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Chicken update

The chickens are doing fine, I think. We lost two more to dogs or something (one was definitely lost to a neighbor's dog). They flew out of their yard I had created for them next to their coop. I have now clipped to left wing of each bird in the hopes of keeping them in this time, and am trying to fix the perimeter fences a bit better to keep out dogs. They appear to be sneaking under the fence.

I am also experimenting with "chicken tractors." This is a device that is sort of a moving pen, so they can be placed in an area where there is sufficient food, that is also in need of work and fertilizing. The chickens receive nutrients, the area cleared of bugs and excess vegetation, and the chickens' droppings fertilize the area. Since we are expanding our garden to at least four more beds this spring, the ground where we plan to place them is an ideal area for them to work.

There was already a cage that had been modified with chicken wire we found on the "back 40" (actually the back one and a half) that we have been using since they were chicks, but it is hard to move great distances without the use of a truck, and it is too small for our growing chickens.

There are many used items about the property. My wife thinks much of it is junk and wants to haul it off, but I have been finding uses for enough items that I have been able to justify holding on to the bulk of it until we are sure we won't need it. One item I found a use for is one of those circular hay feeders for horses. I took one of these and attached my remaining chicken wire from the previously mentioned fencing and it makes a wonderful chicken tractor. I have a two sided ladder for climbing over it to place the chickens in it, and it is easily moved from one part of the property to another. I just upend it on its side and roll it to where I want to go!

Chickens

Our ducks we bought last spring have been laying, but their eggs taste awful to us so we just use them for baking. We aren't sure if that is because of what they eat or the pond water seeping through the eggshell (they lay most of them in pond water) or what, but it just ain't working out.

So, we bought some chickens. One rooster, six hens, all chicks but now growing nicely.

We put them in our garage when we first bought them, in a small rabbit cage that was in one of the barns. We kept a warm light on them, set the cage outside when it wasn't too hot.

Unfortunately, they pecked through a hole I didn't see and got out. One of our new pups killed and ate three. We have since found that puppy a new home. She was very cute and smart, but I have always been taught you can't keep a chicken-eating dog if you have chickens. Growing up, it was pretty much a captal offense for a dog to eat one of your chickens, but times have changed.

We bought some unusual chicks to replace the others. They were very cute and mild, but shortly thereafter we began to wonder if they were even chickens. We investigated the possibilities they were quail, ginea, or pheasants, but the investigation was inconclusive. We have decided to just let them grow and reveal themselves in their own good time.

We moved them out to a chicken tractor (also found on the farm) when they were big enough, bringing them in nightly for comfort and safety. They soon outgrew their little night cage, so we moved them into a larger cage inside what was once used as a chicken coop/rabbit hutch. We would bring them out each morning and put them in the tractor.

This past week we felt they had outgrown the cage in the coop, so I made some repairs and allowed them on the floor. Finally I spend a day shoring up the pen and fixed a sliding door for them. Sunday we let them out into their large pen (about 2500 square feet, I think). At first they just hovered outside the door in a space about the size of their chicken tractor, eating the bugs and such from the weeds and grass in the 4'x8' area. Finally, yesterday I saw them out running in their little yard, going from one end to the other, apparently over their fear of the open spaces.

It is so much easire to care for them now. We just feed and water them when needed in the morning and evening, and remove the small sliding door in the morning and close it back up in the evening. We do worry about predators. We have many large hawks in the area, and our dog (a black lab that doesn't bother them) has chased a few raccoons and skunks and the like. There are also a few stray dogs and our neighbors also let their dogs run wild, and we worry about them. So far, so good!

Today I build some perches for the chickens in their little coop. Look forward to seeing how they handle that.

Back again

It has been a while, but I have decided to start this blog back up again, as much as a journal than anything.

I'm keeping all of the old finance posts, mostly because they come in handy as reminders.

But since my last post, we have purchased a small farm of 8 acres with a huge pond full of bass. We got the place as a HUD foreclosure and it needed a lot of work. We put about $40,000 into it, bringing the total cost to about $167,000. It is estimated to be worth around $200,000 now even with the current market.

We bought it largely so that we can begin to grow our own food. We had a small garden this year that is not all that well organized and we got a late start due to construction (we did a lot of the work ourselves), but next year we plan to plant at least an acre of raised beds. The topsoil is clay, so we are importing a lot of our own dirt.

So, that and work is our big focus now. We look forward to more fun in the future.

How to get out of debt

1. Cut up the cards. You can always order new ones once the mess is cleaned up.

2. [url=http://frugal1.blogspot.com/2006/06/track-your-spending.html]Track your spending [/url]. Clark recommends you do this for a couple of weeks. I suggest you do it forever. It is outlined in [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140286780/qid=1149210662/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-6372803-5307169?s=books&v=glance&n=283155][i]Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, [/url][/i]by Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin, which you can get in your public library. You will be amazed at all the ways money is leaking out of your life, and how easy it is to cut back once you find out.

3. Create a[url=http://frugal1.blogspot.com/2006/06/zero-based-budget.html] good budget[/url]. It is like giving yourself a huge raise.

4. Cut your spending to the bone using [url=http://savingslist.home.mchsi.com/]The Savings List[/url], listening to Clark Howard, and going to the library to check out [i][url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375752250/qid=1149210583/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6372803-5307169?s=books&v=glance&n=283155] The Complete Tightwad Gazette [/url][/i], by Amy Dacyczyn. This is the bible of frugal living.

5. Pay off your debt using [url=http://www.mdmproofing.com/iym/ramsey_debt_snowball.shtml]Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowbal[/url]l and read these two books:

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785263268/sr=8-1/qid=1149210336/ref=sr_1_1/104-6372803-5307169?_encoding=UTF8][i]The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness [/url][/i] by Dave Ramsey

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805420789/qid=1149210507/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6372803-5307169?s=books&v=glance&n=283155][i]Mary Hunt's Debt-Proof Living: The Complete Guide to Living Financially Free [/url][/i]

There are several methods for paying off debt, but Hunt and Ramsey have counseled many many people, and both suggest smallest debt to largest. They also have some outstanding advice on how to live debt free even after you have survived this debt. Some folks recommend highest interest rate to lowest. Both methods will get you there. The first works because the snowball accelerates more quickly, the second makes sense mathematically. The important thing is that you have a plan and attack it methodically.

Another excellent book that presents a similar plan (though less intense and from a secular point of view) is [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743269888/sr=8-1/qid=1154435859/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6372803-5307169?ie=UTF8][i]All Your Worth[/i][/url], by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. The plan is based on the concept of balancing needs, wants, and savings. They suggest taking your income and spliting it Must-Haves (50%), Wants (30%), and Savings (20%). Personally, I prefer to keep both of the first 2 under 50% and savings over 50%, but the point is finding a balance that works. They have a lot of good get-out-of-debt advice, as well.


For real get-out-of-debt advice and inspiration, go to [url=http://www.daveramsey.com/radio/home/index.cfm?FuseAction=dspContent&strMode=dspShowArchives]Dave Ramsey's radio show archives[/url] and listen to his show for free online.

Zero Based budget

A zero based budget is a budget that starts with zero and ends with zero. Most grant budgets for institutions are zero based, because you are generally expected to have zero dollars of the grant left at the end of the grant period.

In personal budgets, it means you start the month with zero and you end the month with zero. You spend every dollar of that month’s income on paper before the month even begins.

My wife and I sit down sometime prior to the first of each month and spend our income for that month. We both work in the same place and get paid bi-weekly the same day twice or three times a month. We have direct deposit. We decide for each pay period how much for food, cash allowance, and church giving, which we split up bi-weekly. The rest is allocated according to the date or pay period due: mortgage, power, gas, water, etc. We then pick a pay period and allocate categories like clothes, medical, vacation, gift (Christmas shopping, which is done in July and August, comes out of this), car (for purchase and repair), and savings (other investments are all pre-tax, so we don’t include those in our budget). We then transfer all of these last expenditures into savings or our Freedom Account, a special checking account for irregular expenses. We keep track of the various accumulating categories in a spreadsheet. Rental income is ignored, as that money goes directly into its own account and is not touched unless for repair or purchases of properties.

Every penny is allocated to one of these categories (or others, as the need arises). So, theoretically, at least, there are zero dollars at the end of the month in our primary checking account.

Now, not everyone who uses this system separates the irregular expenses from the primary checking, although the money is still allocated to a category. They don’t have the problem we do with the need to leave a cushion, but we find the Freedom Account cleaner.

Next, use the envelope system.

For each pay period, for each category that is not a bill that you mail in, such as groceries or gas or allowance or entertainment or whatever, withdraw the amount planned and place it an envelope marked Groceries or Cash (allowance) or Gas-Car 1 and Gas Car 2, or whatever.

When the Allowance envelope is empty, that's it. No more spending in that category. When the Groceries envelope is empty, that's it. No more groceries. If you feel you must spend more, then take it out of one of the other envelopes and do NOT take it out of the bank.

This places concrete, physical limits on your spending. No numbers in your head or figures in the bank, but real object that you can see you are running out of (or ARE out of).

If you don't want to carry that much cash with you, that's fine. Have two sets of envelopes, one that you lock up, one that you carry with you. When you get ready to go shopping or whatever, take money out of the envelope in the lock box and put it in the envelope for that category that you carry with you.

Do not use credit or debit cards to shop

It doesn’t matter whether or not one pays off the card every month. It doesn’t matter that one never carries a balance. Credit cards are dangerous to one’s wealth because one spends more with them. Lots more.

25 fascinating facts about personal debt, by Paul Bannister, bankrate.com.

"People using credit cards in fast food restaurants spend up to 50 percent more than when they pay cash."
========================

Micropayments Making Their Move, The Green Sheet.

"For many customers, paying with credit or debit is a convenience if they are often short on cash, even change. And customers tend to spend more using plastic, which is good news for merchants and the ISOs/MLSs who sell them bankcard-processing services." ========================

You Better Be Taking Plastic, And Enjoying its Benefits, International Point of Sale.

"Customers using credit cards will spend an average of 30% more than their cash counterparts. The WSJ notes an interesting fact about McDonalds (who recently began rolling out credit card terminals at their registers.) According to the credit card companies, McDonalds found that the average transaction jumped from $4.50 for cash customers to $7 paying with plastic (credit or debit card.)"
========================

The Psychology of Spending Money, by Deborah Fowles.

"One negative aspect of using credit cards instead of cash is that you don't feel like you're spending real money. The pleasant feelings you experience when you purchase the item are disconnected from the unpleasant or painful feelings of making the payment when you get the credit card statement.

"Studies show that most people are much less likely to buy, or less willing to spend as much, when paying with cash as opposed to credit cards. Try leaving your credit cards at home. Pay with cash, check, or a debit card."
========================

The Psychology of Spending: the urge to splurge, The Spectrum, MIT.
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How Do Credit Cards Affect Willingness to Pay?

Subjects: Pricing, Price Promotions
Past research has shown that credit cards encourage spending. Credit card users spend more in department stores, restaurant tips are higher when credit cards are used, and credit card users are less able to recall prices paid for purchases. Research has also shown the mere presence of credit card logos and paraphernalia lead to higher levels of willingness to pay. In this study, the authors conduct a series of controlled experiments to uncover the underlying behavioral mechanism that leads to such effects.
In an experimental setting, consumers are presented with the opportunity to purchase either a pair of tickets to a professional basketball game, a pair of tickets to a professional baseball game, or a sports banner for a professional team. Some participants were told that payment had to be made in cash while others were told payment must be with a credit card. Results show dramatically higher levels of willingness to pay for participants who were told they must use a credit card. For the two pairs of sporting event tickets, subjects were willing to pay 113% and 76% more. For the sports banner, credit card buyers were willing to pay 59% more. Further analysis of the results shows that the differences in willingness to pay are not attributable to liquidity constraints. That is, the higher willingness to pay does not result from the unavailability of cash paired with the availability of credit. A more general explanation for higher willingness to pay stems from the way consumers perceive money and prices in noncash situations. Consumers appear to diminish the amount they sacrifice when credit cards are used. Promotion managers should be aware of the ways method of payment can be incorporated into promotion programs.

Always Leave Home Without It: A Further Investigation of the Credit Card Effect on Willingness to Pay
Drazen Prelec and Duncan Simester (M.I.T.)
Marketing Letters, vol. 12, no. 1, 5-12.
========================

And I think this is the best one yet:


The Value of Money, by Gillian F. Jay, Renna Jiang, & Dilip Soman, Advances in Psychological Research

Exerpt:

"Ask any school-aged child what money is and he will likely tell you that it is what you use to pay a price to acquire a good – in North America, it is dollars. The notion of money is instinctive to modern day people. Adults and school-aged children alike are familiar with what money is and have encountered it in their everyday lives. After all, a dollar is a dollar, is it not? A key assumption that underlies money has remained relatively unchallenged by consumers and economists alike. This assumption is that of format invariance – people’s valuation of money is affected only by the amount that they have. Put simply, a dollar is a dollar and two dollars is twice as much (Parkin and Bade 2003).

"At first, it may seem nonsensical to question an assumption that has not only been widely accepted by a great many economists throughout the ages and around the world, but one whose validity is required by numerous economic theories and models to remain valid themselves. Evidence, however, exists that serves to nullify the assumption of the format invariance of money. More specifically, people’s consumption behavior, which depends on their valuation of money, is influenced by payment mechanism, consumer credit availability, physical form of payment, timing of payment, source of money, and currency in which prices and incomes are expressed.

...

"With the growth in the number of people holding credit cards and using them more frequently for payment, it appears that credit card companies and retailers do believe that people spend more using credit cards than using cash. Additional published research results lend support to the finding that payment format has an effect on people’s valuation of money and further explores the role of credit cards in spending behavior (Feinberg 1986).

"The commonplace status and high visibility of credit cards inspires the research hypothesis that the mere presence of credit cards serves as stimuli for spending behavior. That is, without even using them, they increase consumption expenditures. Research conducted by Feinberg (1986) tested this hypothesis as well as whether the effect was moderated by gender, product types or interactions. In a laboratory experiment, subjects were presented with a book of consumer products and asked to answer two questions about each product – one of which was an evaluation of how much the subject would spend on the product pictured. To administer the credit card stimuli, a replica of a credit card well-known to subjects and a corresponding insignia used on retail doors were present on a corner of the desk that held the book of consumer products. Subjects exposed to the credit card stimuli were willing to spend more than those who were not exposed to the stimuli. Subjects did show a significant main effect for products – they were willing to pay different sums for different products.

...

"This research confirms that the mere presence of credit card stimuli can increase an individual’s willingness to pay and the actual spending magnitude, while reducing the decision time to spend. This research is significant as it implies that spending magnitude is increased not only when credit cards are used as payment, but also when the logo of credit cards is present without using a credit card as payment.

...

"Consider payment by cash as the benchmark transaction. In paying by cash, the payment is very salient in both physical form (i.e., it is easy to see that money is being spent) and in amount (i.e., since cash has to be counted and surrendered, the amount is memorable). In moving from cash to check payments, the salience of the physical form weakens somewhat, but the amount is reinforced (since it has to be written in words and numerals). With credit cards, the salience of both the physical form and the amount is weaker (i.e., cards do not have the physical properties of cash, and the degree of price reinforcement is limited). With electronic and mobile payments (such as the Hong Kong examples discussed earlier), the salience is even lower."


=====================

Dave Ramsey and Mary Hunt

Why is Dave Ramsey so passionate about getting people out of debt?

Anyone who has listened to his program more than a few weeks knows that most of the people calling in are in desperate straights, and have no clue about what to do or where to go. These people need to get out of debt as quickly as they can, or they will get discouraged and give up. Unless debt is seen by them as an evil think that is sucking their life energy away, then they have no hope of ever getting out of debt. They will just go back to their old debting ways. I think he has a point here. That is why you will never hear him recommend a credit card, because there is a large percentage of people who will tell themselves they will pay the balance off every month, but the first time a crises comes up or a want comes up that they will pay off soon anyway, they will put it on the card and let it ride a couple of months. Once this happens, it is like giving a person in AA a drink: off the wagon they go.

So, is there any way for him to know which person will be able to use that card or stretch out those payments for a little while longer and not get hooked again? No. There is no way to know that. So, he errs (if err there be) on the side of caution. It won't hurt the small minority of former debtors who would then pay off the balance each month to pay cash for things they could use a card for if they had one. It is better to be debt free than to take the chance.

And with all that said, I'm inclined to agree with Mary Hunt more when it comes to saving and investing while getting out of debt. She believes in the "pay yourself first" idea even while getting out of debt. Basically, save 10% until you have your emergency fund, which for her is a nice round figure of $10,000, then create what she calls a Freedom Account (which I will explain at another time), then invest it until you are debt free, all while paying down your debt.

But even there, I disagree slightly. I would use my other moneys to build the Freedom Account, and start investing my "pay yourself first" money as soon as my 3 to 6 month emergency fund (which for me and my frugal lifestyle isn't nearly $10,000). Then, when debt free, I recommend socking away as much as you can afford.

So, while you are correct when you detect Dave Ramsey influences, do not assume I am a Dave Ramsey clone. I read and find value in many many different books and points of view. I pick and choose what makes sense to me, just like everyone else does, and leave the rest.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805420789/qid=1149210507/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6372803-5307169?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805420789/qid=1149210507/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6372803-5307169?s=books&v=glance&n=283155] [/url]