Financial Samurai

It’s apparently very common to live at home with mom and dad after college.  Some statistics have the figure at 80% of newly grads move back home.  Is it really that common?  Have I lost touch with reality, yet again?  After four years of college, where there are just ridiculous amounts of parties and unspoken amounts of fun, who on earth goes home and lives back with mom and dad?

Even if I was unemployed, I’d pay several hundred bucks and rent the sofa in my buddy’s living room or something.  Is there no feeling of guilt living at home with parents as a grown adult?  Perhaps not.  Right on my street, live three 26-27 year old young bucks with grandma.  Come on, how can these guys live with themselves living with grandma?  So I got to thinking, perhaps it is feasible to live at home with mom and dad, or grandma and still get girls!

STRATEGIES FOR GETTING GIRLS WHILE LIVING WITH MOM & DAD Read more…

As a recovering car fanatic who has literally bought and sold 8 different cars in the past 10 years I’ve come to appreciate the intricacies of getting a good deal.  One of the most important things people don’t think about when they are about to buy that fancy European automobile is how much car insurance will cost.

On an absolute dollar level, driving a $50,000 car could cost anywhere between $2,000-$3,000 a year, depending on your record.  At 4-6% of the annual cost of your car, car insurance is a big deal!  The irony is, the cheaper the car you buy, generally the higher car insurance is as a percentage of your total cost. Read more…

One of the best things about running your own blog is that you can write whatever you want, whenever you want.  There’s really no pressure to do anything really, and I don’t understand why some would feel otherwise.  Several blogging buddies have gone straight up cold turkey, not writing anything for months.  They tell me they can’t keep up with the schedule of writing great content.  Who says content has to be great?  They say new jobs lead them to not have the time.  Are you working 100 hours a week?  I’m sad because I miss their posts and our interactions.

Blogging shouldn’t be a chore, it should be easy.  Blogging is writing, and writing is like speaking, which comes as naturally as breathing.  Surely you speak everyday to people, whether in a fun or work setting no?  If so, why is it so hard to put some words together on paper and press publish?  Oh yes, we’re afraid of what people will think of our writing.  Yes, it’s sometimes a debilitating feeling.  We feel we should always try and write something meaningful and profound.  Gimme a break.  We’re bloggers for goodness sake, not the authors of Crime & Punishment and The Invisible Man!

Look around the blogosphere.  There’s hundreds of non profound posts out there.  There are posts about doing this and that when the author has no clue.  Boring makes up an extraordinary majority of articles on the internet, so don’t worry one bit if your post has the personality of a waxed figurine.  Although we’re only a small micro fraction of the web, I’m pretty confident that someone will find us interesting.  Don’t believe me?  Try putting the worst piece of crap on Craigslist, and I guarantee you tons of people will ping you to pick it up.

If you speak at all, you can write.  And if you plan on speaking forever, you can write forever!  Come back blogging buddies, come back.

Bloggers, what are your reasons why you don’t write more often?  Is blogging easy or hard?  Non bloggers, share with us your excuses as to why you’ve stopped working on some endeavors such as a New Year’s Resolution?

Regards,

Sam @ Financial Samurai – “Slicing Through Money’s Mysteries”

The Bay Area is full of entrepreneurs.  There’s something in the air that creates an almost godly electric spirit that causes people to work hard and innovate.  As 2011 nears, more and more I hear about how small business owners are clamping down in preparation for next year’s tax hikes.  Clamping down is generally not a good term to use if you are a politician who wants to create job growth.

Let’s say you make roughly $3 million in annual gross revenue from your internet business like my friend Zach does.  Not bad, but not exactly big money if you take into account his cost structure.  If his pre-tax operating profit margin is 25% after he pays the salaries of all his employees, the rent, and so on, Zach is left with roughly $750,000 subject to taxes.  If his tax rate goes up from 36% to 39.6%, for every dollar he makes over $375,000, he will pay roughly $25,000 more in taxes a year in 2011.

Well guess what?  My friend is letting go of one of his junior programmers who makes roughly $85,000 to pay for next year’s $25,000-$35,000 tax increase!  My friend feels bad letting his 2006 college graduate employee go, but he has no choice since revenue has declined since 2007, and the government is tightening the screws.  Zach believes that 2011 revenue will be worse next year than this year, and is budgeting a decline.  Thank goodness for 99 weeks of unemployment insurance!  And no, it’s not reasonable for the junior programmer to just go work in fast food after only several weeks of looking.

DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR LIES.  THEY AREN’T IN IT FOR YOU. Read more…

Are you a lazy shopper?  I gotta say that I’m an extremely lazy shopper because I’m trying to pair down the things I own.  When I do go shopping the experience is sometimes so cumbersome I often just give up and don’t buy anything.  That said, when there’s a deal, oh how great the temptation it is to buy.

Whenever I think about coupons, I think of old folks sitting around their round breakfast tables on a Sunday morning going Edward Scissorhands on the paper.  With their stacks of nicely cutout coupons in hand, they go to the local grocery store and bargain hunt away.  If only there were an easier way, which bring us to a guest post by Kyle, the Director of Marketing at CouponCactus.com. Read more…

Well, well, well.  Not everyday does a $300 million dollar mega yacht stop by the San Francisco Bay Area!  The creatively named “A” yacht is owned by 38 year old Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko and his lovely supermodel wife Aleksandra!  Andrey made his money in fertilizer, banking, and energy and is worth a reported $4.4 billion dollars.  Interest alone on $4.4 billion at 4% is over $178 million a year!

The “A” looks like something out of a James Bond movie.  Can you imagine all the crazy parties on this bad boy?  Wow!  I rode my bike to the very north end of San Francisco to take a look and boy oh boy is it big.

Some nice mouth watering yacht stats for all you billionaire wannabes out there! Read more…

Recently, I’ve been on a mission to tell anybody who will listen to refinance their mortgage.  I get nothing in return, just the satisfaction of knowing that someone who isn’t a rate hawk like me can get a nice kick in the pants to save some money every month for the next 5-to-30 years of their lives.  Nobody gave me a kick in the pants when I locked in my refi, which is why I had to pay 0.125% higher than I should have because I was unsure and waited a little too long.

Banks have promotions all the time, and your duty as a borrower and saver is to identify which banks are offering the most attractive terms at any given moment.  That bank is Citibank, with mortgage rates often 50 basis points (0.5%) cheaper than any competitor out there for 5/1 and 30-year mortgage products.  Citibank is on a rampage to build up their loan book again.  As patriots, it’s our duty to spread the word and make sure we don’t fall off a cliff again!

THE BIGGEST HURDLE IN REFINANCE LAND Read more…

There’s a whole world out there of financial products I have very little understanding about.  Apparently, there’s a market for buying and selling “structured settlements” for cash after you win big money after a court case.  The following is a guest post by Jason from JG Wentworth which pays people cash now for settlements which are paid over time.  Interesting concept and something which is worth learning about.

When a plaintiff settles a court case and is awarded a large amount of money, it may be decided that the settlement will be paid over time in installments rather than a single lump sum payment.  This type of arrangement is called a “structured settlement”.

The advantage to having a structured settlement is that the money is tax-free if set up properly.  Structured settlements can also be beneficial because they provide a source of income for the recipient well into the future, where as lump sum payments will more likely be spent if the recipient does not manage their money responsibly.

Structured settlement payments can also be a disadvantage, trapping the recipient into periodic payments when they may want cash now.  Many settlement recipients choose to sell their settlement payments for a lump sum of cash to start a business, pay for college tuition, purchase a home or other various financial reasons.

Handling a large lump sum of cash can be exhilarating.  And it can be a little unsettling, too.  Money causes people to worry, and worry spins half-truths or unfounded myths about financial issues at hand. Selling your structured settlement into a lump-sum payment is an opportunity to increase your net worth — not limit it.  All it takes is a little guidance from a reputable structured settlement buyer and a plan of action for your cash to breakthrough any doubts.

Apparently there must be some controversy about structured settlements and Jason is here to help clear the air.

MYTHS ABOUT SELLING A STRUCTURED SETTLEMENT FOR CASH Read more…