Posted on: November 13, 2008 by Matt
While flipping through some blogs this morning I happened upon a post over at IowaHippieChick that advertised a free 8X11 Custom Cover Photo Book from SnapFish. The deal is courtesy of Oprah and SnapFish.
The deal is good for one 20 page custom cover photo book and runs until 11:59 PM PST tomorrow (11/14/08). You then have until 11:59 PM on Sunday (11/16/08) to complete your photo book. From the looks of the disclaimer you will still be responsible for shipping and handling but for that cost I think I will be looking to pick up a photo book for a family member as a gift for Christmas.
The full text of the disclaimer for those interested is:
This offer is only good for one standard 20-page 8″ x 11″ custom-cover photo book per household. Coupon dispersal ends at 11:59 p.m. PST Friday, November 14, 2008. Free photo book must be redeemed by 11:59 p.m. PST Sunday, November 16, 2008. Offer does not include customary shipping and handling changes or additional pages. Offer applies only to mail-order delivery to U.S. customers. Offer cannot be combined with other coupon codes. Coupon cannot be resold or otherwise transferred and is void on the earlier of redemption or the offer end date.
If you missed the link above then just click here to get to the page to get your free book.
Posted on: November 12, 2008 by Matt
This morning I read a post over at Harvesting Dollars about prepaying for burial that I just can not get out of my head. In his post Todd notes that his in-laws have prepaid for a cremation and that his initial reaction was “this is probably a bad idea” but he invites readers to drop their opinion. Todd also notes that he has heard that prepaying for burial plots and funeral services is a bad idea but that he does not actually know if it is true.
While I have no experience with prepaid funeral expenses the post is stuck in my mind as I have lost people close to me unexpectedly. The death of a loved one may never occur completely expected and even when you have had time to brace for it there will still be a period of grieving. Therefore my thought on prepaying for funeral services in general would be to find a reputable service and get the planning done.
The example that comes to mind most readily for me was the death of my mother. She died when she was 44 and did not have any funeral planning in place. I suppose most people probably would not consider having arrangements made while still in the prime of their life and facing your mortality while still young – really morbid. I am unsure what if any planning she had in place as I had just turned 18 and was not privy to a number of conversations.
I do remember a number of discussions about where and how she would be buried. Her family (I think that’s how it worked out) wanted her buried in the town she grew up and spent most of her life in (not far from where I was born and raised, one town over) but the cemetery was “sold out”. Eventually her mother and step-father offered up their plots in the cemetery for her burial. A very selfless and admirable act that I now appreciate deeply. In addition there were several other issues that came up during the process that were stressful for everyone involved that could have been circumvented with advanced planning.
Right now I am only 29 years old and have not done any of the planning I mention in this post; no will, no burial or funeral plans, etc. However, I do believe that it is not too early to start - not for my own peace of mind but for those that I love and care about. So far the most I have done is had the difficult discussion with my girlfriend in the even that something should happen we each know what the other wants. After reading the post on Harvesting Dollars and writing / thinking a bit about my own experiences I will probably look into getting a will together for any horrible unexpected events.
Posted on: November 11, 2008 by Matt
It seems that the holidays are coming up really quickly this year and I have not prepared. I do have some money available for purchasing gifts but would like to find ways to stretch the money I am spending. I know that my girlfriend shares the same situation and has been already browsing around online trying to find some decent deals on gifts.
We also just recently came up with a method to give out personalized gifts at very low cost. Over the past couple months I have been dabbling around with woodburning (otherwise known as pyrography). I had not attempted any significant full sized burns until last Saturday night when I worked on a burn for my girlfriend. My girlfriend is particularly fond of fairies and I happened to track down a pattern that I thought she would like online. I traced it out and showed her the pattern – she liked it but was not too excited so I set it aside for about a month. On Saturday night I opted to pick it back up and burn the pattern into the wood.
I finished the burning and handed it over to her as a gift. She seemed pretty excited by it and asked if she could color it in. I told her it was hers and she could do as she liked. She spent a couple of hours coloring the burning in with colored pencils and nail polish of all things. Then added some form of glitter to various regions of the pattern. The final result was impressive enough that we decided to make a few more burnings together to hand out as holiday gifts to our families. I am really excited about this for a handful of reasons like:
- I am going to be burning anyway: I really enjoy woodburning and am learing a lot as I go. If I am going to be burning anyway, why not put it to good use?
- We can both enjoy the craft: It is a lot of fun for us to work on a craft like this together. There is not pressure and we can each do the parts of the craft that we enjoy.
- The whole family can get involved: We also burned a few small stencil outlines of Christmas themed patterns for the kids to color. We can let the kids turn them into hand made ornaments to give out as gifts or to hang up around the house.
- The gift is personal: I suppose a lot can be said for fancy, expensive, commercial, mass-produced gifts that tend to break within a month but I prefer something with a bit of meaning. I think that a gift that we put our time and thoughts into means so much more than some commercial junk.
- The price is right: It really does not cost us all that much in materials to make a burning. I currently only have a single temperature wood burner that cost about $30. While I would love a fancy variable temperature tool we can still get by with the tools we have. Basically – we have all the material available and the cost is already sunk as we purchased the wood and burning tool months ago.
In addition to various wood burnings we have also discussed putting together some form of holiday mix in fancy jars for people and doing a mostly hand and home made Christmas for our extended families. We will see how it goes and I look forward to keeping everyone posted on how it turns out. Have any of you had any success with home made Christmas gifts?
Posted on: November 7, 2008 by Matt
Another week has flown by here and it is time for my weekly favorite reads. This weeks list is:
Hope everyone has a safe and relaxing weekend!
Posted on: November 6, 2008 by Matt
While working on getting myself out of debt and on the right track financially I have been figuring out what tools best suit my needs. While I have yet to get together a complete list of everything that I have used in getting my finances together I can share some of the tools that have helped me get started. When I started to get my life back in order I found that I was regularly using:
- The Telephone: I had to get in touch with all the people that I owed money to and get any problems straightened out. Communicating with creditors allowed me to make sure we were all on the same page.
- Personal Finance Software: Like Microsoft’s Money or Intuit’s Quicken. I currently use Money but have an interest in at least checking out Quicken. Either way I have found that having software that can tell me where my money is going invaluable. I can identify areas where I may be overspending and identify trends in my spending that I need to change. Then make the adjustment(s) to my lifestyle and have more money available to repay debt.
- The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness: I had a few ideas on how I was going to go about getting my loans paid down and my finances back in line but needed a few more details. An ex-girlfriend recommended Dave Ramsey to me and had brought home The Total Money Makeover Workbook to read herself. I flipped through it and found a lot of the information useful and bought the actual book. I was able to get a lot of basics under my belt by reading and practicing some of the basic ideas Dave puts forward. The price of the book was worth just learning how to budget for me as I had not learned or understood the importance of budgeting before.
- Microsoft Office: Well Microsoft Excel more than any of the other programs. I found that Excel was a much easier to use interface when putting together basic budgets than the budgets in Microsoft Money. I already had a copy of Office but if I did not I would have probably grabbed a copy of OpenOffice for free in stead.
Those are the tools that I started out my financial recovery with and I still use them all to some degree today. If you are just starting out and have no idea where to begin I would highly recommend starting of with Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness in order to pick up the basics and then start to move forward from there.
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