Remember Drew?
Three months later he’s shot over 1500 rounds (so much so that he broke his Kahr!). Since his Kahr is in the shop, he bought an M&P9 Pro so he’ll have something good for IDPA/IPSC/Whatever. He’s totally digging the 17 round magazines and can do 250 round sessions without thinking about it. He’s started his own thing where he does multiple target engagement without even realizing it.
I’m so proud 😀
You can’t carry at Toys R Us, but you can buy a Gen 2 night vision rifle scope?
It’s Turkey Week!
I know a lot of you will be hanging out with family and exchanging wish lists for Christmas, so here are some books I recommend from the personal finance side of things:
If you invite me to your wedding, you get this book and something from your registry.
The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
More than Enough: The Ten Keys to Changing Your Financial Destiny
These three books were written by Dr. Thomas Stanley. Dr. Stanley did some research and basically discovered that your average millionaire drives an 8 year old car, lives in a blue collar neighborhood, and buys his jeans at Wal-Mart. My biggest takeaway from this series was that they will look at the total cost of ownership rather than the up front cost and base pretty much all their decisions on that. There is a story about an antique dining room table that cost $10,000, but it was appreciating in value. In 50 years it would still be around for the great-grandkids and be worth more than they paid for it.
The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Mind
The Millionaire Mind
This one is where I first heard the phrase “Pay yourself first.” It’s written as a fictional story rather than a non-fiction battleplan, but it’s a good resource.
The Wealthy Barber, Updated 3rd Edition: Everyone’s Commonsense Guide to Becoming Financially Independent
This is a classic. Written in 1926 by George Clason, it covers the basics of getting out of debt and building wealth using characters from several thousand years ago. I have this as an audio book and listen to it about twice a year.
The Richest Man in Babylon
By purchasing from those links, you also help support my work here!
Or, you can buy my something from my Amazon Wish List
If you’re looking for something to distract you from Aunt Edna’s story about her latest kidney stone woes, here is the thread on mp3car.com where I basically liveblogged getting out of debt. It’s 42 pages long.
Last Thursday I ordered 1,000 rounds of 9mm from CheaperThanDirt.com. On Saturday (Nov 12), FedEx delivered…500 rounds of 9mm. The manufacturer packages the ammo in 500 round boxes, so I was supposed to get two boxes instead of one.
Called CTD and they verified they shipped two boxes. Customer Service also gave me the tracking number for the second box and said it would probably come on Monday. I figured the driver just didn’t realize I had two identical packages but would figure it out Saturday night.
Well, it’s Thursday now and I still don’t have my ammo. Went to track the package, and, well…
How does a package that originates in Louisiana and destined for Tennessee wind up in California? Especially when at one point it was within 25 miles of it’s destination and the other package in the shipment was delivered?
Refusing to make a cake for someone because they’re gay: You’re a bigot
Calling on other people to boycott a bakery because of their religious beliefs: Totally okay!
Maybe she should have told them she’s a Muslim. That would make it okay, I think.
A pox on all of them, but be consistent, dammit!
Work laptop just had a hard drive failure. Not easily recovered, and the company doesn’t automatically back up workstations.
Lucky for me I started doing backups a couple of months ago. I did a convoluted system that involved rsync, ssh tunnels, and cygwin, and now I’m glad I did.
Dr. Thomas Stanley had a post yesterday about the houses that millionaires live in, and his figures may shock you.
It seems that a whole lot more millionaires live in houses that cost less than $300,000 than those who live in homes that cost more than $1 million.
The median home price for the millionaires in his study was 1.49x yearly earnings. If you think about it, that’s kinda low for most people. Using this number, someone who makes $100,000 a year would live in a house that costs only $149,000. A quick look around the web shows people recommending 2x-3x annual income as the commonly accepted number.
I don’t want the commonly accepted number, because the common man is broke. I’d rather use the exceptional number used by the millionaire!
Let’s look at this ratio in the context of this post. If you’re annual taxable income is $100,000, then according to PayCheckCity.com your take home pay will be about $6100/month. A $149,000 with 20% down means a $119,200 mortgage. If you get a 15 year mortgage at today’s rate of 3.5%, that breaks down to $852/month. Let’s say that adding taxes (lot’s of taxes in this case) and insurance puts you at $1100 per month.
That’s about 18% of take home pay, which is less than the 25% maximum Dave Ramsey suggests. For the record, ours is about 14% of our take home pay.
Just one more thing to think about when purchasing a home.
If the right has a protest movement, the potential for violence must be trumpeted on every evening newscast for weeks.
If the left has a protest movement, the actual violence must be downplayed, dismissed, obfuscated, or blamed on agent provocateurs.
Please update your scorecards.
I was talking with Mrs. wizardpc over the weekend about taking some classes from Tom Givens (warning: auto-playing video w/sound, so mute your speakers) in 2012. Drew has already progressed from ‘never shot a handgun before’ to ‘I want to shoot IDPA’ in less than three months, and the two of us want to take Givens’ level 1-5 classes. The Level 1 class satisfies the requirement for a TN Handgun Carry Permit, and the subsequent classes build on that. Since I’ve always wanted Mrs. wizardpc to get her permit, she’s going to go with us to the Level 1 class–as soon as we figure out a date that works for everyone.
I floated this to her a couple of weeks ago, and her reaction was, “What? Why don’t I get to go to the other classes, too?”
That was pretty much the opposite of what I was expecting, since she has no desire to actually carry. Totally awesome, though.
Anyway, this weekend we were talking about it some more, and we had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: I was looking at Rangemaster’s site and they will provide a handgun and ammo for the level 1 class.
Her: What about after that?
Me: Well, after that you have to supply your own gun, ammo, and related gear like magazines and a holster.
Her: Well, I guess we just need to get all that stuff for me, then.
Me, dumbfounded: Errr, okay! Sure!
Her: And you know the rule about buying guns: The other spouse gets an equivalent amount to spend on jewelry. Or, in your case, guns.
I love this woman. 😀
I’m thinking a single stack compact 9mm for her, since I’d prefer not to have to keep another caliber in stock. Naturally, she is going to pick it, but I’d like some thoughts on what she might want.
