sorry to disagree, but obese people where I live get everything FREE! access to a special van because they're so fat they can't stand/walk. This is taxpayer dollars - mine.
I went to weight watchers. lost and now continue tracking my food/exercise daily on lifetime.
While the main subject of the article is true, that being overweight can cause you to have a higher cost of living, please don't fall so quickly into the trap of "reasons to avoid letting extra pounds accumulate." This blog opens your eyes to diet fads, incorrect theories of "healthy" eating and how unscientific some weight loss studies can be. So before any WiseBread readers look into spending money trying to lose weight, I recommend taking a look at that blog to see how pointless it all may be and a waste of money that could be spent on the more expensive clothes and airline tickets.
Lin I should say it a very good article and it conveys the most obvious message that the "pen is mightier than sword".
It is not always that a good writer gets a good job but it is true that a person with good writing skills would always get more respect and a better position in every sphere of life.
There are many situations where a person is unable to vocalize his thoughts due to some constraints, in that case the best option could be penning down his thought into a letter or diary and conveying it.
In fact the first time I proposed..I did it by writing a letter.....
Hence it is true that people with good writing skills are better valued and respected.
In response to post #29 about how it might be better financially for one income instead of two (because of the costs of working) but that's not true without kids...well...I'm not punching out a baby just so I can stay home.
Choosing not to procreate is a money saver as well. Why on earth would I want to have babies and have more financial woes? So yes, I would make a "net profit" from working a full time job, but why would I stress myself out like that? And those who belittle the stress factor, please try to understand, in almost all situations cooking and cleaning falls to the women. No matter if they work or not.
Yes I realize there are exceptions, but take a poll one day and you'll get my point. Also, most men (again do a poll) prefer NOT to have to cook and clean. Though I realize some love it and would love to stay home. Fine. Find a woman who will pay the bills while you stay home. It exists as an option.
Today's "liberated" women are doing entirely too much work these days when they work full time and cook, and clean and sometimes even take care of kids. The net profit divided by all those hours of stress will almost always amount to far below minimum wage.
To those super concerned for women who stay home and their financial insecurity due to that decision...financial security is largely a myth. Having a job doesn't mean you can't lose said job. And women who stay home and run a household aren't necessarily JUST doing that. Many start their own small home based businesses (which is a course I have chosen.)
So I'm not sitting around at the mercy of my husband's money for the rest of my life here. I'm actually building in some financial support for myself, but doing it in a way that makes us both happy.
Somehow the happiness factor is lost on people. And no, my husband is not rich. You would be amazed the amount of money you can save and what you can get by on when you stop having to have EVERYTHING. There is no need to have 2 or 3 cars, a big house, 400 channels on television, every piece of electronics equipment known to man, etc.
It all comes down to individual couples/families and what they feel will make them happy. If you think I'm running on your hamster wheel for social approval, you are smoking the crack. I'd rather stay home, run my little business, take care of the house and my husband. If that sets back the women's movement, screw the women's movement.
As one other point of contention, I get tired of hearing "this isn't the 1950's anymore." I didn't personally ask for gender roles to be reversed or expanded. While I'm grateful for many of the choices I have now that might have been harder then, I did not ask for someone to "save me" from servitude to a man.
I'm HAPPY being in the relationship set up I'm in. I'm happy being provided for by a dominant, alpha male. And honey, if that ruffles your feathers, then put on your power suit and go to work.
I suspect this doesn't work for every printer, as some will not print at all without an electrical signal from the cartridge. But it's a good idea for those of us who don't have anything that fancy!
For people whose printers require electrical contact between the ink cartridge and the printer, there are other issues that result in the same error. Sometimes, you really are out of ink. In that case, you can refill the same cartridge with an off-brand ink and use it until the electrical contacts die (or pay someone at Walgreens to do it [less than the cost of another cartridge] if there's no hole hiding under the label). Sometimes, there's a chunk of dried ink gumming up the works. In that case, you can rub an ink-dissolving substance where the ink comes out, and then wipe that part of the cardtridge on a paper towel (repeat until the chunk comes out). For lumps floating in the ink, you have to empty and re-fill the whole thing. But you have to do it and keep the electrical contacts clear.
I'm a fat guy (265 lbs at 5ft10"), luckily not so fat that I need to shop at "big size" shops for clothing or buy two seats or such things, and through hard work(out) and some more conscious eating losing it slowly (and adding muscles instead of fat) - down 30 pound already.
One problem I see and have is costs. It is that it is damn cheap and easy to get food with a high-caloric density. Our society sells food through weight. Low density food has less calories/lbs and because of this it's automatically more expensive to keep yourself fed because you need more of it (in terms of weight). 2000 calories of fast food cost 5-6 $ (or less if you go for specials), which - while not healthy or even filling - keep you fed for a day.
The same amount of calories - and you shouldn't eat much less even if you try to lose weight - done with healthy ingredients will cost you several times the money even if you ignore organic stuff and high price items.
A bag of chips has 1000+ calories and costs less than a dollar. 1000+ calories of tuna or beans or even potatoes cost you 5-10 $. Of course it will be more filling and healthy, but it doesn't makes things easy for people who want to lose weight on a budget.
If your table gets greener you have to pay more green notes for it.
The only thing that's cheaper is drinks - water is nearly free after all.
It could be just me, but when I feel particularly rotten about my weight, I either binge on food or go shopping for something we don't particularly need. It's purely psycological, but it goes hand-in-hand with my weight. So a wallop to the wallet has to be counted on from time to time.
And I agree with Mark, the kids are the saddest cases. There's got to be something more we can do to prevent childhood obesity. As an obese mom with a normal-weight 4-year-old, I'm constantly vigilant of my son's lifestyle, lest he fall into the same traps I have. And I hear you thinking "why don't you do something about yourself and set an example"...I'm with you.
Very good article. It's probably not going to be popular, but you've said some things that need to be said, and presented my weight to me as something that needs to be challenged from a frugalista standpoint. Grazie!
..I can't be that out of touch if there's a movement in place to try and get rid of these books. And I did a quick straw poll at the office, asking people when was the last time they had looked at a yellow or white pages for a number, either at work or home. Out of 31 people, 2 said last month. The rest said "too long ago to remember" or "not in years." Maybe that makes my office out of touch?
I think someone needs to write a piece about how shoddily-made many products are these days. One year is not a long time, my grandparents would have been outraged.
@9
Why don't they have them delivered using hybrid cars? Because the people they pay (like me) to deliver them can't afford hybrids. I was a newspaper carrier that also contracted with telephone directory companies to earn some extra money.
Sometimes political correctness can go too far in the other direction. If hybrid cars became a requirement for that job (which I don't think it can be since it typically is a 1099 position), that would eliminate many of the very people who depend on those types of jobs. Sometimes we forget that being able to stick to our principles is truly a luxury. I am a subscriber to two newspapers and one magazine, but all three are online only subscriptions. Ideologically, I am in favor of reducing paper waste, but at the same time, that was the only viable source of income I had for my schedule(it was literally that or "adult actress").
Also. goes to show you can't please everyone- another poster referred to deliverers dropping books off at a central location- even if I had the most efficient car in the world, using the latest technology, parking my car every three houses because someone wanted their newspaper on their doorstep was the reason why I eventually left the job. (and we are the lazy ones?)
The reason I took jobs like that (and am considering going back) is because the money was decent and the hours did not interfere with my class schedule. Most employers these days see the word "student" and think that equals $6 per hour or "internship."
@ author of post
Also, I think statements like "Honestly, when was the last time you needed a dry cleaner and went to the phone book instead of the web?" prove just how out of touch you are with society beyond your immediate circle. A lot of people do not have 24/7 access to the Internet. Think of how many retail or other non office workers there are that might need to make an doctors appointment on their break and don't have access to the Internet. I work at a community center where the majority of people don't even own computers in their homes. This is true in both urban and rural areas. I personally cannot afford a laptop, and honestly don't know if I ever will. I can't afford a fancy phone with internet either. There are many others like me. I know that going to the phone book first doesn't make me a dinosaur because I have found results that I was not able to locate on the web, or didn't come up in the first few pages of the search.
As I type this, the hubs is installing the new Samsung printer we just ordered. We thought our Brother -- just a year or so old -- was giving us false "out of ink" messages. He tried the tape, tried ordering some little gizmo that was supposed to fool the printer into thinking it had a new cartridge, but nothing worked. Now it turns out the thing might have been broken, not out of ink. Bah.
But still, he found it more financially prudent to buy a new stupid printer than try buying a new cartridge for $30. Now that I think about it, I suspect that my husband was just so frustrated and annoyed by this point that he didn't want to buy a new cartridge to see if it would work.
Very true that too many decades of just going with the flow of whatever everyone else's eating habits were around me led me to have rather expensive eating habits, including expensive cocktails before dinner and wine with dinner. When I finally wanted to quit alcohol, it was very hard for me (though I didn't even drink at all till age 30). I turned to water fasting to reset my body's natural cravings for a healthy (and much cheaper) diet. Now, my food bills are way more reasonable, consisting mostly of fresh fruit and vegetables and rice, fish, and chicken (and way less of all of this). After I fasted for 10 days and post-fasted for 5, it was so much easier not to wreck all the great feelings I had from the fast by even thinking about ingesting the heavier foods or any alcohol again. I chronicled my fast in a Fasting Log at http://shanelyang.com/2008/07/03/fasting-log-day-1/ and I highly recommend it for anyone with health problems that doctors just can't seem to fix, too -- except liver cancer! I write more about all of that in my posts. Good luck to all! : )
I've been geocaching for about 9 months. We've had such great fun and had many adventures. Thanks for the excellent idea about the custom swag. I linked your article on my site.
I never replace the toner/ink unless it starts printing out unlegible letters.
Some tips I learned in the office:
- If it's a laser printer, it helps to take the toner out and shake it around.
- You can also go into the printer properties and have it print at a lower quality level. It uses less ink. For most word docs, and especially if you're just printing out a throwaway map/directions/etc sheet, you won't be able to notice a difference.
- For colored inkjets, choose the black-only cartridge to print. Otherwise, it will use some of the color ink to make it look "nicer"
Writing skills are so important in life. When getting my masters in Educational Leadership we had to write way too many papers. One of the comments to me from the head of the department was he could tell I was a math major.
i followed the link and the website is closed.
dotties weight loss zone offers all the information, message boards, etc that you can get at weight watchers. free.
www.dwlz.com
(the weight watchers police are gonna come after me now!)I can no longer pay, or want to pay, the fee.
sorry to disagree, but obese people where I live get everything FREE! access to a special van because they're so fat they can't stand/walk. This is taxpayer dollars - mine.
I went to weight watchers. lost and now continue tracking my food/exercise daily on lifetime.
people have to want to change.
While the main subject of the article is true, that being overweight can cause you to have a higher cost of living, please don't fall so quickly into the trap of "reasons to avoid letting extra pounds accumulate." This blog opens your eyes to diet fads, incorrect theories of "healthy" eating and how unscientific some weight loss studies can be. So before any WiseBread readers look into spending money trying to lose weight, I recommend taking a look at that blog to see how pointless it all may be and a waste of money that could be spent on the more expensive clothes and airline tickets.
Hi,
Lin I should say it a very good article and it conveys the most obvious message that the "pen is mightier than sword".
It is not always that a good writer gets a good job but it is true that a person with good writing skills would always get more respect and a better position in every sphere of life.
There are many situations where a person is unable to vocalize his thoughts due to some constraints, in that case the best option could be penning down his thought into a letter or diary and conveying it.
In fact the first time I proposed..I did it by writing a letter.....
Hence it is true that people with good writing skills are better valued and respected.
I would recommend buying a Laserprinter instead of a new ink cartridge.
In my experience the toner last longer and is far less messy to deal with then an ink jet printer.
And these days they aren't that expensive either. You can find good ones for 120-160 $
I got my mom a Hp laserjet 10xx printer and now still 2 years later it still printing on the same toner cartridge it came with.
She only had to take it out and shake it around one or two times.
And yes, a new toner cartridge will cost you 30-40$ but it will yield roughly 3000 pages.
Hi,
I actually wrote about pretty much the same thing when the first iPhone came out. I still don't get it and I'm glad so many others don't either!
To read the article, check out www.varsityblah.com/calling-all-customers/
In response to post #29 about how it might be better financially for one income instead of two (because of the costs of working) but that's not true without kids...well...I'm not punching out a baby just so I can stay home.
Choosing not to procreate is a money saver as well. Why on earth would I want to have babies and have more financial woes? So yes, I would make a "net profit" from working a full time job, but why would I stress myself out like that? And those who belittle the stress factor, please try to understand, in almost all situations cooking and cleaning falls to the women. No matter if they work or not.
Yes I realize there are exceptions, but take a poll one day and you'll get my point. Also, most men (again do a poll) prefer NOT to have to cook and clean. Though I realize some love it and would love to stay home. Fine. Find a woman who will pay the bills while you stay home. It exists as an option.
Today's "liberated" women are doing entirely too much work these days when they work full time and cook, and clean and sometimes even take care of kids. The net profit divided by all those hours of stress will almost always amount to far below minimum wage.
To those super concerned for women who stay home and their financial insecurity due to that decision...financial security is largely a myth. Having a job doesn't mean you can't lose said job. And women who stay home and run a household aren't necessarily JUST doing that. Many start their own small home based businesses (which is a course I have chosen.)
So I'm not sitting around at the mercy of my husband's money for the rest of my life here. I'm actually building in some financial support for myself, but doing it in a way that makes us both happy.
Somehow the happiness factor is lost on people. And no, my husband is not rich. You would be amazed the amount of money you can save and what you can get by on when you stop having to have EVERYTHING. There is no need to have 2 or 3 cars, a big house, 400 channels on television, every piece of electronics equipment known to man, etc.
It all comes down to individual couples/families and what they feel will make them happy. If you think I'm running on your hamster wheel for social approval, you are smoking the crack. I'd rather stay home, run my little business, take care of the house and my husband. If that sets back the women's movement, screw the women's movement.
As one other point of contention, I get tired of hearing "this isn't the 1950's anymore." I didn't personally ask for gender roles to be reversed or expanded. While I'm grateful for many of the choices I have now that might have been harder then, I did not ask for someone to "save me" from servitude to a man.
I'm HAPPY being in the relationship set up I'm in. I'm happy being provided for by a dominant, alpha male. And honey, if that ruffles your feathers, then put on your power suit and go to work.
I suspect this doesn't work for every printer, as some will not print at all without an electrical signal from the cartridge. But it's a good idea for those of us who don't have anything that fancy!
For people whose printers require electrical contact between the ink cartridge and the printer, there are other issues that result in the same error. Sometimes, you really are out of ink. In that case, you can refill the same cartridge with an off-brand ink and use it until the electrical contacts die (or pay someone at Walgreens to do it [less than the cost of another cartridge] if there's no hole hiding under the label). Sometimes, there's a chunk of dried ink gumming up the works. In that case, you can rub an ink-dissolving substance where the ink comes out, and then wipe that part of the cardtridge on a paper towel (repeat until the chunk comes out). For lumps floating in the ink, you have to empty and re-fill the whole thing. But you have to do it and keep the electrical contacts clear.
I'm a fat guy (265 lbs at 5ft10"), luckily not so fat that I need to shop at "big size" shops for clothing or buy two seats or such things, and through hard work(out) and some more conscious eating losing it slowly (and adding muscles instead of fat) - down 30 pound already.
One problem I see and have is costs. It is that it is damn cheap and easy to get food with a high-caloric density. Our society sells food through weight. Low density food has less calories/lbs and because of this it's automatically more expensive to keep yourself fed because you need more of it (in terms of weight). 2000 calories of fast food cost 5-6 $ (or less if you go for specials), which - while not healthy or even filling - keep you fed for a day.
The same amount of calories - and you shouldn't eat much less even if you try to lose weight - done with healthy ingredients will cost you several times the money even if you ignore organic stuff and high price items.
A bag of chips has 1000+ calories and costs less than a dollar. 1000+ calories of tuna or beans or even potatoes cost you 5-10 $. Of course it will be more filling and healthy, but it doesn't makes things easy for people who want to lose weight on a budget.
If your table gets greener you have to pay more green notes for it.
The only thing that's cheaper is drinks - water is nearly free after all.
It could be just me, but when I feel particularly rotten about my weight, I either binge on food or go shopping for something we don't particularly need. It's purely psycological, but it goes hand-in-hand with my weight. So a wallop to the wallet has to be counted on from time to time.
And I agree with Mark, the kids are the saddest cases. There's got to be something more we can do to prevent childhood obesity. As an obese mom with a normal-weight 4-year-old, I'm constantly vigilant of my son's lifestyle, lest he fall into the same traps I have. And I hear you thinking "why don't you do something about yourself and set an example"...I'm with you.
Very good article. It's probably not going to be popular, but you've said some things that need to be said, and presented my weight to me as something that needs to be challenged from a frugalista standpoint. Grazie!
it is called client.silabsoft.org but you need a server its sorta like runescape only u lvl up alot faster and some things dont work
..I can't be that out of touch if there's a movement in place to try and get rid of these books. And I did a quick straw poll at the office, asking people when was the last time they had looked at a yellow or white pages for a number, either at work or home. Out of 31 people, 2 said last month. The rest said "too long ago to remember" or "not in years." Maybe that makes my office out of touch?
I think someone needs to write a piece about how shoddily-made many products are these days. One year is not a long time, my grandparents would have been outraged.
here's a different perspective...
@9
Why don't they have them delivered using hybrid cars? Because the people they pay (like me) to deliver them can't afford hybrids. I was a newspaper carrier that also contracted with telephone directory companies to earn some extra money.
Sometimes political correctness can go too far in the other direction. If hybrid cars became a requirement for that job (which I don't think it can be since it typically is a 1099 position), that would eliminate many of the very people who depend on those types of jobs. Sometimes we forget that being able to stick to our principles is truly a luxury. I am a subscriber to two newspapers and one magazine, but all three are online only subscriptions. Ideologically, I am in favor of reducing paper waste, but at the same time, that was the only viable source of income I had for my schedule(it was literally that or "adult actress").
Also. goes to show you can't please everyone- another poster referred to deliverers dropping books off at a central location- even if I had the most efficient car in the world, using the latest technology, parking my car every three houses because someone wanted their newspaper on their doorstep was the reason why I eventually left the job. (and we are the lazy ones?)
The reason I took jobs like that (and am considering going back) is because the money was decent and the hours did not interfere with my class schedule. Most employers these days see the word "student" and think that equals $6 per hour or "internship."
@ author of post
Also, I think statements like "Honestly, when was the last time you needed a dry cleaner and went to the phone book instead of the web?" prove just how out of touch you are with society beyond your immediate circle. A lot of people do not have 24/7 access to the Internet. Think of how many retail or other non office workers there are that might need to make an doctors appointment on their break and don't have access to the Internet. I work at a community center where the majority of people don't even own computers in their homes. This is true in both urban and rural areas. I personally cannot afford a laptop, and honestly don't know if I ever will. I can't afford a fancy phone with internet either. There are many others like me. I know that going to the phone book first doesn't make me a dinosaur because I have found results that I was not able to locate on the web, or didn't come up in the first few pages of the search.
Paul, thanks for this info. I am going to give it a try right now! These cumbersome books end up as weed-block mulch in my garden.
But I think the "phone book fairies" know when I do that. When I rip them up, the next day I walk down the driveway and there's a couple more!
As I type this, the hubs is installing the new Samsung printer we just ordered. We thought our Brother -- just a year or so old -- was giving us false "out of ink" messages. He tried the tape, tried ordering some little gizmo that was supposed to fool the printer into thinking it had a new cartridge, but nothing worked. Now it turns out the thing might have been broken, not out of ink. Bah.
But still, he found it more financially prudent to buy a new stupid printer than try buying a new cartridge for $30. Now that I think about it, I suspect that my husband was just so frustrated and annoyed by this point that he didn't want to buy a new cartridge to see if it would work.
I blog at www.shopliftingwithpermission.com.
Very true that too many decades of just going with the flow of whatever everyone else's eating habits were around me led me to have rather expensive eating habits, including expensive cocktails before dinner and wine with dinner. When I finally wanted to quit alcohol, it was very hard for me (though I didn't even drink at all till age 30). I turned to water fasting to reset my body's natural cravings for a healthy (and much cheaper) diet. Now, my food bills are way more reasonable, consisting mostly of fresh fruit and vegetables and rice, fish, and chicken (and way less of all of this). After I fasted for 10 days and post-fasted for 5, it was so much easier not to wreck all the great feelings I had from the fast by even thinking about ingesting the heavier foods or any alcohol again. I chronicled my fast in a Fasting Log at http://shanelyang.com/2008/07/03/fasting-log-day-1/ and I highly recommend it for anyone with health problems that doctors just can't seem to fix, too -- except liver cancer! I write more about all of that in my posts. Good luck to all! : )
I've been geocaching for about 9 months. We've had such great fun and had many adventures. Thanks for the excellent idea about the custom swag. I linked your article on my site.
I consider the inability to have kids a cost saving measure. So really, I'm way ahead of all those skinny people who keep reproducing.
I would be really interested to learn more about these letters your grandfather and mother wrote in order to get cheaper homes.
I never replace the toner/ink unless it starts printing out unlegible letters.
Some tips I learned in the office:
- If it's a laser printer, it helps to take the toner out and shake it around.
- You can also go into the printer properties and have it print at a lower quality level. It uses less ink. For most word docs, and especially if you're just printing out a throwaway map/directions/etc sheet, you won't be able to notice a difference.
- For colored inkjets, choose the black-only cartridge to print. Otherwise, it will use some of the color ink to make it look "nicer"
It sorta sucks outside.
You are so right. Our society has become so sedentary. It is sad when you obesity in very young kids.
Writing skills are so important in life. When getting my masters in Educational Leadership we had to write way too many papers. One of the comments to me from the head of the department was he could tell I was a math major.
Writing is an art in itself.