The last few weeks have gone very poorly. I’ve found no motivation to add anything to this site or even to pay my bills. The latter has cost me $39 in over-limit fees on one of my credit cards.
However, I’ve been thinking about what I need to motivate myself to work on this site and, more importantly, my financial situation. Leo Babauta recently noted what he feels are the only two things you need to do to motivate yourself: “1) make things enjoyable and 2) use positive public pressure.”
I’m already doing the latter, that’s what this site is here for. However, the former is where I’ve been falling short. I find the technical aspect of this site fun, but not actual financial side of things. All I really need to make fun is posting to this site as that’ll increase readership and increase the weight of the “positive public pressure.”
What’s New?
So, with that in mind, I developed a new feature: nuggets. Nuggets are links to other useful and/or interesting bits of financial advice and information I’ve stumbled across. They link right to the article in question and I usually include at least a quote and frequently some quick thoughts on the piece.
They’ll be interspersed with the full articles, but are distinguished with the gold coins icon:
This is based on John Gruber’s Linked List and will make it easier for me to bookmark what I’m finding useful, pass it on to you, and to post more regularly and quickly.
I still need and want to write my longer posts, but I need to be comfortable with posting here for that to happen.
Stats
For the past two weeks (October 6th-20th) I’ve seen only 41 site visitors (mostly at the head & tail of that period). Almost all of that traffic has come from the banner on my personal site" because I released some new Textpattern plug-ins recently.
I’m still retaining my six subscribers to the RSS feed.
Silly website. I don’t think having money and collecting technology devices is compatible:}
I don’t think its possible to get out of debt without sacrificing all unnecessary expenses. Think only going to work, the grocery store, and the doctor. I pretty much did this for 5 years after I bought my first house. Granted, I didn’t have credit card debt, but I didn’t get any either. Living within your true monthly means is the key to financial success. You can’t have everything.
Or, you could move somewhere, where computer jobs are a plenty, like Maryland. Then you have a high paying job and an even more high cost house….wait that doesn’t work either.
Yeah, I had whittled my gadget spending down to a bare minimum (bought two new cell phones, $20 after the rebates, when both our cells died in early spring), but I’m in a complete spending freeze now. I’ve been selling off gadgets for extra credit card payments, but that doesn’t save me much (except space in our apartment) since people around here aren’t really buying at the moment.
The cost of living in Vermont is actually pretty high. I’d say at least I don’t have to worry about the high property tax, but it’s still keeping our rent high and heating during the winter is not cheap. I’m happy to see gas prices finally going down a bit more for winter so that my 100 mi/day commute is less expensive.
But, the truth is, getting the spending down is the hardest part for me. It’s gradual, every time I see a way to slim it down a little more I try to do it, but I’m just not proactive enough yet.
It looks like its about 20% more expensive to live in Maryland vs Vermont. With housing being ~65% more expensive. I can’t stress enough the importance of living in a location where job prospects are extremely high. Take your own pick of tech cities to live in. I mean I live within 15 minutes of NSA. Do you know how many people they employ at Ft. Meade? 40,000+. This pushes tech salaries crazy high. Its funny how high salaries erase debt quickly.
Anyhow. are you tracking every penny (including cash) in Quicken or equivalent? I did this for 10 years out of College and really this was a big key in staying ahead of things and tracking the budget.
I quit about 7 years ago doing this because I finally reached critical mass and started paying EVERYTHING with one card. So by default, that card became my Quicken.
Well, having dropped out of college two years shy of a BS in Computer Science, my employment prospects in my field of experience are not nearly as high as they should be. I do well in Vermont because most of the smaller companies are willing to pay normal salaries (for this region) to someone without the degree, but with real-world experience.
I can’t imagine I’d be able to compete all that well for a position in big corporation. I’m also quite comfortable with Vermont, so moving is not high on my list. I’ll be noting the actual amount of my debt shortly and you’ll see that it’s quite modest and I should be able to get out of it without doing anything too drastic. Applying myself and picking up a second source of income, if necessary, should be enough.
I used to track every penny, but the past year or so I let the credit card slip as we were both using the same credit card account for all our gas, groceries, and shopping. It got “too time consuming” to enter both of our receipts, so I let it go. Of course, I kept all the accounts reconciled, but that doesn’t help keep spending in check.
I’ve been ramping back up to tracking every penny and should be on track shortly. I’m currently using a combination of PocketMoney on my Newton and Mint.