A Break from the Norm

When faced with extreme circumstances, most times the proper response is also extreme in nature. An example of an extreme situation would be a married couple that has 2 kids, 1 parent working and a buttload of debt. This is the situation that stared me in the face 1 1/2 years after our first child was born. The injuries were all self-inflicted and we really have no one to blame but ourselves.


This type of extreme financial situation could result in a multitude of responses. The path most commonly travelled would be doing nothing and hoping the situation will get better on its own. I've never been one that listed divine intervention as a high probability on my list of beliefs. I don't like the feeling of depending on someone else to fix my problems even if that person is the big guy himself. And the thought that God helps those who helps themselves still relies on the person in jeopardy do something to correct the situation.


First, I did a lot of reading on the topics of personnel finance and debt reduction from various authors. While all of them had good points separately no one person had an overall plan that I seemed to agree with. I took some basic concepts from most the plans and rolled them into a program that worked for us.


Part of this plan was to no longer use credit or debit cards to pay for things. While this seems like common sense the idea itself is much more powerful than I could believe. We used to always pay for everything on credit card. I thought I was being smart with my cash back American Express card, but slowly the debt owed would creep up. I would then pay the balance off via our HELOC (home equity line of credit) and start the process all over again. No matter how disciplined you may think you are with credit cards, you're never as disciplined with them as you would be when you got zero cash on you. When the money is gone you're done buying, period. This simple move has saved us so much money that it's ridiculous. And don't worry you will make do. Sure you may not get everything you want, but you'll manage to buy everything you need.

Next, we cancelled our subscription to cable and land line phones. I'm sure you're probable freaking out now and think I've gone too far but it really isn't that bad. The phone was the easiest to do since we both have cell phones. We're with Alltel and have their favorites plan. So each of us have 5 favorites that we can call for free. That includes land lines or other cell providers. Of course we have unlimited calls within Alltel's network also. The plan is 1000 whenever minutes so really this has not been a problem at all.

Now the more extreme of the two measures. Getting unplugged from cable has been a blessing in my mind. Now I feel I have more time to be productive and I don't feel like I have to watch X amount of shows just because they are on every week. In the grand scheme of things does it really matter what's happening on Lost, Survivor or Grey's Anatomy. These are all things that drain us of our most prized commodity, TIME. I like to think of things now as a historian. Twenty years from now am I going to look back fondly at some BS television show with characters whose names I can't remember and think WOW that episode changed my life? Or am I going to look back and remember playing with my children and bettering myself so that I can afford the nice vacations that will always bring fond memories and pictures to enjoy for years to come.

If that explanation doesn't make you want to kick cable then think of this. All of the major channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX) have online versions of their most popular shows. So you can still watch the above listed shows on your own schedule.

We of course kept the internet since this is our lone source of communication with the outside world. Plus the internet is the great equalizer in the financial struggle to gain more and pay less. There is so much information on the internet that can help you better yourself that it is truly an investment and not just a waste like cable.

Lastly we have shifted our money to basically an all online holding. We still kept our brick's and mortar bank (B of A), but we keep the main holdings in ING Direct. They have a very decent savings account rate (about 4%) and they just recently opened an online checking account called Electric Orange. The great thing about this account is that it is also an interest earning account (about 3%). While 3% isn't huge it's far better than the 0% you receive from the classic banks.

The brick's and mortar bank allows us to perform simple deposits into our account and we can then transfer the money electronically to our ING account and distribute it accordingly. I also had my work checks changed to automatically deposit into ING so the money gets in there with as little hassle as possible. If you are concerned about having instant access to your online money don't be. ING is with the allpoint system and allow free transactions at any of these types of ATMS. I searched around my house and there was approximately 60 of these allpoint ATMS in my area. So getting money is still a snap. The only problem with the ING account is the only way you can deposit real money (cash or checks) is by snail mailing the item to them. That's why we kept the brick and mortar bank account open yet to help with these infrequent types of deposits.

We've implemented these changes now for approximately 2 months. So far we have saved about $150 dollars from our cable/phone bill and we've made about $12 from our online interest bearing accounts. While these are not huge sums of money take that amount out for a year and the total is $972 dollars. Who amongst us wouldn't like an extra $1000 dollars for doing nothing?

I hope this has helped in you're search to build financial independence and if you have any further ideas please don't hesitate to post a comment or send me an email.

The beginning

As with any journey, there must be a beginning. The start of my search for financial freedom began with the birth of our first child. While his birth was a glorious day, it also served as a rude awakening to our then financial state. My wife and I both had decent jobs with decent pay. For that year I believe we had a combined income of around $70,000 dollars. While this may not be a fortune, it definitely put us way above the poverty line.

As with any couple in their early thirties, we definitely lived for the present and always procrastinated our savings for another day. We were by no means deadbeats or bad credit risks (we both have mid level 700 FICOs), we just didn't save anything. If there was an extra dollar after all the bills were paid we would snatch it up as quickly as possible and spend it on frivolous BS.

To make matters worse, we somehow spent more than we were making. How this was possible, I have no idea. We had purchased a house in 2003 before the market really took off. In the years to come, we continued to gain equity in the house, not by accelerating our payments, but by enjoying the rapid increase in price appreciation. When your home is worth more than you owe on it, you have acquired "equity" in your home. This must be a good thing, right? By now you should see what's coming next. We decided, "Hell, we have all this equity, we're rich. Lets take out a home equity loan and really enjoy ourselves." Again, we didn't see a problem with this because we were both still making good money. Even as we increased our debt tremendously we still were able to easily make the minimum payments and have excess cash to waste on more BS.

Fast forward 2 years to 2006. We decide to bring a little piece of heaven into our lives and give birth to a boy in August of that year. This is when the magician could no longer pull the quarter out from behind our ears and the wheels fell off the revolving money merry-go-round that we were riding on. Unlike some new parents, we did not have retired grandparents that lived extremely close which would afford us cheap daycare. We looked around and the choices seemed to be at the extremes. Either the daycare was cheap (approximately $600 a month) and in the ghetto or it was expensive ($1000 a month). Ghetto daycare was definitely out of the question so the only option was the expensive route.

We sat down and crunched the numbers and determined that the peanuts my wife would be bringing home, post daycare fees, was not worth having someone else raise our child. So, shortly after the wife returned from maternity leave she gave her 2-week notice and left corporate America. That meant we were suddenly a 1940's "Leave-it-to-Beaver" family living in a modern two-income world. I immediately took all the off-duty and overtime I could find to keep us afloat. I realized during this time that I was spending far too much time working to survive rather than spending with my loved ones. I wanted to remember when I saw my son reach an accomplishment rather than remembering when my wife told me she saw him reach it.

Now we fast forward to 2008 and we are just months away from the birth of child number 2 and, of course, it's a girl. Now don't get me wrong, I'll be happy if she's healthy, but damn it. It sure would have been nice to go the "hand-me-down" route for many years to come. As No. 1 outgrows things, No. 2 can slide right in and pick them up.

I now see the error of my earlier ways of living for the present and not the financial future. I want to create a way of life that will allow my kids to flourish and even prosper as they follow in their parents footsteps. As cheesy as it may sound, I feel that I am now living more for them than I am for myself. I have begun to set things in motion that I hope will create a life of financial freedom and growth that will allow my family to be happy and wealthy for generations to come.

I realize that time is the most precious of all commodities and you should only spend that time on those ventures that will yield the greatest results. That is why I have created this blog, "Apex Income Investments". I will attempt to present all forms of investments and compare them in both ROI of time and money. In the end, only those that yield the highest returns with the least amount of time input will be utilized to grow our net worth.