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Sunday Roundup: Outta Town

Misc

Scrapbooking Cupcakes!
Image by clevercupcakes via Flickr

This weekend, my wife is off scrapbooking with my mother and sister-in-law.   Instead of hanging around the house trying to keep three kids entertained, I’m at my brother’s house, since his wife abandoned him with their kids, too.   I’ll let his kids keep mine entertained, and vice versa.  Woo!

30 Day Project 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 30 pounds since January 2nd!   That’s only 1 pounds since last week.  12 more to meet my goal for February.  The difference this week?  I’ve cut back on the supplements, to see if they actually make a difference.  It would appear they do.

Total Inches: I have lost 16 inches in the same time frame, down 1.5 since last week.

Best Posts

I totally got live this joke.

Are you a compulsive shopper?  Money Crashers has some tips to cut that down.

Before I got a smartphone, I relied on a PocketMod for almost everything a smartphone does.  Does that make me a geek?

$39Glasses is having a killer sale.  $15 off a $40 item is huge.

Tim Ferriss has a guide to slow-carb seasonings.   It’s worth reading if your food is boring you.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago.  Did you miss them then?

This was Scam Week last year.  I had a post on debt scams and scams that target disaster victims.  As we roll into flooding season, it’s important to know how these scams work.

I also discussed my attempt to teach my son to savor delayed gratification.  It has been working.  He makes long-term(for an 11 year old) plans regularly.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Money Problems: Setting Goals was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Your Budget is Worthless was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings was included in the Carnival of Money Stories.

Debt Burnout was included in the Totally Money 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!

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2011 Goals

Life

It’s that time of the year when people make public promises to themselves that last almost as long as the hangover most of them are going to earn tonight, otherwise known as New Year’s Resolutions.

Not a fan.

I am, however a fan of planning out some concrete goals and doing my best to meet them.     I do this through a series of 30 day projects.  I set a goal that can be reached in 30 days, and push for it.   I tend to make my goals fairly aggressive, and I tend to meet them.

Here were my goals and results for 2010:

  • January:   Wake up at 5am AND read to my kids every night before bed. These were easy goals to meet.    A year later, I am still getting up much earlier than I ever have, even if it’s not 5AM.   I write better late at night than I do early in the morning, anyway.    I’m not still reading to my kids every night, but we are making progress on teaching my four-year-old to read.
  • February:  Do 100 push-ups at one time by the end of the month. I accomplished this in 22 days.    I also had a secret project that involved doing something sweet for my wife every day.  By the end of the month, she was convinced I had done something horrible that I was trying to make up for.
  • March:  Do 100 sit-ups at one time by the end of the month. It took me a week, but I found out how bad sit-ups are for your back.   Pure failure.
  • April:  Spring Cleaning.  I will declutter every room in my house this month. We missed one room and one closet, but made a lot of charities happy.
  • May:  Have a sit-down dinner with my family, at the dining room table at least 3 times per week. We managed this one and enjoyed it, but we haven’t managed to keep it up.   I’ll have to try this again.
  • June:  No computer use, while anyone else in the family is awake, except for household necessities, such as bills. This one worked well and improved the quality of our interaction.  I’m not quite this strict about it, but my computer use has gone down dramatically while my family is awake.
  • July:  Write fiction every day. I don’t think I wrote more than a few pages of fiction, but I did write every day.
  • August:  Buy nothing new this month. We came very close to doing this one perfectly.  It wasn’t easy.
  • September:  Attempt to learn a new language. Total bomb.  I never even got started.
  • October:   No yelling at the kids. Have you ever thought about trying this with a a two-year-old and a four-year-old?  We never got started.
  • November:  No complaining.  Not at home, not at work. I didn’t make this an actual month, but I’ve been trying to complain much less.  I think it’s been working.
  • December:  I will have done 14 projects this year.  December is a month off. As planned, I took December off.

So I missed 4 months of projects.   This year, I’m going to modify my overall plan and only do 6 projects, every other month.   That will give me a month off to either relax or incorporate the goal into my ongoing habits without any stress.

Here are my goals:

  • January: I’m going to do Tim Ferriss’s Slow-Carb diet.  Yes, it’s a fad diet, but it beats the constant stream of garbage I eat now.   The basic plan is to avoid anything white; no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, or sugar.   That’s accompanied by a targeted supplement regimen and a timed exercise plan to manipulate my metabolism.    I’m not adding any aerobic exercise to my day, because I want this to be as controlled an experiment as possible.   If it’s working at the end of the month, I will keep it going.    It’s time to not be fat anymore.
  • March: In February, I managed to get myself able to do 100 pushups in a single set.   In March, I hurt my back trying to do the same with sit-ups and that killed my workout habit.   This March, I’m going to do the 100 pushups challenge again, but this time, I’m going for perfect pushups.   Last year, they got sloppy after about 80.  This year, that won’t be good enough.
  • May: I’m going to do at least 30 days of the Couch to 5k running program.  It’s a 9 week program.   As a 30 day project, it’s designed to establish the habit.  When I tried picking up running last year, my knees were causing problems.  Hopefully, my January project will mitigate that this year.
  • July: I’m going to pick up a new language.  This is the failed plan from September 2010.   I’ve narrowed it down to either Spanish, Swedish, or Italian.  One is useful, one is a part of my heritage, and one is for fun.   At the moment, I’m undecided.
  • September: Undecided.  I am leaning towards a “nice” month.  30 days of doing something nice, for someone, somewhere.   If I go this route, I’ve got 9 months to plan, because that’s a lot of things to do.
  • November: Absolutely undecided.    Any suggestions?

That’s my plan for the new year.   Six specific goals, each lasting 30 days.    I could definitely use some help for September and November.   Please give me some suggestions in the comments.

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Looking Back: 2012 in Review

Misc

Another year draws to a close while I still feel like it’s March…2002.   How does that happen?

Here are the 10 most visited pages on this site over the past year:

  1. Slow Carb Diet: How to Avoid Going Bat-**** Crazy
  2. How to Live Happily Without a Budget
  3. Build a Bunker: How to make a vault without breaking the bank
  4. Carnival of Personal Finance #270, the Elvis is Dead Edition
  5.  100 Pushups in 22 Days
  6. Hacking a NookColor
  7. Mastermind – The Best Personality Type
  8. Festival of Frugality: The Peer Pressure Edition
  9. About LRN
  10. Make Extra Money

Numbers 4 & 8 surprise me a bit, because they are carnival posts.   There’s no meat there.

Number 10 is an unfinished series.   I will finish that soon.

 What else has happened this year?

My financial situation has changed pretty drastically.

  • My mother-in-law passed away in April, leaving my wife a house, a reasonably well-funded retirement account, and a moderate life insurance policy.
  •  Two of my side hustles have grown to the point where I was close to looking at the end of my day job.   One of them is still on the upswing, the other has contracted a bit.
  •  I changed my day job.   The new job is mostly a lateral move, but a bit of a backwards step in my career.   I’m not managing a team any more and I’m not the senior developer.  I have picked up more social media and advertising responsibilities, which is a direction I’ve wanted to go for a while.   Combined with a pay raise and moving to an industry I care about, this is a good move.

These changes worked out well with the several years of debt elimination.   Now, our credit cards are paid off each month and our mortgage is down to $24,000.   The inherited house is almost ready for the renters to move in just one month from now, and we’re considering adding more properties to our financial plan.   We did take out a car loan 6 weeks ago, but that was only to take advantage of a deal.  We’ve paid off nearly half of the loan and should have the rest paid off in a couple of months.

What’s on tap for 2013?

I’m hoping to carve out more time for me.  And my family.  I’ve worked almost nonstop in 2012, now I’d like to explore some personal interests and develop some non-commercial hobbies.   There are a few commercial projects currently in the works, and a few planned, but I’m going to try to keep those under control this year.  My interest vary and don’t always stick for long, so there’s no real measure of success here, but if I can buy an atlatl and learn how to chuck a spear into a target or maybe brew a few batches of  beer, I’ll be happy.

I’m also going to spend more time working on my health.   Working 60 hour weeks with at least an hour of daily commute time killed most options for exercise.   Now that I’m working from home, I’ve been walking a mile or more every day that’s been above 15 degrees. I’m going to restart the slow carb diet tomorrow.   It won’t be as complicated this time, because I can eat out of my refrigerator instead of trying to pack a slow carb meal or find one at a restaurant for lunch.    I’ll consider this a win if I can drop 60 pounds this year.

What about the blog?

I’ve considered selling this site.   Time is always crunched, and I’m no longer paying off debt, but I still need the outlet.    I’ll probably keep to the twice-a-week schedule and you can probably expect me to focus more on personal and business development instead of money.

Have a happy new year!

 

 

5 Steps to Save

Finance

neighbor of the beast
Image by BitHead via Flickr

“Saving is too hard.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“How much should I save?”

“Who the heck are you to tell me what to do with my money?”

“Shut up, Jason.”

These are the things I hear when I start talking about getting a good strategy in place to save some money.   Financial matters are intimidating to a lot of people.  They’d rather not think about their money any more than they absolutely need to, if that much.   Here, I’m breaking it down to some simple steps to make saving easy.

1.  Get motivated. Why do you want to save some money?  Are you trying to make a secure future, or do you just want to buy a new toy?  These are the kind of questions you have to ask yourself.  Nobody else can tell you why you want to make changes to your lifestyle, and nobody else’s reasons matter in the least.   Saving money is something you have to do for you.

2.   Figure out how much you can save. Generally, you’re going to need a budget so you can figure out what you can afford to save, but not always.  If you are making ends meet, then you get a raise, you can obviously afford to bank the difference.  If you do that, you’ll never even notice the missing money.  If you try to save so much your mortgage goes unpaid, you’re plan is doomed to failure.

3.  Open an account at a new bank. The biggest problem I used to have when I was trying to save was that it was too easy to get the money.  Every time I checked the balance of my checking account, I saw the balance in the savings account.   Worse, it took seconds to transfer that money from my savings account to my attached checking account.    Every time I wanted to see if I could afford whatever toy I was looking at, I’d see money that wasn’t earmarked for anything in particular.  Naturally, that money got spent more often that it was ignored and allowed to grow.   Now, I can completely forget about the money.

4.  Automate. I’ve automated everything I can.  All of my bills are paid automatically, except for one company that insists on quarterly paper invoices.    I’ve got $665(neighbor of the beast!) automatically transferred to my INGDirect account, to get divided between my various savings goals, including a fund for my semi-annual property tax payments and a fund to pay for the braces we haven’t actually had to buy yet, but will in a couple of years.   The money disappears into a bank I don’t use for my day-to-day expenses and grows completely out of sight.    Every once in a while, I look at the account and get surprised by how much has accumulated.

5.  Get rich. Once you’ve got the other four steps in place, all you’ve got to do is let it work.  Over time, you will build wealth in a way that may surprise you.    Your goal at this point is to do nothing new.    Every once in a while, you can pull out some money and tuck it into an investment account to get some real growth going for you.

“Thank you.”

“You’re the best.”

“What would I do without you?”

“How can I show you my appreciation? <wink><wink>”

“What the heck are you doing with my wife?”

These are the things I always hope to hear after sharing my strategies to save money.

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Sunday Roundup: Ice Fishing

Misc

Ice Fishing in Portland, Maine
Image by Captain Kimo via Flickr

Update: Something wonky’s happening with this post.  If you’re seeing it in your reader again, just ignore it.

Twenty years ago, my grandparents were living in Arizona.   They went to see Grumpy Old Men in the theater and, during an ice-fishing scene, they overheard the people next to them talking about how impossible it was.  You can’t walk on the ice, let alone drive there!   Naturally, my grandparents corrected them.

For the uninitiated, in the land of 10,000 frozen lakes, ice fishing is an actual pastime.   The ice on a lake can reach 36 inches, which is more than enough to drive on by 24 inches.    Ice-fishing aficionados will drill a hole through that frozen mess, drop a line through the hole and find dinner.    Last night, I went ice fishing for the first time in at least 10 years, probably 15.    On the lake we were on, they actually plow roads across the ice.   It sounds cold, but we were in a 20-foot fish house with a generator, a couch, and a TV.  The neatest thing was the underwater radar thingy that turns ice-fishing into a video game.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit.   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 29 pounds since January 2nd!   That’s 4 pounds since last week.  13 more to meet my goal for February.

Total Inches: I have lost 15 inches in the same time frame, down 1 since last week.

Best Posts

Thinkgeek has a new high-protein, low-carb snack.  Did you know that toasted ants taste like bacon?  I’m far more tempted than I should be.

On the off chance that somebody has missed the memo over the years, tax protesting–the art of ignoring your taxes because you don’t like them–will not end well for you.

I’ve been fighting an urge to get a Kindle.  Over the last few weeks, the itch has been getting harder to ignore.  Money Crashers has a list of resources for free ebooks, making the itch that much worse.

That’s two posts on spending money.  Here’s one to balance that with making money.   Do you know the best time to post an eBay auction?

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago.  Did you miss them then?

Have you ever participated in a financial binge & purge?  Budgeting and planning can help you avoid the purge, but you’ll have to forgo most of the binges.

Everybody gets caught by life’s ups and downs occasionally.  When that happens, how can you fix the damage to your budget and finances?

Finally, I explained my plan for shopping quickly.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Debt Burnout 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!

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Saturday Roundup

Life

I’ve spend the last 10 days at home with my two youngest kids.   It’s been a lot of fun.   It’s amazing watching them interact with each other and seeing how their imaginations works.   It’s also been a helpful reminder that, if I don’t turn on the TV, they will happily find something else to do.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit.   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 belly, waist, biceps, and thighs.   Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 11 pounds since January 2nd.  This is crazy.  At least part of this has to be due to the natural swing of up to 5 pounds from day to day, and part of it is due to the fact that I was wearing jeans when I weighed in the first time and cotton pajamas this morning.  From now on, this is going to be the first thing I do on Saturday mornings, so everything is as consistent as possible.  Another factor is that I’ve cut most of the crap out of my diet for a week.  My body has been flushing garbage.  But dang!  11 pounds in a week.  I’m a bit excited.

Total Inches: I have lost 5.5 inches in the same time frame.  This is proof that it’s not just water that I lost, which is where first, dramatic losses usually originate in a diet.

The loss seems a little bit nuts.   Here’s hoping it stays consistent.

Best Posts

Your retirement account shouldn’t be an optional investment.   Do you know how to maximize retirement savings?

I’m a big fan of making extra money.   Money Crashers lists 6 sites to help you rake in the cash, without needing any special skills.

Unclutterer is giving away three Fujitsu Scansnaps.   I want one of these is a way that isn’t quite right.

I’ve been moving to LED lights instead of CFLs for a few years.  CFLs make lousy security lights in Minnesota in the winter.  They take 5 minutes to get to full brightness when it’s cold.  LEDs last forever.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote one year ago.

I posted about the difference between bribes and rewards and the problems inherent in trying to buy good behavior.

Lesson 2 of my budget series went live, detailing my monthly bills.

We made some changes to our budget plans that haven’t worked very well.   Over the course of the last year, every one of these ideas has either been partially or totally abandoned, but it’s working for us.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

3 Things You Need to Know About Homeowner’s Insurance was included in the Festival of Frugality.

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.

That’s all for today.   Have a great weekend!