If you spend any amount of time reading about personal finance on the internet, you will eventually find a common thread about what to do.

• First, stop the bleeding. This means stop using your credit cards.
• The second thing is to establish an emergency fund. Most places advocate an emergency fund of $500-$2000 dollars, with $1000 dollars being the most commonly recommended.

When I first read it, it did not make a whole lot of sense. The money that I was putting into the “Emergency Fund” could have been money that was going to reduce debt. Well now I see why it makes sense. Life Happens. Just when you think that you are about to get ahead, life happens. My emergency fund has been in place for well over 2 years now, and I have been making pretty good progress to getting my consumer debt (read everything but mortgage) paid off. I have been actively tracking my spending (I can tell you where almost every penny of my pay check goes), reducing my spending, paying more towards debt, and things were going pretty well. Then Life happened. Our freezer/fridge died on us last Friday. The good news is that the problem was fixable, and we did not have to purchase an entire new freezer/fridge that would have started around $1000.00 and gone up from there. The bad news is that while it did not cost $1000.00 or more, it did cost $250.00 and a half a day of work.

Since I am in my debt reduction mode, I have been putting all extra funds towards reducing my debt. As such, I do not have a lot of wiggle room, and I did not have the $250.00 dollars to spare to get the fridge fixed. Thankfully, I do have an emergency fund that had enough to cover the repair. If the emergency fund was not there I would have had to used a credit card to pay for it, and that just would have added to the debt load, and potentially made me feel worse. Because I did have the emergency fund, I was able to write a check for it, and it was all over. Sure my emergency fund is now $250.00 lower than it started out as, but I was able to pay for the repair without having to use a credit card, and I did not add any debt (stop the bleeding…).

So now that I have actually used the emergency fund, I understand the reason for it. It allows you to make sure that your “stop the bleeding” efforts do not get eroded by an instance where you needed money in an emergency. I think that it is a really good idea to have an emergency fund, and in fact I am now thinking about how I can increase the amount in mine.

End of the quarter Review :

Well 3 months have passed since the start of the year, which means that it is time to do an end of the quarter review. I am going to see how I am doing on the goals that I established at the start of the year.

• 52 posts on itowler.com : So far this year there have been 14 weeks (if you count this week) and I will have posted 10 of 14 weeks so….I am a little behind, but I am on track for doing better than I did last year. So on this point I am going to say that I am making pretty good progress. In the future I do see these posts dealing more and more with the family tree.

• iTowler.com Goes Drupal 6.0 : Drupal 6.1 has been released, so everything is heading in the right direction for this step, but I do not think that this will happen until the end of third quarter, or maybe even sometime in the fourth quarter of the year.

• Read 8 books : I am on track for with this goal for the year. I have already finished 2 books, which is what I need to read each quarter. I do not know what I am going to read next, but I guess that means that I have to go to the library. Among other things, School has been keeping me busy, so I have not had as much time to read as I wanted to.

• Reach a weight of 170 or lower : I have not made any progress on this goal at all. I plan on getting back to the gym in April so that should help. In addition Roller Hockey season starts at the end of April. So even though I have not started on this goal, I still think that it is within reach. That being said 170 is still a pretty strong goal, so I need to get started on this.

• Expand the family tree to include 2,650 people : If I were to average the number of people I need to add to meet my 2650 goal, I would need to average a little less than 4 people per day, or 336 people added per quarter. As of 31 March 2008, there are 1520 people in the family tree, so a net gain of 214 people for the quarter, which means that I am behind. I only added 64% of the people that I needed to for this quarter. So….I have some work to do. That being said, I have a plan to meet that goal. One of the things that is slowing me down with this goal, is that I do not want to add people without adding a source for that person, so that really means that I am adding 4 people per day with a source, which is a little more challenging. None the less, the 2650 people will happen.

• Pay off my Debt : This year I filed my tax returns very early, and I have already received my refund. I used my refund to help pay down debt. This is a pretty big departure from years past, where I have used my refund to buy myself a “treat”. Instead, this year I used about 98% of my refund to pay off debt, the other 2% was used to buy a textbook for school. As such, I have reduced my debt by about 30% from the Jan 1 amount. I plan on using the “Economic Stimulus” package money to pay down more of the debt, and I have looked at a few other options for increasing my income as well. Things are looking to be on track for this goal.

• Stop Drinking COKE/Soda : As I predicted, this is one of the hardest goals on the list, and I am not doing very well at meeting this goal at all. I am going to start fresh on April 1, I will buy no more Coke or Soda.

Overall I think that I am doing OK with my goals, not great, but OK. I still think that they all can be reached by the years end. I am just going to have to work harder on making some of them a priority.

Till next time. Ian

Last week I talked about VINE, a research tool for those doing research in Indiana. In the post I mentioned that I had found several Towler Obituaries and a few Hoffman’s. Using the information that I gathered in VINE, I sent away for copies of each of the obituaries. One of the Obituaries that I sent for was the Obit of Mrs. Mary Hoffman.

The Hoffman’s are a brickwall (Brickwall in genealogy is a term meant to describe a person or event that you can not get around and is blocking further research) of sorts in my Family tree. I know that my paternal great grandfather married two Hoffman’s and they appear to be sisters, but I can not prove that just yet. Of the two sisters, I am most familiar with the facts of Maggie C Hoffman. I know that Maggie’s Parents were Fredrick and Mary Hoffman. I also knew that Fredrick and Mary were from Germany, based on US Census records. Beyond that I did not know very much.

So when I found a obituary in VINE for a Mary Hoffman, I was cautiously optimistic. When I actually received a copy of the Obit I was very excited. The obituary was printed in the Greensburg Standard (a weekly Newspaper) on Friday, April 10, 1903 and found on page 8. You can see a small version of the Obit on below and to the left.

The obituary was packed with info that I did not have before. Some of the most notable new pieces of information are:

• An exact Birth date of 25 July 1837, Born in Germany

• A calculated immigration year into the United States of about 1854

• A year of Marriage of 1859 in Cincinnati

• A death date for Fredrick Hoffman of 20 Feb 1889

• She raised a large family of 10 children

Before I had this article I had always assumed that Mary and Fredrick were married before they came to the United States. I can not explain why I assumed that, but based on the obituary they most likely were each single when they immigrated. The obituary also gives me some clues about where to look next. I will need to do some work on trying to find some sort of documentation of Fredrick and Mary’s marriage.One of the things that I was hoping for in the obituary that I did not get is Mary’s maiden name. Based on family stories, I am told that it might be Wolf/Wolfe but I have not documentation for that. I also would like to know where, at what port, did Mary enter the United States. By knowing the port of entry, I might be able to discover more about Mary’s parents and family.

All in all the Obituary of Mary Hoffman has proven to be a great find. This has served as a reminder that you need to be open to all sorts of records. As you can see, a well written obituary can be a very valuable source of information. While obits can be a great source of information, you must remember that obits are usually written by family members at or near the time of death, and are not necessarily fact checked, so they can be full of mis-information.

Thanks to VINE I was also able several obituaries that have helped me start to get past a long standing brickwall. This particular group of obituaries that I found are fairly interesting, and I will be sharing some more of them in the future, including the obituary for Mary’s husband, Fredrick.

Ian

About a week ago, I was surfing the Internet, looking at some Indiana Genealogy sites. Indiana, along with Kentucky, and Virginia are areas that I have done the most research in. Looking at my family tree, my previous 4-5 generations all have solid roots in Indiana, on both my Mothers side and my Fathers side. While surfing I somehow managed to find my way to the Indiana State Library webpage. I have been to the site before, and I have had a little bit of success, but not a tremendous amount. I generally have a little better luck at the Individual County or City Library pages. This time while making my way through the Indiana State Library page, I found a new resource named VINE, that should be helpful. VINE stands for Vital Information Exchange, and appears that the intent is to make a single point to search for multiple types of records. The VINE project overview page states:

The Vital Information Exchange, (VINE), is a collaborative state wide database that is composed of Indiana local history and vital records from Indiana libraries, historical societies, genealogy societies, and related organizations. The database is designed to allow participants and users to obtain access to Indiana local history and vital records through an Internet searchable database. Since the VINE is Web-based, no additional software needs to be downloaded or installed. The database is searchable by county, event, or through a general surname search of all records. These records are available to the public at no charge and include a host of records such as: birth, marriage, death, divorce, obituaries, court records,newspapers, scrapbooks, yearbooks, church records, military records, and many other record types.

The VINE site allows you to enter a Name, either Full or partial, and then using a Drop down menu, you choose a Record type. Currently the Record types you can select from include : Anniversary, Biography, Birth, Cemetery, Census, Church Records, Death, Divorce, Marriage, Military, Mortality, Naturalization, Obituary, and School/Yearbook. At first I was pretty excited about finding this resource, but it does appear that the search function/records indexing is in its infancy. I was not able to find any records other than Obituary’s for the Surnames Towler and Arbuckle. In all fairness, the site does issue a statement at the bottom of the page that it is still under development, and that not all features are fully functional.

So even though the VINE site is not fully functional, it was able to help me find 13 Obituary’s that I was interested in. The 13 included 11 Towler obituaries and 2 Hoffman obituaries. The VINE site does not give you an image of the record or even a transcription, but it does give you the details about which library in the Indiana State system has the record, what the source of the record is, and the date. Using this I was able to determine that the Greensburg Library in Decatur County, Indiana, had several obituaries that I was interested in.

Using the information that I had found in VINE I was able to give a researcher local to Greensburg, a list of exact Papers, dates and names, so that they could lookup the Obituaries and print off a copy for me. I am sure that this saved me money, and saved the researcher time.

All in all VINE has been helpful for me so far, but I do look forward to its further development. I have high hopes that it will be come a powerful tool for use in finding Indiana Genealogy records.

You can find the VINE website here :

http://208.119.135.17/db/vine/vine_home.asp

Book Review (#2)

All The Money in the World, How the Forbes 400 Make And Spend Their Fortunes.

Written by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan, this book examines members of the Forbes 400 list. The Forbes 400 list has been compiled every year since 1982 as a list of the 400 richest Americans. The list is published by the Forbes Magazine, and was the idea of Malcom Forbes, who was a firm believer in Wealth building. The list is based on the personal fortune of its members. The list has attracted attention since its inception, and some of those who have been named in the list have even sued Forbes, wanting to keep the extent of their wealth private. In 1982 you needed around 75 million dollars to make the list, in 2007 you will need to be a billionaire. The book is pretty well written and flows nicely. At times it can be a little dry, but all in all it was a pleasant read.

As I was reading this a few things struck me. One of the things that really struck me was the impact that inherited money had on families. In my mind one of the most striking trends was the trend for family names to drop off the list in about 3 generations. There are plenty of examples given, the Vanderbilt’s, the Duponts, and the list goes on. One of the cited reasons for families dropping off the list is wealth dilution. A recent example is the Sam Walton Fortune. Upon his death Mr. Sam Walton’s Fortune was split amongst his family. As the generations continue, there is less and less to split among more and more people. The book made me feel like you were better off making the list on your own merits, rather than inheriting your position on the list. The book crunches a few numbers and shows that as time goes on the number of people on the list that have inherited their wealth drops, and in contrast the number who have made the wealth themselves continues to increase.

There is an entire chapter devoted to the subject of the potential evils of inherited wealth. What I found interesting was that several people cited inherited wealth as something that could be a really bad thing. Upon further explanation of their thoughts, they described how growing up in a excessively wealthy family could deprive you of the drive that it takes to acquire a vast fortune. In addition to the potential for a diminished drive, they also cited the potential for a very high amount of stress to succeed. There were some very encouraging stories as well. The book also focused on that fact that almost anyone can make it on to the Forbes 400 list if they have the right combination of luck, drive and perseverance. Some of the current Forbes 400 list that were interviewed clearly cite luck, and hard work as the key to their successes.

I feel that the book is a pretty thorough study of the Forbes 400, and as such is packed with interesting details. Here are a few of that I found interesting.

• In the 2006 list, the average net worth of those without a college degree was 5.96 Billion. Those with a college degree, 3.14 Billion.

• Since the lists inception in 1982, New York has been the city that claim it has the most members on the list.

• While New York has the most members, California has the highest percentage of the total wealth represented on the list with about 20%.

• In 1982 the biggest Wealth generator was Oil, accounting for around 23%. In 2006, the biggest wealth Generator was the Finance Industry (think hedge funds etc..) accounting for around 25%.

If you are interested in the mega rich, this is an interesting book to read. It reads pretty quick, and for me the take home message was that anyone who is willing to work hard enough and is in the right place at the right time, with a little bit of luck can make the Forbes 400 list.

Ian