Screw you Escrow!

Total Trade Count: 207,307
Total Foil Count: 3,750

Today we are celebrating the fact that I have been able to remove Escrow from my Mortgage.  When you buy a house you get a mortgage.  In that mortgage they have this thing called escrow.  Escrow consists of PMI, Taxes, and Insurance for the property (at least where I live).  So in the end your mortgage consists the principle payment, the interest you need to pay for the privilege of having a mortgage, and this escrow account.

Escrow will get added to your mortgage automatically if you do not put 20% or more down for the down payment.  You will also get charged PMI.  PMI is like an additional payment to the mortgage company because they know you do not have a 20% down payment, so they are "trying to protect" themselves from something besides being able to take your home if you do not pay.

The way Escrow works is, you get to pay PMI to the mortgage company but you also need to pay your home owner insurance and property taxes through the mortgage company as well.  Home owner insurance is paid out 1 time a year and it is a pretty big number.   Then property taxes is also another large number that gets paid out 2 times a year.  All three of those payments will come out of your Escrow account, and the mortgage folks are glad to do that for you.  And since you paid less than 20% as a down payment, you need to use them to pay those.

A lot of people think that is just an awesome thing for them to do for you.  Not only will you just pay the mortgage, but they will also pay your other bills for you?!  But like I mentioned in my last blog, it is all about the small moves that you can get ahead.  Those cash back rewards and interest payments by buying things from a savings account using interest free financing, but paying it off slowly while you have the full payment in savings gaining interest is what I am talking about.  This is just another small move to take.

So by removing Escrow from my mortgage, then all I will be paying is the principle payment along with the interest payment.  Next, I take all that money that I would have paid to my mortgage for the Escrow account and I put that into savings.  Since the insurance gets paid out once a year, and the taxes will get paid out twice, that leaves a lot of months to be gaining interest while I wait to pay those bills.  This is just another small steps in making more money for family in trying to secure my financial future, and money to use to buy Magic cards.

I am not sure how much I will be making on that saving account, but it will increase the total amount of my savings account, which is also leverage to be able to make the quick moves that I am trying to do in order to take advantage of some situations from time to time.

I know, some people might think it to be silly to put that kind of stress on yourself, and have to worry about more things in life, but those are the small little moves that get you ahead in life.  It is the same reason I really love getting 0.019 shares from a Dividend Reinvestment off of some stocks that I own that I get to reinvest back into my position with the knowledge that I will get 0.020 shares the next quarter.

I might go into this at some time, but to prove my point a little bit more back in 2008 I started down the path of DRIP investing and in that year I made $538.83 for free off the Dividends.  Last year that DRIP ended up being $6,924.25 for free.  I know that seems silly, and who really cares, but in my eyes I made almost $7000 for doing nothing but buying some shares of stock that pay a dividend and let them sit there and reinvest that dividend back into itself for free.

It is all about those little steps.

My hope is that with all these little steps I will be able to take my investments and put them into more dividend paying stocks along with stashing some of them into Municipal Bonds and try and live as tax free as I can.  But I can get into that in a later blog, this one is about the Escrow account.

So to celebrate I decided to make a little investment into War of the Spark.

I am just going to come out and say it now, this set is going to be just like Kaladesh and Aether Revolt.  Like Ixalan or Eldritch Moon.  I am going to take a little bit of cash and invest it into some sealed product.

Here is the first batch of boxes I picked up, and I have some more that should be coming in as soon as my FLGS can get them in, but I am going to say that this set is going to be one of those sets that people look back on with a smile.  It will be one that they wish they can find a box to buy for drafting or collecting.  This is going to be another Dominaria.  People will want to experience this set well after they stop printing it.  I almost want to say that WoTC are going to stop the print on this set early just to mess with the investors.  We will see, but I am marking this down as one of my Spec's and going to pick up a bunch.

I can see the value not only in the rare cards, but the uncommon and common cards.  And like Ixalan, this set has some good land cards, and everyone needs land cards.  I have some high hopes for this set to make a lasting impression with future players, and it will retain value moving forward, and I can make a little cash with this investment in this sealed product.

Now I am still only going to open a Mythic Edition box if I can get it, and 1 of my Bundles, following the plan to keep the least amount of extra cards around, and finishing up the playset after rotation.  I figure this set will be opened a lot, and there will be a very large inventory out there to piece together my sets in 2 years.

I almost want to pick up more of these for some stupid reason, just cause I think they will be the last of their kind since there are not going to be anymore sparks.

I think the BaB promo is not too shabby either, and could be a good EDH card.

I also stopped by another LGS the other day and picked up these for a really good price.  $0.50 a piece and I can't pass that up.

I got some trades in as well, so throwing them up for the ledger, but almost done with my Guild Kit land sets.

And then three more Player Promos.  These have slowed down a bit, and now they are only trickling in, but I hope to get them complete soon.

So that is it.  Just had to share my thoughts on the Escrow accounts, and how I am making small moves to reach my financial goals.  It is just another step up those long stairs in the hopes to be able to retire at some point, and only focus on things I enjoy.

Debt

Total Trade Count: 207,496
Total Foil Count: 3,762

I am big into budgeting.  I have been keeping a steady budget since 2003.  I keep track of everything I spend, all my bills, all my debt, everything financial.  There have been adjustments for the last 16 years as I have grown.  At first it was a pretty simple budget with my bills, my income, and what very little I saved.

I would say that keeping a budget was the most important step in my financial career.

It gave me the insight of what I was spending my money on, or better put what I was wasting my money on.  Have you ever just wondered what you spend our paychecks on?  Like, you make so much an hour and pay your bills on time, but for some reason you never really have enough every couple of weeks.  Well that is where I was.

Being 27 and not really having much to my name, I just wondered how people were able to save for retirement, or a house, or a new car.  Emergency fund?!  It just did not make that much sense to me.  I was able to do the things I wanted to do, and I was saving my 10% a month for retirement, but I never really thought I was getting ahead in life.

I have been saving since I was a working 17 year old because of what my father told me.  When I started working I asked my father if he could go back in time, what would he do differently.  His answer was that he would save more at a younger age, and then he showed me a spreadsheet on how compound interest works.  Over time the money you saved could grow, and you could basically make money on the money you have saved, and not even need a job.  Of course this peeked my interest and I started my financial education.

He had bought me a couple of Motley Fool books, and I took a slight interest in this whole financial independence world but at 17 how much could I really do.  I took in what I could, started a simple budget that I never kept up with, and started to save 10% of my gross income.  Once I hit 18 I put that money into a RothIRA and let it be.  Back then you could only start a RothIRA at age 18, and it did not matter if you had taxable income, while now if you can just prove you made the money through employment you can start depositing money into a RothIRA at any age.

You would think that there was some correlation that the first years I started to try and keep a budget was when I stopped playing Magic the Gathering, but I still blame Everquest for leaving Magic the Gathering.  That is another story.

Fast forward 10 years and I was still working and saving, but I was not anywhere close to owning my own home.  My father and I purchased a townhome together, but that was mainly for him.  I had the credit, and he had the cash, so we decided to just buy something together since the place we were renting kept raising prices.

And yes, I lived with my father until I was 25.  And yes, the main reason I moved out was because who wants to bring home a girl when you still live with your parents.  I had to grow up at some point.

After a little while I got into corporate America and started to make "the real money", but I still could not make ends meet.  I was maintaining a credit card balance throughout the year, and was stuck in the rotating swipe and payoff cycle.  I was basically living on the credit card because I was out spending my income.  I tricked myself into thinking that I was living a life style that I could actually afford.

So I started the budget in 2003, and it really showed me where my money was going.  I had a credit card with a $5000 balance, and I was paying around $200 a month to the bill.  Then I saw that I was being charged $103 in interest for that $5000 balance.  So that means, the $200 I was sending in for payment, more than half of it was going to pay the credit card company for the pleasure of swiping the card making them fees, and the other less than $100 was going to pay off the $5000 balance.

I literally slapped myself in the face with my own hand.

I was just throwing away money every month, and I figured out why I could not make ends meet.  I still remember to this day calling all my credit card companies and asking them to lower my interest rate that I was paying.  Most of them did end up lowering the rate, but there were some cards that wouldn't.  Those were the ones I transferred my balances out of to the ones that did lower my interest rate, and I ended up cancelling the cards.

I know, you should not cancel the cards, but I was upset so I did something rash.  But really the right thing to do in the credit card game is to pay off the card and try and keep them around as long as you can.  That will only help your credit history, and maintaining an available credit balance for longer.  We will get into that game at some point too.

So yeah, in 2003 was when I started my journey to get debt free.  I started that year with $10,389.20 in debt, and I did not become debt free until Sept 2005 just in time to move into my new condo and put on some more debt!

From that point on I was very aware of playing the credit card game.  At every point I would attempt to buy everything interest free, and I would only finance something if I could get an interest free credit card or loan.  Outside of buying a car or home, my goal was to not pay any interest.  I was also very aware of what interest rates were on any type of credit I owned.

Enter my newest purchase.

I have an Amazon credit card and with that comes 12 months of interest free financing if the item is over $499.  With having good credit you do get some perks.  So if I end up paying off this box of Mercadian Masques in 12 months, I will not have to pay the interest that is being charged during the 12 month period.  All interest is deferred.  This means I am paying some god awful rate, and every month that interest balance gets higher, and at the 12 month mark if I have not paid off this purchase I will have to pay what ever is left on the balance and the interest gets added onto that balance.

So why did I just go on about my budgeting history and paying off debt?

Well being able to come to this purchase without having any credit card debt, and having the funds to pay off the purchase at any point, I can take advantage of the interest free financing option and get what I want without having to pay more than what the price is.  The trick is to not fall into the trap of not paying it off before your interest free period ends.

Not having a cloud of payments that need to be paid every month is where you want to be.  You want to make the money you have working for you, and not the other way around.  Do not think about it like you can afford the $80 a month payment to avoid paying interest.  Try and look at buying things with the aspect of being able to pay for things outright, but choosing not too because that money is sitting in a savings account making you money.

Then find interest free ways of buying things so that you are afforded time to pay off the things you want slowly while gaining interest in the savings accounts, and then paying them off.  That way instead of paying $800 for a box of magic cards, you really only end up spending $750 because of the 12 months you made $50 in interest in that saving account.

I know that seems silly, and it is only $50.  But if you end up using a cash back credit card, and you make 1.5% cash back from your purchases, that is an additional $12 you will have made, and it will bring your purchase price down to $738.

And if you do all your purchases with this in mind, things start to add up real quick.  For instance, I have been able to do this for a while now, and in 2018 I was able to make $1569.52 in cash back rewards and interest on my savings accounts.  That is a bit more than $50.

My wife actually got mad at me because I would not let her buy things with cash.  She wanted to run the spending budget account with envelops of cash rather than use the cash back credit card.  I then showed her that we would be losing around $1000 in cash back rewards, and she changed her mind.

Being able to come at purchases with this in mind frees you up a lot.  Now I am not able to just go out and buy everything I want, but I am able to take advantage of purchases when they do come up because of this.  I already have the money sitting in a savings account making me money, which is a huge deterrent to spending money in itself, but then having the options to buying things in this manner is also freeing.

Instead of charging $800 to a credit card that charges 24% and paying well over the $800 purchase price in the end, I am able to leverage what I already have built up to get ahead $1 at a time.

It has been a very long road to get here, and I am talking about 16 years.  I still have my home debt, and I am trying to save up enough money to buy my next car without getting a loan, but that is all apart of the game.  Now I do not live pinching pennies, but saving where I can to make these small increases in personal wealth has afforded me the ability to leverage my past financial history with future purchases, and come out ahead so I can continue this cycle.  I am no longer stuck in the cycle of living on a credit card and making the minimum payment.

This is just a small look inside of how I try and deal with buying MTG products.  Here are some more updates on things that have come in.  And again, I hope to be writing more like this.

This fine trade came in, and the complete sets of Player Rewards Promo cards is getting close to complete.  Thank you CardSphere!

I stopped up at a LGS near the house to see if they picked up anything, but this is all I could find.  Not sure on the Isolate, but it can never hurt picking up things that cost 1 mana to get rid of things.

Went up to my old stomping grounds Mead Hall Games and I was able to get closer to my UMA set and the Box Topper set.  I swear if they come out with another Box Topper type set with Modern Horizons I am going to just quit.

That same day I headed up to my FLGS Lodestone Coffee & Games.  I finally finished my Battlebond playset of first prints, and was able to snag some UMA and UMB Box Toppers.  I really wanted to see if I could pre-order War of the Spark and Challenger deck, but they pointed me to their website.

And since I was out and about I decided to head up to the Source Comics and Games to see if they had anything, but all I could find were some lovely packs.  I KNOW!  I could have picked up a box of Nemesis for what I paid for these, but yeah I wanted to impulse buy something.

This was another trade that came in from Canada, and it was also on CardSphere.  I think I only need like 6 more and I am done!

So fast forward a week and I just picked up these at the LGS near the house.  I did end up trying to buy them at Lodestone, but they do not pre-order these things, and when I went up there they did not even have them in stock!  No idea what is going on, but sure wish they would just let me pre-order everything.  What a waste of time going up there, or was it?

Since I was already up there looking for Challenger decks, I might as well try and see what they did have in.  I recently found out that this card came in 6 different flavor texts.  So of course I am trying to get a playset of them all.  With these adds, now I think I just need to pick up the rarest of the prints.

And BAM!  Picked this up to finish up my playsets of these wonderful dual lands.  I did go for 3 playsets of each, and it might end up being too many, but I can really see these going up in price so it was somewhat of an investment.

So there we go, some info on budgeting, saving, credit cards, and the such.  I hope you enjoyed it, and like I said I am going to try and write more like this instead of just posting what I picked up.

Thanks for reading!

Thoughts

Total Trade Count: 207,629
Total Foil Count: 3,765

I am going to start to try and talk about my life more in these blogs, just so I have something to talk about.  I just don't see the value of just posting the cards in my collection without something interesting to talk about.  I mean, some people might want to just look at cards in my collection, but I need to make this more interesting.  The one purpose of this blog is to provide a running ledger of my collection, but I really need to have something to talk about in these blogs.

So today going to talk about goals.  Let's review my Magic the Gathering Goals.

1: Playset of every Standard Released Set from The Dark and up
2: A Single set of AAL and all supplementary sets
3: Complete Sealed Booster Box from Revised and up
4: Sealed product collection of all supplementary releases
5: Bucket List ABU complete sets Sealed product of more rare sets
6: Get rid of all my extra cards, and add the least amount to my bulk

I have OCD and I work best off of lists, so I tend to make lists of everything I want to do and that gives me some control and purpose of my days.  It allows me to gain control of what I NEED to do, and I can stay focused on those lists.  There is an added bonus to getting something done, but really it is a way for me to get up and move throughout my day knowing what I need to get done.

In my MTG life I have been able to complete #1, #2, and #4, while getting really close to #3.  I do not expect to get to #5 until after I retire.  And #6 we are in the middle of right now.

But with that I need more than just MTG lists in my life.  I maintain multiple spreadsheets to gauge my retirement, and also a daily budget.  I keep track of everything.  I mean everything!  It has helped me in knowing what I can spend, and what goals I can accomplish without stressing myself out.  I know that I can pay for my child's schooling, as well as be able to buy groceries every week.

I would say that my budget has lead me to be able to be comfortable with having a child.  There is no way to really plan for a baby, or to really be ready for a baby, but there were somethings that I did in order to make life less stressful for me.  My wife could care less about the planning of everything, but I needed to take responsibility for how I was going to be after the baby came, and there were steps I needed to take in order to get there.  I would also like to add that my freaking out still happened, but I would hope that it was to a minimum.  I mean, my wife is still with me, so it has not been so bad that she could not stick around.

But one thing I needed to do was get rid of all our debt.  That was pretty much my main goal before thinking about having a baby.  I came from a broken home, and financials were the main cause for the break, so I wanted to be able to provide my wife and baby the comfort of not having to worry about the day to day costs of living.  It also allowed me to have the flexibility of moving money from savings to spending without too much worry.

I save a lot.

One thing that I did not expect is the change of priorities.  I am not talking about saving, or budgeting, but the well being and health of myself.  I am an older first time father and some would say that I was not in horrible shape, but I was not healthy.  Having my son was a nice wake up call for myself, and I set a goal of running in a marathon by the time he turned 1.

Fast forward to his first birthday and I was no where near being able to finish a 10K, but it did set me on a path to getting more healthy.  I can now run a 5K without any real struggle, and I am working toward being able to finish a marathon at some point.  I really do think that everything started to change when we had our child.  At the beginning of the year, on New Years Day I decided to attempt to get a perfect year with consideration of my Apple Watch.

Rewind a bit, when my wife told me we were pregnant I went out and bought an Apple Watch.  The thought was to really use this new toy in getting in shape so that I can be around to see my grandchildren.  Time went on and I was able to finish that 5K, but I was very stop and go with working out.  I found it to be very difficult to maintain a workout schedule due to injury and straight up being out of shape.  I kept trying to find a schedule to working out that worked, but it was pretty difficult to maintain anything.

So, back on New Years Day I looked at my wife and said I was going to get a perfect year with my Apple Watch, and really make it a goal rather than just working out a couple times a week.  On the Apple Watch you get three rings that you can accomplish every day.

Move Calories burned
Exercise Minutes
Stand Goal

The watch will keep track of all your calories burned, but the move ones are more important because you are actually moving.  Then you need to exercise for at least 30 minutes each day, and stand for 1 minute each our for 12 hours a day.  Easy right!

I could do that, those are 3 very easy goals.

At first the rings were closed pretty easy, but now that I am 3 months and 6 days into it, my watch keeps pushing that limit to see if it can break me.  I swear that now that it sees all the completed days of rings being closed it is trying to see if I am really up to the challenge.  I really think that with the daily goals, I will be able to make the prefect year, but the stupid watch throws these monthly goals in there.

The Monthly goals started off pretty innocent, but now that the watch thinks I am in pretty good shape it is trying to kill me.  Now I have no real goal of getting a perfect year with all the monthly goals, but fuck you if I am not going to try.  Like the January goal was to hit my Move goal 20 times in the month.  Then February was to exercise for 830 minutes for the whole month.  March hit me a little in the face with closing all my rings, which was not that hard because I was trying to do that anyway.  Then fuck you April showed up.

This was not the kick ass April O'Neil from TMNT, oh no.  This was "so you want to get a perfect year?" asshole April.  I am so scared of this goal that I almost do not want to finish it because of what next month is going to look like.  In April I need to burn at least 28,100 calories.  That is 937 calories a day.  Right now, my Move Ring goal is 770 a day, and I can average around 850 a day.  This means I need to work out more that 80 more calories a day in order to hit this goal.

I know it does not sound like a lot, and I am thinking that next year around this time I will be laughing at that tiny goal, but it is good to have these goals to better my life.

Taking my OCD and using it in my favor.  Creating these lists to maintain my life and being about to workout different ways of thinking of things in order to make my life a little easier.  It might be more to do, or more work that needs to be put into maintaining all these lists, but it is bringing my better purpose in my life.

Without the lists of MTG cards I needed I would have not found a better way to spend money, and I would not take so serious budgeting.  Without my wife and child I am not sure I would be out of debt.  Without the thought of needing to grow old for my family I would not be on this path of staying healthy.

I still do get hit with those dark days, and it is impossible to take me away from my computer because things are not lining up.  Or I spend countless hours looking for a single thing because it was not where it was supposed to be.  But all in all I have been able to maintain my life through these lists, and if those are in good standing I can look at enjoying more of the life we are building for my son, and really enjoy life the way people should.

Goals are a good thing, and I think everyone should try and set some for themselves.

Here are some more of those Player Rewards Promos that came in.  I love CardSphere!

Nice little pick up here!

I am really getting close to getting all these lands, and I am surprised that there is not more of a demand for these.

And these stupid Planeswalker deck cards.  I seriously hope they cancel these decks after War of the Spark.  I am really starting to hate this product.  Just cause they have new printed standard cards, I am trying to get playset of them, and it really sucks.

So yeah, I am hoping to share a bit more of things that I am going through, and tie it to MTG collecting.  Hopefully next post it will be spicy with a new purchase, and how I got there.

Sold my Collection

April's Fools!

Yeah, I did not sell my collection, but I had to do some type of April Fools joke.  I was going to put in my notice at work, but that would have been going to far.

Total Trade Count: 207,674
Total Foil Count: 3,765

I have been getting some of the new cards in the mail, so I thought I would put a new post up.  It is nothing crazy, just some basic lands from the Guild Kits and some Player Rewards Promos.

Here are a ton of the basic lands from the Guild Kits.  As of the writing of this blog, I only need 13 more basic lands from 3 different Guild Kits.

Got these two, and I have to say my favorite is the Disenchant, just cause I am old school.

Then there are these two, but I could care less about them.  Just happy to add them to the collection.

I think the art on this one is a bit out there, but another nice add.

This one came in with a little bit more damage, but I did not want to complain about it.

This one was a bit cool to get, not going to lie.  It is a nice to have this in the collection.

I dont care what anyone else says, I love this card.  I have an Unlimited playset, and I just love them.  I used to play a Red / Blue vintage deck, and this card was just great.  I know the prices have come down a lot since there are so many other direct damage cards out there now, but back in the day, this was a big deal.  Serra Angel in one shot!

These are the posts that annoy me the most.  I just hate putting up pictures of cards that come in, as it makes me feel like I am just bragging but who could really brag about these cards.