Money Management 101 November 5, 2009
Posted by Rio in : Money, Resources, Rio , add a commentOk, kids. It’s time to learn how to manage your money! Besides not buying stuff, what can you do to save money?
Some of the more interesting things I’ve done to make myself spend less include cutting up my credit cards only to realize I had no way to pay for groceries, and then paying for my $10 pizza entirely in pennies (the ones I had in my change jar). Other things include never carrying cash or credit cards, and then going to the bank and asking the teller to withdraw $3 from my account so that I could pay for this event I really needed to go to.
Other great psychological tricks include asking a friend to hide my credit cards. He then leaves for a week and is out of touch, during which time I really needed to pay for something or other. My $2.75 stash of laundry quarters wasn’t going to cut it, so I resorted to one of my other favorite tricks: becoming a guinea pig for science! Thinking that donating my eggs was probably too drastic, I decided to volunteer for a research study that would involve, among other things, not brushing my teeth for three weeks. What happened to my social life, you might wonder? To hell with that, they were giving me $500! Besides, think of all the time I could save by not spending those 3.5 minutes brushing my teeth twice a day! I’m a busy entrepreneur, after all. I have things to do!
Instead of cutting up my credit cards, I had the better idea of simply never carrying cash or credit cards when I go places. I know, I know, what a crude method. But hey, it kind of works. I end up not making all those dicky little purchases like tea and books (I love tea, and I’ve probably single-handedly kept Borders Bookstore here in Ann Arbor from closing).
Sometimes the whole “not carrying any money” things has its problems. Like when I do actually have to pay for stuff. At the post office for example, where I went last to send off 15 packages containing things I had sold on ebay (more on that later). Only after I made the lady ring through and attach stickers to my 15 boxes did I reveal to her that I wanted to pay by check. She informed me that they couldn’t accept my check because I didn’t have my address on them (hey, identity theft, you know). I tell her I would write my address on the check for her. She goes: “um, No.” I point out the 15 boxes she had already stickered and put through the system, and would have to painfully remove if she didn’t accept my check. She caved. Sometimes you have to be cruel. The moral? I have no idea.
Not bringing your credit card does help, sort of. All those little purchases really do add up. Especially when you don’t always have time to cook. Now I love cooking good, healthy, homemade food, but….well, I’m slow. It takes me like an hour to make oatmeal (granted, my oatmeal is really fucking good.) Anyway, housewives get my respect. Cooking three meals a day from scratch is hard work. But anyway, there are times when I’ve managed to eat only home cooked meals for months on end, but that involved significant luggage. Meaning, if you don’t have a car and don’t live 5 minutes away from town, you have to haul all three meals with you for the day. Now that’s fun. Not only do you get your requisite workout in from hauling 50 lbs of stuff everywhere you go (really, I weighed it), but you end up being skinnier by eating less overall! (Damn you, rocky mountain chocolate factory, for being on my way to town).
Back to being a guinea pig. After prodding my teeth and cruelly stabbing me with various sharp metal instruments, my graduate student dentist friend tells me that I qualify for the $500 study. I would have thanked her, but my mouth was spewing blood. I wasn’t complaining though. You have to be tough in this world. Another favorite research study of mine was a series of “decision-making” studies that I participated in through the University of Michigan. Basically, they put you through a series of prisoner’s dilemmas to see how everyone interacts. I love this kind of stuff, being an economics major and all, but the real upshot was that we got to keep whatever money we made during the game! I once walked away with $57 after 5 minutes. (By defecting, of course). But the truly greatest study I took part in was one where I watched an episode of Sex and the City and then answered a questionnaire grilling me on my body image. I told them all about how skinny I felt, of course. Especially since I’ve been eating all these home-cooked meals!
Eventually I quit doing $15 an hour research studies because…well, let’s face it, we’re never gonna make a million dollars that way. Hopefully we’ll have bigger fish to fry, and better ways to spend our time (like being self-employed and all that fun stuff). I am going to add the $500 to our “money made so far” icon up there on the right, though. So that leaves us with our last idea: selling shit on ebay. Being a neat freak and all, I like to cleanse my room occasionally and get rid of the stuff I don’t need/use. The thing is, it turns out you can actually make money doing this. Old textbooks I’ve never used or wanted to, weird electrical appliances from the 80s, and those shoes I never should have bought because they are really fucking uncomfortable. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a lot of work selling stuff on ebay, and like getting a job, the opportunity cost is too high (I’ve talked about that already). Time is my most valuable asset right now.
So, besides being made fun of by your friends and having no social life whatsoever, my methods should put you on the right path towards dominating your finances! I’m Here To Serve You, America’s next generation, and to help this great country get out of debt. Remember that the next time you wait in line for 30 minutes at the bank only to have the person in front of you withdraw a total of $3 from their account. That person is probably one of my disciples. World domination, here I come.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD October 1, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation, Resources , 1 comment so farInformation overload. Hits me every day. I don’t mean the newspaper stuff. I mean the ToDo lists. Not that the lists are long, I’ve already spent all week whittling them down to five. It’s the amount of crap I find out for each item as I try to tackle it.
For example, on web developer stuff: “Make a web page center in the browser”. I do a web search on that, 32,000 hits. The second one looks perfect. I open it up and its some tech blog with 20 people suggesting the perfect way to do it with links. I soon have 80 tiny tabs crammed in so tight I can’t tell what they are. So now I have to go through them all and repeat the prior process till I have 13 browsers open with 200 “related” articles and soon I’m off analyzing how giraffes can center themselves in their sleep from zoology today and six hours of my life have passed.
So what do I do? I procrastinate more. It’s a nice little circle that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I read all the GTD (Getting Things Done) stuff like Steve Allen’s book “Ready for anything”:…practiced them as well…it made me so happy to only have 4 categories of ToDo and spend all night moving them between the boxes.
I have found that the only thing that works for me is a timer. Here is a free browser based one that I created (stole) that can be used anywhere just to remind you to get up and take a break. http://www.2people1year1million.com/timer.html.
New studies have shown that the top performers from CEOs to Athletes treat their brain like a muscle. About every 90 minutes they take a 10 minute break that enables them to handle periods of high stress so they can pull off that all-nighter or just produce more in less time. The bonus is after every break you see where you’re at and can get back on track.
P.S. On the bright side I did discover a gem or two in those long lists of articles. I think its hard to find good references because those who know what their doing don’t waste their time answering blog posts, which of course I’ll do if anyone wants to post me a question.