Welcome to the The Old Money Edition of the Money Hacks Carnival! If this is your first time here, please have a look around and consider subscribing to our RSS feed. Be sure to also check out Festival of Frugality No. 139: The Michael Phelps Edition which was hosted here yesterday for more recommended reading.

Madoline and I have a fondness for history and all things old, so the theme for today’s carnival is “Old Money.” While credit cards, online banking and checks are great modern commodities, they just don’t have the charm of good, old fashioned money - in other words, cash. We hope you enjoy this tour through United States Treasury history and the art to be found in currencies of the past.

1934 $100,000 USD Bill (Woodrow Wilson)

Editor’s Picks

• PT presents 9 Tips For Going To One Income.
• Twenties Money Magazine presents My College Sold Me Out.
• Toni presents Happy with What We Don’t Have.
• The Investor presents How a boring broker will make you richer.
• Karen presents Spending money can save your money.

1918 $10,000 USD Bill (Salmon P. Chase)

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Welcome to the 139th Edition of the Festival of Frugality! This week’s edition celebrates the sensational achievements of Michael Phelps, holder of 15 Olympic Gold Medals and 7 World Records in swimming, in the past week and a half at the 2008 Olympics with photos and inspirational quotes from the champion himself.

I am also hosting the Money Hacks Carnival tomorrow, so be sure and check back for more great reads! If this is your first time here, please look around and consider subscribing to our RSS feed. 

Now on with the carnival!

(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Editor’s Picks

• Silicon Valley Blogger presents Lost Money: How Money Drains Add Up To $175,000 In 10 Years.
• MoneyNing presents Frugally and Happily Back to School 9 Different Ways.
• Kevin Brink presents “Sale” Can Sometimes be Just Another Four Letter Word.
• ISPF presents 10 Tips to Get Anyone into the Habit of Cooking at Home (Even if You Have Never Stepped into the Kitchen Before).
• Savingadvice presents Reached Financial Independence. Now What?

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We received the following letter from our County Assessor-Recorder the day before yesterday. At first I was afraid to open it, thinking it was bad news. Well, it did turn out to be bad news … but with every cloud comes a silver lining…

Dear Taxpayer:

As a result of the decline in value of the local residential real estate market, and, after a careful review of your property’s current assessment, we have determined that the factored base year value of your property exceeds the market value of your property as of January 1, 2008 and your value will be adjusted downward for the 2008/2009 tax year. This review has been done under the Proposition 8 “Decline In Value” program.

This value change will be reflected on your 2008-2009 tax bill which should be mailed in September.

The provisions of Proposition 13 also mandate that the value of your property shall be reviewed on an annual basis. This annual review could restore your factored base year value plus any applicable inflation factors that have occurred as of any subsequent lien date, but can never exceed your protected Proposition 13 base year value plus any applicable inflation factors. If the annual review should show that the market has experienced a further decline, you will receive another decrease in value for that tax year.

The Silver Lining

Despite the badness of this news, we can’t help but be a little cheered at the prospect of lowered property taxes this year. With decreased income but increased everything else, a break in property tax right now seems more important than our property value, because, after all, we won’t be trying to sell our property in this market.

The Rest of the Cloud

But back to the bad part of the bad news: Our adjusted 2008-2009 value is now 37% less than its base value. This is really worrying. We had been thinking about re-financing in the next year or so because our current loan is an ARM (fixed for the first 10 years - so until 2015), but that’s definitely on hold for now.

A few of our major concerns right now are:

• What if the market doesn’t come back up by 2015?
• What if we can’t afford to keep up with all the necessary maintenance due to the inflation and lowered income, resulting in further decline in value?
• What if we need to sell the house for some reason?

We can only hope that everything will work out after a year or two of lowered property taxes. Maybe we should start patronizing Starbucks.

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This first writing project deals with the circumstances, people and events in our past which have led to our present financial habits. I proposed this topic as the first of our group writing project as I had been planning to write something about our background and why we live the way we do.

We are one of those people who have a somewhat complicated history. In our first 25 years, we had lived in 3 different countries and called approximately 20 different places “home.” After several hours of attempting to put it all in prose, we have finally given up and decided to put our family financial history and relevant events in timeline format (and with authentic pictures), for your sake and ours.

A note before we begin: The time periods used to head each section are names of actual time periods from history; however, they are not all in correct historical order, but rather arranged to fit eras of our lives.

Pre-History

• 1978 July - Oakland, CA
  Mother, an art student from Taiwan, marries a young engineer and flight instructor from Japan whom she feels sorry for because he is poor and alone.

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As most of you must know, the California wildfires have been getting worse with each passing year. According to Peter Sanders of the Wall Street Journal, fire season has barely begun, but in the past 3 weeks, the fires have consumed 631,000 acres of and $112 million in State funds. In the past 12 months, the State of California has spent an estimated $950 million in firefighting costs, a 41% increase from the previous year.

With a current budget deficit of $17.2 billion, the urgent issue of who should pick up the firefighting bill has arisen. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed an insurance surcharge on all California home and property owners to help raise funds for firefighting.

But for those of us who have not chosen to build and live in the areas where these frequent seasonal fires occur, we can’t help but feel a little resentful of this proposal. The existence of homes in those areas drive firefighting costs up due to the necessity for differing procedures and additional resources. Not only does it cost more to have to use fire engines, airplanes and helicopters to defend these structures, but they take resources away from other remote fires that would otherwise be more quickly and easily contained.

According to Timothy Duane, professor of environmental planning and policy at UC Berkeley:

“When you are forced to move resources in defense of structures, it means you’re often taking resources away from other areas of the fire, or entirely separate fires, which means those fires are harder to contain with less resources. You have to deal with life, and property and natural resources, in that order, and when you’re dealing with the first two, it increases the extent of the fire and the time period before you can put the fire out.”

Yes, we do feel sorry for those who have lost their homes or whose homes are in danger, but they willingly purchased and/or built homes in areas that they knew were susceptible to seasonal fires. When we purchased our California home, we did so after researching the various environmental factors and comparing risks of natural disasters with other areas. With this sort of information readily available, as well as the fact that the wildfires are widely covered in the news each year, it’s hard to claim ignorance to the risk when they purchased or built their homes.

I know I should be more charitable and sympathetic, but frankly, with the daily inflation of food and gas prices, the heat wave increasing our electric bill, and decline in business putting a strain on our already modest lifestyle, I am not in the mood to pay a surcharge on my home insurance in order to make up for the poor home purchase decisions of others.

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Expansions Difficulty/Complexity: Easy

This is a cash-free version of the game wherein all transactions are handled through personal checking accounts and recorded in individual check registers. Each player is responsible for his own account and must record all transactions – payment and receipt of rent, taxes, bribes, etc. in his check register.

Objective

To teach children (and some adults) how to accurately record transactions and balance a check register.

How to Play

• Download and print the Bank of Monopoly Personal Check Register (includes rules)
• Instead of distributing cash at the beginning of the game, players record the opening balance at the top of the check register (in the right-hand column under $ Balance). If playing the original Atlantic City Monopoly game with the distribution of 2 x $500, 2 x $100, 2 x $50, 6 x $20, 5 x $10, 5 x $5 , and 5 x $1 bills, the opening balance is $1,500.
• Instead of using cash, all transactions are recorded in the check register under Deposit (+) and Payment (-), and all money belonging to the player is totaled in the $ Balance column.

Click on the image to view a sample check register

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