Introspection Found in a Suit

Over the weekend I was honored to be an usher at the wedding of two great friends.  We had a really great time celebrating, and I got that warm fuzzy feeling that you get at a wedding when you know that the couple is truly meant for each other.  I also had to Dress to Impress and wear a suit.  I hate dressing up.

I've reached the point in my life where I can no longer get away with khaki pants and a button-up shirt at formal gatherings.  This was very apparent when I under-dressed for my cousin's wedding last summer.  It was an outdoor wedding on a hot summer day and I thought comfort and practicality would prevail in the wardrobe choices of the guests.  I was wrong.  While I hate dressing up, I learned that I hate under-dressing even more.  Who wants to stick out and look like a schmuck in front of the whole family by being the only guy not wearing a blazer?  I felt like a lightening rod for the biting wit of my judgmental family.  Ugh.

I own a nice suit that I bought three years ago to wear to my job interviews as graduation approached and I had to secure a "real job."  Unfortunately, a sedentary job and diminished athletic activity has taken its toll on my physic.  Thus, in order to avoid any hushed Chris Farley jokes at my expense I needed a new suit jacket.  The marketing machine of the local mens formal store was kind enough to sucker me into buying more that I intended by offering the evil and manipulative "free" bonus.  With the purchase of a $99 blazer I was awarded a pair of free matching pants.  The sales person also convinced my wife that I needed a new tie to complete the package.

I planned to buy a $79 blazer and instead got a $99 blazer, matching pants, and a tie.  After alterations and taxes the total bill was $160.00.  I'm a sucker, BUT at least I didn't look like a schmuck at the wedding.  I also took solace in the fact that this entire package is exactly half of what I paid for my last suit.  Yep, my last suit that was worn about a half dozen times and outgrown in three years cost $320.  

The way I look at it today is that I've made progress.  I've realized that the way I dress does matter from time to time.  I've realized the direct costs of being in bad physical shape, and since January I've been at the gym 3-4 times every week.   I've grown more frugal and spent half as much to buy a suit, simply by ignoring the brand name.  Finally, I've realized that I am not a financial robot and that slips and compromises are a part of the process. 

Who knew that buying a suit could be such an introspective process.  Thanks for reading.

[ Read More ]

Life Insurance: How Much?

I know I need more life insurance. I've been planning to get more ever since we bought a house last May. I have a few reasons that I've put it off, but I know I should stop making excuses and do it!

We aren't completely without life insurance at the moment. I have a little more than twice my salary from work. My pension also provides a death benefit that would be about $1,500 a month to my wife. Finally, there would be a small amount of social security that my wife would collect as well. If you add that all up it is in the ball park of $200,000 plus $1,500 a month. That is enough to pay off all of our debt (including the mortgage) and leave my wife a little money each month to get by.

Based on what I have already, I know we are currently ahead of many people out there. However it certainly isn't enough to replace my income. I'd say that it would cover about 40% of my current income and that would leave a lot of strain on those I may leave behind. I'd prefer to be able to cover the mortgage and then leave 80% of our current income less what would have gone to the mortgage. That may seem convoluted. Instead, here is how it works out.

Current Income	$80,000
COL Reduction w/ One Person	80%
Wife's Income	-$10,400
Mortgage	-$15,000
Current Death Benefit	-$18,000
Total Shortfall	$20,600
Annuity Rates	5.6%
Insurance Needed	$365,507

And there we have it. I currently have about $365,500 less life insurance than I need to provide for my wife. Doing a similar calculation based on having children in the future, I will need to add an additional $500,000 per child to help with the costs of raising children and the expense of putting them through college.

Now that I know how much insurance I need, I am that much closer to getting it done. My primary stumbling block at the moment is the hope that my current workout regimen will bring my weight down enough so I can get premium pricing. Based on the quotes I have received this coverage comes in at $390 annually for "super preferred," $462 for "preferred," and $882 for "non-tobacco." I think I may just have to bite the bullet and buy it now even if I don't get the "super preferred" price, and then try hard to lower my premiums through a healthier lifestyle.

I'm currently planning several articles on the topic of insurance. I'll update you on my progress with life insurance and cover other topics like disability insurance and maybe a bit about health insurance. Subscribe to my RSS feed to check back later for more posts. Thanks for reading.

[ Read More ]

Tax the Unhealthy?

Lazy Man and Money was kind enough to ask me to contribute a guest post.  I was happy to oblige and today the post went live.  Please check out Tax the Unhealthy? (Part 1).  Be sure to read the post and check out the debate in the comments.  Check back tomorrow to see Part 2 and again later in the week for a possible rebuttal on the other side of the debate.

Welcome to those who are new to Aspire 2 Wealth.  This blog was started to chronicle my path to wealth and keep me moving forward toward my goals.  I share my detailed personal finance history and articles on the topic of personal finance.  Be sure to check out my Millionaire Rules Series, Archives, and subscribe to my RSS feed.  Thanks for stopping by.

[ Read More ]

Dentist Update

I had my dentist appointment today. As expected it wasn't the smoothest experience, but it wasn't a total disaster either. The office has a standard practice of collecting the copay or any balance due upfront before you are even allowed to sign in. This is the first dentist I've ever gone to that had this type of policy. I assume this is because they have an extremely difficult time collecting from their clients due to the type of client they serve. Don't that that the wrong way, when a dentist provides bottom of the barrel service (but lower prices) in a frankly poor neighborhood, they get clients with limited financial means or a lack of options. If my insurance covered ANY other dentist within 50 miles I would go somewhere else and based on conversations I've had with other clients they agree.

Paying up front would not be too much of a problem except that I firmly believe this visit should be "on the house." I talked to two different people in the dental field and a crown that shatters after 6 months is almost certainly defective from the start. When I had the crown installed the first time I left worried about the quality of the workmanship and really really MAD. Here is the story, my appointment to have the permanent crown fitted was at 1:00pm. I left the dentist's office at 7:00pm. I literally spent 6 hours at the dentist to have a 15 minute (again based on my experts) procedure done. They cracked 3 crowns trying to do the installation. See, the dentist just got a new machine to fabricate their own permanent crowns in house rather than having to send a mold off to the lab and wait. The problem is that the crowns they were making did not fit my mouth! They would try to force the crown on and low and behold it would snap because it was made too thin on the top surface. So anyway, on the 4th attempt they managed to get one that fit into my mouth. 6 months later it broke too.

I was not about to pay a single cent to have them fix what they did wrong before. I very nicely explained this to the receptionist. She said, "Ok let me look into this." She called me back up 10 minutes later and gave a slip of paper that had $55 written on it. She told me that was my balance and that I had to pay it. I told her nicely that was incorrect because the last time I came I paid via check over $1500 and there was no balance. She frowned and went back behind the counter. Again 10 minutes later she called me back up and gave me a slip of paper with $24 written on it. I very nicely explain that I know for a fact that I do not have a balance and I would be happy to fax her an invoice that stated my balance was $0 later that day. She said I was wrong because the $24 was for services rendered TODAY. I was confused because I had just explained to her how my visit today was a follow up for a past procedure and so on. This time she told me to sit down and someone would be out to explain it to me in a minute. This means that she is calling in the heavy artillery, because 5 minutes later a large frowning woman comes out glares at me and says, "You know you have to pay to see the doctor. If you aren't going to pay there is nothing I can do." I don't think I hid my anger very well but I manged to not raise my voice and said, "Can you please go tell the doctor that I am here because she screwed up my crown 6 months ago and I am here to get it fixed." The response, "We'll see what she says." My next move was to drop the law suit bomb but thankfully I didn't have to because a different secretary came out and told me that the doctor would be happy to see me free of charge. Finally.

30 minutes later I was escorted to a chair. 30 more minutes later someone came by to clean my teeth. Of course I wasn't there to get my teeth cleaned so I said that. The young lady looked confused and asked me if I was Mr. Such-and-such. Well that wasn't me so she left again. A little while later a gentleman took an x-ray of the afflicted tooth. He said he would be back when it was developed. 30 more minutes later the doctor showed up (a total of 2 hours after my appointment time) to tell me that indeed they would replace the crown free of charge, but I'd have to come back Dec 18th to get it done. In the mean time they stuck some goo on my tooth to keep my tongue from rubbing on the sharp edges of the broken crown and sent me on my way.

So again I had a terrible encounter with the dentist and the worlds worst customer service. The upside is that I don't have to take them to court to get my crown fixed. In a perfect world I'd just get a refund and go somewhere else but I can't image what a fight that would entail. There is also the problem of having no other providers in my dental network anywhere nearby. Sigh.

[ Read More ]

Clarifications & Dentist Saga

I want to start this post with a clarification of my last post. That entry ended with a goal that some people I know found preposterous; my goal of accumulating 10-15 million dollars to be satisfied. Couple people who I shared the post with reacted strongly that I was selfish or found some other way to take offense. So, I though more about my goal and I stand by it.

For those of you who did not have that reaction to what I wrote I'm probably "preaching to the choir" but I'll explain my position a little and hopefully people will back off a little. First, remember inflation. If I spend 40 years accumulating my nest egg inflation will take a massive bite out of my spending ability. Here is the math: 3% inflation, 40 years => 1.03^40 = 3.29. What that means is that I will have roughly one third the buying power when I retire. 15 million will be worth in 40 years what 5 million is worth today. Next, my assets will need to support me and my wife for decades after retirement. If I make it to my target retirement age of 62 there is a high probability I will live for 30 more years. My wife, who is a couple years younger and has a longer expected life time, will statistically last even longer. A safe withdraw rate each year would then be Annual Return - Inflation - Safety Factor to ensure the principle is never depleted. Again the math I anticipate looks like this: (7% Annual Return - 3% Inflation) * .9 = 3.6%. I expect to spend 15% of my net worth on my primary residence and every 8-10 years spend 2% on "new" cars. If I have 5 million (in 2007 $) that means a $750,000 primary residence and $100,000 for two automobiles. What remains is 83% of 5 million which generates $149,400 (before taxes, insurance, etc). While not austere it certainly isn't living the high life (Britney Spears wasteful spending). I hope that clarifies for everyone the standard of living I aspire to. And hey, if I do better I won't feel guilty for that either.

The big news for today is related to the awful topic of the dentist. Last night while casually eating dinner at home I bit down and felt a nasty crunch. Unfortunately, I've been in this boat before when I had past dental problems. See, until I was a senior in high school I'd never had even a single cavity. When I did finally get a cavity I went to a guy in the small backwater town I lived in and got a filling which as luck would have it was a botched job. I found this out a few years later when I bit into a tortilla chip and my whole tooth crumbled. I went to a new dentist (I'd moved a few times since then) and was told that the filling I got was not deep enough and my whole tooth had rotted from the inside. Yuck!

Long story short, I had to get a root canal followed by a crown on the tooth that had the bad filling and a crown on the next tooth as well because there was so much damage. There were a series of billing problems, half a dozen appointments, and a temporary crown that the dentist stuck me with for SEVERAL MONTHS. Those procedures were finally completed back in May and are part of the credit card debt I now am trying to dig out from. Now to the present, last night the crown SHATTERED in my mouth. The crown I just got back in May. The one I've only made a small dent in paying off. After talking to some people including a friend who is nearing the end of dental school, another dentist, and my sage mother and father. I am going to ask for a full refund for at least one crown and probably all of the work that this dentist incorrectly performed (based on evaluation by yet another dentist). It seems that I've literally been the victim of severe dental malpractice. I have a meeting set up for tomorrow and if that doesn't go well I'll be looking for a lawyer. Ugh!

I have never sued anyone. I don't care for people that abuse the tort system. But I'm pissed and this dentist had better make this right or I will sue the pants off of them. Wish me luck.

[ Read More ]