Obviously a lot of people think that they need to keep the money compartmentalized. That's why I felt moved to talk about it--because I don't think they realize the trade-off they're making. You lose a lot of power and flexibility in money management if you rely on compartments rather than viewing your portfolio as a whole.
Tucking the money away somewhere so that it's hard to spend is a crutch. A crutch is fine for the short term, but in the long run you want to develop the capacity to stand on your own if you possibly can.
Follow the example of the toddler, who learns to walk by holding onto a parent's hand and leaning on the furniture. Yes, some people need a cane, but nobody goes out and buys a cane for a toddler just because he's fallen a few times.
I take the same view of money management. Develop the capacity to manage your portfolio as a whole. It's so powerful even if you make a few mistakes along the way you'll still come out ahead. (As long as you don't use it as an excuse to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.)
In an Interview, you always want to have an answer to every question asked. Take your time and give specific examples and personal experiences. Sometimes you may not have had a Professional experience with the question at hand, however; find some personal experience to provide a good example. If you are good enough to show a relation of your personal and business experiences it will impress your interviewer.
A downturn can be a blessing in disguise! Many times this is the time you can save money in the start-up process. Current businesses are running sales and trying to move old inventory and you can negeotiate better leases on buildings among many other options. What we are finding at
http://www.CapitalBull.com
is, workers who were laid off received buy-outs, these employees can not find work and turn to owning their own business. They use the buyout as their downpayment, a blessing in disguise. More and more are turning to business ownership; especially in downturns.
I think it's much easier for some people to compartmentalize their money into different places because many people don't have the self-discipline to lump all of their money in one place. Like if you have a wad of money in your pocket, we all know what's going to happen to it. But if you have some in your pocket and some buried in the yard, you won't spend the buried money very easily.
Making your money hard to get to is essential for some, only if they don't have the self-discipline.
All of you who have responded have way more than just the "luck" (as you all have redefined it) on your side. You have GUTS. It takes a HECK of a lot of chutzpah and confidence to go out and either quit your day job to be self-employed or to downsize from 2 salaries to one. I say this since there obviously is much less of a steady income (as long as the employer was stable) that you can count on.
I, for one, am quite jealous. I have been on the fence for awhile now about leaving the corporate world to also be self-employed. My obstacles currently are doing more research into what I want to pursue and the guts it takes to really do it.
Times are tough. We’re all looking for ways to cut spending. After looking at my cable bill, I decided (with zero research and zero preparation) to see if my wife and I could live without television for 52 weeks, relying solely on the internet.
Two TV Junkies under one roof can consume a remarkable amount of programming content. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is no silver bullet one-size-fits-all solution to replacing television with the internet. We watch a mixture of streamed shows and downloads.
After a bit of a learning curve we’re up to speed and have not missed a single show. Election night was a bit tense, but I didn’t miss a beat. Plus, we’ve saved $250 in five months. Best of all, my setup has passed The Wife Test (your milage may vary).
The cartoon network has lots of episodes up if you are worried about the kiddos including Ben 10 (which is a favorite with my boys) kids wb also some content available but their player isn't as good as CN's in fact CN has one of the best online players we've come across. I don't know why some others aren't as good (cbs can be finicky and fox isn't great -- use hulu for fox shows). I suppose the idea was it should be so easy a child could use it, lol.
I was successful in unlocking my Toshiba SD-K850SU using the following sequence (I think it will work for almost all toshibas):
1. Press the Open button on your remote control to open the drive tray
2. Press the 2 button on your remote control
3. Press the 4 button on your remote control
4. Press the 0 button on your remote control
5. Press the 3 button on your remote control
6. Press the 9 button on your remote control
7. Press the 6 button on your remote control
8. Press the 0 button on your remote control
9. Press the Enter button on your remote control to change the region to 1 for region 1, 2 for region 2, and so on, or 9 for multi-region playback
10. Press the Open button on your remote control to close the drive tray
11. Power off the DVD player
12. Power on the DVD player
If you think about it, "money" is a Federal Reserve Note(FRN)that must be borrowed into existence, either by government, or by business and individuals. They don't just pass the stuff out so we have something in our pockets when we go to the store.
The only sure way to have FRNs in circulation is government spending. The Federal Reserve is only too happy to lend the United States the amount of any number of bonds the government cares to present as collateral. When the government pays its bills, it pays by check. The receiver takes the check to a bank and exchanges it for FRNs. Whatever cash the receiver then spends, which circulates further, has thusly been borrowed into existence.
Likewise when businesses or individuals borrows money. FRNs, or checks representing FRNs, circulate as borrowed money. When the loans are paid back, FRNs or checks reprensenting FRNs return to the bank, where they are taken out of circulation.
Paid-back loans and no new loans equals no money in circulation. The economy grinds to a halt because there is no medium of exchanging goods and services except through barter. The car dealer does not care that you have 20 tons of wheat to exchange for a new car; he doesn't want wheat--he wants FRNs or a check representing FRNs. Why? He has bills to pay, too, and he can't pay if nobody wants the wheat he just accepted from you.
He doesn't sell you the car, which means he doesn't advertise, which means the sign company lays off two employees, which means the shoe store doesn't sell them shoes, which means the factory isn't moving it's manufactured shoes, which means another round of layoffs, reduced purchasing, etc., etc., ad infinitum, until everybody is sitting around with things to sell, with no FRNs to exchange them for.
That is why, if people want to borrow money and will be able to pay it back, banks should loan the money. The only reason they should not is if it is one of those individuals that just got laid off because banks would not loan his employer next month's payroll.
I suggest the investors who would like to invest in stock marketing to opt for long term investments which suits the current situation. http://shortcuttoprofits.com
Luck and your choices each play a part. Luck gives you the opportunity, its up to you to take that opportunity. Most people tend to miss opportunities on a consistent basis and just complain about how bad they have it.
I've had comments about how lucky I am, by people who way more "consumer goods" than I do. They made their living decisions and I made mine.
This is a great post and I agree with it and many of the commentors.
We gave up our satellite TV last year and haven't missed it. We've used our little "live TV" in the guest room exactly twice since then: for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and for the New Year's Eve ball drop. (It helps that we don't watch a lot of sports.)
Our big regret until recently was that the kids' PBS shows weren't available. But we just discovered this week that full episodes of FETCH are now available. Woot!
The computer is hooked to the TV, so we're watching full screen from the couch. The only drawback is that the resolution isn't really good enough to adequately read the web pages of hulu and the networks to see the listings. And a big-screen TV is NOT in our future.
Oh, and we didn't pay for the computer that runs all this. It's a frankenstein: cobbled together spare parts of dead computers.
Ive worked for both walmart and am currently employed thru target. Ive got three other friends as of the moment that work at walmart. In my observations and theres, when it comes to employees, Walmart is WAY better. Heres just a couple examples. You will get written up at target for call people who are shopping, customers, why????? Well because there guests and we dont want them to feel not welcome! Reason two. They have repeatedly broken employee laws for making there workers work for days on end without one day off and to go one step further, for Christmas, walmart at least has the common courtesy to give there employees some kind of bonus weather it be a company t-shirt or a cash bonus which it happened to be this year. What did target do? NOTHING! Not a merry christmas or a card. Well theres empployee appreciation. Guess those coporate ceo's need something for christmas too. So when it comes to working at either of the two, I'd go back to walmart any day of the week.
GO to this website where you will find a list of FAQ's. Scroll down to the "Converter Box" category---the last question in this category is the one you should click on, as it explains this very problem--how to use the converter box with an older set with no coaxial cable. You CAN hook up your box to an older set, just check out this website and it will tell you what you need to know. Good Luck!
Good tips. I work from home and my fiance takes care of our daughters, so dinner is usually the sanity check of getting out of the house for a few minutes. At the cafe at our gym I order their kids chicken nuggets (nothing like that on the adult menu, mostly salads).
I also like the post about Chinese takeout. We have a chinese buffet right up the street, so we will be doing that this weekend.
Also, I grew up in Europe where bringing your own wine is quite common. Especially for more expensive bottles.
Who pays $500 for a computer? If you know what your doing a few freeware programs will provide proper security. Were moving the opposite direction, towards online content.
I just waiting for one of the content providers to grow a pair and start offering full content streamed online for a subscription.
We found the same thing you did - it is much more economical to watch TV over the net. Then we moved out to the country where the net was not so great.
Even though we have high-speed our shows are constantly skipping. It would be nice if more of these sites allowed us to pause video and let them load into the buffer YouTube-style...
Gold is not a risk free investment. You're logic is the same as the people who believed that stocks only go up in the 90's. Just because something happens most of the time or has been happening a lot recently does not make it risk free. I suggest you read the book Fooled by Randomness. Also, read up on the concept of expected return. The probability of an event happening is only half the story. You also have to take into account your potential gain/loss in accordance with that probability.
Also there are many possible reasons for high interest in the auction. Almost all of the volume in auctions are generated by banks or other large financial companies through a primary dealer. Many of these institutions have to adhere to strict risk profiles which may require the bond even if it yields 0% or negative. It may seem strange that anyone would be willing to "invest" in an instrument that loses money. However, you have to consider that banks have a variety of operations. If you can generate a 10% yield through a combination of activities(trading cash bonds, swaps, swap futures, etc) and lose 1% on buying a bond to hedge out part of your risk, then it's still worth it in the end.
As for individuals, I would recommend TIPS over the I bonds. One of the big problems with I bonds is that they cannot be sold in the secondary market. Also, there is only one maturity: 30 years. This means that you're basically locking up your principle for 30 years unless you want to pay the penalties previously mentioned. TIPS on the other hand can and are often traded in secondary markets. Granted, these are not the most liquid markets and crossing bid/ask combined with commissions can add up to be a bit, but in most cases it will still be less than the penalties of the I bond
Obviously a lot of people think that they need to keep the money compartmentalized. That's why I felt moved to talk about it--because I don't think they realize the trade-off they're making. You lose a lot of power and flexibility in money management if you rely on compartments rather than viewing your portfolio as a whole.
Tucking the money away somewhere so that it's hard to spend is a crutch. A crutch is fine for the short term, but in the long run you want to develop the capacity to stand on your own if you possibly can.
Follow the example of the toddler, who learns to walk by holding onto a parent's hand and leaning on the furniture. Yes, some people need a cane, but nobody goes out and buys a cane for a toddler just because he's fallen a few times.
I take the same view of money management. Develop the capacity to manage your portfolio as a whole. It's so powerful even if you make a few mistakes along the way you'll still come out ahead. (As long as you don't use it as an excuse to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.)
In an Interview, you always want to have an answer to every question asked. Take your time and give specific examples and personal experiences. Sometimes you may not have had a Professional experience with the question at hand, however; find some personal experience to provide a good example. If you are good enough to show a relation of your personal and business experiences it will impress your interviewer.
A downturn can be a blessing in disguise! Many times this is the time you can save money in the start-up process. Current businesses are running sales and trying to move old inventory and you can negeotiate better leases on buildings among many other options. What we are finding at
http://www.CapitalBull.com
is, workers who were laid off received buy-outs, these employees can not find work and turn to owning their own business. They use the buyout as their downpayment, a blessing in disguise. More and more are turning to business ownership; especially in downturns.
I think it's much easier for some people to compartmentalize their money into different places because many people don't have the self-discipline to lump all of their money in one place. Like if you have a wad of money in your pocket, we all know what's going to happen to it. But if you have some in your pocket and some buried in the yard, you won't spend the buried money very easily.
Making your money hard to get to is essential for some, only if they don't have the self-discipline.
Hey I have just made the mash and am anticipating fermentation but how long will it take for the yeast to start making alcohol?
All of you who have responded have way more than just the "luck" (as you all have redefined it) on your side. You have GUTS. It takes a HECK of a lot of chutzpah and confidence to go out and either quit your day job to be self-employed or to downsize from 2 salaries to one. I say this since there obviously is much less of a steady income (as long as the employer was stable) that you can count on.
I, for one, am quite jealous. I have been on the fence for awhile now about leaving the corporate world to also be self-employed. My obstacles currently are doing more research into what I want to pursue and the guts it takes to really do it.
I salute all of you!
use it to clean a bone folder
Times are tough. We’re all looking for ways to cut spending. After looking at my cable bill, I decided (with zero research and zero preparation) to see if my wife and I could live without television for 52 weeks, relying solely on the internet.
Two TV Junkies under one roof can consume a remarkable amount of programming content. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there is no silver bullet one-size-fits-all solution to replacing television with the internet. We watch a mixture of streamed shows and downloads.
After a bit of a learning curve we’re up to speed and have not missed a single show. Election night was a bit tense, but I didn’t miss a beat. Plus, we’ve saved $250 in five months. Best of all, my setup has passed The Wife Test (your milage may vary).
I just started writing my 6-month write-up @
http://replacetelevision.wordpress.com/what-im-watching-and-how-im-watch...
If you've cut the cable, please e-mail me or visit my website and tell me your story.
The cartoon network has lots of episodes up if you are worried about the kiddos including Ben 10 (which is a favorite with my boys) kids wb also some content available but their player isn't as good as CN's in fact CN has one of the best online players we've come across. I don't know why some others aren't as good (cbs can be finicky and fox isn't great -- use hulu for fox shows). I suppose the idea was it should be so easy a child could use it, lol.
On the end it comes out pretty much the same, better to buy complete season dvds.
I was successful in unlocking my Toshiba SD-K850SU using the following sequence (I think it will work for almost all toshibas):
1. Press the Open button on your remote control to open the drive tray
2. Press the 2 button on your remote control
3. Press the 4 button on your remote control
4. Press the 0 button on your remote control
5. Press the 3 button on your remote control
6. Press the 9 button on your remote control
7. Press the 6 button on your remote control
8. Press the 0 button on your remote control
9. Press the Enter button on your remote control to change the region to 1 for region 1, 2 for region 2, and so on, or 9 for multi-region playback
10. Press the Open button on your remote control to close the drive tray
11. Power off the DVD player
12. Power on the DVD player
If you think about it, "money" is a Federal Reserve Note(FRN)that must be borrowed into existence, either by government, or by business and individuals. They don't just pass the stuff out so we have something in our pockets when we go to the store.
The only sure way to have FRNs in circulation is government spending. The Federal Reserve is only too happy to lend the United States the amount of any number of bonds the government cares to present as collateral. When the government pays its bills, it pays by check. The receiver takes the check to a bank and exchanges it for FRNs. Whatever cash the receiver then spends, which circulates further, has thusly been borrowed into existence.
Likewise when businesses or individuals borrows money. FRNs, or checks representing FRNs, circulate as borrowed money. When the loans are paid back, FRNs or checks reprensenting FRNs return to the bank, where they are taken out of circulation.
Paid-back loans and no new loans equals no money in circulation. The economy grinds to a halt because there is no medium of exchanging goods and services except through barter. The car dealer does not care that you have 20 tons of wheat to exchange for a new car; he doesn't want wheat--he wants FRNs or a check representing FRNs. Why? He has bills to pay, too, and he can't pay if nobody wants the wheat he just accepted from you.
He doesn't sell you the car, which means he doesn't advertise, which means the sign company lays off two employees, which means the shoe store doesn't sell them shoes, which means the factory isn't moving it's manufactured shoes, which means another round of layoffs, reduced purchasing, etc., etc., ad infinitum, until everybody is sitting around with things to sell, with no FRNs to exchange them for.
That is why, if people want to borrow money and will be able to pay it back, banks should loan the money. The only reason they should not is if it is one of those individuals that just got laid off because banks would not loan his employer next month's payroll.
I suggest the investors who would like to invest in stock marketing to opt for long term investments which suits the current situation.
http://shortcuttoprofits.com
Wow, I learned a lot from the post and comments. Will have to explore sourdough and maybe even the starter.
I thought I was doing good with my frugal pancake recipe. This takes the cake.
Luck and your choices each play a part. Luck gives you the opportunity, its up to you to take that opportunity. Most people tend to miss opportunities on a consistent basis and just complain about how bad they have it.
I've had comments about how lucky I am, by people who way more "consumer goods" than I do. They made their living decisions and I made mine.
This is a great post and I agree with it and many of the commentors.
I watch OTA tv via rabbit ears. Wrote a post about it here. http://frugalnyc.blogspot.com/2008/09/free-dtv.html
You don't need the converter box if your tv has a digital tuner already, just a good set-top dish antenna would do.
Great resources from this post and comments though.
I used to be ambitious. I used to work all hours. I used to be concerned about pay equity and job titles.
Now that I've been through a year of complete financial crisis, none of that matters to me anymore.
I love that I have a job I'm good at. I contribute what I can to the world. I can feed my kids and send them to the doctor when they need to go.
Do I need to run the place? Nope.
Things are different.
We gave up our satellite TV last year and haven't missed it. We've used our little "live TV" in the guest room exactly twice since then: for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and for the New Year's Eve ball drop. (It helps that we don't watch a lot of sports.)
Our big regret until recently was that the kids' PBS shows weren't available. But we just discovered this week that full episodes of FETCH are now available. Woot!
The computer is hooked to the TV, so we're watching full screen from the couch. The only drawback is that the resolution isn't really good enough to adequately read the web pages of hulu and the networks to see the listings. And a big-screen TV is NOT in our future.
Oh, and we didn't pay for the computer that runs all this. It's a frankenstein: cobbled together spare parts of dead computers.
Ive worked for both walmart and am currently employed thru target. Ive got three other friends as of the moment that work at walmart. In my observations and theres, when it comes to employees, Walmart is WAY better. Heres just a couple examples. You will get written up at target for call people who are shopping, customers, why????? Well because there guests and we dont want them to feel not welcome! Reason two. They have repeatedly broken employee laws for making there workers work for days on end without one day off and to go one step further, for Christmas, walmart at least has the common courtesy to give there employees some kind of bonus weather it be a company t-shirt or a cash bonus which it happened to be this year. What did target do? NOTHING! Not a merry christmas or a card. Well theres empployee appreciation. Guess those coporate ceo's need something for christmas too. So when it comes to working at either of the two, I'd go back to walmart any day of the week.
I love Surfthechannel as well - you have to put up with pop up ads but it's totally worth it ... just delete your cookies after each session!
GO to this website where you will find a list of FAQ's. Scroll down to the "Converter Box" category---the last question in this category is the one you should click on, as it explains this very problem--how to use the converter box with an older set with no coaxial cable. You CAN hook up your box to an older set, just check out this website and it will tell you what you need to know. Good Luck!
http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html
Good tips. I work from home and my fiance takes care of our daughters, so dinner is usually the sanity check of getting out of the house for a few minutes. At the cafe at our gym I order their kids chicken nuggets (nothing like that on the adult menu, mostly salads).
I also like the post about Chinese takeout. We have a chinese buffet right up the street, so we will be doing that this weekend.
Also, I grew up in Europe where bringing your own wine is quite common. Especially for more expensive bottles.
Great writing. Keep it up.
Who pays $500 for a computer? If you know what your doing a few freeware programs will provide proper security. Were moving the opposite direction, towards online content.
I just waiting for one of the content providers to grow a pair and start offering full content streamed online for a subscription.
We found the same thing you did - it is much more economical to watch TV over the net. Then we moved out to the country where the net was not so great.
Even though we have high-speed our shows are constantly skipping. It would be nice if more of these sites allowed us to pause video and let them load into the buffer YouTube-style...
Gold is not a risk free investment. You're logic is the same as the people who believed that stocks only go up in the 90's. Just because something happens most of the time or has been happening a lot recently does not make it risk free. I suggest you read the book Fooled by Randomness. Also, read up on the concept of expected return. The probability of an event happening is only half the story. You also have to take into account your potential gain/loss in accordance with that probability.
Also there are many possible reasons for high interest in the auction. Almost all of the volume in auctions are generated by banks or other large financial companies through a primary dealer. Many of these institutions have to adhere to strict risk profiles which may require the bond even if it yields 0% or negative. It may seem strange that anyone would be willing to "invest" in an instrument that loses money. However, you have to consider that banks have a variety of operations. If you can generate a 10% yield through a combination of activities(trading cash bonds, swaps, swap futures, etc) and lose 1% on buying a bond to hedge out part of your risk, then it's still worth it in the end.
As for individuals, I would recommend TIPS over the I bonds. One of the big problems with I bonds is that they cannot be sold in the secondary market. Also, there is only one maturity: 30 years. This means that you're basically locking up your principle for 30 years unless you want to pay the penalties previously mentioned. TIPS on the other hand can and are often traded in secondary markets. Granted, these are not the most liquid markets and crossing bid/ask combined with commissions can add up to be a bit, but in most cases it will still be less than the penalties of the I bond