Every $1 spent at Kroger earns you 1 fuel point and every 100 points earns a $0.10 per gallon discount at Kroger Fuel or participating Shell stations. You earn double fuel points when you purchase gift cards at Kroger. The selection of gift cards available is extensive. You can buy gift cards for major retail outlets and restaurants. If I am planning to make a purchase at one of those retail outlets, I will buy a gift card in a denomination closest to what I will need to spend at that particular store.

• I buy a $15 Starbucks gift card for myself once a month. I figure that’s a reasonable amount of money to spend at Starbucks in one month. That’s 30 fuel points that I would not have earned if I just forked my cash over to the green mermaid.
• A friend helped me move last month, so I treated him to lunch at Ruby Tuesday. I picked up a $25 gift card and earned 50 fuel points.
• I went to Home Depot to buy plastic sheeting and staples for my staple gun to mitigate the energy-leeching effects of drafty single-pane glass windows in my apartment. Buying a $25 gift card prior to shopping at Home Depot earned another 50 fuel points.
• Panera Bread has some excellent vegan-friendly items, none of which is a plain baked potato and side salad. $25 is a reasonable amount to spend there over the course of two months. 50 more fuel points.
• Do you shop on Amazon.com? Amazon gift cards are available at Kroger too.

September is Live Insurance Awareness Month. September is almost over. Where did the time go? Just because Life Insurance Awareness Month is about to pass, it doesn’t mean we can stop thinking about it.

As a single man, I never gave a second thought to life insurance. Who would benefit from it? I wanted every penny of my paycheck that I was entitled to so I could spend it on fun things. Living in an epicenter of scam artistry raised insurance premiums all around. I had contentious sentiments toward the insurance industry. I only wanted the minimum to stay in the good  graces of the law.

All that changed after Twilli was born. I know how important it is, but I dragged my feet (and other body parts). I wondered where I would find the money in my already tight budget for a life insurance premium.

How to Buy Life Insurance

Life Insurance and the Stay-At-Home Parent

Where to Go For More Information

Nursery Decoration on a Budget

Let’s be honest, being charged with the task of decorating your child’s nursery is scary enough without having to worry about the costs involved. Most families are living on a tighter budget these days, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still supply your newborn with the nursery that they deserve. Hiring home decorators and buying new baby furniture can come with quite a hefty price tag. With a little creativity however, you can easily decorate your baby’s nursery by yourself for a fraction of the cost and surprisingly little effort.

One of the easiest ways to decorate a nursery is with some homemade or store bought stencils. With stencils, you can add some character to your child’s room without having to resort to expensive wallpaper. Wallpaper can be a real pain, especially if you’re installing it by yourself. By painting with stencils, even a dad with no artistic ability can create great looking wall art on for very little money. Stencils can usually be found at any art supply or crafts store and come in a variety of shapes and designs. Once you have your stencils, practice painting with them on a scrap of wood or drywall. Practice makes perfect and the better your painting skills, the less time and effort it will take to get your nursery walls looking just right.

When decorating your nursery walls you may be tempted to go with more traditional colors like pastels. While these colors are nice and give the room a nice tone, baby’s eyes are underdeveloped for the beginning stages of their lives and they have difficulty distinguishing soft colors. Be bold and paint your nursery with bright and vibrant colors! Not only will it make for a more interesting nursery, but your child will actually be able to see the designs which will make the room more engaging for your son or daughter. Simple tricks like these will help take the pain out of room decoration while also making the most of every last penny.

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I promised a personal finance post a long time ago. Here it is.

Frugal Dad recently wrote a post about having a sinking fund. I wasn’t familiar with the term, sinking fund, but I was aware of the concept long ago. For those of you joining me here out of context, a sinking fund is an amount of money set aside regularly to help fund irregular expenses.

In the past, whenever an irregular expense like the 6-month premium for my car insurance came due, I simply charged it. I told myself I would pay it off over time. I even gave myself extra credit, calculating the APR over the same time frame was still less than the inconvenience fee charged by the insurance company for making installment payments.

My financial health is trending upward, but I am still operating on  a cash basis.  Oh, I can get credit, but it’s hardly on favorable terms. The banks aren’t being very nice to people with good credit scores either these days. Since I am on a cash basis, I have to carefully plan for these irregular expenses.

I created a spreadsheet that helps you calculate how much of your monthly budget should go toward your sinking fund. It looks like most budgeting spreadsheets, but with additional columns. The additional columns are for quarterly, semi-annual, annual, and bi-annual expenses.

Like most people, I find it easier to look at money on a monthly basis. The biggest portion of our expenses occur at that interval. At the bottom of the spreadsheet, you’ll see a running tally of how much you need to put into your sinking fund each month. This is a fun spreadsheet to play around with. I can daydream and  run what-if scenarios all day with it.

Download the spreadsheet here.

You might notice the screen-shot above doesn’t look like Microsoft Office. With yet another frugal move, I started using Open Office. When Microsoft Office 2008 was released for the Mac, I asked myself if I should upgrade or do I jump ship for the open-source alternative? I asked myself, but my wallet chimed in before anyone else could speak.

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Illustration: Elliott Kim

One month ago, we made a family decision to downsize to one vehicle. We took inventory of our needs and our expenses, and it made sense to get rid of one car. I am glad to be free of life’s most inconvenient convenience.

We’re not disadvantaged with the lack of one car due to our circumstances. One parent stays at home with the baby and home-schools the older child. I’ve learned how to use public transit and I ride my bike whenever I can.

The prevailing attitude in South Florida is that a car is a necessity. The lack of a car would be a hindrance. I have not felt that hindrance. Did I miss the meeting? Did I not get that email? I’m supposed to feel stuck! Why has an overwhelming sense of liberation come over me?

• I’m not a believer in multi-tasking, but this is as close as it gets. I’m getting recreation, exercise, and transportation at the same time.
• Riding the bus gives me opportunities unavailable to me if I’m driving. Try reading or watching a video podcast while driving. Oh wait, this is South Florida. I wouldn’t be surprised if people did just that.
• Riding the bus insulates me from the bad drivers. Everyone thinks the drivers in their city are the worst. South Florida drivers really are among the worst in the nation.
• Riding my bike is a much more intimate interaction with the aforementioned bad drivers. I choose my bike routes accordingly. I’ve discovered some great scenery because I’ve had to find alternates to major thoroughfares.
• I eliminated $600 of monthly expenditures.

My current work situation allows me to carpool with a friend of mine. Beer is cheaper than gas now, so I buy him a 12-pack once a week, and I even get to drink 2 or 3 of them.

Sarah Palin is keeping all you fact checkers very busy, so I’m going to save you some time. A 12-pack of Heineken works out to be about $9.70/gallon. Okay, so in Europe, I’d be right. However, the amount of gas I’d burn in one week commuting costs significantly more than the beer used to fuel our friendship.

The point is, (I find myself saying this a LOT to the resident teenager) there are alternatives to the automobile. My bitter and contested divorce from conventional wisdom has allowed me to explore the options I am currently using.

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I admit, my results are skewed. I was without the full-time employment portion of my income strategy for 2 weeks. My current gig gets me out the door at a reasonable hour and guarantees that I can leave work promptly at the “official” end of office hours.

I’m pretty handy with the most of the Adobe Creative Suite (hint hint hint to anyone looking for freelance graphic designers). PDFs of the bus timetables and maps can be easily sliced up, organized in iPhoto, and imported to my iPod. An essential piece of public transit warrior gear can become even more useful.

Reducing one’s reliance on an expensive resource is always a smart move. Commuting by car would represent a monthly fuel cost of $64. That’s not inclusive of the total cost of driving or the personal driving that I do. I am clearly coming out ahead by riding the bus. Reducing my gas consumption to 1 tank of gas per month is a realistic goal. Taking the bus to work costs me $40/month.

Driving less also translates into higher resale or trade-in value on my car when it’s time to phase it out.

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A 21st Century Dad must also be in charge of the family finances. I’m not saying it’s a man’s duty specifically, but if it does fall on you, you better be good at it. There’s a lot more on the line than your own well being.

Guys like J.D. at Get Rich Slowly, Frugal Dad and Mike over at From Mike focus on personal finance. I enjoy writing about the variety of topics that a father today is interested in.

Where Does Your Money Go?

Years ago, I did a revealing exercise. I tracked every dollar I spent, down to the penny. It wasn’t hard to do. I ended up spending less because it meant having to write it down and tabulate it later. All of a sudden, that one dollar here and there for a soda ended up becoming $40 at the end of the month.

Track your spending for a month. You’ll find there’s a lot of fat you can cut out. You may be shocked at where your money goes. The Starbucks Latte is a favorite target of personal finance gurus. It may or may not be what’s sucking you dry. When you examine your spending, you will certainly find things to cut out.

Plans and Goals

It’s called “personal finance” for a reason. Everyone’s needs are different. Based on your spending analysis and your current needs, you will need to come up with a financial strategy for your family.

• Do you need to save up to make a down payment on a new home?
• Do you need to pay off debt?
• Are you making a nice chunk of money but still living paycheck to paycheck?

Where to Go From Here

We didn’t learn much about personal finance in school. I spent many of my supposedly adult years being ignorant of money matters. My own education about money started with the exercise I described earlier and reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The book taught me a few things. The most important lesson I learned was that I knew very little!

A great place to start is the blogosphere. I let my personal finance education fall off a little bit… and yes, I’m feeling the burn. I’m a little sloppy right now. These bloggers have inspired me to revisit personal finance and tighten things up.

• Get Rich Slowly
• Frugal Dad
• From Mike

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