hard to make her punching through walls and flipping over men twice her size look good; and it doesn't. I really enjoyed that show, but some of her "strong" moments were entirely unconvincing to me. To bring it back to Luke Cage, though, the most violent moments and the coldest, sharpest words were delivered by women.

The Get Down also takes place in Harlem, but is centered around music. The main character is a young lyricist who is about to change his life by forming a rap crew, and you'll have to excuse me if that summary is wildly inaccurate. I've seen 2 episodes of the first season, and that's what I've deduced. I like the show for the REALLY good rhymes, the gorgeous actresses and its coherence, which I'd like to expand on.

I barely made it through one episode of Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon), and didn't really like Treme (HBO). Both shows were about the life of musicians, but I think they were written for people who live like that because they were laden with idiosyncrasies that were lost on me. I think the world of musicians has a lot of eccentric people, and the crazy maestro in Mozart was just frustrating to watch. I suffered through 3 hours of Treme because I figured the same writers of The Wire could get me again. I know the marching bands in New Orleans was well-researched and performed, but I couldn't find any semblance of a narrative, and it felt like I was just watching a bunch of people do stuff. I totally missed the point of that show.



The Get Down's narrative is tighter, and has so far focused on 2 main groups of friends. I see their relationships and motivations for what they want to do with their musical talents, and that makes it easier for me to follow, and it doesn't hurt that the actresses are fine as hell.



Last note: I'm glad neither show spends too much time whining about blacks versus whites. Luke Cage has a theme about injustice in general, but the message is more about communities helping themselves instead of pointing the finger. Racism only takes a minor part in the background, but neither show is out to blame white people for black problems, and I think that makes both shows more appealing.