Tale Of The Tape: Danger Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How's that for a diet tip?

Sunday Book Review: Miserly Meals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changing It Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll let you know if this works.

Gambling: Craps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By The Power Of Grayskull!

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

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

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

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

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

Dell Is Done

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

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

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

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

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

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

READ MY MAIL -- MAKE MONEY FAST

Actual excerpts from mail I received today:

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

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

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

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

Tale Of The Tape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life never ceases to be exciting.

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

Sunday Book Review: Games You Can't Lose

So, I know what you've been wondering.

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

Well, this book is a lot of the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Car Problems Solving Car Problems

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned.

Doing The Town--On A Budget

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

Well, here's how we did it tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One bit of advice, though.

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

Gambling: Slot Machines

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

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

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

On which game to casinos make the most money?

Which adds the corralative question:

Which game does the public lose the most money on?

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

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

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

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

Usually, the casinos go something like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, Some Personal Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

And then, on the way home, I sneezed.

Oh. My. Word.

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

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

This Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple Starter Diet Changes--Food Choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, some words of warning:

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

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

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

Short Range Goal

So here's my new short-range goal:

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

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

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

When to Weigh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I end up back at 245.

So that is the weight you see before you.

Sunday Book Review: The Zone

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

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

Here, however, the differences end.

The Zone diet, you see, was sane.

What Dr. Sears teaches is this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coupon Shopping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And coupons, of course, expire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gambling: The Lottery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same thing with your money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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