From a friend, for a friend :)

There's a new-ish post coming shortly, I promise. The delay I've been experiencing will be its primary subject :) In the meantime, I got this from Missie over at Death by Chocolate Martini, and figured I'd indulge. Unfortunately the chain'll have to stop here for the moment :(

· go to your documents
· go to your pictures
· go to your 6th file
· go to your 6th Album
· go to your 6th picture.
o no changes here… sorry
· blog about it
o …or here either
· Tag 6 friends to do the same.

Here's my photo -



Ahh yes, this picture. When I was at Iowa State, I joined Tau Beta Sigma, which is a co-ed music service sorority (of course at the time I joined I was only the second male in the chapter :) ). This was taken at Kappa Kappa Psi/Tau Beta Sigma Midwest District convention in 2001 or 2002, don't remember which. The blanket I was wearing was one that I was selling, as each had the fraternity or sorority's letters and crest on it. To sell some more, and to make a fool out of myself (since I enjoy making people laugh), I created this character called Blanketman, and constantly referred to myself in the third person. At a meeting of all attendees, when they asked for any announcements, I jumped up and gave a version of the following speech:

"Do you find yourself freezing in the evenings? Have your feet gone numb due to lack of warmth? Need some security in this harsh world? Then you're in luck! Blanket man is here to save you! With one of my trusty blankets, you too can combat the callously capricious cold! See me for details!"

So yeah. Fun stuff. Ahh, my sorority days - :)

9 useful money tips from Get Rich Slowly

Was browsing the web while my code was compiling, and stumbled across this article at GetRichSlowly.org. In case you don't feel like reading the whole thing (and I highly recommend reading the entire article, as well as several of the associated links), here's the 9 tips summarized:

1. Track every penny you spend
2. Develop a budget
3. Optimize your accounts
4. Start an emergency fund
5. Get out of debt
6. Fund your retirement
7. Automate your finances
8. Earn extra money
9. Educate yourself

These are all very good (if somewhat obvious in some cases) tips for getting your finance in order and increasing your overall wealth. Obviously this blog is focused on number 5 - getting out of debt - but that is most definitely not the only subject I'll discuss. I'm also already performing several of the above steps:

• I track all of our spending in Quicken, mostly out of a paranoid fear that someone may have stolen our credit info. I keep track of categories to the best of my ability, and have all our bills entered as recurring payments. I've recently begun to use this as a twice-a-month checkpoint to determine where our funds our at. One of the things that got this whole effort started was a daunting lack of knowledge regarding our financial situation - at any point in time, it was almost a guess more than a certainty that any given transaction at the grocery store, or while grabbing a bite, would be successful. Since I've started the budgets and keeping an eye on debt, I've been a lot more confident with these situations - and it's only been about a month!
  
• I've got two unofficial budgets for tracking purposes, and one budget I'll be discussing with the wife that we'll use to actively control our spending habits. The tracking budgets are just tools I use for the moment to keep myself on the ball, to get a general feeling of where we stand in terms of our financial situation. The new budget will actually be geared toward having foreknowledge of where all our money will go, and will come with guidelines for how to function under the budget. Somewhere along the line I developed an obsession with documentation, and I'm working on describing this whole thing in a doc that will probably become a blog post somewhere down the line.
  
• I'm constantly educating myself on money matters by browsing finance blogs in my free time - it's how we saved 10% off market when we purchased our home as a foreclosure. The Housing Bubble Blog was one I used to mitigate my frustrations with my life as a rental during the housing insanity of the past several years, and has been a wealth of information and resources.
  
• We're both working towards funding our retirement. It's not a lot at the moment, as we're both kind of focused on debt reduction, but it's also not zero and every little bit helps. I'm matching my company's 1% at the moment, and increase that amount by 1% every may after merit increases go through.
  
• We're also establishing an emergency fund. One of our primary problems, as most homeowners know, is that within the first year of homeownership thousands of dollars worth of expenses can come out of nowhere (especially in a house like ours that was vacant for 18 months before the purchase). With the new budget, we'll be putting away at least $250 towards savings every month, which should give us a comfortable $1,000 emergency fund within five months, and at least a month's worth of expenses by the end of the year (if all goes according to plan, that is).
  

I view my debt as a beast, and to pull unashamedly from Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, I'm constantly looking for knowledge bullets that I can load my brain with, so as to more effectively bust a cap in that bitch. Or something.

Don't resolve, just do.

Around this time of year, people are making resolutions for the new year. They resolve to get out of debt. They resolve to quit smoking. They resolve to get in shape. What do all of these people have in common? Simple - they're likely setting themselves up for failure.

There are two problems with new year's resolutions. First off, the special significance ascribed to the new year is unnecessary. If you are continually waiting for some big event, some turn of the clock, or some magical marker to begin your improvement plan, you're setting yourself up for failure. By making a big deal out of the goal you are trying to accomplish, you are doing exactly the opposite of what you need to be doing - making the improvement a habit.

Second, by calling them resolutions we mislead ourselves by improperly labeling these items - they are goals, and goals need to have several components in order to be useful. They need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely - known by the acronym SMART. Most resolutions will resemble the following:

"I resolve to get myself in shape this year. 2009 is the year, baby!"

Now on the surface this seems like a good goal. The problem is that it's doomed to failure. First off, the person making the resolution is trying to step outside their life, to circumvent their habits by using the new year as a jumping point. Why the new year? What's so special about this one date? How will you then not use this logic to circumvent that goal on, say, your birthday? After all, it's your birthday, it's a special occasion!

Second, where's the specificity. What does the resolver define as being "in shape"? Personally I'm in shape right now, that shape just happens to be "bulbous." If it's not specific, how do we know when we've attained our goal? What about a deadline, to hold us accountable? There is absolutely no way to gauge the success or failure of this goal accurately - it is simply far too nebulous a beast to get a handle on.

When I was first out of college, my boss made me read a book entitled The Power of Focus - this book did a great job of laying out what one needs to do in order to achieve lasting self improvement. Specifically, it focuses on two areas - setting appropriate goals, and developing habits. Both of these areas are crucial in achieving the things you want - you need to get into the habit of doing whatever it is you need to do to achieve your goals, otherwise you will just relapse into the patterns that got you into the hole in the first place. This is why most resolutions fail - the person making the resolution is trying to sidestep their habits by making vague promises on a special day. I'm sorry, but the world just doesn't work that way.

So if you must, make your resolutions, but make them SMART. Don't fall into the trap that so many other people will fall into this year.