- @Elle_CM Natalie's raid looked like it was filmed with a strobe light. Lame CGI in reply to Elle_CM #
- I want to get a toto portable bidet and a roomba. Combine them and I'll have outsourced some of the least tasteful parts of my day. #
- RT @freefrombroke: RT @moneybeagle: New Blog Post: Money Hacks Carnival #115 http://goo.gl/fb/AqhWf #
- TED.com: The neurons that shaped civilization. http://su.pr/2Qv4Ay #
- Last night, fell in the driveway: twisted ankle and skinned knee. Today, fell down the stairs: bruise makes sitting hurt. Bad morning. #
- RT @FrugalDad: And to moms, please be more selective about the creeps you let around your child. Takes a special guy to be a dad to another' #
- First Rule of Blogging: Don't let real life get in the way. Epic fail 2 Fridays in a row. But the garage sale is going well. #
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 #
Allowance
This article on the Simple Dollar discusses raising kids to be financially responsible.
My wife and I have a goal to raise our kids to be more financially responsible than we have ever been. We are currently digging out of a financial hole we dug ourselves, which is a situation we hope our children never see.
Side Hustle: Garage Sale Tips
Garage sale week wasn’t enough. There are so many little things that I did–or meant to do–that I forgot to include them last week.
- Advertise everywhere. I do mean everywhere. Take out an ad in the paper. Put an ad on Craigslist. Have fliers in the grocery store, the laundromat, and any place that has a publicly-accessible bulletin board. Put big, bright signs at every possible turn to get to your sale. Assume the drivers a dense. Don’t give them an opportunity to make a wrong turn or–like I did–put conflicting arrows on different sides of a sign.
- Use bait. Set out tools and furniture where they are visible. Lots of people drive past if they only see knick-knacks. Tools get the men to stop, furniture gets anybody running a household to stop. If you don’t actually have any tools to sell, put your lawnmower out with an insanely high price on it. Heck, if someone wants to pay you 125% of retail for your mower, take it! I had a number of tools and lawn-crafting gear–actually for sale–near the end of the driveway. If I can get the people out of the car, someone will find something worth buying.
- Price it like you’d buy it. People don’t come to garage sales looking for sale prices. They come looking to pay as little as possible. They want the crazy deal. You’ll have to oblige them, at least a bit. Price some things very low, and everything else almost very low. Aim for 25% of retail or less, except for a few special items that you won’t mind keeping.
- Don’t be afraid to say no. Some hagglers are jerks. If the offer is insulting, don’t feel obligated to take it.
- Bag the little stuff. Instead of pricing every toy 10 cents, put a handful of toys is a zip-lock bag for a dollar. Mix some of the bad with the good so the crap goes away, too. Reject every offer to open the bag and sell the stuff separately.
- Put the bags of toys on a table in the driveway. Kids stay out of the confined garage and entertain themselves digging. Kids are clumsy. They can’t break your lamp if the don’t come near it. Parents will welcome something to keep their little brats occupied while they shop. It’s a win for everyone!
- Describe anything that isn’t obvious. Make a lot of signs. To be clear, make a lot of signs. Describe the furniture. Show a current ebay auction for the item. Identify the antiques. You don’t want to be forced to sell everything yourself. Let the signs sell for you.
- Start early. Price and sort your stuff a month in advance. The night before the sale, all you want to have to do is set up tables and unbox your stuff. Don’t try pricing it then.
- Multi-day sales are best. It gives people a chance to tell their friends about it, or to come back and buy the thing they passed up. Don’t lose out on the buzz!
- Save your grocery bags. A few weeks before a sale, I go to the grocery store and ask if they mind if a bundle of plastic bags goes home with me. The manager has always said it’s okay. If that doesn’t work, just double bag your groceries and save the bags for a few weeks.
- Use blankets and tarps to hide anything that isn’t for sale. People will ask about everything they can see. Save yourself the hassle.
- Plan your layout to let people browse and move. You don’t want a traffic jam in the garage. Give it a clear flow, with enough room for people to pass each other comfortably. Three people should be able to pass each other in every row. It’s not always possible, but try. If two people can’t pass, start over.
- Clean your stuff. Clean items sell better. Dirty stuff will have to be sold for at least 25% less than clean stuff.
That’s it for now. More to come, I’m sure.
Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.
Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.
Delayed Gratification, Take II
How much would you pay for a kiss from the world’s sexiest celebrity?
That was the focus of a recent study that I can’t find today. There is no celebrity waiting in the wings to deliver the drool, and the study doesn’t name which celebrity it is. That’s an exercise for the reader.
This was a study into how we value nice things.
The fascinating part of the study is that people would be willing to pay more to get the kiss in 3 days than they would to get the tongue slipped immediately.
Anticipation adds value.
Instant gratification actually causes us to devalue the object of our desire.
This goes well beyond “Will you respect me in the morning?”
The last time I talked about delayed gratification, it was in the context of my kids. That still holds true. Kids don’t value the things that are handed to them.
The surprising–and disturbing–bit is that adults don’t, either. If I run out to the store to buy an iPad the first day I see one, I won’t care about it nearly as much as if I spend a week or two agonizing over the decision.
The delay alone adds to the perceived value. The agony turns the perceived value into gold.
If I spend a month searching for the perfect car, the thrill of the successful hunt adds less value than the time it took to do the hunting.
Here’s my frugal tip for today: Delay your purchases. While it may not actually save you any money, you will feel like you got a much better deal if you wait a few days for something you really want.
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.
