Laziness cost me $720 today
May 15th, 2010
We’re all a little lazy for the sake of convenience every now and then and usually it doesn’t have any impact on our lives. At other times it costs us and today is one of those days for me; today my laziness cost me a lot of money. I needed to renew my license plates and where I live when you pay for this they check to see if you have any outstanding parking tickets which they make you pay before you can renew your plates. Unfortunately I had accumulated a bunch of parking tickets over the last year and i was lazy in paying them, I was also lazy when I got the tickets in the first place (but that’s a different story), but I knew that I’d have to pay for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was the cost. The unpaid parking tickets added up to a grand total of $720!
The really painful part of the story is that a significant chunk of that cost was late fees for not paying the tickets on time (about half the cost to be specific). By being lazy came back to bite me in the ass in a very major way. Not only did I let this amount get so high by being lazy but I got all of the tickets by being lazy (they were all from parking on my street without a parking permit which costs $10 a month). The moral of the story is that be careful of your laziness because there are times when it will come back to haunt you.
Taking the easy path might seem like the best approach but the path can very quickly change from being easy to being much harder and more costly than simply being proactive. In this case I am already being proactive since I have purchased the necessary parking permit for the remainder of the year, I just have to remember this day when the permit expires and get a new one.
It just makes me wonder how much money do we (in general) waste because we’re being lazy and don’t want to spend 15 minutes or 20 minutes to do something? I think I might need to look at other parts of my life to see if I’m not wasting more of my hard earned money.
Posted in Commentary, News/Misc | 3 Comments
A New Job!
April 27th, 2010
As I write this spring has arrived and with it the infernal weeds have started their barrage on my lawn (and my lacking gardening skills). Spring is a time of growth and change and for me this spring there is definitely a lot of change. Since I last posted on here I got a new job! I’ve been in the new job for about a week now and I’m very excited. The offer that came along was too good for me to refuse, it was a healthy 20% raise, more vacation and a more senior position. I liked my old job so it was sad to make the change but as I said it was too good to pass up.
The work is already much different from my previous position and I think I’ll really enjoy it here. I think the reality will really sink in when I get my first paycheck; the first one is going to pay down a couple bills (and to see what I’ll net after the government takes their cut); after that there will be a definite increase in savings and paying down debt. I wanted to hop onto the site and pass along the good news!
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Busy but still alive!
March 24th, 2010
Every now and then life becomes incredibly busy for each of us, sometimes its expected and sometimes it’s not. For me this year has been incredibly busy and when that happens something is bound to suffer. In my case it has been my writing on this blog; I have been focusing on two things: work and my family. My family always comes first but work has been hectic and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change dramatically any time soon (unless I change something about it).
Needless to say I have been trying to keep some of my goals in mind throughout this busy time and I have managed some success in that my finances are not being forgotten and I am managing to keep at least a few things simple in my life. Unfortunately I have not had much time to myself let alone blog. The net result is I haven’t posted up here for a couple months. I think that February is the first month in the history of this blog that I haven’t written a single post and in many ways this pains me.
With all of that said I am missing my blog and my writing and I wanted to post a quick note up here to let everyone know that I am in fact alive! Despite my lack of posting I do have a few things in mind to write about in the hopefully not too distant future. This includes my new car (and its costs), some balance transfers to take advantage of the incredible interest rates around and well just life in general (having an 18 month old around does put things into perspective).
I promise my next post won’t be in June (at least I sincerely hope not)
Posted in News/Misc | 1 Comment
Year of Less
January 3rd, 2010
If I were to put a statement on this past year it would be that it was the ‘Year of Busy’, it felt like I was running around a lot doing a great many things and in the end I felt like I was stretched extremely thin. The goal for this year will be to make it the ‘Year of Less’! This past year I read Leo Babauta’s book Power of Less
I find with myself that I like to set my goals extremely high and then inevitably they aren’t achieved or the project is started and never quite finished. This blog has been witness to a few of these grandiose goals such as my posting of my weekly budgets to goals from previous years where I have tried to save X or Y where the numbers were rather large. So this year I am going to take a slightly different approach, I am going to focus on fewer things and by doing that I am hoping to achieve more of them.
Further to that point here is my list of goals for the year, I’ve kept the list to 5 items. I think I could accomplish a great deal more than just these 5 items but I think by starting with these and not putting more down I have a better chance of success
- Quit Smoking and drink less
- Get my finances in order
- Find my passion
- Get my side business going
- Declutter the house
Each one of these items is important to me and I think that in the long run I would be happier by achieving these than anything else.
Quitting Smoking and Drinking less
This will be the goal that I start working on first because it has the most immediate impact and at the same time it has the farthest reaching impact. The smoking part is in my opinion extremely obvious. Smoking is extremely bad for you and I have never hidden the fact that I smoke and that I would rather be a non-smoker. There is no cutting down on this part of the goal I am sick of it and I don’t want to do it anymore. The second half of this goal is a bit more of what I would call fuzzy and it will tie into the other goals to some extent. I like to have a few beers at the end of a long day, while I don’t drink excessively I do drink fairly frequently. The drinking by itself is not a problem, I enjoy having those couple beers a day, what I believe is a problem is the fact that this habit is extremely expensive and I don’t think I need to do it.
Get Finances in Order
In many ways this goal is the a very significant part of the reason why this blog exists and has existed so long, unfortunately I am still struggling with certain aspects of my finances for example I am not saving much money and I am still carrying a fairly substantial consumer debt load. While my financial situation has improved over the years its still not great and could be a lot better than it is.
- Savings – increase savings to 15% of my paycheck by end of April (currently its at about 5%)
- Credit card debt – reduce debt by 20% by the end of the year (this would mean that by the end of the year I would be below 10K)
Those two measurable goals are something that I would like to achieve, I also think that I could do a lot better than this but I would like to start small and keep myself focused. Also this will give me a bit more time to truly define what getting my finances in order really means for me. I pay my bills on time but I have not been making much headway financially and I just want to make sure I tackle it in a way that is appropriate for me.
Find my Passion
Over the past year I have started delve into myself and try to figure out what drives me and what my passions are and for this upcoming year I want to continue to do this. While I don’t know if I’ll be able to find my passion within this calendar year I do want to continue the process of trying to discover what they might be and what I can be doing about them.
Get my side business going
As part of trying to find my passion, and finding myself in some ways, I have discovered that I don’t want to do live the rat race life until I am ready to retire (or die). I want to be able to try new things and to experiment I also don’t want to be a slave to someone else for my bread and butter. I have had a few ideas for starting a side business for a few years but I have never really done anything about it other than dream and talk. This year the goal will be to get this moving once and for all. The worst thing that can happen is it fails.
I have a couple ideas that are potential candidates and I have decided to focus on one of them to drive the idea forward and see what happens. If I make some money off of this that would be great, if I try it and nothing happens then really I am no worse off, but if I try this and it works then this will become the starting point for additional income streams.
One of the starting ideas behind this blog and its name is was to have one million dollars by the time I turn 35, I am now 32 so this is an achievement that is becoming harder and harder to fulfill and I believe that getting off my ass and doing something about a side business is the way to go. Over the next couple months I will be working to getting this going and while I don’t want to blog about it just yet I will once the idea is in place.
What I would like to achieve from this goal is that by the end of the year I would like to have $1000 in income from a side business coming in monthly.
Declutter the house
This goal ties in more to the concept of the year of less, we simply have too much crap and I don’t want to bother with it anymore or worry about it. Just by scanning around the room I am in right now I can see things that we really don’t need like the extra phone and charger stand that aren’t being used and I believe the phone doesn’t even work anymore or the printer that is stacked on the shelf because we’ve replaced it with a new laser printer. I am never going to buy new ink cartridges for it and thus never use it. These are just a couple examples that I was able to find by looking around the room and I am sure that the house is full of items such as these that need to be removed. The end result is that i am hoping to have fewer things to worry about and have to deal with. If anything can be sold or donated then it will be what can’t will be thrown out. I will attempt to initiate this goal slowly because it is not as important as the others I still want to achieve it.
Will I be able to accomplish all of these five goals over the course of the year? The real answer is I don’t know, the one about finding my passion might the one that brings the house of cards down, but I believe that I can and should be able to achieve these. If I am successful then I can always add more items to the list.
Posted in Commentary, News/Misc | 1 Comment
Happy Holidays!
December 26th, 2009
Happy Holidays everyone; I really hope that each and every one of you has had a great holiday (regardless of if you celebrate it or not).
Don’t forget that its not about the gifts (though they are always nice) but its about the small things like spending time with the family or taking the day off to do nothing but watch movies and recharge yourself. Whatever it is it doesn’t have to be monetary and in fact most of the most memorable moments I find aren’t.
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A slow Re-Invention of Self – Finding my Passion
December 11th, 2009
The past few months have been a bit on the challenging side for me, actually I would say that this past year has a bit challenging for me. Between juggling all of my real and perceived responsibilities I haven’t had much time to myself and I have been feeling a bit of a void that is symbolized by a lack of passion and direction. At times I have been worn thing and others I have been unhappy but I think the biggest thing is that I don’t feel that I am living up to my own potential.
By no means do I think that I am a failure I just think that there is something I am missing that will take me to a place where I feel that if I am not working at my potential I am working towards it and my internal success recognition will become based on this rather than seeing the results of others and comparing myself to them personally and professionally. I am happy and grateful about many things in my life and without these I think I would be both a lesser man and to put it frankly pretty bloody miserable.
Passion
Over the past probably year I have been reading about passion and trying slowly and quietly to find my own. One of the biggest problems that I have found in trying to nail this down is that while a lot of books in the self help area deal with success and passion theymerely state that people will find their greatest success and happiness by finding their passion. The reality is that I have never been taught to look deep within myself to find out what is my life’s calling is or to find out the things that will drive me to get up in the morning a couple hours before everyone wakes up and keep me up at night to put in that little bit of extra effort.
How does one find ones passion? There are a few ways to do it and these will depend on the person and their circumstances. For me this has been a slow process and one filled with this slow nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right (and its not the burrito I had at lunch). Its a feeling that is telling me that my current measure of success could be better but unfortunately that feeling doesn’t tell me what needs to be changed. So I have been exploring the concept of having a passion and trying to see what I need to do to find this.
In some ways this process has been a little discouraging; while I’m starting to feel that I have made some progress I have discovered that rather than being closer to finding my passion I am in reality further away than when I was younger (both as a teen and a child). My interests and hobbies have atrophied over the years to the point question what are your hobbies makes me cringe slightly because the answer has become “I’m not really sure”.
I think a person can have many passions both over the course of their lives and at the same time. There are people out there who accomplish momentous achievements in many areas seemingly at the same time. Are these people some magical beings that just happen to know the secret handshake that allows them to do this? No. They are incredibly talented and they understand themselves their interests and what drives them and how to motivate themselves.
My Past
You’re reading this blog because I’ve always had some interest in money and I’ve always battled my own demons when it comes to managing my own money. This is an interest that I know about but one that has suffered because of business and a general lack of passion when it comes to anything. For a little while I contemplated simply closing shop on this site but I enjoy it and I believe that it has helped me grow (and hopefully helped the odd reader). This got me thinking about how to find my passion… when I started this site it got started with a spark an idea that has fitfully existed for a little over three years. I haven’t had many of these ideas lately so the starting point to find out what some of my interests are was to go backwards in time to when I had more interests and to see if there are any passions there that can be cultivated with some time.
If you live the 9 to 5 grind pause for a moment and think back to when you were a child can you remember all of the things you were interested in? Chances are that with a little thought you’ll be amazed at all the things you did then compared to now. That’s the idea that is driving this part of my slow reinvention.
Fear
Now I don’t think I could really talk about finding my passion without at least mentioning fear because I have slowly learnt over the past year that fear drives me in many strange ways that I’m not really all that happy about. I think that I’m not the only one in this situation either; there are so many people living their lives in a rut that a whole industry has come to exist to help them (aka self help). How am I going to deal with these fears? The reality is that right now I’m not sure I know that I am going to have to because living my life unhappy in a rut is not a way to live and I will not let a fear keep me back.
The problem with these fears is that often times I don’t think its a fear that is driving a decision but something else like caution, prudence or being realistic about something. Now at times those things will keep you from making a bad decision but that isn’t always the case. I think that all too often a choice is avoided because of some misguided fear that really should be addressed. The other thing is that I’ve found that my self confidence has been really low for years, while on the surface its high deep down it’s been pretty low and I think a lot of that is rooted in these misguided fears. Along with identifying my interests and hopefully passions I will need to tackle my fears and the demons that come with them.
Going forward
If you’ve made it this far I congratulate you, this is a personal finance blog not a self help blog and something about what I’ve said has sparked an interest in you. Thank you. This is not going to be an instant change or fix and hopefully it doesn’t take me too long to figure it out but it is something that needs to be done for my own peace of mind. What does this mean for the site? Well hopefully it translates to more posts because I have determined that this is an area that I have been interested and want to continue to explore.
Posted in Commentary, News/Misc | 1 Comment
My Frivolous Purchase
November 2nd, 2009
This past weekend I decided to invest a little money in a very worthy cause, myself! I made what many people might consider a rather frivolous purchase. I bought myself a mini laptop, a Dell 10v specifically and so far I have to say I’m fairly impressed with it. I didn’t make this purchase lightly, I’ve been eyeing getting myself one of these computers for a while now and it was time.
Every now and then you have to treat yourself to something nice or all the money in the world isn’t really worth collecting. I commute a fair amount and although I do have a work laptop I am not going to use it for my personal stuff so when the idea of these mini laptops started to gain popularity I have to say I was rather intrigued. That was close to a year ago and since then they’ve become all the rage which is great for me because the price has gone down. I purchased this little item from a big box store for $399+ taxes which might seem high but it came in a custom color and with a 6 cell battery. The net result is I would have paid a similar price directly from Dell.
While some people will lament the fact that I spent that much money on a luxury item this wasn’t a purchase made overnight or on a whim. It also wasn’t a purchase that was made on credit. I have learnt my lesson when it comes to spending my money on the geek toys; save up, wait and if you still want it then purchase it. I waited over a year and I saved up the money for this so there won’t be any credit card bills coming in the mail nor will this weeks groceries be on the lighter side.
The one thing that made me second guess this purchase is the fact that I could have paid down my debt a bit more rather than paying minimums. But as I mentioned earlier you have to be able to treat yourself every now and then. I haven’t purchased anything that was specifically for me and me only in… probably close to two years, maybe longer. There is a couple benefits to this purchase other than the geek factor and that is that I’ll have a bit more portability with my computing life (thankfully I’m not a facebook user or I might have to update my profile everytime I find a new hotspot), there are a couple projects that i would like to work on and this might remove any additional excuses that I have for not doing them.
Now a question for my readers – have you ever treated yourself, and I’m not talking about the latte that you’re sipping while browsing through your daily reads, I’m talking about a purchase that you wanted but could have lived without that was more significant. Did you wait? Did you save up for it? Did you feel any type of remorse or regret?
Posted in Commentary, News/Misc | 3 Comments
The Quiet Financial Blog
October 26th, 2009
Over the past couple months things have really quieted down on the site, I think there’s been a grand total of 2 posts in almost three months. No I haven’t given up on the site though I will admit I really didn’t have much to say for a couple months and it got to the point where I wasn’t even thinking about blogging. In the past couple weeks the thought to jump back on the site and write again has been coming back to mind. Now there won’t be any grand proclamations about what will and won’t happen or how great or badly I’ve been doing.
In some respects things have been great, my daughter turned one at the beginning of the month and she’s been doing awesome. She’s been bringing joy into my life every day since her birth. Yes some days are tougher than others, lets be realistic its parenthood not every day will be perfect. The magic is the fact that when I see her face when I pick her up the smile she gives me and the excitement I get is enough to make it all worth while. Being a parent really has taught me a lot from resposibility to seeing the simplicity and joy in life.
On the financial front things have improved and stayed the same at the same time. Yes I’m still carrying debt (close to three months of quiet isn’t going to erase that much debt), but I have managed to start building my savings. The debt is being maintained and slowly lowered while at the same time I’ve managed to save up a small amount of money (about $1,000). While my successes and general status quo in the financial arena have not been stellar there hasn’t been any regression which is a good sign by itself.
For a while I was torn about the site, I didn’t have anything I wanted to say, and I contemplated shutting it down. But I do like writing about personal finance and my finances. If I can somehow convince one kid or one person not to make the mistakes I made then all the writing would have been a success. So I would like to start writing again, it might take a little while to get topics flowing again but I want to write so I will just like I will continue to make the small steps to improve my financial situation – even a small step in the right direction is a good one.
Posted in Commentary, Financial Situation, News/Misc | No Comments
The Quietest Month On Record
April 1st, 2009
This last month I managed to post only once to the blog even though a lot has happened. There were a couple times where I wanted to post something but life got busy and other times where I was being introspective and didn’t want to force a post. For me posting on the site has always been something that I enjoy and I didn’t want to force myself to write something for the sake of posting.
One of the things I noticed in the month pretty much absent of posts is that I did miss it. My writing on this site has been tied directly to what is happening in my life; during the times that I am incredibly busy I tend not to write and when I manage to have some time freed up I write a bit more frequently. Realizing that I do in fact enjoy writing on the site and want it to be successful I am going to have to make a few changes and one of them is the consistency.
The battle to get things done has been one I have always struggled with and I have finally gotten David Allen’s Getting things done and I have been reading it. Knowing that I want to continue this site and grow it I believe that in the process of becoming more organized I will be able to bring some consistency back to this site. For those of you you’ve missed my sporadic posts – I’m sorry the plan is to make them much more regular.
Posted in News/Misc | 1 Comment
This Week’s Carnival of Personal Finance
February 28th, 2009
This weeks Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Broke Grad Student and my post about Lowering Expenses by Keeping Receipts was included. Definitely check the carnival out. Here are a couple entries that caught my attention:
Job Happiness”: The oxymoron of the century
Cutting Back Can Make Changes to Your Health
Quitting Smoking – One Month Later
When to Cut Your Losses
Posted in News/Misc, Sites/Articles | No Comments
