It's Cold & Rainy

After the great weekend of weather, the hounds and I have been on a gentle slope toward snow tomorrow. It's been a slow process, first the temps dropped, a day later the sun disappeared, last night it started raining and today it's been 'freezing' around 40° and a constant rain.

It's reminded me of my time in the PNW, experiencing the winters on Whidbey Island for ten years ... cold, dark and rainy. Therefore, I've had more than my normal two cups of coffee today. I have read all kinds of new blogs on new topics. I've looked at houses on Zillow, checked a few old neighborhoods on Google Satellite Maps ... basically have just hung out inside.

The hounds haven't done much at all and certainly nothing to blog about. Heidi will only go out twice on a day like this. Remember she has a threshold of 70° for a lot of outdoor activity. She is older and she knows when to let me know when she needs to go outside. Otherwise I can find her hidden in blankets in her spot on the bed.

Stella and Sadie went outside numerous times but never stayed long even when I was willing to let them roam. They did what they had to do and came running back to the house. They napped most of the day. Those times they wrestled inside my favorite camera ... the Nikon D3200 ... failed to work again to get the photo of them.

I am not sure if it is the lens or the camera but I do know that I am tired of trying to figure it out. NO, I will not send it back in to the repair center. They had their chance, it worked for a short time. Plus I read on the Nikon D3200 forums that I am not the only operator that has this problem. Not sure what my next camera will be nor when I'll buy it ... I might go an entirely different direction this time in choosing one.

Heidi's skin has improved today, after I wrote about how red it was yesterday. It's a very light pink and I am not sure if that is even an accurate description. Let's say it's close to a normal skin color with just a little tint of faded red. My attempt to capture that photo to show the color was a failed attempt with the Nikon 18mm-55mm lens.

So by the time I grabbed a different lens, lock and loaded the camera ... Stella and Sadie were willing to pose for a photo.

The other day while finding new blogs or articles to read I came across a different way of budgeting. Currently I have the 8-9 different categories that Dave Ramsey recommends, filled out on my spreadsheet where I have been tracking my expenditures since 1999. The different kind of budgeting recommended only 3 categories and percentages 50/20/30 of your take home pay.

I follow a pretty tight budget because basically I am probably what some have called me ... cheap. At least I know where it went and I always have some money left over every month ... so it's good. These new categories gave me some breathing room. In areas I thought I was spending max amounts under Dave Ramsey's ideas, I was well within range of the 50/20/30 percentages. It didn't matter if I was eating out or buying groceries, it was just food.

If you have read this far and someone interested in budgets ... Let me explain more in detail.

Do not include or count any of your income that goes to investments, 401Ks or IRAs that are taken out of your pay check before taxes. Do not count anything that is withdrawn from your gross income, such as medical, taxes or social security. Just take your net income and work with that amount. The 50/20/30 are max spending limits.

50% is for "Fixed Spending" -- these are monthly payments that will not change until they are paid.

• Mortgage, Auto Loans, Insurance, Utilities, Water, Phone, Internet Provider, Trash Pickup, HOA Fees, Rent

20% is for "Financial Goals" -- only 3 categories here, pay off credit card debt, saving for emergency fund or retirement

30% is for "Flexible Spending" -- Other stuff you buy during the month where spending amounts are different.

• Groceries, Dining Out, Gas, Hobbies, Shopping, Other Fun Stuff

I found that once I sat up a spreadsheet and plugged in that information, I found out that I was better off than I had been thinking I was. It gave me a little more flexibility financially ... some breathing room. I guess I can go back to the Casino and put my money played on the craps table in the "Other Fun Stuff" category and still be under my 30% limit.  :)

Also a little side note. For those that have this site bookmarked with the .net domain ... stop, don't do it anymore. Due to the large amount of uncontrollable hacking attempts on that domain, I have changed the settings of that .net domain to "park"... it will not bring you to this site anymore in the next few hours once the servers are reset.

On Wordpress I was getting a large amount of spam hits on the domain even after being online just a day. In that case I was able to install a WordPress plug-in to block them and their comments. On blogger I have yet to find a way to block ALL spam attempts. My Blogger traffic reports show the .net is the source of a huge amount of hits, outside the normal numbers. Based on the countries those hits are coming from, I know they are spam attacks.

So ... you can bookmark or add to your blog side bar the .com domain but delete the .net domain. I have no plans to renew either domain this year so this blog will eventually go back to www.bhounds.blogspot.com. If you want to just bookmark that url, that will work also.

So ... really not much went out today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

I Saw The Bad Side of the Economy Today

This post fits more into the "Retirement" side of my blog. It would just graze the edge of the "RV" side of the blog.

By helping a friend today, someone I worked with just a few months ago, I saw for the first time the bad side of the economy in the USA. It's the economy that some say has recovered and everything is great and then there is the side where those people cannot see the light at the end of a dark dark tunnel.

In some news media over the past few years you might have read how the majority of working couples are really just a payday away from disaster. This is based on no savings, living payday to payday, a family to support plus a mortgage. Well, this is kinda like one of those stories.

In this case there was no mortgage lost, but a single mother supporting two boys below the age of 7. Due to some recent contract awards while working for the government as a government contractor, her parent company lost the contract after five years of support, when it came due for new bidding. The new contractor chose not to make an offer to her to keep her job. It is common the new company will make an offer when there is a change in government contracts.

In this case a couple of things have played against her. Those are somewhat private and something I will not discuss here, since I do have some ex coworkers that read this blog on occasion.

Without a job offer to her, to keep her job, what it did was move her and her two boys from a very nice large house that was rented, eliminated a very substantial salary to nothing and a situation where the job market is tight enough in the local area that after a month of job searching she has found herself unemployed. She is also out of money and her unemployment does not start until the week of September 21, 2014. That unemployment payment will be less than half of her salary of a month ago. How many of us could afford to take a 60% pay cut or more?

When I heard the news from a mutual friend the other day, I contacted her to see if she was ok and if there was anything I could do to help. Since I have been out of circulation by being retired, I was not aware of job opportunities as I normally would be. So there was nothing I could do there to help her in finding a job except let her know she could use me as a reference.

What she asked for and told me was the most stressful for her right now was a very surprising answer. It was an answer that showed me just how bad this friend was hurting, withdrawing and not asking for help from any of her friends. She had just moved from that large nice rental house to a small 3 room, not 3 bedroom but a 3 room apartment, where the cost of rent was the deciding factor. This was one of those older large houses that was turned into multiple apartments mostly to attract the rental market of college students years ago, but not now. The house was in good shape, a neighborhood that had remodeled older houses for blocks and blocks ... a nice area to live.

Luckily she had a ground floor apartment, with a nice front porch and yard overlooking a part of the college town and a small backyard and patio but not the type of yard where the two boys could play and burn off some energy. The rooms were good size but with the two young boys the rooms had to be reconfigured to fit them. The bedroom and the living room were reversed to give them the bigger room as a bedroom.

Back to her surprising answer and a look at a Catch-22 when things are not going your way in life.

When I asked if there was anything I could do to help her, she paused and then in almost a whisper ... "I need someone to haul my trash away".

I was somewhat confused by that answer. I was expecting to be asked for a loan, maybe buy some groceries, or fill her car up with gas but no. She said her most stressful thing right now was getting the trash hauled away.

The trash in this case were boxes of stuff she had moved but had no room for. It was things she had not sold on Craig's List or eBay. It was really just stuff you throw away. I thought I knew the answer, but asked her why couldn't she just leave it where it was in back for the weekly trash pickup. Of course one was money, she could not afford that kind of expense but the other reason was .... even though she had bagged a lot of it in large heavy duty black trash bags, the city had their own trash system where their containers had to be used. Also those containers were color coded where the trash was separated as if you were recycling. Those containers also cost extra on top of the pickup fee. I had expected the cost being a reason but not the container requirement.

The stack of empty boxes plus some filled with things not worth giving away were covering the small patio right up to the back door of the apartment. Out by the alley was a stack of large moving boxes and the large black heavy duty bags filled with more stuff not worth giving away. Only the stack by the alley had been sitting there for a month and had been in a couple of heavy thunderstorms. It was not a good situation. The boxes were soggy, the bags had puddles of water on them.

Long story short, in two different trips I was able to fill my Toyota FJ and haul everything away. The empty boxes were broken down and taken to recycling. The bagged trash will go out with my weekly pickup and the large boxes full of junk were burned ... the burning process just finished before the thunderstorm that passed through early this evening.

So the economics side of this story is, she is doesn't have a job, doesn't have enough money to last until September 21, with two young sons to feed. She also needs to buy gas to get to job interviews if she she is called. She has interviewed a few times but I'm sure here past salary keeps her from an offer. She has many resume's out for jobs in a market that will be hard to get a job, especially without a college degree.

I know from personal experience twenty years ago, college graduates some with master degrees are willing to work for less money just to stay in the area. Some have a spouse still finishing a degree, some are graduate degrees. It's a tough market to crack when looking for a job and it's even harder without a college degree ... if you expect to make the amount of salary she was making.

The two unspoken factors will prevent her from being hired in her old department, even though it has been requested she be hired numerous times by different managers, according to her.

Yes, she could have saved more or even some of her salary. The majority of baby boomers nationwide have not saved since life itself does become expensive raising a family, especially as a single parent. She was one of those that never suspected she would ever lose her job, although I mentioned to her last summer about being financially prepared in case the large contract was not renewed. These companies are Fortune 500 companies that work that bid on contracts to support government activities. That environment has naturally changed for everyone with the changes in the last year of worldwide military support and available funding released from D.C.

She was kind of caught in the 'perfect storm' of government work, and now finds herself in a bad situation.

Today was an experience I didn't ever want to witness, especially to a friend with young children.

As far as the RV side of the blog I mentioned, this situation reminded me of some of the blogs I had read over the years where families or even single people had moved into an RV and started the lifestyle due to a loss of job, loss of house due to job loss or storm damages. It also reminded me of just how fragile retirement living is for some based on living on a shoestring budget. Who knows how high the cost of energy, the cost of groceries and medical coverage will be within the next 5 and 10 year periods, let alone gas/diesel prices. Will their retirement incomes keep up with inflation?

I wonder what percent of the millions of RV travelers only do it for economic reasons?

Fulltime RVing and Finances

I spent the past couple of days trying to get away from RV sales sites, so I could see what thoughts would come to the forefront. I read a lot yesterday about fulltiming, about different rigs and what the owners liked and disliked about them. I also thought about a smaller trailer that could be pulled with a my Toyota 4Runner. That might be a good set up short term but I can't see that being a long term fulltiming option after adding my 3 hounds to the trip.

Had another slow day at work today, so I continued my way around blog land reading more of the same type of blogs. One theme that kept coming up in the new blogs I was reading....finances or lack of.

I see sticking to your budget on the road to be very important. With no plans to workcamp, a pre-planned budget will be a key issue before hitting the road. I already know what my expenses are now living in a house, I know that my eating habits will probably not change,  of course no one knows what the cost will be for unexpected repair and maintenance will be but you can put the money aside and add to it monthly.  In my case when I compare living on the road financially to living in a house that will be paid for, those expenses are very close to being the same.

Fulltiming for me will not be a way to live cheaper. It will be a way to live at about the same monthly expense but deciding where I want to wake up each morning. I will be able to chose where I stay and when I go. When I picture living in my paid house, retired and two different pensions hitting the bank account every month, I see my life possibly becoming very stagnant. I do have workaholic tendencies although those have decreased this past year. I am basing that on what I normally do when I have time off during a long weekend or during a holiday. I would get tired of that routine day after day.

So because of that, hitting the road fulltime is a good thing for me. When I took a cross country bicycle trip many years ago, I had a general plan but every day I was pretty flexible on where I headed or when I rode. I have a strong desire to get back to that type of travel. I know weather will play a factor at times when and where I am at. I plan to boondock as much as possible. My main reason to boondock is not the cost savings compared to staying in a RV park, but the main purpose is getting to a beautiful place that is quiet, no one around and hot sunshine. I want to go places where I hear nothing but the nature around me. I can see myself doing that easier in a RV Class C rather than a Class A.

So based on those plans I think I am pretty close on what it will cost me on a monthly basis. For my fuel estimate I have been using $4.50 per gallon for fuel and 8-12 mpg in whatever vehicle I use. I think I could live at about the same monthly expense that I do now and still be able to save monthly for unexpected repairs that lie around the corner. I know there will be some months where the miles will be almost zero if I am at a place that I like enough that I don't want to leave. That will average out over the year if I am wanting to follow the weather.

So that's where I have been the past two days ... reading different blogs and thinking about cost of living fulltime. Just out of curiosity, how many of you spend more than you budgeted for? How many of you spend pretty close to your estimate?

For some reason, the Class C has moved back to the front of the pack for my type of RV.  I think a trailer that would be towed by a Toyota 4Runner with a V8 engine would be too small for fulltime long term.  Anyone have thoughts on that? I know some of my readers have smaller trailers with dogs and are fulltiming. But my dogs are larger than I have seen so far for those traveling in a towed trailer.  Of the bloggers I have seen with a couple of large dogs, they are all traveling in Class As.

I know eventually answers to all my questions will hit me up the side of the head to where it's obvious what I will do, but it is sure a pain sometimes in getting to that day.