A Tip For Estate Planning

Posted By Paul

Hi Everyone,

Having had a recent experience with estate planning I thought I would pass on something that I learned from the experience.

A friend of a friend recently had a relative pass away.  The relative had had a healthy long life, and had left behind some very clear estate planning.

The only downside was that the relative had listed a person as their executor that now lived overseas.  It was difficult to locate and contact this person and created a lot of hassle.

Luckily they listed several alternate executors, but one issue they had was that they chose people that were about the same age as them or older.  It makes sense that you would choose peers to be your executor candidates, but the problem came up that since the relative had lived such a long life the other candidates were all quite up there in years and didn't feel up to handling the role.

There were a few aspects of the estate that needed to be resolved quickly.  The process of tracking down the overseas candidate, and getting the paperwork for them to decline the role took quite a while. Luckily the other candidates were easier to find, but when it was discovered that they didn't want to serve as executor it took additional time to get THEIR paperwork handled and then ultimately find someone to take over the role.  Ultimately it all got resolved, but it ended up being a significant hassle. 

My advice?  Definitely list several candidates to serve as your executor, and try to update your estate documents accordingly if someone moves overseas or has some other event that would make them unable to serve in the role.  Also be sure to let your executor candidates know that they are listed in your estate planning so that they can let you know if for any reason they no longer want to serve in that capacity.

Also I think that it's practical to have at least one executor candidate who is significantly younger than you, to avoid the situation where all of your candidates are in a place in their life where the hassle of handling an estate is too much.

Once my son is an adult I plan on making him an executor candidate, and hopefully I'll keep my estate planning up to date in case something happens that makes an executor candidate no longer able to do the job.

Saving while celebrating holidays

Posted by Paul

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share something that my family started doing recently that ended up being fun and also a good way to save money.

We noticed that in certain months we had quite a few holidays. For example my wife and my wedding anniversary is in February as is Valentine's day.

My wife and I started to 'split the difference' where instead of celebrating each holiday separately we actually pick a day between Valentine's Day and our anniversary and celebrate both with a night on the town.

It's worked well for us, not only do we avoid the Valentine's Day crowds in restaurants, etc but we also feel like we can splurge a little bit more since we're having one celebration instead of two.

We still observe Valentine's day and our anniversary, but with much more simple stuff like a small surprise treat or a dessert out with our family.

It has been a nice way to celebrate frugally without feeling like we are sacrificing.

Want to save money? Skip the kid's meal

Posted By Paul

My wife and I often have dinner with friends (who also have little ones). Since the kids aren't quite up to restaurant age yet we get takeout from various restaurants around town and we take turns hosting the meal.

We have been doing this for years, and we generally orders kid's meals so that our little ones will have something to eat.

Just a few weeks ago while our friends were hosting we noticed that our little one wasn't really interested in the restaurant food we ordered for him that week, so our friends offered him some apples and mac and cheese (which he happily ate).

We decided to try that from now on, where both families agree to have simple kid food available when it is their turn to host, so we don't feel the need to include kid's meals in our restaurant orders.

We save money on the kids meals and if our little one ends up wanting to try our restaurant fare my wife and I are happy to share our food. We've noticed this works especially well since our little one seems to enjoy trying new foods so he often prefers trying our food as opposed to his kids meal which is often a fairly boring chicken finger and fries sort of thing.

Plus when we get all the little ones together they often want to play, so the meal part of the evening is often brief and we end up giving him a snack at home right before bedtime anyway, so why pay the extra money for the food he doesn't eat?

Ways To Save On Eating Out

Posted By Paul

My wife and I are continuing our experiments to save money and we have been employing a strategy that is really working for us.

As with many people, eating out is a significant optional expense (especially if it gets out of hand), so my wife and I have been watching it closely.

One thing we did this weekend was that instead of our "usual" breakfast restaurant we went and had bagels and coffee at a bakery. It was still fun, we got out of the house and enjoyed a breakfast together as a family, but at a fraction of the cost. We made up for our light breakfast with an early lunch.

It was even better for our little one because we didn't have to wait for a table (our favorite dinner haunt gets crowded on the weekends) and it only took a moment to toast up a bagel so he only had to wait a couple of minutes for food.

We're looking for other ways to replace "eating out" with "snacking out" as a way to save money while still enjoying the experience of going out.

Article: Steps to thin your health risks, fatten your wallet

Posted By Paul

A friend sent me a link to a great article that I wanted to pass on.

As my family tries to live a frugal life and keep costs (including food) down. We often run into a conundrum.

Often the cheapest foods are not the healthiest foods. This is something I run into a lot with restaurants (where the cheapest fast food options are often not very healthy at all), and also with groceries (where organic and fresher ingredients are often more expensive than processed foods).

My wife and I made the decision some time ago that spending a little more money now to eat healthier will pay off in the long run by avoiding various costly health issues.

Of course such a decision is based purely on supposition and we won't ever really know if we made the right choice, but it was nice to see an article that suggested that our philosophy had some merit.

Check out the article and tell me what you think:

Steps to thin your health, fatten your wallet

Article: Why Only Thinking About Affordability Makes You Poor

Posted By Paul

I saw this article on a blog that I discovered today.

I really liked the article because I use the term 'affordability' a lot when I talk about money. When people ask me if I think it's okay for them to splurge on something I often ask the question: "Can you afford it?"

This article emphasizes that many people when answering that question are simply asking themselves: "Do I have the money now to cover the payment?"

It talks about how using that definition can lead you into some poor choices.

The article lists a set of other questions you should ask in addition to just basic affordability when making a financial choice:

1. Is it necessary or is it nice to have?
2. Is there a more economical version?
3. Would most people in your situation want to buy it?
4. Would you still buy it if you had time to think about it? In other words, is it an impulse decision?
5. How is that going to affect your short and long term goals?

I especially liked item 5....considering the choice in relation to your financial goals.

I think that now when discussing financial choices with people I'll have to ask the question: "Can you afford while meeting your other goals?" as a starting point for discussion.

Check it out:

Why Only Thinking About Affordability Makes You Poor

Pretetending You're Broke - Follow Up

Posted By Paul

Just a little follow-up on the 'Pretending You're Broke' experiment, a couple of small things that I came across that ended up being great ways to save a few bucks:

My son and I have a standard routine where on Thursday nights we go and so something fun (generally his choice) and then after we go to a restaurant (also his choice) and get something to eat before heading home.

Well luckily my son usually wants to go to the same place, a kids activity center. We go there so often that we purchased a one year membership which has already paid for itself.

After the activity center we went to our usual restaurant where my 3 year old gets his usual meal. I often get food there myself but this time I just got a drink (well specifically I shared a drink with my son) and it was actually fun. I didn't really miss eating there and I just grabbed a bite as soon as we got home.

Another thing is that I'm getting together with friends this weekend. We often try to meet for lunch or dinner but due to our schedules we were only able to get together around 3PM so we're going to meet for coffee instead.

I realized that this was a great way to get together and save a few bucks. Instead of a full meal I'll just be getting a coffee. I still get to sit and chat with my friends, which is the real point of getting together anyway.

So far the 'pretending you're broke' experiment has been a really good experience.