This blog is officially 1 year old! Just a baby compared to most blogs.

I began 1MansMoney 12 months ago with a post about our negative net worth. Since then, we have turned things around and now have a positive net worth. We also have one year under our belt towards achieving our goal of financial independence and retiring early.

I give credit for our financial success to God because this is all His anyways, to my wife because she’s my inspiration, and to our families for their guidance. I also have to give credit to this blog for helping us keep better track of where we were at and where we are going.

For those of you that want to get out of debt and plan for retirement, I encourage you to consider starting a blog. Any goal worth achieving requires a plan and follow thru. I find that this blog is a terrific tool. I liken it to a financial diary that, since others read it, helps provide accountability and feedback.

I can’t wait until a year from now when 1MansMoney is in its terrible 2’s.

In a previous post, I mentioned that we filed an APPLICATION FOR CHANGED ASSESSMENT in an attempt to get our property taxes reduced.

We received a letter from the County’s Assessor’s Office today stating that they reviewed comparable properties and agree that property values have declined. In our application, we requested that they reduce our property value from $340,016 to $275,000. Instead, they reduced our property value to $270,000, $5,000 more that we requested!

We simply have to sign the form and send it in. From that point, it should take 30-45 days to receive a corrected tax bill. We have already paid $1,842.50, half of our original $3,685.00 tax bill. We’re guesing that our 2nd half of the tax bill will be reduced by ~$700, to $1,142.

Looking back, I thought this whole process was going to be a hassle. Thankfully, my wife was not of the same opinion and took it upon herself to call the County’s Assessor’s Office to find out where to download the form. After downloading the form, we spent a few minutes checking comps in the area on http://www.zillow.com/, completed the form, and drop it in the mail. . .Easy money.

Check out this interesting net worth comparison tool based on your age and income: http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/networth_ageincome/index.html.

This calculator is set-up for individual comparison; I don’t think it really applies for couples. Nonetheless, I ran a few scenarios just to see how our current $23,873.25 net worth compares. The details are below.

SCENARIO #1
Using my age (32) and annual income ($66,150):

SCENARIO #2
Using my wife’s age (23) and annual income ($40,000):

SCENARIO #3
Using my age (32) and our combined annual income ($106,150):

Based on the results, it seems that we are doing great for our ages. However, we are not don’t as great when comparing our net worth based on our income. We just barely came out ahead in Scenario #2 using my wife’s income and in the other two scenarios, we get badly beaten.

While this calculator was fun to play with, I do not put a lot of weight into its usefulness. One flaw is that it does not take into account how long you have been making your current income. Just a couple of years ago, my salary was considerably less. In real life, this has to play into the equation.

Okay, maybe I’m just a little bitter that we didn’t get better results. Ultimately, I know that what matters is where we are at in achieving our goals, not how we compare to everyone else.

We have decided to get term life insurance to protect us financially in case one of us. . . well, you know.

My wife found $500,000 10 year term life insurance from Farmers for $20.68/month for me and $18.60/month for her. We made sure there is an option to increase coverage for when we buy a home as well as to renew the policy at the end of the 10 year term.

We are also switching our condo insurance and my truck insurance from AAA to Farmers. The condo insurance will increase $35/year ($451/year vs. $416), but my truck insurance will decrease $254/year ($626/year vs. $880/year). Both policies will have the same coverage and deductibles as before. The money we’re saving on the truck insurance will help offset some to the cost of the term insurance. Plus, it just makes sense to have all of the policies with one company.

This year, our condo tax bill increased from $3619.60 to $3,685.68. This is surprising considering the decline in Southern California property values. We purchased our condo two years ago for $333,250. Similar units are now selling for ~$260,000-$290,000.

Our tax bill indicates the county’s assessed value pf our condo is currently $340,016. A couple of our neighbors have been successful this year at reducing their condo taxes $500-$1,000 simply by challenge the county’s current value of their property. So, we have decided to do the same. We filled out an APPLICATION FOR CHANGED ASSESSMENT, in which we estimated our properties value at $275,000. The form was easy to complete but the approval process can take a couple of months. If we are successful, we will receive a refund on the taxes we paid this year.

My wife and I have decided to give ourselves a “bonus” this month for reaching our 2007 net worth goal 3 months early.

This extra fun money will come from an unexpected ~ $799.09 commission check my wife will receive from her old, old job. We plan to give some of it to our church and then split the remainder. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not getting lazy now that we reached our 2007 net worth goal, we’re just rewarding ourselves for being consistent with our plan earlier in the year.

We’re excited to already be making progress on our 2008 net worth goal ($48,700) while still only in 2007. If my projections are accurate, we should be over 60% of the way there (~$30,000) when 2008 actually starts.

My siblings and I were blessed to have grown up in a nice home in one of the better communities of my hometown. As a young man, it didn’t seem like such a big deal to me that our home was paid off. As I grew up, however, I realized that most of my friend’s parents still had huge mortgages in addition to a lot of consumer debt. Now that my wife and I have our own mortgage, I have an even greater appreciation for what they were able to achieve.

My parents ended up selling that house years ago and purchased a new home in a retirement community on a beautiful golf course. During a recent conversation with them, I learned that they only have a ~$23K balance on their mortgage and will likely have it paid off soon. Wow! Most people are lucky if they pay off one house in their lifetime and my parents are going to have done it twice.

Today is a busy meeting day for me at work (4 meetings total). I try to get my work done between meetings, making for a hectic day. In-between meetings, one of my co-workers popped in my office today asking “Do you know you have a flat tire?”. I thought he was joking, but unfortunately, he wasn’t. Since my day was packed, I figured I’d wait until after work to take care of it.

After work, I removed the flat tire and put on my spare tire – one of my co-workers was nice enough to lend a hand. I hesitated going to the tire store because I figured it would be packed with customers coming in after work. When I pulled up, there was not one customer in the office or a single car in the bay. They were able to patch my tire in 15 minutes, for no charge. Heck, they even saved me the trouble of putting my spare back under my truck.

What started off as a bad situation that didn’t turn out so bad after all.

My wife was planning to join me on a business trip next week, but is unable to now that she is starting a new career. We had purchased her plane ticket online and received special pricing, so I was sure we would have to just right it off. I was wrong. She called the airline yesterday and they told her that we can apply the value of the ticket to another flight as long as we did so within 12 months. I’m going to miss her on the trip, but it’s good to know that the money spent on her ticket was not just thrown away.

I was reading about scams the other day and it got me thinking.

I don’ t believe I have been duped many times, but a story that immediately came to mind was a time I was took for $20, and gave it to the guy with a smile. A few years back, when I was living in an apartment, my roommates and I were kicking back in front of our place when a guy walked up looking sweaty and tired. He explained to us that he was our new neighbor in a unit just across the pool, and had run into some bad luck. His moving van ran out of gas down the hill, and he was trying to get everything moved in to his new place before he had to work that evening. He asked if he could borrow $20, and repay it the next day. Wanting to be a helpful neighbor, I gave him $20 and wished him luck. After a couple of days of not hearing back from the guy, I began knocking on the doors of the apartments across the pool. No one had heard of a new neighbor moving in, or had seen the guy. I couldn’t believe how gullible I was. It wasn’t so much the $20, but the fact that someone would take advantage of another person that was trying to help.

Another story that came to mind was the time my buddy bought a VCR (before DVD’s) from a guy selling them out of the back of his trunk in a parking lot. My friend gave the guys $50 for a new, unopened VCR. He raced home, excited to test his new purchase. Upon opening the shrink wrapped box, he realized that instead of buying a VCR, he bought a VCR box filled with bricks. Granted, he deserved what he got for buying what would likely have been stolen merchandise.

Do you have a good story of a time you have been coned?