Posts made in July, 2012

A Dusty Guitar

Posted by jefferson on Jul 31, 2012 in Eliminating Debt | 42 comments

Ever since I was 10 years old, I have had an obsession with music and the people that create it.  What young boy in America doesn’t grow up with dreams of one day being a rock star?  But my passion for music has never translated into an ability to play an instrument.  Over the years, I have watched  friends and family members play in scratch rock bands, and a part of me has always felt like I was missing out.

When I graduated from college at the ripe age of 22, I got a decent job and found myself with disposable income for the first time in my life.  Sadly, I didn’t look at this as an opportunity to build up savings or to jumpstart my retirement, but instead decided to finally buy all of the things that I had always wanted but couldn’t afford.  Just a few months after starting work, I walked into Guitar Center and dropped over $750 on a left-handed Fender Stratocaster and a Blues Jr. tube amplifier.  I had no idea how to play guitar (outside of “Iron Man” and the start of “Come As You Are”), but was determined to take the time to learn how to play.

I practiced diligently for the first six months after purchasing the guitar.  I purchased books and videos and  spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at guitar tabs online.  I worked hard to master switching between the seven or eight chords that make up so many popular rock songs, and to train my finger muscles to quickly and decisively jump from string-to-string.  My apartment neighbors no doubt got quite tired of hearing me struggle through very basic songs by Green Day and Travis, over and over again.  I was improving, but still struggling.

For the next twelve years, I would go through phases where I practiced guitar regularly, and even more phases where I didn’t touch it at all.  Finding time to practice got harder and harder to come by after having our second child and then our third, especially since I only had the (noisy) electric.  At one point, I took a half dozen lessons from a kid who was half my age at a local music store, but didn’t get much out of them.  Truth be told, I never grew confident enough in my own abilities to play in front of anyone other than my wife and kids.

I think that some activities in life come easier for some folks than others.  For example, playing sports has always felt very natural to me, but playing music is a much different story.  From the first time that I picked up a guitar, any attempt to play has always felt a bit forced.  It takes me forever to pick up even the simplest of timings, and I often wonder if I will ever truly be able to develop a “feel” for the music that I am attempting to play.  My issues with music aren’t restricted to guitar either, as I also am completely unable to sing on key and I have been laughed at in multiple states for my dancing prowess.  I should note that my inability to sing or dance doesn’t stop me from doing either, as these are two of the greatest joys in life, and lack of talent should never keep you from a good time.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a second guitar, a lovely Yamaha acoustic, which is much more friendly to just pick up and play.  The thought was that I would be more likely to just grab the guitar and practice if I didn’t have to deal with the amplifier and all the noise that came along with it.  What I didn’t realize is that after buying the acoustic, I would never touch the electric Fender Strat again.  Even so, it didn’t occur to me that I should sell the old guitar and amplifier, and so they sat in our basement collecting dust for the past few years.

Last week, Michelle and I were going for one of our nightly walks and talking about ways that we could raise some additional money in the next month.  We talked about looking to see if there was anything that we had missed in our previous minimalism/fundraising efforts.  When we got home, I strolled into the basement and saw my guitar and amp sitting in the corner feeling sorry for themselves.  Since I hadn’t played or even thought about them in years, I knew with confidence that I wouldn’t miss these items.  It was clear what had to be done.  The next day I listed my old guitar and amplifier on both Craigslist and eBay local, hoping to fetch a pretty decent return.  I would love to get $500 for both, money that would go directly towards debt repayment.

– — –

Making the decision to change your life and to live debt-free involves agreeing to make sacrifices today for a better life tomorrow.  This can include delaying family vacations and home repairs, spending you free time chasing extra income, and possibly even selling off some of your old possessions.  I am not completely abandoning my boyhood rock n’ roll dreams by selling my guitar and amp (I am keeping my acoustic, for now), but I consider this a big part of stepping into the next phase of financial maturity.  Sometimes you have to let go of your past, to step into the future.

Extreme Blog Makeover — The SDR Edition

Posted by michelle on Jul 30, 2012 in Site News | 53 comments

Monday morning sometimes has a way of sneaking up on me.  I think I was so excited about our new look that I had a hard time concentrating on writing!  I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to our friend, Andrea, of Nuts And Bolts fame, for making us beautiful.  Mrs. Nuts, if you will, did an amazing job of marrying the two very different personalities and styles that Jeff and I embody, somehow making both of us happy!  I was so impressed with her every step of the way.  She knows what she’s doing, for sure, and she was so fun and easy to work with!

We’ll be back tomorrow with a real post, I promise!  For now…let’s just soak up the pretty.

Help, I Can’t Turn the Water Off!

Posted by jefferson on Jul 26, 2012 in Eliminating Debt | 35 comments

Note:  The situation below occurred several weeks ago.  Since that time,  our local government has initiated a voluntary water conservation to prevent shortages.  As such, we have stopped watering our yard, and have instead started doing nightly rain dances.

It was a fairly typical Friday evening in the SDR household.  The kids were all asleep, and Michelle and I were cleaning up.  When you have three kids at home, there are always things to keep you busy.  Michelle and I folded laundry,  washed out baby bottles, and took turns commenting on some of our favorite blogs.  The whole time we were doing this, the sprinkler was running outside, providing our parched grass with some much-needed life support.

It has been a truly brutal summer here in the Midwest, with more than a dozen days over one hundred degrees already.  In addition, we have had virtually no rain at all.  As such, most people’s yards have turned into a barren brown wasteland where only weeds can possibly thrive.  On the night in question, we were moving the sprinkler around every 30 minutes, to make sure that every part of our small suburban yard got a little bit of H2O love.

Just before heading off to bed at midnight, I went outside to turn the sprinkler off.  The hose was connected to the house via an old metal faucet, similar to the one in the picture at the top of this post.  I stumbled out to the faucet and attempted to give the handle wheel a few turns.  Much to my dismay,  the handle wouldn’t budge…  at all.  I applied a little bit more force,  but still couldn’t get the wheel to move.  Houston, we have a problem.  But then things got worse.

I wondered if the wheel had just gotten off-center a bit, so I then attempted to shift it up and down a bit to see if that would free it up, but it didn’t work.  I then put my foot up against the house for leverage, and gave it one last yank to see if I get things moving.  This extra leverage didn’t cause the wheel to turn, but instead broke the handle clean off!  I picked my jaw off the ground and walked inside to tell Michelle about the situation.

When we went back outside with flashlights, it was clear that the faucet was absolutely fubar, and there was nothing that we could do to fix it from the outside.  I am not afraid of DIY projects, but it was clear that replacing the faucet was going to involve cutting up my basement ceiling and somehow soldering on a new connection in a very small work-space. This “project” was definitely out of my league.  To top it off, there was no way to turn the water off without the handle, which meant that there was no way to turn off the sprinkler!

All homes have a main water shut-off valve that stops the water flow to the entire house, and ours is in the unfinished part of the basement.  We went ahead and brushed our teeth, used the restroom, and I then headed downstairs to turn off the main valve.  Much to my dismay, the shutoff valve was stuck in exactly the same way, and wouldn’t budge!  Having learned my lesson outside, I knew that applying a lot of force to the handle can have severe consequences.  Only, if this happened inside (with the main valve), water would start flooding into my basement, and I would truly have no way to shut it off.

Instead, Michelle came up with an idea to just kink the hose outside, which would at least stop the water from shooting out of the sprinkler until we could call a plumber in the morning.  Do you know that scene in “The Goonies” where the toilets start exploding and a guy who is using the restroom gets launched into the air?  I was concerned that kinking the hose would potentially cause water pressure to build up inside the house causing a that scene to occur in real life.  But a little bit of Google research calmed my fears, and we went ahead and kinked the hose and went to bed knowing that the following morning was going to be an expensive one.

The next day was a Saturday, and it seemed like 90% of the plumbers listed in the yellow pages tacked on a large “emergency charge” for weekend calls.  When we found a company that advertised “No extra fees for after hours or weekends,” we gave them a call.  They came out an hour later, and confirmed our suspicions.  There was no way to replace the faucet from the outside of the house, and they would have to cut up our basement ceiling to get to the pipe.  They also examined the main shut-off valve and told me that I should be very glad that I didn’t attempt to force it.  The water line coming into the house from outside was made of fairly brittle hard plastic.  If I had somehow snapped that line with excessive force, we would have to dig up the yard on that side of the house in order to get to the intake.  That would have meant that we would potentially have been without water for days or even weeks.

All in all, the plumber did a fantastic job.  It took about 2 hours and he replaced the outside unit with a newer model that featured an easy-turn plastic handle.  He left the main shutoff valve as is, but further up the pipe added a second shutoff switch that simply required pulling a lever up and down.  I asked him what caused the handles to get stuck in the first place, and he thought that excessive heat was the most-likely culprit, especially outside.

While we were relieved to have it fixed, the total bill for his visit was $400.  We certainly didn’t budget for a random plumbing bill of this size, but luckily– we were able to raid our emergency fund to pay for the repair.  In the past, these type of unexpected expenses always went straight to the credit card, which makes this a case-in-point as to why having a proper emergency fund is such a critical part of getting out of debt.  Accidents and emergency repairs will always happen, and you need to be ready for them!