Home Value Falling $1k/Week

So this morning I was updating my 2008 Goal percentages on the sidebar and it’s become rather apparent that my streak of positive gains in respect to net worth is going to come to an end this month.

That’s okay by me. As long as the debts continue to fall.

We did, however, spend a boat load of money this month… and there is still another week to go?!

The $1k+ spending spree last weekend can technically be cancelled out by the ecomonic stimulus check that arrived at the beginning of the month, so that’s not the reason for the pending negative report.

The plumbing repair wasn’t an expected expense, but it also wasn’t so large that it should have made a big dent.

And the vacation reservations we’ve been making aren’t really to blame either (though without them, I do believe I could still squeak out another positive month.)

It wasn’t that long ago when I said that I wasn’t feeling any effect from the housing crisis we keep hearing about but what really killed me this month was just that — the value of my home.

The Zillow.com zestimate value of my house has been plunging around $1000 each week. Not cool.

As of this morning, it’s down another $500. Down $4500 for the month. I’m not 100% certain how the zestimate is calculated, I’m too lazy to look it up, but I have a feeling it has something to do with recent sales and listings of comparable homes in the area.

Usually I’d agree that that would be a pretty safe way to guesstimate the value.

Thing is, while killing time looking at the local listings on Realtor.com a few weeks ago, I came across a home not too far from me. Walking distance, actually.

Same age, same style, and almost the same size too, but what really caught my eye was the listing price. $119k. Wow. That’s cheap.

That night, I did a drive by to take a better look, thinking the list price was a typo. $191 would be more accurate I thought.

So, after driving by two or three times, nice and slow, I noted its faults (in comparison to my house)…

It’s on a busy road, it doesn’t have a garage, and though the lot is about the same size as mine, it’s one of those long skinny ones — very little curb. It also needs a *ton* of work on the exterior.

Hmmm… Maybe $119k was a fair price (actually a bargain still, if you ask me). But when I thought about it some more, the way Zillow would factor in its listing price to my zestimate, it all made sense.

By the measurable numbers, my house is essentially the exact same as this one. Lot size is roughly the same, square footage is within 50 feet, and they’re both X-form gabled ells built in the late 1800’s. On paper — we’re the same house.

That can only hurt the Zillow value of my home.

But at the same time, it makes me feel okay about the value dropping.

The zestimate is just a gimmick guideline anyway — I know its actual value, while obviously falling, isn’t falling as fast as they’re making it out to be.

Posted on May 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance | No Comments »

Planning for Summer Vacation

Well, I’m quickly realizing why we didn’t go on vacation last year… Vacation is expensive!

As with past vacations, we’re going to be doing a lot of driving…

Not like in the past — I’m allowing for a maximum of 9 hours per day in the car.

Yeah, that might sound crazy to some, but our 2006 vacation included a 22-hour drive session on the first day. The vacation before that boasted a 17-hour drive session, again, on the first day.

Obviously, for us, it’s about “getting there.”

Anyway, for 2008, it’s shaping up to be a 10 day/9 night marathon of museums, festivals, concerts, baseball games, football games, zoos, aquariums, amusement parks, and various roadside attractions along the way — just the way we like it.

Nine states, one province. I’ve got something in mind each day.

So far, our first 4 days and nights are set in stone — reservations have been made and paid for to the tune of $679.89. That’s just for accommodations.

We’ve also spent $111 for concert tickets along the way but for nearly all of the admission charges at the various stops along the way, we’re planning to buy tickets at the gate.

If you add in the Garmin Nuvi 260 (and accessories) to the total from last weekend, we’ve spent $1039.67 so far. For 4 days.

That’s not including gas, food, tolls, or any of the fees (parking & admission) associated with the “points of interest” along the way.

We’re not exactly going frugal here — I won’t stay in a hotel that has a number or color in the name, but we’re not going “Showcase Showdown” style either. I’m just a little surprised at how quickly things are adding up.

In the end, I’d venture to guess that each day, including accommodations, food, gas, admission, will set us back around $425/day. Not exactly in the budget, but we’ll make it work.

I’m thinking, with us paying for much of the trip well in advance, it won’t hit (or hurt) the wallet in one fell swoop — and that will make a huge difference.

At any rate, with a daily expenditure of over $400, every single day better be pretty freaking awesome.

As we nail everything down, I’ll post the full itinerary…

Posted on May 22nd, 2008 at 8:03 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Vacation | 2 Comments »

Money Discriminates against Blind People

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court says paper money discriminates against blind people.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a ruling that could force the U.S. to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values.

Such changes could include making bills different sizes, including raised markings or printing oversized numbers for people who see poorly.

The appeals court ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that the U.S. didn’t explain why such changes would be an unreasonable burden, especially since many other countries have done so.

Are you kidding me?

I’ll admit that I don’t like that US bills are all green, but I’m not about to take it court.

Should the colorblind folks take it to court? Perhaps.

For the handicapped, of any kind, sorry, but there are some things in life you just won’t be able to do. It’s a disability?! That’s why they call it a handicap.

But discriminatory?! Please…

And really, give the Treasury some credit — the new versions of the bills do, in fact, have larger numbers on them.

Posted on May 20th, 2008 at 10:51 am by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Current Events | 3 Comments »

A Moving Violation, American Idol, and a No-Hitter

I work several floors up in a boring rectangular office building. I keep my windows open a crack, partly for fresh air, but also because I like the white noise of the traffic going by.

This morning I heard a police car do that quick siren thing (like in the “Click-it or Ticket” commercials), so I looked out the window and a police officer had just pulled over a vehicle right beneath me.

The time was 7:55 am.

Mid-thirties woman, obviously on her way to work based on how she was dressed. Not to profile or anything, but she didn’t fit the description of a thug at all.

If I had to guess, it was either speeding or running a red light — neither of which I personally take lightly — that resulted in her being pulled over.

So the police car is right behind her — I can see in the officer’s car through the windshield that he’s punching something up on his laptop — probably the car’s registration or something. No biggie.

Then a bicycle officer pulls up to his passenger window. (I won’t even go into the fact that the bicycle officer was riding on the sidewalk.) The officer in the car rolls down his window and they start talking.

Still, no biggie, the original officer called for backup or whatever. Perhaps it’s for legal purposes, but I think it has more to do with them liking to make a big scene out of nothing. Still, at this point, I’m thinking things look pretty regular.

I sit back down and start working again…

Then I hear laughing. I stand back up and poke my head out the window. I’m low enough to hear the entire conversation when pressed against the window screen. The two officers are shooting the breeze… about, get this, AMERICAN IDOL!?

Now this wasn’t a short conversation…

The woman was sitting patiently in her car. Actually, she was starting to get fidgety. Can’t really blame her — she was probably late for work at this point — and wondering what was taking so long.

It was obnoxiously rude of the officers.

I mean, if I could hear the conversation a few stories up, she could definitely hear it as well.

In her shoes, I’m not sure what I would have done. Is it right to honk the horn? Flash your brake lights? Get out of the car and approach the officers?

They’d probably shoot you. At the very least, they’d arrest you on some bogus charge of interfering with an officer. A disorderly conduct charge would also be thrown in for good measure.

At the conclusion of the jovial conversation laden with expletives, the officers agreed that David Cook should win tonight on American Idol. “That guy rocks.”

At 8:13, the officer’s car door *finally* opened and he approached the woman’s driver side window. They spoke for two minutes.

The officer then walked back to his vehicle and spent another 12 minutes in his car writing up the ticket while discussing the Red Sox no-hitter last night with the bicycle officer?! Unreal.

The bicycle officer then rode the ticket up to the woman and then pulled in front of her car to make a u-turn across traffic (yes, on a bicycle), which at this point, due to the time and a squad car with its lights flashing, was pretty heavy. He even put his arm out as if to indicate he had the right of way. Um, yeah.

She finally pulled away at 8:27. That’s 32 minutes after she was pulled over.

Now, I’m not one to say the police are corrupt, or evil, or out to get everyone — not for a second — but I will say, it’s things like this that lead the public to lose faith in the system.

The police department has a negative image in the community not because of the job they do but because of the way they do it.

The public believes what they see and what I saw today didn’t shed a very positive light on the city police department. It was very unprofessional. They showed absolutely no respect to this woman. None. Frankly, I found it disgusting.

Sadly, you can’t really call them on it though, unless, of course, you’re willing to take an “interfering with an officer” charge for the team…

Where are officer Carey Mahoney and McGruff the CrimeDog when you need them?

Sigh…

Posted on May 20th, 2008 at 8:35 am by Brainy Smurf
Rants | 1 Comment »

Moment of Weakness: I Charged over $1k this Weekend

That’s right. I went back to my old ways this past weekend.

I blew through $1015.88 from Friday to Sunday — and I used a credit card to finance it all.

Things got off to a great start — I planned to finally clean out the basement this weekend, and along with some help from a 1 gallon jug of Mr. Clean, the basement (as well as the house) smells lemony-fresh inside.

Quite an improvement from the sewage odor we’d been, ahem, dealing with for the past couple of months.

And then came the spending binge…

Friday morning, I blew $111 on Tickets.com for some tickets to a show my wife and I are planning to attend while we’re on vacation. Eh, not too bad…

After work, my wife and I went to our nearest strip of big box stores — BestBuy, Circuit City, and Sam’s Club. Now, we’d planned to “stimulate the economy” by picking up a computer for my wife, and that’s just what we did…

We selected the Compaq AMD Athlon SR5421F at Sam’s Club which set us back $399.

Every CPU I’ve ever purchased has been Intel-based, so this was my first foray into the competitors market. I’ve also never been a fan of Compaq, but now that they’re one with Hewlett-Packard, well, how bad can it be, right?

It is a Vista machine, it has enough RAM to run properly, and best of all, the price was right. I couldn’t justify spending twice that on a machine that would probably work just the same… After getting it all set-up, I just might go back and replace my current machine as well.

Odd, after nearly a decade of spending in excess $1500 per CPU, I’m now happy with the $399 version…from, well, basically Walmart. Right now, her PC easily blows the rest of our computers out of the water — performance-wise. The hard drive is a little light, but we’ve got an external RAID on our home network to make up for any shortcomings.

In addition to the computer, who can go to Sam’s and not add a few “extras” to the cart? Total bill at Sam’s Club was $472.85. Ouch.

While at all three stores, we also priced out the little GPS units you see in so many people’s cars these days. The TomTom, the Garmin, and the Magellan. I don’t really want one of these because I somewhat enjoy getting lost, but at the same time, with our big vacation coming up (and my wife’s iffy map-reading skills), I thought it might be a good idea to pick one up.

Not really so much for the directions (the main feature of the device), but more for the little “Points of Interest” they list along the routes chosen.

Some of the most memorable things we’ve done on vacation have been at roadside attractions — this vacation, I don’t want to stumble upon them by accident — I’d rather hit them on purpose.

So after playing with them all at the store on Friday night, and writing down some prices, I did some research on them on Saturday. I was set on the Garmin models. They won out over the TomTom models because they included Canada in their built-in maps. The Magellan models were far too expensive for me.

The two models I was comparing were the Garmin Nuvi 260 and the Garmin Nuvi 350. The Nuvi 350 model cost a fraction more, and boasted lots of additional features — mainly being able to play mp3’s, give traffic advice (for an additional monthly fee), and it was also bluetooth enabled.

Okay, three things I have absolutely zero interest in or use for. The decision was made. I was going to purchase the Garmin Nuvi 260 for $221.49 from Amazon.

Now, just like any other wireless electronic, they nail you with having to purchase a lot of extras. Added to the unit, I bought a dashboard friction mount so I don’t have to use the ugly suction cup thing in the car.

In addition, and since I was spending money like it was going out of style, I upgraded our version of Microsoft Office to load on to my wife’s new computer. The Home & Student Version set me back an additional $97.99.

Saturday night, my wife wasn’t feeling well and asked me to go to the grocery store. It was a tough mission since I usually don’t do much other than look at people when in the grocery store.

The list included Gatorade, CocaCola, and cherries. Total damage was $18.51. I charged it because I don’t carry cash. D’oh?!

To finish off the weekend, on Sunday, I won an eBay auction for a game worn hockey jersey. It was only $52.00, and the shipping was another $7. Not too bad, but still, after the huge expenditures of the previous days, I should have held back.

In the end, here’s what the weekend’s final tally looked like:

$ 111.00   Tickets to show - Tickets.com

$ 399.00   Compaq SR5421F - Sam's Club
$  25.39   Tide Detergent - Sam's Club
$  13.54   Kingsford Charcoal - Sam's Club
$   5.18   RealLemon Lemon Juice - Sam's Club
$   4.28   Cocktail Croissants - Sam's Club
$  25.46   Sales Tax - Sam's Club

$ 221.49   Garmin Nuvi 260 - Amazon.com
$  27.29   Garmin Friction Mount - Amazon.com
$  97.99   MS Office Home & Student - Amazon.com
$   7.75   Shipping - Amazon.com

$   8.27   Cherries - Stop & Shop
$   4.99   Orange Gatorade - Stop & Shop
$   4.99   Coca-Cola - Stop & Shop
$   0.26   Sales Tax - Stop & Shop

$  52.00   Game Worn Hockey Jersey - eBay.com
$   7.00   Shipping - eBay.com

$1015.88   TOTAL

On the bright side, though I went back and used a credit card, I did it wisely this time. I charged all of them on a card with rewards (ooooooh!) and at the perfect time of the month to give me nearly a 40-day grace period.

In the end, no worries, I’ll pay it off in full before any finance charges come my way, but this could certainly negatively impact this month’s net worth numbers.

Posted on May 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Credit Card, Mistakes | 7 Comments »

Faded Glory: The Dog or the Family?

My wife pointed this out to me last night as she flipped through this week’s Walmart flyer full of deals for the upcoming long weekend.

Now, obviously Walmart is trying to mimic Old Navy’s $5 flag t-shirt idea (a strategy which Old Navy has apparently abandoned) and then undercut them somewhat. Looks like a pretty good deal.

For all I know, they’ve been doing this for a couple of years now.

I’d never heard of this line of clothing before — though the “slogan” they chose — “Faded Glory” can be interpreted many different ways.  That’s a different discussion and not something I’m about to go into.

But what really struck my wife is that Walmart is advertising that you can clothe your family for less than you can clothe your dog.

The dog outfit costs more than double what an adult t-shirt costs?!

How messed up is that?  Maybe the dog version is of a better quality?

But hey, it also says at the bottom that they’ll cash my economic stimulus check for FREE!

Oh, now I’m totally sold.  I’ll take 400 Men’s Faded Glory Flag T-Shirts please…

Posted on May 16th, 2008 at 6:02 am by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Bargains | No Comments »

Is $4/gallon the Threshold?

It was just a year ago that I wrote my initial rant about the price of gas. May 10, 2007 to be exact.

At the time, it was $3.19 per gallon in my neck of the woods.

Media reports preached that breaking the $3 mark would change the driving habits of Americans.

I didn’t see any difference.

So, today, we officially hit the $4 mark in Connecticut.

I’m not complaining though.

When they’re not covering the typhoon in Myanmar or the earthquake in China, the news reports have been exactly the same as they were a year ago with catchy titles like “Pain at the Pump”.

I wouldn’t be shocked if they’re just recycling old archived stories — they could, few would notice.

Sure, the price has risen 81 cents for me in 12 months, but as with May of 2007, I still feel the same way:

…even with the price rising, it’s not affecting my budget at all. It’d have to raise at least another $2/gallon before I’d even have to reconsider my driving habits…

I went back and did a little research on my gasoline expenditures over the years. So far, in 2008, from January 1 thru May 15, I’ve spent $483.14 on gas. That works out to $24.87 per week. Not a budget breaker.

               Gasoline Expenditures  

          Year     Total        Per/Week
          2008    $483.14        $24.87
          2007    $402.11        $20.85
          2006    $403.29        $20.91
          2005    $463.27        $24.02

So, you can see, the upswing in the price of gas isn’t as significant as they make it out to be on the news — at least for those of us who don’t drive for a living.

A four dollar per week increase shouldn’t cripple your finances — I wish these folks they interview on the news could see the actual difference. For those smokers out there, that’s far less than a package of cigarettes. Think about that for a second…

I understand that the price of gas causes the price of food to go up as well (along with countless other consumables), but really, we’re talking very small amounts in the grand scheme of things.

So, again, I’m still not anywhere near the point that I’m about to change my driving habits. In fact, we’re planning a cross country driving vacation right now.

And I’m not even sure I still agree with my guesstimate of $5.19 per gallon being my limit. Hey, if the daily doomsday predictions in the media are correct and on target, we’ll see that price by Labor Day.

I’m not happy about it, but I’m also not about to cry poverty over it either.

Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 10:35 am by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Current Events | No Comments »

Product 19 — Yeah, they still make it!?

Monday night my wife and I went to the grocery store.

The past few weeks we’ve been going to a different grocery store each week, you know, to add a little excitement to the routine of, well, grocery shopping. So far, it’s been a pretty good experience.

This week, though, we weren’t able to go grocery shopping on the weekend as we were out of town. It’s thrown the whole week off to a certain degree, but to get it out of the way quickly (on a week night), we went back to our usual grocery store that’s just a stones throw from our house.

I’m not much help at the grocery store. I don’t even push the cart.

My job is generally to look at people (I enjoy this) and scan the items at the automated check out — unless of course someone is in line behind me cause then I get all stressed out and move even slower than I already do.

But this time, when my wife set me free in the cereal aisle to pick my cereal for the week, something caught my eye.

Product 19.

I couldn’t place it. Where had I seen that red box before? Hmmmm… something from my past…

Then it hit me.

Remember those single serving variety packs of cereal Kellogg’s used to sell in the 1980’s? They were essentially just a bunch of little cardboard boxes — miniature versions of the real box — shrink wrapped together. I think there were 8 boxes in each “bundle”.

(These days, I know they still have single serving sizes of cereal available but they come in their own little plastic bowl now. Totally different experience. Back then, you still needed to supply a bowl.)

Anyway, our family summer vacation each year would involve camping for a few weeks and my Mom would buy us these variety packs for breakfast during the trips.

Obviously, Frosted Flakes was the top prize. Froot Loops were right up there too. Apple Jacks were an excellent choice (though they tend to tear up the roof of your mouth). Corn Pops weren’t exactly a favorite, but a nice treat now and then. Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran, with tons of sugar added manually, were both still edible.

But when it came down to the fourth day of the trip, my sister and I would have to make a decision.

Which was worse?  Special K or Product 19.

We’d fight over this.  It was important — I mean, breakfast IS the most important meal of the day.

More often than not, Product 19 ended up being the worst of the two evils.

Product 19 was like a lump of coal.

It was like eating poisoned Frosted Flakes.

No amount of sugar could, well, sugar coat it.  We tried.  Really, we tried.

I’m not sure my parents would even eat Product 19 — and my dad is a fan of liver.

Yeah, it truly was *that* bad.

Worse, even, than Grape Nuts. (Who’d have thought that was even possible?)

I’d venture to say that the last time I saw Product 19 was in 1985 while on vacation.  It blew my mind this week to see that it was still on the market.

But I certainly wasn’t about to give it another try.  No way.

In the end, I chose Frosted Cheerios to be my cereal of the week. Sadly, they’re tearing up the roof of my mouth as well.

Posted on May 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am by Brainy Smurf
Retro, Food | 1 Comment »