July 2023

This month had some real high points.

First, I took a trip out to where my company is headquartered for a kickoff project. I brought several books with me to read, but two in particular were finance-related. The first book, Stacked: Your Super-Serious Guide to Modern Money Management by Joe Saul-Sehy and Emily Guy Birken was only okay. It was fun (to the point of being distracting, at several points) but in my view lacked a strong why element to the argument. The authors outlined how to hedge yourself on many different fronts financially, and that was great insofar as it went, but they never really explained why to do that. I finished the book feeling fairly indifferent to it. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anybody.

The second book I read was an incredible read: Raising Your Money-Savvy Family for Next Generation Financial Independence by Carol Pittner and her father, Doug Nordman. This book was an extremely practical look at how to pass down healthy financial attitudes and training to your kids. I had already started implemented some of the things they mention in the book with my own daughter, before reading it, and it fit perfectly with the type of things I want to teach my kids. The biggest takeaway was let your kids make mistakes with their money. Do not attempt to control them, even if it's through passive suggestions. Hands-down recommendation for people with kids. This is what should be taught in homeschool economic curriculum! (Well, this and Early Retirement Extreme.)

When I returned to town, my wife and I and the kids drove to another state to see the school bus I'd mentioned in the previous post. I didn't get exact measurements, but it appears to be nearly 40 feet long, flat-nosed, 1983 Bluebird, white. The inside has been gutted entirely (and was actually used in some capacity by a previous owner). It barely has any miles on it, it came with two top-notch air conditioners. The engine has been signed off on by a former bus mechanic (the dad of one of the people I was visiting). There were a few cracks in the windows here and there, but it checked out. They wanted $10,000 on it, and it met all my expectations and my wife's expectations, so we shook hands on it. They were thrilled to sell it to us, someone they actually had heard about before, and who we clicked with immediately.

After I got back in town over the next couple of weeks, I drew up a bill of sale and a promissory note to purchase it for $10,000 with 10% interest (which is only 5% interest after inflation). The official payback period is one year, with the first payment coming in September (after I get my quarterly deferred paycheck plus quarterly bonus) but I think I can get it paid off this year. We'll see. Next thing is to figure out how to actually get it moved, where to move it to, and so forth.

One last low point - I was contacted by a man who has edited some historical theological articles by a particular author. He was exploring self-publishing his book. I shared with him some of my ideas, and without going into too many details that would compromise my anonymity right now, I'm going to spin up a second small publishing house geared toward making historical theological works available in a classy way for a modern audience. This could feed backwards, too, because the man has written a host of books that I'd love to publish through my main Machete Press publishing company. We'll see.

Lastly, my wife went on a weekend trip to a lovely cabin in the woods near a beautiful waterfall. This was her version of the trip she sent me on last month, but this time I got to go with her. We had a lovely time reading and resting by the waterfall, and I brainstormed a very simple two-page author's contract to send to the man I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Very lovely time. Not at all frugal, but it was a great time to take some a deep breath in creation.

The month also had some real low points.

Earlier this year, my wife told me that if I didn't close off the crawlspace, we'd have another major flea problem like we did the previous year, when a stray cat got under our house and introduced fleas. I said I'd take care of it. I didn't. The week before I was scheduled to fly out to my work, we had a huge flea outbreak. Long story short, I spend hundreds of dollars on pest control to come make the problem go away; we bought a steam cleaner much sooner than we'd been planning on it, we ran the washer and dryer non-stop, bought other flea-related items, and most thoughts of frugality went out the window. No fun whatsoever, and it took weeks to get rid of them. (Writing this post on August 4, I'm still not 100% sure they're gone, but they're nearly gone. Four weeks! Awful.)

A second major issue was that our van just stopped starting while I was out of town. It seemed to be coming from a parasitic drain on the battery from the automatic doors, but it wasn't holding a charge, and the doors weren't working at all even when it was jumped and running. Lastly, a bunch of concerning lights on the dashboard showed up indicating that there was more going on than just the doors. To make a very long story short, I took it into our Honda service shop an hour away.

It would seem that at the end of the day, the problem was a whole host of issues stemming from a minor accident in November 2022 . . . which I had taken the insurance money from, paid off the van, and moved to liability instead of fixing the issue.

To elaborate, in November 2022 we (not my wife or myself) hit a deer driving down the road. There was substantial bumper damage, but no dripping of any kind, no leaks. The airbag light was blinking, which indicated that something had happened, but I interpreted it as simply the vehicle recognizing that there had been an accident and that the seatbelts had been tripped.

At the time, we had comprehensive insurance on our van, so I filed an insurance claim for the deer. Within just a few weeks later, someone backed into our driver's fender, so I filed a second insurance claim for that, too. I received about $3,000 of insurance money.

Once I realized what a pain it was going to be to coordinate with the shop (an hour away) to get things checked out and repaired, including new bumper and fender, I figured that since there wasn't any leaking, no weird sounds from the engine, and no discernible problems (aside from the blinking airbag light), and since I was frugal now, I would take the insurance money (since I could, legally) and pay off the van entirely (we'd bought it from a family friend), and move on with my life.

Except there had been damage, and it just took eight months to show up. I ended up paying Honda about $4500 to repair a host of issues. To think, that would've been $0 if I had stuck with the insurance claim process.

The flip side though is that my van wouldn't be paid off now, I'd still owe at least a couple thousand dollars on it, so truth be told - I'm not entirely sure if I walked away from the situation that badly off.

I immediately got back on comprehensive coverage. My monthly insurance bill went from $32.99 to $65.70. An extra $32.71 per month to know that any issues will be 100% covered? Yes, please. This was definitely an instance of being pound wise, penny foolish. If you're going to own a vehicle, don't skimp on the insurance unless you really think it through.