Well folks, this is it. 2009 is just about in the books. Did you hit the financial goals you set back in December of last year? I accomplished a few of mine, but came up short in couple other areas. Just gives me something to shoot for this year!

Over the next couple days I’ll be sharing more about my goals for 2010, and reviewing how things went in 2009. Hope everyone enjoys a happy, safe introduction to the New Year.

Oh, almost forgot…Frugal Dad celebrated its second birthday a couple days ago. I started writing here on December 29, 2007. Time flies when you are having fun!

The Frugal Roundup

2009 – A Year in Thanks. It was a rough year by most accounts, but I enjoyed this post which inspired me to remember the things I have to be thankful for, and the blessings from 2009. (@Do You Dave Ramsey)

It’s More Important to Be Happy Than to Be Rich. I think the title speaks for itself. (@Get Rich Slowly)

Top 135+ Personal Finance Posts for 2009. Jeff put together a great list of popular personal finance posts for the year. (@ Good Financial Cents)

5 Ways Guys Waste Money. Almost every guy can relate to a least a couple of these categories. (@ Studenomics)

My Call From a Debt Collector. If you ever get a call from a debt collector, don’t take their word for it. Do a little research and make sure they are right. (@ Money Relationship)

Best of the Rest

• Should I Tip or Not?
• Financial Planning for the Next Year: 10 Best Money Moves
• Five Foolproof Financial Strategies That Will Ensure You a Better 2010
• Good Riddance to All Unwanted Gifts
• 8 Financial Resolution Ideas for 2010
• The Best Car Deals for Your Money
• Holiday Hangover Cures
• Getting Ready to Create Your 2010 Budget

“Geraldine”, a sassy lady portrayed by the late Flip Wilson, answered her husband thusly when he demanded an explanation for yet another new dress: “The Devil made me do it! I was walking down the street minding my own business when he snuck up behind me and pushed me into that dress store. He MADE me try on! Then he pulled a gun on me and forced me to buy it and sign your name to a check.”

Geraldine’s humor is timeless because so many of us can relate to it. For example, have you ever bought a new car and then wondered what possessed you to do it? I doubt if it was the devil, but the devil’s first cousin, car fever, will have the same results.

Do you currently own a car you wish you had never bought? Are you asking yourself if you should try to sell it or just live with it? This post is designed to help you think through this dilemma.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

How much do I owe on it?

If you paid cash, then you are probably not facing a financial crisis necessitating the sale of the car. If you simply don’t like the car, then take your time, sell it and pay cash for another one. If you are in debt, move on to question two.

How big a burden is this car on my budget?

If one hiccup in your life will cause you to start missing payments, then you need to amputate this car before that hiccup occurs. Even if you are easily making your payments, you still might be deceived into thinking all is well. Long term debt on a depreciating asset such as a car is a formula for staying perpetually in car debt. To break that cycle, you need to get the car paid off in 24 months or less and then keep driving it while you save cash for your next car. If you are on track to do so, then keep the car and enjoy it. If not, you should seriously consider getting rid of it.

If I am seriously considering selling, how do I go about it?

Knowledge is power. First, you need to learn if you are upside down (owe more than the car is worth). Check http://www.kbb.com/ to learn the private party value* of your car. If this value is less than what you owe, you are upside down. *(Use private party value because you are money ahead selling the car yourself).

But how does this work? Here is an example: You owe $22,000 on your “Geraldine” car and you could sell it for $18,000 (private party sale on www.kbb.com), thus putting you $4,000 upside down. If you decided to buy a $3,000 car (we will call the “beater”), your new debt would be $3,000 plus $4,000 = $7,000. You are still upside down, but you have eliminated $15,000 of debt.

How do I go about selling a car I am upside down on?

Unless you have an extra $4,000 available, you will need to borrow it in order to get the title released. So where do you borrow the money from?

Start by checking with the title holder. You have done your homework, so explain your rationale. In effect, you are asking for an unsecured loan on your upside down amount. Most lenders are not thrilled by this, but explain that this same amount of the current loan is already unsecured and you are simply asking that they move this amount from a more expensive car to a less expensive car.

If the title holder balks, don’t give up. Try your credit union or your home town bank, explaining that you will be moving your business to them. If you simply can’t find financing, consider other options such as selling stuff (Craigs List or Ebay or yard sales) or temporarily working a part time job.

REALITY CHECK: Are you ready to get your Geraldine car out of your life? Good! Doing so will not only be a huge relief, but will teach you to never again succumb to car fever. Still, you need to go into this decision with both eyes open, so the following pros and cons will help you preview the reality of your decision:

The Good

• LESS DEBT. You have just reduced your total debt by $15,000!
• OUT OF DEBT QUICKER: From our example, with an 8% loan and monthly payments of $400, your Geraldine car will be paid for in 5 years and 9 months. Your “beater”, on the other hand, will be paid off in only 19 months.
• STAY OUT OF DEBT: Once the beater is paid off, you could save $4,800 toward another car by making payments to yourself for one year. Assuming your beater would bring $2,000, you could upgrade to a $6,800 paid for car. Had you stuck with your Geraldine car, it would have depreciated to about $12,000 by now and you would still owe $13,300 on it.
• PEACE: You will know that you have taken the steps to undo that Geraldine decision. This is a great feeling.

The Reality Check

• INCONVENIENCE: Selling your car and buying another is a hassle.
• A DOWNGRADED DRIVE: Face it: your Geraldine car is nicer than a beater will be. Be prepared for it.
• LESS DEPENDABILITY: No doubt your beater will have some issues. You need to be realistic in assuming that it will not be as dependable as a newer car.
• MORE MAINTENANCE: With less dependability comes more maintenance.
• FRIENDS WON’T UNDERSTAND: Reality? Yes. Negative? Not really. Just be prepared for it.

One Final Reality Check

You may not be able to arrange the necessary financing. Why? Either your credit score is not adequate or you are too far upside down. Should this be your scenario, you will need to strategically pay down all other debt in order to free up enough cash flow to make huge car payments. Keep the car until it is paid off or you will be swimming in car debt for years to come.

Readers: Have you ever regretted a car purchase? What did you do and how did it work? What tips would you offer?

2010 is as good a year as any to get the finances back on track and start eating better for you. One food that has been around forever in many forms are beans. There are tons of types and almost all are like little pockets of low fat protein, perfect for your healthy eating plan. The other great news is that they are also extremely cheap, especially if purchased dried. I know the idea of preparing beans from dried may sound like hard work but it really is not.

Introducing Dried Beans Into Your Diet

Image Credit: CF Whitney

At this stage in 2010 a lot of us are looking at our sad excuse for a belly and sad excuse for a savings account and wondering what we are going to do about it! All of the infomercials, paid television endorsements and latest celebrity fad diet food will have us believing that eating well and staying healthy is a pricey affair. However this just is not the case.

In this article I am going to look at three common and nutritious dried beans and show you how you can easily prep them.

Firstly though, let’s take a look and see what beans can be used for:

• Stews, chillies and curries:beans can easily replace meat in a good hearty chilli or curry. I make these every few weeks and use almost no oil and a whole bunch of veggies.
• Dips:many beans can be blended with herbs, spices, tahini and other things to make really nice and nutritious dips.
• Burgers: bean burgers are pretty easy to make and can be grilled or lightly fried.
• Soups: Most soups can benefit from a few added beans

And much much more…..

You will get much better value buying all of these beans dried. If you have never looked at the dried beans and pulses section of your local supermarket then you may be very surprised at the prices and the amount of savings that could be had on many foods, if purchased dried. For example, in my experience, a bag of dried chickpeas containing the equivalent of around 2 or 3 cans will cost about the same as a single can.

Chickpeas

Image Credit: Phxpma

This is my favorite bean. I add them to soups, stews, chillies, curries, make hummus, burgers and even like them plain as a snack.

1/2cup (roughly 100g) will provide about 365 calories, 6g fat (only about 0.65g of that is saturated fat). You will also get around 19g of protein and 60.5g of carbs (17g of that is dietary fiber)…. Basically a very nutritious and hearty, healthy food.

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the chickpeas over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 24 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on medium heat.
7. Boil until beans are tender, 1-2 hours normally, so check periodically.

Black Eyed Peas

Image Credit: Frangrit

These are great added to rice or salads. They also make a great dip and are nutritionally comparable to meat for many dishes.

A 100g serving will provide about 243 calories, almost 0 fat, 62g carbs (27g of those are dietary fiber) and 24g of protein.

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the beans over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 6 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on low heat.
7. Boil until beans are tender, 40mins-1hr normally, check throughout.

White Beans

Image Credit: WontonBrutality

Quite a few Italian dishes call for white beans. They make excellent spreadable pastes, are great for pasta sauces and are good in stews, lasagnas, chillies and more. I also really like eating them cold as a snack, with a little salt and spice.

A 100g serving will provide approximately 335 calories, 0.9g fat, 60.8g carbs (15.5g dietary fiber) and 23.5g protein (there are various types of white beans so these numbers may vary slightly)

Preparation from dried:

1. Spread the beans over a flat surface, remove any bad beans or foreign objects.
2. Rinse the sorted peas.
3. Put into a large Tupperware, fill with clean water, 2 or 3 times higher than the beans.
4. Put in the fridge for 12 hours.
5. Pour out the water, rinse and fill with the same amount of clean water.
6. Transfer to a pot with a lid and put on low heat.
7. I have found boiling time to vary greatly for these beans, so ideally check every 1/2hr or so until they are just tender.

See, nothing to it! I hope this post inspires you to try and get a few more beans into your diet. Let us know how it goes.

This question is especially important if you are considering retiring soon or if you have been offered an early retirement package.

If you’re like me, when you try to imagine what lies ahead, you think about your most recent experiences and extrapolate going forward.

Investors do this more than anyone – at least as far as I’ve seen. While I can see why folks do this, it’s really not a very good exercise and I’ll show you why.

If you think back over the last 10 years, you’ll agree that it hasn’t been a picnic for investors. Depending on when you calculate the 10-year average, you could get a slightly negative return or a slightly positive return for that period. But either way, it’s a lousy return.

Based on that, investors might forecast a crumby 10-year return going forward.

Even though we’ve heard that old expression that the past is no guarantee of the future when it comes to investing, what else do we have to base our decisions on other than the past?

Well…I do want you to consider the past when you think about the future.  Just think about it a little differently.

Let’s look at an example to help explain this idea.

If you review the chart below, you can see that the 10-year trailing return in 1974 was an ugly -3.8%. That means had you invested in 1965 and held on to your investments through the end of 1974, your annualized return was -3.8%.

S&P 500 Trailing 10-Year Annualized Return

Real Returns Over the Next:

But what happened over the next 10-year period? The market had an annualized 6.9% return. In fact, after each of the last 5 decade-long market meltdowns, the market did pretty well.

Is that a guarantee that the next 10 years will be years of wine and roses for all?  Not by a long-shot. But it does indicate that history is on our side. It shows the importance of not falling into the trap of thinking our most recent experience is going to be repeated in the future.

Exactly one year ago, did you predict that the market would do so well by the end of the year?  I sure didn’t.

While we face real challenges ahead as a nation and as investors, it would fly in the face of all the facts to become pessimistic right now.

What do you think we’re in store for over the next 10 years?

Hey everyone! Adam from Money Relationship here. Jason was kind enough to allow me to do this week’s roundup to give you some news. You know Chris who has been posting here (on Fridays) about his debt? Well, Chris is actually me. When I first started blogging, I wanted to share our journey out of debt. However, my wife felt a little different about that. So, I thought I would create a pen name (Chris) to blog under.

Lately, I have been talking to my wife about coming clean and she agreed that it was time. We have had great support from the readers here and over at Money Relationship. We now want to share with you our journey out of debt on a more personal level. I think it makes it much easier to follow someone on this type of journey if you can connect with them. We want to get to know you and support you in getting debt free just like you will support us. Transparency is our new goal. You can also check out the post where I confessed to my readers and announced some upcoming projects.

I look forward to you joining in the great discussion here and at Money Relationship. Have a great holiday season!

The Frugal Roundup

Why We Are Weird. Some people make their own deodorant. Others only buy grocery items that have coupons. People may say you are weird, but I bet you would call yourself normal. (@Marc and Angel Hack Life)

Getting Out Of Debt: Make That New Year’s Resolution Work. Flexo offers some great tips on making your debt-free resolution stick in the new year. (@Consumerism Commentary)

Action Beats Inaction. JD talks about getting things started even when you only have a little. Only have $100 a month to save in a Roth IRA? Do it anyway! (@Get Rich Slowly)

Best of the Rest

• 7 Good Things That Could Go Terribly Wrong
• 5 Characteristics of a Great Mentor
• You Know You Might Be a Personal Finance Redneck If…
• Net Worth Vs Self Worth: Money Isn’t Everything
• How to Live a Rich Life Without Spending a Fortune in Today’s Economy
• 3 Ways to Be More Life Scrooge
• You Probably Don’t Need an Extended Warranty
• Starting an Investment Club
• Plan Now to Make the Most of Post Holiday Sales
• Payday Lenders are Disastrous to Your Finances

We’ve all made financial mistakes, and chances are we’ll make more mistakes in the future.

Maybe we aren’t socking away enough money for retirement, or overdrew our account, or bought at the peak of the housing market and are underwater. When things like that happen, it’s common to take a step back to analyze our mistakes to see where we went wrong.

While reviewing and learning from past mistakes is good — that’s how we improve and prevent repeats of the mistakes — dwelling on them and beating ourselves up over them isn’t.

But when it comes to analyzing the past, there’s a step we often
overlook: Reviewing our past successes.

Take a moment to think about it. What have you done right lately?

See what you have done well in the past, and what you could repeat in the future. What caused you to make a decision that turned out well?
What traits did your successes take advantage of?

For example, maybe you’ve set up a bill paying system that where you pay your bills at the same time each month. Since then, bill-paying has been a breeze. That takes organization, so organization is probably one of your strengths. How else could you use organization to improve your financial life?

“Make a list of financial goals” is the first thing that pops into my mind when I ask myself that question. Once my list is made, I can set about organizing it further so that I can achieve the items on it.

Or maybe you’ve automated your bills so that they’re withdrawn from your checking account each month like clockwork. And since you’ve done that, you haven’t once overdrawn your account, which was a problem for you in the past. If automation is working for you, look for other areas that you could automate. (Such as retirement, investing, savings, etc.)

Play to your financial strengths and use them to your advantage.

Like you, I take stock of myself this time of the year.  I look back over the last 365 days and consider my accomplishments.  I also think about the challenges I still face. I think about what I could have done differently in 2009 and how to apply those lessons in the coming year and beyond.

This reflection is a really good thing – especially when it comes to finances.

But let’s face it.  For most of us, there is only so much you can to do.

Sure we can learn more about money.  We can earn more, spend less, get rid of more debt and invest better.  But I have to be honest with myself.  I’m going to be working on doing better in these areas for the rest of my life.  Probably, so will you.

So..yes…..taking this “financial inventory” is mission critical for me….but it’s also dangerous and I’ll tell you why.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about my finances, I think about improving things.  I focus on the outcome.  The results.  Control.

But in reality, most results are beyond my control.

Look….in 2008 my business and my income suffered a lot. When I did my financial inventory last year, it wasn’t fun.  Like you, I lost a lot.  Doing my “financial inventory” hurt.  I was in a lot of pain and fear.  Even though I wasn’t responsible for the global financial crisis – it felt like I was.

This year, things look better and I feel better.  Yes, we cut expenses…..but much of the improvement in our financial situation is a result of the economy improving and that’s beyond my control too.

I’m sick of tying my sense of well-being to things I have no control over. I am officially turning in my badge.  That’s it.  I quit.

I’m going to try my hardest to stop taking responsibility for things I have no control over – good or bad.

What I will do is take responsibility for suiting up and showing up – but that’s it.  My inventory is going to consist of a whole new list:

1.  Did I spend in a reasonable and adult manner?  Or did I act in fear and unreasonably?

2.   Did I invest in a similar way?

3.   Did I spend my time wisely?

4.   Did I have fun? What can I do to enjoy the process of earning a living, cutting my spending and investing?

5.   Am I trying to control the outcomes or am I willing to let my best be good enough – regardless of the outcome?

6.   Was I of service to other people?  Did I try to help?

This may seem really basic to you but it’s not for me.  I’m hard-wired to focus on the outcome .  That’s a good quality and it’s helped me a lot.  But that same character attribute is also a character defect when I take it too far and my natural tendency is to do so.

What about you?  What are you going to take inventory of this year? Do you think it’s OK to focus on results?