Category — bumblefucked wisdom

A few days before Thanksgiving I had the misfortune by being pulled over by a cop in Burbank, which I wrote about here. In the time since that I have changed over my registration, gotten my California license (they have THE hardest written test EVER), and answered the question how much does a California smog test cost? Then last week I headed over to the Burbank courthouse to pay my fees. That is when I learned that the 12500(a) v.c. was charged as a misdemeanor! And that means that I could not just go up to a little window and make a payment. Instead I had to appear in court and be arraigned!

My court date and time was scheduled for Christmas Eve at 8:30am. What a bummer, eh? I searched the internet for info on what to expect. What I found was a lot of conflicting info. One place said that I would have to post bail before the court appearance but there was no mention of how much. One told me that I just needed to go before the judge with my new license and registration and ask for the charge to be reduced or dismissed. And that was pretty much the extent of info I found.

Not knowing how much money I needed or if they took debit cards I took out $300 in cash the night before.

ON THE COURT DATE

The day of court I arrived a bit before 8:30.  There were two courtrooms and there were papers posted on the outside of the doors of each. You had to go up and see if your name was listed on the papers. I found my name on the first one. It also listed the charge and that I was there for arraignment. There were about 30 names on the paper. A bit after 8:30 a stern looking older woman, who was the bailiff, opened up the courtroom and let us in. She then set up a TV and told us we had to watch a video on our rights. The video lasted about 20 minutes and went through things like how you could plead, what pleading ‘no contest’ meant and the like. When that was over a few people got yelled at for wearing hats, a few for having food in the courtroom, a few for having kids with them, and a few for chewing gum. The bailiff brought out a stack of files and called out people’s names. When she called your name you had to answer if you had a lawyer, wanted a public defender or were going to represent yourself.

Once all of that was done, the bailiff cautioned us about the way the judge liked his courtroom. Apparently there was to be no talking out of turn or arguing or you would be arrested for contempt. It was then announced in what order cases would be heard. First would be people with private attorneys, then people that had to deal with the city attorney, then public defenders and then people representing themselves.

The judge came in shortly after that. He was the meanest, rudest, most foul person I have ever encountered. He would ask someone a question, they would answer and then he would cut off the person speaking. If the person did not stop speaking immediately they would get yelled at by the judge something to the effect of “Don’t interrupt me! Have some respect!” He later yelled things like “Can’t you see I’m reading” and “Listen to me when I’m speaking to you!”

I got to see someone charged with meth possession, someone charged with less than an ounce of marijuana (he had a note for medical reasons but apparently while it is legal here for medical reasons it is illegal to transport it!), there were people that were there for speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, using a cell phone while driving, making illegal u-turns, turning from the wrong lane and failure to appear.

One other guy was there for the same thing as me. He was up before me and I got to see what would have happened if I had been a black guy when I got my ticket.  His charges were the same as mine only the cop that wrote him the ticket also impounded his car. Apparently he could not afford to pay the fee to get it back so the city took possession of the car and sold it. As a result he could not provide his proof of registration and the judge fined him $250!

By this point I was getting pretty nervous. The lowest fine I’d seen anyone get was $174. It was not too long before I got called up. The judge asked how I wanted to plead. After seeing how others has pleaded I said “Guilty.” The judge then asked if I had my license and registration, which I handed to the bailiff. And confirming that I was all legit, the judge announced he was dismissing all charges and that I needed to go next door to pay  $10 administrative court cost! Hooray!

I also learned that they do take credit cards at the courthouse.

As a teen I wish someone had given me some advice on finances and money making. You see, as a teen I was busy doing stupid stuff like acquiring as many CDs and other unnecessary items from the mall that I possibly could. And the best time to be a bit of an entrepreneur is when you are a teen. I mean, think about it – you have no real expenses and the whole teen entrepreneur is such a gimmick and it truly works in your favor. Sure, not every teen can be an Ashley Qualls and make millions, but there are some great ways for teens to make money.

The tried and true

Babysitting – This is something that teens have been doing for some time now. You won’t get rich off of babysitting jobs, but the work is fairly simple. You get to wear whatever you want and play with kids and a lot of time you also get to eat for free. Not a bad gig. I actually did this for a while my freshman year of college.  I got to eat for free, the kids went to bed fairly early and then I got to sit and do my homework, all while getting paid.

Mowing lawns and collecting trash – I knew a lot of  guys that spent their summers mowing lawns. They got exercise and they actually got paid pretty well. If you are in a large neighborhood there is even more potential for cash. And if there is not a trash pickup then offering to collect trash weekly is another great way to make some money.

Farm work - I grew up in the South where there were a lot of tobacco farms. So, each summer a lot of people that I knew made an amazing amount of money just by helping out on the tobacco farms. Of course, this is pretty hard work.

Tutoring – There is always a need for tutors. So, if you excel in a subject area, why not offer your assistance to someone else that could use a little help? A lot of times you can even reserve a meeting room in a local library for free to do your tutoring.

Thinking outside the box

Baking – If you have a teen that loves to bake, then this is a potential money maker.  And who can resist a teen going door-to-door selling baked goods?

Computer services – Teens that are interested in computers and can do things like design websites can offer their services to the community.  This can include everything from building computers to installing software and memory to setting up networks or other more complicated endeavors.

Blogging & website services – There are plenty of web savvy teens making money from everything from blogging to offering up SEO services.  If you have a teen that does this sort of thing for fun, why not encourage them to make a little money from it.

Art & crafts- These days more and more artists are selling their artwork on the web.  There are plenty of artists making a lot of money just by selling artwork on eBay. If your teen is more into things like making jewelry for instance there is also Etsy where your teen can sell all sorts of different art and craft items that they have made.

Writing - Freelance writing is not just for adults. Teens can get paid to write from all sorts of places. In addition to sending out queries to traditional places, there are sites online like Associated Content and Helium where writers can earn a modest sum for their words.

eBay seller – If you are teen with a keen eye for items that can be re-sold for a profit you might want to think about being an eBay seller.  This means going to yard sales and flea markets and the like and looking for things you can buy cheap and resell for a profit. Of course, you do not have to use eBay for that. You could go with Craigslist or another route. You could also offer to list items for eBay for other people in your community for a small fee.

Graphic designer - If you are a teen with some graphic design skills, why not offer those up to local businesses? Offer to do flyers, posters or brochures. You could also offer to do party invitations for people in the community.

Photographer/videographer - All you need is a decent camera or video camera and you can be on your way to making money as a photographer or videographer. Look for sports teams in your area and see if they need someone to video their games for a small fee. Offer to take photos of sports teams, pets and more in the community. Businesses, like real estate offices, also need photographers to take photos of homes.

A few posts ago I wrote on how to save money at Whole Foods. And just the other day I discovered a new way to save some cash. But it is a limited time money saving thing. In fact, you have to act by this Wednesday and you can save $5.00. Here is what you do. Just head on over to the Whole Foods website. And scroll down a bit and you will see an image like the one below. Click on it and you can get a $5.00 PDF coupon that you can print multiple times. You just have to spend $25 to use it.

It has been a little over a month after the Bumblefucked household made a cross country move and one of us is finally employed. I am not going to lie – I was worried. We managed to score a sweet deal on an apartment that was fairly new and still fairly empty – we got $600 off the first month and two months for free! We could have taken that two months free and pro-rated it over the length of the lease – but we chose to take it up front in case financial Armageddon hit us.

With the current state of the economy I was starting to get a little worried. Then I read an article someplace that stated how people with MBAs should expect to be out of work the longest. Eek! That’s me! So, I went on the offensive. I started applying to any and all jobs. I am talking call center jobs and the like. I just took my MBA off my resume for those. I also joined sites like Media Bistro and tried to get some freelance writing jobs. And I went to a few staffing agencies. One of the agencies told me that I would be lucky to get $20 an hour in this economy, which was less than my previous salary. Hearing that was a bummer, but I just wanted a job!

Fortunately, I landed a job through that same staffing agency two days later at a pay rate considerably higher than the original quote. I started on Monday. The job is with one of the major movie studios, which means that I get to see and hear about some interesting things.

Earlier this week, while I was waiting to cross the street to get to my car, I got to see David Arquette speed where there was not a lane and cut someone off. What a wanker, I thought to myself. Then yesterday I heard that he was on the lot playing basketball with some of my co-workers and that he was “super nice” even giving some socks to one of the guys from his trailer. And then today, I encountered him in his car again. He let me out in front of him, so I guess maybe he doesn’t drive like a wanker after all.

Yesterday I got word that I had been selected for a copywriter position that I had applied for through Media Bistro. The bummer was that there was a week of on-site training. I had been stoked about this position as it was work at home and paid $30 an hour. But, with my new job I could not take it. And I got the call for one of those call center jobs today. Thank god that did not come before this one! I would have taken it just to be employed! Another place also called me wanting to set up an interview. So, if you are unemployed someplace, come out to Los Angeles as there seem to be plenty of jobs here and only one of the ones that called me was a crappy call center job! I spent 3 months in the Midwest trying to find a job with no luck and I get out here and I get all these calls and offers! Insanity.

The Bumblefucked household has been shopping at Whole Foods for about 3 years. However, the past 6 months or so has seen Whole Foods being our primary grocery store. It is no secret that you can spend a fortune at Whole Foods. Organic foods that are not in season can indeed be pretty pricey. But overall, you can spend about the same at a regular grocery store. The key difference I have found is coupons. Most of the stuff that we buy at Whole Foods (that is not produce) are the Whole Foods 365 brand or other brands that just don’t put coupons in the Sunday paper.

Today when I made my trek to Whole Foods I discovered something awesome that I am ashamed to say I did not know about before.

This little booklet is chock full of recipes and coupons! Apparently this is something that Whole Foods makes for customers. According to what I read on their site, you can typically get The Whole Deal at the customer service desk. At my Whole Foods though it was sitting on the tables in the dining section. The “More than $40 in coupons inside” thingie caught my eye while I was waiting in line. And there are great coupons in here! You can download t The Whole Deal from their site in PDF.  Have a look and see the coupons that are available.

I can’t wait to start saving money at Whole Foods with these coupons!

After the craziness earlier this week where the markets took a nosedive of almost 800 points, I got to wishing that we had some extra cash to sock away in our Roth IRAs. I logged into our Vanguard account to see that the fund we both have was at its 52-week low point.

We just moved to a new state.

Neither of us have jobs.

So, what did I do?

I took $300 and bought some more shares of the Vanguard Star Fund for each of us. Oh yeah, dollar cost averaging is totally my BFF.  The way I see it, if times get tougher I can always pull it back out since you can withdraw your contributions at any time. And if we manage to avoid financial armageddon then we come out ahead by buying in at such low costs.

Some people are hoarding their money right now due to fear. We just invested ours. So, who is really bumblefucked?

If you find yourself unemployed and looking for ways to make some extra cash, or just plain looking for some extra cash, there are some easy steps you can take. In fact, you can sit at your computer at home and easily make enough to cover a cable bill or a weekly grocery bill with little effort.

First, go through your home looking for things you don’t really need. Then you can sort your stuff into piles – Craigslist, Amazon Marketplace, eBay, second-hand store, used book/cd store, garage sale, goodwill.

I like to sell things like books, dvds and cds on Amazon Marketplace. I have found that you can make more on there than you can with eBay. And as a bonus you don’t have to deal with PayPal.

I tend to use eBay to sell bulk lots of clothes (say 5 pairs of near perfect Levi’s jeans in the same size), used electronic items (laptops, digital cameras) and collectibles like comic books or Disney items.

Craigslist is reserved for larger items. Things like furniture, desktop computers and other things that are too heavy to mail using eBay. You can also use Craigslist to offer your skills. Let’s say you want to walk dogs – you can place an ad saying you will do that. If you have a truck, you can offer to cart off people’s trash or furniture for them. I often see ads on Craigslist where people are offering to pay someone with a truck to help them move some furniture.

If I have books, cds or movies that are not selling for at least $2.50 on Amazon (I figured up how much it costs me for postage, mailer and Amazon fees and this is the minimum I list for) then I will go to a used bookstore or music store that buys those things. Sometimes they even buy things like comic books and other collector items.

Some places have second-hand stores that will buy used household items. In central Ohio there is a chain called “New Uses” that buys everything from TVs to ice trays to dressers to pots & pans. They pay pitifully though. But once when I lived in Orlando there was a used furniture store that would drive to your home and make you an offer and haul stuff away for you. I sold them a $90 table/chair set for $50, which I thought was pretty decent.

If you have a yard or a place where you can have a yard sale you can do that to get rid of things you could not get rid of elsewhere. You can’t price things too high though, which is why I recommend the other avenues first.

And with everything that is leftover you put that in your Goodwill pile and cart that all off to be donated. Why? Because it will make you feel good and it will get some clutter out of your home!

If you are still in need of cash and are looking for something other than a part-time job you can turn to the internet. There are a few different ways to make easy money online, but usually there is a 30 day wait for payment. You can make money a little quicker by doing something like writing articles for Associated Content. But with Associated Content and other ways of making money online, there is likely a lot more work involved than you realize. And unless you are a super speedy typer/writer then you might be better off getting a part-time retail job.

Debt totals in the sidebar have been updated. The prognosis is not good. As you can tell from the percentages that are greater than 100%, we are worse than when we started in a few places. As previously mentioned, moving is hella expensive.

We knew this would happen.

We knew the smart thing was to stay in the Midwest where the cost of living was cheap. However, the job market there was less than stellar. In fact, I have not had a job since February. Resumes were sent out but there just weren’t jobs. That was partially what was driving the need to pick up and move.

Risk.

We knew it was a risk coming out here. With risk there is either great reward or well, not so much on the great or rewards part. Either way, it was a gamble we are willing to take.

So, now all that is left is to work our butts off and see if we can get the debt payoff train back on track or if we get twice as bumblefucked with debt. Only time will tell.

more animals

The Bumblefucked household just up and moved 2,000 miles. Moving is always expensive. But moving across the country is REALLY expensive. Sure, we cut costs where we could but there are just some expenses you can’t avoid.

Gas. It takes a lot of gas to drive over 2,000 miles. To avoid paying out the nose for gas, we topped off the gas whenever we happened across an exceptionally low price on gas. This way we were able to avoid having to pay high prices when we were desperate for gas. We also took to only getting gas in more populated areas. It seems like the middle of nowhere gas stations are the ones that really stick it to ya. For instance, I paid a decent price for gas in Flagstaff, AZ. I did not gas up again until Kingman, AZ when I saw another decent price. But boy do I feel sorry for the schmucks that had to gas up in between those areas – the difference was about $0.40 a gallon!!

Food. For starters, we tried to stay at hotels that had free breakfast. We also looked for hotels that had a microwave and fridge. And we kept bread and peanut butter in the car. Then, we would take a few extra pack of jelly from the hotel breakfast so we could make PB & J’s in the car! Another way we saved money on food was by stopping at grocery stores instead of restaurants. This was an awesome cost savings!

Hotels. We had to have places to stay on the move. And hotels are not exactly cheap. At least not the types of ones you feel comfortable sleeping in! Fortunately one of the evil credit cards that we have is affiliated with a hotel chain. So every dollar spent earns hotel rewards points which turn into free hotel rooms. Since we knew for a while that we would be making this move we began using that card and paying off what we charged in order to earn points. I also had a bunch of Marriott Rewards points that I had been saving up from back when we were reckless spenders and travelers. And for the non-free hotels we looked at Last-Minute Hotel Deals at Expedia.com  and took advantage of the Expedia promotion for free gas cards when you book hotel stays.

The end result. Even though we found some awesome ways to save money the fact remains that we spent more in a few weeks that we normally spend in an entire month. So, that means we added to the credit card debt some. We also traded in our dying car for another used one. So the car loan balance on the sidebar will show an increase soon. But more on that later.

The Bumblefucked household is pretty frugal. And we are experienced travelers. That means that we have learned how to save money on food when traveling. And let’s face it – food expenditure can be one of the more costly things on a vacation or trip.

Think about it – When you are traveling you typically do not have a kitchen. Sure, sometimes you can get a good deal on one of those rooms that is a studio suite with a kitchen. But most of the time the cheapest room is not one with a full kitchen. So, what do you do?

First,

Look for a room that has a mini-fridge and a microwave. You would be surprised where you can find these without paying extra. Look for a Holiday Inn Express or even a LaQuinta Inn. I have had success in both of those chains. And if you book a room that lists one or both of these amenities – make sure you get them! There is a pretty good chance that you will arrive and your room will be microwave/fridge free. Apparently the hotels move these amenities around. If you are missing something just ring the front desk and ask for it to be sent to your room. Remember to look over your bill when you leave to make sure you did not get charged extra for it if you were not supposed to!

Second,

Look for a hotel that has free breakfast. Now, as a healthy eater I can honestly say that most hotels do not have much food that is redeeming for their free breakfast. At Holiday Inn Express for instance you can usually get some yogurt, some oatmeal, some toast or a bagel or english muffin. They also have pastries, eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy and cold cereal. Fruit is usually pretty scarce. So, you can try to eat what you can at this. What I like to do is to take some sandwich baggies and snag some bread from the toast area, assuming that I did not bring my own. Then I grab some of the peanut butter and some of the jelly. And that will be lunch later! You can also get a bagel or something else to snack on later if you want. And the oatmeal can be made in your room later thanks to your coffee pot.

Third,

Pack some food before you leave! It is super easy to toss in some road snacks and such before you leave home. You can even grab some bread and peanut butter from the pantry. I also like to grab any food that will go bad before I return, like fruit. And if you have the space, I suggest packing a cooler with drinks. You will be amazed how much this can save you on a road trip.

Fourth,

Bring something to cook in. Sure, you can cook in a microwave. You can also cook in a crock pot or rice steamer if you have one. And that really saves you money! You can even cook in the car if you have one of those things that plugs into your car and converts to a power outlet. Just be careful if you do that. I recently took a rice steamer on a trip and ate dinner in the hotel room. I went across the street to a super Wal-Mart and bought the following:

• brown rice – $1.64
• veggie marinade – $1.98
• bag of mixed broccoli and cauliflower – $2.36
• mushrooms – $3.48

So, my total food expenditure was $9.46. We ate this two nights in a row – so that is a total of four meals. AND – we threw some out as we did not want to heat it up again! That means that one meal’s cost was only $2.37! You can’t beat that! The best part is that I had grabbed some paper plates and plastic forks from the breakfast area, so that was totally free! And there is still a lot of leftover rice in the bag to be made up at the next hotel, where the only expediture will be the veggies as there is also marinade leftover.

What I think is interesting here is that clearly these meals could have cost even less if I had skipped the mushrooms! And it still would have been just as filling.

Your next steps,

If you do not already have one, I highly suggest getting a small crock pot or rice cooker. I got my Black & Decker 16-Cup Rice Cooker at a Big Lots for only $15.00! It also has a veggie steamer tray in it. If you are looking for a rice cooker or small crock pot check out Amazon as they seem to have decent prices on some of them. Or look for a Big Lots near you!