Starting to sense a theme this week?

After reading yesterday’s post, my wife couldn’t help but point out one of my Christmas gifts from her mother.

So, as I crunch away while watching the season premiere of the Biggest Loser (a guilty pleasure), it’s become apparent that sometimes happiness can actually come from eating yellow snow.

I mean, I’m not certain that any advice that I’d give could be considered sound. I just talk about what I’m doing, what I’ve done, why I’m doing it, and why I’ve done it.

For the most part, it’s worked out pretty well for me.

If you want to mimic the way I successfully got myself out of debt, you know, follow my lead, by all means, go right ahead!

Of course, I write this post a mere three days after offering some real estate advice… Go figure?

Anyway, the Bazooka Joe comic pictured is one that I’ve carried in my wallet since, hmmmm, probably 1999. A kid I used to sit with at hockey games (and was always chewing gum) gave me a piece of gum one night and this was the comic enclosed:

The comic itself is pretty stupid, as expected, but the fortune at the bottom still makes me smile to this day.

Happy is one who eats not the yellow snow.

Now that’s sound advice.

Maybe it’s that hint of Yoda-ness that strikes me, I dunno, but I wish fortune cookies would have such funny messages.

This year, I’ve got nothing.

I’m saving up for a home improvement project without a price tag.

It’s too, um, fluffy for my tastes.

So, in a desperate search for something more specific that I can keep track of — and after reading Frugal Dad’s resolution about downsizing his home (and concluding that while it will work out well for him, it would be a horrible idea for me), I’ve been toying with the idea of hitting the mortgage hard.

Over the past two years, my debt attacking strategy has knocked around $25k per year off of my combined debt balances. At a pace like that — now, finally, with no other debt besides the mortgage — I could theoretically pay off the house in 4 years.

I mean, just last year, when I set out to overpay the mortgage by $6100, I instead ended up knocking $11k off of the principle, almost double, while still paying down the credit cards and an auto loan.

I can totally “afford” to do this.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s dumb to pay off your mortgage early… But I think it’s even stupider to downsize a home that you can easily afford, while likely taking a loss on it as well.

Now, Frugal Dad intends to pay off his future mortgage (for the smaller home) in 10 years time. Maybe that means that I didn’t fall into the bigger is better trap of the last decade because, if I pay mine off in the next 4 years, I’ll essentially be paying it off in 10 years as well.

Regardless, the thought of being just 36 years old and owning my home free and clear (with no other outstanding debt) kind of outweighs the stupidity of it all. Different strokes for different folks.

Still on the fence about it though…

Exciting times, let me tell you…

This was our first trip since August when we accumulated $45.40 in the span of an hour.

While there wasn’t any creepy old man drama this time, we had the place to ourselves, we didn’t come away with quite as much cash in our hands.

Total bounty was $41.25 (825 bottles and cans) and it took us about 45 minutes to feed the machines. Not bad when you consider that that’s a better reward than my credit cards offer!

But it’s frightening to think that we average over 200 cans of carbonation per month — that’s like a 6-pack per day?!

Holy crap — It’s a wonder that I still have my teeth!

(That last line was to remind myself that I have a dentist appointment next week.)

The Dow finished up almost 3%. The NASDAQ was up 3.5%. Those are HUGE gains.

So…where’d this rally come from? It was up, up, and up right from the opening bell.

Bernanke didn’t announce anything. I didn’t hear Paulsen’s name in the news today. Obama’s laying low. No signs of all the money Madoff lost… What gives?

You can’t tell me that it’s some sort of New Year optimism — I mean, in the “real” world, flipping the calendar page from December to January is just like any other page flip.

For me, today was just a regular Friday at work.

Sure, we had yesterday off, but I can’t claim that the office had a “new” mood running rampant. I didn’t sense any optimism — indifference would more accurately describe the atmosphere lately.

I can’t believe that it would actually be *this* different on Wall Street.

Apparently it is…

He, his wife, and their infant daughter are currently living in his parents house and, his words, “It’s time.”

There’s a bit of a language barrier between us being that we’re from opposite ends of the planet, but we’re both around the same age, I’d assume that we make about the same amount, and I like to think that our goals overlap quite a bit. Must be an immigrant thing… I dunno…

So far he’s been looking at some pretty affluent areas and I think he’s been discouraged by the price tag attached to homes in those towns.

I grew up in one of those towns. In fact, it’s one that he had on the very top of his list.

Now, people can say that the reputation of the local school system is an important aspect when it comes to settling on a home, he actually mentioned it, but I think that I would have been perfectly happy living two towns over in a house twice the size — and no, the surrounding towns aren’t/weren’t ghettos.

Besides, the heralded school system that I came out of certainly didn’t prepare me for university. It may have earned me acceptance at a few schools (that I didn’t attend anyway), but no matter how you slice it, I feel that my high school education was substandard.

Academically, I was NOT prepared for higher education.

For that, I blame the school system. It was, and still is, over-hyped. Really, they’re still bragging about some award the school system won in 1985…

Other than telling him that the school system in the town he was looking at sucks (and has only gotten worse over the past 24 years since they ‘won’ that award), I told him that my advice would be to pick a house with a great location — don’t worry so much about the town.

He smiled and laughed out a, “Location, location, location…” while waving his finger.

Evidently, he’d heard that before.

Further, I told him to avoid living on a corner if at all possible which resulted in a very confused look.

The house I’ve lived in for the past 6+ years is on a corner. The house I lived in with my parents for over a decade was also on a corner. I’ve got some experience when it comes to living on a corner.

While there are some perks, like being able to give people really simple directions (”Yeah, it’s on the corner of Garden and Glen Hollow”), they don’t outweigh the negatives…

One annoyance is that there’s always a school bus stop in your lawn when you live on a corner. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re one of those people who really values the appearance of your lawn, good luck getting grass to grow there.

Further, on the subject of lawn care, when you live on a corner, chances are that there are street signs in your lawn. You know, street signs, stop signs, and speed limit signs?

Ever have to mow around those?

It’s tough — requiring you to have to weedwack too. Doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but if you live on a corner, you know what I’m taking about…

Does the city have sidewalks? Guess what, in the winter it’s the law to shovel them within 6 hours of the completion of a snow storm. If you live on the corner, well, you’ve got to shovel the sidewalk on two sides of your property rather than just one like everyone else. Hardly a perk…

Another problem with living on a corner is that, at night, car’s headlights will shine into your house when they take the corner. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced this problem because the direction that cars making the turn towards my house has always been desolate. The people across the corner from us, well, I’m sure their bedroom lights up with every passing car. That would suck — even on a low-traffic street.

When you live on the corner, people who walk their dogs think your property is their toilet. It sorta makes sense if you think about it, you know, with all of the street signs, cable boxes, and fire hydrants that you have on your property, dogs love it. It’s like a playground for them or something… I often think the dogs “hold” it on their walks until they reach a corner.

But the largest hassle you’ll encounter, for whatever reason, when you live on a corner is that, besides dog $h!t, your yard also becomes a depository for Taco Bell wrappers and 7-11 Big Gulp cups.

People also seem to enjoy emptying their car ashtrays in front of your house too. It’s… nice.

Actually, it’s disgusting.

My street has very little traffic, maybe one car per hour on a busy day, but I still end up having to pick up trash along the corner more than 3 times per week. Our next door neighbors?

Well, I’d venture to guess that they think we’re pigs since we always have garbage in our yard.

Evidently, they’re unaware of what it’s like to live on a corner.

December of 2008 essentially canceled out my dismal November, which is good, but I’ve still got a long way to go to make up for my 5-figure loss in the month of October…

No matter, you have to get going somewhere and it looks like December was my first month on the road to recovery.

Here’s the breakdown:

Cash:
Getting that third paycheck at the end of the month (due to New Year’s Day falling on my normal pay day) padded this number some and also allowed me to pay off some credit card debt at the last minute.

Savings:
This is the result of my mildly successful aggressive savings plan. While yesterday’s news (ING lowered their rate) is a little upsetting, if I can keep this kind of pace up until the smurfling is born, well, I’ll be in great shape — you know, to start a renovation plan for, ahem, that room…

Gov’t Bonds:
Considering that I’ve only got $600 tied up in these things, a gain of four bucks is pretty neat-o!

401k:
No complaints here. All the reports you hear are about how the stock market lost over 40% of it’s value in 2008, but my investments rose nearly 6% in the last month. Overall, for the entire year, I lost around 34%, but the fact that it went up a reasonable amount in December is reaffirming that it’s the right place to have such a large amount of my assets

Home:
Can you say recovery? Ha! A little too early for that, but hey, after three months of decline, again, I’m not complaining.

Auto 1 & Auto 2:
Hmmmm… The both took a pretty large hit this month. Not sure what’s up with that, but I won’t let it bother me because I don’t owe a dime on either of them.

Credit Cards:
Zilch. Zero. Nada. Remember that Black Friday Derailment I had at the end of November? Well, it didn’t hit my credit card until December, but yesterday’s paycheck paid every last cent of it off.

Auto Loans:
Have I mentioned that I paid these off? 2008 was a great year for me financially.

Other Loans:
Nothing to report.

Mortgage:
More movement that last month but still not very much to get excited about. Evidently I have made the transition from debt repayment to savings, which I thought was impossible back in July, but I really hope I can find the funds to knock around $1000 off the mortgage principle each month *and* still be able to keep up my savings routine.

I did pretty well on my goals for 2008. I mean, I certainly can’t complain.

In order of completion, I managed to increase my 401k contributions to 15% of my income, I eliminated all of my credit card debt, I paid down enough principle on my mortgage to have PMI removed (though it never actually happened), and I paid off all of my auto loans.

That’s a pretty decent set of achievements and I’m proud of every single one of them!

But there were a couple more goals on my list…

One, that I considered lofty, was to have $10k in savings.

Here, on the last day of the year, I’m finding myself in a bit of a grey area. I don’t feel that I accomplished the goal but by a technicality (my paycheck was deposited today instead of tomorrow because of the holiday), I actually have $10k at my disposal.

Just saying that blows my mind but, honestly, it doesn’t feel real.

And it isn’t all in my savings account right this minute, but it could be, so that goal was pseudo accomplished as well.

The final goal was to increase my passive income. That was a wishy-washy goal from the get-go and though my “side income” decreased by over $13k this past year, I managed to increase my 100% passive income… by just $63 over the entire year.

Hey, it’s better than nothing, right? It’s not like I “worked” for it…

So, with that, I can’t say that I accomplished all of my goals, but I think I took care of the big ones.

Hopefully 2009 goes even better — though my goals for the coming year are far less specific.

Interest Rate Change to 2.472% (2.50% APY)

Can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but it’s still disappointing…

Why didn’t I start sooner?

Okay, that’s what I’m using. My wife “just knows”.

As of today, it says we’re 140 days in and have 140 more days to go. Of course, if you’re reading this tomorrow (or the next day or the day after that), it says something completely different.

No matter what, as painfully exciting as it is, it still seems like a *really* loooooonnnnnggggg way to go…

To pass the time, or prepare, actually, we’ve been reading a bunch of those eerily similar pregnancy books. I’ve found that most of them are horribly negative and I’m beginning to understand why every single woman claims to have had a “difficult” pregnancy.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m one of those guys at work who rolls his eyes every time a group of women start bragging about how their pregnancy was more difficult than anyone ever since the dawn of time — it’s like it’s a competition or something…

The books, primarily geared towards women, are mostly to blame. They are nothing but doom and gloom.

The doctors, from my perspective, aren’t any better. Everything is a problem…or has the potential to be a problem. EVERYTHING!

It’s preposterous. I mean, seriously, there are an awful lot of people out there having perfectly healthy babies. Even the crack-whores are doing it.

Pregnancy can’t possibly be that treacherous…

One book, or author, that’s stood out so far has been Jenny McCarthy.

Weird, really, if you think about it (and you know who she is), but her books are the only ones that we’ve come across where they tell it like it is and just advise you to roll with it and, well, enjoy it.

She doesn’t dwell on the doom and gloom. That’s refreshing.

The book that I’ve been reading most recently is called “The Expectant Father” by Armin A. Brott and Jennifer Ash.

It’s not very good — just a hodge-podge assembly of a bunch of brutally obvious stuff that’s been fully covered in the books more geared towards women. The “man” slant they put on things is minimal. Really, it’s just like all of the other books, just with a dress shirt on the front.

The book does devote an entire chapter to money though. Month 4, the month we’re in right now, is apparently when I’m supposed to wonder if I can afford this…

Um, a little late for that, don’t you think?

Anyway, the advice isn’t very sound so I won’t go into the details. Perhaps it’s because the book was originally published in 1995 (with an update in 2001).

And seriously, when the baby is still negative 5 months old, I’m not exactly worried about paying for braces.

Should I be?

I don’t think so.

One passage in the book that I did enjoy with was in the chapter for the seventh month (yeah, I got ahead of myself…). It’s regarding the difference in how men and women visualize the coming baby:

Pregnant women generally dream and fantasize about babies, while expectant dads tend to imagine themselves with three- to five-year-old children. That was certainly true for me. In almost every dream or fantasy that I had involving children while my wife was pregnant, I was holding hands, leaving footprints on the beach, or playing catch — all things you can’t do with an infant. My wife, in contrast, dreamed of a palm-sized hairless baby who talked to her like an adult.

Wow, apart from the “leaving footprints on the beach” part, that pretty much sums up how I’ve been envisioning things.

On the subject, my wife got upset earlier this week when I mentioned that I was coming to think that the whole “new baby” experience would almost be anti-climactic.

I mean, sure, it will be exciting — we made a person! — but a newborn doesn’t really “do” anything. Will that initial excitement last? Will all of this anticipation be worth it?

I mean, babies just sit there like lumps, don’t they? They don’t even appear to do any tricks… Even puppies can do tricks. Babies? Well, they eat and poop.

Sorry, but from my perspective that short and limited routine will get old really fast…

So my wife made me feel like a jerk, probably rightfully so, but that passage in the book made me feel like I’m not the only father that isn’t exactly looking forward to the first year or so. I even had to read it out loud to her.

Year two, three, four, or five — well, that’s when I imagine the excitement begins. I’ll be able to teach the toddler how to do, um, tricks besides eating and pooping!

I can still do a mean somersault without hurting myself (though there’s always a possibility of a major muscle pull) and I can’t wait to show someone who’s never done one how to do it my own special way.

It’s funny though how it’s as though my wife has had a total change of heart regarding young, young babies. I don’t think she envisions her baby speaking to her like an adult, but I do think she imagines that it will be able to do all kinds of things.

I mean, for years now we’ve silently poked fun at couples we’ve seen bringing their newborns to the zoo or sporting events or whatever.

I mean, really, the baby’s not going to remember any of that. They’re not. The kid is just there for the ride. That’s right, you paid extra admission for something your child is too young to remember. Ha-ha…

Really, we’d laugh about this sort of thing and then declare that that would never happen with us — but now…well, I can already see it on the horizon…

We’ll be at the Bronx Zoo next summer taking our brand new $450 stroller/swing/car seat contraption out for it’s maiden voyage and a very trying day out in public. Oh, how I don’t look forward to that 2-hour car ride home…

But that isn’t to say that I won’t want to leave the house at all during that first year. I will, I just won’t want to pay admission to do it…or sit in the car for hours…

I mean, I’ll find just as much enjoyment taking the stroller out to see if anything has filled all of the vacant Steve & Barry’s yet…

Guess what? They don’t charge admission for that!