The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is coming to my area.  This is a good thing, I’m told, because they’ll bring money to hotels, restaurants, brothels and convenience stores.  Money, in an economy that is supposed to be so bad that the wealthy keep getting wealthier and the poor keep getting poorer, will help keep the poor wealthier and the wealthy hiring.  I’m not much for politics any more, not since I figured out that politics is about man’s solution to man’s problems without ignoring man’s real problem.  However, its nice that they’re coming to the Denver metro area as well because our roadways are designed for slightly less people than currently drive them, and the new crowds of drivers will help keep the price of gas high as gas station owners have figured out that they can pretty much charge as much as they want and we’re a captive audience.  I think that’s a mixed metaphor.

There are some genuinely good reasons to have them in town and one of them is that a reader of this very blog will more than likely come into town to support her husband who will more than likely rule the world before its all said and done, and I’d like to have him in my pocket be in his pocket have the right connections.  The financial impact that is suspected to come with this national convention is roughly $160,000,000.00 in currency influx.  They’re expecting a huge crowd at the Bronco stadium (branded Invesco field) for  B. Obama’s acceptance speech.  Big money, big names, and they bring them in with enough people to populate the town I grew up in.  Which, if it were to be receiving the Democratic Nation Convention, would self implode.  Lets hope that the Dems bring money, but its not debt money, we don’t need that in Denver, Colorado or the US Government

Since switching teams on the whole Credit Cards are Evil debate I have had a major increase in intensity as I deal with not getting myself and family into worse debt.  I’m keeping track of spending on it, which was what I was not doing before that made things worse.  Spending more than you’re paying will just rack up the debt like nobody’s business.  The motivation to have self control, the motivation to maximize the rewards to help maximize the payoff is intensified.

Without clarity of vision, a focused attention on the goal, using the credit cards could be financial suicide.  Or, at least a severe case of bankruptcy, something I’ve got zero interest in doing.  Our vision is someting we keep constantly beholding, constantly cutting out distractions, and constantly evaluating our mental state.  Without the focus, our goal could be like a car accident waiting to happen on this road.

The credit card companies want you to feel like you’re on the journey of life to live out experiences that are outside of your reach, all the while keeping your payments from actually letting you have quality experiences within the frame of your budget.  The experiences in life that you have must be evaluated in the context of its richness and not in the luxury.  The Mastercard ‘priceless’ commercials emphasize this well, they want you to pay each little bit on your Mastercard to have that priceless moment, that comes with a cost that is often outside of what would be a smart financial choice - unless you paid cash and it fit within the context of you reaching your goal.

The Discover card commercials are much more subtle.  Their focus is on the idea of rewards to the max.  Imagine a life with rewards at every turn - except that if you carry a balance on the card, you’re going to pay those rewards back[just as we have] over and over.  The rewards are only rewards if you keep a zero balance.  A zero balance must be part of the goal and vision of your daily lifestyle.

There’s nothing quite as exciting as the unknown.  There’s nothing quite as exciting as the adventure of facing life’s trials and coming out victorious - but don’t quit staring at the goal, anything that comes between you and that goal is a completely wasteful distraction.  Capture those distractions, put them aside, and keep going.  The goal is so close, don’t lose sight!

Editors note: this is a weird post, I’m sorry.  Read it with more humor in mind than seriousness.  I’m really not trying to be a jerk, just funny (think Steve Martin)

I think prostitution is abhorable for various reasons, but this article about prostitution being paid for with gasoline cars puts the gas price debate into a weird perspective: Sex for Fuel.  We’ve not found ourselves using more or less gas at this stage in the game simply because we don’t do as much driving as the average household.  I work from my basement most of the time and our gas prices are usually just slightly under the national average.

Now that Bill Gates has stepped down as chief officer of whatever at Microsoft maybe he can put forth some of his humanitarian efforts in some petroleum related way.  I don’t know how that would help alleviate pain and suffering in third world countries, but it would at least reduce first world pain at the pump.

In the new Pixar movie Wall-e, there’s a fantastic message about stuff: Too Much Stuff Is Not a Good Thing.  There’s also a message about selfishness, gluttony, excess, and of course the environment.  And Love, if robots can be in love, that is.  However, the beginning of the movie shows us that on earth more stuff leads to the final elimination of useful life because all resources were used up (that’s the environmental message), but as the movie plays out there is a terrific scene where a massive mega-store is panned across the screen: Buy’n'Large appears to take a mile wide spot in a shopping center that is dedicated to the one single store.

The people on earth in this futuristic movie were so focused on stuff that they forgot that life was more than stuff.  Personal finance is best understood in the context of stuff (including the Nintendo Wii that I’m lusting after, the 5 string bass guitar, the new road bike, the bigger 30″ monitor, the 40″ HD TV [and, no, I don't need a bigger HDTV - that looks almost like restraint, huh?], and the gym membership with accompanying self control).  Does the stuff rule you, does it give purpose to your life?  If the answer is yes, then your perspective is out of whack.  Give another thought to the value of stuff.  Stuff is part of what drives a capitalistic culture, but a balanced and healthy society is going to deal with the stuff and grab for something deeper.

Wall-e is entertaining.  Wall-e is amazingly full of detail, and yet what I walked away with was a renewed sense of focus to get rid of the stuff and cling to the value in my family, the value in my faith, and the value in the richness of the creation around me.  I live just outside of the Rockies in Aurora, Colorado and yet I’ve never skied there, I’ve not gone hiking too many times and I’ve been pretty limited in my appreciation for the Rockies.  With the price of gas going up my opportunities, if the prices of gas keep going up, will dwindle.  Its time to kick this appreciation thing into high gear.

If you have seen Wall-e, what do you think?  Did the movie envigorate your perspective on stuff?  Am I too analytical?

Unless I write about what I’m going through financially, which has been laziness and tax frustrations, I have had very little to contribute lately.  I keep seeing others posting re-hashes of the same stuff and am basically stuck in a loop of repetitive concepts.    I’m not dead, I’m just not writing much.  As things come to me I’ll post them, I’ve got an idea started, its just not fleshed out.  I’ve been doing a LOT of chores/projects lately and that tends to limit the time for blogging.

For several months now I have been slowly, slowly discussing with the IRS details of my 2006 tax filing.  Slowly because first they sent me a form and notice asking for more than twenty thousand dollars.  They had gotten some misinformation from a company about how much money I had made (by tens and tens of thousands of dollars).  That was clarified and then they responded by saying I owed much less, but still owed.  The problem with the details lied in the fact that there were errors on several filings from several different entities.  I learned an important lesson: make sure you’ve dotted your i’s, crossed your t’s and then double, triple and quadruple check your i’s and t’s.  Search out the rest of the alphabet and make sure that the details are perfect.

In looking over the data for this tax fiasco I have found a few more errors where if I re-filed I could get some money back from other tax years [too tiny of an amount to get active about].  I’m going to avoid re-filing because I don’t want to get flagged for an audit and since I’m already on the radar I want to stay clean and without fault.  I’m relatively confident an audit would not turn up any issues, but I’d rather not go through the hassle.  The IRS employees don’t want to come to my house anyway

The good thing about taxes is that they help us have roads, military personnel, justice, and social services, but I sure would like to pay less legally.  The bad thing about taxes is that they are often more complex than they could be (despite the congressional ‘clarifications’ and ’simplifications’).  Taxes fund things that  we as tax payers don’t like.  They fund bureaucracy that at least feels like its slow and costly.  However, we’re blessed to live in the United States and I hope that the taxes I pay will be used well for the growth and development of this country and the world at large.  May the benevolence of the U.S. stand strong and continue on… just without some of the perceptible waist.

With this last trip to Indy I was watching the price of gas because every ten cents of gas price increase cost me roughly $20.00 $10.00 [editor: fixed bad math from tiredness] more for the trip. My car is a Honda CRV, it gets roughly 32 miles per hour (not the EPA gas rating, but with AC and various other things in play, that’s the average). I had to drive over 1,000 miles and so that meant about four fill ups (including driving around in Indiana) per direction. Each tank fill up was 12 gallons or so [it holds 14 gallons, but you have to pick where you can get gas driving through Kansas]. We ended up paying closer to $4.00 a gallon at most locations. The first lesson learned: know the gas math of your trip so you’re not surprised.

I mentioned the $4.00 a gallon above. We left on Memorial Day Weekend. This is a classic time for gas stations to jack prices up. Somehow they don’t call it price gouging I watched the price of gas jump by ten cents between Thursday and Saturday when we left. By taking a day off and leaving one day earlier, I could have saved some money (though it would have cost me a day off).

Lastly, we’ve still got one Discover card and this Discover card has a special 5% cash back bonus on various purchased at different times of the year. We’re doing our best to pay off the discover card as quickly as possible. However, since I knew we’d be spending so much money on gas we pre-paid the amount we had budgeted for gas on the discover card to get the cash back bonus. This is part of a paradigm shift I’ve gone through, but I’ll write about that later. Credit cards are a major temptation when our minds aren’t focused on heavenly things and so we get caught up in their trap - a clarifying blog post will be forthcoming. We’re not using credit cards for credit, this was a pre-paid spend that will allow us to get some relief, minor as it is, on the cost of gas. We didn’t use it for anything but pre-paid, known expenses and came out having pre-paid more on the card than we spent. Between June and September Discover is offering 5% cash back on gas - we’re going to participate in that discount.

So: remember to do the gas math, remember to plan, as best as you can, around known pricing schedules, and figure out how to maximize your dollar.

So two Saturdays ago, on the May 24th we set forth out on a journey half way across the United States to go to our relative’s house. As I have mentioned before, we had a great computer incident wherein computers and puke contacted one another and it cost me some money to get replacement components to keep working while on the road. We’re home now in Aurora, and I took my Mac Book Pro into the Apple Store at Cherry Creek Mall and asked what it would cost to have it repaired. Gulp. Wow. Blurp. Narf. Pretty much the cost of having the Mac Book Pro repaired was going to be the cost of a new Mac Book. A new Mac Book with a smaller screen, but with everything else faster and better than I had on my Mac Book Pro. I’d not lose the use of the Mac Book Pro, but I would lose its portable usefulness since the screen is damaged. So after discussing things with my wife I opted to scrape out some cash from the emergency fund and buy a new Mac Book. I have to have a laptop computer and I have to have a keyboard and screen that work.

Why did repair cost so much on a computer that should have only needed a new display and keyboard? Because puke is a bio-hazard. Shipping and handling of the computer suddenly sky-rocketed because the laptop had been violated of sanitation. Of course keyboards and computers are notorious for harboring germs, so this seemed a bit of an over-statement, but company policy is company policy. The new computer is almost up and running with what I need to take the Mac Book Pro out of service. I have to install some more software for development work, and some Adobe graphics stuff. It’s not how I wanted to spend this money, but at least I had it.

The moral of the story is that when you travel with a laptop you risk its damage or loss. Don’t discount kids, thieves, other passengers or travelers. Real life happens and having an emergency fund is just about one of the smartest things you could do.

I’ve been super-duper busy with work, but I’ve also had some crazy stuff happen which has kept me busy. Turns out that also my WordPress install was borked as well so I couldn’t post because of a bug in the code. I fixed the bug (it’s good to be a geek) and now, since life has slowed a bit, I’ve got a lot to write - regular posting may just come back soon

Yesterday, on my way across the country on a family trip, one of my daughters threw up all over my laptop.  Most of the keys work on the keyboard except for a few on the left hand side that got hit the most.  The display is borked and has a whole bunch of damage.  The harddrive is working and I’m actually using it to type on now.  Fortunately the destination city, Indianapolis, has an Apple store.  I’ve purchased a new monitor to use with the laptop and I’m hoping that the Apple store can replace the keyboard tomorrow.  This is not the way I wanted to spent my emergency fund.  This is exactly why you should always backup your data.  Mine is safe - but I wish that it was a little easier to access as certain keyboard keys do not function at present.

Most importantly the daughter is doing well and hasn’t thrown up again today.  I’ll take a sick computer over a sick kid any day.