Live Real, Now

The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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The Library vs Amazon

Finance, Life

A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website.  The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon.

So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.

I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.facepalm

In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge.   Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.

I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.

Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!

New Ideas

Business

lawn gnome

 I had an email exchange with my close friend and business partner earlier this week.

“I get ideas but think they are probably stupid.  Okay,  I have some ideas. Again, I get scare you’ll think I’m reaaaally dumb.”

My response?

“No ideas are stupid.  You start filtering **** like that, we’ll never find the ******* gold.

 Brainstorming has no filter.  You never know where a “stupid” idea might lead or what associations it might trigger.”

When you are trying to generate new ideas, applying a filter like “That sounds stupid” won’t get you anywhere.  It’s idea suicide.

Could a discussion on the possibilities of becoming a lawn gnome distributor lead to becoming a successful manufacturer of combat gnomes?

Brainstorming involves turning off your stupid filters and running with it.   Keep a recorder or a notebook handy and keep track of everything.   Go off on tangents and see where they lead.  Maybe they’ll lead to the gold.

The one thing you can’t do while brainstorming is criticize.   If you start shooting down ideas, you are destroying the opportunity to find greatness.  Even if an idea is  impractical, build on it.  There has to be an angle that becomes worthy of consideration.    On the off-chance that there’s not, run with it anyway.  It’s an exercise in creativity.

I regularly send my friend emails with potential business ideas.  Most of them come to nothing, but once in a while, something clicks and we launch a successful venture together.   If I were filtering ideas because they might be stupid, we might not have some of the projects we’ve got.

In addition to random & odd emails, I’ve got a notebook of some kind with me everywhere I go to record any passing idea I may have.   In my car, I use a voice recorder.   I periodically review everything I’ve noted and copy most of it into evernote.

Someday, those pieces may come together into a billion dollar idea.

How do you generate ideas?  Do you bounce ideas off of friends or get drunk and shuffle a Trivial Pursuit deck into a Monopoly game?

 

 

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Find the Things That You Love

Life, Parenting

First, watch this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_BtmV4JRSc

“It’s not about what you love, it’s about how you love it. There’s going to be a thing in your life that you love, and I don’t know what that’s going to be…it doesn’t matter what that is. The way you love that–and the way you find other people who love it the way you do–is what makes being a nerd awesome. -Wil Wheaton”

In the video, Wil Wheaton gets asked to send a message about being a nerd to an audience members newborn baby, and he does.

Being a nerd isn’t about pocket protectors, or D&D, or chess club.  Being a nerd is about finding something you love and loving it no matter what.

My son is obsessed with League of Legends and Minecrack.   I don’t get it.

I don’t have to.

My wife and daughters are all horse, all the time.  I don’t get it.

I don’t have to.

Growing up, we got our first computer when I was about 7.  Thanks to 3-2-1 Contact magazine, I started programming it shortly thereafter.

A few years later, we got a computer that wasn’t Apples green-on-green monstrosity.  My first instructions from my parents were “Don’t break it.”

It took me three days.  I was 11.

At 14, I got sent to computer camp.  Soon after, I was up all night writing code.  I remember getting questioned when my dad got up for work.  “Have you been on that thing all night?”

He didn’t get it.

He didn’t have to.  It was enough that he didn’t stop me.

My obsession–and my parents’ tolerance for it–eventually led to a career that allows me to support my family.

In high school, I discovered roleplaying games.

NERD!

The friends I made there are my friends now, 15 years later.   I rent a room to one of the first people I played D&D with.  He introduced me to my wife.

My nerdy obsessions have formed the basis of everything I love today.

When you are raising your kids, or shaking your head at something your husband or wife is doing, just be happy that they have found something to love.

Don’t ever tell them they can’t love the things they love, and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t love the things you love.

 

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Five Signs You Don’t Need That

Finance

Everybody occasionally buys things they don’t need, from DVDs to luxury cars.   There are signs that what you’re buy may not be an actual necessity.

Here are five signs you should put that back:

  1. You’re buying that sweater or video game for the endorphin hit, you’re shopping for the addictive high not to fill an actual need.  It’s a habit that’s as hard to break as smoking, if not harder.  You can’t, after all, stop shopping altogether.
  2. You already have one.  Or 10.   A relative can’t turn down a sale and she buys for life.   She regularly buys 3 of whatever useful gadget is available on the shopping channel.    Her house has turned into a sad story of compulsive hoarding.
  3. The rationalizations for your purchase include “It’s cool”  or “My friends all have one.”  If you are buying something just for the bragging rights, it has become an ego purchase, which is something to avoid.   The insidious part of an ego purchase is that you have to keep topping your last purchase and the last purchase of your social circle, or the purchases lose value.  It’s a vicious circle.
  4. It doesn’t have a “place”.  Where are you going to put it?  Is it going to go in the corner, or is there a drawer or shelf it can live on.  If there’s no play to consider “away”, you’re just buying clutter.  If you must have it, go home and toss, sell, or donate 2 things to make room. If possible, do that before you actually by the new toy.   If it’s important, you’ll come back for it.
  5. You didn’t know you needed it 10 minutes ago.  If you actually need it, it’s on your list, right?  Impulse purchases have been the biggest budget-killer in my house.  That’s why we use Alice for the household goods.  If we don’t see the it, we can’t throw it in the cart at the last minute.    We no longer shop with the debit card, so we have to watch what we buy.  It’s embarrassing to have to undo a purchase at the checkout because I didn’t bring enough cash.

What did I miss?

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