Practical Parenting - The First Six Months

These are tips and products that I found to be helpful in my son's first six months of life, ordered as chronologically as possible.

1. Saline nasal spray! If you are having a baby in winter, I hope I can save you from the faux cold I developed at the hospital in the days after my son was born.  One of my nurses explained to me that the air in the hospital is very dry, and it dries out your sinuses which causes runny nose, congestion, and could potentially develop into an infection.  This was especially inconvenient because my son was in the NICU.  I kept expecting them to tell me I couldn't visit until my symptoms were gone, but fortunately that didn't happen.  Saline nasal spray would've kept me from feeling sick in the first place. A humidifier might help in one room, but it can't humidify your whole house. Saline nasal spray goes where you go.
2. For those who anticipate a vaginal birth, get a butt donut!  It's shocking to me that this is not standard issue.  It's painful to sit directly on hard surfaces after childbirth.  Especially with our son in the NICU, there was a lot of sitting when I would rather have been lying down.  You can search for inflatable donut pillow or cushion, but it looks like this.

   

   Butt Donut Cushion

3. Once we all got home from the hospital, I thought the sinus issues would clear up on its own (I hadn't tried saline nasal spray yet). It resolved a little and then got worse because I was cooped up in my home with the heat running. This leads to my second tip: Get out of your house every single day! You need fresh air, sunlight, and exercise. This will help your sanity and physical health.  I was miserable the first month of my son's life because I felt sick and was trying to avoid him (other than to breastfeed) in case I was actually contagious.  I know getting out of the house is hard, but it's important.
4. Fed is best!  Breastfeeding is hard, and society makes us feel like we have to do it or we're bad moms. Ignore that! Anecdote is not evidence. Economist Emily Oster from Brown University wrote a book called Cribsheet (highly recommend it) that in Chapter 4 dives into every study she could find on breastfeeding and how it affects development. In short, once you control for things like the socioeconomic status of the mother, whether the mother smokes, etc, there are essentially no differences in IQ, obesity rates, allergy or asthma rates, height, cavities, blood pressure, or SIDS rates.  So, if you want to breastfeed, go for it! If you don't, go for it! I breastfed at the beginning because I hate doing dishes, it's cheaper (not free cause mom ends up eating more), and travels easier.  We switched to formula eventually, and I loved that we could switch off in the middle of night, could feed our baby in a car seat while the car was moving, and less work for me specifically.  Breastfeeding is also very painful for the first 6-ish weeks and, if you have to be away from your baby for more than a few hours, means you have to pump. Do whichever makes your own personal pro-con list the best to you. The most important thing is that your baby eats.
5. If you choose to breastfeed and have a baby in the NICU, you may be encouraged to pump to help with supply. (The short version: Your body makes more milk if you extract more milk.). Pumping output the first days will be measured in milliliters. Watching precious milliliters get stuck in the pump pieces is so disheartening.

   

   Look at all the places colostrum/milk can get lost in a full pump

   Before your milk comes in (i.e., the volume increases),  I would hand express directly into a syringe or container instead of messing with an electric pump. You can also use a Haakaa if you have one.  Anything that shortens the distance the milk has to travel.

   

   Hand expression into the funnel means less lost milk

   
   

   

   Haakaa

   
   
6. Once your milk comes in, you may start using an electric pump to store milk for when you're not around or when you go back to work. In either of these situations, the nursing-pumping bra is a game changer!  

   

   Nursing-pumping bra has nursing clips and openings for breast pump flanges.

   I didn't have to take my shirt and bra off at work because I was already wearing a pumping bra. Didn't have to change into a nursing bra when I got home, cause I was still wearing it.  If I had received this bra while I was on maternity leave, I know I would have used it then too.  The one I have didn't come with padding, but I was wearing breast pads to absorb leakage anyway, and the bra having removable padding made pumping easier.
7. Here's a bunch more breastfeeding tips rapid-fire style.  A) Make baby slightly uncomfortable if they keep falling asleep during feeds. We would turn on all the lights and strip him down to his diaper.  B) Use Lanolin in the early weeks to help soothe your nipples.  C) Clean your nipples after every feed so the milk/saliva/lanolin mixture doesn't turn into clogs. I had to take tweezers to my nipples to get the coating off them. D) Wearing these Nipple Shells between feeds kept my bra from rubbing against them when it was especially raw.  E) In the first few weeks, my lactation consultant told me that if the initial latch hurt, count down from 10, and if it still hurt, then the latch wasn't right and to try again.  F) Your hospital should have lactation consultants, use them while you're there. It's harder to get to the breastfeeding help once you are discharged from the hospital.  G) This one is slightly controversial. If your having severe nipple pain, use one side only per feed. It gave my other nipple like 5 whole hours of rest. Also, he would stop latching when he'd gotten enough to be satisfied but would keep eating if I didn't switch sides. Once your nipples heal, go back to feeding on both sides. H) Get a Haakaa.  It allowed me to pump while feeding on the other side. It was also a great travel pump so we could have a date night over the holidays and leave the baby with his Grandparents. It saves time washing all those pump parts too.  Here are a couple videos I used to develop my own hybrid Haakaa technique:  Video on how to start let down and Video on how to attach it after milk is flowing. I would have a container/bottle with a lid next to you to empty it when it fills up or if it comes off with milk in it. Don't try to reattach a half-full Haakaa. I spilled milk, and I cried.
8. In the first few months, NO ONESIES!  Who thought up this great idea: Let's make clothing that goes over their heads before they can hold up their heads.  Parents will need a third hand, Brilliant! Ugh. Stick with clothing that opens from the front like sleepers and rompers.

   

   Snap-up sleeper with the 4-snap crotch

   
   

   

   Zippered Sleeper

   Rompers are great for warm months, sleepers for night and cold months.

   

   Snap-up Romper

   My son essentially only wore a sleepers and rompers until he could hold his head up on his own.
9. Get sleepers with fold-over mittens instead of getting separate mittens.  Mittens was always a weird baby item to me.  Now I understand why they exist  Even if you trim their nails everyday, they still manage to scratch up their faces.  Small items get lost though, so avoid buying individual mittens.  Not every brand of sleeper has the fold-over mittens, but the common ones that do are Target's Cloud Island, Carter's Sleep N Play, Old Navy,  Kickee Pants' Footies, and Burt's Bees Baby. In a pinch, baby socks work just as well.

   

   Sleeper sleeve unfolded mitten

   
   

   

   Sleeper sleeve fold-over mitten

   
   
10. Speaking of scratching themselves, baby nail clippers are impossible to use. Everything's so small and baby's move unexpectedly.  I cut his skin once and avoided trimming his nails for weeks afterwards; we kept his hands in socks for most of that time.  Eventually, my husband bought us a rotating sander baby nail file.

    

    Electric Nail Trimmer

    It has a light so you can see what you're doing, multiple grits for different ages, and spins clockwise or counterclockwise at two different speeds. It made nail maintenance tolerable.
11. If you are planning to get a portable crib or playard, make sure it is comfortable for your baby to sleep in.  Our son never would sleep well in the bassinet or pack n play as a newborn, and even now that he sleeps 11+ hours a night, he looks visibly uncomfortable in the 2 hotel pack n plays we've tried. Get a playard that is directly on the ground or that has significant structure (look at the supports underneath) with a padded fitted sheet to keep the base warm and provide more padding.  He sleeps so much better when we travel with the padded fitted sheet and the higher quality playard. If you can physically touch the assembled pack n play, push down on the mattress from corner to corner to check for stability, strange bumps, and cushion. If you are shopping online for one with the mattress suspended off the ground, look for pictures of underside; the shape of the supports will tell you most of what you want to know. They all pretty much have an X, but it's the extra support that seems to make the difference. The supports of the one we have look like a tall infinity sign with additional long-edge supports. It's a Baby Trend Playard from 2003.

    

    Baby Trend Playard underside supports

    The other one we've used that worked pretty well was shaped like an asterisk with 8 ground contacts. It's a Graco Pack N Play TotBloc Playard.

    

    Graco Pack N Play TotBloc Playard underside supports

    The ones with only an added short-dimension-middle support are terrible. The one shown below is a Graco Pack N Play.

    

    Graco Pack N Play underside supports

    The absolute worst one we've ever tried was the Foundations Sleep N Store Portable Playard. It had a raised hard section down the middle, a cardboard-thin mattress, and flimsy supports (you can tell because it's like half the size of our good Baby Trend one when folded up). He woke up an extra 5 times the night we used it. I don't have a picture of the supports, but its shape looks a lot like the Graco Pack N Play's just with thinner bars.
12. One of the more frequent, frustrating interactions I had with my newborn son was always in the middle of the night.  My husband's asleep, and it's my turn to get up with the crying baby.  Change his diaper, no improvement.  Try to feed him, not interested.  Ok, he's probably gassy.  I don't think the gas drops ever worked.  Try the Windi.  According to their website, the Windi is "a hollow tube that safely, naturally and instantly relieves gas and calms colic."  It really does relieve gas instantly. 

    

    Windi

    

    Inside of a Windi

    You lube up the tube, insert it into their butt hole, and out comes gas (and likely poop too).  There are some caveats: A) It doesn't work for all types of gas, only gas that is far enough into their intestinal tract; B) the baby can become dependent on the external aid, so use it sparingly.  Our rule of thumb was that Windi's were a last resort after you've tried everything else first and only if it is also the middle of the night.
13. Sleep training works. Sleep is important for all of you. See Chapter 11 of Cribsheet for evidence that it works and how to do it better than I could explain it.  Don't try too early though, your baby won't be physically capable of sleeping 6+ hours until sometime around month 4.

Debt Calculator

How long will it take me to get out of debt?  How do I figure out what order to pay off my debts?  Which debt payoff method should I use?  These are all questions I've heard many times, and without getting very personal details from the asker, the best answer I know is to send them to an online debt calculator.  Problem is I didn't like the ones I was finding.

Solution:  I decided to make my own debt calculator.  It compares the time and amount of interest paid if you were to pay the minimum payments for the life of each loan versus three debt pay-off methods: Debt Avalanche, Debt Snowball, and Debt Spiral.  I made it in Google Sheets so that people could download their own copy and keep the results without worrying that they were downloading a virus.

Frugal Fanatic's Debt Calculator - Google Sheets Version

When you click on the link above, it'll take you to this page.

By clicking "Make a copy," it will add a copy of the Debt Calculator to your Google Drive.  If you don't have a Google account and don't want to make one for some reason, here's a downloadable Excel version.

If you have questions about how to use it, find any bugs, or have any feedback about features that you would like, please leave a comment here.

Why You Don't Want a Tax Refund

In case you hadn't heard, Tax Day was this week.  As I was perusing my preferred news outlet, I came across a link to this article.  It explains how criminals file tax returns on behalf of others, both living and dead, taking advantage of several flaws in our tax system.  A young couple, for example, was supposed to get a $3,500 tax refund this year, but because someone else already filed taxes as the husband, it would be months or years before they see a dime.  This couple was going to use the refund to help with the downpayment on a house, but now they're going to have to move in with his mother.

I have two issues with this article:  

1. While $3,500 is a substantial chunk of change, it should never be the difference between BUYING A HOUSE and MOVING IN WITH MOMMY. In other words, this couple is probably not even close to being ready financially to buy a house.
2. Why in the world is your refund $3,500 in the first place?  

I know that most people see tax returns as "surprise" money, but it's YOUR money and you are loaning to the government, interest-free.  If this couple had set-up their W-4s correctly, they wouldn't be waiting for $3,500 or moving in with mommy, they'd have their money.

"Well, even if I put $3,500 in a savings account for a year, I'd still only get like 50 cents in interest.  So it's not worth the effort to fix my W-4."  If you've ever thought something similar to this, try thinking about it like this:  You could give yourself a raise of $300 per month with that $3,500 refund.  Now, you can obviously get by without this extra $300 a month, because otherwise you would have fixed your tax withholding long ago, right?  But if you paid even a dollar in interest on a credit card, mortgage, car loan, etc., you could've netted way more than 50 cents.  Here are a few examples (here's the math behind them):

Example 1 

Say in January 2014, you had a $2,000 balance on a credit card with 18% interest rate and $50 minimum payment.  If you pay the minimum payment until it's paid off, it'll take 5 years and cost ~$1,000 in interest.  Maybe you're a little better and only pay the minimum payments until April 2015, when you receive your $3,500 refund and then completely pay it off.  In this case, you pay the debt off in 15 months and pay ~$420.  If instead of waiting for the refund, you give yourself a $300/month raise and use it to pay off credit card ($350 monthly payments), the debt will be out of your life in 6 months and you'll have limited the paid interest to ~$90.  This approach saves you about $330, which, last time I checked, is substantially more than 50 cents! 

Example 2

If we replace the credit card debt in Example 1 with a student loan of $50,000 at 6% and $500 minimum payment, the same three approaches look like this:  

• Only minimum payments takes almost 11.5 years and costs ~$19,200 in interest
• Minimum payments with a lump sum of $3,500 each April takes just under 7 years and costs ~$11,300 in interest
• Pay $750/month (initial minimum payment + $300 each month) until it's paid off takes just over 6 years and costs ~$9,900 in interest

This saves you ~$1,400 over 7 years or ~$200 a year.  Saving yourself $1,400 seems like a pretty good use of the 30 minutes it would take to fill out your W4 each year.  When was the last time you got paid $400/hour?

These examples require that you change NOTHING about your current lifestyle, spending habits, or career path.  All you have to do file a single page form with the US Government, and I didn't even take into account state income tax returns.  So you should definitely fix your W-4 (talk to your HR person if you don't know how to do it) and get super excited about the higher paychecks you're now getting instead being disappointed that you don't get to wait until April for a lump sum.

Also, in case it wasn't obvious, you should file your taxes as soon as you're able, so criminals don't have the chance to file them for you and cause you a massive headache.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  If you're like me, you might be thinking "Can I get a free loan from the government by underpaying my taxes until April?"  Answer:  No.  If you substantially underpay your income taxes, the lovely government will hit you with a penalty on top of the taxes you owed all along.  So the goal should be no money due AND no money paid at tax time.

The Debt Spiral

Throughout the personal finance community, there's a lot of debate over what the best way to pay off debt is.  The two main approaches are the Debt Snowball (popularized by Dave Ramsey) and the Debt Avalanche.  Both methods say to pay the minimum payment on all debts except for one, focus all extra payments on that one debt until it's paid off, then repeat with the remaining debts.  The difference comes with the order; all the methods discussed below are included in this handy Debt Calculator I made.

From a strictly mathematically perspective, the Debt Avalanche is the best method because you end up paying the least interest. With this method, you order the debts by interest rate, starting with the highest.  For example, say you had the following 5 debts:

1. $2,500 on a credit card at 8.5%
2. $10,000 on a home equity loan at 3%
3. $8,000 on a student loan at 6%
4. $7,000 on another student loan at 5.2%
5. $18,000 on a car loan at 5.5%

Using the Debt Avalanche, you would pay them off in the following order to limit paid interest: credit card at 8.5%, student loan at 6%, car loan at 5.5%, student loan at 5.2%, and home equity loan at 3% (i.e., A, C, E, D, B as shown in the animation).  However, the first few "wins" may take awhile, and it can be harder to stay motivated.  If you don't stay motivated, you'll end up paying more in interest no matter what method you use.

Debt Avalanche

The "wins" come the quickest with the Debt Snowball method.  I used to think this method made absolutely no sense, and to a financially rational person, it doesn't.  But the people who find themselves in debt probably aren't thinking in a financially rational way, or they wouldn't be in such a mess.  These types of people need the encouragement that comes with completely paying one of their debts off.  Using the same example, the Debt Snowball would pay off the debts as follows: $2,500 credit card, $7,000 student loan, $8,000 student loan, $10,000 home equity loan, and $18,000 car loan (i.e., A, D, C, B, E).

Debt Snowball

Despite the benefits of the Debt Snowball, I have a hard time conceding that you should pay off a $3,000 debt at 2% over a $4,000 at 20%.  So, I thought, "What if I used both the interest rate and the debt balance to determine the order?" instead of one or the other.  I call this the Debt Spiral (because of how the graph looks).  Basically, you divide the debt balance by the interest rate, and then order it smallest to largest.  If you have a debt with a 0% rate,  it goes last unless it's temporarily 0%, then use the eventual interest rate.  The Debt Spiral would pay off the debts in our example in the following order: 1) $2,500 on a credit card at 8.5%, 2) $8,000 on a student loan at 6%, 3) $7,000 on another student loan at 5.2%, 4) $18,000 on a car loan at 5.5%, and 5) $10,000 on a home equity loan at 3%.

Debt Spiral

So why should you use the Debt Spiral instead of the other well-known methods?  Because it simultaneously limits the amount of interest you have to pay like the Debt Avalanche while spreading out the "wins" to keep you motivated like the Debt Snowball.  Here's an example to illustrate (all the math can be found here).

John Doe makes $50,000/year and $3,300/month take-home.  At the end of each month he has just under $45 left to save, but he has the following 4 debts

1. $5,000 on a credit card at 18%, minimum monthly payment $125
2. $12,000 on a personal loan at 10%, minimum monthly payment $220
3. $6,000 on a car loan at 3%, minimum monthly payment $75
4. $2,500 on a student loan at 5%, minimum monthly payment $35.42

John would like to use the $45** to help him pay off his debts faster, but is unsure which method would be the best.. 

If John paid only the minimum monthly payments

Debt Balance	Interest Rate	Pay Off Time	Total Paid	Interest Paid
$5,000	18 %	61 months	$7,599.81	$2,599.81
$12,000	10 %	73 months	$15,977.28	$3,977.28
$2,500	5.0 %	84 months	$2,959.36	$459.36
$6,000	3.0 %	90 months	$6,693.31	$693.31
Totals			$33,229.76	$7,729.77

If John added the $45 to his Debt Avalanche

Debt Balance	Interest Rate	Pay Off Time	Total Paid	Interest Paid
$5,000	18 %	39 months	$6,577.83	$1,577.83
$12,000	10 %	57 months	$15,515.12	$3,515.12
$2,500	5.0 %	59 months	$2,911.94	$411.94
$6,000	3.0 %	64 months	$6,620.72	$620.72
Totals			$31,625.61	$6,125.61

If John added the $45 to his Debt Snowball

Debt Balance	Interest Rate	Pay Off Time	Total Paid	Interest Paid
$2,500	5.0 %	34 months	$2,677.03	$177.03
$5,000	18 %	49 months	$7,317.78	$2,317.78
$6,000	3.0 %	60 months	$6,582.06	$582.06
$12,000	10 %	65 months	$15,884.31	$3,884.31
Totals			$32,461.18	$6,961.18

John now wants to determine which order the Debt Spiral method would generate.  So he calculates the debt to interest ratio for each debt and orders them from smallest to largest.

Debt Balance	Interest Rate	Debt / Interest Ratio	Debt Spiral Payoff Order
$5,000	18%	5,000/18 = 278	1
$12,000	10%	12,000/10 = 1,200	3
$6,000	3.0%	6,000/3 = 2,000	4
$2,500	5.0%	2,500/5 = 500	2

John would pay the minimum payments on his student loan, personal loan, and car loan while putting every extra dime he has towards paying off the $5,000 credit card balance.  In this case, it happens to be $170 ($125 + $45).  Once the credit card is paid off, he'll have an extra $170 each month to start paying off the $2,500 student loan.  So he'll be paying $205.42 ($35.42 + $125 + $45) each month to the student loan until it's paid off.  Once the student loan is paid off, John can use the $205.42 to help pay off his $12,000 personal loan.  And finally, the $425.42 ($220 + $35.42 + $125 + $45) that was going towards the personal loan will be added to his $6,000 car loan minimum payment ($75) until it's payed off.  Now that John is debt free, he has just over $500 to save each month and hopefully keep himself out of debt!

 If John added the $45 to his Debt Spiral

Debt Balance	Interest Rate	Pay Off Time	Total Paid	Interest Paid
$5,000	18 %	39 months	$6,577.83	$1,577.83
$2,500	5.0 %	46 months	$2,841.63	$341.63
$12,000	10 %	59 months	$15,661.03	$3,661.03
$6,000	3.0 %	64 months	$6,621.67	$621.67
Totals			$31,702.16	$6,202.15

As expected, the Debt Avalanche produced the lowest interest paid.  But it only beat the Debt Spiral by $76.54 or 1.2%, whereas it beat the Debt Snowball by $835.57 or 13.6%.  Also unsurprisingly, the Debt Snowball wins the contest for earliest debt paid off by a few months, but the Debt Spiral actually ties the Debt Snowball for the average time between debts paid off.

Method	Time Until 1st "Win"	Average Time Until "Win"
Minimum Payments	61 months	77 months
Debt Avalanche	39 months	54.75 months
Debt Snowball	34 months	52 months
Debt Spiral	39 months	52 months

So the Debt Spiral is a win-win!

**Paying off debt quickly requires you to live differently.  In the John Doe example, he doesn't change anything about his life and so it takes several years to pay off all four debts.  Cutting expenses, getting a second job, and selling stuff would have helped him cut years off his debt sentence.

Argument for Emailing Invitations

For some reason, whenever I bring up the idea of emailed invitations, people respond with a grimace and a "That seems tacky."  But why is it tacky?  I have yet to hear a sound, logical reason for this.  And even worse, I haven't found anyone truly arguing FOR email.

The main argument for paper invitations is etiquette.  That's what Emily Post says we have to do, and besides, it's tradition!  I understand some traditions come from culture, but this one seems to have stuck around because the wedding industry makes a lot of money off people who think they have to have double-enveloped invitations addressed with the finest calligraphy.

This reminds me of a story I heard several years ago.

Every time Sarah made pot roast, she would cut off both ends before putting it in the oven.  One night, her husband John asked why.  Sarah replied, "I don't know.  That's just the way my mom always did it."  So the next time Sarah and John visited her parents, John asked her mother why she always cut off the ends of the roast.  Her mother thought about it and said, "I don't know.  That's just the way my mom always did it."  John, really wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery, then called Sarah's grandmother to ask her why, and she replied, "So it would fit in the pan."

Tradition can sometimes force us into doing wasteful things for essentially no reason.

Another argument I've heard is "Not everyone is technologically savvy."  It's 2015 and all of my grandparents have computers and email addresses, so this reasoning's relevancy is fading fast.  But even if there are a few people on your invite list who don't have email addresses, this doesn't mean that everyone needs a paper invitation.  You could even use this opportunity to encourage them to get an email account.  "Grandpa, until you get an email address, you are grounded from all family events, including but not limited to weddings, showers, christenings, birthday parties, and funerals."

And the most ridiculous and infuriating argument:  "Compiling all of your guests' current email addresses can be a daunting task."  I'm sorry, but how is this any different than having to compile a list of their mailing addresses?  Actually, gathering email addresses is easier because people move way more frequently than they change email addresses.  Anytime I am about to get a formal invitation, my friends end up texting or EMAILING me to ask for my address, which I sometimes don't know, depending on how far in the future they plan on sending me something.

So now that I've dismissed all the half-baked arguments against emailing invitations, here are the reasons FOR email.

1. The most obvious:  It's less expensive.  Whether you just send a regular email or use a service, paper invitations cannot compete.  Between envelopes, RSVP cards, stamps (don't forget the one on the reply card), other inserts, and then the actual invitation, the costs can really add up.
2. Keeping track of RSVPs has never been easier.  Instead of asking your guests to mail back RSVP cards, which could get lost in the mail or be illegible, you can provide links or embedded RSVP forms which automatically populate all the responses in a spreadsheet.
3. It's a lot easier to individualize each invitation.  Each potential guest can be sent a separate invite with their own RSVP card so it's obvious exactly who they can bring.  When using paper invitations, people tend to make a generic one and then count on the recipient understanding some ancient addressing rule that you can only RSVP for the exact names on the envelope and up to the number of guests indicated (see:  John Doe vs John Does and guest).  How are you supposed to learn this rule if you've only ever seen it addressed without a guest?  Most movies imply that you always get a guest so it's not crazy to assume that!
4. You waste less.  Most guests will probably end up throwing the invitation away.  With emailed invitations, there's no trash and you don't have to worry about your identity being stolen because one of your relatives didn't shred the invitation (i.e., the piece of paper which has your full name, mother's maiden name, father's middle name, and town where you grew up).
5. Speaking of which, you don't have to worry about your identity being stolen.  See above.
6. If you have a typo, you find out right away.  If you make a mistake with the email address, the server should kick it back to you in seconds.  If you make a mistake with a mailing address, it'll take a couple days if at all.
7. You can get notified when they've received/opened/read/clicked the link.  With paper invitations, you basically have to call or EMAIL each person to make sure they got it.

To me, this really doesn't even seem like a fair fight, but somehow, I'm in the minority.  Can someone please explain this to me?  Or give me more ammo to fight off the haters?

UPDATE:  So another argument on the paper side is that they are sometimes kept as keepsakes, which you obviously can't do with an electronic version.  While I can understand some people will actually do this, I think hosts tend to overvalue the sentimentality of the invitation.  The people most-likely to want the keepsake are the hosts.  Plus, if somebody REALLY wanted a keepsake, party favors can serve the same purpose and emailed invitations can always be printed out.

Why Couponing Is Worth Your Time

One of the most common arguments people use when I bring up couponing is "It's not worth my time".  I'm here to prove that it is.

Couponing is a misnomer.  It should be called sales shopping with coupons because most of the savings comes from the store sales, coupons are just a bonus.  Only 17% (~$200) of the money I've saved over the last 2 years was from coupons.  The remaining 83% (~$1000) is from store sales and coupon doubling.  Now, these savings aren't just going to fall out of the sky.  You do have to prepare for your shopping trips, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be more efficient with your time.

Now for some math!  I've spent about $1,400 on groceries (which includes food and hygiene and household products) in the last 2 years or so and saved almost $1,200 over approximately 70 shopping trips.  So each transaction should have cost me $37, but I only paid $20.  Also, assuming you actually save this money and don't use it on a new toy, compound interest or growth (depending on whether you invest it or put it in a savings account) will turn it into even more money.

The additional $600 that I get to keep each year is also tax-free.  The IRS doesn't suddenly come a-calling because my disposable income increased; they already got their piece.  If you're in the 25% tax-bracket, that's like increasing your pre-taxed income by $800.  (I'm assuming that you are safely in the 25% so all $800 would be taxed at the same rate.)

But wait, there's more!  The $108.33 I would have spent with no store sales or coupons is well under the monthly average for a single person.  According to the USDA, the average monthly grocery cost for someone between the ages 19 and 50 is more like $250.  So in comparison with the average American adult, I'm saving $2300 each year, and I'm only a moderate couponer!

Now since I don't punch the clock when I start and stop couponing, and I'm almost always multi-tasking while I do it, I don't know exactly how much temporal effort it takes.  But I think 3.5 hours per shopping trip is a conservative estimate.  That equates to 123 hours per year and $18.70/hour post-tax or $24.93/hour pre-tax (at 25%).  So on top of the income I'm getting from my day job, I'm also getting paid substantially more than minimal wage to essentially watch TV while I surf the Internet.  A cushy job that I can never be fired from...sounds like winner to me.

Plus, I love it so it doesn't really feel like work.

What Do Allen Iverson and Curt Schilling Have in Common?

After publishing my first couple posts, someone suggested that I read Mr. Money Mustache's blog.  It took me about a month to read through all his posts, and I learned a lot.  (For those of you who have never heard of him, he and his wife saved ~75% of their software engineering salaries and were able to retire at age 30).  It never even occurred to me that I could retire that early.  My parents are looking to retire in their early 50s, and I thought that was impressive.  Even without the goal of super-early retirement, I'm still saving over 50% of my salary, but I could never verbalize why I was.  Fortunately, MMM did it for me.  It's because I want to be financially independent.

Do you remember the feeling when you realized you had taken your last final EVER?  I do, it was something like, "I done with school forever!  I feel like I could cartwheel all the way home!"  That's the feeling I equate with financial independence.  You're not required to do anything.  You get to decide how to spend your time.  For me, it probably involves moving to Florida with my future family and switching to a career that involves sports and/or budgeting.  Could I be a personal finance manager for professional athletes? We all know they mostly suck at managing money.  (See Allen Iverson and Curt Schilling)