Good Fortune At My Own Expense.

Never get the warranty. It's usually a rip-off. The salesman will try to convince you that the second you walk out the door, the product is going to explode in your hands, and the only recourse you'll have is that warranty.

(Whenever they're doing this, I can't help but wonder if they really think their product is so bad they really, really need to sell me on a promise to fix it.)

Well, four years ago, I got the warranty for my video camera. I don't know why did it, except that I was stupid. If my four-years-younger self wasn't stupid, there wouldn't be a need for a turnaround.

So for about the last year, this video camera hasn't worked right. It works fine if it's plugged in, but if you try to run it off the battery, you get nothing. I kind of need a video camera, so I figured that would be one of my first purchases once this debt payoff thing's done.

Except as I was going through my desk looking for index cards, I discovered this fortuitous gift from my stupid past--a full, four year warranty from Best Buy from November of 2001--two months after my first daughter was born, and she was starting to do cute stuff I figured I'd want to see years and years later.

Apparently I wasn't a total moron--based on the last four digits of the card on the receipt, I didn't go into debt for the camera--I just let the guy bully me into an $80 warranty. Which means I now don't have to pay for a new battery that probably doesn't cost half that.

Either way, it was a nice bit of luck. Look for some of the results of my working camera to pop up soon over at mildlyamusing.com.

Now if I can just discover I left $5,000 in a good growth stock mutual fund and forgot about it.

Friday Mythbustin': Gatorade Is A Diet Drink

Myth: Gatorade is a good drink to have if you're trying to lose weight, because it's for healthy people.

Truth: Gatorade is sugar water.

Yup. You read that right. Gatorade is specially formulated Kool-Aid.

I'm not saying Gatorade is bad. It works. It does exactly what it's meant to do. But it's not meant to make a person healthy.

What it's meant to do is give you energy, and Gatorade does this really well.

There are several kinds of sugar, each of which your body processes at a different speed. Some can be absorbed into the bloodstream directly from your stomach. Some have to be processed by your kidneys first.

Gatorade contains a special mix of these sugars. By giving you some of each, it creates a "time release" effect, where by the time your body has finished processing one set of sugars, the others are starting kick in.

Now, as with all energy, if your body doesn't use it, it stores it. Which means if you aren't running around or working hard or somehow giving your body things to do with that energy, it's going to store it--and to your body, stored energy means fat.

So if you aren't up and moving when you have It in you, it will stay in you, on your waistline.

Which leaves you with two options. Either stop drinking it or go out and give yourself a reason to need it. Both should help a lot.

And it's not just Gatorade, by the way. Lots of so-called "healthy" drinks are basically sugar water, and just as bad as soda. I stopped drinking Sobes when I noticed the ingredients list was exactly the same as Mountain Dew, except the water wasn't carbonated.

Be careful when the first ingredient in your juice says "High Fructose Corn Syrup." Fructose is the sugar your body processes instantly. That means it spikes your blood sugar levels, and unless you're doing something to burn it, your body will instantly start pulling that stuff out of the blood and storing it as fat in order to get your levels back to normal. Not even Gatorade, the stuff designed for athletes who are giving 110% every moment, tries to pump that much sugar into the body right away.

3 Miles A Day

So somewhere a few days ago I got the idea I should start moving 3 miles a day. At this point, I don't care if I walk it or run it or crawl it, just as long as I locomote, under my own power, three miles every day.

This was due in part to watching Supersize Me. In that, the guy tries real hard not to move much. Not moving much is one of the secrets to gaining weight.

So I'm thinking, if this guy can create a "perfect storm" for weight gain, why not work a little harder to create a "perfect storm" for weight loss?

In essence, that's what I've been doing, but I knew if there was one category I was lacking in, it was the cardio. So I decided to give myself this goal of three miles to get me going on cardio.

So I've been doing it. It's been entirely walking, so far. Yesterday it was at the mall. Today it was just around a neighborhood. And you know what? It feels great. One of the coolest part was seeing how loose my clothes fit--I don't realize sitting around the office or driving my car all day that even with my belt on the tightest loop, it's not hugging my hips very well. That's really encouraging.

(There's a tip for you: If you want to feel good while you're walking, put on some of your "bigger" clothes, so you can feel like you've shrunk inside them as you walk. "Weren't these tight when I left the house?")

Of course, I blew my shot at a "perfect" storm--tonight was my brother's birthday, and once we busted out the meat at my folk's house, I didn't eat so hot. But at least it was grilled and smoked, even if it was pork and sausage. As penance, I passed on the cake.

Tomorrow, we shall make it all come together. Weightlifting in the morning, perfect eating all day long, and walking in the--well, walking sometime. Once I can fit it in.

And all shall be amazed at my powers of self-diminishment.

We won? Maybe?

A while back I mentioned "Dumb Stuff I'm Trying To Get Out Of Debt," or something like that. I said that in addition to all the smart things I'm doing, like coupon clipping and budgeting and debt snowballing, I was also trying some not-so-effective things like entering lots of contests.

Not the lottery, mind you. Not Vegas or online casinos. Just the free stuff. I use iwon.com for all my searches, that sort of thing. The way I saw it, at the end of the year, I'd be able to say, "Total raised by me: $____.__. Total raised by contests: $0.00."

Well, it looks like that may be wrong. But I say that with a caveat.

Over at the website of a local radio station, there's a contest page that shows all the contests Clear Channel has going on right now, and for the last few months there's been a contest for free Lasik, one free surgery a month, and I've entered my wife's name each month.

(While we both have vision problems, hers are far worse than mine. To get her Lasik has been a goal of mine for a while now, hence why I kept entering her in this contest.)

Well, she won. To be specific, she won a $2,000 gift certificate to Custom Laser Center in Los Angeles.

Now marketing is part of my job, too. So I have this underlying suspicion that while the ad says "contest" for "free" Lasik, this is really some kind of bait-and-switch technique, where it turns out surgery really costs $3,200 and they bring you all the way down there and butter you up and convince you to fork over the other $1,200.

When we asked them about it on the phone, they said procedures run from $800-$5,000, depending on your vision problems.

So I am extremely interested to see how this goes, and I will definitely be making a full report here. We're meeting the guy with the letters after his name a couple of weekends from now, so watch this space for exciting developments.

Erik on Supersize Me

I just saw Supersize Me for the first time. Yeah, I know that it would seem like the fitness-savvy half of this website would have been there on opening day, but the budget-savvy half of this side waits for most stuff to come out on DVD (the longer you wait, the cheaper, and all that).

Here's some of my thoughts. If you've seen it, you'll probably remember all the stuff I'm talking about. If you haven't, keep these in mind when you do check it out.

First, the biggest culprit in his weight gain and health problems wasn't the Big Mac, nor was it the Filet o' Fish he kept calling the "worst thing on the menu."

The burgers aren't health food, obviously, but if you remember the guy who's been eating two Big Macs a day since before he was married, the Big Macs weren't the problem. He was skinny, and his cholesterol was fine.

Plain and simple, it was the fries and the soda.

The guy knew this in the film. That's part of why it's called Supersize Me--he's paroding the company's willingness to give you a half a pound of fries and a tub of soda with your sandwich.

However, to claim that the company had an insidious plot motivating them do this is just crazy. In fact, it was Americans who were trying to be smart who motivated the whole "giant food" craze. They weren't trying to be smart about their health, though. They were trying to be smart about their money. Getting a ton of food for little money felt like a great value.

Fast food places were actually behind the curve on this one--they were copying gas stations. I remember when I was a kid, and you could get a 44oz soda at 7-Eleven or AM-PM for under a buck. You never got your soda at the fast food place. You got your burger there, and then headed over to the gas station for your tasty beverage. I would guess fast food places knew this was happening and chasing those dollars. The syrup for the extra soda probably only cost them a dime, and they got the business back.

Even in the movie, when they needed the really big soda, they headed to 7-Eleven.

So let's stop vilifying everybody. Let's stop saying it's the government's fault for letting McDonald's sell people a product they really wanted to buy. Let's stop saying it's McDonald's fault for producing a product that people enjoyed. Let's even stop saying it's the public's fault for trying to be smart about their money or their convenience or whatever motivates them.

Instead, let's take advantage of the new knowledge we have. Let's make smarter food choices and smarter reading choices (Googling "365 day turnaround" instead of "gossip about Justin Timberlake" is a good start, so I'm delighted you're here).

As is oh-so-briefly mentioned in the film, often times we don't care as much about health care as we do about "sick care." We notice our bodies only insofar as they stop working, and only then are we dragged kicking and screaming to see a physician. We don't live healthy, we "diet." We don't live healthy, we get gym memberships we never use.

That's part of why this website talks about a "365 day turnaround." I'm not looking to toss some pounds off and then go back to what I was doing. I'm trying to completely modify my lifestyle into one that makes my body healthier and healthier and my finances more and more solvent, rather than slowly getting fatter and fatter and getting myself into a deeper and deeper financial mess.

So I'm grateful for the movie, mostly because I think it imparts a whole bunch of really good knowledge, and knowledge is always power.

But as far as singling out McDonald's specifically--he also wasn't exercising (wasn't moving much at all), wasn't drinking water outside of what he got from them, wasn't monitoring his calorie intake--he was creating a perfect storm of physical neglect that went beyond just the food he was eating. I could probably get similar effects if I did all that stuff and ate his wife's vegan menus.

Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea.

Healthy is a lifestyle, not a boxed product from a fast food place.

Alton Brown On Supersize me

Here's what Alton Brown, host of TV's Good Eats--the show that got me interested in cooking--had to say after he saw Supersize Me.

I just saw the movie “Supersize Me” and I have to say that I liked it. It was fun, irreverent film making on a shoestring and it’s good to know that filmmakers can still pull that sort of thing off.

What shocked me about the movie wasn’t what it said, or. Heck I already new most of that stuff. What shocked me were the gasps I heard from the audience, most of whom seemed generally surprised that big business could be so…well…business like.

Here’s what it comes down to kids. Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you. They are not going to laugh with you on your birthdays, or hold you when you’re sick and sad. They won’t be with you when you graduate, when your children are born or when you die. You will be with you and your family and friends will be with you. And, if you’re any kind of human being, you will be there for them. And you know what, you and your family and friends are supposed to provide you with nourishment too. That’s right folks, feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Feed yourselves.
Feed your loved ones.
And for God’s sake feed your children.

Don’t trust anyone else to do it…not anyone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go out to dinner every now and then…that is after all one of the great joys of life…but it isn’t life itself and that’s what I’m talking about.

Is MacDonalds food bad for you? What do you think? Does that mean you shouldn’t eat it? No, it just means you shouldn’t live on it or anything else made by someone you wouldn’t hug.

Burgers don’t kill people.
People kill people.
Don’t be one of them.

A

More on The Artist's Way

This isn't really a review, since I'm only 1/6th of the way through this book, but I have to say, I absolutely love it.

The book's subtitle is "A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity," but honestly, it is neither as New Age or as artist-centric as the title might make it sound. In reality, it's a book for people who are, for some reason, finding themselves unable to do something they really, really want to do. Maybe it's the mythical "writer's block," or maybe it's taking up a hobby you've missed for years, or maybe it's quitting your job for one you actually enjoy.

Whatever it is, if you're blocked--especially if you're painfully blocked, I recommend The Artist's Way.

It's certainly not for everybody. As you can see in the reviews, people either love this book or they absolutely loathe it.

Some may find Cameron's tone too dreamy and poetic--if you are such a get-down-to-business type, you probably just get-down-to-business and do it anyway, and don't need the book. But if, perhaps, you know you should get-down-to-business, but can't bring yourself to do so, this book might help restore some of the sense of "play" that is, in the end, what makes any "serious" business worthwhile.

The book--at least so far--could be summed up as the counter to the worldly idea in this quote, taken from the book's margin:

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. -- Susan Jeffers

This book strives to restore the position of the "positive" as not only realistic, but, ultimately, the only thing worth bothering with.

It's set up as a twelve week course, apparently mirroring an actual twelve week class the author used to teach. The two primary features of the course are "Morning Pages"--three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing about anything you do each morning--and "The Artist's Date"--a date with one's proverbial "inner child" each week, where you do something you know you would enjoy but wouldn't normally have the chance (or allow yourself!) to do.

If all of this seems too "group therapy" for you, you might want to steer clear. But if it sounds intriguing at all, go do a "Look Inside This Book!" thing over at Amazon and see what you think.

Anybody reading ever finish it?

Friday Mythbustin': I'll Just Have The Salad

Myth: It's good to order "just" a salad if you're trying to eat healthy or lose weight.

Truth: Salads are sometimes the most fattening thing on the menu.

I had to throw this in here today after listening to an office full of people discussing lunches, and hearing how often the phrase "just a salad" or even the word "salad" came up.

The idea behind salads is a decent one. Since vegetables are high-fiber and low-calorie, a nice little mix of them adds fiber and some minerals without adding very many unwanted calories. Hence the "salad" portion of the meal. Some lettuce and tomatoes and things to balance the straight carbs and protein, like bread and steak.

But when you make the salad the center of attention, it seems kind of dull. It needs spruced up a little, badly, to become a complete meal. In fact, it needs carbs and protein--all the stuff you used to eat on the plate next to the salad plate.

So that's what restaurants did. They started adding bells and whistles to the salads to the point where all those fiber-filled vegetables have become a bed, a nest, a holding center for lots and lots of calorie filled stuff.

Think about the stuff people put on salads:

Dressing: By far, the worst offender. Two tablespoons of bleu cheese dressing contain 118 calories. That glob of dressing on top of that tomato slice has more calories than the whole tomato (which had about 22 calories whole).

Ah, but!, you say. Bleu cheese is 100% fat! I will go with the fat-free dressing! Well you're on the right track--you've probably gone from 118 calories per two tablespoons to around 50. Still more than twice the original tomato, and chances are the restaurant's globbed more than two tablespoons on your lettuce.

Your best bet is to go with as low-cal a dressing as you enjoy the taste of, and then try to spread it as thinly as you can throughout the salad. Some people say to get the dressing on the side, then dip your fork in the dressing, then take a forkfull of salad. If that works for you, great, but I've never really dug it.

Croutons, Chips-strips, Noodles, etc.: Would you eat straight white bread or chips if you were dieting? So then why is it suddenly a "diet" food when it's on a salad?

It's not, plain and simple. Lots of that stuff is fried, lots of that stuff is stuffed with calories, and lots of that stuff has zero nutritional value.

Unfortunately, it's also my favorite part of most salads.

(Okay, little confession. There was a time where I'd use Lucky Charms on my salads. Yes, the breakfast cereal. The crunchy part acted like croutons, and the marshmallows gave a nice sweet flavor, like raisins.)

It's probably the realization that I can't have croutons with it that turns me most off to salads now.

(To give you an idea of the difference the above two make--the Caesar side salad at Wendy's, without the dressing and croutons, is 90 calories. That's including the cheese and the "bacon pieces." With the dressing and croutons, it shoots up to 290 calories. Those two have twice the calories of the rest of the salad.)

Meats: "Ah, that's a fine cut of meat. Put it in the salad."

Not high up on the list of things you're going to hear at most of the restaurants you and I can afford. Chances are that's not the leanest stuff in the house.

Plus, lots of salads feature "hard" meats, full of saturated fats and other calorie-laden stuff that's really yummy but not all that healthy. Even if it's chicken, it's often the same fried "finger" chicken they serve in appetizers, with all the added calories of deep-frying.

Cheese: Cheese is another make-or-break. Piles of shredded cheese add on saturated fat calories. A a lot less of a flavorful hard cheese, like Parmesan, can do the same thing for fewer calories.

How big a difference in calories can we find in what constitutes a "salad?"

Well, at Jack In The Box, if you get a Chicken Caesar Salad, you're looking at around 220 calories, without the dressing. But if you get the Chicken Club Salad, that's a plate of 825 calories, before the dressing. The Bacon Bacon Cheeseburger has less than that. That's about the same as a Jumbo Jack and medium fries.

Over at Wendy's, that Mandarin Chicken Salad might seem tempting, with only 170 calories. But that's only before the noodles, almonds, and dressing. Those kick you up to 610 calories, giving you more calories than the Big Bacon Classic sandwich.

So "salad" might be a good starting word, but it's not enough to guarantee healthy eating. Some good words to tack on there would be "grilled" (as in the meat), "low-cal" (as in the dressing), "sensible" (as in the portion size), and fresh (as in the ingredients, because fresh vegetables are quite the opposite of bland).

Commemorating An End To Procrastination

I think I'll do today's blog entry tommorrow.

Do It Now! Do It Today!

I am a master procrastinator. The champ. If there were any area of life where procrastination triumphed, mine would be a Rocky-level success story.

Unfortunately, this is planet Earth, and here, procrastination is debilitating. Today I re-read some things I wrote several years ago, around the same time my daughters were born.

Guess what I was talking about?

Yup. My weight issues. My money issues. My job issues. My school (or lack thereof) issues. The same nonsense I'm still dealing with. The same problems I blog about here day after day.

My younger self actually wrote, "Even if I got back in school today, I wouldn't be ready for a masters program until I was 30. 30! My life would be nearly half over."

I want to throttle that kid. You're barreling down on 30 now, man! It came even though you weren't in school. What were you waiting for?

He probably deserves some slack. Though he didn't know it, he was only a couple of months away from doctors finding a tumor in his newborn daughter's leg and having some of the hardest decisions of his life.

The guy that needs throttled is me--the one who came through all that and still hasn't learned. Who still can't do today what he can put off 'till tomorrow.

So part of my turnaround will be transforming from Erik, Royal High King of Postponement into Erik, Guy Who Does It As Soon As It Needs Done.

I'm going to change a couple of habits that, while I realize are only symptoms of the problem, will help me remember this change and give my positive self-talk some back-up.

From now on I will:

1. Refill the gas tank on half a tank, rather than waiting for it to empty.

2. I will take out the trash before the rim is reached, not once the pile above the rim is no longer architecturally capable of supporting more trash.

3. I will get anything that must be done before the end of the month done by the 17th of that month.

Down Another Pound

Well, I'm down another pound. I have about 10 weeks to go until my birthday, and about 16 pounds to reach my goal of 220 by my birthday. Will I be able to pull it off? Will I shed this excess weight and rise above my yo-yo past, or will I crash and burn, brought down in a blaze of deep-fried foods and oversized portions?

Stay tuned, true believers, as the saga continues . . .

Testing A New Posting Feature

Yet another attempt to try and facilitate my publishing this blog easier,
leaving me more time to write my fiction and other things.

Hopefully, this experiment will not go as freakishly wrong as it went on my
other blog, leaving my entire page looking like portions of another blog had
been cut and pasted into mine. We will have to see.

In the meantime, the 365-day-turnaround continues, and new weight
information should be up tomorrow in the new tale of the tape.

Also, just like I've used Dave Ramsey's baby steps to try to control my
finances, and Bill Phillips' Body-For-Life to get going on fitness,
I'm once again giving Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way a shot at
re-energizing my creativity. It was a birthday gift from my dad shortly
before the birth of my first daughter, and I started the 12 weeks, but never
finished them. This time, I'm giving it another go. We'll see if this
makes any sparks, and any sparks will be duly reported.

Changing The Cardio

For the last four months, I have been very faithfully lifting weights. My brother and I have only missed a couple of days--once, because his wife had a baby, and once, because my daughter had an earache.

I haven't been nearly so faithful with my cardio. Because we both figured we could do cardio without needing a spotter, we didn't get together to do it.

Well, that's changing this week.

Starting Teusday, we will also be doing cardio together. I don't mean side-by-side (that boy could probably run me into the ground) but we will meet each morning, like we do with weightlifting, so we both feel the positive peer pressure to get up and do it.

I hope to see this push me to the proverbial "next level," fitness wise.

I'll let you know.

Friday Mythbustin': "Right Way" vs. "Wrong Way"

Myth: There is one right "way" to eat, and once you discover it, you're going to be slim, happy and healthy.

Truth: Because people's bodies and goals are different, "right" and "wrong" can be completely different for different people.

So there are diets that say to eat no carbs.

And then there's diets that say that to eat carbs, but only when you balance them with protein.

And then there's diets that say to eat carbs and protein, but never at the same time.

What's going on here? Why can't anybody agree?

What you have to remember is that different diets have different purposes. They're each trying to make your body do different things.

For example, a lot of the "no-carb" diets are trying to trigger a specific reaction in your body--a thing called ketosis. The entire goal of this type of diet is that one single thing. Dieticians disagree about whether ketosis is a good thing or a bad thing, but they all agree a no- or low-carb diet will get you there.

The types of diet that require you don't eat combinations of food--they usually say to eat nothing but fruit until noon, and then make sure time passes between when you have carbs and when you have protein--are actually less about weight loss, and more about keeping your system clean. Since different chemicals are required to digest carbs than protein, your body can process them faster if you only throw one of them at a time into your system.

On the other hand, diets that ask you to eat foods in combination are trying to do the opposite--since digestion burns calories, the longer the digestion process takes, the better. Combinations of food slow the rate of absorption into your body, giving you the chance to burn that energy before it gets stored.

So if it seems like two food statements are in conflict (This article says I should eat broccoli, but this one says I shouldn't) stop and look at what the reasoning for each statement is. A difference in recommendation is usually because of a difference in goal.

Good-Bye Cheap Internet

Well, I just got word that what has been one of the nicest budget items I have--my dial-up internet access--is going away.

Access4less.net is going to discontinue doing dial-up on May 9th. I've been getting dial-up service from them for $5.95 a month for some time now, and have not had any complaints about their service.

I'm a no-frills internet kind of guy anyway--spare me your special browsers and your nifty chat features and your special dialers. Just give me the settings to plug into my dialer, don't hassle me, and I won't hassle you. Access4less was internet service that worked for me.

If I don't do anything, they're going to bump me over to Earthlink for $9.95 a month, which only represents a $4.00 increase in my budget, and while $4.00 doesn't bother me so much any more, six months ago, that would have been a pretty big deal to me, and so there's still a little voice in my head that's upset about it now.

Either way, I'm going to miss my silent ISP. I have a suspicion this is going to be like when my neighbor upstairs moved away and the new people moved in--it's not that I missed seeing and hearing the folks upstairs, it's that I miss not seeing and hearing them.

On Budgets--An Analogy or Two (or Six)

I've been using an analogy lately when talking to people about budgets. People seem to think using a budget is like tying up your hands and feet before jumping into shark-infested waters. If the month is going to be tough, financially, why limit yourself? Why not leave yourself completely free to use the money the way it's needed?

I'd say that's like a major-league center fielder looking at his glove and saying, "You know, this thing is really limiting me. It's got two positions--open and close. If I took this thing off, my hand would really be free to catch that ball that's hurling at me through space."

Or a carpenter who says, "You know, I keep using this hammer, and the end of this hammer is really small. I'm even missing the nails sometimes. But look at the size of the palm of my hand! I bet I'd never miss if I used that. What am I using this tiny little hammer for?"

The fact is, the budget is a tool, and like most tools, it gives you more freedom than if you didn't use it, because it gives you more power.

Budget represents your money saddled and bridled, with you firmly in control. No budget is when your money running wild and free, dragging you to all sorts of places you never expected (or really needed) to go.

I never plan to go a month of my life without a budget again. I'll never trap myself, hold myself back like that again.

Missing the Update

I should get the Tale of the Tape updated by Thursday. I'm sure it doesn't bother other people as much as me when I don't do it on Mondays, but the first half of this week is a little hectic, and I haven't been able to get to Official Government Scale I use to weigh myself each Monday.

I did bring the finance portion down a bit, but it will come down a little more when I do the update. However, because of debt snowballing, a $300 mileage check, and a reimbursment check for work expenses, I was able to make a $750 car payment this month, and I had to post that. My car payment is usually $170.

I'll tell ya'--it was a great feeling. I'm so far ahead of where I was just four months ago. I couldn't be gladder that I've been doing this.

Between that and the fact that I'm starting to get some real shoulders, I'd say things are going pretty well.

More On Separate Checking Accounts

My friend Becky makes the case that, rather than pooling all their money, it's a good idea for couples to pool some of their money, and leave the rest separate--the idea being, more or less, that the money that's together will help avoid the conflicts that come from having all your money separate, and the money that's separate will avoid the conflicts that come from all your money together.

I really feel that the opposite is true--keeping some money together and some money separate opens up the door for both types of problems.

I'm reminded of a buddy of mine who was a missionary. Normally, missionaries serving together keep their finances separate, for the only real good reason to do so: They're going to be leaving each other eventually, and it will make the separation easier.

However, one missionary he was living with convinced him it would be a good idea to pool part of their money for food and other expenses.

What do you think happened? The other missionary ate all the food, even though they'd gone in halvsies on it. The other missionary spent all his personal money at the start of the month, so when unexpected expenses came up my friend had to pay for all of them. At the time I met him, this missionary had a bunch of "rainy day" money saved. When I saw him again after he served with this guy, that was entirely gone.

Same thing in a relationship. Let's say Marci and I did this. What I got in an accident, and I had to use Marci's car? Would I then pay for the gas and oil changes for Marci's car, since I'm the one using it? But I still have to pay for the deductible for my car.

And what about when we're doing something together that only one of us wants to do? If we go to a comic book convention on my day, would I pay for both of us, since I'm the only one who really likes that? And if we go see a chick flick on her day, should she pay, since it's a movie she wants to see?

The problem with the above examples is how independent they both try to be. My car. Her car. My night. Her night. If we really are in this together, that's our car. It's our night. It's the separatedness that makes conflict inherent in each of the interactions above.

A couple of points--

First, I am not saying multiple checking accounts are a bad idea. I'm going to be opening up another account here eventually, when the first check for ad revenue for this site comes in. What promotes conflict is separate checking accounts--accounts where expenses are, in effect, "hidden" from the partner.

Also, I'm not saying complete unification of finances is going to be conflict free. I'm saying that pooling all the money creates a sense of unity with both partners that makes the conflicts easier to handle. Even if my wife and I are at odds about whether me buying printer toner is more important than her buying a sewing machine part because we don't have the money for both, the fact that we're arguing about our money and what's best for us puts us a step ahead of those couples who are arguing about "my" and "yours" and "you" and "I."

And because we've taken that attitude about everything--even our debt--that puts us at a full advantage. She came into the marriage with a lot of debt, and a lot of conflict came from her continuing to think of that debt as "hers." She didn't feel I should have to pay it. Now, by fully relinquishing "her" debt to "us," we're able to pay it off a lot more effectively than if we were still fretting about whose was whose. The second we decided to become an "us," the debt had to, had to, become "ours."

Would it have made sense, financially, if I was investing "my" extra money and getting a 10% return, while "her" debt was still costing 18% a year? It might have made sense for me, but it wouldn't have made sense for us.

I'm not saying we won't eventually budget each other a few dollars. We aren't doing that right now, because we're paying down debt so aggressively--right now the sewing machine is still broken and the printer still has no toner--but we'll eventually reach a point where we can budget out for a few of our "own" purchases.

I am saying that since money is directly linked to emotion, fully "investing" in a relationship by contributing your entire salary allows and creates a more complete emotional commitment. Failing to fully commit financially may represent that a person hasn't fully committed emotionally.

And, since partners know this too, a complete surrendering of one's finances to the relationship will be perceived as one of those actions that speak so loud it's hard to hear what you're saying. So will failing to make that commitment.

So again--I'm not saying completely pooling finances will eliminate all conflicts. It won't. I can testify to that.

I am saying it can create a sense of relationship security, of unity, that cannot be had otherwise.

Quote

"There are long periods in life when everything moves in lazy repetition, when each week resembles the next, when nothing happens, when it seems that nothing ever will happen, that existence has no change in sight and no complications can come to disturb the satisfying routine, which has been established. Then suddenly everything is accelerated, events crown in, swift decisions have to be made, when hardly the time is given to make them, when everything is hurried, dramatic, and intense."

Owen Johnson

Erik Live!

Tommorrow I'll be speaking and doing a Q & A as part of a panel on employment and finance at a church in Colton, CA, at around 10am. Email me if you'd like directions.

Stats

Here's the numbers: Depending on what study you look at, between 75 and 89% of all divorces can be traced to quarrels and accusations over money.

It's wise to get on the same page with your spouse financially.

Friday Mythbustin': Separate Checking Accounts

Myth: It's good to have separate checking accounts so both spouses can feel like they're contributing and maintain a sense of their own identity.

Fact: Having separate checking accounts is bad news, both for the relationship and for the budget.

When my wife and I first got married, we only had one checking account, but we had two separate checkbooks.

Say what?

Yeah. The way we figured it, as long as both checkbooks stayed balanced, both of our money was always there, and if we added the two checkbooks together, we'd know our bank balance.

It was, to put it mildly, a disaster.

We reverted to one checkbook pretty quick.

What I learned from personal experience, I've heard backed up time and time again, both by financial people and relationship experts.

One of the common factors that pops up before a relationship heads for trouble is that the couple starts using separate checking accounts.

Not only should both spouses pool their money, but both spouses should be involved in the finances.

Why is this?

1. Trust. You're not going to worry whether your husband picked up the tab for his secretary's new necklace if you both have access to all the family financial records. Ask anyone who's ever had a spouse who was involved with drugs or other problems, and they'll tell you one of the first warning signs was that their spouse started being very secretive about money.

2. Unity. If you're making financial decisions together, it will keep you on the same page, financially. You won't see her dashing out to buy four or five new chick flick DVDs with money you'd saved by eating tuna sandwiches for lunch (even though you hate tuna) so you could take her out that weekend.

3. "You and I" becomes "We." There's no arguments over whether "I" paid more towards bills or "you" paid more towards bills when "we" had to pay all the bills. If you're worried that pooling the money will allow your spouse to take advantage of you, swiping up all "your" money to buy "their" stuff, your marriage needs help for reasons unrelated to money. As long as it is "you and I" (or, more accurately, you vs. me) instead of "we," you will always have issues.

4. Exponential Increases of Power. Remember how they're always saying that in physics, 1+1 can often equal 4? Phrases like "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts?" That's how it becomes when money and energy is pooled. With the finances and intelligence of both partners contributing to the family's entire financial pool, rather than each assuming one or two specific areas, you get greater strength in every area.

5. Commitment. How many Olympic athletes do you think won medals who started out a race by dipping their toe in the pool and slowly climbing in the water to adjust to the temperature? You might think that's a poor analogy (Marriage isn't a race, after all) but I think it's a great one.

One of the reasons so many relationships end with both partners bailing is because both partners spend so much time making sure the parachutes work. Making sure finances are separate, cars are in separate names, maybe even avoiding a legal ceremony all because hey, well, we have to be ready in case it doesn't work. If they put as much effort into making it work as they put into being ready in case it doesn't, their relationship would probably work out just as well as their exit strategy would have.

How much more confidence would you have in your relationship if a spouse pitched all their money in together with yours, and sat down with you and began to make plans for how the two of you would prepare for your retirement years together? Would it give you a good sense that your spouse was in this for the long haul?

How do you think your spouse would feel about your level of commitment if you did the same thing?

Wouldn't it take a little of the edge of some of those fights if you both knew that you were still in it for the long haul?

Now I'm not saying money is the only way couples can become more united. But it definitely is one of them. Far more breakups and divorces are caused by financial concerns than are caused by infidelity and abuse.

So if you're in a relationship you want to stay in, pool your money. If you're not willing to put your money into a relationship, why in the world are you willing to put your time and your heart into it?

Family Fun On A Budget: Yes, Even Disneyland

So, nobody was all that impressed with my pictures.

Well, will anybody be impressed if I say I spent Tuesday at Disneyland?

That I took me, my wife, and my two girls to Disneyland on a budget?

Is anybody paying attention to any of this?

Well, if anybody cares, here's how I did it.

There's an old saying in sales. "You can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick any two."

This saying always holds true. You can get good, fast food for example, but it costs. If you want cheap, good food, it's not going to be fast--you're going to have to take the time to make it yourself from scratch.

So if you're on a budget, that means that, in most cases, you're either going to have to sacrifice it being fast or sacrifice it being good.

In the case of Disneyland, you can't control the quality (It's still good, no matter what your opinion of Eisner), so what you have to give up is speed. As with all purchases, you get the best deal if you bide your time. The more flexible your time frame, the better a deal you have time to find.

In our case, we knew we wanted to go to Disneyland, but we gave ourselves all the time in the world, and we were able to whittle the price for the tickets for my wife and myself down to free.

Yes, free.

We received an ad for a timeshare presentation that guaranteed that you would receive a fantastic prize at the conclusion of the presentation, whether you joined their program or not. If you weren't happy with your prize, they'd swap it for two tickets to the "Orange County resort" of your choice. Including Disneyland.

We pounced on it. We said no a lot that night, to a lot of people, but ultimately we ended up with the free tickets.

And, as you'd expect, there were all kinds of limits and restrictions on what days we could use the tickets (nothing too close to a holiday, no weekends, etc.) and there were a lot of hoops to jump through (mailing in forms and getting back forms and mailing in other forms, etc.) but ultimately, we ended up with a couple free tickets to Disneyland a free night's hotel stay in Buena Park (Right by Knotts Berry Farm. They offered to move us by Disneyland for $30 more. I'm sure the people who got Knotts Berry Farm tickets were already staying over by Disneyland, and being offered rooms in our hotel for $30 more).

Since Miriam is older than 3, we did end up buying her a ticket. So me, my wife, my three year old, and my two year old all got into Disneyland for the price of one child's ticket.

As for food, we brought a backpack with snacks and treats we bought cheap beforehand, so we could munch on things all day long, rather than stop the fun to pay outlandish prices for Disney food.

We did also pay $10 for parking.

So the moral of the story is know what you want, and then be flexible about when you want it, and you may be surprised with what types of deals turn up eventually.

Oh, and the Universal Studios pics? That trip was courtesy of the company I work for. The moral of that story is work real hard and people will recognize and reward you for it.

I hope I'm not making this 365 Day Turnaround thing look too easy, because it's not. It really is a challenge (Just getting this tickets was a challenge, with all the hoops you had to jump through. Fortunately, it was a challenge that didn't cost money).

I do hope I am making it look like a whole lot of fun.

Tale Of The Tape: 90% Of The Man I Used To Be

Yup. I'm down 25 pounds.

::Does silly, giddy dance::

And that leaves only 17 pounds to hit 220 by my birthday in July.

And then I'll have a whole six months to lose the last 20 pounds.

Right on schedule.

Oh, and Dell? The company I said I'd never mention again? It was nice to get their bill today and see that $0.00 in the "amount due" line.

Life is good.

Before And After

I know I haven't posted a picture before. Here's a pair. Maybe this will add to my credibility some.

The "before" pic is the work Christmas party in December. I was at least 262 pounds, since that's where I started the year, but probably more, since I started dieting a little before that pic was taken.

The after pic is last week, at Universal Studios, with Doctor Doom, the arch nemesis of the Fantastic Four. I'm down around 240 in that pic.

Both photos are clickable if you want bigger versions. And flickr.com, where I hosted them, has some cool features if you want to check them out.

I hope these pics will confirm that I do know what I'm talking about, and encourage somebody change is possible.

Oh, and for those who are wondering--yes, there are "Body-For-Life" style before and after shots where I have my shirt off.

You're welcome for my not posting them.

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.