Guns, Cars, and Tech

Category: Debt Free Living

  • Deal Alert

    For the 13 of you who 1) still use RSS feeds and 2) haven’t unsubscribed yet, boy have I got a deal for you.

    Last week, I got a mailer from Midway and one of those items in there was the Hornady AR Gunlocker for $239. I have always been interested in vehicle mounted AR safes but usually they are in the $400 range, so I started looking around.

    The original MSRP is around $350 on these. Amazon had them for $220. I decided to wait a couple of days until payday/allowance day (we still do Dave Ramsey and my “blow money” comes out of the wife’s biweekly check) to see if I still wanted it. I decided that I’d probably get it when the price dropped to around $200. By allowance day, it was $204 so I bought it.

    The price is still dropping and my safe was delivered today.

    It was $189 when I woke up this morning and now it’s $182 with prime shipping.
    Those of you not running an adblocker can see the current price below:

    Now, I just got it today and it’s still in the box so I can’t give a review yet, but for $184 (probably lower by the time you read this) I can make it work, even if I have to replace the electronics with something more useful. It may be too wide to fit in my cherokee but I can use it as an underbed safe or something.

  • New Jeep!

    Ever since I sold my last one, I’ve regretted it. I’ve owned two cherokees (a 93 police package and a 99) and loved them both dearly. They both developed electrical problems and due to time, money, and storage limits they had to go.

    For about 6 months I’ve been looking for another one. Jeep stopped making the Cherokee in 2001, so what’s out there generally has about 180,000 to 230,000 miles. I’ve been looking for another 99 due get the best mix of parts interchangeability and reliability, and about three weeks ago decided that if I really wanted an NP242 transfer case, I was just going to have to buy one with the NP231 and swap a 242 in.

    That made it really easy to find one in the price range I was looking at:

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  • A great story on why everyone needs an emergency fund

    Over at Thomas J. Stanley’s blog.

    (He’s the guy that wrote The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind.)

  • The Economist Vs The Straw Man

    Instapundit linked to an article over the weekend originally titled The Envelope Method for Household Budgets is a Bad Idea (now titled “You’re probably doing your household budget all wrong”). Since I’ve been using that method for about 10 years now with great success, I clicked through.

    What I found was the most horrible piece of gibberish since the last time I read anything by Gail Kerr of The Tennessean.

    Take this example she lays out:

    The system works great, as long as nothing ever changes. But the minute that some price changes, you’re in trouble. Here’s an extreme example. Imagine you drive to work, and your “gas money” envelope contains enough money to get you to work for the month, and maybe a little cushion. But then gas gets more expensive. You may first react by switching to a worse grade—say, from premium to regular (research shows many people do this). But if gas prices go up even more you simply will run out of money in the gas envelope. And then you won’t be able to get to work. Strictly following the envelope system here would be much, much worse than “cheating”: It’s certainly bad for your household budget if you miss work.

    Well, it’s a good thing Ramsey has never advocated doing that. The point of the envelope system is not that you have to stop buying gas (or food in her next example) if you spend all the money in that category; the point is that you must recognize you have to cover the shortfall from some other category. You can’t just increase the amount you spend on any category because all the money is already spent.

    The writer understands this, because she covers it a couple of paragraphs later:

    It may very well be that you’d rather keep with your normal grocery purchase and cut back somewhere else—say, two fewer lattes this week.

    Yes. This is logical, and precisely what he tells you to do. There’s required category called “blow money” that you would use for things like morning lattes. You would take money from that category and use it to buy things you need to survive.

    But because the “coffee” budget is separate from the grocery budget, you end up with the same number of lattes and fewer bananas.

    Only if you were an idiot. In which case I want you to starve so you’ll get out of my gene pool.

    She then continues with an example of overspending on Christmas purchases…by two thousand dollars. I don’t think I’ve ever spend two grand on Christmas presents. There’s certainly no way I could ever overspend by that amount. And no one who’s following Dave Ramsey would ever overspend by that on a credit card, which is the example she provides.

    Bottom line: the article is a piece of crap with no bearing on reality. Dunning Kruger is in full force.

  • Notes from the weekend: HOLY CRAP THAT WAS FAST Edition

    Listed the house on Friday morning. Three showings over the weekend and we’re mulling over one offer. The two that didn’t make an offer were buyer-side problems. All the realtors said the house showed really well.

    About 90% of the houses that fit our criteria are under contract. If we accept this offer, we basically have two houses to choose from. Both need work.

    I got to use the first aid kit I bought several years ago. I bought one at Target or something (very similar to this one) to keep in the car. It’s no IFAK, but it’s got some iodine, basic bandages, some band-aids, etc. I basically dug a channel out of my finger while loading some boxes into my wife’s car. Two days later, it’s still bleeding. Glad I had it. Need to make a note to buy one for her car, too.

    Getting old sucks. I somehow injured myself (to the point of barely being able to move all day yesterday)…while feeding my son yogurt.

    At our realtor’s suggestion, we moved the Tactical Dog’s crate out of the living room. Should have done that a long time ago, because for the first time since we brought her home we were able to watch an entire movie without stopping to get her to calm down. That movie? The Red Dawn Remake. My one takeaway from that movie was “wow, those actors have really good trigger discipline!” So there’s that.

    Blogging may be light.

  • The Freight Train

    image

    That’s what I got. And yes, it’s got baby seal skin seats.

    2002 Ford Excursion Limited Ultimate. I went with a V10 instead of a diesel, because for the extra $7-10,000 a diesel was going to cost me, I decided I’d just buy a commuter car.

    This one gets 15mpg on the highway, 12 in town. I filled it up when it had 1/4 tank, and it cost me $110.

    I have no practical use for it. I’m not towing anything, and don’t plan to. We’re not going to end up with a basketball-team’s worth of kids. I got because I wanted it, with a side of “Screw you, hippie.”*

    In 2006, I was waiting outside a canoe-rental place for some friends of mine, and a black diesel Excursion with a really big lift and some ginormous tires roared by. I made up my mind that one day I would have one. I did the same thing in 2001 with a Full-Size Bronco…saw one at a gas station, decided I wanted one, and a couple years later I bought one.

    Driving this thing reminds me of that Bronco. It’s a big, lumbering, mobile fuel tank that’s fun to own. That it’s practically a luxury car on the inside is just a huge bonus.

    It’s also the first car I’ve owned that was made after Clinton was President.

    A couple of months ago I decided that the Jeep was getting to the point where I needed to start looking at my next vehicle. If you’ve read “How to buy a cheap car”, you know my process is to start with a budget and then figure out what you get. After that I got on some forums and asked about the various engines and model years, and learned that the V10 was going to be my best bet. I also wanted captain’s chairs in the second row instead of the bench, because Tactical Dog will jump over bench seats like they’re hurdles. Repeatedly. Enthusiastically. In a 2003 or later, swapping them out is fairly straightforward but the chairs are expensive. Before 2003, there’s some cutting and welding required.

    I stopped looking at them when I started getting excited about buying one. I wasn’t ready yet, and there was no need to get worked up about a good deal on something that was close to what I wanted when I wasn’t planning on buying one for 6-9 months.

    Then, a couple weeks ago, I left for work and by the time I got to the end of my 40 foot driveway I had smoke coming from the dashboard of my Jeep. Long story short, there’s a wiring short somewhere behind the dash and I can’t have any dash illumination. So I can’t see my gauges at night. This kind of problem is very difficult to hunt down (read: expensive), so after lots of reflection we decided it was time for me to go ahead and buy an Excursion.

    Original sticker price was just north of $50,000. I paid less than 20% of that, in cash. It’s the nicest car I’ve ever owned.

    *No, I’m not calling Tam a hippie. Read the post. You’ll get it.

  • It’s been 10 years since I built my last computer

    And I’m about to do it again.

    I bought my last one about four and a half years ago for less than I could’ve built one. Quad core, lots of memory, dual head PCIx video card…$400-ish.

    Well, that one just died in less than spectacular fashion. Again. The drive I got two months ago is having the same symptoms the original drive did, meaning that while the BIOS can detect it, the controller can’t seem to see it. It’s weird, and I don’t really have time to troubleshoot it. This is the fourth hardware failure on this box this year (very glad I moved the blog from home-hosted to HostGator), so time to just get a new one.

    After off-loading my sites to HostGator, the only thing this box did was act as a media server. I have been using XBMC since it was on the original XBOX. The PC is connected to a Pioneer VSX-1020-K using a DVI cable for video and an optical cable for sound. The receiver is hooked up to a Samsung HDTV which basically acts like a big hairy monitor*. I freaking love that receiver.

    So we have this nice TV, nice receiver, and a nice entertainment center, and next to all that is a mini tower that looks out of place. Well, now I’m going to fix that. But I need your help.

    See, it’s been so long since I’ve built a computer that I may be missing something. I need gamers and other performance-minded folks to look at this and say, “Hey, wiz? That’s not gonna work and here’s why…” I’ve already had a guy at work tell me I didn’t need to buy a CPU cooler since the retail box I was getting comes with one.

    So here goes…
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  • Miscellany

    A few things that aren’t worth their own posts, but that I wanted to mention anyway:

    • I finally got around to ordering the UTG Defender Tactical Xenon Flashlight Brass suggested in my Weapon Light Bleg post from…April. Should be here by Monday. I figure at $35, if it works, great! If it doesn’t seem very robust, I’ll throw it on my .22 trainer and get a better one.
    • I did get around to posting a list of state level gun rights organizations, but I never actually mentioned that I had done it after soliciting your help. Thanks for your help with that, I really appreciate it.
    • I finally got around to installing the APEX RAM and DCAEK in my M&P9 yesterday. I didn’t install the USB that comes with the DCAEK, because it require removal of the rear site. Since, as my friend Reese informed me, IDPA stands for “I Don’t Practice Anymore” I don’t want to futz with the sights and then not verify zero before I shoot a match. The next one is in 9 days and I don’t see myself getting in some range time before then.
    • It has been 5 years since I became Debt Free. I paid off my student loans on July4th, 2007*. It seems longer that that.
    • I have been given my great-grandfather’s .32 S&W revolver. It was bought used in 1920. Near as I can tell, it was made in 1904. Not sure it’s ever been cleaned, though. Pictures coming soon.

     

    *And 11 months later, I got married and we did it all again with her stuff. We have been debt free about 2 years now.

  • Is it just me?

    Or did brass cased 5.56 prices skyrocket in the last month? I swear 1000rds of SS109 was $300 shipped. Now it’s more like $380.

    Hard to budget when that happens.

  • I’m having a hard time following the logic here

    First off, let’s remember that the reason the economy is in the crapper is because people who shouldn’t have gotten loans to buy houses got loans to buy houses, cars, jacuzzi tubs, and jetskis and ridiculously low interest rates based on nothing more than “I want it and deserve it because I breathe air!” When those people didn’t repay the loans, it started a cascade of trickle up poverty. I was writing mortgage underwriting software at the time, so I had a front row seat to the entire thing.

    I went to Starbucks over the weekend and saw this new campaign they’re having: Create Jobs for USA

    The display they had asks for donations to help create jobs. I’m pretty sure the best way for me, as a consumer, to create jobs is to buy products or services that I find useful. Donating money just so that someone can have a job seems like busywork. Or government.

    Me, being me, asked the manager “So how many positions are you hiring for?”

    “Oh, at this store? None.”

    Wait, what?

    So I decide to look a bit further into this, and it turns out that the donations don’t go to help people get jobs. The donations go to banks, who then lend out the money to small businesses that are on the verge of failure. Plus they cart out the “created or saved” mantra as a success metric.

    So here’s how it works: You donate $5 to the program. That program then gives the money to a bank as a grant. That bank then loans the money out, collecting interest and fees. It’s a great gig for the bank, because there is ABSOLUTELY NO RISK TO THEM. Anything they charge for interest or fees (closing costs, application fees, etc) is pure profit. The borrower, on the other hand, is more screwed now than he was before. He was already struggling, and now he has another bill to pay and another creditor breathing down his neck.

    I don’t begrudge the banks for trying to turn a profit. More power to them, but debt is not a blessing, and charity shouldn’t be a profit center unless you’re up front about it. I once gave a truck to a guy I worked with because he heard I was trying to get rid of it and he told me he wanted a project that he and his sons could work on. He was in his mid 20’s and his boys were at that age where they were getting curious about mechanical things. For me, this was win-win: I get rid of the truck, he gets some father-son time. A few days later, his “brother in law” came to pick it up.

    I found out a year or so later that he had immediately put the truck on craigslist after I agreed to give it to him. The guy that came to pick up the truck was the guy he sold it to.

    I was completely willing to give up the truck for free to a good cause, but I was furious when I found out what really happened. I felt cheated and taken advantage of.

    This program is a lot like that.