- 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
Cutting Costs While Cutting Hair
About once per quarter, my wife and I have a…I won’t call it a fight. It’s more like she-comes-home-looking-stunning-while-I-make-disapproving-grunting-sounds-while-giving-the-checkbook-dirty-looks.
I hate salons.
$80 for highlights, $30 for a haircut and $15 for eyebrow “shaping”. It’s an afternoon of chemicals and hot-wax torture, for the low, low price of $125 + tip. Frugal it’s not, but that’s an argument I lost long ago.
This weekend, she tried something new.
Beauty school.
For roughly the cost of materials, she got her eyebrows “shaped” and her hair highlighted and cut by a senior student at the beauty school, under the supervision of a licensed beautician/instructor.
It looks good, and she said she had more fun during her appointment than any other salon trip she’s had. I guess there’s something to be said for interacting with someone who isn’t burned out on interacting with the general public.
What does it cost? What normally runs $125 cost just $35. That’s for a $5 cut, $25 highlighting, and $5 wax. That’s a $90 savings or 72% off. Yay!
Other services they offer include:
- Full color, cut and shampoo for $20.
- A Perm for $25.
- Mani/pedi for $24.
- Full set of acrylic nails for $15.
- Wax for $5. Have I ever mentioned that I am happy to be a guy?
- Seaweed treatment for $10. I don’t even know what this is. A buffet, maybe?
They also have a “Princess” package that we’re going to use for brat #2’s birthday party next month. It’s an up-do, nail polish, make-up, and tiara for $10 per kid. We’ll take the girls out to get made up all pretty-like, then off to the dollar theater, for a $35 party.
The school my wife visited has more than 90 locations in 21 states, but I’d be willing to be every city big enough to support a Wal-Mart also has a beauty school nearby. They don’t tend to advertise their customer services, so you’ll have to call, but for a 70% discount, it worth spending a bit of time on the phone, isn’t it?
I have two questions for you, dear readers:
- Would you consider going to a beautician trainee?
- What the heck is a seaweed treatment?
Don’t Be A Dick
Integrity is what you do when nobody is looking.
Do you cheat at solitaire, steal from an untended garage sale, or keep something a store forgets to charge you for? If so, integrity may not be your strongest trait.
Similarly, if you let the actions of others dictate your behavior, you may be integrity impaired.
If you get cut off in traffic, do suddenly feel justified in cutting off the next guy?
If you have a dollar stolen from your desk, does that make it okay to take a candy bar from the honor-system candy box?
If the last guy left the water cooler empty, are you going to refuse to refill it the next time you are the one to drink the last drop?
If you’re answering yes to these questions, it may be time to examine your moral code. Doing the right thing means doing the right thing all of the time. You can’t be an honorable person if you resort to dishonorable behavior whenever you dislike what someone else does, especially if your actions are hurting an entirely uninvolved 3rd party.
You know the proper behavior. You know what the ethical choice is. The fact that someone else made an unethical choice doesn’t give you a license to be a dick.
If it’s your turn to clean the community refrigerator, do it and do it well, even if the last guy did a poor job.
If the last mom driving the car pool showed up late, don’t deliberately forget her kid.
If someone forgot to pay at a group lunch and you covered it, that doesn’t mean you can skip out on the bill next time.
Even if everything else is taken from you, no one can ever steal your ethics, your integrity, or your honor. Those things are up to you to destroy, and they nearly impossible to replace.
In all cases, in all things, do the right thing. You won’t be sorry.
Resurrected from the archives.
100 Push-ups in 22 Days
Push-ups
One from the vault:
Last month, I set a goal to do one hundred push-ups in a single set by the end of the month. Before I started working on this, I hadn’t done a single pushup in at least 10 years. At the beginning, I didn’t know if it would be possible, or how much it would hurt. I knew it would be a challenge, and I was looking for a challenge.
Three days before the start of the month, I did one set of pushups. I wanted to find my baseline, so I could see the progress I was making, and I wanted a chance to recover, so I’d be starting from scratch on the first of the month. That day, I did 20 pushups. I pushed, but 21 wasn’t going to happen. That’s not an impressive number, but I ride a desk all day and had spent 10 years lazy. It could have been worse.
My initial plan was to do two sessions per day, morning and night. I’d be doing a total of 56 sessions. Each session would consist of 5 sets of my baseline, progressing to 100 push-ups in a set for the 56th session. That would mean I’d have to add 1.5 pushups to my sets each session. I decided to add 1 to each set in the morning and 2 in the evening sessions. My planned progression was 20, 22, 23, 25…95, 97, 98, 100 over the course of the month.
That lasted one day. February 1st, I did 100 push-ups in 5 sets of 20. That night I did 110 push-ups in 5 sets of 22. The next morning, I hurt so much I couldn’t do 10. I did something like 8/5/5/5/cry-like-a-baby. My abs were cramping and my shoulders burned. I ended the session in the fetal position, hoping all of the screaming muscles wouldn’t cramp up at the same time. If pain is weakness leaving the body, then I was making a significant contribution to the the problem of homeless weakness particles.
Plan A failed. As I waited for the pain to end, I had some time to think. In between “Please don’t cramp! Please don’t cramp! Please don’t cramp!”, I developed Plan B.
I decided to base everything on the previous session’s largest set. The largest set would set my baseline for the next session. The first set in the session would be half of the baseline. The next three sets would be 3/4 of the baseline, and the final set would be pushed until I couldn’t go any further, establishing the next session’s baseline. Starting from my newly established baseline of eight push-ups, my next session was 4/6/6/6/15. The session after that was 7/11/11/11/16, then 8/12/12/12/16.
Plan B became an aggressive, self-correcting progression. If I pushed too hard, the next session was done at a lower level, allowing me time to recover.
The first week hurt. Going from little-to-no real exercise to an aggressive exercise regimen is painful. I was stiff and sore, but I was progressing. One of the best things about Plan B: Set #1 is a good warm-up. Warming up is important.
By the end of week one, I was back to where I started, doing sets of 20. I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I had a few days in a row that didn’t improve my baseline at all. Then I skipped a day. When I came back, but baseline jumped by 10 push-ups. I had hit a small wall, gave myself a day to recover and had a 50% improvement. Guess what got incorporated into Plan B? If I had two days in a row without improvement over the four sessions, I skipped a day.
By the end of week two, my baseline was up to 60. I stopped increasing the warm-up set, so it would still be a warm-up and not create strain. I only went above 20 for the warm-up set once before I created this rule. At this point, my session was 20/45/45/45/60. That’s progress.
At the end of week three, my baseline was at 80. I took the weekend off.
On Monday, February 22nd, I decided to see where my absolute max was. I did a set of 20 to warm up. I followed up with a set of 30, to make sure I was ready. Set #3 was 100 push-ups, a full week early. I’m not going to lie and say push-up #100 was perfect, but it was done. I went from barely being able to do 20 push-ups to successfully doing 100 push-ups in 22 days. I spent the rest of the week perfecting my form. After 75-80 push-ups, it’s hard to tell exactly how straight your body is and how low you are going, without a spotter or a mirror.
Next, I’m applying Plan B to sit-ups.
Decluttering the House – April 30 Day Project Update
My 30 Day Project for April is to declutter my entire house. That’s every room, every dresser, every drawer. We’ve got 12 years of jointly accumulated clutter.
Our progress so far has been wonderful. The main level of our house is almost done.
In our daughters’ room, we put in bunk beds and pulled out a dresser. With the crib, changing table, and toddler bed removed, they actually have room to play on the floor. Their closet has been emptied and repurposed as scrapbooking and blanket storage. Cost: $140 for the bunk beds.
Our son’s room has had a dresser, a desk, and a bed replaced with a loft bed. Even with the 6 foot tall monstrosity of a bed, his room looks so much bigger. We still have to clean out his closet, which is mostly artifacts of a business we no longer have, leftovers from when his bedroom was our office. Cost: $260 for the loft bed.
Our room was depressing. Never dirty, but oh-so-full. The closet was jam-packed. The top shelf was full of towels and sheets. The closet rod couldn’t fit another shirt. There was a modular shelving system on the floor of the closet–full. We had three full dressers. The headboard has 5 foot tall cabinets, half of which were full of makeup and jewelry, the other half with books. Now, there is 1 empty dresser. It belonged to my great-grandmother, so it’s going to the shop to be refinished, instead of the garage sale to be sold. Another dresser has spare room in it. There’s no need to rearrange the cabinets to get to anything. The closet is less than half full and there is almost nothing on the floor of the closet. Gear for my side-line business is stored out of sight and out of the way. This is so much more relaxing.
We’ve tackled the kitchen, except for 1 cabinet, which is mostly cookbooks and booze. That will be fun to clean out.
Our front closet was worthless. It was so full we put hooks on the outside of the door to hang our coats. We pulled out a dozen coats we never wear. At least 20 pairs of shoes, some belonging to roommates gone 1o years. We can actually use the closet now. The shoes and boots all have homes. Our coats all fit…inside.
We have 1 closet and 1 cabinet left to address on the main level. There are also 3 small rooms in the basement that need to be gutted–the laundry room, the family room, and a room that has been designated for storage and the litter box. The last one will be the hardest. It’s full of remnants of hobbies past and failed ventures. I’m expecting some fights, flowing every possible direction.
In the process, we’ve filled our dining room with stuff for our garage sale…twice. It’s all getting priced and boxed as we go through it. We thrown away anything we won’t be able to sell. We’ve done all of this with the mutual understanding that nothing is coming back in the house. After the sale, it will be donated or sold on Craigslist, but it won’t become a part of our lives again. We are successfully purging so much. The “skinny clothes” are gone. When the time comes, they’ll be replaced. In the meantime, they can be put to better use on someone else. Hobbies that never took, games that are never played, it’s all going. We are getting down to the things that are actually used and useful.
It’s interesting to note that the process is getting easier as the month goes by. My Mother-in-Law is a hoarder. Those habits get passed down, but what was originally a source of stress has turned into a pleasant chore.
The most wonderful discovery of all? It turns out we don’t need a better storage system, we just need less stuff.
Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.
UFC: Salary or Prize Purse
A gig in the UFC must be pretty lucrative, right? I mean, look at the top UFC earner Chuck Liddell. His lifetime total pay-per-view career bonus earnings since is estimated at over $4.3 million. Tito Ortiz isn’t far behind with just over $4 million. And what do the lower ranking fighters earn? Two thirds of them are estimated to make less than $100,000 per year. That’s gross salary. Take out insurance, taxes, equipment, and license fees and the payout isn’t as sweet at the bottom. Some office drones take home more money than UFC fighters do. And those drones don’t have anything close to the job hazards associated with the UFC.
So what gives? Why the huge discrepancy? They all get the shit kicked out of them at one time or another, right? MMA in general, UFC in particular, has been criticized for paying athletes much lower salaries than similar sports like boxing. The controversy led UFC President Dana White to defend the salary structure of UFC, in part saying that no one knows exactly how much top fighters earn because the fighters don’t want anyone to know how much they earn. He went on to say that the UFC pay structure “smokes” boxing’s pay structure, yet gives little insight into such insight.
So what do the fighters make? President White jumps around the issue in a Fox 11 Sports Interview from September 2012. While he insists that there’s a guaranteed amount, he dances around the question, insisting that “the guys get paid a lot more money than what you’re seeing on things.” He admits that bonuses and incentives make up part of the pay structure. Obviously the amount of the prize money correlates directly with the hype surrounding the fight.
How much? Well, not all bonuses are made public. In fact, the athletic commissions didn’t even release prize purse information until 2004, so it’s impossible to account for UFC 45 back. And currently the only prize purse amounts that are released are Fight of the Night, Knockout of the Night, and Submission of the Night. The rest of the bonuses beyond that, including sponsorship money, pay-per-view cuts, and other “locker room” bonuses aren’t even publicly reported. But new UFC rules require sponsors to pay the UFC for the right to provide sponsorship for fighters, a stipulation that leaves less money that goes directly to the fighter.
Dana White says that the fighters are free to share their income figures if they like; their contracts do not gag them from releasing the amounts. Yet it’s difficult to pin down the exact amount the UFC grosses each year from ticket sales, pay-per-views, merchandising, DVD sales, and video games. Fighters like Jon Fitch and Tim Kennedy have publicly spoken out against UFC’s pay schedules. In fact, Kennedy stated that emptying trash cans pays better than the UFC. It’s further proof that it’s all about the purse.
