Monthly Archives: March 2015

Setting Up Shop – Part 1 | Mike Makes

Over the past two weeks I’ve moved all of my Dad’s tools into the new shop, bought a Grizzly G1023SL 10″ table saw for $450 bucks, and somewhat restored my 10″ Craftsman drill press.

I built two work benches along the walls and recessed the Dewalt 12″ miter saw and DeWalt 10″ Power Shop radial arm saw into the top.

I’m very happy with the progress so far. Next, I need to build tool holders to hang all of my hand tools on the wall!

If We Woke up in Debt | Fix Your Finances

How would we get out of debt if we woke up one day with student loans and a credit card balance? By taking extreme measures to cut spending and earn extra income.

We discuss everything from cutting up our (hypothetical) credit cards to selling our excess furniture and gadgets on craigslist. Although it’s easy to stand on the sidelines and say “that’s what I would do,” we hope this is a help to someone out there.

All-Inclusive? The Hidden Costs of Cruise Vacations

Thinking about taking your first cruise vacation? Even if you book a cheap cruise, there are still a few hidden costs that you might not expect.

For example, most people don’t expect free alcohol, but soda isn’t free either. Add $6.50 per day for unlimited soda. What about tips and gratuities, and internet? We’ll talk about these and many more!

Is Bigger Really Better? Our Cruise Vacation on Allure of the Seas!

We?ve just returned from a 7 day vacation on the biggest cruise ship in the world, the ?Allure of the Seas.? Many people wonder if it?s worth the extra money, if it?s too crowded, and what makes this ship so special. We have answers to all those questions and many more.

We talk about the advantages and disadvantages of vacationing on a floating city at sea. As diamond members of Royal Caribbean?s crown and anchor, we?ve been on many different classes, itineraries, and cruise lines. Oasis and Allure of the Seas are amazing, but are they our favorite cruise ship?

Analyze Your Spending | Fix Your Finances

How to use mint.com’s “trends” feature to analyze your spending and fix your finances! We are only looking for problem areas in our budget this video, not tackling creating a budget from scratch.

Next week we’ll start outlining sample budgets depending on where you are at financially. It was too much to fit in one video.

We also share a couple of quick tips for calculating how much your savings could be worth in 10 years:
Mr. Money Mustache Article https://goo.gl/H54L0e

Monthly Expenses: MULTIPLY by 173
Weekly Expenses: MULTIPLY by 752

What Is Your Financial Situation? | Fix Your Finances

Before we can begin to talk about budgeting or investing, we need to get an idea for where you’re at financially. The easiest way to do that is to start tracking your spending for a month.

You can do that by hand, but there are websites and software that will do it for you. We use https://mint.com. We have been using it trouble free for over 5 years. It’s tracked and categorized almost 6500 transactions!

While we’re waiting for data to accumulate, you can calculate your net worth to see where you stand financially.

NOTE: If you are a viewer outside of USA, you can purchase a program called “You Need A Budget” (YNAB) that makes manual expense tracking easy.

Fix Your Finances – Series Introduction

Our most requested video topic is basic personal finance. In this new video series we want to cover the fundamentals of managing your money with simple explanations that anyone can understand.

Topics will include:
Budgeting
Credit Cards
Living Below Your Means
Getting Out Of Debt
Emergency Funds
Insurance (Health and Life)
Taxes
And many others!

Let us know if the comments which topics you’d like covered so we can add it to the list!

Vlog Fail #1

 

 

Our goal this week was to show you where we work. Unfortunately, we did a really bad job vlogging. Lauren had a difficult time filming at work and Mike just had a bunch of clips with no context or explanations.

We decided to post it anyways, because WE’RE ON VACATION!!!

Remember, no live show this Tuesday, March 10th.

What Is Your Emotional Threshold When Investing?

 

A recent Jim Collins post (we know, big surprise) got us thinking about what our emotional threshold is for investing in one lump sum.

In 2012 Vanguard did a study that showed lump sum investing was more profitable than dollar cost averaging 67% of the time. With results so clear, shouldn’t investing large sums of money be easy?

Jim’s Case Study:
https://goo.gl/8nJCyl

Jim’s Dollar Cost Averaging Post:
https://goo.gl/jxydjb

Vanguard Study:
https://goo.gl/VGzpFO