Update since last post

It’s been almost 1 year since I last posted.  I had been blogging about money saving ideas.  My last post was on how to save money with TV.  I am happy to report that a year later, other than an occasional football game, we don’t miss cable or satellite at all.  Our Roku’s are still working, and our antenna picks up 19 channels well plus another 3 on good weather days.

Since my last post, a few changes have happened for the Phillips’ family.  In November of last year, we decided to take Nathan out of public school and put him in a private school.  This was a big step for us.  Last week, we had to register him for the fall semester and start up the monthly tuition checks again.  I must say however, it’s not as painful as most would think.  For a banking system, I have so much taken out of my paycheck each pay period, transferred into another sub account automatically.  Then on the 21^st of the month, the tuition amount is transferred from my sub account to my checking account.  Also on the 21^st, I have a bill pay system set up on my checking account, and it’s set to pay the tuition automatically.   This is one bill that is automatic from paycheck to actual pay.  I don’t lift a finger therefore, it’s not painful. 

Another way to make life easier.

Save Money on TV watching

Last time I blogged, I talked about using MagicJack Plus to save money instead of using a local phone company.  MagicJack Plus is still working.  My son uses it every day to call mom when he gets home from school so that we know he is home.  It’s nice having a home phone and it’s even better not paying over $50 each month for it.  And we have found a solution to call China with it at a very low per minute cost.

This time on the blog, I would like to talk about another way to save money.  Now, for this, you really need to research it to verify if it will work for you.  For some people, this will not be a solution.

Our story.  A friend showed me a small box he had on his TV and explained how he used this box and was saving money on his tv watching.  I dismissed the idea.   However, in May, I was sitting in the living room thinking about this box.  It then hit me that we were paying $52 per month to watch tv.  Or better yet, what hit me was that is $13 each week.  There had to be a better solution.

So I talked to my friend Dale and he explained the little black box.  It is called Roku.  A Roku is a small device that hooks to your tv and streams internet videos.  More importantly, it streams Netflix, HuluPlus, and AmazonPrime.  Each of these services allow people to watch TV for a small monthly fee.  For Netflix, the cost is $7.99 per month.  I think HuluPlus is the same.

We went out and bought a Roku and signed up for Netflix.  Our TV watching went from $13 per week to $7.99 per month.  The best part is Netflix has parental controls, so we can control what Nathan watches.  And oh how he watches TV now.  He has found old cartoons that we grew up with and is now watching them himself.  For us, to watch a TV show without commercials is a big BONUS.

We knew we would need local channels, so I bought a TV antenna that is supposed to pick up channels within 75 miles.  I hooked the TV antenna up to the cable that the satellite company was using, and put the antenna on the satellite pole.  I didn’t have to do any other reconfiguring of wires.  We went to our TV’s, set the TV to scan and we now pick up 26 local channels.  I think if I raise the antenna higher, we could get more.

Total cost.  We ended up buying 2 Roku’s at $70 each.  We bought the TV antenna for $50.  Total investment $190.  On-going expenses – $7.99 per month.

Between the MagicJack and the Roku, my wife and I have saved about $100 per month.  Why is this important when this is Lessons from an Adoptive Father blog?

Simple.  We have taken that $100 we have saved and put it into our Debt Reduction plan.  As we raise Nathan, we know that we have 8 years before we need money for college.  By adding an additional $100 to our Debt Reduction plan, we should have our house paid off the same month that he would start college.  So to pay for college, we would be able to leverage our house’s equity.

And it’s all because, we have cut costs now.  That is the true Lesson from an Adoptive father.  We have to cut things today so that our kids can have a successful tomorrow.  (This is not intended as a political dig either)

Now at the beginning I said you need to research if this is right for you or not.  This is not cable.  I have not found a way to get ESPN streamed.  So I don’t get Monday Night Football.  Or WGN for the Cubs baseball games.  If you are a huge sports fan, this is probably not a good solution.

Kids cost money, how can we save money?

One thing about being a new father with a 10 year old boy is that children view us as a 1 big source of money.  We are working on getting Nathan to understand that money doesn’t grow on trees, we have to earn it and it’s a resource that requires management.  To that end, my wife and I have been trying to find ways to save money on normal things that most families do.

For the next few blogs, we will be talking about things that we have done to save us money.  This one is about our home phone.  Like most parents, we had a copper link to the local phone company that cost about $25 per month.  Over 12 months, the home phone cost about $300 a year.   So what other options do we have?

We looked at several options…we could add Nathan to our cell phone plan for $40 per month….Not an option.  We looked at a pre-paid cell phone, figured we could get the cost down to about $12 per month as long as Nathan didn’t make a lot of calls.  Then I remembered.  A few years ago, I had purchased a MagicJack.  The cost was $45 to buy it and it came with 1 year of service.  During that year, I purchased 5 years of service for another $59.   Recently, when the need to have a home phone came about, we tried to use the MagicJack.  However, since we purchased the MagicJack, we had given up our tower computer for a laptop only system.  MagicJack on a laptop isn’t a great idea, especially if you use the sleep feature on the laptop.   It created havic with mine.   So I looked on MagicJacks website and found they have a new MagicJack called MagicJack Plus.  For $69 I was able to buy this new MagicJack Plus.  What is nice about this new one is 1. I was able to keep the original MagicJack number and time already purchased and 2. It works via my wireless router instead of my computer.  The MagicJack Plus is plugged into the wireless router.  I then hooked a phone line from the MagicJack Plus to my house phone system and next thing you know, all of my house phones work via the MagicJack Plus.  Our family voicemail system works again.  For visitors that come over, they cannot tell when they use our phone that it’s a different system.  Oh and I forgot, since the MagicJack Plus system is using the internet, there is NO long distance calling within the 50 states.  There is a small cost to call other countries. 

My entire cost for this was $173 and I won’t have another cost until 2015.  On the website, it says the cost for 5 year service is up to $99, but it goes on sale to $79 from time to time.  Remember, I was paying $300 a year for our old local phone company.  Over 5 years, that is $1500.  With MagicJack plus, I have paid $173.   Based on their website, the cost today of a new user would be $79 for the MagicJack plus and $99 for 5 years of service.  That would be $178 instead of $1500.  It has 911 capabilities and the sound quality has improved significantly in the past 2 years.  If you need a home phone, have a great home internet system, then I highly recommend MagicJack Plus and cut the cord with your local phone company.

My wife and I will take the additional savings and put it into an educational fund for Nathan.  It’s very inexpensive way to get away from your local phone company yet still have a house phone and 911.

Our next blog will be on how to save money on your TV viewing. 

If you have any questions or want more detail about how I set up our house phone system with the MagicJack Plus, please post your questions here.

Father’s Day

Fathers Day

Father’s day is a special day for the male parents in a family.   It’s his day.  This year’s father’s day was a little more special than last year.   This year, I really felt like dad.  Let me explain.  If you have been following this blog, you know that in February 2011, we adopted a little 8 year boy from China.  When Nathan was born, he had a birth defect that even though is fully treatable, was too much for his parents and he was left on the side of a road in China when he was just a few days old.  Nathan grew up in an institutional orphanage.   I only tell you this to set the ground work of why this Father’s day was better than last years.

When we got Nathan home in March of 2011, he did not speak English.  He didn’t really start to capture the language until summer camp when he got a chance to play every day with kids his own age.  He started to pick up the language, both good and bad.  I will expand on this on a different blog.

Last year, it was only 3 months after we got home that father’s day came around.  Of course, it was our 1^st Mother’s day and Father’s day, but Nathan only followed along with what Stepheni and I did.  He signed the cards the best he could but having him home was still surreal.   Nathan wasn’t fully understanding what it was like to have a family, let alone celebrate Father’s day.

This year, he has been in America for 1 year 3 months.  He speaks and understands English.  He is reading at a late 1^st grade early 2^nd grade reading level.   People that meet him cannot believe he has only been in America for 15 months and prior had no English background.  Because he can speak and understand English more, he had a better understanding of what Father’s day was.  He had to pick out the card.  He had to pick out the presents.  He had a part in what we did and where we went.  It was Nathans day to celebrate Father’s day with his father.  Stepheni still had a part to play, but this was the Father’s day where it became a day between father and son.

If you are curious to what we did do, well, we went to church first.  After church, Nathan and I went to the hardware store for the 1^st time together.  Unknown to Stepheni, we got old time glass bottle grape pop while we were there and enjoyed the excitement of drinking pop in an ice cold glass bottle.  From there, Stepheni and Nathan took me to a BBQ place for lunch.  Afterwards, we came home and played Wii bowling.  Nathan won.  It was a great day. It was perfect.

How can you lose weight if your the family garbage can?

How do you lose weight when you’re the family garbage can? 

 A father can’t lose weight when he is the garbage can unless he has a high metabolism or gets lots of exercise.  Neither of which I have.  Let me explain how I became the family garbage can.  First, if you know me, I don’t like left over food very well.  So when we started taking Nathan out to eat (which we do far too often still), we would let him order what he wanted.  He liked to order big people plates.  Example would be if we went to Outback Steakhouse, Nathan would order a plate from the normal menu.  In the beginning, we would let him because we wanted him to experience all types of food.  He would eat about a third of the meal and say he was done.  Knowing we were paying well over $10 for the plate of food, I couldn’t let it go to waste.  Thus, I became the garbage can.  The other reason I became the garbage can is because we do go out to eat too much, Nathan has a lot of left overs.  No problem, but at some times, there is more left overs than can be eaten, then it becomes a waste.  Once again, if you’re spending a lot of money by going out, you don’t want to waste food, do you?   

What did we learn?  We now do 2 different things depending on where we are going out to eat.  Sometimes, Nathan orders from the children’s menu.  We are a lot more careful to take him to places where he likes the children’s menu.  The other thing we have done is order 2 plates and split it into 3 plates.  Either way, there is a lot of less food left over.

What do you do to not waste food in your household?  Please post your comments.

Nathan turns 10 Today – a look back

Nathan is turning 10 today.  That is a good age to look back at the fond memories as he grew up.  The problem is as an adoptive father, I can only look back 1 year and 2 months.  I am not complaining, just stating the reality.  As an adoptive father, I missed his 1^st birthday, his first steps, and his first words.  I also missed some things that I feel where ok to miss.  Changing his diaper, the terrible two’s and the other not so pleasant things parents go through.

In the past year, I have learned a lot of things.  Let me list them

Discipline takes on all shapes.  Nathan coming from an orphanage helped us learn and stretch our notion of discipline.  My world of discipline was from my childhood.  Stepheni’s world was from her childhood.  We found out quickly that our childhoods where very different.  I was stricter.  Stepheni was less strict.  (She still towed the line, but Nathan quickly figured out he could do some things with mom, that he couldn’t do with dad).  Over the past year, we have tried all kinds of discipline.  What worked one week, wouldn’t work the next week.  An example of this was time outs.  When he first came home, we would use time outs when we had to dish out discipline.  That lasted about one month.   We soon figured out he like time outs.  Not a good discipline.  We tried taking away his electronic devices.  (Playbook tablet, Nintendo DS).  That didn’t matter to him.  He lived almost 9 years without these devices so he made do without them again.  We tried taking away his Lego’s at one point.  How many Lego’s can one child have?  Apparently, thousands.  And they are in boxes, drawers, cubbies, you name it, they are there, so how can you take them all away.  Take a few, he has more.  Take those, he still has more.  We tried banishing him to his room.  That worked for about a week until he figured out that it was fun to be in his room, with closet basketball, or reading a book, or playing with cars.  Well you get the idea.

Our current level of discipline is more like a reward system.  For everyday he does things correctly, he earns a day at summer camp.  For a day he doesn’t, he puts 25 cents into the bad day jar.  Mom and Dad have to put money in the bad day jar too.  So far, we have about $3.

The lesson I have learned on Discipline is:  Discipline with Love.  Never anger.  Discipline to correct an action, not just because.  Be consistent with your actions.   Love your kids no matter how angry they are making you.

How do you discipline your children?

Next Post:  It’s hard to lose weight when you’re the garbage can.

Lessons I have learned

Today begins this experiment on what I call Lessons from an Adoptive Father. I started writing in 2011 thoughts and lessons I have learned since we brought Nathan home from China. Some are work related lessons, some are simply what happened and what we learned. Thank you for following this blog.