- RT @ramseyshow: RT @E_C_S_T_E_R_I_: "Stupid has a gravitational pull." -D Ramsey as heard n NPR. I know many who have not escaped its orbit. #
- @BudgetsAreSexy KISS is playing the MINUTE state fair in August. in reply to BudgetsAreSexy #
- 3 year old is "reading" to her sister: Goldilocks, complete with the voices I use. #
- RT @marcandangel: 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills http://bit.ly/b1tseW #
- Babies bounce! https://liverealnow.net/hKmc #
- While trying to pay for dinner recently, I was asked if other businesses accepted my $2 bills. #
- Lol RT @zappos: Art. on front page of USA Today is titled "Twitter Power". I diligently read the first 140 characters. http://bit.ly/9csCIG #
- Sweet! I am the number 1 hit on Ask.com for "I hate birthday parties" #
- RT @FinEngr: Money Hackers Carnival #117 Wedding & Marriage Edition http://bit.ly/cTO4FU #
- Nobody, but nobody walks sexy wearing flipflops. #
- @MonroeOnABudget Sandals are ok. Flipflops ruin a good sway. 🙂 in reply to MonroeOnABudget #
- RT @untemplater: RT @zappos: "Do one thing every day that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt #
Saturday Roundup
- Image via Wikipedia
I’ve got a birthday party today and a class to teach tomorrow. Sometimes I think I take on too much, but it’s hard to roll that back when the side-hustles are all making a bit of money. What I need to do is make the side-hustles profitable enough that my straight job is optional.
In other news, I’m 10 days away from my first blogging anniversary(here). I’ll have to come up with a way to celebrate that.
Favorite posts this week:
GOOG-411 is shutting down, but there are alternatives. My favorites are Google SMS and Bing-411.
I’m a Zimbabwean quadrillionaire due to their version of “quantitative easing”. If you’re not pushing an agenda, QE is also known as devaluing the dollar.
I’m happy to be living in the future. When I told my wife this story, she was ready to cry at the beginning, but had to see the pictures by the end. Yay, technology!
And finally, thanks to Chris, here’s a primer on the absurdities of the security theater known as TSA:
Carnivals I’ve rocked:
Experiences v Stuff was included in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.
Thank you!
If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.
Charity is Selfish
I try to give 10% of my income to charity. I don’t succeed every year, but I do try.
I don’t give because I’m generous. I give because I’m selfish.
If you give to charity, you are too.
I’m not talking about people who give to charity strictly for the tax deduction, though that is selfish too. I’m referring specifically to the people who give to charity out of the goodness of their hearts.
If I give a thousand dollars worth of clothes to a homeless shelter, I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I helped people stay warm.
If I send $100 to the Red Cross for whatever terrible disaster happened shortly before I made the donation, it makes me feel good to have contributed to saving those lives.
The put-the-inner-city-kids-on-a-horse thing we do? Makes me happy to get those kids into a positive situation.
Donating blood? Yay, me! I’m saving lives!
While it’s nice to help other people, that’s not the ultimate reason I’m doing it. I do it because it makes me feel good about myself to help other people, particularly people who–for whatever reason–can’t help themselves.
That’s the basis of altruism. It’s not about helping others, it’s about feeling good about helping others.
The truly selfish, the evil dogooders, are the ones who want to raise taxes to give it away as “charity”. They get to feel like they are doing something and helping others while not actually contributing themselves and, at the same time, stealing that warm fuzzy feeling from the people who are providing the money to start with.
Evil.
Charity has to be done at a personal, local level or the benefits to the giver are eliminated while the benefits to the receiver are lessened. Bureaucracy doesn’t create efficiency.
For the record, if it’s taken by force, by tax, it isn’t charity. Charity cannot be forced. Forcing charity is, at best, a fraudulent way for petty politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists to feel they have power over others.
Again, evil.
The Luxury of Vacation
This was a guest post I wrote last year to answer the question posed by the Yakezie blog swap, “Name a time you splurged and were glad you did.”
There are so many things that I’ve wanted to spend my money on, and quite a few that I have. Just this week, we went a little nuts when we found out that the owner of the game store near us was retiring and had his entire stock 40% off. Another time, we splurged long-term and bought smartphones, more than doubling our monthly cell phone bill.
This isn’t about those extravagances. This is about a time I splurged and was glad I did. Sure, I enjoy using my cell phone and I will definitely get a lot of use out of our new games, but they aren’t enough to make me really happy.
The splurge that makes me happiest is the vacation we took last year.
Vacations are clearly a luxury. Nonessential. Unnecessary. A splurge.
When we were just a year into our debt repayment, we realized that, not only is debt burnout a problem, but our kids’ childhoods weren’t conveniently pausing themselves while we cut every possible extra expense to get out of debt. No matter how we begged, they insisted on continuing to grow.
Nothing we will do will ever bring back their childhoods once they grow up or—more importantly—their childhood memories. They’ll only be children for eighteen years. That sounds like a long time, but that time flies by so quickly.
We decided it was necessary to reduce our debt repayment and start saving for family vacations.
Last summer, we spent a week in a city a few hours away. This was a week with no internet access, no playdates, no work, and no chores. We hit a number of museums, which went surprisingly well for our small children. Our kids got to climb high over a waterfall and hike miles through the forest. We spent time every day teaching them to swim and play games. Six months later, my two year old still talks about the scenic train ride and my eleven year old still plays poker with us.
We spent a week together, with no distractions and nothing to do but enjoy each other’s company. And we did. The week cost us several extra months of remaining in debt, but it was worth every cent. Memories like we made can’t be bought or faked and can, in fact, be treasured forever.
How to Prioritize Your Spending
Don’t buy that.
At least take a few moments to decide if it’s really worth buying.
Too often, people go on auto-pilot and buy whatever catches their attention for a few moments. The end-caps at the store? Oh, boy, that’s impossible to resist. Everybody needs a 1000 pack of ShamWow’s, right? Who could live without a extra pair of kevlar boxer shorts?
Before you put the new tchotke in your cart, ask yourself some questions to see if it’s worth getting.
1. Is it a need or a want? Is this something you could live without? Some things are necessary. Soap, shampoo, and food are essentials. You have to buy those. Other things, like movies, most of the clothes people buy, or electronic gadgets are almost always optional. If you don’t need it, it may be a good idea to leave it in the store.
2. Does it serve a purpose? I bought a vase once that I thought was pretty and could hold candy or something, but it’s done nothing but collect dust in the meantime. It’s purpose is nothing more than hiding part of a flat surface. Useless.
3. Will you actually use it? A few years ago, my wife an cleaned out her mother’s house. She’s a hoarder. We found at least 50 shopping bags full of clothes with the tags still attached. I know, you’re thinking that you’d never do that, because you’re not a hoarder, but people do it all the time. Have you ever bought a book that you haven’t gotten around to reading, or a movie that went on the shelf, still wrapped in plastic? Do you own a treadmill that’s only being used to hang clothes, or a home liposuction machine that is not being used to make soap?
3. Is it a fad? Beanie babies, iPads, BetaMax, and bike helmets. All garbage that takes the world by storm for a few years then fades, leaving the distributors rich and the customers embarrassed.
4. Is it something you’re considering just to keep up with the Joneses? If you’re only buying it to compete with your neighbors, don’t buy it. You don’t need a Lexus, a Rolex, or that replacement kidney. Just put it back on the shelf and go home with your money. Chances are, your neighbors are only buying stuff so they can compete with you. It’s a vicious cycle. Break it.
5. Do you really, really want it? Sometimes, no matter how worthless something might be, whether it’s a fad, or a dust-collecting knick-knack, or an outfit you’ll never wear, you just want it more than you want your next breath of air. That’s ok. A bit disturbing, but ok. If you are meeting all of your other needs, it’s fine to indulge yourself on occasion.
How do you prioritize spending if you’re thinking about buying something questionable?
Time Management
My wife told me that I don’t do enough around the house.
She is, of course, correct.
I could make a list of excuses, but none of them matter. There’s really only one reason: I have problems with time management. I’m easily distracted.
For example, in the time it’s taken me to write the above three lines, I stopped to check a website, updated my Evernote installation, and added a new contact to my address book.
That’s not multi-tasking, that’s inefficiency. People don’t actually multi-task. Instead, they break concentration and completely switch gears. Repeatedly. They pretend they are doing a lot of things at once, when in fact they are doing a large series of individual tasks. That’s serial single-tasking, poorly.
On top of that, I focus to the point of obsession. The entire world goes away when I am working.
No, that’s not a contradiction. I’m good at procrastinating and I am interested in everything. If a random thought floats to the surface while I’m working, I follow it to Google and, if it’s interesting enough, I get lost. It generally only happens during research or while doing a job I hate.
For those of you following along at home, I can be easily distracted from some tasks, then lock on to some tangent and have an evening disappear.
For some reason, my wife hates that, especially when there are dishes to be done and laundry to be folded.
This has blown up on me a few time.
We’ve come upon a solution, in three parts.
1. Timer. When I get on the computer, I set an egg timer for 1 hour. When the time’s up, I’m done. The time limit helps me focus on finishing the task at hand. If I know I need to get a post written in an hour, I’m less likely to catch up on the comics in my news reader.
2. Communication. If I’m working on something that I know will take more than an hour, I tell her. I’ve had to do that for each installment of the Make Extra Money series.
3. Nagging. If #1 has failed and #2 doesn’t apply, I’ve given my wife explicit permission to remind me, as often as necessary. Sometimes, I don’t register everything people say when I am “lost”, so now she knows to keep trying if I don’t respond, or respond with a spaced-out “Uh-huh, yes, dear.” Before, she was worried about upsetting me by nagging, but I wouldn’t have noticed the first few times. Thankfully, with #1 and #2, #3 has only been an issue one.
Time limits, communication, and persistent reminders. That’s my plan to manage my time. Getting off of the computer has helped me be more useful with household chores and it’s given me a chance to be closer to the woman I love most. The time-limited focus has even helped me get a couple of projects rolling.
We all have the same 24 hours. Are you using yours efficiently?
(P.S. Happy anniversary, honey. These have been the best years I could ask for.)
