Finance and Fat

Interesting and useful links from the past week or two.

Drop Upload Does Quick Drag-and-Drop FTP - from Lifehacker.  Very nice little FTP application, perfect for quick uploads. I set up a connection to the images directory on this site and now I can quickly and easily upload images for posts without having to open any heavy programs.

Everyday Expenses & Housing Costs Ate Stimulus Checks - from The Frugal Duchess. Interesting statistics on how stimulus checks are really being spent. Many people are using the money for regular expenses and some even needed the check to avoid foreclosure- “29.4% used funds from their tax stimulus check to pay for everyday expenses, such as food and gasoline, while 20% said they paid down their credit card debt“.

Fuel Efficient Cars In Your Future? Watch for the MPG Illusion - from The Digerati Life. You can’t just look at miles per gallon to figure out how much money you might save. The percentage saved goes down drastically as you switch from moderately efficient vehicles to those higher up the scale.

The Dirty Secrets of Debt Reduction - from Get Rich Slowly. Everything you need to know if you are getting started on your journey to get out of debt.

15 Baby Steps Towards Voluntary Consumerism - from Early Retirement Extreme. Entertaining read on how to become a great consumer! In case you don’t notice, this is a what-NOT-to-do list. 

Sharing links I found during the past week that were useful or interesting.

Michael Jordan’s 10 Secrets to Reaching the Top - from Dumb Little Man.  My favorite quote from the article- “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Pixar’s Tightknit Culture is Its Edge - from 37 signals. Interesting look at the work environment at Pixar. I love the focus on education for all employees.

Seven Websites That Saved Me Money in the Last Week - from The Simple Dollar. Nice collection of money saving websites.

Lessons in Productivity from Ralph Waldo Emerson - from Zen Habits. Great tips, I especially want to work on ‘writing everything down’.

I read an excellent article at Lifehacker recently, ‘Empty Your Inbox with the Trusted Trio‘. I don’t know about you, but I have tried several methods in the past and repeatedly failed at keeping a clean inbox. It’s too soon to tell for sure if this method will work, but I like it so far. Be sure to read the article for all of the details and related reference material. What I want to do here is simply share how I implemented this at work- specifically when using Microsoft Outlook 2003.

As written in the Lifehacker article, the premise here is to create 3 folders and process every item from your inbox using those 3 folders (anything that doesn’t fit these 3 would be deleted). The 3 folders are Archive, Follow-up, and Hold. I think they are relatively self-explanatory, but be sure to reference the original article for elaboration on those concepts.

Creating the 3 folders should be simple enough, and it is, but you need to take a few extra steps to make this system really useful. Outlook comes with a number of default folders that you are stuck with, or at least are likely to want to keep around because you are used to using them (such as Drafts, Outbox, Sent Items, etc…). I’m okay with keeping those folders, but I don’t want to look at them unless I have to. Based on this system, I will only be working with 3 folders so I want those to draw my visual focus to those 3 folders and make them easily distinguishable from the rest. You can accomplish this by creating your new folders and putting an underscore ( _ ) at the start of the folder name- this will keep the folders you want to focus on at the top of the list.

The next step is to make sure we don’t just put email in these folders and forget about it. It’s okay to forget about the archive folder since that can be searched later, but I want to know that I have items waiting for me in Follow-up and Hold. The easiest way to accomplish this is to right click on the folder, choose properties, select the General tab, and click on ‘Show total number of items’ (see the image below). This will give you a numerical count of the emails in the folder and highlight the folder name in bold (see the above image). I think this gives you a nice way to track how much work you need to do while keeping your inbox clean and organized.

My next step will be to put this system in place on my Gmail account, though it is currently a bit of a mess so that may take some time. I’ll come back and share how I did that in the future.

I am long overdue for a Web Favorites Roundup and I was tagged by I’ve Paid for This Twice Already for this book meme currently running around the Internet. I happen to have two books nearby, both of which I have recently finished reading:

• The Richest Man in Babylon
• The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class

The rules for the book meme are as follows - grab the nearest book that has at least 123 pages, open it to page 123, count down 5 sentences, then type the next three sentences here.

Since The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class only has 112 pages I will go with The Richest Man in Babylon. By the way, I highly recommend both of these books and I will be publishing reviews soon.

So here are the 3 sentences following the first 5 sentences from page 123 of The Richest Man in Babylon.

I’ll kill ‘em. Then Megiddo spoke up, ‘It doesn’t make sense to me to talk of masters beating willing, hard-working slaves to death. masters like good slaves and treat them well.’

Wow! I bet those 3 sentences have you wondering what is going on. Well, they are part of the long story of how a man went from being a slave (because he was in debt) and worked his way to becoming to the richest man in Babylon.

Now it’s my job to tag 5 other bloggers to participate in the book meme. Hopefully I’m not double tagging anyone, but I’m too lazy to make sure I’m not. 

• Collecting My Cash
• Free From Broke
• Llama Money
• Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
• Me vs. Debt

Weekly Web Favorites

The possible Microsoft takeover of Yahoo has been big news lately. Personally, I have serious doubts that it will turn out to be a success, but I would love to see a stronger competitor to Google so I am cautiously optimistic. Web Worker Daily published an excellent roundup of that covers just about every angle of this deal. Also see this excellent table of all of the overlapping services Yahoo and Microsoft currently have (big reason why I think this merger wouldn’t go well).

The proposed economic stimulus package has been big news lately too. Early Retirement Extreme digs in deeply below the surface with an excellent analysis of the problems that need to be solved in our economy and why this stimulus package won’t get the job done. Also, since I’m not going to say no to the money, I really enjoyed reading the details about the current proposed stimulus plans by Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

While those big picture news stories are great to follow, I like to have something practical to work on too. See this post at Being Frugal about how to make some homemade cleaning products. I think this is a good way to save some money and reduce the clutter in your cabinets by not buying lots of expensive cleaning products. Probably better for the environment too….if you are one of THOSE people. 

How about one more link for good measure. If you haven’t read the famous Abraham Lincoln letter to his lazy brother, be sure to check this great breakdown by The Frugal Dad. It really is a must read.

Maybe I should have come up with something more brilliant, but it just so happens that this weekly links post is my 100th post at Finance and Fat. Yay for me! 

Two Words About Nutrition by Collecting My Cash - “Eat Clean”, I like that. If we all follow that simple advice we will find  a lot less trouble in our diets.

I Make Thousands of Dollars Working Two Hours (or less) a Month by Millionaire Mommy Next Door - I am starting to come around to the Index fund investing approach rather than individual stocks. I really like this low maintenance strategy.

In Managing Your Money; Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst… by Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Money - It’s easy to hope for the best, but if we aren’t preparing for the worst the best is never going to happen (at least not regularly).

Consumption Equality by Ask Dong -  The consumption gap between the rich and the poor has narrowed. Sounds like the poor living beyond their means. I don’t think we are prepared for the consequences of this problem hitting our economy some day.

Money Math: Tax Impact by Free Money Finance - Multiply the cost of what you want to buy by 1.4 to see how much you need to earn before taxes to pay for it. Yikes!

25 Reasons to Love Credit Cards by My Dollar Plan - I don’t love credit cards, but here is a look from the ‘other side’.

Your Greatest Asset is the Ability to Create Income by Cash Money Life - forget managing your money for a moment, what are you doing to increase YOUR earning power?

Rehabilitate Your Finances by Clever Dude - A great analogy for taking care of your money and ‘treating the disease’.

Morning Roundup: Goals Across the Web by Consumerism Commentary - I finally posted my 2008 goals and here is a nice collection of other blogger’s goals for 2008.

The Best Equity is Sweat Equity by Blog Maverick - The ‘magic’ formula for success! Oh wait, it’s not magic, it still takes hard work.