Yes, I'm Back

No, I have not abandoned my quest for the year that changes the entire direction of my life.

Certain work obligations kept me from being able to post this week. I apologize for not warning everyone in advance--I honestly intended to blog each day this week, and each day found myself unable.

But that "crisis" has past, and I will now be back to regular blogging. However, I will be making a couple of changes.

First, I will be discontinuing the Sunday book review. On Sundays, I won't be blogging at all. I'm letting you know that now, that so that you will know there's no need to check that day (although my stats show me hardly anyone checks on Sunday anyway, so I don't feel too bad).

Also, I'll be replacing the Friday feature. Instead of talking about gambling, I'll talk about money and diet myths. I guess I might talk about gambling if I can dispel a myth about it.

(Actually, if you want to hear gambling myths, just read an ad for any lottery or casino. To paraphrase Dave Barry, if you want to know the truth, it's usually the opposite of what advertisers are paying millions of dollars to try to convince you. If Coke and Pepsi spend millions of dollars trying to convince you that one product will make you attractive and popular, and the other will make you a socially backwards wanna-be, then they're probably both just fizzy sugar-water.)

I have continued to diet and spend right, and events that would have been crises a short time ago have become easier and easier to bear.

Last Saturday, after I posted, we discovered the tire was flat on my car. We discovered this after my wife had taken it to the grocery store.

(I love my wife.)

However, paying $50 for a new tire was no problem. We didn't use a credit card, we didn't do any debt--we had a bit of emergency fund, so we were okay.

We're really, really okay. I've only been at this for three months (four, if you count that I sort of started in December) and we're already out of "crisis mode." We're no longer sweating those last few days before payday, hoping the gas and food can make it. We've established a bit of an emergency fund, and even keep a "cushion" of money in the checking account that we don't run out and spend indiscriminately.

It's a wonderful feeling.

But it's also a bit of a hindrance. Because the crisis is passed, the fear is that we will lose some of the fire. That we will not pay down the remaining debt as aggressively as we need to, because our monthly "Cash flow" situation is not as desperate now that many of those bills are gone.

Now is when discipline and vision are beginning to become more and more important--that we move those dollars we were paying over to the next bills each month, rather than finding new and less productive ways to spend them.

But I do not feel bad at all for those dollars I'm letting pile up in my checking account and emergency fund. Sure, they might save me a couple of dollars in interest if I shoved them all at the debts. But the peace of mind of knowing that it's there, the satisfaction I get from not having to take steps backwards by plopping down a credit card for every emergency, all of that so valuable to me--in fact, it's truly priceless.

If you don't have one, make an emergency fund for yourself. Even if you're paying down debt, stop long enough to get some dollars sacked away. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Quote of the Day

A talk I just heard repeated this quote from J. Reuben Clark:

Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation. ... Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

Gambling: A Day At The Races

Back when I was a kid, my brothers and I would watch the Santa Anita races on channel 56. Before the race started, they'd pan down a list of the horses on the racing form, and we'd each pick one, usually based on a cool name like "Unrequited Love" or "Mugging Grandma."

But pretty soon, I started to figure something out. Instead of picking a horse based on a name, I started picking the horses based on a number. Not the number they wore on their side, but another number. It was usually the last thing on the chart, and for some reason, they'd usually subtract one from it. I didn't know why.

10-1. 4-1.

Why didn't they just write 9, or 3?

I didn't know. But I did start to figure out a good way to pick winners. Pick ones that had a really low number right there. I didn't win all the time, but I was winning way more often than my brothers.

I'd learned the sad truth of horse racing. If you want to win, you have to bet on favorites. And if you bet on favorites, the odds are so low that you barely get back what you paid, and even a few losses can tip you negative pretty quick, with no way to recoup it.

There's lots of horses that would pay you more, but those usually aren't the horses that are going to win.

Unlike gambling, there is a bit of logic can be employed here. I'm told the best way to pick a winner isn't to know horses, but to know trainers. If you know trainers, you can trust them to know the horses.

But that's not any more foolproof than any other "system"--underdogs are horse racing heros.

Proud of Myself

The previous post is the first time the Blogger spell check has not had to correct my spelling of the word exercise.

I was surprised the other day to find, among old papers, a spelling test from 9th grade journalism in which I misspelled exercise exactly the way I still misspell it now.

I may have finally broken a life-long bad spelling habit.

Even more ironically, when I went to spell check this post, the machine had to correct both misspelled and misspell. Two S's, Erik, two S's.

Making internet spelling more accurate, one word at a time.

A New Diet Idea

I've come up with what I think is the best diet ever. It makes perfect sense to me, and I'm curious to see what you all think of it. And it goes a little something like this . . .

I was reading an article about weight loss that explained why most diets don't work. It explained how the body "adapts" to diets after a while. If you eat 1500 calories a day, your body will regulate itself to where it burns 1500 calories a day. If you eat 2000 calories a day, your body will adjust itself to burn 2000 calories a day.

Then, when you finally break down and eat an extra 1000 calories (not hard--I have a bag of Jelly Bellies sitting next to me I got in my Easter Basket that's calling my name and has 700 calories in it), none of it gets used, and it all goes to fat.

This article argued you should actually do the opposite--eat at a certain level, and then drop your calories drastically for a day or two, then go back to your regular eating pattern.

Now look--that's insane. Don't even try it. That just sounds to me like "Hollywood Diet"--a diet that consists of nothing but drinking juice for a weekend.

Diets like this do not help you lose fat. When your body needs energy for the short term, it does not go to fat. It goes to the sugars in your muscles. It saves the fat for last, lest your attempt to starve it go on forever.

So what good idea did I get from this diet?

I combine it with an idea I got from my Dad a while back.

Go find a calorie calculator. They're all over the place online--here's a good one.

In the calculator, don't put in your current weight--put in the weight you want to be. Don't put in any exercise or anything--just what your regular lifestyle would cause your body to burn if you were your ideal weight.

Then eat that many calories every day. Spread it out over five or six meals, but eat that many calories or less--maybe as many as 500 calories less, but no more than that.

Top that with some exercise to burn a few more calories.

Your body's natural inclination to slim down will work together with your exercise to get you down to your ideal weight.

Not a "Lose 20 pounds in one weekend" tabloid diet, but a very safe, sensible way to get your body where you want it.

So the Hollywood Diet guys sell gallons of the stuff, while I still get about 20 hits a day. Maybe I should try going for a little more hype.

Interest-ing

From Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace Planner:

Now let's move to a bigger ticket item--the family car. Car payments can be the biggest waste of money! Who wouldn't love to drive paid-for cars for the rest of his life? The power of compounding interest can help.

J. G. and Jill bought a used car for $4,100 cash. Even though they won't need another car for a while, they decide to start saving for the next one right away. So they put $200 a month into a mutual fund at 10 percent interest. By year seven, they will likely need a new car, but will be ready. Their savings will have grown to approximately $24,190. Now they can buy a new $16,000 car, have no monthly payments, and still have $8,190 in the bank.

After buying this new car, J. G. and Jill decide to continue saving for the next car, but they cut back their monthly payment to $100. At the end of seven more years, that $8,190 left over plus the $100-per-month investment grows to $28,540. Again, they have a seven-year-old car they want to dump for a new one. So they buy yet another $16,000 car for cash, leaving $12,539 in savings. For another seven years, they have no car payment, but they quit saving. Even so, the $12,540 at 10 percent will grow to $25,179.

The bottom line: By sacrificing with a lesser purchase up front and saving the difference, J. G. and Jill can drive paid-for cars and have savings the rest of their lives. That is compound interest working for you.

Tale Of The Tape: Oops.

Pulled pork sandwiches. Buffalo Chicken Pizza. Jelly Beans. Fried Chicken Drumsticks. Biscuits, gravy, sausage and eggs. A cupcake. Peeps. Chocolate (of course).

All this is my way of sayin' I hope you had as good an Easter week as I did.

In my defense, I am now 241 with shoulders, instead of 241 with no shoulders.

Sunday Book Review: How To Ruin Your Financial Life

Ben Stein.

Actor. Game show guru. Author.

In this follow-up to his tongue-in-cheek How To Ruin Your Life, Ben Stein spot-on hits the sure path to financial doom and in so doing, not only mocks the ways we justify some of our stupidest ideas, but makes the path away from financial ruin pretty clear.

Glancing at the table of contents, we see gems like:

Repeat After Me: "I Am Not Responsible For My Financial Well-Being"
Don't Think About Retirement--It's A L-O-O-N-N-G Way Off
Make A Point Of Watching Those Late-Night Financial Success Infomercials
Put All Your Eggs In One Basket--'Cause Only Sissies Diversify

It's light reading. It's a small book and only about 130 pages long (I read it standing around at an unnamed Big Chain Bookstore).

But it's witty, easy to understand, and it gets its point across. It would make a great gift for a grad or a Newlywed--a book that would introduce the simple concepts everybody should know, but that was witty and entertaining instead of boring and preachy.

Gone Phishing: Fake eBay and PayPal Emails

I got an Email pretending to be from eBay today.

I know everybody probably already knows this, but I want to send out a heads-up anyway: This email is fake.

The link carries you to a site outside of eBay, with fairly realistic looking login stuff. You fill it out, somebody steals your information. They are commonly sent out by people claiming to be from either eBay or PayPal.

This is called "Phishing." You "fish" for personal information by creating a pop-up screen or an email asking for financial information, and then seeing how many people will put it in.

eBay has a little tutorial on fake emails here.

If you think you have a fake eBay message, forward it to spoof@ebay.com.

If you think you have a fake PayPal Message, report it here.

Remember, only you can prevent phishing phP\3@x.

Gambling: Poker

So what about poker? Poker's poker, right? Not a lot the casino can mess up there, right?

You've obviously never played casino poker.

There are two places where the casino makes its money off poker. First, they keep 10% of every pot. Period.

Second, up to four people at the table can be employed by the casino, and two of those can be playing with casino money.

As Harry Anderson says, "It's hard to bluff a guy who isn't gambling with his own money."

Just ask--the casino's required to identify them if you want them to--at least, they are in Nevada.

Of course, if roving "teams" of cheaters have found their way into the casino with you, this is probably where they're going to strike. Have fun playing with them, too.

They probably won't identify themselves for you.

To Checklist Or Not To Checklist

I'm kind of a fan of checklists.

When I was in my prior job, where my day-to-day routine was fairly consistent, I kept a text file on my desktop with a list of all the things I needed to do each day. Each morning, I'd pull it up and as I'd finish each one, I'd delete it. By the end of the day I'd clean the whole list away. I'd close it without saving it, and the next day the list was there, ready to go for me again.

Lots of people aren't fans of checklists.

Checklists, you see, are guilt-inducers. Sure, if I don't have a checklist, I'll feel guilty about some of the things I'm not doing, but at least I'll have the luxury of getting to forget some of them. If I have the checklist, then I am reminded of each and every thing I was unable to do. The only thing that's maximized is my sense of inadequacy.

There's a happy medium to be found here, I think, and that is this:

The checklist is a tool, not a rule.

In other words, the checklist is there to help you, not to govern your actions. Like any tool, if there is a day or a situation that it is not useful in, then it is the tool that is inadequate, not the person using it.

Today was laundry day at my house. Lots of time was spent making dirty clothes clean. Since we don't have a washer or dryer, we tend to use those of others on one specific day, making laundry an all-day project. A "daily checklist" that's perfectly good on non-laundry day becomes useless on laundry day.

Does that make sense? The situation changed, so the tool wasn't useful in this case. Tomorrow, it probably will.

And even on days when you can't do everything on the list, the list still doesn't rule. It just serves as a guide. You can say, "Alright, I know X, Y, and Z all need to be done. Let me take care of X, and I don't have to worry that I'll forget about Y or Z, because they're written down here. And if I don't have time for Z quite yet, That's okay, because I'll know X and Y are taken care of and off my mind."

Tools, not rules. Let them help you, not rule you.

If you make the checklist just another thing on the checklist--in other words, if it's another thing you feel like you have to have done--then the checklist will just be a burden to you and take up more of your time.

But if you can treat it like a tool, know that it's in charge, and consider any shortcomings the fault of the tool rather than absorbing that guilt yourself, you'll empowered rather than demoralized.

Now, let me go mark "Blogging" off my checklist so my conscious will leave me alone.

Lil' Bits

Well, a few bits of news.

First, I'm finally starting to get shoulders. This has always been important to me for some reason. I have it in my head that if I can make my shoulders a bit wider, it would make my waist look narrower, even if my waist wasn't actually narrower. If I can get some shoulders on me and have a narrower waist, even better. So having a bit of shoulders is exciting to me.

(This is why I think weight training is important. You can diet and do cardio, and your body will end up in the same shape, just smaller. By creating muscles, you actually have the power to "create" your shape a bit.)

Second, I actually wrote 1,000 words last night. I do that a few more times I'll actually have a new short story for the first time in months.

What's Up With The Weather?

So Thursday I'm supposed to take my first day off in ages.

Why did the weather service decide they had to give that day a 157% chance of rain?

Can somebody call the governor and tell him to postpone the showers?

Tale Of The Tape: Danger Zone

So last Thursday, I'm sitting on the couch thinking, "I missed a couple of my meals today. A bit of ice cream probably wouldn't be too bad."

So I ask my wife if she has any coupons for some junk food or snacky food for desert. We look through the coupons, and I point out some healthy choice ice cream.

She comes back from the store with about $60 in junk food that she's purchased for about $17.

I learned a couple of things from this. First, as my wife reminded me, never send someone armed with coupons who is craving junk food out with the mission of picking up junk food. Not unless you want junk food.

Second, junk food is really, really easy to get on sale. I love Butterfingers, and since they're promoting that new Butterfinger crisp bar with both sales and coupons, we got a whole bunch of them for next to nothing. They're really good. But at 150 calories even in the mini ones, I had to ajust my eating whenever I'd have one.

And of course, the last thing I learned was that all that stuff they say about "less energy" from junk food is absolutely true. I didn't really give in too much to the junk until Sunday, and I cut back on some of my other eating to compensate. This meant Sunday I was basically on a junk food diet. On Monday morning, when I went to lift weights, I felt strong enough to lift the weights, but I just didn't have the oomph to put behind it.

I still ended up down a pound, so I'm pleased, but I really think it could have been more if I'd eaten a little more carefully.

But I do reccomend those new Butterfinger crisps to anybody who likes Butterfingers or those little crisp cookies that go good in ice cream.

How's that for a diet tip?

Sunday Book Review: Miserly Meals

A few weeks ago, I pined for a book about cooking healthy on the cheap. Yesterday, my wife and I went out and picked this one up.

I'm glad we did. First off, the layout of each recipe is great. It includes the recipe, the number of servings, the nutritional values for each food (including calories, protein, fat, and even sodium and cholesterol), the preparation time and the cook time. No matter which diet you're on, this book will give you the info you need to know which recipes will fit it.

It also contains the "cost per serving" for each meal, and the book brags that every recipe costs less than 75 cents per serving.

(The catch, which the author mentions in the introduction, is that the "cost per serving" is assuming you are a savvy shopper who follows frugal shopping techniques. Unfortunately, these frugal shopping techniques are not outlined in this book--they're in her other book, Miserly Moms. So when Amazon reviewers gripe about her use of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, they're missing the part where it explains how to get those cheap, which I'm sure involves the words "sales" and "freezer.")

I'm a fan of recipes for pre-made "mixes" that you can keep on hand for when you need to whip up a quick batch of something. This book has a few of those, the most notable being a Bisquick-like mix you can keep on hand for quick baking.

Other chapters contain beverages, appetizers, and an entire chapter on various ways to prepare turkey.

And the "kitchen tips" that end each recipe make the book interesting easy chair reading--I know, it's not Alton Brown, but I like a readable cookbook.

If any readers have their own cookbook suggestions, please feel free to share.

Changing It Up

So far this year, I haven't missed a day on this blog.

I have also only pursued my other goal, science fiction writing, on a handful of days.

My goal was to write a short story a month, 12 stories total, and sell three of them by the end of the year.

I'm doing great at losing weight, okay at getting out of debt, and lousy at writing the stories.

So starting on Monday, I'm changing things up. Science fiction will now come first, and I'll do this blog after I have my 1,000 words for the day written.

The hope is, out of motivation to get a blog post done before midnight, I'll write the other stuff.

I'll let you know if this works.

Gambling: Craps

I don't understand craps. At all. I'm not even going to pretend I do.

The craps table has a more complicated layout than the interior of my computer. There's numbers, pass lines, come lines, fields, don't pass bars, don't come bars. Sometimes you do want to roll something, other times you don't--I'm lost.

Here's what I know about craps: the bet with the lowest house percentage in the casino is a pass line bet in combination with a free-odds bet. The house PC on this is less than 1%.

Other bets, particularly the ones in the center off the layout, have a PC of 10% or higher--they'll bring you down fast.

And remember--even though this is where your best odds are, that's just your best odds of keeping the money you came in with. Those bets pay even money, so they're not bets you're going to make a million dollars off of in one shot. You'd have to hang around the table a while, and the longer you hang around the table, the more you're going to find your results lining right up with the odds the laws of probability dictate you should get--in this case, still losing about a buck for every hundred you play. Nice, slow way to lose it, but lose it you will.

That's the way in the casino, the carnival, where ever. The more you can win off of something, the lower your odds of winning it. The better your odds of winning, the less they'll give you in return. (So you paid the guy $5 and he guessed your weight wrong, huh? Enjoy your $2 prize.)

So if you like to throw dice, you could stay home and play Monopoly. You might even learn a little about the cashflow benefits of investing in the process. It comes in a variety of editions, ranging from Disney Monopoly to Star Wars Monopoly to Lord of the Rings Monopoly.

Why try to win a few bucks from a casino when you could win the Empire back from Darth Vader?

By The Power Of Grayskull!

Okay, so I'm not quite He-Man. I'm not even that wimpy little geek Adam.

(Come to think of it, wasn't Adam just as big as He-Man? Why did everybody think he was such a dork? Why didn't anybody try to give him a weapon or something? "Hey, Adam," somebody should have said, "You're kind of a nerd, but you have pecs the size of Man-At-Arms' helmet. Take a sword or something, man." But I digress.)

So what I was saying, before my train of thought was derailed, was that last night, Greg and I decided to try to do the exact same upper body workout we did on Friday, same weights and everything. Since we're writing down everything we're doing, including rating the difficulty of the exercise on a 1-10 scale, we were able to see exactly how well we did compared with a few days before.

And I'll tell you what--nothing makes you feel stronger than doing two or three more reps than you did a couple days before. Sure, you could look around the gym and realize everybody's doing twice as much weight as you, but nothing beats being able to beat yourself.

So I say track your fitness training. Even if it's cardio, track how long it took you and how far you went or something. Nothing beats that feeling of knowing you're doing better.

Dell Is Done

My tax return today paid off my $1,200-plus balance on my Dell computer. Since I am now officially done with Dell Financial Services, I do feel it appropriate to point out, one final time, that of the $40 a month I was paying them, $30 a month was going to interest.

I am not going to accuse them of deceptive marketing practices (like a certain class-action lawsuit that they are involved in) simply because their catalogue does not indicate that their "easy payment" options involve paying on the computer until long after the day the computer becomes obsolete due to the sun going nova.

I am not a victim. All terms and conditions of the financing were clearly outlined, somewhere.

However, I will never, ever, ever again finance anything will Dell.

Or anybody else for that matter. But this is one monkey I'm pleased to have off my back.

They make fine computers. They make lousy buddies to borrow money from.

READ MY MAIL -- MAKE MONEY FAST

Actual excerpts from mail I received today:

First of all, I have something very important to share with a limited audience. (I only want to share this invitation with 5,000 people maximum.) So, I asked my list broker to be very careful about who got this mailing.

As you may know, the slot machine was invented in 1906 by Herbert Mills. It was "unbeatable." That is . . . until Frank Calder came along and broke one in 1938. Frank figured out how to pull and twist the arm of the slot machine so that it delivered cash every time. The Mills machine is now part of history.

But. . . get this. All modern day machines have a secret structural flaw in them too. That means you too can do what I do. You can walk up to almost any machine you want and make it give you cash. If you know what to do. It's a structural flaw. And so far, the casino owners don't know what to do about it.

They know the flaw exists. But they don't know what to do about it.

Tale Of The Tape

On this blog, I've started to spend a fair bit of time guessing what you're thinking. So much so that I should probably change the name of the blog to "The 365 Day Turnaround Into A Mentalist."

(Of course, if anybody would use the comments feature more than once every two weeks, I wouldn't have to read anybody's mind.)

So this time, I'm reading your mind again, and I'm guessing you're thinking, Erik, that's great that you got the kids into Chuck E. Cheese, but how does pizza fit into your diet?

Well, the way I see it, if I got this big eating entire large pizzas by myself, then eating half a large pizza should get me down to half my weight.

But seriously, I just arranged my eating for that day based on the fact I'd be having pizza. I didn't starve myself--but I had a really low-cal protein shake for breakfast and a serving of chili for lunch. Plenty of calories left over for a dabble in late night pizza.

What probably surprised those of you who really know me is that I had soda. Normally I absolutely, positively drink nothing but water. It was a special occasion, though, so I dabbled in a little diet soda.

How did it all work for me? Well, check out the tale of the tape. I'm down another 4 pounds since last week, putting me at 21 pounds since the first of the year, and only one pound away from my short term goal of 240 by April 3rd. Which is, of course, good, because we all know those last 20 are going to be harder than the first 20, so it's nice to be a little ahead of schedule on my goal to be down to 220 by my birthday in July.

And tomorrow, for my cardio, I'll get to move furniture out of the office that flooded and that we were forced to close because of mold.

Life never ceases to be exciting.

Note: Look for another exciting Tale of the Tape update this week, on the financial end, as I experience the power of both the mid-month payday and a tax return.

Sunday Book Review: Games You Can't Lose

So, I know what you've been wondering.

Erik, you say, if you've never laid a dollar down in Vegas, where do you get your information about all of these casino games?

Well, this book is a lot of the answer.

When I was a teenager, my interest in magic led me to an interest in swindles, which led me to this little book, which is full of proposition bets, cheats, and cons.

Wanna know how to take of your suit vest without taking off your jacket? Think you know who the first President of America was? Wanna know how to make an egg balance on end?

All that stuff is in here, along with entertaining stories of famous hustlers and some of the greatest hustles of all time.

The second half of the book is called Games You Can't Win, and features every commercial hustle from the casinos to the carnival to the tracks to the street corner.

Three card monte, "systems" at the track, card counting, it's all in here. There's a remarkable amount of information for such a thin volume. And it's peppered with stories--cute stories, my favorites being "The Man In The Bathrobe," and "The Three Little Milk Bottles."

The Harry Anderson who wrote this is the same Harry Anderson who does the magic shows and who played the judge on Night Court. If you're wondering what his qualifications are to write this--well, the lore goes something like this.

Harry actually started out in San Francisco as a street hustler. After a couple of bad experiences (first he got arrested by the police for playing a game of chance, then he got his jaw busted by a guy who realized he was not playing a game of chance) he found himself back on the street, on now he was teaching how to avoid getting conned by the monte. He was teaching people, with his jaw wired shut at all.

He ended up a Vegas magician, until after some "experiences" that left him barred from playing cards in the state of Nevada.

Is any of this true? Who knows. Even the fact that so much of history may just be a swindle proves there's no better guy to write this book. Admittedly, it's pretty light stuff--this book is to the real world of cons what those pamphlets they sell at Disneyland are to magic--but it's still entertaining reading. It's also a wee bit dated--it was first published about 15 years ago (That also dates me).

So basically, I know so much about casino games because when I was a kid I studied up on scams and found the Casinos were one of the first things they talked about.

Car Problems Solving Car Problems

So about 5 years ago, I had a Chrysler Le Baron that I drove into the ground. I'd purchased it in California and junked it in Pennsylvania.

Now for some reason, even though the salvage yard in Pennsylvania had a junk title for it, the California DMV thought I still had the car. Every year, when I'd go to do my state taxes, the Franchise Tax Board for the state would keep my whole return, saying I owed it for registration fees on that Le Baron. Every year I'd call and gripe, every year they'd say to mail them a copy of that junk title and everything would be fine, and every year it would happen again.

So this year, the same week I sent in my taxes I went down to the DMV and spent about an hour while a couple of very nice people did what five years of people couldn't do for me--they solved my problem and got me my money back.

So this week, when my car started doing the shimmy-shimmy and my check engine light came on, I was able to get it all going again for less than half the amount of the check the DMV sent me back.

I still have enough left over to pay for next month's discount adventure with the girls--and this one is going to be even better than Chuck E. Cheese.

Stay tuned.

Doing The Town--On A Budget

So how to you show two little girls a good time when you're trying to keep from spending any extra pennies?

Well, here's how we did it tonight.

On an online "Freebie" forum, I found out about a thing where Chuck E Cheese was looking for mystery shoppers. If you signed up, they'd mail you a packet of little coupons to give out to people who did a good job, a coupon to give to the kitchen if you got your pizza in 10 minutes, etc. Once you went (with your own money) then they'd send you out a "guest pass" to get your next visit free.

Now we, being the relentless coupon clippers that we are, had some Chuck E Cheese coupons already clipped and saved away.

Tonight we took both the girls, got pizza, soda, and a bunch of tokens for about 20 bucks with the coupon, and we'll get it all again after the guest pass comes (The guest pass is for one large pizza, four drinks, and 30 game tokens--exactly what our coupon was for). Two visits to Chuck E Cheese for just over 10 dollars each visit. Not a bad deal.

We made it by the skin of our teeth--the deadline for the project was tomorrow.

I was proud of myself for finding this one myself. Usually we find out about such things through the "Mommy Chain." One Mommy tells another Mommy tells another Mommy. Our kids got to meet Bedtime Bear and decorate their own picture frame at Toys Backwards R Us towards the end of last year thanks to a bit we picked up on the Mommy Chain.

Anyway, the girls had a great time. They watch a lot of PBS, and since the skateboarding mouse is such a "proud sponsor" of so many PBS kids shows, they've wanted to visit him for quite a while now. I'm glad ol' Chuck E. showed them a good time.

One bit of advice, though.

If you're looking at the 15 ticket prize bin, don't get the whistles.

Gambling: Slot Machines

Yeah, I know you've been waiting for this one. You're dying to know all about those whirling icons with the pull handle.

A while ago, I asked which game the house kept the highest percent on.

In Jeapordy fashion, here's the question to go with "Slot Machines":

On which game to casinos make the most money?

Which adds the corralative question:

Which game does the public lose the most money on?

Yup. Those coins you pump into that "one-armed bandit" go a long way towards paying for the fancy carpets, the gold plated furniture, and the complimentary meals for the high rollers upstairs.

So what' the house percentage? In Atlantic City, it is limited by law to 17%. This is worse than roulette, worse than blackjack, worse than any game except keno. It means the casino keeps nearly a buck for every five that get put in the machine.

Of course, Vegas is the hot spot, and in Nevada, there's no legal limit on how much the house can keep. They can set the machines to pay at whatever rate they want.

This means you should never, ever play a slot at a grocery store, or the airport, or at the gas station, or any of the other places that aren't mainly concerned with gambling. They don't care if you come back, so they can set that machine to pay out as little as they want.

Usually, the casinos go something like this:

Since the nickel slots are seen as "introductory," the house sometimes keeps a slightly lower percentage on it--around 10-15%, so you'll see yourself winning some coins sometimes. Not all of them--maybe as high as nine for every 10 that you play.

Of course, if you pop all nine of those back in, you'll only get eight back, and so on and so on until it's all gone. Obviously, it won't happen as perfectly cleanly as this example, but overall, that's the general result.

Some of the dollar slots have better odds--around 2-3% for the house PC--but when you're losing, you're losing money five times as fast. Where with keno, it can take you an hour and a half to lose ten bucks at a dollar a game, here you can do it in less than three minutes.

Are there tricks to finding a slot machine with a lower house PC? You bet. Obviously, the ones in view of the doors and restaruants pay more, because they want other people to see the winners.

But as with card-counters, Vegas makes a lot more money of people who think they're "in the know" than they lose to people.

The biggest suckers of all are the ones who look for "patterns." They look for a machine that's been cold for a long time, thinking it's "due" for a payoff. Or they look for a machine they think one because they think it's "hot." Then they put coin after coin into this machine, because they are bound and determined to prove themselves right.

And the casino owners are completely willing to let them keep right on trying. After all--they need another few bucks to comp that expensive bottle of wine to the high roller upstairs.

Okay, Some Personal Stuff

After yesterday's post, I thought I'd post some personal stuff, just to throw everybody off.

So on Wednesday was my day for legs and abs. My brother Greg, who I'm working out with, decides to break out the medicine ball and we go through quite possibly the roughest workout routine I've ever done.

After we finish, I start getting worried. I've had some pretty bad days after working my abs too hard. It's like having a stomach ache without getting to stay home from work ("Gee, sorry, boss. My abs are too sore").

And, I knew it was going to be a tough day anyway, because I had to move furniture around at the office that flooded and helped me lose the six pounds, because now they were taking up the carpet.

But then, to my surprise, the pain wasn't too bad. I got through the whole day without really feeling it. I was proud of myself.

And then, on the way home, I sneezed.

Oh. My. Word.

I thought my insides were going to burst out. It was indescribable.

I'm trying really, really hard not to sneeze again.

This Blog

So I'm always wondering what tone to take with this blog.

Sometimes I feel I'm being too basic, but I know that there are people reading this blog who know nothing about the subjects I'm talking about.

Sometimes I feel I'm getting too complicated, but I know there are people reading this blog who could teach me far more on these subjects than I could ever teach them.

I try to strike a balance--just spouting what I know (or what I research that night) about a particular topic I find interesting, in the hopes someone else will find it interesting, too.

I don't post a lot of personal stuff--stuff like "Today I wore a shirt that's been too tight for months now, and it fit pretty well!" I don't know how interesting people would find that stuff--I personally find it exciting, but can't imagine why anybody else would.

I guess what I'm mostly looking to give are insight and excitement. A sense of what you can accomplish and how. Do I succeed? Who knows. But in the meantime, it keeps me going with my goals, and keeps me looking for new insights and new reasons to be excited.

Simple Starter Diet Changes--Food Choices

A while back, I posted my Simple Starter Diet. I pointed out that it was an eat-anything-you-want diet that would work for anyone who had significant weight to lose.

However, you may want to fine-tune it some.

Think of the diet as a framework--you're then free to make certain changes to it to best suit your needs. You just have to make sure you stay within the basic guidelines. I'll try to outline these guidelines for modifying the diet over the next few weeks.

The first modification you could make would be in your food choices. After all, even though I could lose weight eating nothing but twelve fudgesicles a day, that type of diet wouldn't give me any energy, and it certainly wouldn't leave me feeling very good.

So what food choices can you make that would maximize your nutrition and give you the most energy?

Look for whole foods--in other words, foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. An apple, for example, is a "whole food." Even if the apple is cut up, it's still in the same state nature made it in, so it's considered a "whole food."

The opposite of whole foods are "processed foods." These are foods that have been dramatically altered from their natural state. Think of a Twinkie. You can't go pluck a Twinkie off a tree, or scoop that white stuff out from anywhere.

One of the main differences between processed and unprocessed foods is calorie content. An apple has lots of water and fiber and minerals that fill you up without adding to your calorie intake. Since the ingredients in a Twinkie have been processed, so all the fiber and most of the nutrients have been removed.

A Twinkie has about 150 calories. If you cut yourself a slice of apple that weighed the same as that Twinkie--43 grams--you would only have about half a small apple, and it would only have 28 calories. In other words, you could eat 5 times the weight in food if you chose apples rather than Twinkies before you'd reach 150 calories.

Of course, if you go with vegetables, well, medium sized carrots have around 25 calories each, as does a cup of broccoli, as does a medium sized cucumber. There's 30 calories per cup of asparagus. Man--we're still not even up to the calories of the Twinkie. You'd have to eat a whole head of lettuce to make up the difference.

Now I realize that vegetables aren't everyone's cup of tea, but the principle should be clear now. The closer to its natural state a food is, the less calories it will have, and the more of it you can eat.

For this reason, I stick to whole-wheat bread and pitas. I even buy whole-wheat tortillas.

The wholer the food, the more fiber and nutrition it will contain.

Also, because there's more "stuff" in the food for your body to digest, it slows the rate at which your body absorbs the calories. This gives your body time to use those calories rather than store them. Think of it like a "time-release" system for distributing your calories over the day as you need them.

Otherwise, your body digests the food quickly and, since you aren't using it as quickly as you're digesting it, your body is forced to store the rest as fat. By slowing that absorption rate, you're decreasing the chances of it ever reaching your hips.

Now, some words of warning:

Be careful. Some foods can be deceiving. For example, homemade salsa is usually really low calorie and nutritious, because it's made from whole vegetables and fruits. However, many store bought brands add sugars and preservatives that can up the calorie count and lower the nutritional value.

And I know lots of us like to let our veggies soak in some kind of dressing or oil, but these often more than offset the calories we saved by eating the veggies. For example, the Wendy's Spring Mix Salad has only 180 calories, but the recommended dressing--the house vinaigrette--has 190 calories. The Mandarin Chicken salad has 170 calories, but if you add the "crispy noodles" and the dressing, you're adding 250 calories (On the simple starter diet, those would constitute a meal by themselves).

So just because something says "Salad," doesn't mean it's healthy. The Chicken Club Salad at Jack In The Box has 825 calories. That's more than their Bacon Bacon Cheeseburger (780 calories).

Short Range Goal

So here's my new short-range goal:

I will be below 240 by the April 3rd weigh in.

That gives me exactly 4 weeks--the first 3rd of the Body For Life challenge.

But it will put me at the halfway point to my first milestone goal, which is 220 pounds by the July 11th weigh-in.

When to Weigh

First off, I just want everyone to know that as of today, I am officially beginning Bill Phillip's Body-For-Life challenge. I have attempted this before, but as I now know, I have never come close to performing this routine at the intensity at which it was meant to be done. We worked hard this morning, and I'm confident this routine will work for both of us.

Because I was working so hard, I was taking in more water than Monstro the whale.

So by the time I get to the Department of Weights and Measures, where I traditionally weigh myself, I've got to go to the bathroom really bad.

And I think to myself, you know, in the name of science, I should weigh myself both before and after, just to see what the difference is.

But I don't do it. I've got to go the bathroom too bad.

After I'm done, I go weigh myself, and I'm 246. Up a pound from last week. Which I sort of expected. I've snacked on cinnamon rolls for the last three days--my wife made a batch to take to somebody who ended up not neededing them, which means these little lumps of white bread covered in sugar are sitting on the table right behind my computer.

I go to visit with my Dad for a while--about half an hour, actually--and by the time I'm done, I have to go to the bathroom again. This time, I decide I do want to weigh myself afterwards--you know, for science.

And I end up back at 245.

So that is the weight you see before you.

Sunday Book Review: The Zone

Before Atkins became all the rage, there was a little book by Barry Sears called The Zone. There were even a few foods that were labeled as "Zone Approved" and there were "Zone Certified Physicians."

Actually, The Zone was, in a lot of ways, a great gateway book for Atkins. It taught that fat was not the enemy, as the nation had previously thought, and it taught about "insulin response," a subject that the nation has come to feel is the sole reason they gain weight.

Here, however, the differences end.

The Zone diet, you see, was sane.

What Dr. Sears teaches is this:

We all know that taking medicine can affect the way our body works, right? You take a pill in the hopes your body will do certain things because of that.

Actually, that's true of anything you eat. Because you ate it, your body is going to do certain things in response.

For example, if you eat carbs, it will give you energy. However, if your body processes them too quickly, it can also spike your blood sugar.

Eating fats help you to feel full. Certain fats also help keep your cholesterol low, and other fats can make it worse.

Eating protein can help offset some of the blood sugar spike carbs give, and it's a building block for muscle. Too much, though, can cause problems in your digestive system.

All the food types are necessary--to eliminate one or another would eliminate a needed aspect of your diet. However, all the food types also have problems--to focus solely on one would be equally damaging.

What Dr. Sears tried to create with "The Zone" was the optimum balance of each of these nutrients in each meal. If you're eating in the right proportions, you're eating "in the Zone."

Enough carbs to keep you going, enough protein and fiber to keep your blood sugar from spiking, and enough fat to help you feel satisfied.

You keep your energy up by eating these zone-perfect meals throughout the day.

And, like any good diet, you also limit your portions at each meal.

Many diabetics swear by this diet, and to me it seems like the most logical and sensible of any of the "gimmick" diet books I've read.

I've heard critics of the book say that Sears, "oversimplifies complex physiological responses." Sears does go so far as to predict that nutrition-based solutions to problems are the wave of the future. I adore this idea.

But the book itself isn't so pie-in-the sky. It does require a good amount of adjusting to one's current diet--a section on how to adopt fast-food meals to become more "Zone Perfect" includes buying two sandwiches and then combining some parts of them while throwing out others--but I think everything in here is as sensible and accurate as any advice you'll get.

If you've fallen for the Atkins hype, please, give this one a read.

Coupon Shopping

My wife and I have a weekly food budget of about $50. My wife takes control of the shopping. In an effort to feed the four of us, she's taken to coupon shopping, and she's getting really good at it.

See, the principle behind coupon shopping is something like this:

Manufacturers are keen on getting their products off the shelves. Obviously, they're motivated by profit, so they want you to buy them. However, sometimes they have other reasons to want to move the product.

Maybe they're going to introduce a new product and they want to free up shelf space. Maybe they want to get you to try the new product. Maybe they want to get something discontinued out of their sight. Maybe they have improved the quality of a product, and they want to get people to try it in the hopes they'll change brands.

So the company and the store will employ a variety of measures to make this happen. These include events, sales, and coupons.

The good news, for us, is that because the reasons a company puts an item on sale are often the same reasons they'll make coupons for them, you can usually get your coupon and a sale price for a product to meet up pretty easily. This means you can get the item very, very cheaply.

Prices are always different. Walk into three different grocery stores, find the same product, and odds are you'll find three different prices. One store will have the product on sale, and the other stores will have different shelf prices than each other. You can even go into the same store three different weeks and find three different prices.

And coupons, of course, expire.

So, the trick becomes being willing to go to three or four different stores, on an all-out quest for the absolute lowest prices on every item and comparing that with the coupons you have.

All of this takes time. The whole process takes time. You have to clip the coupons, scrutinize the sale papers, and visit all the different stores (one friend of ours actually goes to three different stores to check prices on Monday morning, then goes back to the same three stores to make her actual purchases on Tuesday morning).

I know it all sounds like a time-consuming, terrible hassle. It is. But the old adage is 100% true: Time is money. If you're willing to take the time, you can save the money. The less time you're willing to give to a purchase, the more money you're going to pay. No one pays more for anything than the person who decides they must have something and that they must have it now.

We're actually eating pretty well this way. In fact, I think we'd be eating great easily, if it wasn't for the little rub that I'm trying to lose weight at the same time I'm trying to get out of debt. Trying to eat healthy while we eat cheap makes it harder than it would otherwise be.

But she's doing a great job of it. Right now, we've got a freezer full of Lean Cuisine meals I use for my lunches at work that she got by combining a sale and coupons.

I wasn't able to get those even before I was on the budget.

Gambling: The Lottery

Imagine if the Governor of your state came up with the following proposal:

In order to solve the state's money problems, he was going to create a new tax. This tax would be only on the poor and the middle class.

Sounds silly, right? He'd get laughed out of the Governor's mansion.

Well, fact is, governors crank out a "reverse tax" like this all the time, and people love it. They clamor for more. They line up to pay it.

Because when you think about it, that's what the lottery really is. A tax on people who don't have any money but want some.

I could quote you odds and percentages on this one, but do I really need to?

The fact is, the government is waving a carrot in front of you--really, in front of you and all your neighbors--and saying that if you all hop and jump and dance for them, one of you will get the carrot.

What's worse, they're doing this while there are plenty of carrot patches all over the place.

Of course, if you think about how interest works, and how your own money can work for you, growing to make more and more dollars, it's more like the government is asking you for carrot seeds in exchange for carrots. If you would just go plant the seed, tend it and take care of it, soon enough you'd have all the carrots you would want.

Same thing with your money.

The current ad campaign for California's Super Lotto plus brags, "Why not take a risk where the upside is millions and the downside is only a buck?"

In truth, the average lottery player plays $30 a month. That's about a buck a day, seven tickets a week.

If the same person invested just that $30 a month in a Roth IRA starting at age 21--$360 a year--at 12% interest they would have half a million dollars waiting for them at retirement.

If they started when they were 18, they'd have $770,000. Over three quarters of a million dollars.

And if you hope to become a millionaire, start at 18 and pop $40 a month into the IRA instead of at the Lotto counter. By retirement, at 12% a year, a millionaire you will be.

I realize, however, that you aren't playing the lottery to prepare yourself for retirement. You're playing the lotto in the hopes of getting to retire now.

Just like the folks who make Fear Factor know they can get a half dozen people to eat bugs and rats by offering one of them some money, just like the people who make American Idol know they can make fun of as many people as they want, if they offer one of them a record contract, the state knows it can get more money out of the lower classes by offering to lift just one of them out of their plight.

And please, spare me lecture on how the money all goes to good causes. Here in California, the lottery was pitched as an education saver. But if you ask anybody in the field of education, they'll tell you the local governments were more than happy to cut school funding for various projects since the schools, after all, could now fund those with lottery money.

And please, spare me the story about your sister's mother-in-law's friend who once won $20,000. One of the guys on Fear Factor got a car, too, but I'll bet his wife kissed him different after he ate that rat.

Cancel That Card!

I went through the roof when I saw the headline, "Don't Cancel That Card!" on the Motley Fool.

The article didn't turn out to be nearly as adamant as the headline, and, buried deep in the article, the truth is there, but almost dismissively.

The fact is, mortgage lenders tend to view open, zero balance credit cards very negatively--they know how many additional expenses you're going to incur during a move--ordering pizza for the gang who helped you move, replacing stuff the gang broke while they moved you, buying new stuff because your old stuff seems out of place in the new place, etc, etc, etc.

Where are you going to put that extra expense? On all those open, zero balance cards. Any home loan officer worth his salt knows that.

There's some good links in the article, but man--those Motley Fool guys can sometimes be more foolish than Foolish. Ever since I got a call the other night offering me a "Motley Fool Credit Card," I knew a little conflict of interest had cropped up that would keep them from dispensing the best possible financial advice.

The Lymphatic System -- More Reason To Move

Just in case this blog hadn't provided you with enough reasons to get up and move yet, now we present to you your lymphatic system.

What in the world is that?

Well, you know all about your circulatory system, right? Heart pumps blood through your body, carries oxygen and nutrients to all your cells?

See, there's another system in your body that's sort of like that, that carries a clear fluid called lymph all through your body. Lymph helps remove unwanted stuff that's hanging out inside your body, and is an important part of the immune system. Lymph isn't something a lot of people know they have, but it's important to staying healthy.

Lymph has a disadvantage compared to blood, though--there's no heart for the lymphatic system. The heart will keep the blood moving around no matter if you're lying down, running around, or sitting on the couch watching Dr. Phil. There's nothing that keeps the lymph moving, unless you move.

Any movement helps--just taking a few deep breaths can get it flowing, although some people recommend sharp, quick breaths--but as you've probably guessed, nothing gets your lymph flowing and flushing out your system like exercise.

So, not only will exercise bring down your weight, help your heart, and release endorphins, but it will also help prevent sickness and cancer.

How many more reasons do you need?

Intensity

This is a word I keep hearing bandied about. Dave Ramsey talks about gazelle intensity. Bill Phillips talks about intensity. I think George McFly says something to Lorraine about intensity. Everywhere I turn, intensity, intensity, intensity.

They keep saying it's the secret. The secret doesn't seem to be a pill or a "program." It's also not a "system"--not a weight management system, not a card-counting system, not even a life planning system.

It's intensity.

So I go and look it up in the dictionary.

in·ten·si·ty
n. pl. in·ten·si·ties

Exceptionally great concentration, power, or force.

Wow. That's speaking to me. So you do something with intensity, and it works--you're putting an exceptionally great amount of effort into something, and you start seeing results. That makes sense to me. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw exceptionally great results.

You get out of any program what you're willing to put into it. If you're not intense, no program can make up for that. If you are intense, just about any program will do.

The casual problem solver looks to the program to solve his problems for him. The intense problem solver uses the program to solve his problems himself.

That's the sad, cold truth of it. If you're not giving it all you've got, you just ain't going to see the same results as if you were.

But that's also the happy, warm truth of it. If you're absolutely fed up, if you're driven, if you're willing to do what it takes--well, that energy's not going to be wasted. Let that intensity take control, and let desire move you.

Tale Of The Tape

Well, it looks like my belly and my chest are almost reaching the same circumference, despite my weight staying the same. I'm glad I'm measuring.

Sunday Book Review: The Richest Man In Babylon

If you read thirty reviews of this book, odds are 29 of them will use the word "simple." What they really mean is "short and clear." If people want to mistake brevity and clarity for simplicity, that is their choice, however I fear it keeps people from taking the book as seriously as they ought.

The Richest Man In Babylon was written in 1926 by George S. Clason. It's told as fiction, although the book does little to try to actually be a narrative. The main character is Bansir, a chariot builder, who wonders why the wealthy have gold and he does not.

As he seeks an answer to this question from Arkad, an old friend who has become the wealthiest man he knows, he discovers the principles that brought Arkad wealth are not out of his own reach, humble chariot builder though he may be.

Naturally, the book's principles also turn out to apply to you and me. They are not, believe it or not, principles of luck or craftiness or brazenness or any of the other things people think they need in order to succeed. They are actually solid, practicable principles that guarantee success.

If you went back and looked at those same 30 reviews I mentioned above, you'd probably see another phrase a lot--"common sense." This book is full of that as well, although in a world where most people receive more than one offer of credit a day and still count it a compliment that so many people are willing to lend them money, this type of sense has become far too uncommon.

Some examples:

Start thy purse to fattening - Part of what you make is yours to keep. Start keeping it. At least 10% of your income.

Control thy expenditures - If you don't have it don't spend it. In fact, don't even spend all you have.

Make thy gold multiply - Put your money where it will make you more money.

Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment - Own your own home. Get it paid off.

Increase thy ability to earn - Never stop learning. Not about money, nor about the things you need to know to provide yourself an income.

Again, this isn't innovative. The book was written in 1926. These are the tried-and-true, time-tested answers.

Those late-night infomercials you see that promise wealth in minutes, those ads you see promising great incomes for three hours a week worth of work--those are all attempted shortcuts. We all know about shortcuts, and how lost they can get you and how much time they can lose you.

This is the regular path. This is the way that you get there, the straight-line route that takes you from point A to point B. And while the book may be clear and short and straightforward, I think if you really read it, and believe it, and apply it from day to day, you'll discover the right word to describe this book isn't simple after all.

It's powerful.

For More Information . . .

I know the information I provide about actual investing is a little ambiguous. This is partly due to the format of this blog.

This year, I'm mostly trying to get out of debt, and this blog's goal is to convince other people why they want to get out of debt. So when I talk about investing or saving, it's mostly in terms of why you should get out of debt in order to do them.

My plan is to continue this blog into next year. This year's 365-Day-Turnaround is about going from debt-laden to even. Next year's 365-Day-Turnaround will be about starting to build wealth.

But I realize some of this blog's readers are ahead of me. To them, I offer some resources.

First, I like the Vanguard PlainTalk investment guides. You can either read them online or ask them to mail you a copy. There are other guides as well.

I do not know this company and I have not read this book, but if you request information from American Century, you get a free copy of the book The Automatic Millionaire. At least one reader of this blog reccomended this book to me, and hey, if it's free, what the heck.

Spin That Wheel!--Gambling: Roulette

Roulette's simple. There's a wheel with 38 numbers on it--1-36, 0, and 00. Some numbers are black and some are red. The zeros are green. They spin the wheel, drop in a little ball, and it lands below one of those numbers.

They let you bet any way you want. You can bet on an individual number, and if you're right, you get 35 bucks back for every one you bet. You can bet on odd or even, red or black, 1-18 or 19-36 and get a buck back for even money. They even have "groups" of numbers you can bet on.

I usually talk about the house PC--the "Percent to Casino." On this game, it's 5 5/19 percent on every bet but one.

How's that possible? If you can bet on red or black, your odds are as good as the casino's, right?

Nope. Those two little green spots with the zeros on them are where the casino makes all their money. Those zeros aren't red, aren't black, aren't odd, and aren't even. They're the sinkhole that makes sure that one out of every 18 spins doesn't pay off on any of those bets. Sure, you can bet on one of them as an individual bet, same as any other number, but that would only pay off 1 out of every 38 spins. And you'd only be making 35 bucks back--leaving you three bucks shy of breaking even. Betting on both would bring it back down to 1 in every 18 spins, but since two number bets only pay at 17 to 1, you'd still come up a buck short.

But wait! What about the bigger group? Those two green squares are also in one of the groups--0, 00, 1, 2, and 3. Should we bet here? Would that plug the loop?

Actually, this is that one bet that has a different house PC than all the others. For this bet, the house PC actually goes up to 7 17/19.

Like last week, there's a moral to the story. Will you win? You betcha. Especially on those even money bets, you can hit them. Will you walk away from the table with more than you started with?

Nope. To win any real money, you have to make single number bets, and the single number bets will swallow your money faster than a hungry rattlesnake landing on a crippled bunny. And by the time your number finally comes up, you've already put down as much as you win.

If, even worse, you chase the numbers, your odds get even worse.

Is there any strategy at all to roulette?

Sure. First, if you can find a European wheel, the house percentage goes down to 2.7%. This is because it only has one 0.

Second, like all machines, roulette wheels are sometimes imperfect. Watch a wheel for a while before you start betting, to see if its favoring one area of the wheel. Betting in that area might slightly increase your chances.

Is either of these strategies going to make you rich?

Does making a hole in your gas tank smaller make it fill itself back up?

Eating Healthy On The Cheap

Checked out the cookbooks at the library yesterday, looking for a book with a title along the lines of the title of this post. Didn't find any. Seems every book at the library is about making cooking easy.

I don't expect cheap, healthy cooking to be easy. There's an expression in marketing--you can have it fast, cheap or good. Pick any two. I know that's going to be true for cooking as well--you can have it fast, cheap or good-for-your, pick any two.

If you want to eat cheap and healthy, I'm sure it means soaking beans overnight and marinating cheap cuts of beef for hours.

Although I don't know yet, because I still haven't found the book.

I'll let you know when I find it.

Willpower Is Not Enough (Erik Gets All Mr. Miyagi)

I read a really fantastic book recently called Willpower Is Not Enough. Although the book was published by a religious press, it was written by two psychologists and teaches some fascinating principles.

The basic premise goes something like this:

If you're having to use "willpower" to do something, if you have to grit your teeth and make a fist and force yourself, you're not only likely to fail at it, but you're working harder than you need to.

Most often, willpower is a function of the mind. The mind intellectually understands something, and wants us to do it (or stop doing it) even if we don't want to. It's as if there's two people inside us, the one who understands what he should and should not do, and the one who doesn't want to be bothered with such restrictions.

The book identifies this other creature as your heart. Willpower issues, it says, come from times when your mind and your heart are in conflict. When you force yourself to do something, the opposition comes from your own feelings. Our culture devalues feelings, focusing instead on intellect and logic. Even most of our religions claim our passions are evil and must be suppressed. "Mind over matter," we say. "Put your mind to it."

Eastern philosophies are not so lopsided. They're all about balance. The real trick isn't so much finding a way to overpower your heart as it is to work with your heart. Involve your heart.

What do I mean by this? Well, you can take it a couple of ways.

First, let's say you want to begin a new behavior. Your brain knows it's a good behavior, but your heart doesn't want any part of it.

Your brain might know you should exercise more, but you can't get fired up about it. Stop and think about the things that do get you fired up. Maybe you're a social butterfly, and you love to be around people. If you make your exercise program into a group activity, your heart and your brain could get behind it.

The book tells of one young man who had terrible study habits. He'd study hard, cramming for a week, but then he'd burn out and ditch class for a week to hang with friends. Then, out of guilt, he'd go back to cramming and burn himself out again. As he started looking at this from a heart/mind perspective, he realized his heart wasn't in his major. By changing majors to something that excited his heart, studying was no longer a chore for him. No more real discipline was required.

Think about it. Does it take discipline for a kid to wake up on the day when she's going to Disneyland? Does it take discipline to call a radio station when they're offering those incredible tickets?

When the heart and the mind are behind things, they become far easier.

So what about the opposite? What if you want to stop a behavior?

First off, you stop assuming the desires of your heart are bad and need to be suppressed. While the means you may pursue to achieve those desires might be unhealthy, the desire itself is probably perfectly normal and important. It becomes a matter of fulfilling that need in a non-harmful way.

For instance, the next time you want to indulge in the behavior, stop and do a self assessment. Ask questions like: What am I feeling right now? What will indulging in this behavior accomplish? What need am I trying to satisfy? Is there another way I can fulfill that need?

It may sound like psychobabble, but you might be surprised to find that a tendency to overeat is actually because of a desire for affection (It's not called comfort food for nothing!). A drug problem might come from a desire to feel important.

You don't overcome those by gritting your teeth, trying to be tough, and forcing your way through it.

If I tell you for the next thirty seconds not to think of a pink elephant, pink elephants will flood your thoughts.

If instead, I tell you to try to picture a white tiger, nary a pink elephant will enter your brain.

You overcome a negative behavior by indulging those decent, honest feelings in more wholesome and positive ways.

That's not to say that there won't be times where you'll need to rely on willpower alone, nor that your heart can always be trusted.

But it is far less stressful (and more Zen) to try to bring the heart and mind together, rather than pitting them against each other.

Like a judo master can use his opponent's strength against him, by using his opponent's momentum to bring him down, so you can bring your heart into submission not through overpowering it, but through letting its powerful desires pull you into the behaviors that will bring you true joy.

Tale Of The Tape: Down Six Pounds

I attribute it all to a "lifestyle change."

I went from being a guy who mostly sat around at a desk and in his car to a guy who spends his days bailing buckets of water from flooded offices and running a wet-dry vac.

I think it's my bedtime.

Why Teenagers Should Read This Blog

When I was a child, I was really interested in time travel. My boyhood journal contains entries like:

Erik, if you're reading this in the future, if you have a time machine and some money, you can send it to me.

I was very interested in getting hooked up by my future self.

Well, now that I'm older, I know that traveling back in time is probably impossible. However, I also know something that never occurred to little Erik.

It was possible for him to hook me up.

How is that possible? What did little Erik have that big Erik doesn't?

Time. Time, as the song goes, was on his side.

If you're a teenager, it's on your side, too.

When you invest money, it earns interest. Once that money earns interest, the interest and the money start to earn interest. Then the money and the interest and the interest all earn interest together. This can snowball into bigger and bigger savings.

Let's say little five-year-old Erik had got his hands on $100. It would have been tough, but if he scraped together allowance, birthday money, Christmas money, maybe everything he got that year, he could have done it. And let's say instead of spending it, he put it away somewhere where it would earn 12% interest, compounded annually.

If that money was destined for me, 30 year old Erik, his $100 would have given me just shy of $2,000. Pretty generous of that little boy.

Of course, if the money didn't go to me, if it went to 65-year-old Erik, getting ready to retire, it wouldn't be $2,000. It would be worth over $100,000. All it cost him to do that was that $100. I don't even know what he really spent it on.

So what does this mean to you, the sixteen-year-old who's just starting his part time job? It means you have a huge advantage over me to give your future self that gift.

Guess how much it would cost you to become a millionaire? What could you do, right now, that would place a million dollars in a little box with a bow on it, labeled To: Me From: Me?

The answer is: $2,000 a year, for two years.

For $4,000, you can retire a millionaire.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "That's a lot of money. I want a stereo. I want CDs. And I really want a car. When I'm older, I'll have more money for stuff like savings. I'll have lots of time to save for retirement later."

What you don't understand, though, is that time is what you're giving up if you wait. If you wait just a little, if you wait until you're twenty, you won't be able to do it in two years any more. You'll have to put in $2,000 a month for four years if you want to retire with a million dollars. Instead of costing you $4,000, it will cost you $8,000. Those four years cost you $4,000.

But hey, that's still not so bad. $8,000 to retire a millionaire? Maybe I can do it when I'm twenty, you say.

But you know what'll happen when you're twenty? You'll be going to college, and then starting a family, and then wanting a house. Pretty soon you're going to be thirty, like me, and you're going to finally get around to starting your investing.

Guess how many years I would have to save $2,000 a year if I wanted to have a million dollars when I retired? Ten? Fifteen?

Well, technically I could stop in twenty years, when I turned 50. But I would still have about a hundred thousand less than you'd end up with from your $4,000. In fact, I could put away $2,000 a year every year, from now until I retired, and I still wouldn't have as much money as if you invested as a teenager. I wouldn't even have as much as if I'd invested at 20, and stopped at 24. I would never catch up.

So who's the wisest?

The guy who does all three. The one who leaves himself a million dollar present as a teenager, leaves himself a million dollar present as a twenty-something, and then leaves himself another million dollar present from thirty on.

Now, if you're a particularly sharp teenager, you noticed a little something on that paycheck you got. You didn't get it all. The government gets a good share in taxes. So you're probably worried that when you save that million, the government's going to take a huge chunk of it away. Up until just a few years ago, you'd have been right.

But a few years ago, a guy named Roth came up with a tiny little change in the way Individual Retirement Accounts work. Instead of paying with pre-tax dollars, and then taxing retirees when they withdraw money, what if they pay with after-tax dollars, and the money grows tax-free?

In other words, there is a place you can put your money where the Government cannot tax it, where it will grow free, and every penny of it is yours when you're done.

It's called a Roth IRA, after that Roth guy, but you may call it your little patch of heaven. Because it's sheltered, the government limits the amount you can put in it, but don't worry. The limit is exactly $2,000 a year. And there's no age limit on when you can start contributing.

Even if you can't do the full $2,000 this year, do $1,000. If you do $1,000 a year in a Roth IRA, you'd only have to pay until you were 20--an extra $1,000--to hit the million. A $5,000 total cost.

The real point--beyond the security you'll be giving yourself--is that you'll learn something about your money. As you put it in that account and watch it grow, you'll be slower to give your money away for "stuff." I'm not saying you can't get some "stuff." Stuff's fun, and having fun is part of what teenagerhood is for. But there's this powerful ability you have right now to turn that one dollar into many, many more.

Because if you did it consistently, do you know how much you would have, if you invested $2,000 a year from age 16 until retirement in an IRA, earning around 12% interest in some good growth stock mutual funds?

Over 5.3 million dollars.

Wait two years. Go ahead. Start when you're 18. The number drops to 4.2 million.

Still sound okay? Sounds like you can wait?

Well if you wait any longer, say until after college, and start saving for retirement at 25, the number drops to 1.9 million.

Wait until you're thirty, like me, and you'll barely clear a million.

But please, don't put it off any longer than that. Do you know what the number drops to if you wait until you're 40? Take a guess.

$300,000.

Wait until you're fifty, and it's not even $100,000.

Time is money. That's not just an expression; that's the mathematical truth.

The little boy me eventually grew up to understand the laws of physics that prevented future me from shooting those dollars back to him, so he forgave me, I think. After all, it just wasn't possible.

But I wonder about future me, waiting there at the end of my career, knowing full well that I had it in my power to leave him a wonderful gift of security and peace of mind. I wonder about my wife's future self, who may have to be without me for a time, who also understands the power our younger selves had to launch this gift forward to them.

Will they forgive us, because they remember how pressing the purchases of today seemed to us? Or will the purchases she and I are making, the stuff we put on credit cards, the money we spent paying interest instead of earning it all be as inconsequential to them as the purchases little Erik made are to me?

Sunday Book Review: Financial Peace Revisited

Dave Ramsey's story goes something like this:

Back in the day, Dave was into "creative real estate." You know the kind--it's the kind that you see advertised on late-night TV, where you try to buy real estate you can't afford by financing it for "nothing down." He did other types of real estate as well, but he was caught up in the get-rich-quick mentality that dominates a lot of wealth-building videos and seminars. Before too long, he was an on-paper millionaire.

Of course, it wasn't too much longer before bad market conditions, some changes in real estate law, and a whole bunch of debt caught up with him, and he was right back to being, not stone cold broke, but drowned in debt he couldn't afford.

So he dumped the "Get Rich Quick" mindset and adopted a bunch of tried and true, no-risk ways of getting out of debt and building wealth. As he likes to say, "It's the kind of financial advice your Grandma would give you."

As some of his old associates started seeing how well he was doing and as some of the pastors at his local churches asked him to help people in financial dire straits, he decided there might be a market for a book about simple financial principles.

He wrote it, called it Financial Peace, and self-published 1,000 copies. Around the same time, he started doing a little show on a local radio station.

Now, his books are bestsellers, and the radio show is nationally syndicated. Seems people are hungry to hear no-risk, simple, common sense financial talk.
This is an expanded version of that original manuscript, with a few new chapters and additional commentary by his wife Sharon. This is basic, nuts-and-bolts commentary on debt and finance. If you only buy one book on money (and why would you only want one book on a topic like money?) this would probably be the one.

It gives simple explanations about everything from how to pick a mutual fund to what all the "alphabet soup" (529? 401K? IRA? 403B?) savings plans are all about.

But most importantly, this book seeks to give you the emotional drive to do all of this, not just the logic. After all, when was the last time you saw somebody running down the street like a mad man, screaming, "ARRRGH! I have come to a logical conclusion!!"

The truth is, until we get emotional about something, we flat-out don't do it. Hopefully, this will give you some of what you need to get going. Like the title states, it isn't so much about getting rich (although it certainly tells you how to do that by retirement) as it is about peace. Not staying up at night, worrying about how sick your daughter might be, and where you would get the co-pay from if had to take her to the emergency room the next day.

I've been there, and I'll tell you, I'm not going back.

Fame!

Thanks to Jarle at Poundfighter for the link. Jarle is Norwegian, but living in Sweden, and running a very interesting weight loss blog.

About Upromise

So for about the last year, my wife and I have been using Upromise. You've probably seen their little logo on things at the store at wondered what the deal was. Here you go.

See, Upromise works together with a bunch of products and restaurants and gas stations and other places, and every time you purchase one of those products or dine at one of those restaurants or fill up at one of those gas stations, a percentage of what you spent goes to a "savings" account for your child (or children) or a child (or children) you know.

The savings percentage varies depending on the product or service you buy, anywhere from 3-10%.

The ads say this is a way to "invest" in the child's future, but that's a little misleading. The nickels and dimes that various companies put into your account do not actually go straight into any type of "investment" account. The site does give you the option of setting up a 529 account through Vanguard, but the minimum contribution is $50 a month. At 3% savings per item, you would have to buy $1,666.67 worth of groceries to qualify. If you eat out a lot, and went to restaurants that gave you back 10%, you could get that $50 by spending $500 a month eating out.

Of course, you could just come up with the fifty bucks. Before you think, "Oh, that's too expensive," remember--it's not a fee. It's really an investment. It stays your money. It's fifty bucks a month you're setting aside to pay for your child's education. It's a special savings account that has certain tax advantages. Fifty bucks a month, invested for ten years at 11% interest would give you $11,000 when it came time to send Junior to school, even though you only paid $6,000 in.

Even if you don't have the fifty bucks a month to save yet, you may as well join one of these places. There is no cost and there's some free money.

How much?

Well, I've been doing it for around a year now. Prior to today, I have never once checked my balance. I have also never once made a purchase based on what would get me Upromise money and what wouldn't. In fact, I am partial to one brand of gasoline that does not work with Upromise.

So, how much was in that account when I checked it today, after all this time?

$4.22. Divided equally between my two daughters, that works out to $2.11 each.

About half of that was made in the last 120 days. Now that my wife has begun coupon shopping, we're buying more of the brand-name products that participate. However, since they pay you as a percentage of the price you paid, and we're using coupons and double coupons to not pay much at all . . . well, you see the number.

Although 75 cents of that came from one trip to Red Brick Pizza I took last year, dining alone, so if you eat out much it may be more worth it to you.

Either way, it's money to my name (or my kid's names) I wouldn't have had if I didn't join up. Joining didn't cost me anything, so why not?

As long as I don't make stupid purchases just because I think I'm getting something out of it in Upromise dollars, there's no possible pain, and a little gain.

Okay, very little.

Gambling: The Worst Odds On The Strip

Casino gambling works like this:

A whole bunch of people show up each day and give a bunch of money to the casino. The casino gives part of it back. Then, people give that to the casino, too. The casino gives part of that back.

People still keep giving more and more of that back to the casino, though. Know why? Because they think that once they won, they're playing with casino money. It becomes play money to them, and so they don't feel it so much when they give it back, a little at a time, to the casino.

The amount that the house gets to keep (this is called the P.C., or the "Percent to Casino") is often regulated by law. In Atlantic City, it's required that all slot machines have a maximum P.C. of 17%. This means that for every 100 dollars that gets put into the machine, it has to give back 83.

So which game has the highest P.C. of any game on the strip? Which game does the house keep the most money on? Poker? Blackjack? Slots?

Nope. It's Keno.

On Keno, the house keeps 25%. In other words, for every dollar that's played, the house keeps a quarter.

Keno works like this: You get a little paper with numbers on it from 1 to 80. You pick a bunch of numbers, the casino picks a bunch of numbers. If picking numbers is too much of a mathematical stretch for you, the casino will often pick your numbers for you, too. The casino pays you based on how high a percentage of your numbers match with their numbers.

Keno winnings are often called "Miracle Money," by gamblers, who know that's what it would take to get it in any great quantity.

Please note--I'm not saying you won't get any of it. You will. What you won't do is win big. If you play enough, the casino will graciously give you back about 3/4 of what you put into it, and they'll call it "winnings."

Keno is a game with no strategy, no luck, no skill involved.

Does it have any redeeming qualities? Sure. Because the game takes longer than most other casino games (figure about 10 minutes to get all the cards and pick the house numbers, versus having the cards tossed down right then) you lose your money more slowly.

However, in this busy, fast-paced world of ours, it may be more efficient to follow Harry Anderson's advice to would-be Keno players: "I'd suggest simply asking for the manager of the casino and handing over a quarter of the money in your wallet, sucker!"

Want further proof of the difficulty of winning big in Keno?

Iwon.com has a keno-like game they run daily called "Pick 7." They've been running this game daily for years. Everybody who goes to the site can pick seven numbers, click an ad, and have a shot at $70,000.

Guess how many times, in the last five years, they've had to pay out a winner? 10 times? Five?

Twice. Once April of last year, and once back in 2001. That's it.

If you're looking for something to do at a casino while you're eating lunch that involves numbers, try this instead:

1. Get a keno form for you and a friend. Or two sheets of notebook paper. Even a couple napkins will work fine.
2. Each of you pick a bunch of numbers.
3. Give each other a buck for each one you match.
4. Repeat as often as you wish.

You get the same effect without losing any money! I'm sure this game will be all the rage at lunch appointments all over the nation by the end of the week.

I mean, if people are willing to pay to play it, how much more exciting will it be to get to play for free!

Squirm Yourself Skinny

My Dad shot me a copy of this press release on an elaborate study done by the Mayo clinic. They had obese and non-obese people wear special underclothing with elaborate motion sensors (The kind they use in fighter jets? How fast did they think these folks would be moving?) and then monitored their "NEAT" rating.

"NEAT" stands for "non-exercise activity thermogenesis," or in other words, how many calories you burn doing stuff other than exercising.

Guess what they found? That the non-exercise movement was a bigger factor in keeping you thin than regular, regimented exercise. "Obese persons sit, on average, 150 minutes more each day than their naturally lean counterparts."

But could that be because they're heavier? The study checked that, too.

For the next phase of the study, the researchers overfed the lean people by 1,000 calories a day to make them gain weight, and underfed the obese people by 1,000 calories a day to replicate an intense diet. Researchers then monitored their movements every half second for 10 days and compared the results. Even after losing weight, the naturally obese group sat more and moved less. And even after gaining weight, the naturally lean group stood, walked and even fidgeted more than the other group.

The moral of the story? Don't sit still. If you are sitting still (like watching TV) do something else at the same time. Iron. Sort laundry. I used to practice card tricks--guess I'll get to again.

I knew a girl who would crochet bandages for a hospital every time she was sitting down anywhere--even at church. It didn't require much thought, so she could still pay attention to what was going on, but she was always doing something.

So fidget your way fit. Wiggle down your weight. Squirm yourself skinny. And when your Mom says, "Can't you sit still?" just say, "Nope. The Mayo clinic said it's good for me."

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Month

Well, today was bill paying day.

Bill paying day is officially my favorite day of the month now.

Paying off my bills isn't like weight loss. It isn't as disconnected. With weight loss, you eat less, and you exercise, and you hope in some vague, ambiguous way, it will show up on the scale.

When I pay bills, I pay, and I immediately see the numbers go down.

Today I finished paying off the first one--a Chase Visa with a $400 limit. Which, of course, frees up more money to go to the next bill, which is Dell Financial services.

Although the total payoff for Dell is a number remarkably close to the amount I'm getting back in my tax refund. So that bill may be paid off next month.

Which will leave me free to start paying off my car early.

It also means I'll be getting to the point where the fact that my bills were so high will work for me. Because the bills that are paid off will give me greater power to pay down on the ones that are still outstanding.

It doesn't mean life is easier in other areas. We're counting our blessings that February is a short month, so we can make the $100 we have left in our food budget last for the next twelve days.

It does mean we probably won't be ordering out for pizza any time soon.

And of course, it will be discouraging to get the bills in the mail next month and see the balances creeping back up as interest inches the "amount owed" a little higher each time (Did I mention that, of my $40 monthly "amount due" on my Dell account, a full thirty dollars was going towards interest? Do you know that I'll probably mention it again?).

But I'll get to knock that down with greater and greater vigor.

Now, I get to do it all again on the 16th of next month.

Start a budget, if you haven't already. Dave Ramsey says, "A budget is people telling their money where to go instead of wondering where it went." If you can't do a budget yet, at least track your finances. Keep a log of how much went where. How much are you really spending on eating out? How much are you really spending on those magazines you pick up at the check out counter?

I was shocked--shocked--to read an article a guy wrote where he advised people not to balance their checkbooks. "You have better things to do with your time," the article said. "You always have a pretty good idea what's in there."

Pretty good, nothing. I remember when I first got my check card. I worked at the bank, got a snazzy little card with my picture on it, and I had a "pretty good idea" what was in there right into repeated overdraft dips into my savings account.

Keep a checkbook. Yes, it's time consuming, but time is money, and if you don't have the money, than you have to be willing to give up the time.

Then track those purchases. See what money is going where. Even if you don't think you can do a budget now, tracking your finances will help you get an idea of what you would need to do to create one.

Because in reality, the more desperate your financial situation, the more desperately you need a budget.