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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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Sunday Roundup: Diet Redux

Misc

Emergency "Twitter was down so I wrote my...
Image via Wikipedia

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!

 

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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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It’s Better to Buy a House than Rent

Finance

This guest post is brought to you by Lender411.com.

The debate is ongoing about whether it’s better to rent a home or buy one. Which is best?

To start, identify your goals. This includes short-term goals and long-term goals—anything relevant to your living situation or your finances. Are you someone who likes to move around and explore new areas, or have you put down strong roots in a specific location? Are you planning to raise a family? Is that family going to grow over the years? Do you plan to build up wealth? Are you aiming to retire a few years early? Work these things out as best you can. You need to know where you’re headed.

Beyond these life considerations, there are some specific facts about homeownership that typically make buying a house a better choice than renting one indefinitely. Specifically, you’ll save money in the long run if you buy a house. Studies have shown that if you plan to remain in a residence longer than five years, you’re better off buying than renting. Here’s why.

Equity. When you own a house, every dollar you put toward paying off the principal of your mortgage is actually going right back to your pocket in the long run. A house itself is an investment—it is a thing that holds value and, in fact, often gains value over time. It’s almost like a savings account. When you put money into a savings account, it stays there. Sure, you don’t exactly have access to the money, but it’s still there and, in the long run, it’s still yours. You don’t gain this value when you’re renting a piece of property. The money you pay out is simply gone.

Value. As mentioned above, a house, like any other financial instrument or investment, can actually increase in value over time without any effort on your part. Sometime property values just go up. Historically, in fact, just about all property gains value in the long run—often significant value. Real estate is a very popular form of investment even separate from the fact that it provides your family with a place to live. Even with a mortgage, the ultimate return you can get for your money is typically very good, especially if you’re able to find the best mortgage rates when you enter the loan. Renting doesn’t give you this opportunity to someday capture increasing property value.

Stability. One of the most appealing perks of home ownership is the consistency of payments month to month. If you have a fixed rate mortgage, your monthly payment is locked in at a certain amount for the next thirty years or so. This can be extremely comforting for some people and extremely helpful when it comes to budgeting long-term. When renting, prices may fluctuate from lease to lease, or you may move from one place to another and constantly have to readjust your budget and lifestyle. Also, mortgage payments on a house will, at some point, end. When those thirty years are up, chances are you won’t need to make any payments toward your house beyond property taxes from then on. Renting, however, never ends. You’ll never truly have a place of your own.

Despite the strength of these three facts in favor of home ownership over renting, the choice is ultimately one that must be made by individuals and families. Everyone has different long-term goals, and those goals must be identified first. But make the decision wisely. From a financial perspective, home ownership is the better of the two options long-term.

Update:  I just realized I didn’t include the link to the Festival of Frugality that included this post.  That’s fixed.

Money Problems – Day 1: Setting Goals

Finance

Today, I am starting a series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not going to run the series in 30 consecutive days.  That’s not my schedule.  Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us.   Instead, it will run roughly once a week.  To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

In this, the first installment, we’re going to talk about goals.

First, we’re going to ask 3 questions.

  1. What is your financial goal?
  2. Why?
  3. How can you get there?

The first question is “What is your goal?” Of course, in this series, on this site, we’re only going to be addressing your financial goals.  Losing 300 pounds, growing wings, and flying to the moon may be an admirable goal, but it’s considerably outside of the scope of this project.

So, what is your financial goal?  Do you want to retire a millionaire, or become financially independent?  Do you want to pay off your debt, or save enough money to see the world?  Do you want to learn how to retire by 40?

Your goal does not matter…to anyone but you.  To you, though, it is terribly important.  Without a goal, how can you measure you progress and see what you have accomplished?  It’s easy to get frustrated and give up when you can’t look back and see what successes you have actually accumulated.

Whatever your goal, you have to do two things:

  1. Don’t let anyone tell you it is stupid or impossible.    There is a quote that I can’t find attribution for, other than as an old Chinese proverb: “Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it.”
  2. Write it down and hang it up.  This lets you see your goal every day.  It will be impossible to forget and difficult to ignore.  I have Dave Ramsey‘s Baby Steps hanging on my refrigerator where I see it a dozen times per day.

The second major question to ask yourself is “Why?”  Why is this goal important to you?  Why do you care?

If you can’t answer that, it’s time to sit back and think about it for a while.  Without a solid reason to succeed, you’ll lose motivation and fail.   Are you getting out of debt to give yourself a secure retirement?  Do you want to save to travel the world because you’ve been dreaming about it since you were in diapers?  Do you simply want to provide a secure future for your family?   Whatever your reason, it is–and should be–uniquely yours.

The third and final question is “How can you make it happen?”  That question has an extremely simple answer: read the rest of the series.

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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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