- Getting ready to go build a rain gauge at home depot with the kids. #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist." ~ Michael Levine #
- RT @wisebread: Wow! Major food recall that touches so many pantry items. Check your cupboards NOW! http://bit.ly/c5wJh6 #
- Baby just said "coffin" for the first time. #feelingaddams #
- @TheLeanTimes I have an awesome recipe for pizza dough…at home. We make it once per week. I'll share later. in reply to TheLeanTimes #
- RT @bargainr: 9 minute, well-reasoned video on why we should repeal marijuana prohibition by Judge Jim Gray http://bit.ly/cKNYkQ plz watch #
- RT @jdroth: Brilliant post from Trent at The Simple Dollar: http://bit.ly/c6BWMs — All about dreams and why we don't pursue them. #
- Pizza dough: add garlic powder and Ital. Seasoning http://tweetphoto.com/13861829 #
- @TheLeanTimes: Pizza dough: add lots of garlic powder and Ital. Seasoning to this: http://tweetphoto.com/13861829 #
- RT @flexo: "Genesis. Exorcist. Leviathan. Deu… The Right Thing…" #
- @TheLeanTimes Once, for at least 3 hours. Knead it hard and use more garlic powder tha you think you need. 🙂 in reply to TheLeanTimes #
- Google is now hosting Popular Science archives. http://su.pr/1bMs77 #
- RT @wisebread 6 Slick Tools to Save Money on Car Repairs http://bit.ly/cUbjZG #
- @BudgetsAreSexy I filed federal last week, haven't bothered filing state, yet. Guess which one is paying me and which one wants more money. in reply to BudgetsAreSexy #
- RT @ChristianPF is giving away a Lifetime Membership to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University! RT to enter to win… http://su.pr/2lEXIT #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: 4 Reasons To Choose Community College Out Of High School. http://ow.ly/16MoNX #
- RT @hughdeburgh:"When it comes to a happy marriage,sex is cornerstone content.Its what separates spouses from friends." SimpleMarriage.net #
- RT @tferriss: So true. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." – Abraham Lincoln #
- RT @hughdeburgh: "The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them." ~ Frank A. Clark #
Saturday Roundup: Evil Dead
- Image via Wikipedia
Last night, my wife and I went to see Evil Dead: The Musical. I’m a die-hard zombie-movie fan, and the Evil Dead Trilogy is among my favorites. I don’t recognize a difference between Candarian demons and zombies, so it still fits the genre.
The musical beats either of the first two movies, hands down. I was rolling. If you are in the Minneapolis area tomorrow, check it out at the Illusion Theater. If you are elsewhere, watch for it. It’s entirely worth the time and money.
Best Posts:
Sometimes, shopping can save you money, but don’t let it get out of hand.
I’ve never had food poisoning, but my wife has. It was unpleasant.
Bacon soda. Yum. No further comment.
Bad marketers. No donut.
Carnivals I’ve been in:
AAA – Save Some Cash was included in the Festival of Frugality.
The Spending Styles of the Rocky Horror Picture Show was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Crack was included in Foodtastic Favorites.
If I missed anyone, please let me know. Thanks for including me!
Why do you need a trailer?
As I mentioned before, we recently bought a Chevy Tahoe. When we bought it, we had a Ford F150 and a Dodge Caliber that we could have traded in, but decided to sell on our own, instead.
About a month ago, we sold the truck. If you’ve never owned a truck, you probably don’t realize how handy they are to have. From hauling brush to moving furniture to donating large amount of crap to Goodwill, we used our truck.
We’ve also been on a mission to replace all of our old crappy stuff with nicer things, without spending a ton to make that happen. We’ve been selling stuff on Craigslist, then taking that money to buy other stuff we’re finding good deals on.
We found a 4×8 utility trailer for $300. It came home with us. The first thing I heard was “Why do you need a trailer?”
Now, we could have made do with delivery fees or rental trucks, but that seemed silly to me.
- We recently replaced our living room couches. One of our cats had mistaken one of them for a litter box. No amount of enzyme cleaner gets that smell out of a couch cushion. Shortly after that, my fat a** popped two of the springs out of the bottom. Bad couch. We found a good deal on brand new replacements, but the delivery fee would have been $80.
- My wife found a beautiful entertainment center last week that matched the corner entertainment center we already have. We don’t need another entertainment center, but after convincing the seller to sell us the side units without the center unit, we have glass-doored bookshelves that exactly match the largest piece of furniture we own. Without the trailer, we would have had to rent a truck to get them home.
- Tomorrow, we’ll be taking the last load of stuff out of my mother-in-law’s house. Without the trailer, that would be several trips in the car.
We’ve had the thing for 3 weeks and it has almost paid for itself in time and money. I think that makes for a good investment. I don’t expect to buy a new living room set every month, but it’s nice to be able to deal with large things when the need arises.
Ditch Cable and Still Enjoy TV
- Image via Wikipedia
Cable is expensive. If you have more than just basic cable, you are probably paying at least $65 per month or more, just for TV. How can you save on television, without stealing cable?
The good news is that, in the internet age, it is possible to fully enjoy TV without having to pay exorbitant fees to the cable company.
Basic Cable
Basic cable generally runs about $15 per month, but it usually comes with a $10 per month discount on internet access if you use cable for that. For $5 per month, you can get all of the local broadcast channels, including the news and weather, which we use in the morning while getting ready for work.
Netflix
We watch movies. We watch lots of movies. Spending $14 per month for an unlimited 2-at-a-time plan is a no-brainer for us. It has also enabled us to scratch the movie itch without resorting to HBO or incessant movie purchases, which used to run $100+ each month. When you include Netflix instant in the equation, which gives us a ton of older movies to choose from at a moment’s notice, we are more than covered for our movie obsession.
Hulu
Hulu.com has a metric crapload of TV shows and movies available for free. They are moving towards a partial pay model, but most of their content will still be free. But, you don’t want to crowd your family around a 15-inch laptop screen to watch something, you say? Fine. We went to our local computer parts store and bought cables and converters to go from the video-out and headphone jacks on the laptop to the inputs on our VCR. That cost about $30 for 2 extension cords and 2 converters. We use the analog outputs, which allows for cheaper converters. The quality after conversion is no worse than watching a movie in the VCR.
TiVo
TiVo comes with a Video-On-Demand(VOD) section, if you connect it to the internet. It’s mostly free, with hundreds of channels to choose from, ranging from trailers to full shows and movies. I have a season pass to TEDTalks, which are always impressive and usually inspirational. There are many more channels to choose from.
Torrent
I’m kidding. I’m not advocate piracy. This is just search-engine bait.
As you can see, it’s entirely possible to save money on cable, without missing out on anything you care about. How do you save money on TV and movies?
Book Review: The Art of Non-Conformity
We grew up in a world of expectations: Eat your vegetables, don’t poop on the carpet, do your homework. It continues right up to “Go to college”, “Get married”, “Having a dozen kids”. Are those the expectations you want to use to guide your life?
Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Non-Conformity (the blog and the book) puts the question like this: We we were younger, we heard “If everyone else was jumping off of a cliff, would you do that too?” In theory, that meant we were supposed to think for ourselves. Yet, as adults, we are absolutely expected to conform and do the things everyone else is doing. Work your 40, take a week’s vacation once a year, and repeat until retirement or death.
Is that our only choice?
The Art of Non-Conformity attempts to be a guidebook, showing you how to live the live you want to live. Chris has made a lifelong series of decidedly unconventional choices, from dropping out of high school to attending 3 colleges simultaneously to spending 4 years as a volunteer in Africa. For the past few years, he has been working his way through visiting every country in the world. He is an expert on non-conformity.
The books tells a lot (a LOT) of stories of people who have either made the leap into a self-defined life or people who have done nothing but talk about taking that leap while staying comfortable in their soul-numbing careers.
The Good
The Art of Non-Conformity is an inspirational book. It spends a lot of time explaining how to break through the wall of fear to take control of your like. More important, it explains why you’d want to. It does not pretend to define how you should live your life, it just provides the framework for the mentality to help you make that decision for yourself.
The Bad
If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide, complete with a list of possible work-alternatives, this isn’t the book for you. This book approaches lifestyle design from the conceptual end rather than the practical. If you want a practical manual, I’d get the 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. Ideally, you should get both. They complement each other well.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. If you’re considering taking a non-standard path or just hate the career- or life-track you are on, you should read The Art of Non-Conformity. I’m planning to read it again in a couple of weeks, just to make sure I absorb all of the lessons.
Family Bed: How to Make It Stop
baby on the cheek.” width=”300″ height=”199″ />For years, my kids shared my bed.
When my oldest was a baby, I was working a graveyard shift, so my wife was alone with the baby at night. It was easy to keep a couple of bottles in a cooler by the bed and not have to get out of bed to take care of him when he woke up once an hour to drink a full bottle.
Then he got older. And bigger. And bigger.
We tried to move him to his own bed a few times, but it never worked well. He’d scream if we put him in a crib, so we got him a bed at 9 months old. That just meant he was free to join us whenever he woke up. Brat.
We finally got him to voluntarily move to his own bed after his sister was born. Shortly after she was born, I woke up to see him using her as a pillow. To paint the proper picture, this kid is 5’9″ and wears size 12 shoes. At 11. When I woke him up to tell him what he was doing, he decided to sleep in his own bed.
Method #1 to get your kids in their own bed: Have kid 1 try to crush kid 2 and feel bad about it.
Method #1 isn’t a great solution.
Soon, baby #3 showed up and we had 2 monsters in bed with us again. Once they started getting bigger, it became difficult for the 4 of us to sleep. We tried to get them into their own beds. Unfortunately, even as toddlers, my kids had a stubborn streak almost as big as my own. Nothing worked.
Eventually, they got big enough that I was crowded right out of the bed. At least we had a comfortable couch.
Sleeping on a couch gets old.
When the girls got old enough to reason with, we had a choice: We either had to find a way to convince them they wanted to sleep in their own room, or we had to have a fourth brat for them to attempt to crush at night.
We went with bribery. Outright, blatant bribery.
We put a chart on the wall with each of their names and 7 boxes. Every night they slept in their own beds, they got to check a box. When all of the boxes were checked, they got $5 and a trip to the toy store.
It took 10 days to empty our bed and it’s been peaceful sleeping since. That’s $5 well-spent.
Have you done a family bed? How did it work? How long did it last?
