Category Archives: money

Raising a Baby on a Budget

If you’ve been following this blog for any time, you know that we retired young and moved to the Caribbean to live the life of our dreams. Some people have made the comment to us that it is all fine and dandy to do that as a single person or couple, but it is altogether different with kids. And that is somewhat true. Having a child changes a lot about your life and realigns priorities quick. Children definitely don’t make things any cheaper.

However, I would say that it is completely feasible to live financially independent with kid(s). Being frugal and budget minded was what got us here and it certainly doesn’t (or shouldn’t) go away when you have kids. If you have good financial habits you just sort of incorporate them into the new life with child. Here are a few tips and tricks we have learned so far in our journey as frugal parents.

Hand-me-downs!
Baby stuff only lasts a short while. Take any offer of hand-me-downs that you can get, whether as a gift or bought secondhand. Many times they are only 3-6 months old and in great shape. We have a hand-me-down crib, breast pump, carriers and lots and lots of clothes and toys among other things. The only thing we have bought new was a dresser/changing table.


Photo credit: Laura Malischke

Breast feeding
Breastfeeding is not as easy as it looks and can even be painful (as it was for me in the beginning), so I completely sympathize with moms who aren’t able to do it, or do it for long. But it really is the best gift you can give your baby to start them out: from a strong immune system to parental/child bonding, it is an amazing thing. But the added bonus is that it is free! If you added up how much we would be spending on formula we have probably already saved hundreds of dollars.

Diapers
I really wish I could say that I use the reusable diapers we were given more than I do. We don’t have a washer and dryer near the house (actually we don’t have a dryer at all), so cleaning diapers would be a huge chore. That said, they are a great money-saving and environmentally friendly option and we have used them some. The good thing about disposables, however, is that you don’t have to change them very often because they can soak up a LOT of liquid, so one diaper often lasts through a whole night and you don’t need to worry about diaper rash as much. We were gifted a huge pack of diapers when Aeden was born and have only recently gone through them. I estimate we will need to spend about $40/month on them until he’s ready to be potty trained (around 2 years old).

Healthcare
Thankfully here in Puerto Rico health care and insurance isn’t too expensive. To have our baby covered by health insurance is about $90/month and has very low co-pays ($10/doctor visit).


Britton and Aeden by the sea

So all in all our expenses have increased about $150/month since having our baby which isn’t too bad! Since we are both home we can do things to increase our income (like selling flowers, renting out the cabana, etc) and take turns watching the child. Babies really don’t need much. They just need to be fed, cleaned and loved. And that, my friends, is priceless.

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Money Matters: Shop Smart and Shop Rarely

This is part of a series on finances. Here’s Part 1: How we live on just $1000/month.

Living in a super tiny indoor space (and a park-like outdoor space) as well as having a careful budget, has really helped to understand what is important and what is not. It has helped me to weigh in whether or not this or that purchase is really worth those valuable dollars, resources or space. In 300 square feet, even a new pair of shoes can take up a pretty large amount of real estate. As I have discussed before, many of our modern problems could be alleviated by simply not buying as much stuff! And we subscribe to this philosophy quite a bit.

But sometimes in this modern landscape we do still need to buy things. This is a point when you need to be careful where your dollars go if you are serious about becoming financially savvy and financially independent. But there can be lots of temptation and marketers that would have you believe that spending gobs of money is the only way for you to get your goods. I recently saw an ad posed as an article in a magazine that made me laugh out loud.

Money matters shopping
Do you see what I see?

At first glance it seems innocent and common enough. There is a list of the must-haves for going to the beach: Laura Prepon’s supposed picks. A tote bag, cover-up, bangle bracelet, bikini and wide brimmed hat. What made me laugh though, was when I totaled up the cost of these items: $298 for the tote, $98 for the cover-up, $75 for 3 bracelets, $225 for a bikini top and $150 for a bikini bottom, and $40 for the hat. Or a total of $886! And that is not including tax which in Puerto Rico would be about $102! So around $1,000 just to wear very little to the beach?!

Outfit
What’s in Cassie’s beach bag?

It got me thinking about my beach gear. Like Laura Prepon, the swimsuit from Marshall’s was the most expensive item at $25 (and both the top and bottom! Imagine that! You don’t have to choose whether to go topless or bottomless -haha). The hat from Me Salvé was $1.99. The tote bag I’ve had for about 15 years and I think cost something like $15 back in the day. The cover up I recently got at a clothing swap, so essentially cost me just cleaning out my clothes that no longer fit me (this is the best idea ever! -thanks Ocean State of Mind!). Regarding bracelets, for one thing I don’t wear any jewelry to the beach, but I just threw them in to be comparable. The green one I got at Kohls in Greeley for about $2 and the bead one was a gift from my momma (thanks Mom!) that I think was something like $10. For a grand total of $53.99! With tax that would be about $60 total. Quite a difference especially when you look essentially the same as if you had spent what the magazines want you to think you need!

Beach outfit
Are you beach ready at $60 or $1000?

So be careful what you buy and be careful what you read. Sometimes just reading or watching things like in magazines, catalogs, TV, internet, etc can make you want things that you would never have thought about before and also plant in your mind a sort of normalcy for spending outrageous amounts of money. Remember, if you are seeking financial freedom, your dollars are your freedom fighters so use them wisely! And while bargain shopping can be a game in and of itself, the truly best way to save money (not to mention the resources it took to make the items!) is to not spend it!

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Money Matters: How We Live On Just $1000/Month

Some people have asked for more specifics about how we were able to up and move to Puerto Rico and essentially retire before either of us turned 35. Well, let me first start this series with our budget. Your budget is sort of like your diet. It can be healthy or not, but it certainly does reflect what’s important to you. For us, living a bit more wild and free choosing how we wanted to spend our time was far more important than a lot of consumer items we could buy. Obviously not everyone wants to live like we do. But it certainly IS possible. And I would say having more freedom is worth every penny we don’t spend. If you are interested in the cost of living in general in Puerto Rico, check out this post: Cost of Living in PR.

Money Tree
Don’t we all wish we had a money tree?!

We live on only about $1000 a month. This is probably a shockingly low amount for most people, but it’s really just fine for us and it is very close to the amount we spent in Colorado except that we had a mortgage there. Less really is more and we still have a lot of fun and this is a pretty loose budget. If we needed to live on less I could probably get this down to about $700/month or $8,000/year if needed. So how does that $1000/month break down for us?

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

$500 -Food/alcohol. Approximately $100-$130/week grocery bill equates to about $500/month. While we grow a good 50% of our food it still costs a lot to buy food and alcohol. I value good, nutritious food, so this might be more than someone who just buys cheap junk processed food. Still eating in is by far cheaper (and way healthier) than eating out. This breaks down to less than $3 per meal per person (3 meals a day). If you counted the snacks/beer/coffee that we don’t go out to buy it’s even less!

Bananas
A banana tree is pretty close!

$100- Vehicle. Travel. Truck gas, marbete and maintenance like tires. We try not to drive too much and this is probably closer to $75/month but also gives some room for long distance travel or a random large mechanical problem.

$75- Going out for food. We don’t eat out much, but just a light lunch for two is about $20. Let alone a dinner. So we only go out to eat about 3 or 4 times a month.

Taco Food
Living in a tourist town can be expensive if you eat like a tourist very often! $8 for a couple of tacos is pretty common

$75 – Partying/hanging out. Hard to admit, but yah, going out once or twice a month to a bar or whatever is expensive when you start buying drinks/rounds! At least we get paid a little when we do it with the band!

$50- Clothing. We don’t buy this monthly but this would probably be an average of about $500-600/year.

$50 -Random household goods/repairs. Kitchen items, Kitty food, makeup, cleaning supplies, small tools, Rx. Stuff like that.

$50- Farm Expenses. Bird food, new plants, plant care, yard tools. Though some of this is capital improvements and/or comes back in the sale of eggs/produce or in that we don’t have to buy as much food at the store.

$50 -Utilities. Water, electricity and internet. Appx $15 each. We don’t have air conditioning or a clothes dryer and although we sometimes water our plants or mix concrete it still doesn’t seem to jump up much. Sharing is caring when it comes to internet and many other things.

$25- Medical. Doctor/Dentist -Rarely needed. Probably not even this much.

$25- Other miscellaneous expenses that inevitably pop up. Also gifts/donations.

What’s missing?
A mortgage/rent. We have no mortgage on this property. Living expenses are generally the largest expense most people have. So to be free from this is incredibly important in being able to live simply/inexpensively.
Other debt. We have no other personal debt. No student loans. No credit card balance. No home equity lines. No car payments. We live simply and don’t like debt unless it earns us money directly above and beyond what it costs to service the debt and even then I don’t really like it.
Costs related to investments in CO. Those go back into the business so aren’t counted as part of living expenses.
Most insurances. We self insure, so I suppose in a way our savings pays for this but it’s not a monthly or yearly expense.
Taxes. We pay very little taxes except sales tax. One big benefit of making less money is not having to pay much in income taxes! Property tax is $40/year or less than $4/month. Counted in other misc.
Costs related to construction. This was saved for prior to the move.
Many utilities. We don’t pay for a cell phone. We don’t have cable or even a TV. We don’t pay heating (there is no need for heating). No one pays for garbage service in PR.
Hair cuts, landscaping, car and house maintenance and other stuff we can do ourselves.
Costs related to children or divorces (like child support/alimony). Keepin’ it simple!
Very many dumb purchases. Sorry to say but some things like cigarettes, lottery tickets or bottled water are just not smart for a variety of reasons including your health, the environment and of course your budget. Alcohol is our one dumb purchase and we limit it to about $50-100/month. If we needed to save more it would be the first thing to go.
Retirement payments. We are already living it!
Most Entertainment. Most of our screen audio/visual entertainment comes from the internet.
Savings. We still save each month, but this budget list is only for expenses that are not recouped.
Travel/Vacations. This is captured under vehicle somewhat, but we can also use savings. Though I haven’t left the island in over two years, so it’s not really an expense currently. Traveling is super expensive in general!

Guajataca tunnel BK CK
Livin’ it up in Puerto Rico!

So that’s it! That’s what we spend our money on. We took a huge pay cut to move to Puerto Rico, but it didn’t really hurt because we lived on this basic budget in Colorado even when we were making a LOT more.  Though a lot of focus is on salary or pay, it doesn’t really matter what you make. It matters much more what you spend. Again to compare a diet, just as you can’t outexercise a bad diet (if you are eating more than you burn), you can’t outearn a bad spending habit (if you are spending more than you earn). You may be making a million dollars a day, but if you are spending two million you’re doing much worse than someone like us who makes maybe $1200/month but only spends $1000.

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Are Acts 20 and 22 Bad for Puerto Rico?

I have been thinking about this for quite some time and would like to hear some other opinions on it. While Puerto Rico is in the midst of major economic woes, there seems to be a rather strange phenomenon going on with what are called Acts 20 and 22 as well as 273. I have heard of these things enough to warrant looking into it some.

Here are the details I found:

These are laws that passed in 2012 with the intent of bringing in investors, money and jobs to the island. Here are some key benefits to investors for each of them.

Act 20: Create export services by alluring outside service entities via tax incentives to relocate to the island
0% Taxes on Earnings and Profit
3-4% Flat Income Tax
0% Property Tax

Act 22: Entice nonresident investors to relocate in Puerto Rico
0% Taxes on Dividends and Interest

0%-10% Taxes on Capital Gains

Act 273:  Broaden the scope of banking activities for international financial entities (IFEs)
4% Income Tax on Permitted IFE Activities
0% Property Tax on Real, personal, tangible, and intangible property
IFE Shareholder incentives:

6% Income Tax on Distributions for P.R. residents
0% income Tax on Distributions for non-residents

Services act 20

Basically what this amounts to are some major tax breaks on everything from property, corporate taxes, individual taxes and banking to non-residents of Puerto Rico if they live here for at least half the year. The hope, of course, is that this luring in of investors and businesses to the island would help improve the economy by providing jobs, spending money and improving the island’s infrastructure by buying up old run down assets. But as you may notice, glaringly, these Acts don’t even apply to Puerto Ricans! For Act 22 for example, you are only eligible if you hadn’t lived in Puerto Rico between 1997 and 2012! Why is there no emphasis on building up businesses from within or at least extending the same benefits? These are so obviously geared at outside interests it’s just downright weird.

So given all of that, what’s the verdict? Are these actually working? Does lowering taxes on the wealthy and bringing in wealthy non-residents improve an economy? Well, these laws were written so hastily that while they know that a few hundred people have come to start investments or businesses here in the last 3 years under these acts, they don’t know what the true impact has been and are just going to start studying the impact now. Oh geez, let’s just write a law and THEN hope that it works? Fingers crossed!

puerto rico policy
Puerto Rico Economic Policy?

But they already know. In general most progressive economists say no, that lowering taxes on the wealthy doesn’t actually improve an economy. What it does is make the rich richer and widen the gap between wealthy and poor. And in this case, it seems to also divide the outside interests and local Puerto Rican interests since there is not an equal playing field. The haves and the have-nots are further entrenched. Trickle down economics has been tried and just doesn’t work.

The basis for a stable economy has always been a strong middle class and these types of tax breaks don’t build up the middle class -especially when it is not available to the general public, you know, to Puerto Ricans! I know quite a few people who would love to take part in these programs but can’t because they were already living here! How backwards is that?! Let’s bring in outside interests that know nothing of the island rather than spurring growth from within of people who know they already love it and don’t want to leave!

In the last 3 years there has been little sign that these sorts of programs have worked at all to help Puerto Rico. The situation in Puerto Rico is even more severe because with so many people leaving the island in search of economic opportunities elsewhere these laws have brought on a type of money grab akin to Detroit by people like John Paulson and Nicolas Prouty who have bought up not only Puerto Rico debt but also huge swaths of property making it even more difficult for local Puerto Rico investments into the community. The whole thing seems to be like building an economy on a house of cards and the stakes just get higher.

And what makes this even more appalling to me is that at the same time that the uber wealthy are swooping in on Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican people who can’t take advantage of these benefits are suffering through austerity measures including high sales taxes, high costs of goods and services (partially due to outdated shipping rules) and shutting down local schools and hospitals all the while being treated as second class citizens without the same rights (voting, bankruptcy) as elsewhere in the states.

These types of tax incentives for the wealthy have been tried before (here’s a long report on the economic history of PR) and brought the large pharmaceutical and other manufacturing companies years ago. But there were no real roots tying these businesses to Puerto Rico. Once the tax benefits expired, the businesses packed up and left. This disrupted so much of society as it took people from the countryside who had worked traditionally on the land and put them in the cities and factories. Once the companies left, the people with no other options were left holding the bag. It seems the same pattern is happening again. It’s a hedge fund party in a economic crisis and the true cost is paid by the locals. The environment is doubly regressive: taxing the poor through higher and higher sales and other taxes and not collecting the fair share from the corporations and individuals that have capitalized on the island -and who are certainly not suffering financially. The financial inequality and disparity only widens.

I have actually met some of the people who have come to Puerto Rico primarily because of these Acts and I understand it from their perspective. They are mainly good people just going where the incentives have led them. They may even truly want to help Puerto Rico. It is not the people I have a problem with and I encourage people to come here who truly want to stay and help Puerto Rico! But I do have a problem with bad policy. And these Acts are bad. They are not holistic, not available and encouraged for local populations, have not been shown to have a real positive impact, do nothing to address the economic burdens that are created, and they are just simply unfair and divisive! They do not bring equal opportunities for all and in fact widen the disparity! Because while these incentives have worked to bring people here, I am not sure it has worked to get them to stay and help the island in a long or sustainable way. If they ever actually make that report that studies the impact of these laws I would love to see how many of these investors stay on the island for more than the 183 day minimum and consider Puerto Rico truly their “home” in anything other than name.

So that’s where my investigations have taken me on Acts 20/22/273. Perhaps in a generally healthy economy, they could stand up to some scrutiny and if they were geared at actually encouraging Puerto Rico ingenuity and entrepreneurship -or bringing back the diaspora of Puerto Ricans from the states even!- I might be able to stand behind them. As they are currently, though, they seem to be just more of the same wealthy elites writing the rules for the rich to get richer on a beautiful tropical island playground for half a year at a time while ignoring the true community and local interests.

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