- Dora the Explorer is singing about cocaine. Is that why my kids have so much energy? #
- RT @prosperousfool: Be the Friendly Financial “Stop” Sign http://bit.ly/67NZFH #
- RT @tferriss: Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ in a one-page cartoon: http://su.pr/2PAuup #
- RT @BSimple: Shallow men believe in Luck, Strong men believe in cause and effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson #
- 5am finally pays off. 800 word post finished. Reading to the kids has been more consistent,too. Not req’ing bedtime, just reading daily. #
- Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse: morbid story from my childhood. Still enthralling. #
- RT @MoneyCrashers: Money Crashers 2010 New Year Giveaway Bash – $7,400 in Cash and Amazing Prizes http://bt.io/DDPy #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-16
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-17
- RT @mymoneyshrugged: The government breaks your leg, and hands you a crutch saying "see without me, you couldn't walk." #
- @bargainr What weeks do you need a FoF host for? in reply to bargainr #
- Awesome tagline: The coolest you'll look pooping your pants. Yay, @Huggies! #
- A textbook is not the real world. Not all business management professors understand marketing. #
- RT @thegoodhuman: Walden on work "spending best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy (cont) http://tl.gd/2gugo6 #
The Magic Toilet
- Image by tokyofortwo via Flickr
My toilet is saving me $1200.
For a long time, my toilet ran. It was a nearly steady stream of money slipping down the drain. I knew that replacing the flapper was a quick job, but it was easy to ignore. If I wasn’t in the bathroom, I couldn’t hear it. If I was in the bathroom, I was otherwise occupied.
When I finally got sick of it, I started researching how to fix a running toilet because I had never done it before. I found the HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter. It’s the magical push-button, two-stage flusher. Yes, science fiction has taken over my bathroom. Or at least my toilet.
I bought the dual-flush converter, which replaces the flusher and the flapper. It has two buttons, which each use different amounts of water, depending on what you need it to do. I’m sure there’s a poop joke in there somewhere, but I’m pretending to have too much class to make it.
I also bought the matching fill valve. This lets you set how much water is allowed into the tank much better than just putting a brick in the tank. It’s a much faster fill and has a pressure nozzle that lies on the bottom of the tank. Every time you flush, it cleans the inside of the tank. Before I put it in, it had been at least 5 years since I had opened the tank. It was black. Two weeks later, it was white again. I wouldn’t want to eat off of it, or drink the water, but it was a definite improvement.
Installation would have been easier if the calcium buildup hadn’t welded the flush handle to the tank. That’s what reciprocating saws are for, though. That, and scaring my wife with the idea of replacing the toilet. Once the handle was off, it took 15 minutes to install.
“Wow”, you say? “Where’s the $1200”, you say? We’ve had this setup, which cost $35.42, since June 8th, 2010. It’s now September. That’s summer. We’ve watered both the lawn and the garden and our quarterly water bill has gone down $30, almost paying for the poo-gadget already. $30 X 4 = $120 per year, or $1200 over 10 years.
Yes, it will take a decade, but my toilet is saving me $1200.
Rebates Suck
About a month ago, I bought a new laptop.
The old one still works, but it’s kind of slow, and kind of in demand, especially when Kid #1 has friends over. When I need to get on the computer and whip up some side-hustle money, I shouldn’t have to fight with kids and deal with the whiny “Are you done, yet?” every 10 minutes.
This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Since the old laptop still worked, we had quite a bit of time to find the new one, so I started watching sales. And I waited.
Eventually, I found a great deal. I got a much bigger/faster/smarter/nicer laptop for about $375 with tax. There was a sale, a coupon code, and a rebate all in play to make that happen.
I don’t mind coupons and sales. In fact, I am a fan.
Rebates, however, irritate me.
It shouldn’t have been bad. After all, I was going to Staples, home of the Easy Button®. I should have been able to go home, fire up their website, fill out a form, and get my money in a couple of weeks, right?
Grr.
Apparently, the easy rebate doesn’t apply to the good rebates. If you’re getting $1.05 back on a $100 printer, you can do it in a few clicks. But if you’re getting $50 back on a $400 laptop, watch out. Then, Staples has the same horrible rebate process as everyone else. Print the forms, peel off the UPC label, snail-mail it to the middle of nowhere and wait 4 to 100 months for a gift card.
Double grr.
Obviously, they are hoping a statistically significant percentage of their customers forget to claim their money.
Shady rebate garbage.
Rebates are a marketing ploy to convince customers they are getting a sale, while hoping the customer forgets to ask for the sale price, thereby paying full price and being happy about it.
Ethical businesses would just have a sale and be done with it. Treating your customers right is good for business. Really.
Now, where did I put that receipt?
2012: The Year the World Ended
December 21st marks the day that Mayan calendar-makers decided was far longer than they needed to waste their time carving
days into stone.
More importantly, it marks the beginning of the week before my birthday. No self-respecting civilization would end the world just a week before my birthday.
This is traditionally the time that people look back at the previous year, and make resolutions they don’t intend to keep in the following year.
Who am I to buck tradition?
In 2011, I became a bit of a workaholic.
This site has taken off a bit. I’m not about to retire off of the proceeds, but it has turned into a nice little side income. Thank you for that.
I launched a marketing company. We do web design/development, social media work, and search engine marketing. It’s strictly a part-time gig right now, but it’s growing and taking up most of my free evenings and weekends.
I’ve been working 50-60 hours a week at my day job.
The plus side? I’ve also paid off almost $20,000 of my debt in 2011, bringing my total to $47,535 left.
It’s been a lot of work, but the harder I hustle, the sooner I can stop hustling.
What’s in store for 2012?
On the work front, I plan to cut my weekly load down to 40-45 hours again. Life it to short to work all of the time.
I want to expand my new company to the point that my day job is optional. I’m projecting that by spring. Call it June 1st.
Here, I want to double the size of my audience. I don’t just want random people popping in, I want to grow an engaged audience. That means more comments and more discussion. Expect to see more along those lines.
I’ve also got a couple of products under development. By year-end, I’d like to have them both released.
On a personal level, my biggest goal is to carve out a regular chunk of time to spend with my wife. Working all of the time has cut into our quality time together. I want to find a way to schedule date nights at least twice a month. It will cost more money, but that’s part of why I’m working so much.
Financially, I want to kill the last of my credit card debt. That’s down to about $17,000. We’ll need to keep working at it, but it’s a reachable goal. That means we still don’t get cable, I still avoid buying books every week, and my kids still have to live with not getting every whim fulfilled.
To recap: I’m going to work smarter, grow my side projects, and make this site better for you. In the process, I’m going to kill the last of my unsecured debt, and drag my mortgage down to it’s last gasping breaths.
Here’s to the end of the world….
Public Service Announcement: Anger, Children, and Cars
If, in the course of a basic morning, your three-year-old decides that you need to pick out her clothes, even though she’s been handling that every day for months, don’t be surprised if she rejects your first three choices. She’s just being lazy.
If, after you’ve settled on clothes, you tell her to pick out some socks, expect the same behavior. She’ll lie on the living room floor saying “You pick them out” for 20 minutes, only to throw a fit if you don’t pick the ones with fairies. At this point, it’s okay to yell at her. Really.
When she tears them off and throws them across the room, you don’t even have to be gentle when you put them back on and strap her shoes down to keep her socks on.
Then, when you’re walking across the yard, and she refuses because she’s mad, it is again okay to hold her hand to guide assist drag her to the car, but it works best if you are strong enough to keep her suspended above the ground when she tries to sit down to stop you.
Of course, when you get to the car, she’s going to run back to the front door because she can walk by herself.
Literally throwing her into the car at this point isn’t okay. Tempting, but not okay.
As the man said, I told you that so I could tell you this:
It would seem, now, that it would be a good idea to flip the child latch on the door to keep the contrary little brat from escaping while you circle the car to the driver’s door, or worse, slow down for a stop sign. It is a good idea.
The thing to remember is that, in your anger, when the world has gone red and you are cheering on the biological traits that make it nearly impossible to hurt your children, it is easy to stick the screwdriver in the wrong slot in the door and jam your door latch.
When that happens your door won’t close. Your little monster won’t stop aggravating you, and the child who has chosen to play the role of little angel this morning will start getting crabby about the wait. That doesn’t help.
After you throw the kids in the spare car–the car which doesn’t have air conditioning on the hottest day of the year, so far–and get the brats to daycare, the internet can show you what does help.
If, when you close your car door, it bounces back open because the latch is jammed, no amount of poking at it with a screwdriver will fix it. You’ll bleed for no good reason. Grab the door handle and hold it in the open position. Then, when you poke the latch with a screwdriver, it will pop into the correct position with very little effort.
It’s amazing what a door that closes will do for your morning.
