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Two recent experiences have taught me the lesson that you should always check the per-unit price:

Light Bulbs

I was in the store to buy light bulbs. There was a pack of normal light bulbs, and there was a pack of double-life light bulbs.

The double-life light bulbs are supposed to last twice as long as normal light bulbs. At least that’s what the packaging said.

I was tempted to buy them, because then I would have to change (and therefore buy) light bulbs half as often.

Then I noticed the price – they cost more than double the regular bulbs.

So I could spend $2.48 twice or $5.48 once for the same amount of light-years.
(what? that measurement is already taken? How about light-hours? Okay.)

I went with two packs of the normal bulbs.

“New and improved” might mean a price hike.

“Chocolate” Syrup

Yes, I added those quotes on purpose. The syrup has “real chocolate flavor” not necessarily “real chocolate”, so I feel those quotes are appropriate.

My kids are going through a chocolate syrup phase right now, probably similar to the Nestle Quik phase that my side of the family went through about a dozen years ago.

At the grocery store, I reached for the larger container of Hershey’s syrup. For some reason I felt like looking at the price. And I compared the per-ounce price to the smaller container. The smaller bottle had a better price.

The large one (48 oz.) was $3.79 and the smaller one (24 oz.) was $1.75.

“Buy in bulk and save” might not apply to whatever you’re buying.

All in all, I saved about 81 cents on those two items by buying the smaller or worse item. If I were paid by the hour, that probably would not have been worth my time to stop and do the comparisons.

Every little bit helps, I suppose. But there has to be a point at which it’s not worth it.

What’s a good threshold for saying “ah, skip it” and just buying an item without comparing prices (either within the store or between stores)?

Today’s post will be rather boring for many people, so feel free to skip it if you want. I’ll understand.

I don’t gamble in casinos, but I make up for it by playing the stock market. Any day now, I’ll pick the right stock and be able to retire early.

I’m not a day trader – more like a week or month trader. And it’s not much of a gamble, because I’m not risking a lot on it. I play with about 5% of my retirement money. And since a normal retirement would be 30 years away, I have some time for playing.

I created a stock screener at my online brokerage. Normally, I would sift through those results and see if any stocks looked interesting enough to buy. But then I got a different idea:

What if the number of stocks returned by the screener meant something?

and not necessarily the stocks themselves.

I guess I was hoping that my screener was inadvertently a leading indicator. So I graphed the number of stocks from my screener against various indices, in order to see if I could find some correlation between the market and my screener.

For the last year (actually March 2010 to March 2011), I ran that screener near the end of each trading day. I missed a few days, but got most of them. You can certainly see a trend:

Unfortunately, all it does is mirror the index price. The number of stocks approved by the screen goes down as the stock market goes up, and vice-versa. While interesting, it doesn’t tell me anything I couldn’t know by looking at the market data without my screener.

Also unfortunately, it doesn’t tell me what the market is going to do.

Maybe I’ll fiddle with the screener and keep up this hobby of mine. There’s not much of a net loss (or gain), so I suppose it’s harmless.

My brother might be appalled to learn that I don’t check my credit card statement every month. I’d just look at the balance due and, if it was somewhere in the ballpark of what I expected, I’d pay it.

The most recent statement for my wife’s credit card came recently. Well, it didn’t really arrive here because everything is electronic now. But I got an email saying that the bill was ready. I thought the balance was slightly more than it should have been, so I clicked on the View Statement button.

This credit card never had an annual fee. But I saw a line in the statement that said $60 for the annual fee.

Where did that come from?

Apparently they weren’t making much money off that card, so they added a fee. Since the fee was brand new, I had a chance to appeal the terms of the card. The note thingy said that we had 30 days from receipt of the bill to dispute the fee.

We disputed it. Or rather, my wife did. It’s her card so she has to be the one to officially talk to the credit card people.

Who are in India.

And are not authorized to remove that fee.

So she said “Fine, cancel the card then.” And lo, the card was cancelled.

The timing of all that was interesting because she had been eyeing a new credit card just a week earlier – a card with a fancy-schmancy rewards program. I didn’t want to add yet another credit card to the mix, but it turns out that now we can.

And I have learned my lesson and will be reviewing credit card statements more thoroughly, at least for a little while.

This post is for all of you who were wondering how much it costs to have a baby these days. And if you weren’t wondering, maybe you are now. And “have a baby” does not mean raise or care for a baby – it means “deliver in a hospital”. And this does not include C-section, which would cost significantly more.

My wife gave birth on February 27th. Our insurance company has notified us of the claims entered, but we have not yet received any hospital bills.  If they can wait 3 months to send the bills, does that mean I can wait 3 months to pay them?

We have an HSA plan, so the way our insurance works is that all claims go to the insurance company. The insurance decides how much the hospital can actually charge (based on whatever deals they had worked out ahead of time for being in the network), and then the hospital sends the revised bill to me. I have a medical checking account and I write a check to the hospital (or doctor or whoever is charging me for medical services). The insurance company does not pay any money unless I go over a certain limit for the year. By the way, having a baby will put you way over the limit right away.

According to the claims, it costs $14,500 to have a baby (staying in the hospital Friday night, Saturday night, and leaving Sunday afternoon). That’s not what it costs me, and that’s not what it costs the insurance company. That’s what it would cost someone without insurance who just paid whatever the doctors and hospital charged.

Here’s the breakdown:

• wife’s hospital stay: $8,000
• wife’s doctor: $3,000
• anesthesiologist: $1,000
• baby’s hospital stay: $2,500
• circumcision: $255

The epidural cost $1,000, but after going through insurance, it cost only $500.  Believe me, that’s money well spent.  And if you don’t believe me, ask my wife.

I got to sleep at the hospital for no charge! So what if it was just a couch? And I got all the free water I could drink. And free wireless access in the room. All that free stuff, for only $14,500!

Due to the extra charge for circumcision, it is more expensive to give birth to a boy, but I think a boy costs less in the long run.

“Let your father and your mother be glad,And let her rejoice who gave birth to you.”
– Proverbs 23:25

I read an article about how a family went one month without spending any money.  It was more of an experiment or challenge than anything else.  It was not a viable long-term lifestyle, as it depended heavily on favors and free Costco samples.  But it did highlight what were needs and what were wants in that particular family.

The idea of not spending any money might appeal to many of you.  Go ahead and eliminate wasteful spending, or frivolous spending, but don’t aim for zero spending. 

If everyone stopped buying things for a month, what would that do to the economy?  You might be better off temporarily, but in the long run it would make things worse for everyone.  Yes, you should not spend excessively.  Yes, you should be thrifty when possible.  But other people’s livelihoods depend on your spending. 

Would you want everyone to boycott your business?  Then don’t boycott everyone else’s businesses.

“these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business.”
– Acts 19:25

I usually try to file my taxes in the middle part of the tax season, sometime between late February and mid March.  I don’t want the stress of last-second tax filing.  This year, due to several factors such as a new baby, this blog, and other projects, I found it was late March before I began doing my taxes.

My normal method is to start my taxes when I get my W-2, in early February.  I do most of it then, let it sit for a week or two, and then finish it.  I find that if I forget about it for that week or two, then it is easier to see things I missed or did wrong the first time.

My goal this year, after starting late, was to finish them while it was still March.  I saw I should be getting a refund, so I wanted to get that sooner rather than later.  Next year, I hope to owe a little bit, so I may plan to finish the taxes in March, but not file until April.

Anyway, it wasn’t until April 1st that I found the last two documents that I needed.  I thought that was an appropriate day to file the returns, as I could them make some comment about how the government tax policy is a joke or something.  I clicked the e-file button at about 5 minutes to midnight.  Being on dial-up, my computer took 6 minutes to file.  So my taxes were officially submitted at 12:01 on April 2nd.  Rats.

“God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. ”
– Genesis 1:8

Why does it take so long for me to do my taxes? Why am I so unmotivated? It’s not like I don’t have any incentive, as I’m getting a decent refund.

Normally, if someone would say to me “Fill out this form and get these numbers to agree and I’ll give you $500”, I would get that done fairly quickly. I suppose to make the analogy more complete, that person first would have taken $5,000 from me.

I don’t like getting a refund in that it means I gave the government too much money. Every year that I get a refund, I increase my exemption by one. This year, I bumped it up by two since we added a child to the family.

It always made sense to have the exemptions correct so that I don’t give the government an interest-free loan. But now it makes even more sense, what with various states refusing to pay people their refunds. Why give the government an interest-free loan that they might not repay? Why give them more money than you need to, when you might not even get it back?

Another item from tax season: be very careful when buying individual stocks that you do not buy shares of a partnership unless that’s what you really want. Because if you buy shares of a partnership, such as Calumet Specialty Products Partners, then you get a Schedule K and have yet another form to complete for your taxes. So if there is an LP or LLP after the company name when you are looking at ticker symbols, then beware.

Or maybe you like filling out extra forms for your taxes. I, though, was unpleasantly surprised when the K-1 arrived in the mail.

“But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.”
– Matthew 18:25