Ok, so our wonderful Federal Government has decided to make smokers pay for children’s healthcare along with everything else we are paying for with taxes. April 1st the Federal Excise Tax on a pack of cigarettes goes up about $1.68 a pack if I remember correctly. But I have been rolling my own for over a year now and saving a ton of money. Well they are hitting the roll your own tobacco harder than ever now. The current tax on a pound of tobacco is just over $1. After April 1st it is going up to $24.68 a pound! Talk about bullshit!

So my pound of tobacco that I have been paying around $15 for is now going to cost me over $40. I refuse to pay that. So I ordered myself 100 pounds of tobacco before the increase happens. Ok, so it was 96 pounds, close enough. Below are some pictures of my stash.

First my two drug sniffing dogs doing their job sniffing out my shipment for drugs:

And the packages after they passed my dogs drug sniffing test:

One of the large boxes opened full of tobacco along with my extra machine:

And finally “The Stash” in all it’s glory!:

And let’s not forget 30,000 tubes (3 cases of these):

So, I think I may have a few cigarettes when I want to smoke. What do you think? Did I buy enough or should I order another 100 pounds?

Tags: Cigarettes

Well since purchasing my Macbook Pro last October I think it was, I have been wanting a Mac desktop computer so I don’t have to keep unpacking and packing up the laptop every day. Checking out all my options my best bet was going to be an iMac.

So I have been watching the refurbished list on Apple’s site and checking ads on craigslist over the past few months waiting for a good deal. Thursday night at work I saw one of the ads that had been posted for a few days get reposted for $50 cheaper. That wasn’t enough savings for me to purchase it though as I could get the same computer for $100 cheaper from Apple’s refurbished list (although I would have to pay taxes on it which would bring it to more).

But with it being posted for a few days and the guy still trying to sell it and even dropping the price a little bit made me think that maybe he would go down on the price even more. So I dropped him an email explaining that Apple has the exact same computer for less on their refurbished list and with my company discount I could get it even cheaper. I then reduced the price $50 from the price I said I could get it for, and offered him that. I gave my phone number and said to give me a call if he was interested in considering my offer.

He called yesterday and said he was interested and in an attempt to feel he did his part in the price negotiation he mentioned raising my offer by $25. He did not do such a good job at it, as he almost blatantly said if I wasn’t willing to pay $25 more than I offered then it was ok and he would still sell it to me for my offer.

I am normally absolutely horrible at negotiations, but I felt totally comfortable this time and it was almost funny how easily I could see the negotiation mistakes this guy was making. I think there were two reasons for this. One, I was not in a hurry to buy and was willing to walk away from the deal at any point. And two I have been working on my communication skills recently as at work I am in a semi-leader role now.

So I went to his house with the money fully ready to walk out if there was any sign of deception in his advertising or if the computer was not exactly what I expected. I was not in a hurry to purchase and could go another 6 months without a desktop waiting for the right deal as far as I cared. So I was NOT a motivated buyer. It turns out he was a little motivated as a seller though.

I walked in and saw the computer set up on the counter and was immediately impressed. I had seen a 24″ iMac in the Apple store when I purchased my laptop in October, but not since then. I had forgotten how truly impressive these machines are. The 24″ wide glossy screen is absolutely amazing. I am still blown away at the beauty of this machine as I type this post on it.

After checking out the system profiler, hardware configuration, drive size, memory, rebooting to insure all was well, etc. I was ready to buy. It was exactly what I was looking for and a reasonable price. I felt I could probably talk him down a bit more since he let it slip that he was a motivated seller of sorts, but something in me told me not to take advantage of the situation. I paid him exactly what I offered plus the $25 he asked for. It was a fair and reasonable price and he was honest with me throughout the deal, so I feel good about that.

In the end I saved myself over $215 if I were to instead have purchased the refurbished one from Apple. I saved over $475 if I were to have purchased a new one from Apple. Not a ton of money but still a significant savings in a purchase I have been wanting to make for a while now. So I am happy about that. Also I learned a little more about negotiating from a real life experience. In the past I would have just had that feeling in my gut telling me I didn’t get a good deal. This time I know I got a good deal, know I could have gotten an even better deal, and have learned from the mistakes both of us made in the deal. I am now better prepared for the next big purchase I make. There has to be some value in that lesson to add to my savings on this deal.

As a bonus the nice $35 Microsoft mouse I purchased long ago that I have hated since purchasing works perfectly on this machine unlike my laptop. I will now get full use out of that purchase as well. I’m very happy about that as I had already tossed the mouse in the corner of the room with my mind pretty much set that I won’t be using it again.

Overall, it has been a great day (yesterday) and I am now the proud owner of a 24″ iMac. I’m very happy and will of course be bragging to all my co-workers tomorrow night. *big grin*

So the depressing money book I recently read was called “Your Money or Your Life.” It makes you think about your life energy and how much of it you waste on making money instead of doing what you want with your life. If that wasn’t enough, the positive side of the book was about becoming financially independent by saving and investing enough that your investment income equals your expenses.

Great concept and it is the same concept many other books cover, but the problem is this book tends to act like it only takes a few years. Also it does not mention the fact that just because your investment income is enough to cover expenses it still isn’t enough because you have to pay taxes to the thieves in Washington on that income.

So basically I need to have around $500,000 dollars of investment capital to live off the investment income from it. That will bring $20,000 a year in income at only 4% interest or around $1666 a month. I guess with only $20k a year income you wouldn’t be paying taxes, so that would do it.

So you just need to be half way to a millionaire in order to have a $1600 a month lifestyle. Now this is assuming you only make 4% on your investments. Yes, I know there are other investments that allow you to make more with much higher risk. But the whole point of this is to have secure income to cover all your expenses without working in order to free up your life energy to do what you really want in life without being forced to go to work for someone just to make ends meet. So you won’t want to be investing in higher risk investments.

Ok. So my entire net worth is around $37,000 right now. About $20,000 of that is still going to be taxed as it is in the form of a 401k. So subtract 30% (minimal really) in taxes from that $20k and that leaves $14k. Which puts my net worth at around $31,000 right now. A few thousand of that is in depreciating assets such as my car and motorcycle. Those will most likely be driven until they die, so the value is really null. $10,305 of that is null. Round to $10k from the vehicles that I won’t see and my total net worth right now is actually $21,000.

So I only need to save $479,000 more in order to be financially independent where my investment income pays the expenses of life and frees up my life energy. If I wanted to accomplish this in 10 years I would have to save $47,900 a year. That isn’t happening anytime soon as my income would have to dramatically increase. 20 years would require savings of $23,950 a year. Again, I’m unable to save anywhere near that. 40 years would be $11,975 a year savings. That is doable as long as I don’t lose my current employment.

So we are looking at 40 more years. Shit, I may not be alive in 40 years with my current health and the direction I am going. I would be 79 years old. So what is the solution? I don’t know, but I know the book is not realistic for the typical American worker. And I make above the average income.

I know there is a way for me to get there though. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I am constantly searching for it.

On a totally unrelated note: Say good bye to Circuit City. http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html

Well so far today/tonight I feel in a better mood than I have the last 2 days. I’m still nowhere near as positive as I was before this week, but I feel a little better about things. My management at work still feels I would be a great leader and is still pushing me for leadership. I’m honored by this and appreciate their faith in me. Now if I just had as much faith as they do.

If I move forward in the leadership route I will be taking a pay cut. According to the company it would actually be a raise since you can’t count on overtime, but even last year when there was zero overtime available I got enough to put me over what I would make as a team leader, as there is always overtime sometime in a 12 month period. Working holidays for double time is just one example of easy overtime to get, even when there is no overtime allowed.

If I were to follow the leadership path then the jumps in pay would be large as I moved up the chain from Team Leader to Manager to Director, but with the pay cut I take to become a Team Leader the first jump to Manager basically would put me right back where I am now, except probably 2 to 3 years from now. Ok, it might be a little bit higher, but honestly I am making 10 to 13 thousand extra per year from overtime, holidays, etc. So lets assume I am a Team Leader 1 year and get an increase in pay as a TL and then 1 year later I get a manager position and get a 10k raise. The 1st year’s raise as a TL would only be a couple of grand most likely. So yeah, in 2 years as a Manager I would be making the same I am making now.

On the other hand it may be something I come to love. It may be the ideal position for me. I may be much happier doing that than what I am or would be doing in 2 years. Would that make it all worth it? Maybe. But honestly I don’t see myself taking that pay cut.

The downfall to all of this is if I don’t become a leader will my management start purposely reducing the amount of overtime I get to prove the point? LOL. I think they are good people and wouldn’t do such a thing, but you have to consider it just the same. I still don’t think it would happen even if they wanted to, because I am one of the top performers and a valuable asset to the department and they want me there when they need someone to work overtime. I know they would prefer to have me there when they need someone more so than many others in my department because I have proven myself many times over.

Overall I know I need to do something with my life/career. I have been stagnate in the same position for 8 years now. What I’m going to do I do not know. I do know at this time I do not plan on taking a pay cut to move into leadership. If leadership was truly my dream and my goal then I would have already been in leadership years ago. I know I can accomplish anything I want to do and when I set my mind to it I go balls out until I get it. Leadership has it’s perks and I do enjoy helping the team and being an authority figure within the department, but that isn’t enough for me.

I have been down and out in my life, I have worked harder than I ever thought physically possible for minute amounts of money. I have worked long and hard to get to the point I am at now and to make the money I am making now. Going backwards and taking a pay cut just seems counterproductive, even if it is a foot in the door to better opportunities in the future. I’m not so sure I want those exact opportunities.

Besides, it is a really funny thing being good at your job, taking initiative and doing what it takes to have your leadership want you to become one of them and then on the flip side of the coin in the back of your mind you have actually been considering dropping your career all together for something new. It’s an odd place to be in mentally.

I think my best bet is to stay right where I’m at. There are new things coming and there will be new opportunities in the foreseeable future. I see all kinds of possibilities opening up over the next few years and the decisions I make now will dramatically affect those available to me in the future.

Anyway, I got about 4 hours sleep total between two naps yesterday. I’m tired although I am not sure I can sleep. I’m all set in my mind now about what I’m going to do though. I am going to help out leadership right now but stay in the position I am currently in. I may learn something about myself during this process but my mind is pretty much set on doing absolutely nothing with my career in the next few months. Current position responsibilities are changing soon and I am looking forward to those changes. From there I will look into moving into a Hi-Cap position. Heck, maybe I can even get an “interim” position in Hi-Cap and move forward from there. We will see how it all plays out.

Man, something about this week. I’ve had a positive attitude for what seems like a long time now, but today I find myself just wanting to give up. Give up on what exactly? I don’t know. Fighting for my money mostly I guess.

For over a year now I have been fighting for every penny I can make and keep a hold of. I got myself out of over $24,000 of debt and saved up an emergency fund. This month I will be paying a large chunk of that emergency fund to the thieves in Washington DC who steal my wages and call them corporate income so that they can claim individual income taxes are legal. I also anticipate other expenses coming from my emergency fund this year. I have been fighting like I never have in my life to get my finances under control; to get “ahead” for a change. And I’ve made some progress, but I am still way behind.

My oldest daughter turned 18 this year. I have been looking forward to dropping my child support for years now because for years I see the money disappear from my budget every single month. It’s been 10 years now and I still have at least 5 to go. So January comes around and I decide to drop the child support just $126 for her turning 18 and the ex-wife gets upset.

You know, while this may sound selfish, I’m way behind where I should be financially and trying like hell to catch up. This stupid little $126 a month thing feels so overwhelming to me. A year ago I was paying less than I am paying now. My child support raised to help pay for a health care plan for the kids. Dropping this little $126 a month would just put me back to paying what I already was. It’s just that after paying child support for so long and finally thinking I can save just a touch more to help me catch up financially then having that idea pushed aside multiple times (increase for health plan, no decrease when they turn 18) makes me feel like I am going to be paying for the rest of my life. When does it end? When do I get to keep the money I make? When do I get to decide where it goes?

I know I shouldn’t complain. I have it good. I have a good relationship with my ex-wife and we have always worked things out about money. But I’m just so tired of seeing all my life energy that I trade for money disappear from my life. Last night I figured out how much money I have made in the past 10 years just working at the company I currently work for and it came to over $560,000. Over half a million dollars made and where is it? I don’t have it and I don’t have shit to show for it.

I trade my time, my life energy, for money and what do I have to show for it? Hardly any savings, any security, no where near retirement when I could actually use my life energy to enjoy life, and certainly no extra time with my children as they have grown. So why do I continue to do it? Why do I give up my life energy for almost nothing in return? I don’t know the answer. I just know it is depressing.

At the moment I am “playing” team leader at work. All my management feels I am a great prospect to become the next Team Leader at work. They have all been working to push me in that direction and get everything in place for me to become a TL. My best prospect of promotion is to go into management and I am willing to do that. But when I look at the numbers I would actually have to take a pretty dramatic pay cut in order to take that “promotion” if it actually was offered to me. How depressing is that?

When I was a teenager my dream was to become a millionaire. When I was married and had children my dream changed to being the best father I could be, just like my Dad was to me and even better. When my wife left me that dream shriveled to just being an average dad. Now that I have been single for 10 years I turned my dream back to becoming financially independent. But with child support, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, my best promotion prospects actually being a pay cut, etc. I just feel so held back. I know they are just obstacles and I can overcome them if I persist, but I’m just tired of fighting for my money right now. I’m burnt out.

I’m almost tempted to go find a low paying labor job, maybe in another state that I have never been to, maybe just working odd jobs here and there that pay cash so the government can’t get their greedy hands on it, and just disappear off the face of the earth. Start a new life all together. Get my health back from working labor all day. Get back to the basics of living on nothing and still enjoying life like I did when I was younger. But I know how selfish that would be. I can’t leave everything behind, can I? It wouldn’t be right.

Anyway, this week I give up. I’m not fighting right now. I’m not working on new websites to make money. I’m not looking for a promotion and applying for new positions. I’m not fighting with the ex-wife, she can have the damn money. I’m not fighting with my budget to attempt to achieve goals. I’m not doing shit. Especially financially right now.

I’m just not in the mood anymore.

Ok, so today I decided to download a bunch of PDF files (i.e. Ebooks).  My computer was running a little hot before I laid down to take a nap, but I figured it was because I had been watching movies on it.  But it continued to stay hot.  I was a little worried but just jacked up the fan speeds and went to bed.

All during my sleep I kept hearing the little alarm I have set for my computer overheating, but I was too tired to get up and check it out.  I figured, how hot can it be?  And besides the fans will increase if it really got extremely hot.  When I woke up I sat down at my computer and the damn CPU was over 170 and GPU over 190.  I was like, what the fuck?

I had nothing running except Transmission which does not take that much resources.  I hit my dashboard to check CPU usage real quick and see it is at 79-80%.  Hmm.  When I pull up Activity Monitor I show the process ATSServer is using 189% of my cpu?  Interesting.  Now from the name of this process you might think this is some kind of server running.  My first thought was, hold your horses, a virus!  Then I thought to myself, “don’t be silly, you own a Mac!  You don’t get viruses.  :P”

Next thought was that it was the server side of things in Transmission.  So I pop up good old Google and search for it.  A couple of links and there is my solution.  It is not a server nor does it have anything to do with Transmission.

The problem is Spotlight is indexing all the new files on my computer and the PDFs have ALOT to index since Spotlight also indexes the contents.  This sucked up all the CPU usage and was overloading the Spotlight index with crap I would never search for.  Heck for that matter I don’t use Spotlight.  I use Quicksilver.

The solution was to exclude the folders with the PDFs in them from being indexed by Spotlight.  So if you ever have ATSServer going nuts on your Mac, now you know the solution. 

I just purchased a new screensaver for my Mac. It is a 3D Aquarium with both salt water and fresh water fish. Lots of options in the preferences. I am really diggin it! I can pick up my Mac and tilt it and the water and fish will tilt with it just like I was moving a fish tank. I bought it from http://www.uselesscreations.com

Check out my new desktop (screensaver is being used as my desktop background with Wallsaver). I now have an aquarium of fish swimming around on my desktop while I work. It is rather calming and very cool.

I subscribe to many blogs. Financial blogs, social networking blogs, life coach blogs, general blogs, computer blogs, you name it. Over the past month or two I have become a blog junkie. I use Google Reader and therefore always seem to have over 600 posts waiting for my attention at any given time. On occasion I will hop in there and read some.

Today my personality and emotions have been a little on the tense side. Hell, for the past week or so they have been. I am a naturally nervous and tense person. I think it is in my DNA as my mother was the same way. Some of the littlest things around me can make me nervous or tense. My thoughts and beliefs on doctors and prescription drugs prevent me from going to a doctor to get some pill to take to fix this. Instead I have come to the conclusion that it is just who I am and something I need to deal with daily.

I can be very emotional, intense, outspoken, and even angry at times. If I were to allow myself, I could stay in these states of emotion for long periods of time. Sometimes certain blog articles or things I see will trigger these emotions and they are very strong emotions. One example is the videos I watched about our money system a few days ago. It took a great deal of effort to not put more emotion into my own post about them. When I think things are wrong I am by nature one to get mad and want to fight the wrong. Unfortunately I have also learned that the majority of people are not like me, therefore I have little backing in those situations.

But to my point here, today I ran across a few articles which put me in a different kind of mood. One where I can say “fuck it.” Relax, everything will be fine. Stop thinking about the worst possible outcomes and just go with it. Enjoy life. I have been in these moods many times in the past as well.

You see, when I am in the mood and realization that everything is fine and if I just did what I wanted in life everything would work out, it scares me. It scares me because I am not currently doing what I want to do. So when I know I should be doing what I want to do and let life happen as it will, I know I should not be going to work for a big corporation day in and day out. I know I should not be living where I am living. I know I should give up all I have worked so hard for over many years. I should go and enjoy life already and stop worrying about money, careers, and fears.

So while it is a good emotion to stop worrying, relax, and enjoy life, I somehow end up turning it into a negative feeling. I hate that fact. I need to learn to enjoy these “Don’t worry, be happy” moments more.

I am a very logical thinking guy. I have to overanalyze every situation it seems. So is the don’t worry, be happy lifestyle better than what I have? Would I truly be happier? How do I figure out the real answer? How can I jump head long into that lifestyle without these answers? I am not carefree by nature. Can I take on this lifestyle and keep my current career and other things I have worked for? Or is it a requirement to drop them?

I don’t know. I know my Dad is an easy-go-lucky type of guy. Growing up I remember him always having a smile on his face (except when he was around my Mother), very social, and very relaxed for the most part. He was a happy person or so it seemed. He enjoyed life. I’m not sure I have ever learned how to enjoy life.

My life experiences don’t indicate I was enjoying life prior to today. Looking back, there is not a whole lot I enjoyed doing. Sex was about it when I was younger. Now days I can live without even that. What do I really want to do? What can I do? I don’t know right now, but right now I am not going to worry about it all. I am going to “Not worry, and be happy.” Or at least kind of do that, as well as I can right now. Fuck it.

Well tomorrow is the last paycheck of the year for me. Being the impatient bastard I am I couldn’t wait until January’s first check to get started on my 2009 financial plan. So I have already changed my federal tax allowances to 2 and my state tax allowances to 1. I also jumped my 401k contributions up to 6% for the company match and reallocated all future contributions.

Our 401k selections suck and there is only 21 choices total. So I set it up so all future contributions will be divided evenly across about 19 of those choices. Diversified as it will get. I wish they would add more choices to it.

On another note, I ran across some interesting stuff on how our money system works and how it is broke. I believe some of it and not other parts. I posted links and videos on money4brains.com so check it out when you get some time.

Enjoy the holidays everyone.

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http://money4brains.com
http://stubbornoldman.com
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