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Stay sane during Covid

It began with a shock as the virus spread, everything closed and markets crashed. Then things got eerily quiet. For a while doom scrolling kept us busy. Then the scramble to set up a home office and learning spaces for the kids. Next came guzzling down Netflix episodes for light drama followed by a US election for even more drama. Most recently we’ve been comparing shots and reactions. But we are all getting weary and it’s time to find new ways to stay sane during Covid.

Fine, I mean fun, dining

No question our eating has changed a lot. Emphasis on the lot.  Where workday dining used to be confined to mealtimes, being at home gives us continuous access to the fridge, the pantry and the cookie jar to relieve some boredom. Here are some ideas to mix things up and stay sane during Covid:

Meal Kits – here in Ohio, our Giant Eagle grocery store has a selection of Great to Go meal kits for two including Chicken Piccata and Mushroom and Green Chile Enchiladas. Meanwhile in Canada, PC Chef has their Oaxacan Pork Tacos with Mango Salsa and smashed Avocados. They make a fun date night, are easy to prepare and build real chef skills for when you are ready to take off the culinary training wheels.

Leftovers – check out Supercook, a clever way to find recipes with what you have left in your fridge. Download their app from the App Store or Google Play and just speak your fridge leftovers into your phone. Boom! It finds you recipes that use just what you have! How Cashflow Cookbook is that?

Wine Clubs – there are some great wine clubs out there including the Wall Street Journal Wine, a cool club that starts off with 14 bottles plus glasses for just $69.99. Or why not try a complete blind tasting kit from Argaux? They offer 2, 3 and 4 bottle kits to test your palette and learn your preferences. You can set up your own testing night and compare scotches, gins or rums. We did a comprehensive vodka testing night right here at Cashflow Cookbook headquarters.

Clear out the brain fog

What a great time to learn something new! We are all used to remote connections and the range and quality of courses has never been better. Wonderful way to reinvest your commute time in ideas to enrich your life and further your career while staying sane during Covid.

Stay sane during Covid take a class
a masterclass can teach you all kinds of new skills. Photo Andrew Pons

Masterclass gives you full access to the best in every field. Learn songwriting with Alicia Keys, cooking with Gordon Ramsey, skateboarding with Tony Hawk or business management with Howard Shultz (think Starbucks). An unbelievable deal at $15/month.

There are lots of other great online learning sites including Udemy, Coursera, EdX and LinkedIn Learning. Titles include business related topics like mastering XL (how fun is that?) or learning to code (How much fun can you take?), to every kind of interest or hobby. Udemy, as an example, includes courses on everything from music and photography to fitness, lifestyle and interior design. Often courses with thousands of 4-5 star reviews are only $20-$40. Coursera and EdX tend to more academic and career-oriented titles.

The great outdoors

There it is, just past your screens and out your front door! Go check it out. Prop up an effigy of yourself in your office chair so you’re not missed on the Zoom call. You got this.

Hike – grab some runners and get to a park or trail. Breathe that fresh air and commune with the woodland creatures. It’s a lot like the Headspace meditation app, but without the computer, the guy with the British accent and the annual subscription. Push the pace a bit and get your heart engaged, or bring some snacks and loaf along. Either way, the latest research says that it will help you stay sane during Covid.

get out for a bike
It’s like riding a, well, you know! Photo Carl Winterbourne

Bike – yah, the dusty metal thing in the garage, just behind the Christmas decorations and the boxes of, well, whatever is in them. Guessing here, but perhaps you haven’t had it out in ages. The good news is that it is just like riding a…well you know. Get a nifty phone holder for your handlebars to help your navigation or just go natural and enjoy the day.

Herb and Vegetable Gardens – A great alternative if all of that huffing and puffing isn’t your thing. Lots of instructions to get you started on YouTube and seeds and kits on Amazon. A wonderful way to commune with your own yard, and get the very freshest ingredients for your garden.

Bird watching – I know, I know, it sounds a bit fuddy duddy. Bust out the Tilley hat and the cardigan and all that. But a bird feeder set up just outside your morning coffee window really adds something. And since your boss isn’t watching, take your time, enjoy the interactions and the colorful species. Hauling the bird food around provides a great workout, which leads us to the next section.

Home workouts

stay sane during covid with home workouts
stay sane during covid with home workouts. Photo Johnathan Borba

Sadly, all of the excuses are gone! The gyms may be closed, but you can set up a home gym. Peloton, Bowflex and NordicTrack are all shipping again. And even if they weren’t your body weight is still there. Maybe more than ever. Get some basic equipment and then amp it up with bespoke virtual classes.

YouTube has every kind of workout and tons of instruction in Yoga, pilates, bodyweight, and Martial Arts. If the Apple elves brought you a watch for Christmas, put it to work with the Apple Fitness+ app. Love this, new classes all the time to bring your treadmill, spin bike, yoga mat and abs to life.

Honeydew list

Since you are at home staring ceaselessly anyway, why not fix a few things up? Tradesmen are booked solid, but what a great time to learn some new skills. Recruit a handy relative or try working under the wing of a pro. There are YouTube channels for every kind of fixit project. Bob Vila and Vancouver Carpenter are awesome for general repairs, while Appliance Repair is great for fixing, well, you know.

If your boredom sinks to previously unexplored levels, it might be time to do the sorting and organizing that you have put off for the last decade or two. Do some robust purging, move those old treasures out to charity and then get some shelves going to give you primo access to the things you really need. Cleaning, sorting, purging and organizing rivals meditation and Xanax for mood improvement.

Looking to ease your boredom, stay sane during Covid and save money? Tackle some energy saving projects, like weatherstripping some leaky doors and windows, sealing around pipes entering your home and adding attic insulation. We did a few Covid-era projects to save on electricity and it made a big difference. See below:

stay sane during covid home energy projects
Looks like those January energy savings projects paid off

Build a kit

stay sane during Covid - build a kit
stay sane during Covid – build a kit

You name it, you can get a kit for it. Deb got me a Les Paul guitar kit that will have me sanding, staining and soldering for weeks. Once done, I will plug it into one of the amp kits I built earlier for a real all-built-at-home experience. To ensure that I can enjoy really great guitar tone, we just got tickets for a Santana concert later this summer.

If you trend to more arts and crafts, here is a cool hands casting kit to immortalize your paws. Or you can find books and kits to make everything from candles to clocks.

Entertainment in a box

A bunch of companies will ship you a monthly box, of well, cool stuff. Hot sauces, mystery games, puzzles, at-home escape rooms, luxury essentials and tons more. Check out Cratejoy as an example. Prices run from $20-$40 a month or so.

Summary

Turns out that there are lots of ways to stay sane during Covid. As scary and as sad as this chapter has been, its also been a time to regroup, reconnect and recharge. Maybe a change to remake your life in a new way. For many it has opened possibilities – more working from home, less commuting, more free time for family. Some of these changes can help free up cash (one less car? reduced commuting costs?), while others can offer a better lifestyle (more time with kids, spouse and pets). Use the time as a chance to improve every aspect of your life. Soon the fog will lift, the world will open up and we will appreciate relative visits, dinners out and concerts like never before.

How are you staying sane during Covid? Let me know in the comments below.

Main Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Save big on home improvements

In the olden days, pre 2020, we all paid scant attention to the condition of our homes. Back then, we focused on the snack we were grabbing in the kitchen, the dog we were leashing for a stroll and the barbecue out on the deck. Now that we are all held in house arrest without bail, we are starting to see the aging kitchen from which the snack came, the scratched floor underneath the dog and the rotting deck under the barbecue. At virtual dinner parties and Zoom wine hours, the conversations turn to home improvements. And with our Stimulus stipends spent, we are all starting to wonder how to save big on home improvements.

We saved 60% on 3 projects – read on!

We recently had 3 situations that nicely illustrated some nifty ideas for savings. With some simple principles we saved $7,000 on the first project, nearly $1,200 on the second and $5,000 on the third. The first was right here at Cashflow Cookbook Global Headquarters. That big chimney on the cover picture needed some work.  The second was a dryer that developed a heat and motion phobia.  The third was a garage rebuild that was close to a full, well, rebuild. Each project highlighted a different idea to save big on home improvements. To illustrate, let’s take closer look at each of these examples.

Look for a different approach.

Nothing says a romantic night like a crackling fire, a bottle of Pelee Island wine and a good Netflix series. Unless of course the chimney inspector says no fires until the chimney is fixed. Who knew that a 1938 chimney would have such issues? After much peering up our chimney, it was decided that a relining was needed to remediate the flue cracks. In other words, about $10,000. Turns out you can put a price on romance and indeed, money can buy happiness.

In true Cashflow Cookbook form, I called around to check pricing. Five chimney places all said that it would run $350 a foot for a stainless steel chimney liner and that, on a 25 foot chimney that would come to about $8,750, plus tax. Seemed like some sort of chimney flue collusion. I noodled the thought of clamoring up our slate roof brandishing a 25 foot stainless steel tube, but the wind was picking up and rain was threatening. What could go wrong?

Wives have a sixth sense about husbands leading themselves into danger and so it was that Deb developed a sudden interest in chimney lining. She found a chimney specialist with a different approach and suggested that I call. I got through to Brad right away and he indicated that he has a special machine that relines the chimney with concrete, fully safe and guaranteed. He had been relining chimneys with concrete for over 20 years. Google glowed about his work with dozens of positive reviews. Total tab? $1,750. In conclusion, shopping around is great, but sometimes a different contractor can bring a different approach. $7,000 in the bank and on to the next chance to save big on home improvements.

Yes you can do it

Broken dryer, home improvement project savings
Broken dryer, home improvement project savings

When my mother-in-law’s dryer packed it in, my thoughts turned to a trip to Home Depot. My brother-in-law and I got together to craft the plan. I brought a credit card and he arrived with his toolbox. Hmm. I’m fairly handy, but hadn’t spent much time on the inside of a dryer. But I remembered fixing a broken ice-maker and I dashed home to get my iPad. I set it on top of the dryer and surfed over to my friends at repair clinic. Entered the make, model and symptoms and there are all of the possible issues, how to test for each, and a little video that shows each step. Nice! With some safety glasses and the right tools, my cat could fix this dryer**.  The Repair Clinic even sell the parts!  Boom. We found the problem on the third issue they listed. Turns out that a little piece of plastic had broken off the door switch. A $9 part and about 30 minutes of diagnostic work. Another $1,200 saved, some good bonding and an excuse for a celebratory beer.

Don’t underestimate what you can tackle yourself. There are so many great videos and PDFs out there to light the path for you. Bring along an in-law for some extra knowledge and know how. You got this. DIY is another great way to save big on home improvements. Another trick is to see if your contractor will let you help, building your knowledge and savings. I tried this approach on a deck rebuild a few years back, check it out. Let’s take a look at one more idea.

Shop around for quality and price

 

garage rebuild - shop around
garage rebuild – shop around

A relative in town had a garage that needed some care and attention, including but not limited to a new roof, soffit, fascia and gutters.  Although price is important,  the wrong contractor could turn the situation from bad to worse. We networked our way to a few contractors and kept a spreadsheet with their name, company, years in business, sense of their competence, their approach and pricing.

Steve had done some work on a neighbor’s house so we tracked him down and he showed up for the estimate. He had a clipboard and a tape measure, but strangely, no truck. Teleportation? Alien beam down? He scrambled around the roof, flailing his tape measure and muttering as he scribbled down numbers. Not too promising. Chad was next, and gave the garage a good staring from the ground. He disappeared into his truck to “work some numbers” and pronounced the garage dead. It needed to be razed and start over. He would reluctantly attempt the rebuild but it would run a good $12,000.

Robert arrives on the scene

And so it went, until we asked a well regarded garage door man who he would use. Robert was the man for the job. He showed up for the estimate in a crisp white (terrestrial) van with custom cabinetry inside of his own hand. Nice. Some careful measuring, a firm Covid elbow tap and he was off, leaving only a promise of a next day quote. Sure enough, there it was in all its detail, including a price of $7,000.

His work was stellar and he even ran wiring for a garage door opener. The floor was swept clean and everything was tight and true. Shopping around and working referrals is a another key to big savings on home improvements.

** I should note that our cat, Susan, is blind and really not great at appliance work. She is, however, an accomplished lounger.

save big on home improvements
Susan the repair cat lounging

If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

How have you saved on home improvements? Let me know in the comments!

Take care and stay safe.

Gordon

 

 

 

In Part 1 we looked at how to stop worrying about money and found a few key themes. One is the tug of war between enjoying money now and saving for the future. We touched on the idea of saving 10% of our incomes with a vague notion that can set us up for financial bliss. We saw some tested financial concepts from the experts, but damn they are hard to implement. Another tug of war. But we also hinted that there is a way to actually get to financial wellness. Heck, let’s aim for financial joy.

What we will find is that we can eliminate these financial tugs of war and get the debt to fade away and the wealth to build, month after month.

Your wealth will start growing when you track it

If we want to lose weight, a thermometer is of little use. Driving a car, it’s difficult to discern the speed by checking  the rear view mirror. If you want to build wealth, you need to track your wealth. What you own, minus what you owe. It’s just one number. If it is rising, you are building wealth. If it is falling, you are losing wealth. Knowing that number and tracking it over time is the simplest and most powerful thing you can do. It changes everything and makes you think about the implications of your spending decisions.

  • Should I bother to renegotiate my cell phone plan? Yep. The one hour call might save you thousands over the next few years. Turns out calling your cell phone company is a powerful return on your time.
  • Is it worthwhile to add a swimming pool to our house? Not unless you really love it. You are unlikely to recover the costs with the new buyers. And the maintenance costs and the $400 a month or so to heat it might add up to hundreds of thousands of missed investment opportunity. See below.
  • What kind of car should I buy? Up to you, but know the cost difference over the time you’ll own the car. Here is an example.
  • Is there a cheaper way to get prescription drugs? There sure is! Have a look here.

Write a best selling wealth app, or just borrow a cocktail napkin and a pen from a bar or download my template, but get started on tracking your wealth. Use your records to go back a few months to see how things have been going. As you make decisions, think about what they do to your wealth. Start tracking it today. That’s your first piece of homework.

For lots more details, read my post on tracking your wealth.

Einstein was correct about compounding

“Compound interest is the eight wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t pays it. “              –  Albert Einstein.

When I was first working, there were lots of wise grownups counseling me to save my money. Interest rates were around 5%. So if I were to, say, save $1000 in my first year of work, at 5% interest I would have made $50 in interest at the end of the year. The tax man might take $20, leaving me with $30. Big deal. So I could go for lunch at the end of the year. Clearly the advice made no sense.

So I lived well. Nice apartment. new car (complete with loan). Some student debt. Floating some restaurant and bar debt on a credit card. I could almost squeeze everything in each month. I never heard the Einstein quote, but I was living the dark side of it. A big part of my income went to paying debt. And that interest was dragging my wealth backward. It was fun to be earning and buying new things but I was building no wealth. Stuck on an earn and spend treadmill. I wish I knew then how to stop worrying about money.

Change your money relationship

Scientists talk about a brain chemical called dopamine. It fires up when we get a pleasure hit of some sort. Buying a new pair of jeans – light hit. Picking up a brand new car – medium hit. Closing on a fancy new home, whoa, – huge hit. Then came retail therapy, shopping without even needing anything, just in search of the dopamine hit. Wow! And it does give you a buzz, at least for a few days until the credit card bill arrives and the dread sets in.

Money can buy happiness when it buys freedom, much more than when it buys things. If the focus of money shifts to future freedoms from today’s things, everything changes. The gamification comes through watching your wealth grow and setting up financial wellness for the future. Small changes make a big difference over time. This is especially true for recurring expenses. Let’s say we call a provider (cell phone, insurance or internet) every six months to optimize our bill and by doing that we can save $100 a month which we invest at 7% in a registered account. Here is the effect over time:

The power of small savings over time
The power of small savings over time

Wow. Turns out Einstein was right. We could retire with an extra $123,000. Not bad considering that the average North American retires with a net worth of just about $200,000. And notice that we didn’t actually give anything up, other than a phone call every 6 months. Oh and that was just one item! What other bills can we look at?

Elegantly reduce expenses

Earlier, we referenced the idea of a spending tug of war. It seems like a win/lose, zero sum game proposition. Enjoy your money now, or save it for future financial wellness. But the reality is much sexier than that. We can have both through some more elegant spending decisions. It turns out that there are simple ways to save on every category of spending. With no haggling, no yelling and no sacrifice. I got curious about all of this in 2015 and started a list that morphed into a book that includes $13,000 of monthly savings ideas. Get a copy on Amazon or here. Maybe the best investment ever.

Apply to Debt or Investments

Once you find a spending hack, that frees up, say $100 a month, it’s yours to keep. Buy a new pair of jeans every month, find something to spend it on at the mall or drink it down at the bar.

Or you could use it to pay down debts faster. Or increase your monthly contribution to your IRA or 401k (or TFSA or RSP for my Canadian friends). That’s where the magic happens. That $100 a month becomes $123,000 by the time you retire. And that is just one savings area. What if you could free up $400 a month? Or $2,000? Lots of my clients and readers do. It means they can retire with a lot more. Or retire a lot earlier. Or just lower the monthly burn to the point where it doesn’t need to get funded on credit cards. They stop worrying about money. If you really want to kick your wealth into gear, check out this idea of surfing to wealth.

Whether you are desperate to get out of debt, or keen to grow your investments, these simple principles make a big difference.

Part 3 looks at some more wealth building examples through more mindful spending as well as some other powerful engines to boost your wealth.

What clever savings ideas do you have? Let me know in the comments.

Glider Photo credit by Konrad Wojciechowski of Unsplash

It’s the start of a new year, marked by some timeless traditions. Some of us drag out Christmas trees to the curb, others dismantle and box our Festivus poles while others pack up menorahs or kinaras. There are lights to be stowed, pine needles to vacuum and gifts to be worn, hidden, stowed, drank, returned or re-gifted. But after the cat eats the last piece of tinsel and the final unloved morsel of fruitcake is tossed, comes the hard part. How to eliminate holiday debt?

So unforgiving, that bold black text on crisp white statement. And the totals, so clearly inflated. There must be a mistake or five here. Then starts the questions and or blamings, “what was that $312.54 for?” or,  “honey did you buy something from JBM Trading Company 412?”.  Often there is a surprise bill or two that arrives around the same time, some medical test invoices, the annual property tax bill, or some school fees for the kids.

It all adds up to, well, more than you have in your checking account. What to do? With credit card interest at 20-30%, compounded monthly, getting rid of this debt is a 5-alarm blaze. And paying the minimum amount due is a ticket to the start of a financial apocalypse. It needs to go. All of it.

How bad is this thing?

Start by surveying the damage. Get it all out there. The paper statements, the online balances, the main credit cards and the branded store ones. And yes, even the “I only got it to get that in-store discount on that one big thing that you swore that you would never use again”, cards. Add it all up. Make up a quick table of the cards, the balances, the interest rates and the due dates. Not pretty, but at least it is all out in the open. Involve your partner in the process. Work out a plan to pay them all off. Missing due dates can lead to credit score issues, delaying the ones with the highest interest rates are costly. Work out the priorities and make a plan.

Remember the pain of all of this, since you will need that for next year’s planning.

What is the funding gap?

What do you owe and what funds do you have available? Identify how big the gap is. That is a key first step to solve the issue. Take a look at timing, when are the next paychecks coming in and which bills are due when.

Let’s pay things off

The first few moves are obvious, using available cash to pay pressing bills, but then it gets trickier – how to fund the bills that have, well, no funding. Here is a list of key action moves:

  • Do you have government Covid checks coming your way? Is there any action to get them sooner? Can you register online or otherwise speed up their arrival?
  • If you are expecting a tax refund, can you get your return filed sooner to access that cash?
  • Are there other bills that will let you delay payments or reduce payments without penalty? Call them and see if they can help you.
  • What about that $1,200 you lent your brother-in-law? Might now be the time to collect?
  • Is there some part time work that you could do to get some extra cash? Overtime at work, some Uber or Lyft driving, some retail shifts or some online tutoring? Can your partner help?
  • Are there some gifts that you don’t like, don’t need or could live without? Try returning them for cash refund. As a minimum, could you return them for a store credit, then sell that online? Or use the credit for essentials that would otherwise need to be paid?
  • Anything else around the house that you could sell on ebay, craigslist or offerup? As an example, maybe you are now a smartwatch devotee and no longer need some dress watches.
  • What changes can you make to reduce your usual monthly spend and free up cash for the bills? Going vegan for a month, reducing take out and drive through food, turning down the thermostat and of course curbing new purchases can all help. Check out my other blog posts or Cashflow Cookbook for more ideas.
  • It’s not ideal, but it might make sense to temporarily reduce payroll or other automatic savings provisions for 401ks, RSPs, company stock plans etc. to free up cash and pay off bills. Not a good long-term solution, but sacrificing a return of, say 7%-10% to pay off bills with an interest rate of 22% has some logic.
  • Try calling the credit card companies. Explain that you are willing to do your best to pay, but you are overwhelmed with holiday bills and are wondering what they might be able to do to help. Worth a try.
  • A final option is to take out a loan or use a line of credit to consolidate the bills and pay them off. Line of credit interest can be as low as 3 or 4%. The danger of course, is to take out one of these loans and then let your credit card balances creep up.

How to Eliminate Holiday Debt for Next Year

Of course, the best way to solve this problem is to never have it in the first place. Now that we have solved your current year problem, let’s start now to set you up right for the new year.

  • Once you pay off your cards, call and cancel all but one. That’s all you need. Multiple cards are damaging to your credit score, make it easier to ring up more debt, complicate your monthly bill payment and record keeping processes and lead to more spending. Oh, and make your wallet fatter. The freebies and extra discounts from these cards don’t save you money, they just encourage more spending. One good reward card. You got this!
  • If you are sweating your holiday debt, so are the rest of your family and friends. Now is the time to set an agreement that limits holiday gift value to an agreed amount. Start a family discussion, be candid and get it done. Whew!
  • Or go a step further and switch to cashless gifts. Why not give vouchers to make a meal, do some house projects, kitchen cleanups, car washes or other services? A backrub for your partner? Or even promises for time together for a picnic or a hike?
  • If the spending can’t change, then at least plan for it and save up. If holiday spending is, say, $1,000, then set aside $83.33 a month into a holiday gift account. Lots of banks now have set ups to let you save for a few different goals. Or just stash the cash somewhere.
  • Pre plan your shopping so that you establish limits for each recipient and stick with them. Plan the gifts too so you can watch for sales, Groupon deals or discount coupons.

Hopefully that will set you on the right course and eliminate some financial stress. What other ideas do you have to help with holiday spending and debt? Let me know in the comments.

All the best to all of you for a wonderful 2021.

Gordon

photo credit Freestocks at Unsplash