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Homemade Ultralight Backpacking Water Filter

04.26.2012 by Matt Jabs //

This is a photo essay of the homemade ultralight backpacking water filter I use.

Use What You Need

Don’t waste your breath telling me this filter isn’t enough for me – or anyone else choosing to use it – and we won’t tell you your over compensating for water filtration.

It’s a free country so leave everyone to use the filter of their choice.

I’m not a water expert so only take my advice if you’re confident it will serve your needs.

Step 1

Get a 1 Micron Singed Polyester 7″ x 16″ Filter Bag Felt Biodiesel Sock Size 1, open the sock into a  flat piece of cloth, draw as many 8″ circles as you can (we fit four 8″ and one 7″), and cut them out.

Step 2

Fold them into quarters and glue the seam (I use a hot glue gun).

Step 3

Create a protective sleeve to store your filter.

These biodiesel socks will catch a lot of dirt and natural material when you lay them on the ground. To combat this I sewed fiberglass screen material to fit over the filter as protection.

You don’t have to make this cover, but it helps keep the outside of your filter clean.

Step 4

Put it all together and give a few to your cheapskate, ultralight backpacking friends!

Enjoy!

Save Money

Effective water filtration at a fraction of the price.

What are your money saving tips for ultralight backpacking?

*******

Resources

  • OA Guide to Water Purification on Princeton.edu
  • Guide to Drinking Water Treatment for Backcountry Use on CDC.gov
  • PDF version of Drinking Water Treatment Methods for Backcountry on CDC.gov

Categories // Simplify Tags // DIY, save

What To Do With Savings

04.13.2012 by Matt Jabs //

What To Do With SavingsThe Question…

DFA reader Stacy asked:

I have $20,000 in a savings account and almost no debt. What is the smartest, most conservative way to invest my money. Sitting in a savings account feels like a waste.

The Answer…
Great question Stacy, let’s take a look. My recommendations are to:

  1. keep some cash in savings for use in emergencies (emergency fund)
  2. keep some cash in savings for your next vehicle rather than financing it (auto fund)
  3. keep some cash in savings for fixed non-monthly expenses
  4. invest the rest in safe, passive investing vehicles.

Emergency fund

Be sure to keep enough cash in a savings account to cover three to six months expenses. If your monthly expenses are $3,000/month then keep between $9,000 and $18,000 in your emergency fund.

Do not invest this, it is for emergencies and needs to stay in liquid cash form so you can get to it quickly and easily when needed.

Next auto fund

Do you own your current car? If so, great, but be sure to save for you next vehicle so you don’t have to finance the purchase.

Financing vehicles is a waste of money. Some people can’t avoid it, but those with liquid cash on hand can, and they should.

Don’t buy new either, buy solid used vehicles that are a few years old. This helps you avoid that huge loss in value when new vehicles are simply driven off the lot.

I’ll never finance a vehicle again, and advise you to adopt the same position whenever possible.

Fixed non-monthly expenses

Stacy, are you budeting for fixed expenses that you know are coming, but are not monthly? I call these fixed non-monthly expenses.

Examples of these expenses are:

  • auto insurance (we pay once every six months)
  • bulk beef (we buy a quarter grass fed cow every year)
  • CSA membership
  • continuing education.

These expenses can be budget busters, but not if you plan for them!

Make a list of all your fixed non-monthly expenses, figure their cost on an annual basis, add the total amount up and divide by 12. This gives you the monthly amount you need to save to have enough money for these expenses when they arrive.

We created a separate Capital One 360 savings account called “Fixed Non-monthly Expenses” that we use to hold the liquid cash, and we tap that fund whenever one of these payments comes due. It is very useful and it saves us from having “budget busters.”

Invest the rest

Many people invest before they build adequate savings.

While it can be tempting to put all your savings into investments, it’s often not the best decision.

You need liquid cash too!

Keep liquid savings for the things mentioned above (plus any other needs specific to your situation) and invest the rest.

I too like conservative investments, and I prefer them to be mostly passive. In other words, I’m not going to advise you to go out and day trade stocks.

My recommendations are to invest in index funds and peer lending.

Open a brokerage account with Vanguard and invest in their target retirement fund that best fits your situation. This will give you diversification, balanced risk, and hands off conservative investing.

Another great option is to open a Betterment account. Betterment has built an amazing platform that helps new investors safely navigate the waters of the financial markets with confidence. Read my Betterment review and consider opening an account.

In conclusion

Right now Betsy and I have enough money saved for emergencies, our next vehicle, a years worth of fixed non-monthly expenses, and we’re investing the rest.

It feels good to be prepared.

Does anyone have any other advice for Stacy?

*******

Categories // Savings Tags // emergency fund, Investing, save

11 Ways We Dove into Debt and How We’re Digging Out

03.21.2012 by Matt Jabs //

It was not all that long ago that our ‘Debt Free’ Adventure was more like a ‘who cares how much debt we have’ adventure.  I suppose we were semi-responsible in that we never made ourselves house poor, nor did we ever go hog wild on gadgets or toys.  In fact, the reason we accumulated debt at all is simple… up until January of 2009 we never understood how powerful a prison of debt can be.

Now that we do understand the power of debt slavery, we avoid it like the plague.

Mindset of the chronically indebted

Before I get into specifics, it is important to touch on a few “thinking problems” we had that are commonly shared by those in deb, you have to change your mindset:

  1. We just didn’t care – By far the biggest personal finance problem for us was simply our lack of responsible money management.  If we would have taken control of our financial reigns from day one we would be in a much better position.  Oh well, since we can’t change the past we focus on doing the right thing going forward.
  2. Influenced by culture – One of the biggest reasons we slowly let ourselves get into debt was because we did not purpose to think for ourselves.  Rather than responsibly determining our purchases based on actual savings and income, we bought according to cultural norms.
  3. We make decent money – We figured because we were both college educated, working professionals that we should be able to have certain things.  Rather than responsibly determining our purchases based on actual savings and income, we presumed our income would always be there and leveraged against future income.
  4. We deserve nice things – Because we sacrificed and worked hard all the way through school, we felt as if we deserved to buy nice things the day we began earning rather than the day we had actually accumulated the savings.  Rather than responsibly determining our purchases based on actual savings and income, we felt as though we deserved nice things before we actually earned those nice things.

Ways our debt accumulated

Here are a few specific ways our debt built up over the years:

  1. We ate out constantly – Before analyzing food costs we rarely planned or prepared meals in advance, instead we would just eat out whenever we felt like it.  Now we set a strict budget for groceries and dining out and are careful to stick to it every month.  Not only do we save thousands of dollars each year, but we have also lost around 60 combined pounds.
  2. We never used a budget – Rather than telling our money where to go, our money would just seem to vanish into thin air.  This always happened, regardless of how much money we made.  Now we give every dollar a job rather than wondering where it all goes… and boy does it feel great!
  3. Credit cards as an emergency fund – Rather than save money for emergencies, we chose to go into high interest debt each time we had an emergency.  Saving for emergencies was a personal finance fundamental we lacked in times past but have since adopted… and we feel much more secure because of it.
  4. I fell for the HDTV craze – I take full responsibility for all our financial irresponsibility… but this particular purchase deserves a special mention.  Against her better judgment, my wife gracefully went along with my decision to purchase a $2,000 television – bless her heart.  This was obviously a terribly unnecessary purchase decision on my part.  We had a 27″ television that worked perfectly fine, but for whatever reason I just had to have a fancy new boob tube.  I would sell it in a heartbeat if I weren’t sure to lose my tail on it… so we just keep it and plan on having it for a loooooooong time.  🙂
  5. Bank fees – Oh my word… I hate talking about this because it makes me feel like such a D-bag.  Before we started our debt free adventure it was not super uncommon for me to be hit with bank fees.  Both over-the-limit fees and late fees were things that ate up a good amount of our money over the years.  Never again I say… never again!  Next to responsible management of our money the best move we made to avoid bank fees was switching to Capital One 360 Bank – they treat us so much better than any bank in the past.
  6. Just swipe it – We used to just swipe our debit cards for everything with the only requirement being a positive balance in our checking account – and even that was ignored sometimes.  Now-a-days we use cash envelopes for our five most easily abused budget categories:  groceries, miscellaneous, dining out, entertainment, and clothing are all kept under tight reigns by limited amounts of cash each month.
  7. Alcoholic beverages – Rather than waiting until we were home to enjoy a beer or glass of wine for much cheaper, we would order drinks with dinner.  A lot of people talk about the latte factor, but I wonder if the less popular alcohol factor eats up just as much or more of the average American family budget.  Now-a-days if we want an occasional beer or glass of wine we just wait until we get home.

Of course there are other factors that contributed to the debt we battle so fervently today… but this list gives you a good idea of what not to do if you want to win with money.

Ways you got into debt

What are some specific things you have changed or need to change in order to avoid future debt and help dig your way out of existing debt?

photo by Joe Shlabotnik

Categories // Debt, Money Management Tags // Debt, emergency fund, mindset, save

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