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Giving Away a Solid GOLD COIN!!

by J. Money on Friday, December 6, 2013

Hi guys! I have a super duper CRAZZYYY exciting giveaway to present to you today :) Which would make an excellent gift for either yourself, or a fellow loved one/coin collector this holiday season. Are you ready for it??? You haven’t looked at the title yet,  have you? ;)

WE’RE GIVING AWAY A SOLID GOLD COIN!!!! Huzzah!!

apmex gold coin

[This 1/10 oz APMEX Gold Round .9999 Fine coin, to be exact]

Worth approximately $120-$140 – depending on the value of gold on any given day… (and not to be confused with a Bitcoin). You don’t have to be a coin lover to appreciate it either as gold is GOLD, baby! You can literally cash it in at any coin store or even most jewelry centers if you don’t like holding onto valuable stuff ;)

Meet Today’s Partner in Crime:

Since I’m no coin maker myself, let me intro you to our partner here who’s offering up this sexy specimen to be given away: Apmex.com – one of the world’s largest, and most trusted, sources for precious metals. And where I personally recommend people to go when they want to pick up some silver/gold rounds! In fact, this giveaway came OUT of me recommending them on Twitter to someone the other week, so hooray for karma :)

Here are some of the goodies Apmex sells, for all you coin/bullion lovers out there:

  • Silver coins, rounds, bars
  • Gold coins, rounds, bars
  • Platinum stuff (worth more than gold!)
  • Palladium stuff (worth between silver and gold)
  • American Silver Eagles
  • Pre-1933 coins
  • And even $500 and $1,000 bills

They also have a great Holiday Gift Guide too, for those interested.

How to Win this Sexy Gold Coin!

Now for the part y’all have been waiting for – how to win this 1/10 oz gold coin. The first step – GET EXCITED! :) And then….

  1. Go to Apmex.com
  2. Tell us a product you like there. It could be something you’d love to have yourself, to give to someone, or just cuz it’s awesome looking – whatev. Just click over and find something, and then tell us what it is in the comments below.

That’s it! And if you’d like some extra credit (and an extra entry!), follow them on Facebook -or- Twitter too. So you can get either 1 entry for telling us your favorite item at Apmex (mandatory), or you can get *two* by also following them on FB or Twitter. Totally up to you – just make sure to leave your extra entry into an extra comment below so you get counted okay…

This giveaway will run for the next 12 days,and end at midnight on Tuesday, December 17th. Open to both U.S. and Canadian residents, 18+, and we will use Random.org to select the winner.

Good luck! And thanks again Apmex!

apmex logo

{ 132 comments }

Side Hustle Series: I Make Money Planners

by J. Money on Thursday, December 5, 2013

palmer's planners front

[Guest post by Kimberly Palmer - of Alpha Consumer fame - as part of our Side-Hustle Series.]

I’ve always been obsessed with making extra money.

  • In elementary school, I launched a (very unsuccessful) newsletter.
  • In middle-school, I ran a (slightly more successful) summer camp for neighborhood kids.
  • In high school, I stayed busy by babysitting, which provided regular, if modest, paydays.

It wasn’t until I grew up and had kids of my own, though, that I fully committed to earning a steady income on the side. Sure, I have my full-time job, and so does my husband, and that regular income allows us to cover our basic bills and expenses. But who knows when those paychecks might unexpectedly disappear. Journalism isn’t exactly known for its job stability.

The Creation of Money Planners

During my first, sleepless and anxiety-filled year of motherhood, I hatched a plan to give myself (and my family) a solid back-up plan in case things suddenly went south with our 9-to-5 gigs. I created Money Planners, which are essentially workbooks to help people with specific goals and challenges (such as affording a baby or launching a business). I made them pretty, thanks to the help of a freelance illustrator. And then I uploaded them to Etsy.

It took me two weeks to make my first sale. I was a little slow to realize that I needed to promote my little shop with the enthusiasm that one might muster for a new child. Soon, I got the hang of it: I bragged about it on Facebook, shared it with friends, and begged bloggers for coverage.

Eventually, it started working. I got my shop up to a healthy $200 a month in income. Not enough to replace my day job, which I hope I never need to do anyway, but it is enough to give me a little peace of mind. And I know that I could ramp up sales if I ever have the extra time and energy to devote to it.

Hard Lessons

It turns out looks matter. A lot. If your product doesn’t look pretty, no one is going to buy it. It’s not that Etsy shoppers are a superficial bunch, but it’s a website devoted to beauty. People will buy things that appeal to them visually, even when you’re talking about budgeting and money goals.

palmers planners
I’m no artist, and my first photos of my products looked a little rough. They were dark and off-center. Perfecting a light-infused look took practice, and it’s something I still struggle with.

My other main area of shortcoming related to start-up costs. I forked over around $400 for a fancy printing press to create hard-copy versions of my digital planners. They are still sitting in my basement. In this day and age, people apparently prefer digital planners. They download automatically, and people can then frame them, stick them in a binder, or, if you’re truly devoted to the Etsy aesthetic, insert them in a vintage clipboard.

More Money, Less Time

Having children might have convinced me I needed a side-hustle, but it also made it harder to find the time to maintain it. Babies, it turns out, take up a lot of time, and soon we had two. As a full-time working mom with two little ones, I barely have time to brush my hair, let alone run my Etsy shop.

That’s where automation comes in. Etsy allows for automatic downloads. Other tools, like MailChimp, lets me set up automatic autoresponders to send free samples to interested potential customers, as well as schedule newsletters to go out when I post new products. Hootsuite lets me schedule my Twitter posts so I can write them whenever I have time, which is usually at 10:30pm after everyone else’s bedtime.

Two years after I first launched by shop, which I like to call Palmer’s Planners, I’m happy to say that my venture is far more successful than the entrepreneurial projects of my youth. Which is to say, I am making more than $0 dollars from my endeavor. Sometimes it’s $200 a month, sometimes it’s closer to $50. Either way, it gives me a financial cushion that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

——–
Kim blogs over at bykimberlypalmer.com, and is also about to release her 2nd book, The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life, which comes out in January.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Perhaps these make the perfect gifts for some of your friends needing a little financial push? Is there a way to subtly give these to people? Haha…

*If YOU have a side hustle you’d like to share with us, give me a shout!

{ 17 comments }

Net Worth Update: $437,088.81 [Up $6,000]

by J. Money on Wednesday, December 4, 2013

net worth calculations - november 2013

Happy November Net Worth Day! It’s as if we do these every single month or something? ;) Hopefully YOU’RE doing them at home though, too. Nothing’s sexier than knowing where all your money’s at, yessir…

We had a pretty conservative month ourselves this time around, compared to our last one (if only every update we could climb $60,000!!). But I’ll take conservative over *losing money* every single time, that’s the worst… But unfortunately all a part of the game.

Here’s How November’s Numbers Broke Down:

CASH SAVINGS (+$163.97): Baaaarely made it into positive territory, but very proud that we did. Quite a change from just a couple of months ago when we were bleeding cash like a mad man. Hustling helps with praying, I’ll tell you that much!

529 College Savings (+$80.63): This will remain fairly stagnant until we start adding more money here for our little tikes… which is doubly scary, now that we’re expecting our 2nd one! Ack… I choose to not think about this much for the immediate future ;)

IRA: SEP (+$1,457.03): Nothing extra added here either, yet. We’ll have our one-time HUGE ass deposit come January/February though once we do our 2013 taxes… The amount I’m allowed to put in depends on business profit, and we’re expecting to be able to max it out at around $15,000 this year (which will come from the money set aside from those sites I sold this year).

IRA: ROTH(s) (+$1,006.32): This has been left alone too, for now. Depending on how the next few months go, we may or may not max out both of our Roths since money isn’t flowing in as much as it used to. But I’d hate to break my record of maxing it out for over 6 years now!

IRA: TRADITIONAL(s) (+$3,134.83): Nothing new added here either – just the markets doing it’s thing… Here’s how my three accounts currently break down – as part of our 2-year old IRA Test:

  • IRA #1 (NOT Managed): $77,619.74 **Leader for two years now
  • IRA #2 (Managed, USAA funds only): $71,915.34
  • IRA #3 (Managed, ALL different funds): $72,754.27

AUTOS WORTH (kbb) (-$356.00): All losses from my wife’s Toyota – the Caddy seems to have leveled off on value dropping lately, probably because it’s now 20 years old, haha… It should be considered an antique soon, yeah? Here are their values:

  • Pimp Daddy Caddy: $1,837.00
  • Gas Ticklin’ Toyota: $6,069.00

HOME VALUE (Realtor) ($0.00): We haven’t touched this since our realtor re-evaluated it over the summer when home prices started going back up (yipee!). I’m sure our house is at least worth a little bit more from what I’ve been seeing, but we’ll remain nice and conservative here since it really doesn’t mater much anyways until we sell it… Right now it’s being rented out while we rent ourselves in our new home state of Virginia. Which is going VERY well, btw, we love it here! Hard to imagine it’s already been 6 months now, jeez….

MORTGAGES (-$651.93): More getting chipped away every single month! It’s amazing how much MORE too goes away with a 30 year fixed over an interest-only loan like we used to have, haha… Then you add in all the rounding up we do every month (we round to the nearest hundredth, and then add an extra $100 on top of that to both loans) and it quickly falls off even more. It’s no $2,000 like it used to be every month, but that stage is unfortunately over for now… Life changes and we re-prioritize as we need to, right?

Here’s what’s left on both these mortgages:

  • 1st Mortgage: $275,889.71 – 30 year conventional @ 5.5%
  • 2nd Mortgage: $28,762.88 – Maxed out HELOC @ a variable 2.8%

net worth graph 2013

And that’s November! It’s pretty cool looking back over the year too, as you can see from that graph I added up above… That’s almost exactly a $100,000 increase this year! Love it. And even more so that we took that big ass fall in June, and still turned the ship around enough to get back on top… I didn’t like it at the time, haha, but it’s nice to look back and know it’s in the past ;)

Hope you guys had a decent month too! Let us know below what you’re looking at now so we can congratulate you (or, help you get back up and at ‘em again :)). And if you’re not tracking your money at all yet, START TODAY!!!

Just grab a pencil and start jotting down all assets in one column, and all liabilities in the other. Then subtract ‘em from each other (the liabilities from the assets), and voila! Your net worth appears. You can get caught up in what goes in there vs. what doesn’t, but just do your best and you’ll be fine. This number is only for YOU anyways – to help motivate you and watch your progress over time. No one else needs to see it, unless you’re crazy like me and start a blog around it all ;)

See ya back here tomorrow… And in another month for our next update!

j. money signature
———–
PS: Saw the recent installment of The Hunger Games over the weekend – pretty good! As long as you can get past the whole “killing each other” part ;) Just make sure to watch/read the 1st one first though or you’ll be lost…

{ 44 comments }

It’s #GivingTuesday!

December 3, 2013

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and SexyTime Saturday is over (oh sorry, did you  miss that one? ;)), it’s time to get back to what this Thanksgiving time was REALLY supposed to be all about – giving, over getting. So when my friend Nate told me about this new day that’s really taking off, I couldn’t pass on the chance to participate and […]

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Why is Saving So Hard?

December 2, 2013
Thumbnail image for Why is Saving So Hard?

According to this article I just read in Money mag, it’s due to “scarcity of attention.” Which is a fancy way of saying “we think of the now, rather than the later.” Here’s a clip: “There’s a popular image of people who don’t save for the future as lacking in self-control. But the reason saving is so hard has less to do with self-control and […]

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How often do you judge people based on their money?

November 29, 2013
Thumbnail image for How often do you judge people based on their money?

That was the title of an email I got recently from a reader who thought I’d enjoy this post over on Houzz.com on how to build your housekeeping muscle. Here’s the rest of it: I read an article recently that I really appreciated and thought you might like it too.  It is actually focused on housekeeping issues, but it starts out with a story about […]

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Rockstar Roundup: #GivingTuesday Edition

November 29, 2013

Hello my happy, and quite full, little turkeys! I hope you had yourselves a stellar Thanksgiving holiday. I don’t know how many people will be reading this today (you know, due to food/shopping comas), but I am still here to present to you my favorite articles from the week. In case you miss blogs already :) But first, a note about #GivingTuesday coming up: If […]

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A Thanksgiving Day Poem

November 28, 2013

I tried to come up with my own, but after reading this one I knew it wouldn’t compare ;) Thanksgiving 8000 Calorie Poem May your stuffing be tasty, May your turkey plump, May your potatoes and gravy Have nary a lump. May your yams be delicious And your pies take the prize, And may your Thanksgiving dinner Stay off your thighs! – Anonymous Happy Thanksgiving, […]

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How I Feel About Black Friday [in Gifs]

November 27, 2013
Thumbnail image for How I Feel About Black Friday [in Gifs]

Two days away from Rebecca Black Friday! How excited are YOU? Are you totally getting out your map right now to plan out the whole thing? Gonna stay up all night after Thanksgiving dinner and get ready for the awesomeness? No? You’re gonna start *tonight* and skip out on T-Day altogether? Wow, you sir (madam?) are hardcore. As a financial blogger, I’m required to write […]

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