How to NOT get lucky on Valentine's Day

I grew up in a small town outside of Cincinnati, and to this day, White Castle hamburgers remind me of my youth. We would often drop by the one at 8853 Reading Road on the way home from church and pick up a sack.

Is it any coincidence that the two teams playing in this weekend's Super Bowl both have multiple White Castle restaurant locations? I think not. Regrettably White Castle restaurants extend only as far south as Murfreesboro, TN, so I can only eat them fresh from the microwave or during a business trip up north.

For you romantics fortunate enough to live near a White Castle restaurant in Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis, Nashville, Cleveland, New Jersey, New York, or St. Louis, you're in luck. White Castle has a special treat on Valentine's Day between 5pm and 8pm where you can enjoy, "hostess seating, candlelit dining, and your own server." Oh, and reservations are required, so check here for the special reservations telephone number in your city. Just don't forget the Beano!

The rest of us will have to fend for ourselves to get a dinner reservation. At least Yan has listed some websites where we can pre-order roses to save us from fighting the crowds after work on Valentine's Day.

Are you average and is your average mean?

When someone asks if I'm average, I immediately wonder if they're asking about mean, median, or mode? If math isn't your thing or you're intellectually lazy, skip to the bottom data elements. Since you're still reading, I'm going to take you back to junior high or high school math class and use Merriam-Webster to define these terms:

mean = a value that is computed by dividing the sum of a set of terms by the number of terms

median = a value in an ordered set of values below and above which there is an equal number of values or which is the arithmetic mean of the two middle values if there is no one middle number

mode = the most frequent value (or values) of a set of data

For those like me who read these definitions and go "huh?", here are the terms portrayed visually:
Practically speaking, let's compute each of these with a dataset of 5 numbers: 29,1,4,1,5.
Mean
29+1+4+1+5 = 40; 40÷5 = 8
Median
The numbers in value order --> 1 1 4 5 26 ... and the middle number (or the median) = 4
Mode
With the data set 29,1,4,1,5... the most frequently occurring or repetitive number = 1

When dealing with statistics about finances and income, the press is often sloppy in their use of the term "average". While most do not use mode, many identify both median and mean as average, which is too imprecise. If you add a few zeros along with a comma or two, the numbers in my dataset could be housing prices or household incomes, and not knowing whether a number is median or mean can have a big impact on how the numbers are interpreted . Because outliers, such as the number 29 in my dataset above, can skew the calculation of mean, many cost and income-based financial statistics are computed as median so that half of all such costs (or incomes, housing prices, etc.) fall above this value and half fall below.

While statistics may not lie, liars use statistics, so know the difference between mean, median, and mode. And with that lesson, here are a few facts about average in the U.S. of A.:

Median home value = $167,500

Mean travel time to work = 25.1 (minutes)

Median age = 36.4 years

Average* household size = 2.6
Average* family size = 3.18
* - assumed to be mean, but it's not clear

ALL
Median household income = $46,242
Mean household income = $62,556

Families
Median household income = $55,832
Mean household income = $72,585

Nonfamily household
Median household income = $28,050
Mean household income = $39,741

And if you're looking for a real-life example of an outlier, Bill Gates has more wealth than the bottom 45% of American households combined.

Note: All stats are from the economic profile of the 2005 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau unless otherwise noted. This survey breaks the data down further into these other profiles: demographic, social, and housing.

[update added March 13, 2007] For a fantastic essay described as "the wisest, most humane thing ever written about cancer and statistics" read The Median Isn't the Message by Stephen Jay Gould.

The ultimate 99 cent value meal

After years of hearing my wife rave about how great the food is at Taco Bueno, I enjoyed my first meal there on a family trip to Dallas/Fort Worth at Thanksgiving. My wife swears by their bean burritos while I wolfed down a couple of crispy beef tacos. They were good--better than Taco Bell's, so I decided to have another after finishing my two. Fortunately at the top of my receipt was a "Free Beef Taco" coupon for completing a survey. It required me to call a 1-800 number, answer a few questions, and then enter a 4-digit code. I'm a cheap bastard, so I spent the 60 seconds punching responses into my cell phone and got my code.

I walked up to the counter and ordered my free beef taco. I handed the cashier my coupon, fully expecting that I'd missed the fine print and would be charged tax or be told I needed to order something else, but no. I was handed my beef taco along with... you guessed it... a "Free Beef Taco" coupon at the top of my receipt for the free beef taco I just received. It is the ultimate value meal--an all you can eat beef taco buffet for just 99 cents.

My family and I returned to D/FW just before Christmas to give my brother and sister-in-law a hand with their new responsibility. While there we had an opportunity to again eat at Taco Bueno. My wife was craving their bean burritos while I was eager to find out if they still had their 99 cent buffet. They did. It became a game to me, so after buying my first beef taco I used their "Free Beef Taco" coupons the rest of the trip to satiate my hunger. And perhaps because I was respectful to the cashiers, they never hesitated to take my coupon and offer a new one in return.

Free 2GB online backup with encryption

I got the blue screen of death as I was drafting a new post this evening. This required me to manually turn my computer off with the power supply switch as even the reset button wasn't working. I waited several seconds and hit the switch again to turn it on, but to my chagrin nothing happened. No whirring fans, no spinning hard drive, no blue LED light emitting from the case... nothing. I tried in vain to flip the switch off and on again in the foolish hope that the power supply would mysteriously heal itself.

Fortunately I have my critical documents encrypted and backed up online with my free 2GB account at Mozy. In full disclosure: if you click on the Mozy link, sign up, and perform a backup, I get an extra 256MB of free backup space--but so do you! Mozy has a lot of neat features, and I particularly like its ability to automatically perform a scheduled backup.

As for my PC, thank goodness for eBay. I'm assuming that my power supply is fried so I pulled it, got the manufacturer & part #, and ordered one on eBay for $30 less than what I was able to find from any retailer on Froogle.

Cost of bottled water vs. tap

I often buy consumables that I wouldn't otherwise when I travel for business. I'm not suggesting I splurge on extravagances, rather these purchases are circumstantial. For example, I seldom use breath mints at home, but I always have a roll of peppermint or wintergreen BreathSavers in my pocket when I'm on the road.

Another item that only gets purchased when traveling is bottled water. I support home town companies, so my bottled water of choice is Dasani. I usually buy the 20 ounce size for $1.06 with tax.

We've all heard that bottled water is 99% profit, but what does the water itself actually cost? I decided to grab my most recent water bill to find out.

My household consists of myself, my wife, and 3 & 1 year old children. Here is a typical month's water usage and costs:

Fully allocating sewer services into the cost, a gallon of tap water = $ .00784. Yes, a gallon of tap water is less than 1 cent.

How does that 20 ounce bottle of Dasani compare? Dasani is $6.78 per gallon, so its gross profit margin relative to my cost of tap water is 99.9%.

Saving thousands on furniture

I bought my first home when I was 20 and living in Dallas/Fort Worth. Well, actually my home was a townhouse, but it was mine nonetheless. I had flight benefits with my job and heard stories of coworkers traveling to High Point, NC, to save big money furnishing their house. As a bachelor, big money and furnishings were mutually exclusive. I went to a furniture liquidation warehouse and bought a matching couch, loveseat, and chair for under $300 which reflected my taste in decor... something Vern Yip would call bachelor tacky. This experience was my basis of knowledge for the cost of furniture.

Fast forward 10 years, and I'm married and living in Orlando. Informed that it was time for a new couch/sectional to go with our new home, I went furniture shopping with my wife. You can imagine my shock in discovering that a 3-piece sectional can cost more than a car... at least the last car I'd purchased (an '88 Volkswagen Fox wagon, quite the chickmobile). I was further surprised to learn that most people can't pick up furniture on the day it's purchased. Remembering, "Happy wife, happy life," we agreed on a style and fabric, and 6 weeks later the furniture arrived.

After moving back to Atlanta a couple of years later, I made a business trip to Greensboro, NC, and decided to make the 25 minute drive to High Point to see what was in the furniture capital of the world and if prices really were better. I visited two stores, Boyles Furniture and Furnitureland South (FLS), to check the price on a Stanley bedside table to match one we'd picked up at closeout from a Sears Homelife that was going out of business.

My first stop was to FLS, home of the world's tallest highboy and a showroom (+ Mart) with over 500,000 square feet of space. I spent an hour wandering around the Mart building and found the bedside table in the Stanley line I wanted. I was surprised to find it 40% off retail, and so I asked a salesperson to check the price. It was correct. She also asked my zip code and calculated that shipping would be ~ $60 but that there wouldn't be sales tax because I was having the item shipped out of state. I took the salesperson's card and left for my next stop.

I didn't have much time at Boyles because I'd spent more time at FLS than planned, but I knew the drill. Rather than going to find the furniture, I immediately asked for a salesperson and had her look up the price of the item I wanted. I was happy to learn that the price was closer to 50% off and that Boyles was offering free shipping on orders over $500. Shipping was about the same otherwise. I took her card, thanked her for her time, and left to catch my flight.

After returning to Atlanta, my wife and I decided to purchase the bedside table from Boyles. We also purchased a dresser and bed from the same line. We have since made several trips to the Triad (Hickory, Greensboro, and High Point) area to furniture shop, mostly at clearance and showroom sales. On our last trip we went to the Furnitureland South Clearance Center and paid less than $100 for a $600 mirror that came from the same Stanley line and completes our bedroom.

If you're out of the bachelor tacky phase and wanting to save thousands of dollars on nice furniture, it's worth a call or click to furniture shop in the High Point area. Here are some sites for reference:

• Boyles
  
• Furnitureland South
• Hickory Furniture Mart
• High Point Furniture Store Directory
• Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Factory Outlet

And until the end of this month, Boyles is offering free delivery on orders over $2,000 for those east of the Mississippi. Those west may have free or discounted shipping depending on the manufacturer.

Ben Stein is wrong about Real Estate Investing

Ben Stein is an incredibly smart guy. You might know him by any one of these titles: actor (he was the boring economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off), host of Comedy Central's show "Win Ben Stein's Money", author of 16 books, speech writer for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, or university law professor.

Ben also writes a financial column every other Monday at Yahoo! Finance, and it's usually full of sage advice. This week's article "A Home Truth about Real Estate Investing" was an exception.

As a part time real estate investor, the title of this week's column caught my attention. I was teased by the short description which reads, "Owning real estate brings great joy and even makes a good investment. For long-term gains, though, stocks are better." I was dumbfounded. I've owned stocks & mutual funds for 15 years, but the returns on my investments in several single-family rental properties have beaten my returns in the stock market, hands down. Could I be a smarter real estate investor than Ben Stein? This fleeting thought was unfathomable, so I read on.

It was only after completely reading his column that I realized the source of my disconnect: I can't recall ever hearing an economist, particularly one who is a "commentator on finance", consider the purchase of one's own domicile to be real estate investing. Mr. Stein's article does a disservice to the practice of real estate investing, which most consider to be the act of acquiring real estate for purposes of generating rental income or profit from resale after capital appreciation (my definition). My own real estate investing has delivered consistent positive cash returns each year, not to mention the huge tax benefit in being able to offset rental income with that most wonderful non-cash expense, depreciation. Once rented, without exception, each property has been cash flow positive while consistently showing a tax loss because of depreciation and section 179 expenses.

Considering his argument for a moment, however, I would challenge Mr. Stein to look at the alternative to purchasing a house/condo. I see a flaw in his logic because buying stocks on broad indexes isn't the alternative to purchasing a house/condo to live in; renting a house/condo is the alternative! I'm fortunate that I don't live in an expensive real estate market (metro Atlanta), but even still, I can't see how, with tax considerations, buying a house is less "profitable" than renting.

And on the topic of real estate, today I learned that Zillow has just begun providing Zestimates for many homes in metro Atlanta!

Give to God what is God's... but get a receipt

Today the freemoneyfinance blog addresses the subject of how to calculate a 10% tithe. Reading it reminded me of something I've noticed the last couple of Sundays at church during offering. While a large number of people write checks, there are plenty of others who still place cash in the offering plate (bucket).

Unless it's in an envelope with the giver's information or donated in some way that the giver can immediately receive a receipt, I find donating cash to a church or any charitable 501(c)3 foolish because such donations are not tax deductible. Understand that I have an accounting degree, so my brain is wired differently than most, but I believe in giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's... and not a penny more. When giving to God, I want the tax deduction.

In case you're wondering, I never put anything in the offering plate. I seldom carry cash or checks, so fortunately North Point Community Church offers scheduled ACH withdrawals which I use and like.