Money Reasons

Smart Reasons to Save, Use and Invest Money

Archive for January, 2010

MoneyReasons Weekly Review 2010, Jan 10

January 10th, 2010

Money Reasons Weekly Review

My Favorite Top 3 External PF Blogger Posts For This Week:

Well-Heeled Blog - has a great article on lifestyle changing goals called “Small Steps Will Lead to Lifestyle Change“. I like Well-Heeled’s approach towards her goals!
Financial Samurai’s - The Samurai Fund – All Hands On Deck! - This is a great experiment that the Financial Samurai is running to try to beat the S&P 500! His idea was to create such a Fund based off of the names of Financial Blogs that submitted them. I’m part of the list of 17 as MON (Monsanto, which creates engineered seeds). Best of luck Sam!
Mrs Micah – Talks about her Biggest Financial Foul up, Incredible story of Mrs. Micah and her husbands battle against debt of over $100,000. That’s a lot of debt, but at least she’s very young (you wouldn’t guess that based off of her writing though!)

My Favorite Post From MoneyReasons This Week:

My favorite post this week is Perfect Snow, it didn’t start out that way, initially writing it I didn’t think it would amount to much, but after I finished it, it invoked such great memories. It’s has more personal value than monetary worth. I do think everybody (in the snow belt, anyway), should take advantage of perfect snow every now and then (by skiing, sledding, walking at night, etc)…

Goals Status Update:

Off to a slow start on Goal #1: 2010 Resolution #1, Losing Weight While Saving Money, I only lost 1 pound this week, time to redouble my efforts next week.


Date	Weight/lbs.		Loss/Gain

01/02/10	235		0

01/09/10	234		1

01/16/10

01/23/10

01/30/10

Total Loss for the Month		:	1

As for my other goals (#2,#3)

2010 Resolution #2, Stop Being a Pack Rat: I have started throwing some of my junk away.
2010 Resolution #3, Maximizing Who I Am: I did a great job talking to more people this week.

This week was busy socially, I had to shovel the drive twice and the kids has a snow day (they went sledding and had hot chocolate afterwards), and we went to 2 birthdays this week.

Not a bad start to the first business week of the new year!

2 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: Goals Weekly Review

Perfect Snow

January 9th, 2010

Snowing is a one of the few magical occurrences on our planet. What else can materialize out of the sky float down in a meandering fashion, and then lightly land on the ground like it was meant to be there all along?

Sledding

As you can tell, I like snow, it’s one of my life’s little enjoyments. Here are the free things that you can do with snow:

Sled Riding (the cheap cousin of skiing)
Build a Snowman (my kids love doing this)
Build a Snow Fort! Another thing my son loves.
Snowball fights, great fun for me and my kids
Making Snow Angels
Snowball chase (my dog loves to chase after a thrown snowball, or catch it in the air… very funny)
Walking at night on a lightly lit sidewalk (this is great, and in my neighborhood, always reminds me of something out of a Norman Rockwell painting).
Snow ramps (yes, this is used with sled riding)
Tubing (this is dangerous, when being pulled being a car, or quad-runner!)
Sliding in the car in a empty parking lot (we did this as kids, I’m not sure if it’s legal or not so beware)
Drive around surrounding neighborhood, it makes them look great, especially when you run across the occasional house that still has there Christmas light on. The way the lights shine underneath the snow looks like a snow spotlight of color. Our kids love this effect.

Other more pricey things you can do in snow are:

Downhill skiing
Cross country skiing
Snowboarding
Snowmobiling

I like perfectly cold, windless night (maybe 25 degrees Fahrenheit), when the dry snow (dry snow means the snow is in a more pure crystalline form with no melting, so snowballs are hard to make) is falling lightly and the flakes are big and fluffy! During these night I like to go on walks around my neighborhood. It’s beautiful, it reminds me of a scene that would be perfect for a Norman Rockwell painting. The nights are quiet on these perfect snow days. The air is pure and crisp, no smells of any type. It’s a great time to think during these special walks. I’m always amazed I don’t see more people from the neighborhood out during this perfect nights, I wonder if they aren’t aware of how perfect this precious time is? Maybe the ones that do that this is perfect snow are skiing? I know that thoughts of skiing pop in my head when I go on walks during these times. The fond memories that float in and out of my head during these walks are of skiing, tobogganing, ice skating, backyard hockey, snowmobiling and snow wars…

Perhaps I find snow magical because it is part of my past that I identify with. The best part of snow is that it’s free entertainment, if you take advantage of it.

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Posted in Entertainment

Tags: perfect snow

The Employment Number, December 2009

January 8th, 2010

Today the employment number comes out, so I’m just going to chill and report the numbers. My kids are off from School today (snow day), so I’m going to be with them instead of on the web much…

The number is:

-85,000 Drat!

Unemployment rate is still at 10%

I was hoping for a positive number… Oh well…

That number was for December of 2009 anyway!

Hopefully the stock market will just be down a little bit today (I’m hoping for flat)…

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Posted in Economy

Reasons To Save Money

January 7th, 2010

Money is a powerful tool, it can either make or break us. Since this blog is called Money Reasons, I’ve decided to list reasons to save money.

Money Reasons

Reasons to save money:

Retirement – This has been beat into the ground, but I want to have a fairly decent retirement! Even thought my retirement is far away, I think I’ll start rebalancing my portfolio every year. At the very minimum, once a year!
Emergency Fund. Who knows when disaster will strike again!
Vacations – Someday, I even want to travel overseas,at once!!! Or go back to Disney! We had a wonderful time and made some great memories.
College Savings – In the nearish future, I want to help my kids pay for college . I’ve been investing in a few 529s, but I still have a long way to go.
Car Purchases – I don’t want any more car loans! The next cars I buy will be bought outright!!!
Home Repair - Things break (water tank, furnace, AC, new carpet, flooring, sinks, etc), and some day the roof will need reshingled.
Kid’s Sports – they add up!!!
Sense of security – It’s nice to know you have money invested in things that could appreciate greatly in value.

Money is a funny thing. After all, it’s really just a small piece of paper. the value that we assign to money, floats with thing going on in our economy and world. And yet it’s what we all go to work for most of our lives.

Do you have any additional “Reasons for Money” that I may have missed?

If I had enough money, I’d travel the world and mainly manage my investments. What would you do?

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Posted in Goals

Tags: money reasons reasons to save saving money

2010 Resolution #3, Maximizing Who I Am

January 6th, 2010

My last resolution is more of a stretch goal, and it won’t be easy…

What do I mean by “Maximizing Who I Am”?

My stretch goal

Ever since graduating from college, I started wondered what I would be like if I ate the perfect foods, slept and exercised the perfect amounts, developed my brain in a perfect way, etc. I wondered what I would be like… would I be a few inches taller? Would I be smarter than I am now, perhaps a little better looking too… How different would the perfect version of me be?

It would be very fascinating to know! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not faulting anybody (especially myself) for not being perfect. After all, to be raised perfectly and do everything perfectly is practically impossible. But what if I start trying for that elusive goal? What would happen…?

Well, that’s what my final 2010 goal will be. I’m going to try and maximize who and what I am. I hope I finally be able to grow those few extra inches that I’m missing! Okay, so that won’t happen, but perhaps I can improve other things to almost the perfect level… That’s what I mean when I say “Maximizing Who I Am“, I can’t be the perfect me, but I can strive to be the best I can be.

This goal actually ties back into my first two goals, both are necessary steps to “Maximizing Who I Am”.

What areas do I need to work at to be a better me?

Exercise. Both aerobic and anaerobic.
Sleeping the proper amount of time. I’ve been a “Night Owl” ever since my college days.
Organization Skills. I’ll use a Planner, tasksheets, spreadsheets and calender programs.
Challenging my mental processes (reading, experiments, blogging, games, etc)
Spending more quality time with my Kids, and with patience!
Working more Effectively at whatever I’m doing (this could be when I’m at work, or at home).
Be more Sociable with my friends, neighbors, and countrymen (joking on that last one, although I could say community and that would be fair game).
Develop a greater sense of Humor. Both laughing and making witty jokes (at least I hope they’ll be witty).
And lastly, Making Better use of my Time! This would be the Carpe Diem thing…

How do I go about measuring these areas?

Well, that is a mixed bag! I plan on measuring my weight loss and exercise routine in spreadsheets. But how do I measure the other pieces of the puzzle I listed above? Well, I’m thinking of keeping an written Daily Journal, then post my progress once a month on this blog. During the post, this will force me to reviewing my performance to see if I’m accomplishing these personal mini goals or not.

And there you have it! My New Year 2010 Resolution Goals are finally listed (I’m hearing the “Mission Impossible” theme song as I’m typing).

Let get it ON!