Finance and Fat

Weekly Web Favorites

Eden — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:07:29 +0000

Some of my favorite Web articles over the past couple of weeks.

7 Wildly Successful People Who Survived Bankruptcy [from Mental_Floss] - It’s amazing how many successful and famous Americans have filed for bankruptcy. Clearly, it shouldn’t stop you from being successful.

Managing Into The Ground: Robert Nardelli [from Barel Karsan] - I need to become a CEO. $200+ million in compensation for failure isn’t too shabby at all.

One Life: The Cost of Extreme Consumerism [from Consumerism Commentary] - A temporary worker at a Wal-Mart was trampled to death by an insane mob of shoppers on Black Friday. This is a great illustration of what is wrong with the Consumerist Culture in our country. Truly disgusting.

Good Gifts To Give: Five Guidelines To Giving Gifts Your Family and Friends Will Love [from erica.biz] - Excellent way to think about gift giving this Christmas season. Bottom line, give something practical.

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis [from mint] - Fancy little graphics breaking down the current financial meltdown. Very well done.

Weekly Web Favorites

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Rational Commentary on the Housing ‘Crisis’

Eden — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:08:34 +0000

Excellent video from CNBC: Dennis Kneale breaks down the real numbers in the current housing decline. Note that only 2% of US Household are in foreclosure. I don’t know about you, but I would have thought the number was a lot higher based on the craziness I hear in the news. Lesson learned, watch less news.

Rational Commentary on the Housing ‘Crisis’

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Update On My Latest Weight Loss Efforts

Eden — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:10:26 +0000

It’s too bad that I’ve had to start over many times with my weight loss, but I’m sure that’s how it goes for a lot of people as they try to get their weight under control after a long time of doing nothing. All I can do is act like it’s for real this time and try to make it stick.

About two weeks ago I woke up after a couple months of laziness and not paying attention to my weight. Since then, I’ve lost 3.2 pounds. I’m glad about that, but I know that I could have done a lot more exercise in that time. I only did some walking and have yet to start my 100 pushups plan restart.

What I have done well is cut back on my calories and I am replacing several meals with protein bars and drinks. I’m also experimenting with some weight loss supplements, probably not a good idea, but I did have success with these years ago and never noticed any bad side effects. If you’re interested, I’m using Ripped Fuel Extreme, by Twinlab.

I’m not recommending weight loss supplements for anyone, they can have dangerous side effects, but you can do some further research and decide for yourself if you think it might be right for you. I think the biggest benefit for me is that the caffeine in the pills allows me to skip coffee all day long and that is saving me some calories from milk and creme. These pills seem to reduce my appetite as well.

Other than that, I’m trying to be more active throughout the day and I have lots of yard and house work to do around here that should help me lose a little weight. We are entering the always dangerous Holiday eating season so I need to try to work extra hard to keep my weight moving down.

By the way, I have updated my weight and body fat charts. It’s always fun (and sad) to see the big picture of my weight struggles. Hopefully you can learn something from my many failures and few successes.

Update On My Latest Weight Loss Efforts

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Weekly Web Favorites

Eden — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:00:55 +0000

Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to have my article about getting rid of cable TV included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by The Digerati Life. Many thanks to Silicon Valley Blogger for taking the time to host the carnival this week.

Early retirement extreme: living in ’squalor’ since 2000 [from Early Retirement Extreme] - I love reading this website because the author’s ideas do in fact seem very extreme to me, but I find that perspective very helpful as I try to break free from the super-consumerism lifestyle I grew up with. This is another great article about perspective, needs, wants, and how to manage the priorities in your life.

Confusion Reigns With Deflation-Inflation Conundrum [from Barel Karsan] - Great article covering the current battle between concerns over inflation and deflation facing our country. The short answer, we are most likely facing low-inflation or even deflation in the short term and much higher inflation in a few years. There’s much more to it than that though, the full article is definitely worth a read for all the details.

Weekly Web Favorites

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Stop Blogging and Get to Work

Eden — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:00:45 +0000

For those of you thinking you can start a blog about getting out of debt and get out of debt by getting rich from your blog…stop it! Take the time you were going to spend on the blog and pick up some overtime at work or find a side job utilizing your best skills and get someone to pay you to use those skills in a way that benefits them.

Only after you have exhausted all available hours and opportunities to make some real money should you even consider taking your valuable time and spending it on a blog. The return on investment for blogging is horrible!

Yeah, I know. I’m a blogger and I did the very same thing I’m telling you not to do. Well, that’s why I’m telling you not to do it. I made the same mistakes. I’m still blogging and I still plan to be a blogger for the long term, but my priorities have changed. The blog is now the last thing on my list. I make time for the blog after I’ve put in my regular work hours, done all of the freelance work I can, and spent some time developing contacts and skills that will benefit me in my real work and my real areas of expertise.

It’s nice to read about bloggers who have quit the day job and blog full-time now, but those are the exceptions. It’s okay if you hold on to dreams of getting there some day, but if you are deeply in debt or struggling to get your weight under control, your time is better spent achieving real results in those areas of your life. The blog can be there and it can grow slowly in the background, but you shouldn’t concern yourself with spending lots of time on it. Face it, almost no one will be reading it for quite a while! I know, it hurts, but it’s the truth. Take the time to write for yourself, determine your style and what you really want to write about. Find your voice and take it slow. If you are good at it, you’ll rise to the top some day. Focus on the problems in your life that caused you to start a blog to help solve them. The blog will still be there when you’re done.

Stop Blogging and Get to Work

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The Secret to Getting Out of Debt

Eden — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:00:23 +0000

No, I’m not talking about some metaphysical foolishness, sold by the truckload thanks to the Oprah. I’m also not going to suggest crazy, get-rich-quick infomercial trash.

The secret to getting out of debt, or doing anything else meaningful for that matter, is quite simple and you already know what it is.

HARD WORK!

I know that isn’t always the answer we want to hear, but it’s true. No matter how many times I’ve tried to avoid it, I always do my best in life when I just forget everything else and put in some hard work (but I’m careful to work smart as well).

That’s it. Go work hard and you’ll be on your way to financial freedom.

Okay, there is a little more to it than that. You could go do hard work breaking rocks or digging ditches but if you are breaking the wrong rocks or digging a ditch in the wrong place all that hard work has gone to waste. You need to work smart too and you need a plan. But the plan is the easy part compared to the hard work that it’s going to take to execute that plan. Whatever plan you end up with, just make sure it includes some hard work somewhere or it’s just going to fail.

Now quit reading blogs and get to work!

The Secret to Getting Out of Debt

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Update on the Credit Card Debt Battle

Eden — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:00:03 +0000

I wish losing weight was as easy as paying off credit card debt. Of course, for the person buried in credit card debt without enough money to eat or enough time to sit around and get fat, I’m sure the opposite would be true.

I guess we all have our strengths and weaknesses. My weakness is clearly food. I wouldn’t quite say budgeting and reducing debt is my strength, but I have found that except for a few things that I really enjoy doing I have found it pretty easy to cut expenses. In fact, as time has gone by, I’m continuing to cut my expenses and October 2008 marked my lowest spending month since starting this get-out-of-debt project over a year ago.

As an example, I just made the ’sacrifice’ of cutting cable TV. I did this while my wife and I are earning more money than we ever have in our lives. I’m absolutely not trying to brag about that, we aren’t rich by any means, though we would probably fall into the above-average category for income. My point is that we could easily continue to spend the money on cable TV, but our priorities are changing. The more I work for other people, the more I realize that is not what I want to be doing and the fastest way I can see that situation changing is to continue to cut expenses, pay off debt, and save up cash. I’m getting off topic though. The point of this post is a long overdue update of my credit card debt progress.

When I last wrote about my credit card debt (as of the end of August 2008), I owed $14,338.45. As of the end of October, I owe $10,271.09. Not only did I pay off about $4,000 in two months, but I also bought a brand new MacBook Pro during that time!

So how the heck is this possible? We didn’t win the lottery or find a few thousand dollars of change in our couch. It’s simply been a matter of hard work and cutting spending more and more every month. I’m fortunate that my career easily translates to freelance work. I basically sit on my couch at home and build websites on my laptop. And I make pretty decent money for my efforts. It can be a drag sometimes, but it’s hard to say no to the extra money. I don’t make a lot at my day job, but the money I earn on the side is a nice supplement to my regular salary.

If you are working at getting out of debt I strongly encourage you to find something you’re good at doing and then find a way to get people to pay you to do that for them. It may be related to what you do for your day job or maybe not, but if you can find a way to make some money on the side for something you don’t mind doing it can really accelerate your plan to get out of debt.

At the start of the year, I had hopes of paying off all my credit card debt in 2008. It’s not likely at this point, but I’m not going to rule it out either. At the very least, I’ll be close and it’s starting to feel really good. I was able to pay off two different accounts and that makes life a little more simple too. Just two more cards and $10,000 to go!

Update on the Credit Card Debt Battle

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Saying Goodbye to Cable TV

Eden — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:00:17 +0000

I’ve been tossing around the idea for a while now and I finally cut the cord on cable TV.

I had a package deal that included digital cable TV, a DVR, high-speed Internet and digital telephone. Of course they sell you on the package deal and they give you a pretty nice discount for bundling everything together. Years ago when we first started with the bundle the monthly cost was about $110. Prices have risen, not to mention we added the DVR service, and lately our bill had grown to about $140 per month. I finally grew weary of paying so much, especially considering the lack of quality content offered by cable TV. I would be happy to pay for about 3 of the cable channels and that would be all I need. ESPN, The NFL Network, and The Food Network are the only stations I miss. I would happily pay a fee to have those 3 channels, but of course that isn’t an option. I felt it was better to stop paying for all of the crap I didn’t want to watch and give free TV a try.

Not that I was ready to give up TV completely however. Especially this time of year with the NFL going strong. With digital TV broadcasts becoming more popular and mroe and more content available online, I’ve found that I miss cable a lot less than I thought I would.

Here’s what I’m doing to replace the cable:

My first step was to buy a cheap rabbit ears antenna and see what kind of reception I could get. I’m about 20 - 30 miles from most stations in my area so I have a bit of a challenge right at the start. I did some searches on Amazon and decided to buy the Terk Technology TV-1 Passive Indoor TV Antenna first. I was pleasantly surprised by this antenna, considering its low price. I immediately picked up NBC, CBS, and ABC. However, I couldn’t get much reception from FOX and that really hurts when it comes to the NFL on Sundays.

My next step was to try a Digital TV converter box and see if I could do any better. I had already requested DTV coupons a while ago so I was ready to make a purchase. Next I went to the Consumer Reports DTV converter box guide to find the top rated convert box. I decided to buy the Tivax STB-T8 Digital to Analog TV Converter Box and I’m really happy I did. This is one of the more expensive boxes available, about $40 even after the coupon, but I think it was well worth it. I’m now getting NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and several more stations and the picture is crisp and clear.

Some of the great features of the Tivax STB-T8 are component cables output, a program guide that shows you the next 4 hours of programming on a given station, a signal strength meter, and a nice-looking small hardware profile. It does not have S-Video out, but that is the only feature this unit is lacking. From what I could find, it looks like you have to spend a lot more for S-Video so I’m okay with skipping it.

I’m really shocked at how much higher the picture quality is now. However, I think I can do better than the cheap rabbit ears I’m using, so I also ordered a more powerful indoor antenna. Finding an antenna is a big project in itself. I highly recommend starting at HDTV Antenna Labs to start your research. You’ll find reviews of antennas, features you need to look for, and a link to a map that will pinpoint your address and signal strength in your area. This step is critical as it will help you determine how powerful an antenna you need to buy and this site will even color-code signal strengths and match them to specific antennas.

I decided to rule out outdoor antennas- I just didn’t want to be bothered with the installation and I’m not crazy about putting a huge antenna on my roof. I’m somewhat limiting myself by only looking at indoor antennas, but based on my experience with the cheap rabbit ears, I think a quality indoor antenna will be sufficient for me. After much research, I decided to go with the Winegard SS-3000 Amplified Indoor U/V Antenna. This antenna is about $60 and based on the reviews I could find it should greatly improve my reception. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I will be sure to write about it after I have it set up. I found this antenna to be a good compromise between price and features. Take a look if you can’t get by with simple rabbit ears.

I’m only a couple of weeks into my cable TV free life, but so far I would say it’s a success. I’ve had to spend a little money getting set up to receive free TV, but these costs will quickly be recouped after just a few months of smaller cable bills. Overall, I’ve cut a nice chunk from my fixed expenses and I had to give up very little in return. If you have been considering quitting cable I encourage you to give it a try. I think the digital TV transition has made the switch easier than ever, not to mention the large amount of content available on the Internet. I’ll write more about what I’m watching online soon.

Saying Goodbye to Cable TV

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Changes to Blog Comments and Discussion

Eden — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:29:09 +0000

I’ve decided to change things up around here and I’ve removed comments from the site (you might have noticed I did this a couple of months ago). I actually started the blog this way, but changed my mind after seeing it wasn’t really the norm in the personal finance blogging world. Well, I don’t want to be just another personal finance, weight loss, or whatever-else blog. There are too many of those already. I hope I have enough worthwhile things to say that I will rise above the noise some day, but even if I don’t - that’s okay with me. I don’t want to waste your time with more of the same content that can already be found by the truckload on the Internet, so if that’s all I produce you should unsubscribe and let this blog site quietly at the bottom of the pile of trash where it belongs.

It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with comments, but in general they tend to be quite worthless. I also don’t mean to imply that I don’t appreciate the comments which have been left here. It’s just that I want to own every pixel of my site and that means that the words here need to belong to me. If you want to respond to what I say, write a post about it on your blog and let me know about it. You can also send me an email or hit me up on Twitter. Whatever you do, the point is that if I have something to say worthy of further commentary, carry on the conversation somewhere and let it grow naturally. It shouldn’t be confined to this site or dependent on my comment policy.

I started this blog because I thought it would help me to get some things in my life in order. Given the not-so-creative title, you can probably guess that means my finances and my weight. There is more to it than that, but those two problems are a great place to start. In addition to helping myself, I also want to share what I learn along the way and hopefully help someone else fix these same problems in their lives or avoid them altogether.

I thought I should be a ‘pro blogger’ and that meant the typical blocks of ads, posts made up of lists, content written to generate search engine traffic, and links shared only for the hope of getting something back in return. Well, now I realize that is all crap. Actually, I knew it was crap at the time, but I thought that was what bloggers do so I should do it too. Today I announce that the crap at Finance and Fat has come to an end (I hope).

I was close to removing all ads from my site again, but I decided to leave a couple in place. I hate to be a sellout, but I also really hate to spend money in addition to my time on this site so at the very least I want to see this site pay for itself and that means having a few Google ads floating around. I know most of you don’t care about the ads and probably most people read this site in an RSS reader or email anyway so you’ll never see the ads. For those of you who visit the site, you’ll only see ads on individual post pages and only in one place on the page (at least that’s how it is as I write this). My views may change in the future, but at least you know where I’m coming from- I’d rather be ad free, but I have to be honest here- I want this site to make some money.

I don’t want to waste any more of your valuable time blabbing about changes here on my website. I just want you to know that you can expect much higher quality content here in the future; and a lot less noise. If I fail to deliver that high quality content, I fully expect to lose my readers and that is how it should be. Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you are a blogger I hope you will consider if any of these changes would be right for you too. Also, if you are a blogger, you must watch this video by Merlin Mann. It just might help you change your perspective on what a blog should be.

Changes to Blog Comments and Discussion

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Update On My Battle With the Fat

Eden — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:05:59 +0000

It has been a really long time since I wrote about my weight. My last update was August 29, 2008. As usual, that is bad news. I weighed 257 pounds at my last weigh-in and I thought that was bad. Well, two days ago I was 264 pounds. Yikes!

What when wrong?

I’m clearly not fit to offer advice about how to lose weight, but I can definitely give you a good idea of what not to do. The first mistake I seem to make when my weight starts to get out of control is failing to pay attention. I stop getting on the scale and I don’t really think about my weight at all. Or maybe I tell myself that I’m probably just holding steady and I can afford to take a little time off. Of course this isn’t the case at all. It’s just a sorry attempt to make an excuse for my laziness.

Honestly, I think my problems come down to just being lazy. Not that I’m completely lazy, but it’s easy for me to get lazy about my weight and diet. I’ve been busy working a lot lately and when I start to get busy with work, the first thing I cut from my schedule is exercise. I also start making excuses for drinking an extra latte or maybe throwing in a pumpkin scone with that latte. These bad behaviors snowball and, before I know it, I’ve gained 7 pounds.

The sad thing is, I’ve been as low as 246 pounds this year and now I’m up almost to the weight (266) I was at when I started this blog back in September 2007. This got me thinking about what has gone wrong and about what I was doing right when I lost 20 pounds. I was doing best when I was having a little friendly competition with my family and we were all holding each other accountable. I was roughly following the Eating For Life plan and I was doing some walking, jogging, and occasional weight lifting.

I think my biggest struggle is with my diet. I tend to get lazy and eat too much and allow too much junk food into my diet. I think that regular walking should be enough to maintain a healthy weight if I could just cut down on the number of calories I consume and find some better sources of those calories.

I talked to my wife about this and we decided that we both want to lose some weight and we are going to work at holding each other accountable to exercise regularly and eat right. Look for more frequent updates for the rest of the year. My goal is to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year. I know that is a lot, but I think I have enough to lose and I’ve put on so much weight from empty calories and laziness lately that I should be able to quickly knock off some pounds.

Update On My Battle With the Fat

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