We all know smoking is bad, but...

Bad for your health, and bad for the wallet. But if you choose to smoke, there are ways to cut the impact on your finances. You can roll your own smokes.

When someone first suggested this to me, I pictured John Wayne licking some paper, sitting at a bar and sipping some whiskey. Well, welcome to the 1900's and the age of simple machines.



I live in an expensive state to smoke where packs can cost upwards of $6 a pack, and cartons are almost at $50. I smoke a little bit more than a pack a day and spent $200 a month on my smokig a month. There was a time when we lived in a very smoker friendly state cost wise, and I could get quality smokes for $12 a carton less than 5 years ago.

At one point since we moved here, I either needed to quit smoking or find a way to smoke more cheaply. Then a rash of people at work started rolling their own smokes. I was able to cut my smoking cost by over 75% by rolling my own smokes.

They sell pre-filtered tubes for $2 for a carton, and you slide these into the rolling machines. You buy a pack of loose tobacco for less the $10. This is almost enough for a carton, and the tobacco actually tastes better too. You stuff the loose tobacco into the slot, and pull the lever. Voila! A cigarette! They key is that the states usually don't sin tax the loose tobacco, just the normal packs.

You can buy hard case smoke packs. I recomment one that has a divider in the middle since there is a risk of tobacco falling out when the cigs are jostled in your pocket. The divider keps smaller amount of cigs together and keeps tobacco from falling out.

Yes, I know I can save even more money by not smoking, including on health related items. But, if your going to smoke, there are ways to cut costs.

More than words

Is there one piece of advice that would have changed how you handle your money?  For me, there wasn't.  For me, actions speak much louder than any sage piece of advice, and I think that this is true for most people.

Now don't misunderstand me, there is a lot of good advice about personal finance out there.  But if you are not open to it, I don't thinkany advice will change how you deal with money.  As I've posted before, my parents were not open about the household finances, which has led to a lot of self education.  But I had to be open to it.

I'd heard about paying yourself first, my grandfather told me that a long time ago. I'm sure he told my dad that, too. But he wasn't open to it. He filed for bankruptcy when I was a teenager. And this did not even affect me, because I lived with my mom and she was very frugal. The only problem there was that she did not yell it from the rooftops that she was frugal, I think because she had to be to survive and make ends meet, instead of to accelerate savings and retirement funds. In fact, she was gaurded when I would ask specific questions, and only wanted to speak in general terms, and even then, not very often.

But the gaurded way that my parents dealt and still deal with money very much shaped how I dealt with money. I use this website to get over that, and to hold myself more accountable for my spending habits, so that I don't also have to file for bankruptcy.

But I don't think any advice I ever heard ever really sunk in until I was open to it.

Buy used, or at least consider it

A few days ago, I blogged about when to spend money and ways to cut down on your bills. Today, I'd like to talk about another way to save money, buying used.

We bought our house about 6 months ago, right at the end of grass growing season. The last time I cut the grass was when I was cleaning up the yard at our rental for the last time. We moved from a lot that was about 1/4 acre, to one that is 3/4 acres. I ama bit of a fatbody, and mowing the smaller lot was a pain in the ass with a pushmower. I also grew up mowing a full acre lot with an electric mower when I was lucky. When I was unlucky, my mom decided that the grass looked better when it was cut with a motorless push mower. Luckily since this technique was last used in full force around the turn of the 1900's people had figured out the tricky concept of gear ratio's, but I was still stuck cutting a full acre minus ~800 sq.ft. with a 16" pushmower. Not Fun. Do not do this to your kids!

But now I am in the market for a riding mower. We've gone to Home Depot and Lowes an I have sat on the mowers like a kid on the dinosaur in front of the grocery store, but the cheapest that they have is still almost $1000. So I have turned to craigslist. I was talking with my boss, who is in his mid to late fourties about this, and he had no clue what craigslist was. This blew me away. I am in a tehnical field, and he is a technical guy, and even has the broadband. How could he have not heard about america's pawnshop.

I became obsessed with it when I was trying to buy an electric guitar after playing my acoustic for a few years. So many pretty pictures, so little time. And now, I stand to get a mower, albeit slightly used, and a little smaller than what the big stores sell because my yard is pretty flat, for about $200, which is about the cost of a self propelled mower, which is my other option as the old one just won't cut it any more. Ha. And it'll even be a john deere most likely so it is a good company with a good product that should last me many years.

So if you have decided that you have to go buy some new piece of machinery, don't be turned off becuase it is used. There are a lot of people out there who take very good care of their items, and who simply don't need them anymore, of have stepped up the ladder a little bit.

60% Rule

Trent over at The Simple Dollar had an interesting post the other day. I guess it is an older idea, but I had never heard it. If you are able to put away 40% of your income a month into an account that gets an average of 10% return (which stocks do over time, as well as other forms of investments even with ridiculously low interest rates) after 11 years the interest on your account will be equal to the 60% of your income that you have using for living expenses. After 15 years, the interest will be equal to 100% of your income.

Using this formula, I could retire when I'm 45, and move back down south where the cost of living is 10%-15% less than where we live now, and live very comfortably, and still put away for retirement. Now, we are no where near being able to put 40% of our income away. We just started putting anything away Sunday. But talk about a motivating factor. My mom raised me and my sister on half of what I make now, and we had a very good upbringing.

So, that will be one of my mid term goals, putting away 40% of my current income. I am sure there will be a decent reward when I hit that one. Don't know what yet, but I have plenty of time to figure that one out.

Another way to cut bills

So, the ING account has $50 in it, and I was able to confirm the normal checking account today, so they will allow the $100 a paycheck now. I am excited about it. Can't wait to see it grow.

We've started paring down our bills too. My wife is not that great with directions, and the printed Mapquest pages don't always do that well, when you are driving, so she had Telenav on her cellphone for over a year now. She has a blackberry that she needed for business, so to get Telenav on her phone, we had to get the unlimited data package for $40 plus the $10 a month for the actual Telenav.

I also had the Internet on my phone for smoke breaks and bathroom use at work. I would cathc up with ESPN and CNN. I got hooked on it when we were with Nextel and the text only internet cost me $3.99 a month. We switched to Sprint when the merger happened and then the internet cost me $15. I was so hooked on it that I didn't want to give it up. So combined, we were spending $65 a month for phone based Internet and nav services. This was on top of our normal cellphone bill. The bill was a ridiculous $176 a month for 2 people. Ridiculous.

I realized that a decent standalone gps, my wife does do much better with some sort of gps system, would cost at most $200- $250, which would give us a 4 month turnaround on savings.

Then the Mio got great reviews. And then it went on massive sale at Radioshack.
We ended up getting it for $129 plus tax. This gives us a 2 month turnaround on savings,
which was half of what we were even thinking was ok. AWESOME!

So, if you are trying to find ways to cut your monthly spending, but don't want to give up the things you enjoy, look for other ways to get want you want, and you can probably find a way.