Jack Picks

Like the rest of the world my family has to do more with less, stretch that dollar, lemons to lemonade and all those other pull your boot straps up and get to work sayings.  With cut backs at work over the last year leading to an effective 40% pay cut I had to lower my family’s expenses. Here are my top 3 “bang for your buck” ideas that worked! Notice, these are not my ideas just ideas that worked for me to save money instantly (except for #1, that one is all me). These are things I should probably have been doing already, but like the rest of the USA I have been spoiling myself and my family (it hurts to know I could have been investing that savings before!)

1.) Kill that data plan! Monthly Savings = $140

I saved $140 a month by just killing the data plan for my iPhone and my wife’s Blackberry. I also blocked text messaging. I found we were getting hit with $10 or more a month from text messages that were unsolicited! at&t will tell you that you can not use your iPhone without a data plan, that is a lie. I activated my phone number on a new SIM card in a cheap Motorola phone. Once that was working I just swapped the SIM card from that phone in to my iPhone, done. My monthly charge before the change was $70 ($60 a month for data and $10 a month to be added on the wife’s phone plan) and after the change my monthly charge was $10. I have limited use of some features, but for $50 a month ($600 a year!) savings it was worth it. The WIFI works just fine to get all my contacts, email, calendar, music, games, etc. working and updated. Once my wife saw that savings she told me to do the same for her phone. That all added up to $140 a month with just a couple half hour calls to at&t!

2.) Pack that lunch, Make that coffee, Eat in (don’t order in)! Monthly Savings = $480

My wife and I would eat out every day. We lived in San Francisco until a few months ago. You can eat cheap if you eat out, but still not as cheap as if you eat in. I started using www.mint.com to track our expenses. Financial programs like mint.com are great for one thing, they can categorize over 90% of your spending if you use your debit card everywhere like we do. What mint.com told me was really eye opening. We were spending, on average, $200 a week eating out. $800 a month. So we thought we were eating cheap, but those snacks, coffees, and Thai Iced Teas added up! I started by just packing my lunch for a month while my wife kept doing what she was doing. The next month our grocery bill went up $100 but our eating out dropped almost $400. That $300 savings was enough to motivate me to make lunches for both of us and ya, we now save about $600 a month by packing our lunches. I found there was an added bonus. My wife feels more loved when she opens her lunch at work and finds the little goodies I put in there. It is a nice chance to add little love notes, too!

I would spend about $20 a week on coffee at Starbucks, or Pete’s, etc. I started going to Pete’s to buy ground coffee (you get a free cup of coffee when you do this) and spent $12 on a bag that now lasts me two weeks. I went from $80 a month to roughly $50 a month and still have a good cup of coffee everyday. As a bonus I put that 4 shot espresso machine I got as a wedding give 3 years ago to work and freed up closet space!

Since I got in to making lunches we now eat out less in general and so we make more use of the food that we do buy. We save about $150 in not eating out for diner, too! All added up that is about $480 a month that we reclaimed!

3.) Car pool! – Monthly Savings = $450

This one really broke our heads. We were both doing our part to save the environment by taking public transit. Again, www.mint.com, was saying that we were spending about $150 a day on public transit. $600 a month! $10 a day for me on the bus and $12 a day for my with on the ferry and another $8 in muni and BART for my wife. That is more than our car payment! This didn’t make sense to me.

We live in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco. There is street parking near my wife’s work (i.e. free and in San Francisco you take free parking where you can get it!). We found the casual carpool spots (there are two of them) in Alameda. There are many in the East Bay all over the place once you start looking you can’t stop finding them. My wife and I started picking up casual carpoolers and dropping them off downtown at the bus terminal. Turns out that is where I got off the bus anyway! My commute didn’t change! I actually got to work 30 minutes earlier! My wife then would drive to work, park and be on time. She would swing by my work, I take over driving and then we would drive home. The extra gas we used only added up to $150 a month, and that is in a SUV! Another $450 a month was realized!

A great bonus with car pooling is that we have met some great people and learned more about our neighborhood and what it has to offer on our 20 minute car rides in to San Francisco.

Let us tally that up.

$170 + $480 + $450 = $1,100

That is $1,100 a month or $13,200 a year. Remember this is AFTER TAX money. So add back roughly 33% to that and that is $17,556 of mine and my wife’s wages that we have reclaimed! We have started doing the pretax dependent care for our day care and pretax health care spending accounts. Those and some other measures will save us even more money over the next year but these 3 simple things were an immediate impact on our daily bottom line. I listed them not in the order of savings, but in the order of effort. I hate driving, so that is why car pooling is listed last.

Please post any other cost savings ideas you have in the comment section. The only idea I had on my own was #1. The others were stolen from friends of mine. My friend Jason sold me on cooking and making lunches just laid out the savings in front of me one night then he said, “Cooking for yourself takes time and effort, but man you save big. Ride that horse, ride that horse as hard as you can!”

Ride that horse my friends. Ride it as hard as you can!

This author, Kay Strom, contracted Malaria while doing research for her book.  Her dialogue with her insurance company is freaking priceless!

I had a similar incident with auto insurance where to use the uninsured motorist part of my policy I was forced to sue my insurance company.  Guess what, they dropped my coverage.  I was hit in the rear, stopped at a red light, by a minivan going 50-75 mph (there were no skid marks, she didn’t try to stop) and I got penalized.  That was in Ohio, so I can only imagine what would have happened if that happened in India and I was dealing with a travel insurance company!

Checkout Kay’s article on her blog, Kay’s Words.

Jack Picks the new Apple IPad FTW!  Not because of what it does but how it does it.  The IPad does everything an iphone does and most of what a laptop does.  This thing is more than a “gadget”.  It is a new way to “flow” with your technology.  I have a good friend that first introduced me to the “flow of technology”.  Good technology gets out of the way of that flow, like the first mp3 players.  Great technology enhances that “flow” and allows you to customize it to fit your needs, like the first iPhone.  Apple has lead in technology “flow” devices and software for years now, and they lead the way in to a new class of device.

Tablet Computing.

The use of just our hands to manipulate everything.  The simplicity of our access to data.  For example, as an artist I would buy the Apple IPad for the Brushes Application, alone, at $499.  Brushes is an application that is a streamlined digital illustrator that can be used just like Adobe Illustrator for your iPod Touch and iPhone.

Example of Brushes in use on an Apple iPod Touch:

When I used Brushes this way I only had one gripe, “Man, I wish the screen was larger and I could zoom in closer.”

Example of Brushes on the Apple iPad.

Obviously I wasn’t the only person with that desire.  With the cost of a drawing tablet ranging from $200 – $3,000, $499 for a tablet that has an OS and Software that does all that and more is a fantastic savings.  If illustrations from an iPod Touch can make it to the cover of The New Yorker three times in one year then I shake with anticipation at the possibilities of Brushes on the Apple iPad!

This is only one application from a company of one person. Now you add access to over 100,000 applications in the iTunes AppStore and you start to glimpse the possibilities.

xkcd “Struth Mate” on parenting!  Translation for non-Aussies xkcd speaks the truth mate on parenting.

I can’t give this site enough press.  xkcd takes simple humor to a whole new extreme and needs to be read by more than just us techies that have nothing better to do when we watch our progress bars than to read web comics!

If you have not read We The Robots then you have been missing your daily dose of hilarity!  With such a simple cast of characters Chris Harding sums up every bureaucratic work existence.

Here we have my review this year by a manager I had for six months of that review year who did not consult any prior manager in performing his review.  This comic pretty much sums up our meeting.  Never thought I’d laugh at this situation, but when it is some loser robot it is kind funny!

Proof that the mean streak in N.Y. Yankee fans is beat in to them at a young age.  Here we have ESPN footage of two young Yankee fans beating that mean streak in to each other by fighting, in public, and the Yankee Fan Parent just records the fight.  The ESPN commentating is funny, but I would like to hear the commentating done by Parent Magazine.

“Ya, these parents here, they are the perfect example of how not to parent.”

Video:

I bet these very same parents will be buying the winner their first beer at the stadium, too.!

Jack Picks Cooler Bot FTW!  Engineers with nothing to do lead to fantastic inventions. 

I originally found this on Engadget and is the best kind of Weird Science!  This bot is solar powered, pack a video camera and Nikon DSLR, good deal of battery power for night surveillance and a fun camouflage paint job.  To think all I do with my cooler is pack it with ice and beer!  I’m such a slacker!

Jack Picks Drag Me To Hell as the best movie of the year so far!  I know, I know, “But Jack, what about Star Trek and…” *SLAP*  Shut your hole!!! This move is funny, scary, self aware to the point of Being! (a.k.a. Dasein).  This movie had the theater in stitches, crying, and wetting themselves scared all at once.  Watch the preview below if you need to, but I recommend just GOING!

BOO!

Jack Picks Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Trooper

It is a cool 1st person fraggingtrashtalkingexplosivenessextravaganza with new maps, weapons, baddies, and other insomnia producing adrenaline pushing caffeinated carnage!  Due out September 22nd 2009, get in line NOW!!!

How can I not pick this!

Jack Picks Jack FAIL!