Smurfs Among Us?

Last night while watching, um, American Gladiators on NBC, I saw a promo for a fluff-piece on the Today show about a blue man that would have aired this morning.

I’m at work when the Today show is on, but I looked the story up and it stems from a December 19th story out of Oregon:

It’s not makeup or paint that makes Paul Karason’s skin a bluish color.

The 57-year-old started making the transition from fair skin and freckles to what he looks like today 14 years ago.

“The change was so gradual that I didn’t perceive it and for people around me, likewise,” Karason said. “It was just so gradual that no one really noticed. It wasn’t until a friend that I hadn’t seen in several months came by my parents’ place to see me and he asked me ‘what did you do?’”

What Karason did was use a substance called colloidal silver, which is made by extracting silver from metal. It goes into water with an electrical current and then you drink it. Colloidal silver is billed as something that will cure just about everything that ails you and Karason swears by it.

Karason does not believe drinking the potion is what caused his discoloration. He believes it happened because he rubbed it on his face to treat a skin problem. A medical condition called Argyria has been linked to such discoloration since the days when silver solutions were used as antibiotics.

Whatever the cause, Karason said it is not easy living life as a blue man.

Interesting stuff. I’d actually heard of this condition before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. Makes you wonder if he grew the beard to look like Papa Smurf?

Posted on January 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm by Brainy Smurf
Television | No Comments »

Big Things come in Small Packages

My biggest bill each month, like a lot of people, is my mortgage bill.

What’s funny to me, and probably me only, is that, of all of my bills, it goes back in the smallest envelope.

Biggest bill in the smallest envelope. Those who hold their mortgage with CountryWide know what I’m talking about.

Think they do that on purpose?

Posted on January 5th, 2008 at 6:08 pm by Brainy Smurf
Mortgage | No Comments »

I’ve hit the 401k, IRA, and Roth IRA Contribution Limit

Okay, now what?

Totally a fictitious question — I haven’t hit the contribution limits and don’t really expect to in 2008, but over the last few weeks, while crunching numbers to maximize my 401k contributions, my eyes were opened to the yearly limits placed on this type of retirement account.

Around ten years ago when Roth IRAs made their big splash, I had a co-worker who ranted and raved mindlessly over how great they were. I was already contributing to my 401k pretty heavily and sending an additional $150/month towards a mutual fund I randomly selected from Fidelity so I just gave it a quick looksie to see what all the fuss was about.

The $2000/year limit (at the time) turned me off. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s NOTHING!? Saving an additional $166/month just wasn’t worth the hassle of opening another account with another institution and keeping track of it — remember, you couldn’t do everything online back then.

Fast forward 10 years and the IRA contribution limit for 2008 is $5000. That’s a little better, but for the past few years, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) we’ve been up against the income limit for contributing to one anyway, so it hasn’t been much more than an afterthought, but am I missing something?

I’m certainly not an expert on the subject, but five grand per year just doesn’t seem like very much, even with the tax advantages — which when we’re talking about such a small amount can’t be that much of an advantage.

So, back to a retirement account that I actually do have… The contribution limit on a 401k for 2008 is $15500 and as far as I can tell, that doesn’t the including employer match so if you work for a really great company, you could in theory sock away $31k per year. Now we’re talking…

But for most folks, a high enough salary and a 100% match to sock away that kind of money just isn’t in the cards.

I was unaware of the $15.5k limit until recently, and unfortunately my salary isn’t high enough to get me there, but it did get me thinking…

In theory, a typical Joe with the ability to hit the contribution limit across the board could save a maximum of $25,500 in 2008. (Broken down to $15,500 for a 401k, $5000 for a traditional IRA, and $5000 for a Roth IRA).

I’ve never come near that number in the past, but I have been averaging $2215/month in payments to credit card companies alone over the past three years. The credit card balances will be eliminated sometime this year, and once that happens, in theory, I could be saving $2215/month instead. That works out to $26584 per year.

So, what do people making 6 figures, say $250k per year, do?

They’d hit the 401k contribution limit by contributing just over 5% of their paycheck — not very much. They also make too much to contribute to a Roth IRA (which as I mentioned earlier would be a waste of time as it would only amount to a negligible 2% of their income anyway), so where do they save for retirement?

Now that I’m maxing out my 401k to get the maximum match (though still short of the contribution limit), and I’m nearing the finish line when it comes to debt repayment (which will give me a lot more money to save), where should my expected $26584 each year go?

I want to emulate the people who earn incomes that make 401k’s look like my meager ING account…

Mutual funds are my best guess…

Posted on January 4th, 2008 at 10:07 am by Brainy Smurf
401k, Finance, Rants | 1 Comment »

First Paycheck of 2008

Being a Thursday and all, today was the first paycheck of the year.

And, as hoped and expected, my tax filing status moves last week increased my take home amount even when I also increased my 401k contributions at the same time.

No raise, but more money in my pocket and more money towards retirement…

Net pay increase worked out to $88.53 every two weeks. Not bad.

My 401k contributions jump up $153.29 every two weeks. Again, can’t complain.

It’s a great start for 2008 — though it is unfortunate that this paycheck already has the mortgage written all over it…

Posted on January 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 am by Brainy Smurf
401k, Finance | No Comments »

2007 Utility Expenses Recap

Yep, another “end of the the year” post.

In the last few months of 2007, we actively started trying to cut down on our utility expeneses, but for

comparison’s sake for 2008, last year’s totals are to the right.

With the cost of everything seemingly going up each year, it will be interesting to see if we are able to cut these costs any…

It’s a bit of an eye opener to see that the cable bill adds up to so much — eclipsing the phone (which is more important) and the internet (which we use a lot more than the tv). I’m not about to drop cable though — the History Channel comes in mighty handy when the networks are all showing infomercials. And my wife is addicted to the Food Network…

Is it worth almost $700? Well, I’m not so sure now…

One value I know will drop in 2008 is the cell phone expenses. I dropped Verizon Wireless in favor of a pre-paid plan with Virgin Mobile in the Fall and that could lower my yearly costs to under $100.

Posted on January 2nd, 2008 at 2:26 pm by Brainy Smurf
Cutting Costs, Finance, Television | No Comments »

PIAC Site Stats for 2007

I’ve never really been a fan of posts on blogs about, well, blogging but I’m about to make one myself. Another goal of mine, that I left off of the my 2008 goals, is to increase the popularity of this site — though I guess it could loosely fall under the “increase my passive income” goal even though I’m not actually making any real money on the site so far…

Anyway, without any further intro-babble…

In my first ever attempt at blogging, “Pants in a Can” went online on April 19, 2007. I made 116 total posts and received 89 comments, though most of those were internal trackbacks.

The big numbers everyone looks for were:

Visitors: 11,481
Uniques: 5,768
Page Views: 57,549

Working in the web design/hosting field for over a decade now for my side income, I’m not terribly impressed by these numbers, but as with every site I’ve ever worked on, it’s picking up steam as the site grows larger.

November 2007 was my best month to date with 1451 visitors. April, obviously, was the worst with 55 visitors over the 11 days the site was online.

The most popular post was from May 25, my ridiculous post about Jim “The Hammer” Shapiro. Sadly, that specific post had nothing to do with my finances.

Thanks to spammers, the top search phrase that brought visitors to the site was unfortunately “coca cola embezzl” for some odd reason. Go figure? Right behind it was “Jordan Knight” — which was the topic of a post in early September but not exactly the type of search term I’m aiming for…

My most popular referrer was CleverDude.

The most comments came from Grant from the Corner Office Blog and a poster named Gigi.

And a big thank you has to go towards Frank, aka The Happy Rock, for driving a lot of traffic my way. Back in September, he apparently added PIAC to his “StumpleUpon” profile and it instantly brought the site a nearly 1000% increase in traffic. I wish I could somehow return the favor…

So, for 2008, I’m aiming to post more often and hopefully that will, in time, increase visitorship (and resulting comments) all around! Afterall, it’s more fun that way!

Posted on January 2nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm by Brainy Smurf
Blogging? | 1 Comment »

Net Worth Update: January 2008

No, I didn’t win the lottery…This month’s numbers are going to look a little funky as this is the first time I’m including my house in the numbers.

As I mentioned last month, I’ll be calculating its month-to-month value using the 2007 property assessment and the Zillow estimate with the latter holding more weight.

With that out of the way, on the assets end of things I pulled all but $1k out of my ING Savings account. With the rates having fallen even further in December, I decided to pull out even more to throw it at higher rate credit card debt.

And apparently I crossed a “magic” mileage number on my primary vehicle, which lost over 5% of it’s value in the span of a month. It had been holding steady, and even went up in value a few times, over the year, but I guess the 26k mile marker is when the value starts to drop heavily.

On the liabilities end, the credit card balances continue to fall. As hoped, I wiped out the 9.9% Bank of America Business Card entirely, and put a significant dent in the other two cards carrying balances.

Everything else was business as usual.

In the grand scheme of things, ignoring the new house number, my net worth is higher than it’s ever been. My total debt is also at it’s lowest point ever.

Together, that makes 2008 look pretty bright, right from the get-go.

Posted on January 2nd, 2008 at 8:49 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Net Worth Updates | No Comments »