الاثنين، 29 يوليو 2019
Questions About MLMs, Safe Deposit Boxes, Package Theft, Clark Howard, and More!
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Spouse withdrawing tons of money
2. Small benefit insurance
3. Nudging child out of nest
4. Getting out of Scentsy / MLM
5. Thoughts on safe deposit boxes
6. How to stop package theft
7. Clark Howard radio show
8. Borrowing money to invest
9. Elderly parent in decline
10. Easiest pasta at home?
11. Computer games?
12. Books with Impact suggestions
For a week each summer, our children go away to visit their grandparents, splitting the week between Sarah’s parents and my parents and effectively giving Sarah and I a child-less stay-cation for a week.
It’s incredibly enjoyable to not have to worry about them for a few days and to have some time alone with my wife. We’ve had children at home for more than a decade and we’re going to have at least one child at home for at least the next decade going forward.
At the same time, there’s a bit of an underlying realization that this is what our house will always be like when they move out. It will be much quieter and less lively. I suspect that Sarah and I will host a lot of dinner parties and game nights and get more involved in community groups when they move out, just to keep up the liveliness.
When I was younger, I never quite got why my parents and Sarah’s parents always seemed so genuinely happy when we would visit for a weekend or for the holidays and why they’d rush around and make our favorite meals. I love going to visit them, but it never quite clicked why that was the case.
Now I get it. There’s going to be a time eventually when the house is quiet and I’ll give anything for it to be lively again with our three kids there.
On with the questions.
Q1: Spouse withdrawing tons of money
Recently found out that my wife has been withdrawing about $500 in cash per week from our checking account. I have no idea what she’s doing with it. Initially very angry but decided to wait before confronting her. What should I do?
– Marcus
Remember, you don’t know for sure where this money is going. Some of the answers can be relatively innocuous – perhaps it’s being used in large part to pay for ordinary things or even being used in a productive way. Some of the answers can be more troubling. Whatever the reason, you don’t know what it is yet, so don’t jump to conclusions.
At some point, you need to bring this up in a non-angry and low confrontation fashion. Your best approach would be to gather up recent bank statements, whether printed off or elsewhere, highlight all of these withdrawals, and simply ask where this money is going.
Your spouse is likely to respond in an emotional way, with defensiveness or anger or sorrow. Expect that this will happen and don’t elevate your own emotions. Instead, when you figure out what the source is, give yourself some time to figure out what comes next. Don’t escalate your own emotion along with hers. Keep calm, gather information, then take some time to think about what comes next.
It may be that there’s a reasonable explanation and no changes are needed. It may be that some changes are needed in how you guys handle your finances. There may be other challenges. The point is, you don’t know, and the first thing you need to do is gather information, and you need to do that as calmly as possible.
Q2: Small benefit insurance
I have a question about paying for things like short-term disability insurance and accident insurance. Paying a monthly premium for an event that may or may not happen has never made sense to me. If I pay $15/month premium for the unlikely event that I might break my arm or end up in the hospital, I might get $500-$1,000 payout, but wouldn’t I have been better off just saving $15/month and having an emergency fund? There’s no guarantee that I’d ever have an accident, and I could be paying hundreds or thousands into insurance premiums over the years to never see a dime paid out or to not get the amount paid out that I had paid in. How do you assess the risk vs. the benefit and justify paying for insurance plans – or not? Aren’t we better off just keeping an emergency fund?
– Anna
Insurance is only valuable in terms of the negative consequences of an unexpected event that it protects you from, and that varies a lot from situation to situation and from person to person.
For example, if you have a policy that only pays out $1,000 in a specific uncommon event and it has a less than 1% chance of occurring to you in a given month, then you’re better off putting $15 per month into an emergency fund. That’s basic math.
In general, insurance is most valuable when it protects against something catastrophic, like the death of an income-earning spouse or parent, and the policy provides enough of a payout that it makes up for at least some of the shortfall, preventing a disastrous financial situation for the survivors. If you can easily afford the financial consequence of that situation out of pocket, insurance doesn’t make much sense.
Where it does make sense is in situations like that death of a loved one. Imagine that you’re married with a couple of kids and your spouse makes as much as you do. One day, your spouse suddenly and unexpectedly dies. That’s going to have a very bad impact on your finances and standard of living beyond just that of losing a spouse unless you happen to have enough cash sitting around not earmarked for anything that could make up for your partner’s income for many years. Very few people have that, so life insurance makes sense.
Yes, most insurance policies only pay out in rare circumstances, but people buy insurance because those circumstance are dire and they’re still common enough that they do regularly happen to people. If those circumstances aren’t actually dire for you, then you don’t need the policy.
For small policies like the ones you name, if you have more than enough in your emergency fund to handle the expenses related to the event that would trigger the policy, you probably don’t need the policy.
Q3: Nudging child out of nest
We have a 20 year old son who lives at home while he goes to nearby university about 15 miles away. He has a part time job on campus there. We don’t have any conflict with him living here but we have a strong sense that after graduation he intends to keep living here, and we don’t think that’s a good idea long term for any of us. We are looking for simple ways to encourage him to get out of the nest when he graduates or even before. Do you have any suggestions?
– Adam
One of my college friends lived at home and her parents had what I considered to be a really good arrangement with her. While she was in college, each month they put some amount into a “moving out” fund for her. When she graduated, she was welcome to stay at home, but each month she did so, they put less into the fund. After six months post graduation, they stopped contributing to the fund and in subsequent months they started to take money out of the fund to pay for some of the costs of her continuing to live at home.
In other words, a couple of months after graduating, it quickly became a matter of diminishing returns for her to live at home. If she moved out then, she basically had a year’s worth of rent covered. The longer she stayed at home, the less and less rent was covered, and if she had stayed at home for a couple of years, the fund would have entirely vanished.
This motivated her to move out quite effectively.
Aside from something like this, I think the best tool in your arsenal is communication. Talk to your partner about what kind of timeline and what situations you’d like to see for your child to move out, then once you’re on the same page, open up those discussions to your child and make it clear what you have in mind before it ends up being a difficult situation.
Q4: Getting out of Scentsy / MLM
My sister has sold Scentsy rather aggressively for the last two years but recently said that she is thinking about getting out of it but doesn’t really know how. Do you have any advice?
– Erika
I don’t know the absolute specifics of how the Scentsy program works, but almost all MLM programs work along the same lines.
The first thing she needs to do is to cut herself off from her upline or sponsors. Delete group chats, block those people, ignore and block their texts. They’re going to apply a lot of pressure to keep her selling Scentsy, so she needs to cut them off.
If she has any automatic shipments of Scentsy products, she needs to cancel them immediately. She should also look into whether or not there are any buyback or return policies; I poked around the Scentsy website but couldn’t find any. If she has stock that isn’t already sold, she should tell people that she’s ending her Scentsy “business” and is selling what she has at a discount.
Beyond that, she should spend some time talking to anyone in her personal life that she used aggressive selling tactics on while selling Scentsy. MLMs damage relationships and they have to be repaired. This can be hard.
If she has any downlines or people she’s sponsored, she needs to have a chat with them, too. Keep it simple, though – she doesn’t have to reveal everything about her life.
The hardest part is going to be ignoring the pressure from the upline/sponsor to keep selling. They have a basket of tactics to use to keep their downlines in line and they will use them. Be there for your sister, because this will probably be hard for someone who was really into selling just a short while ago.
Q5: Thoughts on safe deposit boxes
Do you still recommend safe deposit boxes as a place to put valuables? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html
– Erik
After reading this article and doing some homework, there are three things worth pointing out.
First, anything you put in a safe deposit box should be insured. Check with your homeowners insurance to see whether coverage is extended to the contents of such a box and, if not, whether it can be extended to it. You may have to take out a separate policy for a valuable collection, but the premiums on a collection stored in a bank vault are pretty low.
Second, the contents of a safe deposit box are much less likely to be broken into than your home. They’re also much less likely to be damaged in fire than your home. That does not make them riskless. It simply means the risk is much lower.
Third, a safe deposit box is a good place to put documents that aren’t significantly valuable on their own but could be really difficult to replace, like deeds and Social Security cards and so on.
I do keep a small number of reasonably valuable collectibles in our safe deposit box. They do not have enough value, in my opinion, to insure on their own. I mostly just want to have them in a separate and rather secure place besides our home.
Q6: How to stop package theft
I think that someone is stealing packages off of my front step but I don’t really know how to prevent it. About half the time in the last six months when UPS or FedEx or post office leaves a package for me, it has vanished. At first I thought it was a fluke but it’s pretty clear someone is either targeting my house or walking through the neighborhood grabbing packages. What’s a good solution for this that isn’t really expensive?
– Jerry
The best solution, though it’s kind of expensive, is to buy a parcel drop box. This allows packages to be deposited in a large opening at the top and then they drop down into a locked box below. You then unlock that box when you get home and there’s your package. I’ve seen these in a few front yards as of late.
You can also put up a small camera ($50 or so) and a sign indicating that the property is under surveillance. Then, if someone actually takes the package, you can watch the video and see what happened. This can help you and your neighbors get rid of the package thief entirely.
The best free (or low cost) solution is to talk to the delivery services and see if you can have your packages held at their location so you can just pick them up when they arrive.
Another approach would be to talk to the police in your area and report that packages are consistently being taken from your front step in a particular timeframe and likely from other homes in the area.
Q7: Clark Howard radio show
Any thoughts on the Clark Howard radio show? He seems to mostly say sensible stuff.
– Bill
90% of the time, Clark Howard does a very good job of making solid personal finance advice into an entertaining radio show. Of the people on the radio who talk about personal finance, he’s probably the one I like the best.
What about the other 10%? It seems like sometimes he starts talking positively about companies and how great they are and I just don’t see why. I’ve assumed that there is some paid product placement in places during his show, but I don’t know that – there’s just parts that feel very off when he’s recommending products or companies, like he’s talking about a company that really isn’t a great bargain or isn’t anywhere near the best in a particular market as though they’re a fantastic deal.
If you avoid his specific product recommendations (and tune out the ads), his show is pretty good.
Q8: Borrowing money to invest
What do you think of the idea of taking a cash withdrawal from a 0% interest credit card and investing that money now, then paying it back over time before the 0% interest rate deal ends? Seems like that would get money into a Roth faster at the start of the year instead of spread throughout it.
– Barry
While this can gain you a little money in your Roth if everything goes well, it comes with significant risk. You’re essentially banking on everything going well in your life, and if it doesn’t, this strategy could cost you a great deal. Plus, there’s the inherent stock market risk – there’s not a guarantee that this will make you money. You’re essentially taking out a favorable loan to make a short term stock market play, and the stock market isn’t a great short term investment.
I wouldn’t do this. You should take out 0% credit card offers in an effort to reduce financial risk in your life, not increase it. Use those things to pay off credit cards that actually have a balance or other fairly high interest debt. That’s a move that reduces your personal financial risk. Use such an advance to buy a necessary purchase instead of using a credit card with interest or using cash savings. That’s another move that reduces your personal financial risk.
This is a bad move.
Q9: Elderly parent in decline
My husband and I are in our mid 60s. We have not yet retired but were planning to do so around 70. My mother is 91 years old and on the verge of no longer being able to live independently. I am her only living child. She is still sharp of mind but her body is very frail. She currently receives a pension from the state plus Social Security so she’s better off financially than many people her age but her medical costs are really starting to ramp up.
The big issue is that we want to be able to move her in with us but our home is not accessible for her in any way. The cost of building on a room for her with a handicap accessible bathroom and easy access to kitchen and living room is expensive but doable for now but we are not sure we will be able to recoup the investment later if we sell the house.
Do you have any advice for our situation? Things we can look into or think about?
– Karen
The best advice I’ve found for this situation comes from AARP, as this is the kind of issue that they handle extremely well. I found this article on the decision to live with aging parents to be really valuable.
In short, the best thing you can do right now is to communicate a lot with your husband and then with your mother, and then when issues of concern come up, research those specific areas of concern.
As for the home addition, your best approach is to start gathering quotes sooner rather than later so that the room is ready when you need to make this move. If you and your husband are really committed to doing this, get started now so that everything goes as smoothly as possible. This means starting with some serious conversation as soon as possible.
We’ve had a bunch of heavy questions this week, so let’s finish up with three lighter ones.
Q10: Easiest pasta at home?
Want to try making pasta at home from scratch but don’t want to invest in a machine until I’m sure it’s worth it. Suggestions for first steps? Looked at some pasta cookbooks but they all jump in to the deep end.
– Alex
Make lasagna noodles by hand. Seriously. It’s not that hard at all and you don’t need a machine.
Use a simple homemade pasta recipe, like this one. It’s mostly just flour and eggs with a tiny bit of salt, olive oil, and possibly a bit of water depending on elevation and humidity. You basically mix flour and eggs until you make a thick dough, break it into small pieces, then roll it very thin, fold it over a couple of times, and roll it thin again. You basically just trim the edges a bit, cook it, and use it in lasagna.
When making lasagna, I actually think it’s worth the effort to make noodles like this instead of using boxed noodles. The homemade fresh noodles taste better and have a better texture in the mouth. I straight-up prefer them, though it’s not a life changing difference. They’re just easy to make.
For me, the real work of homemade pasta is cutting them into small noodles in any sort of efficient way (think spaghetti or fettuccine). This is easiest done by machine.
Q11: Computer games?
You said you spend a few hours a week playing computer games. What kind of games do you play?
– Adam
I basically play long simulation-style games. Over the last three years, aside from occasionally playing other types of games with my kids, I’ve really only played five computer games: Factorio, Stellaris, Northgard, Europa Universalis IV, and Civilization VI.
These are all relatively slow paced games where you spend time thinking about your next move and you can easily just save your game at pretty much any time and play later, though there is a strong “one more turn!” temptation with all of them. The only one that’s even “click-y” at all, and it’s very minimal, is Northgard.
I have several friends who play similar games and so I often talk to them about it, so it has a social component, but I play these games almost entirely solo. I enjoy them for the problem solving and the kind of slow and meditative pace.
My philosophy on computer games is that I’d rather play a game to utter death and earn most/all of the achievements rather than hopping from game to game.
Q12: Books with Impact suggestions
I have really enjoyed your Books with Impact reviews, especially when you write about personal finance adjacent books like personal development and productivity and leadership. Here are some books you might want to consider for this series.
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Atomic Habits by James Clear
How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci
A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
I look forward to reading your summaries and thoughts on these!
– Jared
Believe it or not, all five of these are on my list of personal development/personal finance books to read or, in the case of three of those books, to re-read. I tend to read a new book and re-read a different book in those areas about once every two or three weeks at this point.
The books I choose to actually review on here as a “Book with Impact” is one that I’ve read, then re-read, and also applied the content within in some successful fashion in my own life in a lasting way or it impacted my thinking in a meaningful and lasting way. I read a lot of good books, but they’re usually not ones I end up applying in any sort of meaningful and lasting way aside from perhaps a minor tactic or two.
I have about five or six books that are definitely going to be covered in this way in the future, and the books on my re-read list number about 20 and at least a few of those will probably pop up. My “to be read” list is much longer, but I usually prioritize ones that my readers ask me about, and that means that the ones above that I haven’t read are likely to be read or re-read soon.
If you have any suggestions for personal finance books, personal development books, productivity books, or books that just made you think a lot about the general direction of your life and perhaps the role that money plays in it, please send them to me at the link below (along with any other questions for the mailbag you might have).
Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.
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A Life Well Lived
One of the best people I’ve ever known celebrated his 90th birthday very recently. His children put together a wonderful birthday party for him and invited tons of people – old friends, extended family members, all kinds of folks. There were people I knew well, people I knew vaguely, people I didn’t know at all, all drawn together to celebrate this occasion.
At events like this, the most wonderful part is how our shared relationships with this guy drew us all together. It was the common touchstone for all of us, and because of that, stories about him flowed. I wound up swapping stories about the guest of honor with all kinds of people and getting to know some of them along the way.
The thing that stuck out to me more than anything else was that people really don’t care what kind of house you have or what kind of car you drive or whether you have the latest gadgets. No one at that party cared in the least about any of that. They cared about the person – his humor, his kindness, his generosity, his good advice, his character, his reliability. So many of the stories involved the guest of honor opening his door to someone or showing up in a needed moment or coming through over and over again or doing something hilarious.
I didn’t hear stories about his house or the cars he drove or the fancy restaurants he dined at or how well he dressed or anything like that. That’s not what drew literally hundreds of people to his party. That’s not what filled all the bedrooms in several nearby houses and had people camping in tents and campers.
He spent much of the party holding court, with people sitting down to chat with him for a bit, then making room for other people. The sheer number of people and memories that shifted across his table in that afternoon was almost unbelievable, a true celebration of a lifetime of memories.
When I’m 90, what will I remember?
I won’t remember going out to expensive restaurants with my wife or with my friends. I will remember eating with them and laughing with them and enjoying their company.
I won’t remember the expensive watch I owned forty years ago. I will remember a random lazy afternoon with my kids when we rolled down hills and blew tufts of dandelions.
I won’t remember that I had the latest and greatest smartphone. I will remember being able to be there for a friend, and when they were there for me.
I won’t remember the books that filled my bookshelf. I will remember the things I learned from reading books, the lessons they taught me, and some of the great stories.
When I’m at my 90th birthday party, I don’t want to hear people talking about my board game collection. I’d rather hear them talking about the time we stayed up most of the night playing a game together, or how I showed up at their doorstep when they were down with a sack of food, some beverages, and a board game and spent the evening with them.
When I’m at my 90th birthday party, I won’t remember the exact details of some trip I went on with friends years and years ago, but I will remember us doing something new and laughing together.
When I’m at my 90th birthday party, I won’t remember the money I frivolously spent, but I will remember when I was able to help a friend and when they were able to help me.
Those are the things he remembers and laughs about when he talks about his life. Those are the sources of the pieces of wisdom he offers, the things that just come naturally from him. Those are the things that people talk about when they talk about him.
His old farmhouse isn’t full of expensive artifacts from forgotten trips. They’re full of meaningful memories, of things made by him and things made for him by loved ones, of photographs, of well-used and well-loved functional items.
The people who came to that party weren’t there hoping for a spot in a will. They were there to appreciate a wonderful person. They remember his character. They remember time spent with him. They remember the skills he had. They remembered what he gave of himself.
Those things aren’t bought. They’re earned over a lifetime of living.
When I look ahead at the life I have yet to live and I ask myself whether I’d rather have a house full of stuff or a life full of good memories and great relationships, I want the latter, and it’s not even a question.
That’s why my financial plans are largely in service of that. I want to have a life that gives me the ability to be there for friends, to be a part of people’s lives, to be more than just a career and a shiny car and a nice house.
I don’t want to end up in an empty house full of stuff with my kids counting down the days to clean it out and sell it off, without friends and people in my life.
With every year that has passed, he has taught me how to live that life. You don’t get there by spending money on forgettable things. You get there by spending time and care on the people in your life. You don’t get there by getting. You get there by giving.
Later that evening, as the festivities were winding down, I wound up sitting fairly close to the guest of honor, engaged in a conversation that he was merely listening to. I looked over at him and he looked absolutely tired, but he had this half-smile on his face that simply said he’d rather be there than anywhere else in the world.
After he went to bed, about forty people were still hanging out, playing cards and swapping stories and laughing. I can’t imagine a better sound to fall asleep to.
Thanks for the example, Herb.
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الأحد، 28 يوليو 2019
Pike County needs a hospital closer to home
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Legal cannabis could pose law enforcement challenges for Pa.
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A hospital closer to home
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السبت، 27 يوليو 2019
Get Paid to Read and Review Books from Home
How would you like to get paid to read books and share your opinion of them? If you have a love for reading, then a paid book reviewer job is the perfect work-at-home opportunity for you! Whether you’re sitting on the couch in your jammies or beachside in your bathing suit, you can cozy up […]
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Is NEPA underserved for hospitals?
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The Value of Time Tracking – And How I Do It
Over the past few years, I’ve made several small references to the fact that I’m a pretty active time tracker. I like to keep track of what I do with my time throughout the day, to the best of my ability, and I find a ton of value not just in doing so, but in the accumulated data.
A few readers over the years have touched base with me on the subject, asking for more details, so I thought there might be value in explaining the full system in detail – why I do it, how I do it, and what value I get from the results. There are definitely some real financial and professional benefits, and benefits in other areas of life, too.
What Is Time Tracking?
Time tracking is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I simply keep track of my time use each day. Any time I do something for more than about five minutes, or if I interrupt an ongoing task for more than about five minutes, I record that.
Let’s say I wake up in the morning and I decide that I first want to take a shower and get dressed for the day. I mark the time, that I’m no longer sleeping, and that I’m now practicing morning hygiene. When I’m done with that and I decide I want to meditate, I mark the time, that I’m no longer doing morning hygiene, and that I’m now meditating. This goes on and on, to the best of my ability, until I’m ready to go to sleep, at which point I mark the time, that I’m no longer doing whatever it was I was doing right before bed, and that I’m now sleeping. I’ll get into the mechanics of this in a bit, but it takes me less than a second to record those transitions, so it’s practically effortless.
In general, I don’t bother recording very short things, less than five or ten minutes or so. I’m more interested in the larger blocks of time I devote to things like sleep, work, hygiene, meals, hobbies, and so on.
I do not aim for perfection. That would be impossible. Instead, I just aim to get as close as I can to recording the actual edges of the significant chunks of time throughout my day. I’m never absolutely perfect at it.
Why Do It?
The first question most people ask when they hear about this is why. Why would a person even want to do this?
This actually is a practice that I started using at my previous job to document my personal time. I was frustrated by my performance reviews and felt that the reviews didn’t actually assess all of the different things I was actually taking care of and responsible for at work, so for the last year or so of my job, I started tracking my time very carefully using an Excel spreadsheet, doing it all manually. I wanted to produce documentation that showed that I spent X hours in an average week – and Y hours over the last year – doing a particular task and so on. So, the entire thing was initially borne out of a frustration with managers not really understanding or appreciating all of the things I was quietly doing and maintaining.
I learned several things as I was doing this.
First of all, the act of time tracking nudges me to make better use of my time. When I made the conscious decision to be as honest as possible with my time tracking, I quickly realized that I didn’t want to track silly uses of my time. If I were to look at my time tracking data at the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month and think to myself that some of those entries were absolutely wasteful or silly, that wouldn’t feel good. I don’t want to see entries like that in my data. So, during the day, I consciously choose things to do that will look better in the data.
This is very similar to the phenomenon of writing down every dime you spend. If you do that honestly, there will be bad expenses that you don’t want to write down, and that desire to not have to record that silly expense pushes you away from that expense. You don’t want to write it down, so you don’t do it.
Second, time tracking keeps me on task. I have a rough rule that if I’m stepping away from the task at hand for more than five minutes, I write down that the task has ended and that I’m moving on to something else. This actually does a great job of keeping me on task. I recognize that if I start browsing websites for very long, I’m actually effectively ending the block of time I spent on task and, as noted above, I don’t want to do that, so I find myself nudging away from pure time-wasting activities.
Finally, time tracking data is incredibly useful, especially as I accumulate more and more of it. I’ll get into this below in the “How I Use the Data” section, but suffice it to say that the data has a great deal of value, professionally, personally, and financially. The things I’ve learn from looking at the time tracking data I’ve accumulated have helped me make better career decisions, make better hobby choices, make better personal decisions, and so on.
When I walked away from that job, I found that the unstructured life of self-employment and contracted work made it very easy to start using time in a … let’s say, less than optimal manner. After a while, I began to realize that I needed to figure out better practices for using my time, and that’s when I returned to time tracking, and I’ve more or less been using it constantly over the last several years. I found that the benefits it brought to my professional life back then actually exist in almost every aspect of my life now.
How I Track My Time
So, how do I actually pull this off without being overly clunky?
For me, the number one most important principle of time tracking is that it must require absolute minimum effort to actually track time. When I first started doing this, I would manually track time in a spreadsheet document, and that was often cumbersome. I had to develop a set of codes to use to make the entry more efficient, but even that was fairly slow. It is very likely that if I were still recording my time manually on a spreadsheet or with a piece of paper, I wouldn’t still be doing it.
The big change for me was the arrival of online services that handle time tracking for you. They basically handle all of the data tracking and reduce it all down to a single button click, though there is a lot of setup work that needs to be done to make it work that well.
I’ve tried a bunch of services and the one I’ve been using for the past few months is far and away the best one I’ve ever used. I use Timery, which is an app that serves as a very user-friendly front end for the Toggl time tracking service. This might require a bit of explanation.
I have been using Toggl as my time tracking service for years because I like the way they handle all of the data that I’ve recorded. The only problem with Toggl is that their actual data entry tools are a bit cumbersome. I usually use my phone or (occasionally) my tablet to record when tasks start and end, but the tools Toggl provides themselves require several taps to do almost anything, which often takes me out of my train of thought.
Timery‘s entire focus is on making data entry into Toggl as simple as possible, reducing most of the time entry down to a single tap off of the Control Center screen on my phone or tablet. I can literally do it in less than a second, fast enough and thoughtless enough that I don’t have to break whatever I’m concentrating on. This has been a revelation for me.
Basically, I have a section on the Control Center screen on my phone called Timery, and within that is a selection of the most common things I track for time. If I have a timer running, it’s shown at the very top in a bigger button, so I just tap that button if I want to end the timer, then I find the button matching what I’m going to do next and tap that to start a new one. Timery handles all of the start and end times and data recording for me so I don’t have to deal with any of it.
I have a much longer list within the app itself for other things, so if I don’t happen to see the thing I’m doing, I tap the Timery app and just scroll down to that timer.
The nice thing about Timery/Toggl is that for each task, you give it a name, assign it a project, and can give it as many tags as you wish. This is huge in terms of sifting through the data once you’ve recorded a bunch of it.
I personally have a couple dozen different projects that are all named with the following structure “[Life Sphere] – [Specific Element].” Life sphere simply refers to one of the eleven areas of my life that I’m concerned with – physical, mental, spiritual, intellectual, social, marital, parental, family, professional, leisure, and financial. Some of those things break down into a few broad groups that I want to track. For example, I have a “Parental – NAME” project for each of my children to record when I’m spending one on one time with them, as well as a “Parental – All” for when I’m doing things with multiple kids at once. I have a “Professional – TSD” project for when I’m doing things with The Simple Dollar, as well as a few other “Professional – ” projects that relate to other professional things I’m doing.
So, for example, I have a task called “Playing Magic with my oldest child” that’s in the project “Parental – Oldest Child.” (Obviously, I use his name in that task, but I try to respect his privacy as much as possible on the site.) He loves playing Magic: the Gathering, so I tap that timer whenever I sit down to play a game or two with him.
Tags are used to include attributes of tasks in different spheres that might have things in common. This is usually to help handle specific tasks that I think are mostly in one project but have a lot in common with tasks in another project.
For example, I use the tags “#mtg” and “#tabletopgames” for the task described above, and there are tasks under the “Leisure” category that have similar tags, so that I can always have a full picture of how much time I spend playing tabletop games and playing Magic in general, with my son and other people combined.
Another example: I have several tasks that are within one of the “Professional” categories that have the tag “#writing” associated with them, so I can always figure out with a few clicks what time I’m spending writing.
Once one of these timers is created, I don’t have to do anything with them again other than to tap it once to start a timer for that task, then tap it again later to end a timer for that task. The name of the task, the category it’s in, and the tags it has are saved by Timery/Toggl, so I don’t have to ever re-enter them again after the first time. I just tap to start a timer, then tap again to end it.
How I Use the Data
So, I’m accumulating all of this data. How am I using it?
First of all, I really like to see week-over-week and month-over-month changes in my time use. Are those changes matching up with what I expect? With what I want out of life?
In terms of planning out my days, I use a “time block” system where I assign several big chunks of time to various things I want to get done, and each of those is usually associated with a timer. When I start to see changes in the data that I don’t like, I usually use that information to change how I’m blocking out my time going forward from there.
For example, let’s say I notice that my time spent with my daughter has declined in the last few months. I’ll likely give that some thought. How is my relationship with my daughter changing? Maybe I need to be spending more time with her. What kinds of things can we do together, just me and her, that would be meaningful and enjoyable for her?
Second, I use the data to help me figure out which work tasks are really worthwhile and which ones aren’t. Ideally, I want to be in a situation where, when I’m actually applying skills to produce work, I’m extremely efficient and earning a nice dollar-per-hour rate for that effort. What productive tasks are most efficient at producing the highest income per hour? Over the last several months, what ones have gone up, and can I connect that to my effort toward learning and improving skills?
For example, let’s say I notice that my time invested in all tasks tagged with “#writing” has gone down a bit over the last few months, but my actual income for writing has gone up. That improves my hourly rate, but why is that? Is it due to the specific tasks? Did I happen to have a really lucrative writing gig? Or maybe it was because I’ve invested some time into honing my writing skills over the past several months. I actually have clues here, data I can work with to figure out how valuable skill building actually is and what tasks and projects are really worthwhile for me. (I have at least one long term contract that now feels like a “dog” because it takes far more time than it gives me, so I know I won’t renew it or sign a similar one going forward. This is something I might not have realized without time tracking.)
In practical terms, this knowledge has led me to spend a fair amount of time working on skill building and knowledge building in the fall and winter months (when I have more time for such things) and then more time on producing things in the spring (where I want to produce a lot of good material quickly to free up time in the summer months). This cycle has worked out well and has enabled me to do some things in the summer that would have never worked in earlier years. It has also led me to agree to some additional projects and decline some others, because the data gives me a pretty clear sense as to whether I can handle them efficiently or not.
Third, seeing time use that I’m unhappy with is an incredibly powerful motivator to get me to cut out less valuable uses of my time. What I’m generally aiming for in life are uses of my time that seem purposeful now, but also seem purposeful when I look back on the data six months from now. If I see time uses that aren’t purposeful, I want to make changes, and those changes are usually positive for my life.
I’ll use computer games as an example. I think a small amount of computer game use is great for me. It is a powerful tool for short term de-stressing and the types of games I play usually make me think and analyze complex puzzles. I’m actually happy with a small amount of it – say, three hours a week. What I’m not happy with it is a steady uptick in the time I spend on computer games or when my time given to them adds up to a lot more than three hours a week. When I see that, I recognize immediately that I need to cut back and give more time to other things.
The reverse is also true. I generally like to see as much time as possible devoted to physical fitness and meditation, two practices I feel are extremely helpful in my daily life. When I see the time devoted to those things going down, I recognize that I need to consciously give more time to those things.
To put it simply, I have in my head an idea of what an “ideal week” and an “ideal month” look like. (An “ideal day” is kind of impossible because days vary too much.) There’s a certain portion of hours devoted to each area of my life, with some areas receiving more focus depending on the time of year. When I start to deviate a lot from that picture, I usually feel it in my life in a negative subconscious way, but I often don’t pick up on it consciously aside from a vague sense that something is off in terms of how I’m living my life. Time tracking almost always points me to what that problem is.
Finding Time for Time Tracking
Honestly, it doesn’t take much time at all to do this, once you’ve got a bunch of timers for the things in your life you want to track set up.
When I’m going through my day and tracking time, I can stop a timer and start a new one with a flick and two taps of my finger; it’s so fast that it barely registers as a conscious thing. It’s kind of a habit that you build up over time, so that it almost becomes unconscious to do it. (Yes, for some less common tasks, it takes an extra tap or two, but that’s like a five second thing.)
As I’ve mentioned many times, I take an hour or two each week (usually early on Sunday mornings, before anyone else is up) to do a “weekly review” of my life, looking at what I accomplished this week and figuring out what I’m going to do next week and going forward beyond that. I use the time tracking data as part of this review; I spend some time looking at my data for the past week and digging into anything that stands out at me. Sometimes, I’ll have a particular question in mind (like “how effective is time spent on focused research in terms of how efficient my actual writing time is?”) and I’ll dig through the data until I get a good answer. Usually, those conclusions help me figure out how to use my time better going forward and informs my planning for the coming week.
When I initially set up the system, it took about an hour to set up my initial handful of timers, and for the first month or two, I was adding timers fairly regularly (took about a minute each, most of which was thinking about exactly what I wanted to track). After that, I’ve occasionally added a new timer, but not often.
So, time tracking takes up very, very little of my time. It’s super convenient and not cumbersome in any way. Although previous iterations of my system were a bit cumbersome, that’s been eliminated thanks to technology improvements.
Final Thoughts
Time tracking is something that has had surprising positive value in my life. It’s helped me figure out lots of different life problems and helped me figure out what’s going on during times when I’ve felt things were out of whack in my life. It’s helped me figure out how to become much more efficient with my professional work and understand how time spent building skills actually ends up helping my overall professional life tremendously. It’s helped me identify areas of my life that need work, and other areas of my life to which I’m devoting too much of my time.
The system takes a bit of time to set up – an hour or two, most likely – and it definitely requires you to build a habit of tracking time as a natural response to changing what you’re doing, but once you get there, actually tracking the information is slick and natural.
The data, once you start to accumulate a sufficient amount of it, is incredibly useful in terms of figuring out what’s really going on in your life and setting priorities and goals going forward.
I’m really glad that time tracking is a part of my life. For the relatively small amount of time I’ve given to it, it’s resulted in a lot of insights and a lot of positive directions for me. I’m glad I chose to start doing it, and I plan on continuing to do this for a very long time, likely until I hit early retirement and our children have moved out of the home.
The post The Value of Time Tracking – And How I Do It appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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الجمعة، 26 يوليو 2019
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The Basics of Asset Protection Planning – The Rules You Need To Know
While working with clients for almost two decades one of the most pressing concerns shared among all of them was protecting the nest egg they had accumulated. Any news headline or market correction would evoke fear about losing their portfolio. It didn’t take long to realize that utilizing asset protection strategies was a must for my clients emotional well-being.
The following is a guest post from Blake Harris. He is the Managing Attorney at Mile High Estate Planning where his primary focus is making sure his clients are protected on all fronts. When he offered to share some of his asset protection strategies on the blog I was excited to share his expertise. Here’s his thoughts on making sure your protected….
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For those who have assets, making sure they are safe is a top priority. There are various threats to your continued ownership of your property, including lawsuits, creditors and even divorce.
In today’s litigious society, many different people can try to take what you have worked hard for from you. The good news is you are not entirely defenseless in this area. There are laws you can use to your advantage in order to protect what you have, and it is entirely legal.
In order to do so, you will need an asset protection attorney who has an understanding of the relevant areas of the law.
What Is Asset Protection?
Asset protection is the term that can describe the variety of different financial structures and arrangements you can take in order to keep your assets safe from creditor, judgements and other occurrences such as divorce. There is not one set definition of an action you would take when it comes to asset protection as it could encompass any one of a number of steps. Defined loosely, these are steps to keep your assets in your hands in practically nearly all circumstances. This can be financial planning or a number of any legal steps that can be taken.
Who Can Help?
Generally, it will be an estate planning attorney that will have the knowledge necessary to assist with this process. There are any one of a number of different disciplines of law that may be involved in asset protection, including trusts and estates, family law, personal injury and corporate law. Most individuals do not have knowledge of one of these topics of law, let alone having sufficient expertise in all of them. This is not really something the average person can do on their own.
Instead, they will likely need the help of attorney to execute these plans. If anything is done wrong, it could nullify the entire asset protection effort. Then, you will not discover you are unprotected until it is too late. Hiring an attorney can minimize many of these risks and give you the peace of mind to know your asset protection plan will be effective.
What Happens?
There are several different outcomes with asset protection plans. One outcome is to move your assets beyond the reach of anyone who may be trying to take them from you. This will mean that, while you may be sued, your assets cannot be reached. Losing a lawsuit and losing your assets are not necessarily the same thing. When someone successfully sues you, they will obtain a judgment against you.
However, they will need to find your assets suitable to satisfy the judgement. If assets are protected or are moved out of your control, anyone who holds the judgments will not be able to attach the assets. They will only be able to go after what they are able to, and the asset protection plan will place much of what you have out of the purview of a judgment.
Alternatively, other forms of asset protection will give you the assets necessary to pay a judgment or creditor in the event they come after your assets.
When Do You Need It Most?
The simple answer to this question is now before it is too late. If your asset protection plan is not in place when trouble hits, you will have difficulty safeguarding your property. There are laws that prevent something called a fraudulent conveyance. This occurs when someone tries to transfer money to another party in order to avoid a debt or a judgment. The key here is there has to be a debt or a judgment that one must be trying to circumvent.
This means any plan must be in place before the debt or incurred or the judgment is entered because anything executed after that may be considered null and void by a court. While you may not go to jail for this, a court will look for an equitable solution in order to keep you from shifting assets around to get out from under an obligation. The appropriate time to worry about this is before there is anything to worry about. If the asset protection plan is already in place, then it will be operative and provide the safety you need.
While most people would benefit from some type of asset protection, not everyone will ultimately need it. By definition, you will need to have assets you are trying to safeguard, so you will need to have a net worth. People who would be ideal beneficiaries of this course of action would be those who may ultimately face frequent lawsuits or the threat of a financially crippling lawsuit.
For example, while doctors may have malpractice insurance, it does not always remove all elements of personal risk to them. Doctors live with the possibility they may have to surrender assets if there is a judgment against them. While they do need to maintain control over some of their assets, it may behoove them to “take money off the table” by executing an asset protection plan. In addition, spouses who enter into a marriage with significant assets of their own may also gain from an asset protection plan because prenuptial agreements may not always be foolproof.
Another important use of an asset protection trust is for someone who may eventually need nursing home care. Nursing homes will look to your assets first, and if you do not have them, then Medicaid would cover the costs of skilled nursing care. Thus, it is imperative to move assets into a trust so that the cost of a nursing home does not eat up all of the assets that you plan on leaving to your loved ones.
What Are Different Types of Asset Protection?
Many of these plans involve trust agreements where you will surrender some beneficial control over an asset in exchange for protecting it from creditors. In other words, you would establish any one of a number of different trusts and move assets into the trust. It is the surrender of control of the asset to someone else which legally separates the asset from you such that there is a distinct identity for the asset.
When you give up the right to exert various forms of control over the asset and give someone else the ultimate power over it, you and the asset are disassociated in the eyes of the law even if you maintain an ownership interest in it.
Other types of asset protection involve the corporate or legal form of the asset or entity. For example, you can set up a Limited Liability Corporation which protects your other assets. While this does not protect you from all types of liability, it means that, if there is a liability-creating event, all the creditor or judgment holder can go after are the LLC assets, including its bank accounts and any property that it has. When this is your business form, your personal assets are largely safe.
Another type of asset protection is to place assets in a tenancy by entirety if you have a spouse. This means that if there is a judgment, the property of the other spouse cannot be reached. Any asset is joint property. However, this means that in the event of a divorce, you may lose some of the property.
Further, while many think of complicated asset structures when they think about protection plans, this can be as simple as buying the right type of insurance. There are specialized policies that can protect assets in the event of a lawsuit. These policies will kick in when the amount of the judgment exceeds existing insurance limits. While insurance can help protect you, it is by no means foolproof and you may not be able to get a policy big enough to remove all risk.
What Are Different Type of Trusts You May Need?
Asset protection trusts can be either domestic or offshore. Which form you ultimately choose depends a lot on the state where you live and whether it permits certain offshore trusts. For example, there is something called a bridge trust that takes effect on the occurrence of a certain specified event. You can remain the trustee in full control of your assets until this event happens. When the event does occur, the trust is automatically set up and the foreign trustee takes control of your assets while you maintain ownership. Then, at some point, the trust can dissolve and you can regain control of your assets. There are various types of offshore LLCs that can act as asset protection entities.
Not every state legally recognizes a bridge trust. In fact, only a handful of them allow this under their laws. However, there are other forms of foreign offshore trusts that can protect your assets which are legal in all states. The countries where these trusts are domiciled have taken steps to make their jurisdictions as defendant-friendly as possible. There may still be attempts by courts to force you to repatriate your assets, but they will be better protected than if they are in the U.S.
Of course, you can always elect to use a domestic trust in order to protect your assets. These are easier to establish and they have certain tax advantages that foreign trusts lack. These will typically cost less to set up than a foreign trust since it will cover less geographic distance and there are fewer parties to work with when establishing the trust. One feature you must be aware of is some of these trusts must be irrevocable in order to provide the desired asset protection. In other words, once you move the assets into the trust, it is permanent and they cannot be moved out. Make sure your attorney checks the laws of the state you are in because they are not always permitted.
What Is the Extent It Covers?
To be clear, asset protection plans are subject to tax laws. Even if the assets are placed in a trust, you would still be responsible for whatever your tax liability is. While these trusts may protect your assets, they cannot be designed to defeat the IRS.
In addition, some judges may compel you to repatriate assets held overseas under court order. Some courts could impose a jail sentence for failure to comply with that court order. This depends on the particular judge and the type of arrangement you have.
How to Pick an Attorney
It is important to know the extent of the lawyer’s expertise before you retain them as your counsel. Look to see the areas of law with which they are familiar and make sure they have the ability to work across disciplines.
At the same time, you do not necessarily want a generalist who practices different areas of the law. It is better to choose someone who has a dedicated expertise in estate planning and asset protection because one mistake can permanently alter your financial picture.
The Bottom Line
Of course, this guide would be incomplete without a discussion of some of the drawbacks of an asset protection plan so you can make an informed decision about what to do with your property. One of the main considerations is trusts cost money to set up and maintain and then require tax returns over the life of the trust. In addition, as mentioned above, trusts can have a certain degree of permanence that is inescapable.
Finally, when placing assets in a trust, you will lose some element of control over the asset, lest a court “pierces the veil” and finds you are essentially the same as your trust.
Of course, you should compare the costs of setting up the trust to what you may stand to lose if creditors or judgement holders have the ability to help themselves to your assets.
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