<$Thursday, June 28, 2007$>
Excuse me for not blogging
| My one day back at the office this week turned out to be a busy one, so I had to forgo all of the blogging I'd planned for today. I'm going dark once again for the weekend (tomorrow is my regularly scheduled Friday off), but I don't want to leave you, gentle readers, empty handed. In my lameness, please allow me to direct you to this discussion at Get Rich Slowly about trying to help those who aren't yet ready to help themselves. I'll admit, I was once a Gillian. I'm glad I'm finally learning what's truly important in life. Labels: finance+blogs, money management |
<$Monday, June 25, 2007$>
Zoning My Health
| So I'm a pretty big believer in the Zone. It's how I lost about 30 pounds in time for my wedding last September. Once I'm doing it, it's easy to maintain, I burn fat despite my lackadaisical approach to exercise, and I just plain feel healthy. Hooray, Zone! Despite all of this, though, Husband and I both let ourselves fall out of the zone for about six months. We have excuses, and plenty of them, starting with our honeymoon cruise, which was basically a week-long 24-hour floating gourmet smorgasbord, and followed up with arriving home just in time for the holiday season with absolutely no willpower left to us. Needless to say, there was weight gain. But now we're finally back in it, and feeling much better, not to mention much better about ourselves. It took a long time and several false starts to finally get back on the wagon, but for me, what finally made it stick was giving up lunch in favor of small, healthy snacks throughout the day. I read some scientific technobabble about how our metabolism gets a kickstart every time we eat, and how grazing all day long like this pretty much doesn't give the metabolism a chance to rest. Whether or not that's true, I find I'm perfectly happy eating small portions, just enough to stave off hunger, if I know I can eat again in just a couple of hours. A paradoxical result of this is that eating more often is actually causing me to eat less. Pretty nifty, eh? Whatever the reason, it's working very well for me. I've stuck to my dietary plan (I refuse to call it a diet, because that's not what this is) for a couple of months now, barring the occasional planned-for splurge here and there. I'm halfway back down to my wedding weight (which is one-third of the way down to my ultimate goal weight), and only about five pounds away from being able to squeeze back into the fancy pants I bought for work last fall. Yay, fancy pants! Best yet, eating this way gives me tons more energy. I have untreated hypothyroidism (which will be remedied as of this Friday; after several years without health insurance and one of sheer procrastination, I'm finally going to the doctor to get tested and, hopefully, treated for it once again), so my energy levels tend to be pretty low on good days and practically non-existent on bad ones. But eating this way has been keeping me energized and clear-headed throughout the day. It's really pretty excellent. It will be interesting to see how the combination of this eating plan works with my thyroid medication, once I start taking it again. I anticipate a pretty dramatic impact on my motivation levels. Labels: healthy living |
Administrative note
| Cross-blog note: I'll be out of the office (hooray for personal days!), and hence away from my computer, for the next couple of days, so don't look for any new posts Tuesday or Wednesday. Labels: site maintenance |
Pet Health: Love's Not All They Need
 If you have pets, you probably don't need me to extol the virtues of having these fuzzy (or feathery, or scaley, if that's your thing) critters in your life. I've always been an animal person, and as such have always had plenty of pets. I've been known to bring home needy strays or accept animals needing homes despite barely being able to take care of myself, always thinking I could just buy the cheap food for them and make it up with lots of love. While I may have been well-intentioned, I realize now that I was wrong-headed. Over the last month we've spent about $350 on our "baby," Fizzgigg, the toy poodle I rescued off the street seven years ago. His health is paying the price for all that cheap food I used to feed him, and we're more than making up for all the money saved on dog food with expensive veterinary bills. I actually figured this out a couple of years ago, when his stomach stopped tolerating the cheap stuff. I upgraded his food to Science Diet, on the vet's recommendation, and he can handle that a lot better. That stuff, though, is loaded with wheat and corn gluten which, as I've found out in recent research, is notorious for causing allergies. So now I'll be upgrading him again to an even pricier, organic and gluten-free dog food, and mixing high grade fish oil in to boot. I won't lie--it's not cheap, and it makes me cringe when I fit it in the budget; but if it takes care of his allergy problem, it could save me hundreds in vet bills. Not to mention that it will improve his quality of life and make him a happy puppy dog, which is worth every penny. Just as investing in your own health will probably save you thousands of dollars in medical bills down the line, investing in your pets' health can save hundreds, if not thousands, in veterinary costs. This has been an expensive lesson to learn, as well as a painful one for Fizzgigg. From now on, no matter how much it pains me to close my door to an animal in need, I won't take on any pets that I can't afford to provide with quality care. UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I found a small bag of Newman's Own at Wild Oats that should provide my little guy with at least a month's worth of healthy, gluten-free eating, and it actually cost about $5 less than what I normally pay for Science Diet. It's too soon to tell how much this new food will impact his allergies, but it looks like this is one case where going the healthier route actually saves money, and not just in the long run. Labels: healthy living, pets |
<$Friday, June 22, 2007$>
ADD, money management, and the importance of the bill calendar
| Back in April, I wrote what was supposed to be the first of three articles about managing finances when you have ADD. Life got in the way of writing the rest of the series, but as it happens, that's okay because over at Adult ADD and Money, guest author Kim Collins managed to boil down all the points I wanted to make into five succinct paragraphs. This is all the stuff that I've done, and still do, to conquer late fees and overdraft charges and stay on top of my finances. For me, the key thing has been keeping a bill payment calendar. Like the article suggests, this is simple enough with the myriad of free calendars available on the web that you can either print off to keep in a notebook or update and view online. Personally, I use a desk calendar that my company provides for free every year. In it I not only write down all of the due dates and payment amounts for all of my bills each month, I also record them in To Do list form in the margins. Every payday, I open up that calendar and go down the list, paying every bill that's due between then and the next payday and checking them off as I go. That way, if I can't remember whether I already took care of a bill, I just check to see whether it's checked off the list. I also note down any other known expenses I need to plan for that month, like birthdays or other gifting occasions, yarn I need to buy to get started on a large project with a deadline (i.e. Christmas sweaters), large, irregular bills coming up the next month that I should start setting aside funds for now, etc. As long as I always go through my calendar and make sure every item is squared away, I can budget out the rest of my paycheck for savings and spending with confidence. It's a really excellent feeling to know I can budget my funds and spend them down to the penny without having to worry about unexpected penalty fees incurred because of my own forgetfulness. Labels: ADD, money management |
New look, slightly new direction
| As I mentioned the other day, I'm making a few changes here, and they're not all cosmetic. Probably the most significant change is that I'm broadening the spectrum here a bit to include topics on organization and motivation, as well as health & wellness. The emphasis will still remain on finances, but these topics are all inextricably linked for me, so it doesn't really make sense not to include them. They're also all things I've only recently begun to get a handle on in any significant way. Yay for finally turning into a functional grown-up! Or beginning to get there, at any rate. The other thing, which you've probably noticed, is the ads. As part of the whole "growing up and getting a handle on my finances" initiative I'm chronicalling here, I'm going to experiment with generating some extra revenue from this blog that I can apply toward paying off my debts and building up my savings. I don't expect to pull in much in the beginning, and I'll probably experiment with different things to see how they work. One thing I plan to do once this blog is eligible is sign it up for paid blogging services. I'll post an official disclaimer when the time comes, but I can promise you now that I'll only accept promotion opportunities that are of relevance to this blog's content and that are interesting enough that I'd be happy to blog about them anyway, and that I won't accept any that require a positive review that I can't provide in all honesty. With that in mind, if paid blogging morally offends you, well then, congratulations. You're a better person than I am, and you probably don't want to read anything I have to say anyway. That's about it, really. I like this shiny new layout, although I wish I could find a pretty 3-column layout that worked in Blogger. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to designing my own. In the meantime, I'm pretty happy with this one, so thanks to Gecko & Fly for providing it. Other than all that, it's business as usual (barring that whole two month hiatus where nothing happened here, and by the way, sorry about that). I still welcome discussion and comments, so please don't be shy! Labels: extra income, site maintenance |
<$Thursday, June 21, 2007$>
Should I stay or should I go-o?
| Today is a good day. It's payday. All of my bills are paid, there's plenty of money in the grocery budget, our fun money allowances are paid out, and there's still about $50 left to spare. I didn't even think about what to do with that extra $50--I just signed onto my online savings account and hit the transfer button before temptation even had a chance to start whispering in my ear. It's a great feeling to know that everything is covered for the rest of the month, but it's made even better by that last bit. This has been a tight month, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to contribute anything to our savings. So even that small of an increase feels great. We finally have enough saved up to finance our move into town, so for the last month or so we've been looking at rental houses and duplexes in the area, without much luck. We've only seen two houses that held much promise, but both times we were beaten to the punch by the competition. After looking at a few houses in our price range in dismally poor and rough neighborhoods, we had a powwow and figured out that we could raise our budget if we repaired Husband's truck instead of replacing it. With the new price in mind, we checked out a duplex last weekend. It was in a decent neighborhood and had everything we need, so we turned in an application. But we checked it out during an open house, and there were a lot of other interested lookers. We haven't heard back on our application yet. I guess we'll keep looking. We have plenty of money to move, and I think there's enough left over to handle the most important of the truck repairs, but that's it. We don't really have an emergency fund, and this bothers me. So now I'm wondering if we should just stay where we are until we've saved up an emergency fund on top of the moving fund. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm used to our current budget. I know how to work with it, and I think we could save up the fund in a few months. The way things are going, it might take us that long to find and lease a suitable home, anyway. On the other hand, I think moving to town would ultimately save us a lot of money, even if we almost double our current rent. It would save us well over $100/month in gas, for starters, and I'm pretty confident that we could pull off enough energy hacks to keep our utility bills low. And then there's the grocery budget. Right now, we don't have a kitchen. We have a mini-fridge and a microwave. It's like we live in a dorm. Except instead of Top Ramen, we eat a lot of pre-packaged and frozen foods, anything that can either simply be heated up or assembled, and we also eat out or pick up fast food a lot more often than we should. That stuff's expensive. I believe having a full-fledged kitchen where we could actually cook healthy meals from scratch would cut down significantly on our food spending. Really, I think probably what we're saving now by living out in the country and renting cheap and what we'd save by living in the city will all even out in the wash, and our month-to-month budget won't see that much of an impact as far as how much is left over for savings and debt reduction. It probably won't really make that much difference when we move at this point, as long as we make that emergency fund a priority. So we'll keep looking, and we'll keep squirreling away what we can into savings at every given opportunity. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is one of those areas of life where slow and steady really does win the race. Labels: goals, money management, personal, saving+investing |
<$Wednesday, June 20, 2007$>
"A Vague Disclaimer is Nobody's Friend"
| This policy is valid from 11 July 2007 This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact Jean Bauhaus (jeanjeanie@gmail.com). This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content. The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org |
<$Friday, June 1, 2007$>
"A Vague Disclaimer is Nobody's Friend"
| This policy is valid from 11 July 2007 This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact Jean Bauhaus (jeanjeanie@gmail.com). This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content. The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org Labels: affiliates, disclosure, PPP |