I didn’t get much done this weekend. Motivation isn’t quite at an all time low, but it’s not far off either.

I’d had plans to spend some quality time updating the blog, but it never happened.

I ended up playing an NHL video game instead — for hours. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but according to the computer, the last time I played was back in October which makes me not feel so bad.

Jumping on the bandwagon, even though they’ve been eliminated from the real life playoffs, I played as the Washington Capitals.

Sometimes I wonder how I found the time to even play video games in the past… By past, I mean like over 10 years ago. Seems I never have that time anymore and I have no idea what I’ve filled it with.

I’d also planned on cleaning up the curbside on the far end of the property.

See, we live on a corner, so there’s twice as much ’street’ to clear which entails picking up all of the leaves, sticks and plain old debris that lines the curb. Basically, you want to get as much up yourself so that when the street sweeper (eventually) comes by to pick up all of the sand that’s been spread on to the road over the winter, it leaves the pavement bare for the entire summer.

Yesterday, my wife and I did manage to get out there and get the job done.

Apparently the teenagers across the street from our open lot prefer Taco Bell and Marlboro smokes. Shocking, huh?

How do we know this? Well, our curbside is apparently their late night trash can. It’s also their overnight parking space for some reason even though the family paved their entire front yard (yeah, it looks, um, ghetto) and has plenty of room for all of their run-down vehicles.

In hindsight, I should have put the pieces of their broken glass water pipe on the hood of their mother’s car, but I just threw it out. She strikes me as the type of woman who’d pat her kids on the back for that sort of thing.

Really, who paves their entire front yard??? It’s a single family home with a parking lot for a front yard?!

I hope they move.

Soon.

We’d also planned on getting the basement, um, well, decontaminated. The issue we have down there hasn’t exactly gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better either.

Thursday night we went out and purchase some kitty litter — and I can I just say, that stuff is a bargain! Really. I’ve never had the pleasure of spending so little money at Walmart for something so heavy that I had to struggle on the way out to my car.

The plan was to use the litter to soak up the pooling water — something we’d planned to do this past weekend — but it didn’t happen.

Friday, my wife, she does all the talking, called a local plumbing company to have them come out and take a look at our sludge problem. They’ll be stopping by tomorrow (Tuesday).

The good news from the call is that they confirmed that it was apparently pretty common for the kitchen plumbing not to be connected to the city sewer line in favor of a dry well.

That explains the plumbing that I see in the basement. It also explains the hole I covered with a big rock in the back yard — that’s the dry well and thankfully not some sort of outdated “little house on the prairie” septic tank of some sort like I’d originally worried.

The bad news is that the plumber also told her that, to him, kitchen wastewater is more foul than toilet wastewater. My take is that it was a warning shot meaning that this is going to cost us more than if we had a “real” sewage problem.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, I don’t consider the kitchen sink water to be sewage, but holy crap, it freakin’ stinks…

Last week, for the first time ever, we hired a local landscape company to come out and pick up our leaves.

It’s something that we’d normally do on our own, and in the past, it has been something we’ve done on our own, but it’s probably not something we’ll ever do again.

(Before anyone points it out, I know, I know, wrong time of the year for that sort of thing north of the equator.)

Next door to our house is an open lot which we also own. In the fall, it could be summed up as a leaf magnet.

Each year, we clear the main lot to make the house look nice; raking and blowing towards the empty lot.  Probably not the best strategy, but making sure the main lot looks nice takes priority.

From there, our city requires that we bag the leaves in those giant brown paper bags — like in the picture.

Idea is, you bag the leaves, leave them at the curb, and the city will come around and pick them up over the span of about a month — usually in November.

On paper, it sounds like a great idea.

But there are a few problems…

The first problem is probably unique to our situation — lack of time.

Working for the hockey team all of these years has sucked up our weekends. It’s difficult for us to find the time required (during daylight) to rake and bag the leaves at that time of year because, well, simply put, we didn’t have weekends from September through May.

Now that I’ve left the team, that should no longer be a problem.

The next issue is a financial one. The leaf bags aren’t free. They come in bundles of 5 and you can buy them at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Stop-n-Shop, and pretty much any where else that has some sort of “hardware” aisle.

You can price shop all you want, but bottom line, they come out to around 50 cents per bag. Sounds like a relative bargain, huh?

Typically, at the start of “leaf season”, we’d pick up around 10 bundles. Let me tell you, there’s nothing more upsetting than walking out to the car with a bunch of oversized lunch bags that you just paid over $50 for.

And then it really hits you like a punch in the stomach… You just spent $50 on something that you’re just going to throw out in a matter of hours.

Making matters worse, we’ve always had to go back and buy even more bags. As a result, we’ve never actually cleared and bagged the *entire* yard. I always end up mowing the crap out of them with the lawn mower — finally chopping them into a fine powder by around August. It’s embarrassing to admit.

In the end, I’d say that over the past 3-4 years, we’ve averaged between $60 and $80 spent on those paper bags. That’s PER YEAR.

Add in the time it takes to bag over 100 bags of leaves. It hurts.

Once bagged, we’d end up building a huge pyramid of paper bags at the curb — it actually looked pretty neat.

But then the city wouldn’t come on the day they were scheduled.

Some children would topple the pyramid.

It might rain.

A bag would tip over, spilling leaves all around.  You know, that sort of thing…

Worst case scenario, and one that happened last year — an early snowstorm before the we’d even started bagging. Sigh…

Basically, there are a myriad of problems to be had each year… One big headache… Alongside a back ache, a butt ache, and two heavily blistered thumbs.

But this year, we solved it all with a phone call.

My wife called the company one morning before she went to work last week, and when I arrived home for lunch, our extra lot was clear.

We haven’t received the bill yet, but when you combine the savings on the bags and the time and the lack of blisters, we’ll, I’m pretty certain it will end up being a great deal.

Not that I’m in the market to buy a house right now, but if the foreclosures come like their forecasted too (I’m not holding my breath), I may take a closer look.

Having already purchased a home once, in hindsight, I kinda wish I’d gone the 80/20 route (taking out two loans) so as to avoid paying PMI. Not sure how much of a benefit it would have resulted in, or even if I would have been able to make the payments that first year, but at the time, I didn’t even know it was an option.

But let’s say, for instance, the house next door to me went into foreclosure. I’ve always kinda wanted to “own the block”, you know, take over the neighborhood and eventually name the whole street after myself, so this scenario would be a good start.

What would I do differently now that I understand how loans and, specifically, amortization schedules work?

Well, I’ll tell you…

Let’s say the house next door goes on the market at $200k and my GFI says the bank will loan me up to $240k. I decide to close on the house. For simplicity sake, let’s just say there is no down payment — 100% financed. Interest rates are about 6% these days, no? Well, let’s go with that figure.

I could go with the tried and true method I did with my first home purchase and just borrow the $200k at 6%.

Or… I could go and borrow the full $240k the bank is willing to spot me…

This time, the older and wiser Brainy would borrow the full $240k and then, with my first monthly payment, I’d send the mortgage company the extra $40k right back, knocking the balance back down to $200k.

Wait… what? Why not just borrow the $200k? You’re still sitting on a $200k balance… What’s the difference?

There’s a *HUGE* difference…

With the larger $240k loan, the fixed monthly payment would be $1438.92 which is roughly $240 more per month than a smaller $200k loan would be. That is the only disadvantage. And given the assumption that you can afford a second home, another $240 per month shouldn’t be that great of an issue.

Working greatly in your favor are the interest payments…

With the smaller loan, it would take 30 years and over $430k going towards interest alone.

With the larger loan, and an immediate “extra” payment of the difference ($40k), you’d only pay a little over $143k in interest. As an added bonus, you’d also knock off over 10 years on the term of mortgage.

The end result? A savings of $287k and 10 years of not having to pay a mortgage.

Hardly identical $200k loans, huh?

Sure, some will disagree, “Why not just take the smaller $200k loan and pay the “extra” $240 difference each month…”

Yeah, the number from that method works out about the same, but for me, I’d prefer to have more equity from the start and to be guaranteed to have the mortgage paid off early rather than leaving it up to my own personal financial discretions…

It would also be a great way of eliminating PMI on a 100% financed loan… ;0)

I buy my pants on eBay.

Contrary to what you might think, they don’t even come in a can. Yep, it’s true.

For years, the jeans I wore weren’t exactly designer, but they weren’t from J.C. Penney either. I’d say I was generally spending around $60-$70 on a pair of jeans.

For the past 5 years or so, I’ve bought my jeans at the GAP. They had one style I really liked — the Worker Jean.

Baggy, but not loose meaning the crotch didn’t hang at the knees.

Not a flair cut, but not an 80’s style taper either. You could still plainly see that I indeed did have feet.

No silly carpenter pockets all over one leg. No hammer loops. No rivets in places that should never have rivets. And no silly back pocket embroidery.

Basically, they were stylish enough and didn’t make me look like I was trying to be a teenager.

On a side note, isn’t it comical when you see a guy in his 40’s or 50’s with camo-cargo shorts down to his ankles and a graphic tee from Hollister on? They’re not fooling anyone… Hey, even I’d look ridiculous in an outfit like that…

I owned 7-8 pairs of those GAP jeans at any given time, or over $400 worth.

But then the supply started to dwindle. A hole here, a hole there. It was time splurge a little and renew the wardrobe.

I went online and saw that the GAP no longer offered this “cut”. Oh no.

Disappointed, I bought the closest thing they had — low rise boot cut — and… well, let’s just say that I haven’t worn that pair very often. They’re not the same.

Enter eBay.

Now, my wife used to do the thrift store thing pretty frequently before I met her and I did my best to curb her of that. Thrift stores just aren’t my thing. I mean, I’m not really fond of wearing other people’s discarded clothes. I realize eBay is the same thing, but eBay lacks the musty smell of a Salvation Army or Goodwill store. You can’t deny that.

For me, that makes all the difference.

Recently, I hit the gold mine when it comes to jeans. An eBay seller was offering SIX PAIRS in my size, in my cut, and all in one listing.

Generally when my size comes up on eBay, the pants get a few bids and sell for around $15-$20. Add another $5, or so, for shipping. Still a pretty good deal considering when new, they run around $70. (And from the looks of the pictures, the jeans are as ‘new’ as my low rise boot cuts.)

Since this auction was in a lot of 6 (dumb move on the seller’s part), there wasn’t much competition. There was only one other bidder, and a newbie at that.

Needless to say, I won six pairs of jeans for $32. It’s like an 85%-off sale. That’s less than $6 per pair!

Best of all, they accepted PayPal, so I didn’t even have to use the credit card (which I most certainly would have had I been at the mall.)

That’s a deal you can’t argue with.

I got my first pair of Chuck Taylors in 1985.

At the time they were just coming back into style, and if I didn’t walk in on the first day of school with a sweet new pair of high-tops, well, I’d be destined to be an outcast for the rest of the school year.

My mom probably paid nearly 40 dollars for those in preparation for my big day entering the 4th grade.

I remember thinking I was *so* cool because mine were yellow. A rare colour at the time — those aqua blue ones were the “hot” color back then.

They were also the first pair of canvas shoes I’d ever worn, having followed a long line of leather Nike, Reebok, Pony, Puma, and Kangaroos. Remember Roos? (Seriously, you can never have enough zippered pockets on your shoes.)

But you know what? The All-Stars held up better than any of those leather shoes. I wore those yellow hi-tops right up until 5th grade, when I replaced them with a pair of off-white ones.

Anyway, they quickly fell out of style, as they generally do every 10 years or so, and their prices plummeted. I kept on wearing them and as the years went by, I generally opted for the low-top (or “oxford”) instead of the high top.

In high school, I worked in the shoe department of a clothing store. At the time, the low-top version of the Chuck Taylor was $14.99/pair. Needless to say, I had nearly every colour our store offered.

I even started wearing mismatched colours. Kinda stupid in hindsight, but I was always careful to rotate them evenly just in case, say, I ever wanted to wear two purple ones. They’d both look equally beaten up.

By the time I was in university the price on low-tops had jumped to $24.99. Still very reasonable considering I could get a good solid year out of one pair. At the time I also dabbled a bit with other brands, usually canvas versions of Vans. They just weren’t the same and I always found myself going back to Converse.

After 20 years, it’s not just a shoe, it’s a life style. (Okay, that was over the top.)

Lately though, Chuck Taylors have come back in style.

While that’s good for me — I look mildly trendy again for the first time in over 20 years — it’s really bad for my wallet. Chucks aren’t $14.99/pair anymore. Even $24.99 would be a bargain.

Nope, they top out at over $40 nearly everywhere.

That’s too much for a flap of rubber, some canvas, and a few grommets. Too much for me anyway.

I’ve been on the cheap when it comes to shoes for decades now. So now what?

Enter the knock-off…

Both Walmart and Target carry a low top version of the All-Star. Unfortunately their colour selection is seriously lacking, but the black low top is a classic and with a price tag of $12.99, well, it’s a done deal for me.

I’ve been rotating two pairs of black knock-offs for the past two years. The Target version is identical to the real thing, right down to the brown sole. The Walmart version is a tiny bit different, but unless you’re looking at the bottom, you really can’t tell. They wear just like the latest overpriced Converse.

(Converse used to last longer before Nike took over and changed the “formula” for this classic shoe.)

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the Target knock-offs are manufactured under the same roof as the real thing. They’re that similar, right down to the laces. My new casual everyday shoe of choice.

So, with that, and all the years of savings, I think I’m due for an overpriced pair of sneakers to conquer my most recent goal.

Here’s to hoping I keep it under $100!

I think I took last year off, but in the past, I’ve always been in the parking lot of Walmart at 4:30 am waiting for the doors to open on the Friday after American Thanksgiving.

No, I don’t line up outside in a lawn chair with a thermos full of hot cocoa. In fact, I don’t line up at all. I sit in my nice warm car (with a can of coke) and walk in at a regular pace once they open the doors.

Not once, using this method, have I not been able to get my hands on one of their “specials”.

Sure, they only have 10 of the fancy televisions, or five of the laptops in stock at each store, but every year, I’ve been able to get to them before they’re gone. (Hint — they usually hide the “good” stuff in the aisles of the women’s clothing department).

The funny thing is, even with these opportunities, I’ve never bought anything from Walmart on Black Friday.

Part of it is that I’m a morning person anyway and it’s neat to have “company” for a change in the morning. I also think it has something to do with my tendancy to want to be “part of the excitement” — even if it’s not my own.

Anyway, with Thanksgiving rolling around next week, the Christmas season is nearly upon us and that means it’s time to start making plans to ensure that it’s a non-debt incurring event.

I remember last Christmas being pretty low key in our house. We’d just gotten married and the roof of our house had just been completed — though the payments for it had just begun. There just wasn’t any money around to splurge on the holidays.

This year, the situation is looking a lot different. I don’t forsee any huge expenditures in the near future. Maybe six-seven months down the road, but I’ll get to that later…

Christmas could be a big event this year — under the new budget, the money will be there, if needed, but I don’t think we’ll take advantage of the available cash. I’d have to ask my wife, but looking back, I didn’t have a problem with how Christmas went last year. No, there wasn’t a lot under the tree, but the payload of new socks is still holding strong today — and that’s good enough for me.

So, with that, it should be business as usual over the holidays in our battle to pay down debt.

Okay, fine, I want a Wii — but I know it will never get the use to justify the cost in our house.

Received my new cell phone last night. Took me nearly 10 minutes to get the package open — it came sealed in one of those super sharp plastic enclosures that you need scissors and a crow bar to get open. Thankfully I didn’t cut myself.

Took me another few minutes to get the stubborn battery door off. I was pushing so hard, I was concerned I’d snap the phone in half.

But after that, it was smooth sailing. The phone is a lot smaller than I’d expected. The thing is tiny, but feels nice and solid in my hand. Definitely not a hunk of junk, by any stretch.

I went online to activate the phone and have a number assigned. Not even 30 seconds after submiting the phone’s information, I had a text message come in saying the phone was now active. Quick and painless. Didn’t have to sit on hold, didn’t have to speak to a person, didn’t even have to lift a phone. That’s just the way I like it.

Sadly, my new number contains both zeros and ones — so I can’t say things like, “Yeah, my number is B-R-A-I-N-Y-8,” but that’s okay, I guess. I’ll live.

So far, so good. I’m very happy with the phone. The signal looks good, call quality was better than my Verizon phone. The volume, of a call and the ringer, destroys my old phone. I used to hate how I could never hear the other end of a call and I don’t think that will be a problem with this phone.

Voicemail set-up was short and simple. They even had an option to skip putting in a password each time you want to check messages — and that’s a feature I like. I’m sure Verizon had that option somewhere too, but it certainly wasn’t well advertised.

I also set up my account online to automatically bill me the $20 every 90 days to keep my service active. It comes out to $21.20 including taxes, but wow, I mean, by next month, I will have already cut my costs by $30 and that’s including the cost of the phone itself.

Better phone, better features, better call quality and at one sixth of the cost.

Why didn’t I do this sooner?

While working a golf tournament today, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to bother keeping my cell number when I make the switch to Virgin Mobile later this week.

When I arrived home, I called Verizon Wireless customer service. Amazingly, only a 2-3 minute hold time and the woman I spoke to, Shawnita, spoke perfect English. Things were going well so far.

I was prepared for a fight — you know, them saying I was breaking my contract or something and that it would cost me $175 to cancel, or maybe they’d pull a fast one and try to keep me by offering me even more minutes. You know, the passive aggressive technique credit card companies use when you activate a card. I hate that.

We went through the “verification” things like my name, address, account number, that sort of thing, and then she asked what she could do for me today.

When I told her I’d just like to cancel the service, she responded with the loaded question, “Well, that’s unfortunate Brainy Smurf, is there a reason why?”

“Um, I just don’t use the phone.”

Silence. I heard a few keystrokes and then she said, “Wow, you really don’t use the phone. Can’t argue with that reason.”

And with that, my Verizon Wireless account is no more.

It was so much easier than I expected.

I pulled the trigger this morning after mulling it over all weekend. I’m switching my cell service from Verizon to Virgin Mobile.

I was very tempted to take their most basic phone, the Nokia Shorty, which comes free and with $20 worth of free airtime upon activation, but the old materialistic side of me wanted something that looked a little flashier.

I ended up selecting the red version of the UTstarcom 1400 Slice. It has the options I’d like to have on a phone, you know, like make and receive calls, and more critically, it looks, well, modern? I think that’s why it won out over the Nokia phone. Hey, even one of the reviews on Amazon said hers had been mistaken for one of those LG Chocolate phones… As far as I know, those are expensive.

This way, I get the expensive look without the hefty price tag. Besides, I don’t really know what BlueTooth is, I won’t listen to music on my phone (really, what’s the appeal?), and I’m not really interested in having memory for 1000 different contacts. I’m not sure I even know that many people…

Let’s see… There is Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Jokey, Vanity, Hefty, Baker, Handy, Sleepy, Harmony, and Clumsy… I guess to fill a few extra spots, I could put Gargamel and Azrael’s numbers in there too, but let’s be honest — I’m not actually ever going to call them. Seriously…

Total spent so far is $31.79. I should have the phone later this week at which point I’ll have to activate it. Did I mention that there isn’t a contract either? I’m really upset with myself for delaying this process for so long.

From the way I’m interpreting it, the flat 18 cents per minute plan is what will suit me best, and to keep my phone activated, I need to send in $20 every 3 months. The fine print is kinda tough to understand, but I believe that’s what it boils down to.

It’s unlikely, still, that I’ll use $20 worth of minutes at 18 cents in a 3 month span, but when compared to the $40 per month I’m sending to Verizon currently, this switch will save me over $400 per year.

And for that, I don’t feel so bad about paying $31.79 for the phone.

After following the Happy Rock’s postings this week regarding Virgin Mobile’s pre-paid cell plans, I’ve decided to follow his lead.

I’ve been a customer of Verizon for nearly a decade now. I’m on my third phone with them. The plan I’ve been grandfathered into is what I’d call an affordable rate these days. It’s just shy of $40/month with all of the taxes rolled in. Certainly within my budget.

Problem is — I’d say in that over the entire decade, I’ve used less than 500 minutes. That’s right. I average less than 5 minutes of airtime per month.

That, my friends, is a waste.

Thanks to the Happy Rock, my eyes are now open to the fact that I’m essentially paying $8 per minute at my current rate?

I always considered having a cell phone, given my daily activities and total lack of usage, to be a waste anyway, but on the freak chance I *needed* to make a call (such as after the accident, the convenience of having one available was worth the monthly bill.

Well, with more attractive alternatives out there, those days are nearing an end.