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Archive for August, 2010

Maximizing Time By MultiTasking Tasks More Wisely

August 25th, 2010

not me, lol

I remember when I first tried to do multitasking, I got overwhelmed.

I think I was trying I update two different computer applications by inputting data in parallel; I was switching back and forth like a madman inputting data between them. You see, back then it took a while for changes to happen to a document so after each saving; it would take a few seconds for the save to complete, giving me time to do a similar process on the other application. I eventually got it done after a few boggled up sessions, and fixes… I’ve learned from experience, that this isn’t the best type of multi-taking!!!

However, as I’m typing this, I’m actually doing two things at the same time! I’m waiting in my car in the middle school parking lot for my son to get out of school on his first day back to school, and obviously, I’m also typing this post!

Yep, I’m multi-tasking the correct way! Multitasking more than one task primarily works best when you have one or more task that don’t require much thinking, paired with only one task that requires you to focus on it a higher degree of attention.

So now that you know my belief around an optimal multitasking system… You may also be wondering what other ways do I maximize time by multitasking more wisely?

Following are my favorite ways to multitask:

Listening to audio books while driving to work. This enables me to optimize my driving time which previously would have been wasted time taken out of my life to drive to my place of employment! My total commute time, both to and from work per day, averages about 1 hour and 15 minutes (on a normal day). So that adds up to 6 hours & 15 minutes I was wasting per week doing nothing but driving mindlessly to work!

At first I tested the waters by listening to a CD I borrowed from the library while driving to work. This worked out great! Next I progressed to Stephen King novels, again this was successful! Then I started listening to classic audio books that I would never listen to, famous novels like “Animal Farm” and “1984”. I even listened to classics that I’ve never heard of before, such an example would be the Ray Bradbury book, “Fahrenheit 451”.

Listening to audio books while driving on vacation trips. Now you may be wondering what the difference is between this and “Listening to audio books while driving to work”? The difference is that listening to such books while driving on vacation trips keeps me awake and delays drowsiness! I’ve only listen to audio books that are very entertaining and exciting enough to keep me awake!

After my recent vacation, I used this technique to drive home at night. Listening to “Insomnia” (ironic huh) by Stephen King, kept me awake. It was a real driving aid, because prior to listening to audio books on vacation trips, I would start to fall asleep after a few hours. Plus I hated driving!

Now, with the help of a good audio book, I can honestly say that I enjoy the driving part of the trip too! This was a huge win-win for me!!!

Reading books while waiting in offices. Hate waiting for the doctor or dentist in the waiting room? Read a book while waiting in the office! I find good biographies (examples like Benjamin Franklin or Warren Buffett) really fill this void! With a biography, the story is a bit drying and anticlimactic, and you can pick up the book weeks later and not miss a beat.

These are some of the ways that I maximize my time by multitasking…

What are your favorite example of tasks that you like to pair together when you multitask?

-MR

15 comments »

Posted in Inspirational

Tags: audio books maximizing time Multitasking

Living With Your Parents While Being Young, Successful And Married

August 24th, 2010

My wife once worked with a young, successful, preppy, attractive girl that recently graduated with her MBA degree, let’s call her Sally. She was working full-time in a VP of marketing position (or something similar) making much more money than my wife did, back when my wife worked at this company. She was recently married and her husband was even more successful than she was!

At first I thought my wife was telling me the classic story of two young DINKS (Dual Income No Kids), setting out to conquer the world…

But these two DINKS were a bit different! You see, both of these highly educated, successful adults were living in the basement of Sally’s parent’s house! I said “WHAT”, thinking that I misheard my wife, but she confirmed it again! Apparently, my wife was shocked too, and she asked the pretty VP to go into greater detail, explaining the young DINK’s logic…

Sally told my wife that her parents are rich, so the basement was finished with a kitchen and bathroom and plenty of room… Sally and her husband were socking away all of their money and living as cheaply as possible. Kudos to them for living a frugal life way before it become popular right? Not so fast!

You see they were saving for a million dollar house, and while they might be able to afford it, it would have been a pretty tight squeeze. I should mention that where I live, a million dollar house is a very BIG house!

So their plan was to live in Sally’s parents house for a five year time span, saving all the money for a huge down payment on the million dollar house.

A clever way to go, and I’m sure Sally’s parents house was big enough… But still, that would be incredible awkward for me, especially if I were her husband!

What would you do, would you mooch off of your spouse’s parents while saving money? In some ways I applaud them, even though it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth! But, Sally’s parents are filthy rich, and they didn’t seem to mind… So, why not!?

-MR

35 comments »

Posted in Frugality

Tags: millionaire parents mooching kids Your parents

Past Unfulfilled Home Dreams

August 23rd, 2010

My Home Dreams have changed as I grew older. As a child (5 or 6 years old) I imagined owning acres and acres of land and having all the endangered species on it. Surprisingly, at this age, the house itself didn’t really materialize. As I grew older, I realized how hard that dream would be to accomplish and had to scratch it off.

My next Home Dream was to live near the mountains living off the land, with a small meandering stream-fed lake beside a log cabin. In this dream, I was a fisherman and a hunter (just for the record, I’ve never hunted). I imagined that I wouldn’t really have many neighbors. I had this dream until college, when I realize I had a bad allergy problem and how difficult and lonely this dream would be. This dream was more feasible from a cost perspective, but very inconvenient and an extremely hard life. Scaling back my dream, I still would like a cabin in the woods; but I currently have more important things to save my money for. Actually this dream is partially fulfilled by renting a cabin in the wood occasionally (we did that last year).

An occasional Home Dream would be to live by the Delaware River like my Uncle did. But those thoughts have always been squeezed out when I realized that I couldn’t afford such a plot of property.

Today, my home dreams consist of owning a small rental property, preferrable a 1 dwelling house (although I’ve heard this isn’t the way to go). I would like to find one dirt cheap that’s in great shape in a great market. Yeah, this is one of the more feasible dreams, but still hard to obtain the perfect combination that is profitable. Plus, I don’t know if I really would like to deal with tenants…

How have your dreams evolved of what your perfect home dream would be?

-MR

19 comments »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Fantasy homes Home Dreams

Money Weekly Cache 2010, August 22

August 22nd, 2010

Weekly Thoughts:

This was an interesting vacation week! It rained almost half of the time, but I was able to accomplish a few of the things that I hoped to be able to do. A biggy was to re-introduce some ocean fun to my son. He’s had the unfortunate luck of getting stung multiples time in the ocean when he was very young (he’s 10 now). It was hard to re-introduce the ocean to him without my son having some level of fear. I was also able to teach both my daughter and son how to bodysurf.

Drat, a few hours after my first draft of this post, I got stung by a jellyfish. The tide was low and the ocean was pretty still. I saw a school of 1/2 foot long fish, and I think I may have stepped on a sponge. I was having my son go body surfing one last time (during low tide, which is kind of lame time to do this) when it got me. I told my son to go inshore as I walked quickly in too. At least my son wasn’t stung!!!

My Favorite Reads of the Week:

First Gen American.com: Sandy brings up the question of Nature vs Nurture on Frugalism, and it really made me think about my own case. I’m a fairly frugal guy, but I think a lot of my frugal habits was learned instead of me being born with it. But I think it’s a combination of both…

Budgeting In The Fun Stuff: 10 Money Saving Tips to Save $1000 for the Holidays, Crystal identifies 10 money saving tips, and how she is able to save money with the tips! I also liked this 6 Extremely Frugal Methods of Saving Money article for BITFS too, it makes fun of the extremely frugal methods that aren’t really that extreme at all. This is a fun read!

Everyday Thoughts and Tips: Kris had a great vacationing hotel series: Thoughts On Travel and Hotels, Part 1… and Thoughts on Travel and Hotels, Part 2 I love articles that I learn or reconfirmed something that I had heard! This is one such article! In the days of bed bugs infestations, these is a great must know posts!!! Kris also had this great article that I couldn’t pass up: Thoughts For Thursday: Calculator Watches, Button Fly Jeans, Fishing Poles, and More! it’s very funny and a must read! Actually, Kris had another great week like typical, check her site out!

Grumpy Rumblings of the Untenured: Octopus is the new black - This post mentions the Mimic Octopus! It morphs its shape into different dangerous animals to deter other prey from attaching it. Truly amazing and something I’ve never see nor heard of before! Check it out!

Closing Thoughts:

There were some other great post out there too that I wanted to include, but I need to go to sleep now (it’s 5:00 pm)! I’m going to drive through the night so everybody is fresh when we get home on Sunday.

Well, that was my big vacation for the year! Hope your was as good (if not better) as mine!

Carnivals and Mentions:

Link Round Up for Week Ending 8/21/2010 by Everyday Tips and Thoughts
Yakezie Carnival by Couples Money
Best of the Rest: New iPhone Edition by Sweating the Big Stuff
Week in Review: Name Change by Bucksome Boomer
Weekly Favorites by Wealth Informatics

-MR

3 comments »

Posted in Weekly Review

Tags: pf weekly links weekly links

Free Things To Do At The Beach, Or Close To Free

August 20th, 2010

This week I’m vacationing at Hilton Head Island. And while I did play golf a few days, I find that the best times I had so far are the free or close to free activities!

Body Surfing - Not my son!

So I decided to compile a quick list of all the free (or again close to free) activities that we have done.

Cheap things to do at the beach:

Body Surfing, is my one of the favorite things to do at the beach. As you can imagine, it’s just riding a wave without a surfboard by using your body in place of the surfboard… I had a lot of fun doing this, but even better is that fact that I was able to teach both my son and daughter how to do it today! My son was tough because he has been stung multiple years at the beach by jellyfish, so naturally he had a strong fear of the ocean. But once he did it once, he was hooked! My daughter was the most fun to watch though! She rode a wave all the way onto the beach! I wish I had filmed it…
Walking the beach. Is there anything cooler than walking the beach with the cool sea breeze blowing as you and your significant other (or solely) walk miles away from your hotel?
Building sand creations. They aren’t just sand castles anymore! When we went to the beach earlier today, there was an alligator sand creature that formed a loop, effectively forming a sand castle too! Okay, my kids still build sand castles, but there are alternatives!
Searching for shark teeth: One of my friend’s parents always came back with a small bucket full of shark’s teeth. I never figured out their trick in finding them, but it always amazed me! Perhaps you know the magic trick, if not, read what this site has to say about it.
Renting a bike for the week: The cost usually runs in the $20 dollar range, or even better you could bring your bikes with you. Since the beach is flat, you can ride for hours and hours without really getting tired. On Hilton Head, there are over 100 miles of bike trails and paths, so it’s a very bike friendly Island. If you are an avid biker like the blogger at Little House In The Valley, you would love it!
Sun Bathing: Okay, it’s 2010 and we all know that sun bathing isn’t such a great idea anymore. But why not sit on the beach with an umbrella (really called a parasol) and read a great novel or some other fun activity and people watch! Or maybe lay out of 15 minutes then go for a walk with plenty of sun lotion on with plenty of SPF protection! Make sure you get a safe sunscreen lotion (I heard not all sunscreens are that good for your skin!)
Flying A Kite: We buy a cheap kite every year. After getting the kite up in the air, my son always buries the kite handle in the sand and just lets the kite fly high above… It always amazes me that the kite doesn’t rip the kite handle out of the sand. It’s a quick fun thing to do.
Sand crabbing: We use plastic shovels and buckets to dig Sand Crabs (also called Sand Mole Crabs) out of the ocean’s edge when the tide is going out. My kids are still a bit afraid of them, but still get excited when the sand crabs are uncovered.