Computer Organization

I found this post today. Organizing our computer folders is as important as organizing our physical documents. If you are not in control of either one, you will waste time. Additionally, I perform these tasks regularly: I clean up my temp, temp internet and prefetch folders. These actions will help keep your computer optimized for peak performance.

If time is money then good organization is a way to save time, money and stress. I am a very organized person. Ha! Hardly. I take up “horizontal spaces”. I have a pile for bills to pay, a pile for receipts to put into Quicken, a pile to shred, a pile to file (nice rhyme) and a pile to “look at later to decide what pile it goes to”.

I find electronic data easier to manage. I must be a child of the digital world. My drives* are labeled accordingly. I have a my boot drive..all things sacred to making my ‘puter run, a music drive, a data drive, a homework drive (for wifey), and a program drive where our games and non-essentials programs are stored.

*By drives I mean that they are either separate drives or partitioned drives.

I like to have my emails automatically drop in to folders. That way I can respond to them at my leisure.

Being able to shave a few minutes off our day to day routine may not seem like something a personal finance blog should discuss. If those few minutes make us more productive and that productivity enables profitability, then it is relevant.

Why? The reciprocal of “Time is money” is “Money is time”. Get control of your time to control your money. Enable yourself to spend more time with family, friends or your blog. Whatever it is you cherish, time management is the key to success.

I find Lifehacker to be a good site to find some great tips for software and what not.

It is what it is

As Charles Dickens said in 1859 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us”

How timeless are those words? One hundred and forty nine years later they still ring true. Life is cyclical. Since the dawn of man until now, everything changes but everything remains the same.

We wake up every day, and go to work. We pay our bills and our taxes, purchase our groceries and pay our rent or mortgages. Little has changed in the history of man. Oh, there have been downtimes and despair, but when the going gets tough….(you know the cliche).

As Americans we have more opportunities to “make it” than any other “empire” ever in the history of mankind. There is no ceiling here. If you want to work hard and smart, you will succeed. The malcontents will always be around being negative. You can choose not to listen.

We all understand the importance of being debt free. We can and WILL all get there, because we are a determined lot. If we allow ourselves listen to the mass media broadcasting their gloomy cynicisms and pessimism then we will surely suffer.

My parents were both born in 1934, during The Depression. My grandparents saw hard times, heck, my parents saw hard times. Today we see a drop in the stock market by a few hundred points and get scared. It should be viewed as nothing but a wake up call to pay off all debt, have an emergency fund, and buy low! We would not have the lifestyle today if it were not for the people that emerged from those times. They knew that times were difficult but yet they succeeded.

Before it gets really difficult, have a plan. What can you do better than your fellow employee to ensure that you retain your job and/or move up the ladder? What skills will enable you to bring in income when others can not? Furthermore, what have you done to make sure you are able to survive in traumatic times?

I believe that most people who spend their time reading financial blogs or blogging already have a good foundation to build upon. Opportunities are around us every day. Just choose to open your eyes and see them. Be true to yourself and your loved ones and nothing is insurmountable.

Have a Nice day!

Have a nice day!

How often do we hear it? How often do we say it? What percentage of the time is it said to us with true conviction and how often do we say it with conviction?

I work in industrial sales, both inside sales and outside sales. I wake up every day with a smile on my face. Why? I shall explain.

1) I woke up and I am breathing. That right there is a bonus.

2) I get to see my wife. I was a bachelor for thirty-eight years. I fought off marriage for twenty years, and thought I was winning. Well guess what? I lost! I see this beautiful woman and I count so many blessings that I am not worthy of. That puts a smile upon my face. How could it not? She is beautiful, kind, funny, intelligent, a good cook, she edits my blog and lets me watch football, basketball and curling. Plus I get to see her every day! How do you beat that? She is my best pal!

3) I have two beautiful, awesome dogs that show me they too are happy that I woke up. Their motives may be selfish, i.e. “Let us out to go potty, then feed us”, but I still get kisses from my beloved dogs when I awaken.

4) I have shelter, food and a job. Some out there do not.

5) I love my job! I sell screws, nuts, bolts and the like. It tackles me mentally and physically every day. I get challenges to make delivery dates, to keep production lines and manufacturing running, and sometimes I assist in the design of new products.

6) My big brother is my best male friend. I love him dearly although I was born twelve years after him. (Oxy was an unplanned event). My life would surely be altered if he was not around. I talk to him several times a week. We are in different states, but not in different states of mind.

7) I have a great sister-in-law who helped me stand tough through some terrible times. She is a rock, maybe a tree.

I am in debt! That fuels me to work harder. I hate debt, but I like the challenge it presented to me. Can I live without #8? Yeah, I am convinced. But for now it is a real part of my life, and someday we will part ways. I will look back to all the things my friend “debt” has taught me.

Recently I proposed a plan to my wifey; to say “Have a nice day!” to at least six people she runs into during the course of the day, that do not directly interact with her during business. She works in a doctor’s office as an operations manager and deals with many patients on a daily basis. Those do not count. I requested that she say it to the gentleman or gentlewoman that held the door open for her, the clerk that scanned the groceries, the bagger that bagged the groceries for her, the gas station attendant, the person she gave her paycheck to at the bank.

We have become such a service oriented society. Somewhere we have lost some humanity in dealing with people. I have seen many people expect cashiers, tellers, or customer service people to be polite, but as a customer they feel they do not have to be polite in return. There is something inherently wrong with that thought process. We should live by the quote from Bill and Ted “Be excellent to one another!”

What did any of this information do to enlighten you on debt reduction or personal finance? Probably nothing. If asking for a lower rate from your credit card company, negotiating late fees or terms, just being sincere and honest will pay dividends not only to your bank statement but to your heart.

The inspiration for this rambling goes to Mrs. Micah and her awesome post today.

Hot and Cold

This morning when I woke up it was cold. I like to turn the thermostat down to 60º or below when I go nitey-nite. I got up today around four am. If it were not for my dogs I would have been one cold Oxymoron. Then again if it were not for my dogs I would have slept until six. So I slapped on the slippers, went to the coffee pot and grabbed the pot, put it under the faucet and went to grab the filters. The doggies wanted out. So I opened the door and wooosh, I was slammed by some really cold air. It was so cold this morning that the pets were back from their duties before I could add the coffee to the filter. I started the coffee and went to the thermostat. It was set at 60º but it really felt colder. I “cranked” it up to 66º and it kicked on and ran for a good half an hour – still warming the house up as it should. I put on my little space heater, jumped online to do a few surveys, and enjoyed some steaming hot mocha coffee, a cigarette and what I like to call “Ben Franklin time,” which is my way of saying “I am awake WAY to early,” but let’s make the best of it. After turning the thermostat up to 72º I finally started to warm up. Outside was about 8º ( all degrees in Fahrenheit for out of US readers) but soon it was like Dante’s Inferno in my house. I wondered what circle it was I had fallen into.

I opened my thermostat and it was very dusty. The furnace is less then five years old, but I can not trace the age of the thermostat. It must be over thirty years old. There is more mercury in the glass tube then there is in the Detroit River.

I ventured out into the single digit temperatures to Home Despot to find a new thermostat. Mind you I have read several articles and knew that someday I would/should do this. But my horrorscope did not say that it was to be today.

I purchased a digital, touchscreen, programmable unit and had NO clue how to install it. I have done other things, so-called improvements, around the house. BUT I fear anything electrical and gaseous. Things that make you go BOOM, scare me.

I flipped the switch at the furnace and turned off the breaker to the furnace. I checked it with my little AC/DC gage to ensure I would not get turned into toast. I disconnected the antique and wired up the new and improved thermostat. I unscrewed the panels from my furnace and discovered that the pilot light was not on. I went to get my Aim-and-Flame, then I thought, I should look at the manual. No pilot light on my furnace. I read the troubleshooting and did what it said. Now my house is comfy and programmed for efficiency.

I paid $507.05 in natural gas last year. The new thermostat cost $39.92 plus tax. If it works, as it says it does it will mean INSTANT savings this year – then compound that over time. WOW! I am geeked and comfortably warm.

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Breakfast Sandwich Comparision

Whether you work at home, on the farm, at the office, at school, or on the road, it is not a good idea to skip breakfast. I have learned to appreciate breakfast more in the last year. After I left school I evolved into a non-morning eater. I usually only needed morning food to curb a hangover. With my new job, and my new outlook on debt-reduction, Carmie and I both do our best to eat every morning. It is not like we eat breakfast before we leave the house; we are nowhere close to being that organized. We make our breakfast sandwiches, lunches, take our showers and then off to work. I eat my sandwich while unlocking the building; flipping on the computers, checking the nightly faxes, starting coffee for the office, etc. etc.

After my post on Groceries and frugality Carmie mentioned I should post how we save money on breakfast. That was too easy of a post to do. I decided to compare NOT just the cost savings, but the nutritional values of making breakfast at home versus going through the drive through window.

Restaurant	Calories	Fat/g	Sodium/mg	Carbs/g	Protein/g	Cholesterol/g	$$ Damage
Golden Arches	500	32	1130	35	17	250	1.99
The King	530	37	1490	31	20	175	1.99
Hardy Har Har	750	56	1960	38	23	255	2.49
Him Torton’s	540	35	1000	35	19	210	2.43
Your Kitchen *	490	21	975	45	27	59	.87 *

This is not a 100% comparison. My breakfast sandwiches are made with Lender’s bagels, “on sale” cheese and eggs, and the assumption of “pork sausage”. We switch back and forth from bagels and English muffins depending on sale prices; ie manufacturer’s coupons or buy “x” get “y” free. Sometimes we use turkey sausage and that makes our breakfasts even healthier than the drive through. The preferred method for us is the bagel sandwich. It has enough umph to carry us through until lunchtime without bogging us down.

Make that sandwich a “COMBO” meal, and at that point you have lost your goal of debt reduction, and weight reduction. Brew your coffee for the morning drive at home, bring it with you. Do you really need an extra 400+ calories for your taters? A regular combo meal will give you over 1/2 of our daily needs of calories in one dang meal. I have not broken out the cholesterol, fat or sodium because it is too scary to show. You can do the math if you really care. I am just here to say that penny for penny you are better making your breakfast at home. Everything made at home has a little love put in it, so naturally it tastes better – not to mention better customer service.

Tomorrow morning, remember that eating a healthy breakfast is the best way to start off your day, and be good to yourself by eating a healthy breakfast. Notice how much better you feel through the morning and the rest of the day when you don’t skip breakfast.

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Monthly Budget

I started utilizing a spreadsheet to help with my monthly budget. I found a good template, from which site, I can not recall. If I could, I would link to it. At home I use the Open Office. It does at great job without having to spend a great deal on Microsoft Office. I can put files on my jump drive easily and edit them at work and have safe and secure backups. Jump drives are now fairly inexpensive and I really recommend that you have at least one.

I modified the spreadsheet as such.

I then copied the worksheet eleven times and renamed them for the months. That way I could adjust the paychecks we receive monthly, as Wifey gets her check on Tuesdays and I on Fridays. It enables a better forecasting method.

If you would like a copy, let me know and I can send it off to you.

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Stay focused

I wanted to write a piece like this, but it was written much better by someone else. Somehow this post is what I wanted to talk about today. You can view it on this great site.

I played basketball for a church team when I was a young lad of fourteen years. Our coach said our name was going to be the Cosmopolitans. He told us this made us part of our own world, but able to touch people outside of our circles. We did not understand that. We wanted a cool, ferocious name like Lions, Tigers…..and Bears. (Oh my!) To be young and dumb and not listen to the wisdom of elders.

We were a team team comprised of youngsters ranging from ten to sixteen years old. At the time I was a strapping lad of 5′ 6″ and 120 Lbs. I was told I was starting guard. My basketball skills were limited. I had “perfected” said skills in a neighborhood of really untalented people. Good enough for my neighborhood, good enough to start, but overall I stunk.

The one thing that I heard and learned from this honorable man was so simple, but so true but took twenty years to understand was “Offense sells tickets, but Defense wins games”. What the heck did this mean? We all wanted to score twenty points a game. To hell with defense, no girl in the crowd was impressed by good man-to-man coverage. To get noticed, you shoot the rock and nail the J, that is all we understood. We went zero and six with one game left. We stunk badly! We were smaller, underdeveloped and just not as athletic as the other teams. The last game the coach brought in a huge substitute for the game. We were playing against another church team, but no one on the team was younger than twenty.

Visual that. A basketball court of prepubescents against MEN. It was intimidating to put it mildly. First quarter down umpteen points. Half time losing really bad. These MEN had no shame on running the court and dunking on twelve to fourteen olds. They double teamed us, stole the ball and would perform exaggerated dunks for the crowd. So Coach brings in the “Super Sub” at the start of the third quarter. Derek, the “Super Sub”, gets the toss and runs up the court and slams it home. Every play Coach tells us “Get the ball to Derek”. We do, He does. Next thing we know it is tied with just a few minutes to play. The crowd was standing up, very excited. The cheering for us was like nothing we had ever witnessed that season. We were beating Goliath and it was good. Everybody loves an underdog. Coach calls a time out and brings us to the sideline. The he did it. HE SITS DEREK! What? We could win this game, and what does that genius say: “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins games.” We went down by four quickly. I was pressured bringing the ball down court and I got trapped. I threw the ball at his legs and it went out of bounds. We had a chance to run a set play. I tossed the ball across the key to an open man. Perfect pass, perfect handle…in and out of the rim. GAME OVER. We lost.

After the game we asked Coach why he had pulled Derek. He asked if it made us feel good hearing the cheers. Heck yeah it did. He asked if we were disappointed in losing. NO, it was so close. “If you would have just left Derek in we could have won,” we said. “If I would not have brought Derek, how close would the game been?” That was when someone from the other team said “It would have been a pain in the *** ‘cuz these little kids don’t slow down.”

The little life lesson to this story is: You can throw a huge offensive at your tasks, problems or debt. Unless you are willing to face some setbacks and adversities, you are not in a position to win.

We were and still are winners for that night. In a debt reduction strategy, the big boys will always loom and there will be quarters that you are down. A good long term plan of reduction and savings will make you prosperous. When you have the open shot, pay down the debt. Little by little you are back in the game. I thank Coach for his wisdom, although it took me sixteen years to comprehend.

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Groceries and Frugality

I live in suburban Detroit. We have an amazing farmer’s market! It has been around for over 140 years. I liked to go down to it a few times a year. Mainly for vegetables, fruits, Rafal spices and their incredible flower day.

I started to really look at our bills and expenditures in February 07. For several years me and Carmie (my wifey) were spending over $150 a week in groceries; and still buying fast food breakfasts, coffee, and lunches. For 2 people. It was insane. Sure we generally ate VERY well. As mentioned before I left a job and had took some time off. My time was spent on some unfinished home improvements and setting my mind straight for my next employer.

Carmie and I both LOVE good food. We are both very good in the kitchen and enjoy being there. For several years together we would come home from work and cook for an hour to 2 hours for dinner and just had some dinners that would cost a mint in a restaurant. We bought the tools to prepare the dishes: a solid copper sauce pan, a Le Creuset dutch oven, a Cuisinart food processor, Henkel’s knives, etc. etc. What did that leave us? DEBT and some good equipment that we do not use very much. There is something to be said about paying more for quality, but if it is not used frequently then what is the point of having it? We use our knives daily and they should last a lifetime with yearly professional sharpening. Our processor is excellent, but too big to keep on the counter and too difficult to clean to use other than the weekends. I highly recommend all the manufacturers where we got our goods, but in a debt-reduction lifestyle, there are definitely ways to do the job without high priced cookware. In fact we use my mother’s Farberware pans daily and only use the pricey hard-anodized Calphalon pans on “special” occasions.

So I digress…this post was supposed to be about my experiences in specialty meat shops, grocery stores and my love of the Detroit Eastern Market . Every year there are stories about how the major grocery chains “dip their chicken in Clorox”, or “change the sale date on sell by tags”. And the seafood department? You can make a purchase there if you can hold your breath long enough! That was precisely why we started buying from local/specialty grocers. Unfortunately, that also added to our debt. We would go over budget on our groceries and that would force us to make minimum payments our unsecured debt. NOT a good thing.

Then we looked at the Eastern Market for more than just produce and spices. On each trip, we make purchases of chicken, pork, beef and seafood that lasts us between 4 and 6 weeks. The total? Between $150 and $200. Put that in a spreadsheet and realize the savings. We have no worries about the quality – these are the butchers that are selling to the local restaurants, so it is impeccable – beautifully marbled beef, fresh pork and seafood, and massive Amish chicken breasts. As for the price, it couldn’t be any better. Just changing our meat buying habits allowed us to put the $770 into our Roth IRA.

It now takes us 4-6 hours to prep the meat. We make marinades, meatballs, meatloaves, stir fries, trim chicken breasts and wrap them up so they are available to take from the freezer before we go to work and are ready to be cooked into tasty meals when we get home.

I know most metropolitan areas have a farmer’s market/butcher’s market. I recommend that you take the time to explore it, if not part of your budget savings, as part of meeting new people, seeing new things, or just getting out to tell a stranger “Have a nice day!”

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Sharebuilder

Against some critics, I think Sharebuilder is a wonderful vehicle. I have used it for several years. The bottom line cost of the trade is a bit high, but the simplicity could not be any easier. I started a Roth IRA in 04/07, unfortunately I could not max out my deduction. I took some of my 2006 tax refund to start the IRA. I make only one buy a month and sharebuilder takes $4 from the investment total plus $25 a year for a service fee. That makes my monthly investments at just over $6 per trade. That’s not that bad if you only trade once a month. The money deposited goes into a money market account that earns a decent return.

I was able to put $770 into the Roth in 2007. Way short of the mark I had set several years ago.. My plan is to be able to fully fund in 2009. The question is should I use that $700 dollars to my debt reduction plan or use it for the future. Many debates arise where the compound interest wins or loses. For me at 40 years old, I NEED to do both fund a retirement plan and get debt free.

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Go Bucks!

As usual it is a fantastic day. My beloved Ohio State Buckeyes are playing for a national championship. At the start of the season I did not see this as a possibility – maybe a decent bowl game was a possibility, but never a championship game. The Bucks with their mighty defense and a strong offense is a reminder of how to handle personal finance. I was taught by a basketball coach, many years ago that, “offense sells tickets, but defense wins games.” This is true when it comes to debt reduction.

Pay attention to the oncoming attacks

1) Have a game plan. (No team ever won without planning)

2) Run your credit report, at least yearly. (Have a good defensive line)

3) Pay more than your minimum monthly payments. (Have good linebackers)

4) Make sure you have an emergency fund. (Have a good defensive secondary)

5) Look out for Murphy’s Law, because somethings will just happen. (Have a good special team)

Once these are all in control, you can pound the ball down debt’s throat. Sometimes you will be able to line out 4 or 5 wide receivers and really attack that debt. But unless you have a core defense, debt will control the field. And you will lose.

Looking at last years Bucks, you can see that by the end of the year they lost the focus of defense and thought down the field. Many of those players left and are making some serious money. Good for them. If they would have focused on defense, they would have had another BCS trophy. Losing sight of “digging in the trenches” and battling, will cost you the game; whether it be sports or finances.

So make goals, dig in and win your own championship!

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