- Uop past midnight. 3am feeding. 5am hurts. Back to bed? #
- Stayed up this morning and watched Terminator:Salvation. AWAKs make for bad plot advancement. #
- Last night, Inglorious Basterds was not what I was expecting. #
- @jeffrosecfp It's a fun time, huh. These few months are payment for the fun months coming, when babies become interactive. 🙂 in reply to jeffrosecfp #
- RT @BSimple: RT @bugeyedguide: When we cling to past experiences we keep giving them energy…and we do not have much energy to spare #
- RT @LivingFrugal: Jan 18, Pizza Soup (GOOOOOD Stuff) http://bit.ly/5rOTuc #budget #money #
- Free Turbotax for low income or active-duty military. http://su.pr/29y30d #
- To most ppl,you're just somebody [from casting] to play the bit part of "Other Office Worker" in the movie of their life http://su.pr/1DYMQZ #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash – $8,300 in Cash and Amazing Prizes http://bt.io/DQHw #
- RT: @flexo: RT @wisebread: Tylenol, Motrin, Rolaids, and Benadryl RECALLED! Check your cabinets: http://bit.ly/4BVJfJ #
- New goal for Feb. 100 pushups in 1 set. Anyone care to join me? #
- RT @BSimple: Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow"— Robert Kiyosaki So take action now. #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now." ~ Sophia Loren #
- Chances of finding winter boots at a thrift store in January? Why do they wear our at the worst time? #
- @LenPenzo Anyone who make something completely idiot proof underestimates the ingenuity of complete idiots. in reply to LenPenzo #
- RT @zappos: "Lots of people want to ride w/ you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus w/ you…" -Oprah Winfrey #
- RT @chrisguillebeau: "The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. Cobra" -Indian Proverb (via @boxofcrayons) #
- RT @SuburbanDollar: I keep track of all my blogging income and expenses using http://outright.com it is free&helps with taxes #savvyblogging #
- Reading: Your Most Frequently Asked Running Questions – Answered http://bit.ly/8panmw via @zen_habits #
Failure! 30 Day Project Summary – March
My 30 Day Project for the month of March has been to do 100 sit-ups in a single set. Based on February’s results, I had a plan.
I will be doing 5 sets, morning and night, as follows:
Set 1: Half of my maximum amount.
Sets 2-4: 3/4 of my max.
Set 5: Do sit-ups until my abs start to cramp, thus setting my max for the next session.
I failed miserably.
It started off perfectly. My base amount was 20 sit-ups. I had a plan. I’d proven, at least to myself, that I was able to follow an intense workout plan, even through pain. I was encouraged by February’s results, so I dove in.
The first 3 or 4 days went well. I had some muscle strain, but that was expected. I hadn’t done sit-ups for years. I discovered muscles I actually hadn’t known existed, just from how they hurt. This was the good pain, the pain that shows progress. After doing the push-ups in February, this pain wasn’t as bad as I had expected. Push-ups are an excellent ab workout.
Maybe I became complacent. Either my form slipped, or I was going too fast and “bounced” through the sit-ups, but I pulled a muscle in my back. This was the bad pain, the pain that warns of fundamental problems. My form, my size, my history of back problems, who knows? One or more of those possible problems reared up to turn an excellent idea into a disaster. March’s plan got sidelined for a few days.
When my back was better, I started again. Again, everything was fine for 3 or 4 days. Then my back betrayed me, again. Another break, another try, another strain and I gave up. I made it to 50, then just stopped. Too much more, and I wouldn’t be able to tolerate sitting at my desk. Or maybe I just wimped out, afraid to hurt my back again.
I’m disappointed. I haven’t done a single sit-up in the last week.
To make matters worse, without the sit-ups to do in the morning, I’ve been letting myself snooze my alarm clock instead of getting up at 5. March has been such a slacker month.
Lesson learned: Always listen to your body. Don’t get tied into a specific routine–even one you created for yourself–if your body is demanding to stop. Watch your form and make sure you aren’t putting undue strain on anything that can cause long-term damage.
Lesson learned, part II: Push-ups are more fun and less painful than sit-ups. They will be getting incorporated into my ongoing routine.
Ending the sit-ups did leave me enough energy to get an early start on April’s 30 Day Project. The goal for next month is to declutter every room in the house: Every closet, every dresser, every drawer.
To start, we replaced our son’s dresser, bed, and desk with a loft-bed that combines the three. While transferring items from the desk and dresser to the new bed, everything was sorted to make sure it still fit and was used and useful. If it didn’t meet those criteria, it was either tossed or priced and boxed for a garage sale.
In the girls’ room, we removed a dresser, the changing table, a toddler bed, a convertible crib/toddler bed. It all got replaced with a set of bunk beds and the dresser we took from our son. Everything got the same garage-sale check before it was put away.
Both of these changes easily tripled the usable floor space in each room and all of the kids love their new beds. Using the magic of Craigslist, I think we got the new furniture for 10-15% of retail, and have old furniture to add to our sale, which will further defray the cost.
This leaves the master bedroom, the bathroom, the front closet, the kitchen and our entire basement to go. Shoes and jackets that have never been worn. Books that will never be reread. Bye-bye. Some of it will be painful, but we all realize it’s necessary. We’ve already filled more than 2 dozen boxes of stuff to sell. None of it is coming back in the house. If it doesn’t sell, we’re donating it.
More to come as we progress through the mountains of crap.
Sunday Roundup: Home Depot and Your Kids
Yesterday, I took my girls to Home Depot. On the first Saturday of every month, Home Depot has a workshop for kids that gives kids a chance to make a small craft project with a parent. For free. This month was race cars. My girls look forward to it all month.
30 Day Project Update
This month, I am trying to do 100 perfect push-ups in a single set. I’m recording each session in a spreadsheet. As of this writing, I am up to 26 in a set, doing about 90 per twice-daily session. I’m expecting to do more tonight(Saturday) as I’m currently taking a 24 hour break to let my muscles heal a bit. By previous experience, I’m guessing I’ll hit 30-35 in the morning.
Weight Loss Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 35 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 2 pounds since last week, meaning I missed my February goal by 7 pounds. I added some cheese back into my diet, to see if it hurt. It did. Research showed that dairy inhibits the insulin response, make dairy a bad thing for a diet entirely out of proportion to its glycemic index.
Total Inches: I have lost 19.5 inches in the same time frame, down 2.5 inches since last week.
Best Posts
Lifehacker ran a post on simple ways to make money online. They may not all pay well, but the poorly-paid tasks are something you can do while watching TV.
Finally! A post explaining the exact connection between autism and vaccinations.
I’d love to see free-market healthcare given a chance, just once. We’d never go back.
Going to college, try some of these scholarships.
Most observant people realize that TSA is a joke. For those who didn’t realize that, TSA admitted it, too.
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
This week last year, I wrote a post about doing 100 push-ups in a single set. Is it a coincidence that I’m trying again a year later?
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Money Problems – Day 3: What’s Coming In? was included in the Festival of Frugality.
5 Reasons Why I Splurge On Travel was included in the Totally Money Carnival.
Ignore Your Budget was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great week!
5 Things to Do in the New Year
- Image via Wikipedia
CNN Money has an article up on 5 things to do this year. After posting a similar article a couple of weeks ago, I thought it’d be interesting to post about someone else’s perspective.
1. Shop for a no-fee checking account.
If you are paying fees for a checking account, go somewhere else. There are so many alternatives available that you shouldn’t be throwing money away. Ally Bank has a great no-fee checking account, as does INGDirect, though ING won’t let you write paper checks against the account. The same principle applies to credit cards. If you have a card with an annual fee and you aren’t getting some monster services or rewards to go with it, run away.
2. Save your raise.
I don’t necessarily agree with this one. If you are in debt, it’s better to use the raise to pay off that garbage, first. When I got my last raise, I immediately boosted the automatic payment for my car to use every new penny. I’ve never had the money available, so I haven’t missed it. Whatever you do, fight lifestyle inflation. Just because you have some more money doesn’t mean you need to spend it. At my last job, I got a substantial raise, so I bought a new car, only to get laid off a few months later.
3. Go for a checkup
Wealth doesn’t matter if you squander your health. Go get a physical. Every disease is easier to treat if you catch it earlier as opposed to later. Don’t make the mistake of running your body into the ground. You will regret it later. Effective this year, most health plans will cover a physical with no copay, co-insurance, or deductible allowed.
4. Score a better rewards card.
B***-****. If you’ve still got debt, don’t concentrate on using more of it. Get that crap paid off. If you’re out of debt, look into getting a rewards card that aligns with your goals. If you like to travel, get a card that gives you frequent flier miles. Otherwise, I’d go with a cash-back rewards card.
5. Use your vacation days.
37% of Americans don’t take all of the vacation to which they are entitled. That’s insane! We work harder and better when we have time to recuperate and relax. Unfortunately, I usually fall into that unfortunate 37%. My vacation resets on February 1st, and this will be the first year in a lot of years that I haven’t had to roll it over or even lose some.
What is your financial plan for the new year?
5 Pain-Free Ways to Save Your Money
Everyone needs an emergency fund. More than that, you will eventually need retirement savings, a new car, a big-screen TV, or maybe just a new kidney. Whatever the reason, one day, have a comfortable savings account will make your life easier.
But, Jason, you say, it’s hard to save money! How can I start saving when I can’t make ends meet? I’ve got rent, 9 kids, and a DVD addiction that won’t quit. My mortgage is underwater, my Mercedes still has 8 years on the loan, and the Shoe-of-the-Month Club only carries Christian Louboutin’s. What can I do?
Well, I’ll reply, since I am Jason and you asked for me by name, you need to find a way to make it happen. I’d never recommend someone give up their diamond-studded kicks, but something’s gotta give. In the meantime, there are some ways you can save money without feeling the sting of delayed gratification.
1. Save your raise. When you get your next raise, pretend you didn’t. Set up an automatic transfer to stick that new 5% straight into a savings account. Don’t give yourself an opportunity to spend it.
2. Find it, hide it. When your Aunt Gertrude dies and leaves your her extensive collection of California Raisins figurines, sell them and save the money. If you find a $20 bill on the ground, throw it right into your savings account. When your 30th lottery ticket of the week gives you a $10 prize, save it! Don’t waste found money on luxuries. Use it to build your future.
3. Let it lapse. Do you have magazine subscriptions you never read? Or a gym membership you haven’t used since last winter? Panty-of-the-Month? Crack dealer who delivers? Stop paying them! Let those wasted services fall to the wayside and put the money to better use. I don’t mean flipping QVC products on eBay, either. Save the money.
4. Jar of 1s. Roughly once a week, I dig through my pockets and my money clip looking for one dollar bills. Any that I find go in a box to be forgotten. I use that box as walking-around money for our annual vacation, but it could easily get repurposed as a temporary holding tank for money I haven’t gotten to the bank, yet.
5. Round it up. Do you balance your checkbook? If you don’t, start. If you do, start doing it wrong. Round up all of your entries to the nearest dollar. $1.10 gets recorded as $2. $25.75 goes in as $26. If you use your checkbook or debit card 100 times a month, that’s going to be close to $75 saved with absolutely no effort. It even makes recording your spending easier.
There you have it, 5 easy ways to save money that won’t cause you a moment’s pain.
Do you have any tricks to help you save money?
Sunday Roundup: Diet Redux
I had total diet fail last month.
From April to May, across 4 consecutive weekends, I put a bit over 1500 miles on my car on 4 separate trips. That is something like 10 times my average mileage.
That’s a lot of driving, squeezed around a regular schedule of work. Have you ever tried a drive through for low-carb food? Because of that, and the circumstances of some of my trips, I abandoned my diet on those weekends. Funeral food is rarely low-carb.
By the time those trips were over, I had spent so much time off my diet that “What’s one more sandwich?” became an easy justification. There is a reason I don’t break the rules I give myself. I can’t seem to cheat just once. Once I cross that line, it’s over.
So, instead of cheating on my diet and feeling guilty, I officially dropped it for most of the month of May. I decided it would be easier to get it out of my system than to continue worrying about it.
May’s over, and I’m back on the Slow Carb diet. My little fail cost me 7 pounds and 6.5 total inches(waist , hips, biceps, and thighs). I’m reasonably sure that most of that is water and will evaporate before next weekend.
Best Posts
My goal is to live my life so that I have no regrets at the end of it. That means pursuing my dreams and doing the things I love.
It’s easier to do the things I love when my life isn’t weighed down by the crap I don’t need.
Sweating the Big Stuff wrote a killer post on saving money simply by asking. Often, the easy things work.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Shopping Online: The Money-Saving Secret was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Money Problems: Paying Off Debt was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
5 Ways to Help Your Friends Stay Out of Debt was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.
Should Pupils Focus on Personal Finance was included in the Yakezie Carnival.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great week!
