Last month was the return of these monthly net worth reviews and the first time, probably since when we bought our house (closing costs are brutal), that our net worth decreased across the month (taxes are brutal too). This month, we saw our net worth increase by a healthy 8.6% helped along by a mild recovery in the stock market (1.39% increase in retirement assets).

Last month I talked about three things in the future - roof replacement, water heater, and diversification of our investments. The roof is set to be replaced on June 16th, contingent on good weather, at a cost of $4,450. The roofing company offers a six month same as cash option but I think we’re going to put it on the Citi CashReturns card for the 1.2% cashback since interest rates are so low (it’s nearly a wash after taxes, so we figured for simplicity the credit card option was better). We knew the roof needed to be replaced so we were prepared, there won’t be any other financial impact (other than the -$4,450 to the bank account).

As for diversification, my lovely wife and I had a chat about the future on a recent walk around the lake. We plan on outlining major milestones over the next thirty years, as best as we can guesstimate, and then adjust our financial plan to meet those milestones. I’ve come to the realization that after you’ve maximized your 401(k) and Roth IRAs, you have to begin saving for specific goals. We already have a house so that’s one significant goal achieved, so we have to determine the other milestones on the list (such as education) so we can chart a path forward. One idea I had was to use target retirement funds to simplify saving for specific goals.

Looking to the future:

• Jewelry riders and homeowners insurance. We got an appraisal for my wife’s engagement ring and need to add a jewelry rider to our homeowners. I called them up and got a quote for $100 a year for total coverage from our current insurance provider, Travelers, and a quote of $105 from an independent jewelry insurer, Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company. Why haven’t I pulled the trigger? I actually wanted to contact Erie Insurance and figure out whether it’s worth it for us to go with them for homeowners. In thinking about it, I should probably mail off the independent jewelry insurance form and then talk to Erie.
• Auto insurance for my wife may be a little tricky. The title for her car lists her and her father as co-owners, which allows her to be on her parent’s auto insurance. The auto insurance now has four vehicles listed, which probably isn’t good. We should be on the same policy, now that we’re grown ups :), but the sticking point is that putting the insurance in Maryland may force her to register the vehicle in Maryland - that’s a 5% tax on the blue book value of the car ($500). We will have to investigate further.
• Water heater is still on the radar but now on the back burner with the roof. We actually just bought a really nice Fridigaire dishwasher (to replace this old Whirlpool dishwasher) for $150 thanks to a find by Fred at One Project Closer. It was a rush sale by a guy who was being foreclosed on and moving out of state in two weeks (yikes), but a great deal. Getting a new dishwasher wasn’t a priority, I had been looking around, but $150 for something worth around $500 was too good to pass up. Quite fortuitous!

One nice benefit of these net worth monthly reviews is that it forces me to think about what we’ve done this past month and what we need to accomplish in the next month. As I was writing, I was forced to think about things I had set off to the side. In looking back, the net worth portion is really a minor part (I mentioned the increase, what was a main contributing factor, and then moved on to more “strategic” level ideas) but I think that’s a good way to approach it. Please let me know what you think!

On Sunday, I reviewed Gotcha Capitalism, a powerful and comprehensive guide for consumers, and gave it glowing reviews. Today, I want to talk about a couple stats Bob Sullivan shares with the reader about complaining to companies and success rates (Keep in mind that the book was published in 2007).

The point of the section was to illustrate that the places where you are more likely to succeed are exactly the places that people don’t try. The success rate at a grocery store is 57.1% but only 14% of people ever try, whereas the success rate with a television company is an abysmal 20.2% yet 84% of people complain. If you want to make the most out of your time, go after credit card companies. Ask to have fees removed, refunded, or waived because you’re such an awesome customer.

Here are the numbers:

1. Credit card companies: 64.6% success rate
2. Airlines: 60.0% success rate
3. Grocery stores: 57.1% success rate
4. Retirement: 52.2% success rate
5. Internet: 51.5% success rate
6. Hotels: 37.0% success rate
7. Banks: 33.3% success rate
8. Insurance: 28.9% success rate
9. Cell Phones: 26.8% success rate
10. Television: 20.2% success rate

Here are the rates at which people actually complained:

1. Television: 84% complaint rate
2. Credit card companies: 79% complaint rate
3. Cell Phones: 71% complaint rate
4. Hotels: 54.0% complaint rate
5. Insurance: 38% complaint rate
6. Internet: 33% complaint rate
7. Retirement: 23% complaint rate
8. Banks: 18% complaint rate
9. Airlines: 15% complaint rate
10. Grocery stores: 14% complaint rate

If you have all the time in the world, complain to everyone!

(Photo by aturkus)

One of my good friends has an opportunity to work on a client engagement in London, England, and started asking me about international medical insurance options for his ladyfriend. He will have medical insurance through his employer but his ladyfriend, if she chooses to live in England while he’s on this half-year engagement, will not have any medical insurance because they aren’t married and because she’ll have left her job. So, in chatting it up with him, the question of international medical insurance came up and he asked if I, in my infinite wisdom, could do a little research on his behalf and maybe write about it.

International medical insurance, or travel medical insurance, is pretty straightforward in terms of its offering and I was surprised at how cheap it was. The first step though is to see if you qualify for an ISIC Card because it gives you access to discounts and some supplemental insurance. Also, they recommend that you purchase travel insurance because it often includes some basic medical and accident coverage. If you are “a full-time student, a teacher or are under 26 years old,” then you’re eligible for the card.

Now, onto the insurance…

Abroad-Only Coverage vs. Both

Abroad-only coverage means that you only have medical insurance coverage outside the United States. The Both option refers to medical coverage in the United States and abroad. The advantage of Abroad-only coverage is in cost because medical services abroad are often cheaper and Abroad-only coverage doesn’t not let you return to the United States for treatment. The advantage of both Abroad and Domestic coverage is that you can always return to the US to receive treatment though the coverage will always be more expensive than abroad only. One significant disadvantage of Abroad-only coverage is that it will not cover pre-existing conditions.

Abroad-Only Insurance Providers

If you already have insurance, the best option is to talk to your provider to see if they offer international coverage. If they don’t (or if you just want to review your options, there are several international insurance providers that cater to the travel and study abroad demographic. If you want the “both” option, your best bet is to use an insurance search engine to get a few names of US insurers and call them up for more information.

Cultural Insurance Services International - This program covers study abroad candidates with affordable temporary health insurance. My friend will not be studying abroad, which is one of the requirements, but if you are, this is certainly a reputable site references by many universities. (Highway to Health, Inc. is another well-regarded student insurance provider)

Gateway Plans - This is a more comprehensive medical insurance provider that isn’t restricted to only students studying abroad. In fact, Gateway offers plans for US citizens traveling abroad, internationals traveling to the US, and almost everything else in between. For my friend traveling to the UK, she’ll likely want the Gateway International plan. The Gateway International plans will cover you for a minimum of 15 days to a maximum of 180, or six months. The plan rates seems pretty straightforward, with $100,000 of coverage for only $4 a day. (Wallach & Company, Inc. is another well-regarded insurance provider)

Does anyone have any first-hand experience dealing with travel medical insurance or something similar? I’m afraid I’ve never actually purchased any so my research is based solely on Google and numerous university study abroad websites, nothing beats first hand.

A few years ago, with my last car, I did a little calculation to help determine the “cost per mile.” I was doing quite a bit of driving back and forth from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, then Baltimore to New Jersey, to visit my girlfriend (now by wife, so I suppose it was worth it :)) and so this number was important for me to know. I also found that it helped make other decisions in my life easier because it gave me a very tangible cost associated with driving somewhere, such as to the gas station across town instead of the gas station on my route home.

The Calculation

The cost per mile can be broken up into three major categories and one catch-all:

• Gas: Clearly the dominant value in the calculation, gasoline is something that has to be based on actual costs rather than estimated costs. You can’t take the cost of gasoline, the EPA value for your car’s mileage, and figure out based on that. Ignoring the inaccuracy of EPA values, though they’ve made a push to make them more accurate, your car is probably not the standard car. You have crap in your trunk, your tires are probably not inflated perfectly every single drive, and your maintenance isn’t going to be perfect (get that 30,000 mile checkup exactly at 30,000 miles?). So, keep a log for five fill-ups, reset your B trip odometer, and calculate your gas cost per mile that way.
• Insurance: This value is easy, simply take your premium and divide by the number of miles you drive in a given year. The “rule of thumb” is around 15,000 miles a year, but if you have an especially long commute then you can increase that. You can always just throw in a guesstimate because what you use as your miles driven per year isn’t going to drastically affect this number. For example, if you pay $2,000 a year and you drive 15,000 miles, that’s 13.3 cents a mile. At 20,000 miles a year, it’s 10 cents a mile. Sure the difference is 33% but you’ll ultimately use this value for trips in the tens or hundreds of miles… meaning a difference of only 30 cents - $3.
• Tires: Depending on how expensive your tires are, you might want to go through with this calculation or just consider it part of the noise. I know tires say they can last 30,000 miles, but I believe most of my tires run only maybe 20,000 miles. Either way, this math should be pretty simple. Divide the cost of the tires by the mileage and add it to the running total you’ve been using.
• Everything Else: I always throw in an extra 3-5 cents to cover everything else, from windshield wiper blades to routine maintenance to oil changes. I figure that a $20 oil change put across 3,000 miles (I actually changed my own oil with synthetic but do it once every 10,000 miles) is small enough to be considered noise in the equation so I use the 3-5 cents catch-all value.

So, what’s the final number? The IRS business mileage deduction is 50.5 cents a mile, how close was your value to this one? When I did this calculation a few years ago, I found my value was close to the mileage deduction back then (it was 40-something cents) but that was before the spike in fuel prices. For comparison’s sake, my value for gasoline back then was 7 cents a mile based on a car that was running around ~32 miles to the gallon (Acura Integra and I was doing a significant amount of highway driving).

How do you use this number? Let’s say it’s 280 miles between my home in Maryland and my parent’s in New York. The tolls between Maryland and New York, I believe, are around $60 a round trip. Given the cost of fuel alone (7 cents a mile), the cost of the trip is over $100 compared to the cost of a Southwest flight that can be bought for $39 a round trip. So, driving alone would cost over a hundred dollars and nearly 5 hours - flying would cost ~$100 and 3 hours… it’s a no brainer and the math is facilitated by knowing the cost per mile.

Finally, your car’s cost per mile is only part of the story. In my drives to Pittsburgh or to New Jersey, tolls played an important role and often threw the entire equation out of whack. Back then, the toll for the Pennsylvania Turnpike was around $8 a round trip and nearly $50 a round trip to New Jersey. Another factor was time. I could take a $15 Chinatown bus from Baltimore to Grand Central in NYC, then jump on an Amtrak train out to New Jersey… but it would take me like 15 hours to make the trip and time is money! (and back then, that was time I could spend with my beautiful soon-to-be wife, and yes she reads this blog)

(Photo by an0nym0usmuse)

When I first started working several years ago, I was amazed at the idea of a Flexible Spending Account (FSA). I could make tax-deductible contributions and they could be withdrawn tax free for qualified medical expenses and over the counter products. Since then, I’ve become aware of two other types of accounts: Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA). Each have their benefits and drawbacks and not every employer offers those program so it mostly depends on your luck. In the two employers I’ve had, I’ve only ever had access to the FSA. So, let’s talk about the differences between each of the programs.

Flexible Spending Accounts

Both the employer and employee can make tax-deductible contributions through paycheck deductions and there is no limit to how much one can contribute to the FSA. You are either issued a debit card linked to that account or you submit receipts of service or products for reimbursement after the fact. The primary downside to an FSA is that the funds are forfeited each year so it’s a “spend it, or lose it” account. If you leave your job mid-year, you lose the funds too (but you pay monthly so the loss is only what you actually paid in).

One loophole with an FSA is that you can spend the full year’s value before you’ve made the contributions. So if you put $1200 into your FSA, or $100 per month, you can spend all $1200 in the first month. What this means is that you can leave in month two and not repay the FSA value. This is usually mitigated by the fact that the funds are forfeited if they are not spent.

Health Savings Accounts

These are actually investment accounts and both the employer and employee can make tax-deductible contributions subject to federal limits. The earnings of the account are tax free and the withdrawals are tax free if used to pay for qualified medical expenses. The funds are linked to the employee and not the employer-employee relationship so it follows the employee even if they leave a company. Another added benefit is that the funds accumulate over the years, as opposed to an FSA where they are forfeited.

Health Reimbursement Accounts

I’ve seen the least of these and they are usually set up by your employer as part of your benefits package. Employees cannot make contributions and an employer’s contributions are not considered income for you and are also not subject to limitations. I know the least about these types of programs as they are not as popular as FSAs and HSAs.

If you’d like to learn more about these plans (and a few others), the IRS has a detailed Publication 969 governing them. I think I’ve captured the important details but they do a much more detailed and dryer job.

When I was younger, I used to play Sid Meier’s Civilization all the time. One of the best parts of the game was trying to build one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World because it gave your civilization a distinct advantage in the world. My personal favorites were the Lighthouse (it gave your ships a farther range and they wouldn’t get lost) and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (I believe each one of your cities now had a Granary), but fun part was being exposed to these wonder in the first place.

Since then, there have been more “Wonders of the World” like the Natural Wonders of the World, 7 Wonders of the Modern World, so why not create a Seven Wonders of the Personal Finance World? Hokey, I know, but it’s my opinion that, if you can, you should “visit” every single one of these wonders.

1. Roth IRA

tax free and whose disbursements are tax free isn’t worth a darned thing. Another wrinkle that makes the Roth IRA is interesting, outside of the tax free elements (growth and disbursements), is that you are limited in how much you can contribute based on your income. While you’re young, it’s less likely that you’ll be restricted in your contributions and it’s more beneficial (because you’ll be taxed less now), so it creates a scarcity effect that almost spurs you to contribute while you still can. (Photo by scottwills)

2. 401K Employer Match

If you put $1 in this jar, I’ll put in 50 cents and you can keep it all. It’ll grow and grow as long as you pick the right jar and you can have it all in forty years, minus taxes. That’s sounds like magic right? Well, for some workers, it’s a reality and it’s called a 401(k) employer contribution match. At my former job, if you contributed 6% of your salary to your 401(k), the company would kick in 3% of your salary and that vested immediately. It’s like a 3% raise for something you should be doing anyway.

3. Pensions (and Social Security)

I lump these in together because they exist and will likely stop existing in the near future so get your looks in now. In both cases, you’re contributing (with a pension, you’re contributing by virtue of having a slightly lower salary than if there was no pension; with social security, it’s deducted straight out of your pay) to a pot that is supposed to grow over time, without you having to deal with it. The problem with pensions is that it requires your company to remain in business, not a guarantee. The problem with Social Security is that it requires the government not to pilfer the lockbox, which it already has. In both cases, they look like great plans because you don’t really contribute and you get a benefit in retirement, which make them wonders, but they’re also both probably on their way out, which makes them ancient wonders. (Photo by Barack Obama, yeah really!)

4. ETFs

These babies have the flexibility of a stock with the diversification of a mutual fund. Before ETFs, you traded mutual funds on their net asset value calculated at the end of each day. Now, with ETFs, you can do everything with it than you can with any stock, such as short it, and you can do it all day as its price is determined much like a stock is. Want to invest in diamonds? Find a Diamond ETF. Want to track the S&P? There are a ton of S&P ETFs. I’m sure if enough people wanted a Personal Finance Blog ETF, someone would sell those too.

5. Credit Cards

Like many things in life, credit cards are a double edged sword. It’s easy unsecured credit that can get you out of a jam or just give you some extra time to float a purchase. It’s easy, unsecured credit that can get you into a jam if you lose control, overspend, and find yourself unable to pay the bill after the grace period. To say that it’s not a wonder would be wrong, but to say that it’s a wonder with just an upside would be wrong as well. With one plastic card, you can bring to bear the power of thousands of dollars of purchasing; it’s enough to carry you through the difficult times and it’s enough to sink you through the prosperous times. With great power comes great responsibility. (Photo by Martin Q)

6. Insurance

Automobile, homeowners, renters, term life, medical, dental, disability, … etc etc etc. If something bad can happen to you, someone is willing to sell you insurance against it. If you’re willing to pay enough, you can insure parts of your body! However, the fact that this exists is a wonder because there is absolutely no reason why someone has to sell you protection against an unknown future. The reason they do is because they can make money, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re making money off you or that you shouldn’t get insurance because you’re “losing.” Insurance buys you peace of mind, sometimes at a premium, but the fact that you can even buy peace of mind is a wonder in and of itself. Look at your situation, look at the various coverages, do you have enough insurance?

7. Personal Finance Blogs

That’s right, I’m calling personal finance blogs a Wonder of the Personal Finance World and you all probably think I’m having a swell time patting myself and my “colleagues” on the back right? There are excellent reasons why personal finance deserve to be mentioned:

• Where else can you read about regular people pulling themselves out of thousands of dollars in credit card debt? (Tricia, NCN)
• Where else can you read about the personal finance trials and tribulations of LGBT individuals? (QueerCents)
• How about the issues swirling around in someone’s head after they’ve just lost their job? (Lazy Man: lost job, his first day off, his wife’s thoughts, an update, and how he handles “how’s work” questions)

Personal finance blogs are open, honest, and they’re not written by Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki, or other “experts,” they’re written by regular people for regular people who are dealing with regular problems. That’s why it’s a Wonder. (Photo by nina_pope)

There you have it, the seven Wonders of the Personal Finance World; what do you think?

Credit card companies are just like every other business. There are essentially three concepts to understand when dealing with a business, especially credit cards:

• They exist to make as much money as possible,
• They have relatively well documented rules and operating procedures,
• They’re willing to break #2 in pursuit of #1.

So, to that end, here are 7 unwritten and often forgotten credit card tricks or “secrets” (I hate the term “secrets” because how much of a secret can they be if I know it?) that may save you a few bucks someday. If you don’t learn a single secret or you have a secret of your own, please let me know! Secrets are better when you tell everyone!

1. Just ask: Lower interest, reduce or eliminate fees

This is truly the best tip of the bunch, hence the top billing, and everything else looks like chopped liver compared to this bit (despite how popularized it’s been of late). The credit business is extremely competitive, take advantage of it by asking for what you want. If you made a late payment and were assessed a late payment fee, call them up and request that they take it off. If your interest rate is too high, call them up and request that they lower it. If they decline, simply tell them that you want to cancel the card or that you’ll take advantage of a new offer that you just received in the mail. They make so much money from you when you spend (they charge the merchants a processing fee) that the piddly late fee pales in comparison to the riches they will reap by keeping you as a customer. If they don’t budge, punish them by taking your business elsewhere.

2. Roll credit limits of the same issuer onto fewer cards

This is a popular one with 0% balance transfer junkies because Citi has a “not so often spoken” rule of limiting a cardholder to at most three lines of credit (without regard to the actual dollar limit). This stinks for balance transfer arbitragers because they want to keep rolling that 0% balance from card to card to card and that gets dicey if they can only have three. One way of getting around this rule is to ask that you roll the credit limits of one of the cards into another one of the cards. They are generally willing to do this because the alternative is that you cancel the card and they lose the business. Since they were willing to give you the total limit in the first place, putting it on two cards instead of three hardly makes a difference to them. This has an added benefit for you from a credit score perspective - you reduce the number of open lines of credit while keeping your credit utilization and total credit limit the same. Double win!

3. Request an increase to the credit limit without a credit pull

I’ve written about how you can request a credit limit increase in the past and not get a credit pull but I wanted to repeat it in a post like this because it’s something not a lot of folks know. What you basically do is, through your online account management portal, go through the normal process of requesting a credit limit or line of credit increase. Sometimes, based on how long you’ve been with the issuer and your credit worthiness, they may offer you an increase on the spot without a credit inquiry. Do not bother trying this within the first six months or first year with the card, they generally won’t offer this without a credit pull so you’d just be wasting your time.

4. Capital One & Discover don’t have a foreign transaction fee charge

When you purchase something overseas, your credit card will often charge you a foreign transaction fee to handle the foreign exchange process for you. In fact, part of that fee is imposed by Visa and MasterCard itself, so any Visa and MasterCard that charges you less than 1% is actually eating the fee. Capital One and Discover are the only two companies that do not charge a foreign transaction fee; Capital One actually pays the fee for you and Discover, since it’s not on the Visa or MasterCard network, just doesn’t charge for it. As I wrote in the other article, if you want to pick between the two then I’d go with Capital One because Discover isn’t as widely accepted overseas (Capital One cards are Visa or MC).

5. Change your card to a different type or rewards program

Do you have a Citi Platinum Select card and you would instead prefer to have a Citi Professional card? Just call up and ask; they’ll probably honor your request. If they don’t, just ask to cancel the card and retentions will probably do it for you. This will only work if they’re the same class of cards, so if you want to change from a Citi mtvU card (student) to a CitiBusiness card (business), that will probably be impossible (but still worth asking). They figure that you can always cancel and apply for the new card anyway so they might as well reduce their overhead by just shifting it over for you. It’s all about lowering costs for them and retaining the customer, converting cards is hardly a chore.

6. Most cards double manufacturer’s warranty

Most credit cards will cover purchases on that card to double the original manufacturer’s warranty, up to an additional year. This comes at absolutely no cost and it’s offered because most people never take advantage of it. Part of the reason is that you often forget this is something that is even offered in the first place (because most people think of manufacturer’s warranty first and then straight to repair or replace) and the credit cards only mention this when you’re buying.

7. Most cards offer auto rental liability insurance

This particular “secret” has been documented quite a bit lately, the fact that many credit cards offer some form of rental car insurance (collision and loss) if you use that card to pay for the rental. What it doesn’t cover your personal auto insurance may also cover so between the two you often don’t even need the insurance (really it’s a waiver) from the rental company in the first place. Some cards, such as American Express, have programs where you can pay extra to have additional coverage.

(Photo by mike hipple)

One of the things I’ve been looking at lately, given the upcoming wedding, was how to optimize our insurance policies because, as we all know, multi-policy discounts are one of the best ways to get a discount. Two auto insurance policies with one insurer generally costs less than two separate auto insurance policies with two different insurers. In actuality, only the medical and auto insurance policies can be optimized because you don’t really share any others. Anyway, I was taking a look at our options and here’s what I came up with.

Auto insurance
This one will probably yield the biggest savings. When you decide to combine two auto insurance policies onto one, you get savings because of two reasons: You are statistically less risky because you’re married and the multiple policy discount. When you do optimize your auto insurance, you should do more than just add coverage to your policy (or add coverage to your spouse’s policy). You should start the whole auto insurance purchasing process over again and get multiple quotes so that you can compare. Two of those quotes should be adding you to your spouse’s policy and you adding your spouse to your own policy.

Medical insurance
Theoretically, given no prior negative medical history, one of you will simply go on the other’s policy for some quick savings. For example, my fiancee right now gets free health insurance and would also get free insurance for me if she were to add me to her policy after we are married. That’s clearly the easiest way to go… but there is another option available. If she were to add me to her policy and I were to add her to my policy, we’d get double the coverage. How is this valuable? This is most valuable if you expect to use your insurance a lot because it increases your lifetime limits. In such a strategy, I would submit claims against my insurer first and if they exceeded the lifetime or annual limits, I’d start all over with her insurance plan. The same would work in the reverse.

Are there other insurance policies you can optimize after marriage? Those were the only two I could think of.

Image by Laineys Repertoire.

Part of the fun of setting up the Festival of Frugality is that I try to read each of the festival posts and at least hit up a few of the posts being linked to when they catch my eye, thus far I haven’t seen too many off the wall tips but every so often you see a few that really don’t make much sense!

So, for your reading enjoyment, here are some ridiculous tips and my thoughts about them. Some of these are from past festivals and some are just tips I’ve heard over the years:

• Buying two-ply toilet paper and pulling the sheets apart - Ignoring the fact that you can just buy singple-ply toilet paper, the time it takes and the “risk” involved in using single ply is too high to make this really worth it… right?
• Buying one entree and splitting it, buying dinner and asking for a take-out box to split it immediately - I understand that meals have gotten bigger and bigger but seriously, if you want to save money, cook for yourself!
• Skip on insurance - Some insurance policies aren’t worth it but all those folks who argue that you don’t need the big insurances (auto, health, and homeowners/renters) are fools. Sure, if nothing catastrophic happens, you’ve saved yourself a few bucks… but if something does happen, you could be out a lot of money. The funny thing about accidents and disasters is you don’t see them coming.
• Tip less than the customary 15% - If you get good service, why punish the server by saving a few dollars and short changing them on their duly earned money? If you want to save this money, don’t go out to eat!
• Dumpster dive for stuff - I’ve taken a television out of the trash (it was in an apartment and someone left a TV by the garbage chute, which was fifteen feet my from my apartment, but I would still calling me fishing it out of the trash despite not having ever set foot there) but I’ve seen suggestions that you take food (and coupons and other assorted items) out of a dumpster. Dumpsters are dangerous (ever see the signs, don’t play in or around the dumpster) because people throw all their crap in their, sharp crap too, chemical crap, and you don’t really need other people’s garbage that badly. If I was a dumpster diving advocate, I’m not anymore.

Gems from Consumerist Commenters

• BOHEMIAN: Save your bar soap slivers and putting them all in the mesh bag you get onions in. I take my old bar of soap and smash it into my new bar of soap, but saving the slivers so you can reconstitute it with other bars? That’s a little too much.
• MAMEDENNIS: Driving 30 miles to save twenty cents - for groceries, for gas, etc. I know plenty of people who do this and it’s ridiculous! It’s not like media hasn’t smashed it into your head that gasoline is expensive not to mention your own personal time.
• RECTILINEAR PROPAGATION: “Taking flowers from funeral homes to give to your wife.” I think the ridiculousness of this one is pretty obvious.
• CHICAGO7: Expanding on the original splitting two-ply TP, Chicago7 has this to say - “Save on toilet paper - use your hand!”

What are some of the ridiculous frugal or money saving posts have you heard? What about some that you may use yourself that others have called ridiculous? Share share!

Today, I’m going to tackle one of the most seemingly unsurmountable pieces of personal finance advice out there: you should have an emergency fund. Before you read on further, this is a Devil’s Advocate post, which means I’m going to try to argue the other side even though I don’t believe it. So… before you read on, let me be absolutely clear … you should have an emergency fund, but if you want a few reasons why you shouldn’t… here they are.

First off, let me go over what I consider an emergency fund. It’s money you set aside for a real bad rainy day in a bank account, whether its a high yield online savings account or just a regular old savings account at your local bank; it must be in an account where the principal is protected. Putting it in a brokerage account, that’s not an emergency fund because the principal could evaporate on a really bad stock market day. So, why don’t you need an emergency fund…

Most Emergencies Are Small…
or if they’re big, they’re really really big. So, in most cases the emergency fund you have will either be way too much or not enough to handle the emergencies of life. If I were to guess the number one emergency that pushes someone to dip into their emergency fund, I’d say it would have to be for auto repair. Even if you follow the most aggressive recommendation of three months, a few hundred bucks for an auto repair probably won’t do too much damage to the emergency fund so your money would probably be better served in a brokerage earning market appreciation rates than whatever minimal rates you’d get in a savings account.

Credit Cards Can Get You By
If you go by the rule that you need 3/6/9/12 months of salary, you probably have that much on your credit cards. In fact, when you do face an emergency, it’s probably a good idea to pull out the plastic first even if you have the emergency funds because you can probably get at least 1% in points from it.

You Have Insurance
You probably pay hundreds of dollars a month in auto, home, life, and medical insurance; so why do you need thousands of dollars saved away for emergencies? Bust a tooth? Use dental insurance. Flooding in your house? Home insurance. Crash your car? Auto insurance. While it certainly makes sense to have a few dollars saved away, having a year of your salary sitting in an account earning a sad rate of return is simply not a strong financial decision.

Ultimately, what you want is to strike a balance between having no emergency fund and having too much earning a low rate. Certainly, since this is a Devil’s Advocate post, I think that having an emergency fund is a very strong financial decision (despite what I said in the last reason) and one that everyone should definitely start once you can.