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?