Support The One Fund

 

"Never underestimate the charitable impulse of the American people." 

- Ken Feinberg, Administrator of the One Fund Boston.

Our hearts are heavy in Boston in the aftermath of the tragic bombings at last week's Boston Marathon. Most Bostonian have a connection to the bombing, shooting in Cambridge, lockdown of the city, or manhunt in Watertown. Despite the tragedy, there are so many stories of goodness and people coming together.

Today's Boston Globe has a story about how the Lenox Hotel cooked food for the crime scene investigators. When the hotel ran out of food, other restaurants and hotels sent food. The law enforcement officials left money to pay the workers who lost wages and were volunteering to work to feed them. The workers then told their managers to donate the money to the One Fund for the bombing victims. This is just one of many stories of the kindness and generosity of those dealing with this tragedy.

The One Fund has currently collected over $20 million dollars. The bombing victims will need money to pay for rehabilitation, prosthetics, lost wages, psychological counseling, etc. Many will need a great deal of financial help putting their lives back together. Please consider making a donation the One Fund to help the bombing victims.

Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's 4/9

 

Three words: free ice cream. Now that I've got your attention. Tuesday, April 9 is free cone day at Ben & Jerry's. If you are an ice cream fan, you can stop by your local participating Ben & Jerry's and enjoy a free ice cream cone.

Bring On Spring

It's that time of year when I look forward longingly to the warmer, longer days of spring. Winter is hanging on strong. Today the temperature was in the 30s with a cold, winter wind. Despite having to still wear my winter coat and gloves, I have seen the signs that spring and warmer weather will be here soon. Patriot's Day, a mere couple of weeks away, is usually the turning point around here where all of a sudden everything blooms and the weather is warm.

To bring on spring, here are the top eight things about spring that I am most looking forward to:

1. Everything blooms. Red tulips blooming in our front yard is the first sign on spring. The green tulip stems have already broken through the ground. The purple crocuses are up in the front yard. In the next couple of weeks, the red buds of the tulips will bloom. We also have a container garden in the backyard with a couple of strawberry plants. Last year, we totally neglected it and we were rewarded with a couple of ripe strawberries a day during late spring and early summer.
2. Ice cream at the Bubbling Brook. Every year on the first warm weekend of the summer, we go to Bubbling Brook in Westwood for dinner and ice cream. They have a take out stand and a grassy area near a bubbling brook (hence, the name) with picnic tables.
3. Volante Farms for fresh produce and ice cream. As the days get warmer. Volantes has more fresh, locally grown produce available. Their home grown strawberries are the best I've ever had. Last year, they opened an ice cream stand that we frequented often. 
4. Longer Days. I so enjoy having the sun stay up until the early evening. I like to go for an evening walk in spring/summer to see the glorious sunset as I walk down the hill back to our house.
5. Dining alfresco. The longer days mean that we can eat dinner outside on our deck. The evenings that we do this seem to be more relaxed. We take advantage of it whenever the weather allows.
6. Baseball. Alex's baseball schedule came out today. I'm looking forward to the evenings when we get to see his games. Also, listening to Jerry and Don's banter during a Red Sox game means summer to me.
7. Iced coffee. I love iced coffee, but I can only drink it when it's warm out. A Dunkin Donuts hazelnut is my favorite summer treat. I also enjoy McDonalds iced coffee and you can't beat the $1 price.
8. Wearing flip flops. Goodbye, boots. Hello, flip flops.

Okay, so come on spring. Get here soon so that I can start enjoying my favorite things about you. Boston.com has a list of 25 things to do this spring in Boston for under $25.

March Money Madness

The NCAA college basketball March Madness tournament has dominated our television watching this weekend in the Morrison household. My two guys have both filled out March Madness brackets so they have a vested interest in what teams are winning. One of them picked Kansas to win. The other one picked Gonzaga.

In today's column, Michelle Singletary shares a link to www.financialfour.org created by the National Endowment for Financial Education and the Financial Planning Association. It's an interactive bracket of 32 financial goals that you can use to pick your most important money issues.

The winning pick is "Live within your means." That's what I picked too. My final four were:

• Emergency savings.
• Adequate insurance.
• Tackle debt.
• Live within your means.

What are your picks?

 Also in her column, Michelle Singletary shares a link to www.smartaboutmoney.org. It's a program of the National Endowment for Financial Education with 10 basic steps to meet your goals.

Good luck with your March Madness bracket picks, financial or otherwise.

How Mint Changed My Life

A couple of weeks ago we signed up for Mint. Mint.com is a free, online personal financial site owned by Intuit. It consolidates all of your saving, checking, investment, and credit card accounts in one place. I have seen it recommended at other financial planning blogs and websites and had been meaning to try it. I'm so glad that I did. It's one of those things where I asked myself why I had waited so long to give it a try.

What I love about it is that I only have to remember one user name and password. I log on and Mint updates all of my accounts in one place. Before using Mint, I had to log into each account separately. There were some accounts like my 401K or IRA that I rarely checked because it was a pain to remember or look up the site, username, and password. Now, I log onto mint.com and I see an overview of all my accounts and their current value. I can click on any account and see all of the recent transactions.

Initially, it was a little bit of work entering all of our accounts. Craig entered his accounts too so that we can see his accounts, my accounts, and our joint accounts. We have also entered our mortgage, estimated home value, and car values. With all this info entered, Mint gives us an overview of all of our assets and debts with our net worth. This is a great motivator for saving. We want to see the net worth number go up so I hope that will make us spend less and save more. It goes back to the Suze's third rule from last week's post to "simply try to get as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending."

Mint has a Take a Tour function that will guide you through the following sections of the site:

• Alerts - Tells you when bills are due or when you have gone over budget. You can set it up to get an email and/or a text message. Coincidentally, when Craig signed up, he saw that some criminal had fraudulently charged tickets on Air India on his credit card. He called the credit card company and got it cleared up. If he hadn't noticed the charge on Mint, it would have been more of a headache to correct.
• Advice - Offers advice on saving opportunities and recommends ways to meet your goal. The explanation says, "As we get to know you, we'll begin to offer easy-to-follow advice based on your lifestyle and goals." The "as we get to know you" seems a bit creepy to me. I've been avoiding the "Advice" section because my feeling is that it's there to sell me products that they've identified I might be interested based on my buying/saving history. This is most likely their subtle advertising and what makes Mint free.
• Bills - Organizes your bills and sends email or text reminders about upcoming bills.
• Budget - Based on average amount spent on each category, Mint sets up a recommended budget.
• Taxes - Claims to help prepare taxes, estimate your refund, and find deductions. This is a tie-in to TurboTax which is also owned by Mint.
• Goal - You can set certain goals and use their calculators to see if you are on track to reach your goal.
• Investments - Gives you a high-level view of your investments with fancy charts.
• Ways to Save - Suggests best offers and ways to save. See the description for Advice.
• Trends - Shows charts and history of your accounts.
• Accounts - Shows you all of the balances for your accounts with your net worth.

The other cool thing is that Mint sends a weekly report of the changes for that week to your accounts. Although, I usually check it on a daily basis so the weekly report really doesn't tell me anything that I don't already know. Still, it's nice to effortlessly get a weekly summary of how your spending went for the week. Overall, I've really enjoyed using Mint and being able to view all of my accounts in one place.

People First, Then Money, Then Things, Then Jackets

 I have a confession to make: I watch the Suze Orman Show. I don't always agree with her advice, but I do like her fundamental advice to get people to face up and deal with their financial problems. I enjoy her "Can I Afford it" segments where she reviews a viewers finances to approve or deny a purchase that they want to make. She shouts, "You've been approved!" or "You've been denied!" depending on what the case may be. We like to guess which way she's going to go. Craig does a mean impression of her "You've been denied!" Suze has a very wacky personality. Kristin Wiig did a great impression of her in an SNL skit a few years back where she altered Suze's catch phrase to "People first, then money, then things, then jackets." Suze does have quite a unique collection of jackets. If you watch the show, you have to put up with Suze calling people, "Boyfriend," "Girlfriend" or cringe "Love Bug."

This week Suze gave the following three rules of financial advice to live by:

1. Ask yourself is this a want or a need:
   "If it is a need, then buy it. You have to buy something that you need. If it is a want, you are to walk away and let it go. Now you have to understand, you need food to survive. So you go to the grocery store and you buy food. You want to go to a restaurant. Get the difference?"
2. Simply lived below your means but within your needs:
   "If you can afford a 3,000 square foot house to buy, you don't need a 3,000 square foot house. Maybe all you need is a 2,000 square foot house. buy what you need not what you think you can afford. So live below your means but within your needs."
3. Simply try to get as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending:
   "Why is it when you're depressed you have to go out and buy something that you don't even really like after you purchased it? Why is it that you feel that the only pleasure you can get in life is when you go out to eat or spend money at a bar? Why can't you just simply get as much pleasure out of sending in that extra mortgage payment, sending in that payment to do what, deposit into your Roth IRA for your retirement?

The Magical Age of Six

Today Alex turned seven. As his birthday was rapidly approaching, I really did my best to savor the remaining days of life with a six-year-old. It seems like Alex's childhood is flying by making me so aware of how fleeting and sweet this time is. In December, we were cramming in as many fun, kid, holiday events as we could realizing that we may have very few Christmases left believing in Santa. Then the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT happened. It hit close to home because I know what six looks like.

Six is that magical time of toothless grins, laughter, singing, and playing from waking in the morning until going to sleep at night. It's the time of finding knock knock jokes hysterical and learning a new thing every day. It's the time of being independent enough to do things on your own, but young and innocent enough to carelessly enjoy everything before the reality and sometimes disappointing outside world takes that away.

It's the sweet spot of parenting. Your child is old enough not to be watched every second and to do things on his own like get dressed. He's also still young enough to sit on your lap and cuddle. You can still hold his hand while you are walking home from school without him pulling away so as not to be embarrassed in front of his friends. I feel like these are the golden years and that I should cherish them.

As Alex gets older, I grieve the previous age. I realize, though, if we didn't move onto the next age that we would miss out on experiencing Alex and what he's like at each age. Sure, we miss how cute he was as a baby and toddler. (Although, I'd happily skip age three which Alex spent in a permanent state of time out.) If we didn't move on from the baby and toddler age, we'd miss out on the fun of the early elementary years. We'll have to say goodbye to Alex at this age to see what he's like in middle school and during the dreaded teen years. We'll have to get through the teen years to see how he turns out as an adult. Until that happens, I'm going to savor these early years. Happy 7th birthday, Alex!