Dont you hate it when you try to save money but end up losing money?

[GotIssues]

More fun: I also started looking around at other info on 401k accounts. Motley Fool says <0.25% expense fees is a good 401k plan (can't find the damn page now though, maybe I'm not remembering correctly...). Somewhere else said to look for <1%. The options available to me are at about 1.4% - 1.93%.
Oh well, at least there's the 50% employer matching, which I'll get all of after 7 years with the company. :\

You are getting completely screwed up the butt on management fees if the only funds you can pick from in your 401(k) have, at best, 1.4%. You need to talk to whoever the plan administrator is at your company (the person that deals with your 401(k) provider) and tell them to stop sucking serious ass at their job.

1% I would say is normal, 1.25% should be your least acceptable. Around .25%, you are looking at index funds. 1.9% is a fund for people who don't know wtf they are doing and get suckered by a "financial advisor" selling them on whatever makes the "financial advisor" the most money.


I hate when I waste money trying to save money. Trying to come up with a way to salvage a project that didn't quite go 100% according to plan and avoid losing money on the deal.

 

[Jeff7]

I'm only putting in the full amount that gets matched. Not sure yet what to do for savings otherwise.
My car is slowly dying, and I'm not sure yet if I want to put a few thousand into getting it fixed, or just get a new one. And I want to nuke what's left of my student loans.

With the amount of money I've had to play with up to now, a savings account was about my best bet for interest and liquidity. Now I've actually got the potential to have some money to invest - but I've not got a damn clue what's done with it.
(And I keep thinking of the judge in Futurama: "My caddy's chauffeur tells me that a bank is a place where people keep money that isn't properly invested.")

 

[ShawnD1]

1% I would say is normal, 1.25% should be your least acceptable. Around .25%, you are looking at index funds. 1.9% is a fund for people who don't know wtf they are doing and get suckered by a "financial advisor" selling them on whatever makes the "financial advisor" the most money.

You sound a lot like my dad. He gets really damn angry when anyone mentions the words "managed funds"

 

[KGB]

I remember buying some of those cheap condoms about 30-35 years ago.

I've been paying ever since.

 

[TXHokie]

I got married hoping I'd save on laundry services. That didn't turn out well at all.

 

[leeland]

I had one that I only realized my level of fail this week.

Built a house...need a bunch of fill for a lawn to get it to grade...

Guy is offering 30 bucks a load of fill delivered vs. 100+ from other guys.

I confirm that I am getting just basic fill from a basement dig...he says yah...

Lawn guy comes to spread the fill and it is littered with garbage...(bike fender, cynder blocks, asphalt chunks, concrete pieces, glass)...

so the lawn guy was cleaning it up which probably cost me an additional 400 bucks...

All I could get out of the first guy was 4-5 loads of clean fill to compensate the difference...

 

[Exterous]

Practice. When I started making stuff all those years ago nice craftsmanship was merely a goal. Takes time, and lots of mistakes. Like my best friend and mentor has taught me, if you aren't breaking shit you aren't learning shit. Get out of your comfort zone!!

Well - thats what makes it more expensive! Starts out cheap but the mistakes, broken things, multiple trips is what adds up. I guess I might save money later in life once I figure out what the f*ck I am doing :biggrin:

Hell - I even had to work out a practice where if two slightly different things looked like they would work I would buy them both. It was a guarantee that I would be back at the hardware store later for something else and I would just return them then. Finally cut down a little on my trips

 

[Golgatha]

Purchased electrically conductive epoxy for around $45 to try and epoxy a contact lead to my rear window defroster. Lead kept coming loose and I ended up re-epoxying the leads back from time to time. Eventually it shorted out anyway due to poor contact and now it is damaged beyond repair. Decided to just live with it instead of spending $500 on a new rear windshield.

Still have a broken rear windshield defroster and I'm out a bunch of time and $45.

 

[lxskllr]

Well - thats what makes it more expensive! Starts out cheap but the mistakes, broken things, multiple trips is what adds up. I guess I might save money later in life once I figure out what the f*ck I am doing :biggrin:

Hell - I even had to work out a practice where if two slightly different things looked like they would work I would buy them both. It was a guarantee that I would be back at the hardware store later for something else and I would just return them then. Finally cut down a little on my trips

It's been my experience that almost any job can be done twice yourself(including parts) for the same amount it costs a pro to do it once. If you estimate you can get it right in 2 tries, and you're willing to put in the work, doing it yourself is the way to go.

 

[RedRooster]

I had one that I only realized my level of fail this week.

Built a house...need a bunch of fill for a lawn to get it to grade...

Guy is offering 30 bucks a load of fill delivered vs. 100+ from other guys.

I confirm that I am getting just basic fill from a basement dig...he says yah...

Lawn guy comes to spread the fill and it is littered with garbage...(bike fender, cynder blocks, asphalt chunks, concrete pieces, glass)...

so the lawn guy was cleaning it up which probably cost me an additional 400 bucks...

All I could get out of the first guy was 4-5 loads of clean fill to compensate the difference...

Haha, ouch! Talk about your all time backfires.
That must've been a sickening feeling seeing those loads of crap getting dumped in your yard, eh? Glad its sorted out, new yards are a pain thats for sure.

 

[hanoverphist]

Haha - bought ball joints at Autozone and replaced them a year and a half later with Moog parts.

All the stupid shadetree mechanics learn that lesson (don't buy cheap parts) the hard way at least once. Maybe the smart ones don't have to. I certainly wouldn't know.

ive done that, i hate when it happens.

i bought a beater to save money on gas, ended up popping the head gasket. now it will cost me more to fix it, and prolong the savings part.

i also get hung up on saving a few cents per gallon of gas. ill drive 5 miles ouot of the way to save 3 cents a gal, which in my truck isnt really saving much at all. sometimes it ends up costing me more to drive farther for 5 cents.

 

[lxskllr]

i also get hung up on saving a few cents per gallon of gas. ill drive 5 miles ouot of the way to save 3 cents a gal, which in my truck isnt really saving much at all. sometimes it ends up costing me more to drive farther for 5 cents.

That's the nice thing about high gas prices; it's very liberating. Instead of strategising driving to the cheapest gas station, you pick the one that's closest to home. I'd eat up a couple of cents per gallon idling at a light waiting to cross the road.

 

[hanoverphist]

Purchased electrically conductive epoxy for around $45 to try and epoxy a contact lead to my rear window defroster. Lead kept coming loose and I ended up re-epoxying the leads back from time to time. Eventually it shorted out anyway due to poor contact and now it is damaged beyond repair. Decided to just live with it instead of spending $500 on a new rear windshield.

Still have a broken rear windshield defroster and I'm out a bunch of time and $45.

glass coverage?

"i dunno, i woke up and the back window was smashed out. my laptop is missing as well."

 

[hanoverphist]

That's the nice thing about high gas prices; it's very liberating. Instead of strategising driving to the cheapest gas station, you pick the one that's closest to home. I'd eat up a couple of cents per gallon idling at a light waiting to cross the road.

ya, ive been watching the prices where i regularly go, and get the one that is cheapest. lately it has been a station i pass after work to get my kids. cheaper by almost a dime most of the time. bad mpg really changes how you look at gas prices. for me, it was going from 14mpg to 34mpg, only to have the car break and have to go back to 14mpg that made me a much more conservative person about it. i really miss filling the civic for 35 bucks instead of the 80ish my truck takes, the truck will get about 40 miles less to a tank too, sucks.

 

[leeland]

Haha, ouch! Talk about your all time backfires.
That must've been a sickening feeling seeing those loads of crap getting dumped in your yard, eh? Glad its sorted out, new yards are a pain thats for sure.

I kind of felt like Clark Grizwald in National Lampoons vacation where he drives off the dead end road and the mechanics are giving him shit after fixing his car...the lawn guy was like 'where did you get this? A land fill?'

I was stuck beside myself laughing and crying at the same time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpx21Uf7hs

 

[palswim]

I started renting a new place and I had a plumber come and tell me "all you have to do to replace your rusted bath spout it to buy a new one and replace the short pipe to connect to the wall." Well, I bought a nozzle ($10) and 4.5" pipe ($1) when I should have bought a 5" pipe, and then $3000 later I had repaired my downstairs neighbor's water damage.

 

[ShawnD1]

I started renting a new place and I had a plumber come and tell me "all you have to do to replace your rusted bath spout it to buy a new one and replace the short pipe to connect to the wall." Well, I bought a nozzle ($10) and 4.5" pipe ($1) when I should have bought a 5" pipe, and then $3000 later I had repaired my downstairs neighbor's water damage.

This is why you never do repairs alone. One dude at the valve, one dude at the thing you're testing. Turn on the valve and check if it's ok. If it's a disaster, yell at the guy to turn it off.

Good for electrical stuff too. You just installed something and you want to see if it works, so you flip on the breaker. OH SHIT THE CORD IS STARTING ON FIRE and it's not enough to trip the breaker. Either have someone at the breaker to yell at or you better have some quick legs.

 

[Saint Nick]

Talk about your all time backfires.

Nice reference

 

[Vdubchaos]

I'm a do it yourselfer, I can write a book about this stuff.

But at the end of the day I would rather do it myself and possibly screw it up/not save money than to hire someone (not that this resolves much at times either).

I just get satisfaction from doing things myself.

Only person I hire is an accountant to do my taxes.

House project/work, Cars, Computers, fixing ANYTHING is something I'm willing to tackle.

When I calculated savings on cars alone 3-5 years ago it was over $14k saved on labor.

Pretty sure I'm deep into 30k-50k saved in the long run. But yes there was plenty I lost some money on as well.