The plumber came out yesterday morning and did his thing to fix our basement sewage problem.

When I arrived home, after the bank incident, I took a trip down to the scary basement to see the fine workmanship.

Eh, it looks alright.

He tucked the new pipe real high and tight among the floor joists, which was nice, and he connected to the main sewer line in a convenient spot — all he had to do was unscrew a cap on the cast iron pipe to make the connection so I don’t think they’ll be raising the estimate any either.

Speaking of the estimate, I think they should actually lower it.

See, what is blatantly apparent to me is that they went out of their way to unnecessarily remove as much copper piping as possible — all the way up to the kitchen sink trap. They then replaced it all with plastic.

Hmmm, think that has something to do with the fact that scrap copper commands over $3.50 per pound these days?

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, we’ll be out of town this weekend for a wedding, so the sludge clean up will have to be put off for another week.

Hopefully, by then, the standing water will have evaporated and clean-up will be less of a project…

I can’t really say that I’m good at making money. I also can’t say that I’m very good at saving money either. Neither is one of my strong points.

I am, however, confident in saying that I’m very good at paying down debts.

Yeah, I know, making money, saving money, and paying down debt should all go hand in hand, right? For me, I’m not sure why, they just don’t. Yet.

Through my quest of paying down debt, I think I’ve mastered the secret of delayed gratification — I’ve put off a lot of things that I certainly wouldn’t have in the past. And now that I’ve got my debt under full control, I still find that I’m able to walk away from the things I want. That’s progress.

Where am I going with this?

Well, April was a pretty mundane month for me. I knocked just $1722 from my debts.

I know, I know, that’s a boatload of money but when you compare it to the previous 5 months (when I was still paying down my credit card debt), it’s not really very impressive:

NOV '07       -$3285
DEV '07       -$4798
JAN '08       -$4859
FEB '08       -$2521
MAR '08       -$3924
APR '08       -$1722

See what I mean? I’m hoping April was just a speed bump and that I can eliminate the last of the auto loan at a comparable rate.

And then, hopefully, I’ll figure out the “saving money” idea and see my savings increase by thousands of dollars each month…

On a related note, does anyone else look at their numbers and wonder where on earth the money comes from?

The idea that I actually have nearly $4000 of disposable income each month to send towards debt is unfathomable. My take home pay doesn’t even approach that?!

Granted, I’ve had at least one 3 paycheck month in the last 6 months, and I was still earning a decent income for my job with the hockey team back in November and December…. Add in the big refund from my tax return… I guess if I spread all of that around, it adds up…

Sure, the numbers don’t lie, but they certainly can be deceiving…

I’m definitely not in any position to set up a budget with $4k of monthly expenses though the number may indicate that I could…

Tonight I stopped by the bank on the way home from work — you know, the drive up ATM…

Well the car in front of me was one of those beat-up used sub-compacts like in the catchy FREE CREDIT REPORT .COM commercials.

Seriously, it was even the same color.

I didn’t pay them too much attention until they peeled out after completeing their transaction… Real winners, let me tell you.

I mean, the squealing tires immediately solidified their “coolness” in my eyes.

So I pull up to the ATM and their receipt is still in the machine. Now usually when this sort of thing happens at a gas pump or something, I just grab it, crumple it, and tuck it into my pocket.

But due to their obnoxious behaviour, I took at look at the receipt.

Wow.

Can you imagine? I had to look at it twice to make sure I was reading it correctly. Yep, 95 cents.

I mean, I’ve run my checking account down pretty low, but never this low.

I also thought it was kinda funny how the little advertisement up top is for “Debt Consolidation”. My receipt advertisements are never for stuff like that — usually it’s BoA’s “Keep the Change” program.

I wonder what the balance threshold is to get the “Debt Consolidation” header… Under $1 perhaps?

Anyway, little things like this make me feel even better about my current financial standing.

Earlier this week I came upon a couple of acquaintances discussing some sort of financial matter. I didn’t get all of the details, but it was apparent that one was giving the other some advice.

It was sad to me in that it was the one who is openly terrible with money doling out the advice as if they had all the answers — and the receiver appeared to be accepting it as sound guidance.

I didn’t say anything. Though I wanted to, it really wasn’t my place.

But it did get me thinking…

Was this person seeking financial advice blind to the obvious fact that the “expert” advising them didn’t have their own financial house in order?

Sure, their exterior might look well-off, but it’s a paper thin veil. We’re talking onion paper. Yeah — it’s that sheer.

Perception is a strange thing.

Do they really want to follow such a lead? I know I wouldn’t.

Perhaps I was just over-analyzing the conversation…

Well, I made a big mistake this morning… See, over the past few years we’ve had some major work done to the exterior of our 100+ year old house. New roof, new siding, new doors, some repaired brickwork, a new porch, basically — short of an addition — we’ve done it all.

But one thing has been neglected — the detached garage. (insert scary fanfare here)

Though it’s a two car garage and that would indicate that it was built in the 70’s or 80’s, I’d venture to say that it was actually built in the 1940’s based on the knob and tube wiring throughout which I disconnected in the summer of 2007. It was probably a huge status symbol back in the day.

Now? Not so much.

It’s a junky looking thing. An eyesore. A 400 square foot wood framed rectangle built on a slab with cheap, dented, and rusting metal doors, a boarded up window (where the roofers tossed a brick on to my BMW), tons of peeling paint, and crumbling asphalt shingles. As you may have guessed, it’s not nice to look at.

To its credit, it does have really nice copper gutters which, unfortunately, the previous owner painted. Really, it doesn’t have much going for it. The elephant in the, um, yard.

It’s dirty and old. One bay has the BMW in it. The other bay has a couple of lawn mowers, a snowblower, my airplane, the garbage can, and an assortment of other lawn tools. There is no possible way we could fit another car in there.

Right now, we have 3 cars. Once we have children, I’ve a feeling we’ll even have four cars. Ridiculous, I know. Growing up, I remember when we only had one car and it got the job done — now, for some reason, I feel the need to have four… It’s hard to justify. Impossible, really. I digress…

So, obviously, I’d like a larger garage — something that, at the very least, could fit all three of our vehicles, and if possible, all of the lawn equipment as well. We’ve got enough property to expand, and if need be, we could always add one of those pre-made sheds they bring over on a wide-load truck for the lawn equipment. I don’t really like those, but it would certainly free up some space.

So I did the Google and typed in “3 Car Garage“, you know, to get a few ideas. And the ideas were definitely there…

Check this beauty out:

This could totally work. I mean, honestly, it would be nicer than my house, but at the same time, it wouldn’t overpower the house either.

I hate that, you know, when you see a raised ranch style home being towered over by its garage. This is unquestionably a large structure, but my house (which isn’t a raised ranch) would still be an entire story taller — and it’s in the same style as my house with the gabled roofline.

Basically, it works. I can picture it already.

Zoning, however could be a problem… I’ve heard horror stories about people trying to build two story garages in town. It’s one of those things were it can only be done if you know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows yet another guy.

Price? Well, obviously that would be a problem as well.

I’ve no idea how much something like this would cost to build, but when I put my mind to something, I usually get it done.

It kind of reminds me of how in high school I joined Columbia House to get 12 CD’s for a penny without even owning a CD player. Just the fact that I had a CD collection made me feel the need to save up and buy a CD player — which I eventually did.

Relating to the present, I’ve got three cars… See where I’m going with this?

The main problem I foresee is sticking to this goal long enough to be able to afford it — either way, something like this can’t possibly be realized for a number of years, if ever…

It’s okay to dream though, right?

So this morning I wrote and mailed the check for June’s mortgage payment.

Sure, it’s a little early but had it not been for the Tax Stimulus check coming in last week, I wouldn’t have been able to write that check just yet.

I’m not sure I feel stimulated by the experience.

Actually, I’m not feeling any stimulation. And I think that will be the case for most who receive these paybacks.

Though one could argue that by sending my entire stimulus check to Countrywide (a company on the brink of bankruptcy), I am doing my part to “save” the economy from a recession…

I guess?

Anyway, I still have my original plans for the payout on my mind, it’s just that, now, I’m gonna use the next coming paycheck to fund the frivolous spending…

That is, if the plumber doesn’t ‘up’ the bill significantly…

They mailed it — that’s what took so long!

You’d think that with the stench of sewage in someone’s basement that there would be a little bit of urgency on their part.

You’d think…

What’s a little fuzzy mold, right?

Anyway, the quote is $527.74. And we’re going to do accept it.

See, this isn’t something we really want to delay. The odor is rough, putting it mildly, and I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter who we choose, I still won’t be 100% satisfied by the price or the quality of work.

Anyway, here’s the scope of the work to be done:

I’m not completely certain that $527.74 is a great price. In fact, I’d bet I could do the work myself while spending just $80 in materials at Home Depot or Lowes.

But at this point, I just want my house to smell fresh and clean again. Sooner rather than later and that’s why we’re not going to solicit additional quotes.

Following the six hundred dollar Canon Fisheye purchase in January of 2007, another complete lapse of financial responsibility occurred a few weeks later.

My dumb purchase for February of 2007 was Adobe InDesign CS2 — the successor to Adobe PageMaker, a desktop publishing application. You want to make slick looking PDF files? InDesign is the program to use.

I foolishly purchased it for a website design project that I had already completed (and been paid in full for). The client came back and asked that I turn my design into a hardcopy format — not really understanding that a booklet/brochure and an animated dynamic website were two totally different mediums… As if the animation wasn’t a dead giveaway…

I agreed to do it — without additional payment as they seemed to think that was part of the original proposal (and I didn’t call them on it) — but first I needed the software…

To my credit, I didn’t pay the full price…which happened to be $699 at the time.

I knew I wasn’t going to use this software very much, hardcopy is *not* my specialty, so I went looking for a legitimate copy of it on eBay. In the past, I’ve had pretty decent luck purchasing software there. To date, nothing totally bootleg has come my way.

In the end, my copy of Adobe InDesign CS2 set me back $300.

Since finishing up that project, I’d say I’ve used the program maybe 5 times. Sure, it’s come in handy in a pinch, but certainly not anywhere near $300 worth of handiness.

Thanks to Treasury Direct’s overly secure login sequence…

With a positive cash flow again, I seriously considered throwing some money at I-Bonds again, and with interest rates dropping like a rock, if I jumped the gun before the May 1st, when the fixed rates are adjusted semi-annually, I’d have surely been pulling in a better return than what ING currently offers.

On April 30, I decided to make a move. I logged into my TreasuryDirect account…

Or I tried to…

See, for a couple of years now, they’ve had this “virtual keyboard” login sequence. You have to click all over the place on a randomized keyboard to enter your password. It’s more of a pain than anything else. But a couple of months ago, they took it a step further and mailed everyone an Access Card.

I opened it, looked at it, and put it away. It looked like a Bingo Card. No joke, that’s it up on the right.

So now, in addition to the virtual keyboard, they make you play bingo. Again, with another randomized virtual keyboard.

Could they make logging in any more of a hassle? It’s overkill.

Needless to say, I didn’t have the super secret access card on me, so I couldn’t login. That evening, I thought, “Hey, maybe I can squeak in a last minute transaction before the rates change tomorrow…”

I logged in using my wacky bingo card, set-up a transfer for $1000, a click here, a click there… Things were going pretty smoothly — I didn’t even accidentally hit the “back” button (something you can’t do on their difficult to navigate website)

I was almost done, and feeling pretty good about this wise money move I was making. But then I read the fine print — my transaction wouldn’t go through until May 1st.

That was too late. I cancelled the transaction — and thank goodness for that!

On May 1st, the U.S. Treasury cut the fixed interest rate on I-Bonds all the way down to 0.00%. That’s not a typo. The rate is zero. Nil. Nada. Zip.

I’m sure glad I didn’t accidentally throw $1000 in that direction now — can you imagine being stuck with a 0.00% fixed rate? Now, I realize the real rate is 4.84%, but that’s just the inflation component that changes every six months. While that might sound attractive given that most online banks only offer something in the 3% range, it really isn’t, with the fixed rate at zero, you’re only keeping up with inflation — you’re not gaining anything. On top of it, you can’t get at the money for 12 months.

Not much of a deal there.

In the end, it makes me feel a little better about the little I still have invested in I-Bonds which are currently a rate of 6.27%.

Now *that* was a deal…

Can I just say that I hate contractors?

Seriously, is there a reputable contractor in existence? It’s really frustrating.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve done some pretty major renovations to our home. Back in December of 2005, we had our roof done. The original roof had two layers of the asphalt shingles and these were on top of a layer of cedar shingles which were likely original to our 100+ year old house.

Basically, it was a pretty big job simply because of all of the stuff that had to be removed and all of the additional material, like plywood, that had to be added before the re-roof even started. Total bill was around $14k.

It started off great, a HUGE dumpster was delivered and dropped right in our yard and work began. After a few days though, it was as though the dumpster was an afterthought. They were just letting the debris slide off the end of the roof. I can understand that — it would be a lot easier, but they dumped probably half of the roof onto decorative shrubs right in the front of our house?!

It got worse though. I didn’t mind that the debris had ripped probably 80% of the screens in our windows, whatever, but one evening I came home and found the window on our detached garage (which was not being worked on) was broken.

I went in, and noticed some finger dust marks (the car was in storage for the winter and it gets pretty dusty) over a deep scratch on the hood of my BMW?! No broken glass anywhere on the floor. Very odd. My wife and I went all CSI and came to the conclusion that they somehow managed to throw a brick from the chimney on the roof, through the window of my garage.

From there, they went into the garage, probably crapped their pants when they saw the car it hit, and they tried to clean up the evidence. I wanted to barf. Profanity was used.

I was upset about the car. I was upset they went into my garage. I was upset that they tried to cover it up. I was upset that they killed my bushes. While the did a nice job on the roof, in the grand scheme, I wasn’t at all happy with the contractors.

Making matters worse, the dumpster remained in our yard for an additional 3 weeks — on Christmas Day, yes, we had a 40 cubic yard dumpster along side our house. It was very festive. Adding insult to injury, the construction company was stopping by a couple of times a day, driving right up on our lawn, and dumping more into it.

Sure, the neighbors probably thought we were also having our kitchen remodeled, based on the additional debris from other projects piled high above the walls of the dumpster, but in actuality, we were just the contractor’s personal landfill.

The next project was the siding project that I detailed on the site last summer. The contractor we selected had a seedy sales team, you know, were the one guy just goes on and on and on about how beautiful your wife is (while it’s obvious he’s just a dirty pig), and how she’ll love this color siding (I hope so, she picked it…), and how he was a star baseball player for the Red Sox back in the day. I looked him up. He wasn’t. Besides, I hate baseball. Nice try there, bro.

Anyway, the cost of that project was over $26k. It was supposed to take 2 weeks to complete and work began on June 14 — two weeks earlier than it was supposed to.

Things looked good — everyone was happy. And then it took a turn for the worse. They ordered the wrong window for our attic. They put another window in the wrong place. They lost an employee so they couldn’t do any work. They put the wrong header on the front window of our house. They started begging us for more money?!?!

Then the siding on one section of the house wasn’t level — and it was obvious. They put the handles on incorrectly on our front door — and the locks didn’t really work. They even chipped a piece off of the trim on the new front door. They called it a thousand dollar door — though at Home Depot, they run around $300. Either way, they didn’t hang our door correctly.

At that point I just wanted them out of our house, I didn’t care. I’d go out and buy another $1000 door just to make them go away.

In the end, the project was finally completed in October. Hardly a 2-week project. It was a 5 months of hell. Just thinking about it makes me angry.

Making matters worse, have you ever found it funny how all contractors like to take pride in how they clean up after themselves? This specific contractor still highlights that “feature” it in their ads in the weekly paper. Hmmmm… my yard still has 100’s of cigarette butts that I’m still picking up, not to mention thousands and thousands of nails that my lawnmower will surely choke on this year.

Roofing shingle fragments are everywhere, vinyl slivers, styrofoam insulation pebbles, just crap everywhere. And did I mention all of the indentations in the lawn from all of their driving around they did in our yard? No, I probably didn’t. They ruined our yard. Then littered all over it.

So what makes me bring all of this up today? Well, remember that basement plumbing problem I mentioned last week? The one where the plumbing company was coming out to give us an estimate on Tuesday?

Well, they came out and said that they call us with the estimate tomorrow. That “tomorrow” was 3 days ago now.

They haven’t called. And our house still smells like sewage.

Can you understand why I hate contractors now (or again)?

You’d think that after spending in excess of $40k on renovations that your house would be better off for it — but in reality, I’m not certain that it is…