Diapers.com Coupon

A reader who recently had a baby sent me an Email about how to save money on diapers. She mentioned saving $10 when buying diapers from Diapers.com. She used a promotional discount coupon code: drybb.

The promo code (drybb) gives you $10 off of your first order from Diapers.com. In addition, they offer free shipping with a purchase of $49 or more. Although they are best known for diapers, Diapers.com also sells other baby products such as clothes, wipes, books, toys, strollers, car seats, etc. Diapers.com’s is known for fast shipping. Based on what other people have said, delivery usually takes about 1-2 days. In some cases orders are delivered in less than 24 hours.

Anyway, I thought that I would pass along this information to my blog readers in hopes that it can save you some money. If readers know of other helpful discount codes, please let me know.

Get a Free Jones Soda

I received an Email from the people at Jones Soda saying that they will offer a free soda to every "Seattleite" who visits their headquarters on Friday, July 10th. The hours for this promotion (which they are touting as a party) are from 8 am to 5 pm. The company is located at 234 Ninth Ave. N in Seattle. For the locals around here, that is in the South Lake Union area, not far from the Space Needle at Seattle Center.

For more information about this event, visit the Jones Soda website. If you know of any coupon codes or other special deals that readers might be interested in, please contact me at the Email address listed in the sidebar.

Guest Post: Planning on an Early Retirement despite the Terrible Economy

For anyone who makes it to the ripe age of 65, you should be able to expect a retirement full of relaxation, enjoyment, and stress free living. At least, that's how it used to be. Retirement now brings with it a whole lot of additional considerations, such as: can you afford to retire?, are my investments safe?, will the government continue to support me?, what if I run out of money?, what state is my 401K in?

Unfortunately, given the financial pressures being faced these days, the truthful answers to most of these questions may not be as reassuring as they used to be. The first two question above can almost never be answered with a reasonable amount of certainty. The following 3 questions do present real risks if you were to retire too early. So, if you are approaching the "traditional" retirement age of 65, how do you actually reach a decent decision or make the "correct" choice. Furthermore, if you were previously considering an early retirement, is this still on the cards, or is it impossible?

There really is no way I could answer these questions for you. Every person always has a unique financial situation, and hence these types of things need to be analyzed on a case by case basis. What I can do instead is give you some valuable advice on how to reach a decision yourself. You don't need a financial advisor to make this decision for you! Instead, follow the 3 steps below, and you'll be well on your way to a successful outcome.

1. Look at the Big Picture:
Sit down one weekend by yourself, or with your partner, and bring out that ring binder. It's time to sort out all of your finances - and I mean EVERYTHING. There is no point in continuing with your retirement planning unless you know your exact financial position and cash / asset reserves. Think of it like a corporation. They need their yearly financial statements to help them direct their decisions for the year ahead. Companies who make decision blindly run the risk of choosing the wrong path - and this is easily what could happen to you.

2. Be Realistic About Your Living Costs:
It's now time to work out how much it costs you to live each week. Whilst you have those ring binders out, calculate your expenses for the previous 2 years. This should include expenses from all categories. Make it look pretty if you wish, but more importantly, come up with a total figure. Now, add $10,000 to that (to account for unexpected expenses that you could have faced in the last 2 years), and divide the total by 104. The resulting figure is how much you will need PER WEEK throughout your retirement.

3. The Final Calculation:
Now, take your total net worth, including all the items you accounted for in step one, and divide this by the weekly requirement in step 2. This will tell you how many weeks you can currently afford to retire for! Clever isn't it. Of course, this is very much an estimate - there will be many other things you need to consider - but as I said, case by case.

Can you retire early? Well, your definitely on the way to being able to work that out for yourself.


About the Author
Andrew Wang lives in Seattle area. He writes about Travel Reward Credit Card & Student Loans. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please contact Seattle Simplicity at the Email address listed in the sidebar.

Review of NationalPayday.com

Payday loans fill an important void that is not served by traditional banks. In a perfect world, everyone would be on top of his or her finances, and there wouldn't be a need for payday lenders. But in reality, most of us have gotten behind on bills at some point.

National Payday offers cash advance loans based on your next paycheck. A payday loan is something to consider if you find yourself in a short-term bind and in need of money. As an example, if you have been shopping for one too many "bargains", and can't make your credit card payment, a payday loan may help you out. Applying for a payday loan is simple, and takes only a few minutes to complete. Most loans are approved within 24 hours.

National Payday has a FAQ that explains how to apply for a loan. A checking account and a steady job are the requirements to apply. To explain how the loan works, suppose you were to borrow $300 from the payday lender. The lender then transfers this money to your checking account, and expects you to pay this amount plus a 25% fee ($75 on a $300 loan) when you receive your next paycheck.

I advise borrowers to read National Payday's disclosure information before applying for a loan. The effective annual percentage rate (APR) on the loan can be several hundred percent, depending on the situation. If used correctly, a payday loan can help tide you over to the next payday.

This post is sponsored by National Payday.

Mystery Shopping Can Be a Pain In the Patootie

Early last year I stumbled across an article in the Wall Street Journal with the enticing title How One Entrepreneur Lives Large -- for Free. It's an article about how one woman replaced her Wall Street salary with mystery shopping assignments. I was enthralled. It sounded so easy, so flexible, so desirable! What if I could ditch my corporate job and mystery shop full time?

I took the time to get my silver MSPA certification and then embarked on signing up with as many mystery shopping companies as I could. I did all kinds of assignments from evaluating retail stores and gas stations to dining in five-star restaurants. I was on my way to a new career! But then I realized that the payoff just wasn't there. There is a lot of time involved with completing an evaluation. Then the really time consuming part starts when you complete the write-up on the assignment. It just wasn't worth the effort to me. Some evaluations took three hours to complete the typed report. And all I got in exchange for that was a reimbursed dinner meal.

But during my little mystery shopping experiment, I stumbled across one company that offers restaurant evaluations in exchange for a reimbursed meal and a ten-minute survey on the service I received. I just returned from lunch there today, and I truly enjoy dining at the restaurant. I have shunned mystery shopping from all other sources, and only work for this company. I am treated to a few free meals a year and I always look forward to the experience. (For confidentiality reasons, I can't share either the mystery shopping company or restaurant with you.)

But all the initial pain and suffering of sifting through the mystery shopping world paid off. I am required to take a dining guest with me to complete the assignment, so I have become very popular with my coworkers for the periodic free lunch they receive!

April Net Worth $466,959 (up $7,955)

My April has a strong showing at $466,959, up nearly $8,000 over March. Most notable are investment gains in my IRA and 401(k) accounts. I also had additional stock options vest which resulted in nice gains there.

Could You Live on Half Your Salary?

At a dinner party last night (where I served my Italian grandma's famous lasagna...mmm) the topic of part time work came up. A friend of ours who has a new baby has shifted to working only two days a week. She is part of a two-income household, which makes it easier to accomplish such a thing, but it got me to fantasizing about a world in which I only had to work two days a week.

I started wondering if there were a position with my company that would allow me to work two days a week, for 10 hours a day. I could start my day at 7:00 am, take a brief 15 or 30 minute lunch, and be outta here by 5:30. By working a 20 hour work week, I would still be eligible for benefits.

But could I swing it financially? Right now my biggest expense is the mortgage on my condo. I'm not emotionally attached to the place, so I wouldn't mind renting it out. If I rented it out as a furnished unit, I could easily cover the mortgage, and make a little extra cash as well. Plus I would get all the nice tax deductions that rental property affords. But then where would I live? Craig's List in Seattle is crammed full of rooms-for-rent ads. I found this ad for a $600 room for rent in a beautiful house in a great neighborhood. Not too shabby. I could manage that. So that takes care of housing.

What about my day-to-day expenses? I currently save about 20% of my take-home pay. I did a little math and found that if I save the same percentage of my new (lower) salary, and reduced my monthly discretional spending from $1,500 (my current average) to $1,000 each month, then I would be still be cash flow positive each month. The biggest chunk of that $1,500 is spent on food, which with a little effort, could easily be reduced.

Of course my annual savings dollar amount would drop in half, but I have been a compulsive saver every since I started my career at age 21. And now, at age 37, my retirement savings are in good shape and I have a healthy emergency fund. I think I could swing this.

It's a fun exercise to consider. It is similar to the game you play, "what if you won the lottery." But the game of "could you live on half your salary" is actually an attainable objective. I think of all the wonderful things I could do with a 5-day weekend. How nice it would be...

Does Condo Living = Simple Living?

Last night during our annual condo association homeowners meeting, I chose to end my two-year term as president of the board of directors. I had an urge to continue because I have strong opinions on how I want the place to be run. But I decided that it's good to let other homeowners participate in the work it takes to operate the condo. Plus it will be a nice break from the responsibilities.

It got me to thinking whether living in a condo is truly simpler than living in a house. I owned a house prior to buying the condo, so I have a perspective on both sides of the equation. When I owned my house (all 650 sq. ft. of it) I was completely overwhelmed with the yard maintenance and exterior maintenance of the place. Something always needed to be attended to whether it was edging the yard, mowing the lawn, painting the retaining wall, weeding the garden, replacing the porch light, roto-rooting the sewer line, and so on. Initially I tried to do most everything myself (except the sewer line issue) then I gradually started hiring out some of the work. But over time I always wound up canceling the workmen because I couldn't stand spending money on something I knew perfectly well I could do myself. So I cancelled the yard guy and I stopped using a handy man. The only thing I would hire out was plumbing work. I felt like I was saving a ton of money, but I also felt the weight of a growing to-do list.

When I first moved into my condo I was giddy with the prospect that everything would be handled for me. I could just pick up the phone and report a burned out hallway light or a broken yard sprinkler and the maintenance men would show up and fix all the problems. In reality that did happen, but I find myself unhappy with the quality of work or the speed in which tasks get resolved. Also, I'm paying a healthy chunk of homeowners dues which is a non-negotiable expense. When you own your own house, you can choose whether to have a yard service handle the lawn one month, and do it yourself the next. That isn't an option in a condo. In addition, my condo has an elevator and a garage door that both require regular maintenance to operate properly. It's amazingly expensive. It is also an adjustment to have decision by committee, and to not be able to maintain the property exactly the way you personally see fit.

My 20-20 hindsight is crystal clear on this issue. I preferred the flexibility as a single-family home owner to hire out home maintenance tasks at my discretion. I didn't realize at the time that it's much more cost effective to hire out home maintenance for a house than to contribute monthly home owners dues for a condo, at least a condo that aspires to having a healthy reserve fund as mine does. This doesn't mean I'm going to sell my condo and run out and buy a single-family home. But I'm certainly more aware of the tradeoffs of both living situations now.

My condo living situation is certainly simpler based solely on the fact that our management company handles the maintenance issues that arise, and it will be even more simple now that I am not an active participant on the board of directors. But a single-family homeowner can create the same situation by investing time to identify good service providers to handle regular maintenance issues.

Free Trial of MS Money Not Up To Snuff

This weekend I downloaded the 90-day trial version of Microsoft Money 2006 Deluxe. I spent about three hours uploading my financial information and meticulously categorizing my expenses. I had MS Money pull my credit card and banking information directly from my online accounts. After tinkering around with it for a few hours, I deduced that I strongly prefer my manual method of tracking income, expenses and net worth in Excel. It is much easier to do what-if scenarios, and it takes much less time. It also makes me feel much more 'in touch' with my money. I felt that Microsoft Money was overly complex, and not as intiuitive as I had expected it to be. I was a little disappointed with this finding. I guess I expected more from Microsoft. I suppose it might be a good tool for somebody who has a business, but for personal finance tracking, it isn't the solution for me.

Location, Location, Location

People often tell me how lucky I am to live in such a fantastic neighborhood. I live in easy walking distance of:

• four grocery stores


• the public library


• a post office


• two dozen or so great restaurants


• three neighborhood pubs


• four coffee shops


• a fun variety of retail shops


• a dry cleaner


• two fantastic parks


• a beautiful lake


• in easy bicycling distance of my office

When people comment on where I live, the conversation usually goes something like this:

Them: "You are so lucky to live in this awesome neighborhood!"

Me: "I agree that it is a fantastic neighborhood. But I am not lucky to live here. I chose to live here."

Them: "I could never afford to buy a house in this neighborhood."

Me: "Sure you can! It just wouldn't be as big as your current one."

Them: "But I couldn't live without my...(fill in the blank)...walk in closet, double garage, jacuzzi tub, four bedroom house, etc."

At that point I change the topic because folks like that can't imagine giving up a material possession or home amenity in exchange for the increased quality of life that a neighborhood community offers. I wouldn't trade my tiny one-bedroom condo in a fantastic neighborhood for a huge, hulking house in the strip-mall suburbs for ANYTHING!