Traveling for Work
September 13th, 2007
Part of the reason that I didn’t want to set too many ambitious goals this month was the fact that it would be incredibly busy from a work standpoint. I didn’t want to set goals in place that had a small chance of success. Part of that is tied in directly to the fact that I had to and still have to do a bit of traveling for work.
I’ve wanted to write about business travel for a while since there are different aspects to this that a personal finance blog can cover. The first thing that comes to mind is all of the potential cost saving measures that come up. Most companies will get rooms for every person that is traveling; this is often more expensive for the company but they don’t mind spending the extra money to keep everyone happy. A quick cost cutting measure would be to double people up in rooms! Personally I like my space so I’d never push this aspect very far. Continuing along the cost savings thinking is the food aspect; restaurants are expensive especially if you eat at them a couple times a day. Hotels often provide breakfast and in some cases these are full breakfast menus, keep this in mind when you book a room. Also because you’re traveling doesn’t mean that you need to eat an expensive meal. Treat the company’s money as if it were your own.
While traveling I inevitably spend more money that I do on a regular day, small things you forget or don’t think you’ll need all add up. Magazines, books, and snacks while you’re waiting to board the plane also add up. The waiting times are probably the biggest challenge for me from a no spending point of view. Planning and preparing for this will help reduce unexpected expenses.
Because I’ve had to travel a bit for work this year (thankfully it is still only a bit) I’ve learnt a lot about prepping to travel and the travel itself. If you plan a trip correctly it’ll save you time and money depending on how you actually travel. An hour-long flight to remove the need for a 5-hour drive for me is a good option; I can sit and work or read at the airport while when I drive I have to pay attention to the road and where I’m going. Planning ahead can also save you money because airlines often limit the number of low costs seats on a plane; buying last minute means paying a premium to be on that plane. A bit of effort early on will save you hassles and aggravation down the road.
I used to have this mental image of an executive flying all over the globe in a private jet or first class and it was an appealing image. But now that I’ve had to travel a few times in close succession that image has been tarnished slightly. Yes its still a lot of fun but doing it too often isn’t fun, you miss your loved ones and wears you out. I hope that I get to continue to travel a bit for work but the moment it starts wearing me out or impacting my family life I’ll have to tone it down and reduce the frequency.
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September Goals
September 7th, 2007
September is going to be an incredibly busy month for me work wise and I don’t want to set some crazy goals for myself that are not going to be manageable. To that end I’ve come up with some goals that are similar to last months and I’m not going to try working on too many side projects on top of that. The net result when you try to take on too much is that everything suffers including the really important tasks.
To that end here are my goals for September:
- Decrease my spending my 10%
- Increase my net worth by $250
- Keep track of all my spending for the month
- Come up with a base business plan for one of my projects
- Adjust my budgeting to fit my spending.
With all of this said to decrease my spending by 10% will mean that I need to spend about $400 less this month. I think this goal is perfectly achievable especially since I’m going to be busy with work and traveling a bit. Also the summer is ending so there will be fewer trips to the boat which inevitably cost money.
Increasing my net worth by $250 is a pretty small task since as long as my assets don’t decrease or my liabilities increase just the paying down my car should be sufficient to cover this off.
I’ve been really good the last couple months in tracking my spending; it’s just a matter of continuing this trend. I’m at the point where I’ve got enough data to accurately determine my spending and where I could cut down (this meshes with the first point). At the same time this works really well with the last of my goals which is to adjust my budgeting to fit my spending. All three points that are linked should make it that much easier to achieve.
Finally I’ve got a couple ideas that I’m in the process of developing as small side businesses. I know what I want to achieve with them but unfortunately I need to make sure that both of these are approached correctly. With that in mind I’m going to build a business plan (a basic one) for one of the two ideas – this is to continue to lay the ground work for what I want to accomplish.
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August Assessment
September 5th, 2007
I have to say that I’m both happy with my results for the month of August and a little scared. First off I was able to spend a great deal more money than I earned, almost $2,000! But to put this into context this did include some furniture and some electronics (the DVD player broke) and some needed clothing. So overall there was more spending but some of it was simply necessary. From a cashflow point of view the month was pretty bad and I haven’t even had a chance to go through the numbers in detail just yet. The good news is I now have 2 months of detailed spending information that I can use to create an accurate budget for September (provided I don’t take too long to do it).
Other than the spending August was a good month, I got a couple ideas for businesses rolling which includes some possible financing/co-ownership, which will help me out greatly. These aren’t very far along but if all goes well one or both of these little ideas should bring in a little bit of extra money (I think it might be a bit early to guess about the amount just yet).
Finally from a net worth point of view I managed to increase my net worth by $1,289.93 to $15,515.35. This is a really nice rebound unfortunately its mostly due to the fact that I’ve just received my most current pension statement which had some nice growth. The unfortunate aspect of this is that it would have jumped more if I wasn’t spending money faster than it was being printed. If I’m able to curb spending next month I should be able to increase this even more.
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This Blog is a Year Old!
September 4th, 2007
Well as I write this entry this blog is officially one year + a day old and I have to say that I’m quite proud of where its gotten to. I started this blog off not really knowing very much about personal finance and since then I’ve learnt a mountain of useful info. Unfortunately it’s also pointed out the fact that I don’t know nearly enough, though I find that happens, the more you learn the more you realize you need to learn.I started writing as a motivational tool for myself and to that end is has really helped me, though I think I could have taken a bit better advantage of a few things I’m still happy with the site. I’m still blown away by the numbers, the stats – over 10,700 visitors since I started the site out and almost 18,000 page views. I know compared to some of the large personal finance blogs out there they’ll get this in a day but for me this was an accomplishment (yes I am a stat junkie though I’m trying to wean myself from it). And to top everything off I’ve made about $350 from this site, which is also something that I wasn’t expecting (it was just a bit more than hosting costs).
What’s next? First off I want to update the look of the site and focus a bit more on the writing. Tackle a few topics that I haven’t yet such as investments and real estate since I’m starting to look at both of them though they will be a bit more prevalent when I get my cash flow under control. Also I’ve got a couple site projects I’m starting to work on which will be businesses and starting a new business is definitely something I want to blog about.
For those of you who have come to the site and regularly come to the site, thank you and please keep coming back! I’ve learnt a lot about personal finance writing this site but also about blogging, and organization which I’m hoping to include in the upcoming year to really make year two of the site that much better.
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