In the next week or so taxpayers should start seeing notices from the IRS in their mailbox. IRS notices have a tendency to cause panic in the hearts of their recipients, but not to worry. The notices are simply a “friendly reminder” from the IRS that this year’s economic stimulus payment eligibility is based on your 2007 tax filing. Those of you who delay filing for the 2007 tax year will likely see a delay in the first round of rebate checks, which should start rolling out in May.

The subject of what to do with these tax rebates has been written about in the personal finance community ad nauseam. So instead of piling on, I thought I would share what we plan to do with our tax rebate. According to most estimates we should receive $1,800 – $600 for me and my wife, and $300 for each child. Initially, I planned to use the entire $1,800 to pay down debt, but things have changed over the last couple months.

I desperately needed new tires on my old beater because steel thread was showing through and a blow out was probably imminent. Our emergency fund took a hit after finding the truck also needed new ball bearings and an idler arm. We’ll use the first $600 to replenish the emergency fund from the cost of repairs, labor and new tires.

My wife has been diagnosed with a problem with her knees, and I’ve got a bad ankle. Both our doctors have recommended a stationary bike to rehab our knees/ankle, respectively, and as a strategy for me to drop some weight. Jogging, and even long-distance walking, is out because I can’t take the pavement pounding. We’re currently looking at picking up a used recumbent bike in good condition from Craigslist or local advertisement. Prices vary, but we’ve set aside a couple hundred dollars from our refund for this purpose.

With the remaining $1,000 or so we plan to beef up our emergency fund and pay down debt. We plan a 50/50 split, putting $500 towards both efforts. I’ve always thought the $1,000 baby emergency fund suggested by Dave Ramsey was a bit anemic, considering larger repairs or replacement appliances can easily top that amount. Bumping up to $1,500 makes me feel a bit more comfortable and motivates me to really stretch to make large debt payments each month.

Have you locked down your plans for the tax rebate?

With the expanded cable canceled and football season a distant memory I’ve gone on a bit of a scavenger hunt through the house looking for things to fire me up. A couple years ago I ran across a book on CD that totally changed my outlook on finances. I’ve decided to dig that out of the archives and listen again, along with a few of my all-time favorite movies and books on finances, motivation and perseverance.

• The Total Money Makeover Audio CD. This has become one of my favorite books of all time. So much so that I recently re-read the book for a review here on Frugal Dad. Just after I took a job in another city a few years ago I picked up this audio book on kind of whim. I thought it would give me something to listen to during the commute (I commuted for a few weeks until I could move my family). Since I was already a fan of Dave Ramsey’s radio show I thought there was little risk of me not agreeing with the books ideas. I can still vividly remember driving down the dark highway in the early morning hours listening to this book on CD and realizing my financial life up to that point had been one of missed opportunity, over-indulgence and mismanagement. It was time to get my financial life in order. I was starting a new job, we were expecting our second child, and we were relocating to a different city. I give this CD, and this book, a lot of credit for my own financial turnaround.

• The Pursuit of Happyness. The story of Chris Gardner is one of sheer perseverance. Gardner overcame unbelievable odds to become a very successful stockbroker, and went on to start-up his own firm, eventually selling it for a multi-million dollar minority stake. The movie inspires me in several ways. Financially, it reminds me that things could be worse. We have a roof over my head, food in our refrigerator and clothes on our back. Sometimes we take these things for granted and focus on the negative aspects of our situation. When compared to the idea of facing homelessness with your child, not being able to afford a new plasma screen or worrying over some credit card debt seems trivial. There are examples all around us of people overcoming much tougher situations than us. Use their struggles to put your own life in perspective.

• Your Money or Your Life. This might be the best finance book ever written. It totally changed the way I think about money, retirement and careers. Up until reading this book (review) I resigned myself to the fact I would probably be working until a ripe old age. The thought of stepping away from the rat race was just a dream reserved for lottery winners and trust-fund babies. Your Money or Your Life broke down that dream and made it a reality for me. Now my 9-5 is simply a means to an end, and that end is finding truly fulfilling work to spend my remaining life energy – something I’ve always wanted to do, but could never afford to do.

• Cinderella Man. Similar to “The Pursuit of Happyness,” this movie reminds me that life can knock you down. Those who survived The Great Depression speak of things that none of us can even fathom. My grandfather grew up during the tail end of the Depression era, and for his family the “depression” continued on for some time. Cinderella Man reminds me of the importance of putting your family first. One particularly moving scene shows main character, James Braddock, giving his dinner (a slice of fried bologna) to his daughter because she said she was “still hungry.” Braddock tells his daughter about a dream he had about eating a big steak with all the trimmings. “I’m stuffed,” Braddock tells his daughter before heading off to work on an empty stomach. It’s enough to choke up the toughest tough guy.

I’m interested to hear your favorite motivational movies, especially those related to finances. Please share your own list in the comments section.

I’ve had a strong desire over the last few weeks to de-clutter our home. Currently, our closets, attic and garage are all packed full with things we rarely use. My wife isn’t a big fan of yard sales (hosting them, that is) so it looks like me and the kids may be on our own if we plan to get rid of some of this stuff. Growing up my mom was the queen of yard sales. We used to joke that if I didn’t want something included in a yard sale I should lock it away in my closet. Looking back, she was setting a great example in the hopes I wouldn’t grow up to be a packrat. Admittedly, I have accumulated my share of our household junk, and I am trying to inspire members of our household to get rid of theirs. Yard sales are also a great way to generate some quick cash to get that emergency fund in place, or to contribute to your debt snowball. Here are a few yard sale tips our family has implemented over the years to have a successful yard sale.

Scheduling

• Schedule yard sales around the first of the month. Most people who are paid monthly, or bi-monthly, receive a paycheck around the 1st of the month (or the end of the previous month). For this reason, we try to schedule yard sales on the first Saturday of the month.
• Check the 10-day forecast. Nothing ruins a good yard sale faster than rain. Keep an eye on the 10-day forecast before submitting your advertisements and selecting a date. There are no guarantees, but significant weather patterns (fronts, tropical systems, etc.) are fairly predictable within a couple days.
• Plan on starting early. Most hard-core yard sale scavengers will start looking around 7:00am (some as early as 6:00am).
• Consider a pre-sale the Friday night before and invite your friends and coworkers. Assuming you don’t mind friends going through your belongings, ask them to come by the night before to look through things ahead of time. I’ve sold some larger items by doing this, including computer monitors, baby furniture, etc. A side benefit of a presale is the more you sale the night before, the less you have to put out on Saturday morning.

Advertising

• Join forces with friends, neighbors or family members. Block yard sales, or multifamily sales, tend to bring a lot of foot traffic. Consider splitting the cost of advertising amongst all participants and use a portion of your sales to pay for it.
• Check out free advertising sources. Credit union bulletins and community websites are a great source to advertise your yard sale. Many people also list their yard sales on Craigslist.
• Use traditional advertising (newspapers) for larger sales. If you are planning to try and sell some high-end items, such as electronics, furniture, or a used car, consider paying to advertise in your local newspaper.

Signage

• Keep it simple. Nothing works better than poster board and Sharpie markers. If you have some old boxes lying around you can also gather up some pieces of cardboard to write “YARD SALE” on and include your address.
• Piggyback on neighboring sales. This is a little trick I picked up as a teenager when my mom would send me around the neighborhood to hang up our signs. I looked in the newspaper Saturday morning to see if there were any other yard sales around our house. I would go to the end of the street these sales were on and hang a sign for our yardsale with a big arrow pointing in the direction of our house. As people left the advertised yard sales they would inevitably see my sign and then look for ours.
• Advertise around heavily traveled intersections close to your neighborhood. Once you get potential customers in your neighborhood, use remaining signs to lead them to your house.
• Keep a count of the signs you post, so later you can remember how many to take down. There is nothing worse than seeing a huge, hot pink YARD SALE sign for one that happened last month.

Pricing

• Leave sentimental value inside the house. People shop yard sales for one reason – to get a deal. Just because the change purse used to belong to your great, great Grandmother who brought it with her from Ireland, it doesn’t mean you should stick a $10 price sticker on it and call it antique. Remember, things are worth only as much as people are willing to pay for them.
• Sell kids or baby clothing from a big box or plastic bin. Based on the type of clothing, set a fair price for the entire bin and hang a sign made from a half-sheet of paper indicating the price of all items. For example, “BABY CLOTHES – $0.25 each.”
• If you are short on folding tables, sawhorses and a sheet of plywood make a good table. If you have some old sheets, hang them over the plywood to protect against splinters. This also provides some space under the tables to hide your empty boxes, or additional inventory.

The Day of the Sale

• Use a staging area the night before the sale. If you have a garage, or another enclosed space you can safely store things overnight, it helps to set up tables the night before. Our family backs the car out of the garage, sets up tables and throws out everything from the boxes the night before. At 6:30 the next morning all you need is some help walking the loaded tables out into your driveway or yard.
• Have plenty of change on hand. The day before the yard sale I usually make a run by the bank to get some smaller bills and rolled coins. $50 in quarters, ones and fives ought to do it.
• Consider getting a cash box. Make change from the cash box and place larger bills underneath the cash tray. If your yard sale becomes wildly successful, consider making a cash drop by withdrawing the larger bills from your cash box and taking them inside the house. This minimizes the chances of someone making off with all your cash.
• Remember safety – use the buddy system. The people I’ve encountered in my experience hosting yard sales have all been honest, hard-working folks and genuine collectors. However, the allure of electronics and cash sometimes brings unsavory guests. These types like to try to create a distraction so another one can make off with the cash box. Work in pairs and assign someone to always have an eye on the money.

The following is part of Frugal Dad’s weekly series, “So You Want to Be a Blogger?” which chronicles the development and optimization of a blog’s lifecycle.

Now that you have identified a subject you are passionate about it’s time to identify your target audience. This is an exercise familiar to any traditional author or marketing executive. The identification of a target audience helps you focus your topic on their interests, and generally helps your writing fit their personalities. It isn’t necessary to spend big bucks here on a full-blown demographic study. Here are some frugal ways to identify a target reader for your blog.

Who are you? Sorry, I know you probably now have the theme to CSI running through your head. If you are passionate about your subject chances are there are others out there like you. After all, great minds think alike. What you need to do is identify who you are in terms of demographics. How old are you? What’s your marital status? What’s your household income? What careers interest you? What hobbies would someone like you engage in?

When setting up “Frugal Dad” I knew there were frugal-minded people out there like me, but I had one distinct uniqueness – I was a man. There are many excellent frugal living websites out there run by women – I know because I subscribe to nearly all of them! What I was planning to offer was content on frugal topics from a man’s perspective. Actually, from a dad’s perspective. Men are notoriously bad about succumbing to big screen televisions and sports cars, to the detriment of their family’s finances. I wanted to present an alternative view. I would set out to prove that stay home mothers weren’t the only ones good at being home economists; us dads could do it, too. So my narrowly-defined target audience became middle-aged husbands and fathers interested in living a frugal lifestyle.

Got your target audience? Good, now think bigger. There is some danger in becoming too targeted. No one will ever find you. In my case delivering targeted content to wannabe frugal fathers aged 25-40 may not yield a large readership. What about writing content geared towards men, but with a frugal slant? I could write about careers, fatherhood, kids and money, technology, etc. And while I’m at it, how about writing some content addressed to both men and women interested in frugal living? Frugal shopping tips, household energy saving ideas, finance book reviews, etc. Does this all sound familiar? It probably does if you have been reading Frugal Dad for any length of time.

In my first post in this series I suggested discovering a peripheral topic to provide to your readers. It’s a great way to engage readers not in your targeted audience. This series of blogging posts is a good example. I know that most of my subscribers are fairly technically proficient. Many of them are blog owners themselves, or may be interested in starting up their own blog. Those who discover Frugal Dad via search engines may also be interested in creating a blog, so there may be value in providing a “how to” series on blogging. I can still stay true to my frugal theme by providing low-cost ways to start up a blog, market your site, etc. Before moving on, brainstorm some ways for you to connect with your readers by providing a peripheral topic.

In an old Peanuts cartoon Charlie Brown complains day after day because all he has to eat for lunch is a bologna sandwich. His buddy Linus finally asks him, “Well who’s making your lunch, Charlie Brown?” Charlie Brown solemnly replies, “I am.” This brilliant cartoon illustrates the fact that all of us have choices – about how we spend our time and our money. We may not want to believe it, but we are in full control of the choices we make.

Everything we do in life is a choice. Sometimes it feels like we have very few choices because circumstances seem to have us pinned down in our current job, but the simple act of getting up and going to work is a choice. Unless you live under communist rule you still have a choice whether or not you get up in the morning and head to the office, and you have a choice regarding your place of employment. Accepting that can actually make [tag]bad jobs[/tag] more tolerable.

Thank God it’s Friday! Oh God it’s Monday. I was once stuck in a bad job in a toxic environment. I was stressed out, burned out and basically fed up with my job. And then in a moment of clarity it occurred to me that I was making a choice every day to get up and go to work. Sure, I would be fired if I didn’t go. My family would lose our employer’s health insurance. A steady paycheck would cease to be deposited in my bank account. Our bills wouldn’t get paid and we would probably lose our car, our home and our other belongings. All those things were negative consequences of my decision not to go to work, but I still had a choice. Essentially, I was choosing to exchange my time for pay, benefits and the right to keep our stuff.

These same lessons apply to our finances. I’ve known many couples over the years who have been somewhat envious of my wife’s position as a [tag]full-time mom[/tag]. It does not come without sacrifice. However, my wife and I agreed early in our marriage that she would stay home with our kids until they were school age or beyond. The cost of daycare and employment-related expenses would make breaking even difficult, and getting further ahead nearly impossible. I choose to drive an older vehicle, take my lunch to work and forgo tech toys so my wife can stay home. She has put her educational and career goals on hold for the same.

Life’s too short to spend it being miserable. If you are stuck in a dead end job, or are working to make a car payment, consider setting yourself free by giving up some of life’s luxuries. Imagine a mother of two paying $800 a month in daycare expenses for her three year old and a newborn. At $15 an hour it will take over 50 hours of work each month just to pay for childcare expenses (actually, it will take over 70 hours when you factor her household earnings are in the 28% tax bracket). Then factor in the cost of a work wardrobe, a car, higher maintenance costs on that car, gasoline, eating out, etc. and suddenly you realize that mom is simply working to pay for the pleasure of working. Seems illogical doesn’t it? I certainly don’t begrudge couples who agree to both spouses working. I was raised by a single mother who didn’t have a choice. However, if given the choice, I would always vote for mom or dad staying home with the kids.

I would encourage you to reflect on the goals you have sacrificed because you feel financial pressure to stay in a bad job. Sell that car. Cancel the spa memberships. Stop eating out. Make those tough choices now so you can spend your remaining life energy going after things that are really important to you.