With the new house in the works and everything going on Ive been trying to really crack down on spending habits while still eating healthy….and I have very little time each day to put towards preparing and eating.  This kind of leaves me in a rough situation at times.  Its easy to get two out of the three but the third piece is always the hardest.

-A5 B12 in the vending machine doesn’t count as healthy

-Packing a complicated lunch at home is great, but a lot of times I just don’t have the time

-Getting quick healthy food is pretty expensive and hard to find

Ive come up with a program to keep myself as satiated as possible while still taking very little time and remaining in budget.

1. Eat Breakfast
This solves way more problems than you would think.  Not only does it reduce cravings for bad food later in the day, it keeps you more full so you have less to eat later on.  I can eat a bowl of kashi in like 4 minutes and let me tell you, thats a filling bit of cereal right there.

2.  Stock up your desk
Get some healthy snacks and put them in your desk.
-Nuts
-Crackers
-Canned Tuna
-Protein Bars

3.  Stock up your fridge and freezer at work
My personal favorite is lean cuisines.  They are cheap, fast, and healthy.  Plus there are all different flavors so you don’t really get bored of eating the same things.  Buy some fruit for the week and toss that in there too.  If you don’t have a fridge at work, get a mini fridge and put it in your office or cube.  When I worked at HP I had one in my cube and I never once had anyone complain about it.  Infact, people always wanted to borrow some space - my manager included.

4) Meal shakes
I personally drink protein shakes, but you can go even further and drink entire meal replacement shakes.  They tend to be inexpensive and can be bought (and stored) in bulk.

5) Drink a lot of water
As Americans we consume way more daily calories than we need and so it wouldn’t hurt to eat a little less throughout the day.  We tend to mistake hunger sometimes for slight dehydration.  Plus drinking water is free and good for you.

6) Forget everything you know about 3 meals a day
Its wrong and unhealthy.  Most people are surprised to know that snacking and mini meals throughout the day is healthier and will make you feel better.  Bulk healthy snacks and meals also tend to be cheaper than going out for some huge meal at lunch…not to mention it takes up much less time.

Its been a while since we’ve gotten back to basics here so I thought I would go over something really fundemental to anyone starting down the financial journey.  In order to turn things around you have to save money and you have to pay down debt.  I know it sounds like an overwhelming task for the uninitiated but it’s not.  I promise you can do it.  If you have been ignoring the problem, guess what?  Its not going to get better on its own.  Take control.

Pay Down Debt and then avoid it

• If you use credit cards, pay off the balances every month. If you don’t, you’re paying interest—often 20 percent or more a year—on everything you purchased.  If you already have balances pay more than the minimum payment.  Pay as much as you possibly can.
• Limit the number of credit cards you have. Use your lowest-interest credit card, and then only for emergencies.

• Set a monthly limit on charging, and keep a written record so you don’t exceed that amount.

• Pay bills on time to avoid late charges.

• Avoid using blank checks you receive from financial services. These checks are cash advances that may carry a higher interest rate than typical charges.

• Pay cash.

Monthly Steps to Saving Money

Most Americans do not have much in savings, and lets face it, unforeseen circumstances happen. To help you prepare for them, you should have at least three to six months of living expenses stashed in your rainy day savings account. You can take steps today to build an emergency fund, save for a home, save for an education, or save for retirement.  Heres a little chart I found and added to:

Finding Money to Save Every Month

Can you list at least five more things to do to save money?
Manage Loans to Save Money

Remember that loans are a liability that reduce your wealth, so choose yours carefully. By shopping for and negotiating the lowest interest rate, you can build wealth by investing what you saved on interest payments.

$15,000 Car Loan for 5 Years

How much money would you save if you chose Lender A vs Lender C?

You can also save interest expense by increasing your monthly payments or choosing a shorter payment term on your loan.

$15,000 Car Loan at 10 Percent Interest

You can choose a shorter payment term with higher payments. By budgeting enough money each month to make the higher payments, you will reduce the amount of interest you ultimately pay, which means – even more savings!

By making wise choices, you can develop strategies and take immediate steps to control debt and build a nest egg for yourself and your family.

Nothing changes in one day

Remember it is the little steps that eventually make the biggest difference.  Rome was not built in a day, and your financial situation will not change in one day so don’t despair and don’t give up.  With time anything can be fixed so get to it!

Of course, that is the question that people ask me every day.  “Why does gas cost so much?”  Its second only to “whats the fastest way to double my money?”  The answer to number #2 is of course “put it all on red.”  (Also a good way to lose 100% of your money the quickest).   The answer to the gas question is a little more complicated so lets dive in.

Ok so its not really that complicated on the surface:

Crude Oil + Taxes + Refining Costs + Distribution = Gas Price

so the culprit can be summed up in one major chunk: crude oil.  As you may have heard the prices of crude oil are at an all time high.

Ok thats nice and all but why is it so dang expensive!?

Simple: supply and demand.  Here is the basic definition of supply and demand:

Strictly speaking, the model of supply and demand applies to a type of market called perfect competition in which no single buyer or seller has much effect on prices, and prices are known. The quantity of a product supplied by the producer and the quantity demanded by the consumer are dependent on the market price of the product. The law of supply states that quantity supplied is related to price. It is often depicted as directly proportional to price: the higher the price of the product, the more the producer will supply, ceteris paribus (”all other things being equal”). The law of demand is normally depicted as an inverse relation of quantity demanded and price: the higher the price of the product, the less the consumer will demand, ceteris paribus. The respective relations are called the supply curve and demand curve, or supply and demand for short.

As of right now, supply is flat and demand is increasing.  They are not pumping any more gas then they were in the past few years, but demand has grown worldwide by large amounts.  China’s oil consumption has grown by roughly 7% per year.  Other places such as India are also demanding more oil.

US dollar inflation + low supply(and high demand) = high crude oil costs

Thats your culprit at the pump, not greedy oil companies (though, I do not disupute that they are profitable…but thats my entire goal too so I cant fault them for that).  Now lets all ride our bikes.

Some more tips and tomorrow, the final 10.

- Don’t idle your car engine to warm up.  This even includes new turbo models. It warms up best and most safely by driving immediately but without accelerating rapidly. For colder areas like my previous homeland of Winnipeg, use a block heater with timer, cold engines can use up to 50% more fuel for short trips.

- Keep a fuel consumption log to compare your mileage and track compared to what your car is supposed to get.

- If you have to run errands and you live in a hot climate, do them early in the morning or later at night to avoid use of AC.

- When buying a car, avoid the sunroof, they create drag

- Park your car in shady or covered areas. You will need less AC and there will be less evaporation of gas.

- Use a solar car cooling device while parked.

- Instead of driving to some far off store (like a far away mall) order things online.  A trip from Fort collins to Denver might cost me $50 in gas when its all said and done

- Leave for work earlier and come home earlier.  This will help avoid rush hour where you are stop and go wasting gas.

- If you have a long commute, look to bring your work closer to you…or move closer to your work…or see if you can work from home a couple days a week.

- Get your own accurate (digital) pressure gauge. They are cheap and more reliable than those crappy 80s ones.

- Watch out for faulty oxygen sensors, if yours is faulty you can improve your mileage by up to 40%!

- If you have a huge load of things you are carrying for a long distance, try to balance the weight more to the front to avoid lifting the front of the car and increasing air drag

- If you are shopping for a new car, buy a lighter color, it will reduce cooling needs

- If you are not getting a new car but have a dark interior, add lighter colored seat covers

- Buy a motorcycle or scooter and use it during the summer (or year round if you live somewhere warm)

- For short distances, ride your bike, its good exercise and saves gas

- Opt for manual transmission over automatic transmission when car buying

- Dont fill up when the gas truck is pumping fuel into the tanks.  A lot of times any dirt and junk in the tanks will get stirred up and

- The bigger your car, the more you should slow things down. Rolling resistance increases linearly with speed but air resistance increases exponentially with speed. Twice the speed = 4 times the air resistance.

- Get a gas card and save a bunch over time

Buy gasoline during coolest time of day
Early morning or late evening is best. During these times gasoline is densest. Keep in mind - gas pumps measure volumes of gasoline, not densities of fuel concentration. You are charged according to “volume of measurement”.

Buy a fuel efficient car
Ok, obvious

Have the right kind of tires for the right season
Too deep of treads in summer will rob you of some gas milage

Tighten the gas cap
Gas will evaporate from your car’s tank if it can.

Dont top off your tank
The additional gas will probably just seep out.

Clean or buy a new air filter regularly

Take your racks off the top
This will reduce drag.  Not using your ski rack?  Take it off

Carpool
Another obvious one, but perhaps the most effective…and least used

Combine trips
If you have multiple errands to run, do them all at once and figure out the best route.  This will save you a ton of time too.

If gas prices are steady, fill up when you’re almost empty
This will save the weight of the gas, but be careful, don’t wait until exactly empty, there could be crud at the bottom of your tank you dont want getting sucked up and clogger your fuel filter.

So I have a massive list of tips I’ve compiled going from the obvious to the not-quite-so-obvious. So here to start things off, is 1-10.

1) Don’t speed
When you speed not only does your drag increase (thinks back to my mechanical engineering classes that I mostly slept through). Not only that, but at higher RPMs even in high gears you are burning a lot more fuel. If you’re on the highway, slowing down from 85 to 70 depending on your car can decrease your fuel consumption by over 20%. I am terrible about this. Im working on it.

2) Dont accelerate too hard
Once again, high RPMs = large amounts of gas being burned. Im also terrible at this. I am also working on this.

3) De-Junk-ify your car
The more the car weighs the more fuel it uses. Only bring stuff you really need. Like golf clubs.

4) Turn that A/C off (or use less)
When the air conditioner is on it puts extra load on the engine forcing more fuel to be used (by about 20%). Roll down the windows, after all, being in touch with with the cool breeze is nicer anyway, right? Edit: rate of diminishing return, drag gets worse as you speed up so above low speeds, roll the windows up and switch to AC.

5) Long trip? Cruise control it up
Avoid accelerating and decelerating if possible. See #2.

6) Waiting on a Train? How about at Sonic? Turn the car off
Save some otherwise wasted fuel.

7) Keep your tires inflated
My cousin and I just did a test on this on his Lumina and it really does save you several MPG if they are properly inflated…in his case from low to slightly high, 3 MPG, no joke. On my Z thats $.57 per gallon!

Buy the lowest grade (octane) of gasoline that you can (safely)
Check your owner’s manual for this information. IF you’re not pinging, you’re good to go.

9) Pay cash at places that charge extra for credit cards

10) Get gas from places like Walmart and King Soopers that are offering loss leader deals
You can often get gas for a lot cheaper. I am saving about 20 cents a gallon at Kings by my house. Sweet.

On the radio today the business guy that comes on once in a while as fill in programming was talking about some of the extreme frugal things that people do to save money, some of the more frugal things people are up to, and some of the super extreme things that people do that are just over the line. Chances are, if you are living this frugally either you are living is destitute poverty, or you are cheap. Enjoy.

Normal frugality:

-A man saves all the boxes he gets because inevitably either he or a family member at some point moves, packs something, or needs a box for a gift. Normally it would have to be bought, but not around him: hes got boxes of any size.

-A lady makes her kids Popsicles out of juice and toothpicks

Getting extreme frugal:

- A man called in to say he and his wife have a group of neighbors that they all make grocery lists together and then shop at Sams (using one shared Sam’s account) and divvy the bulk groceries that way.

-A man would wait for abandoned houses to be condemned and the night before demolition he would take the copper pipe out of the house to recycle. (Not sure if this is even ethical….)

Oh Dear Lord you cheapskates:

-A college kid called in to say he would eat the leftovers in the commons area after people got up to leave for classes

-A guy says that his buddy collects partially cigarettes out of ashtrays and puts them away for later or finishes them.

-A lady called in to say her mother in law only writes in pencil so she can erase things off the paper and reuse it.

-A lady reuses her paper towels after they dry out

-A man called in to say he had created a separate urinal system for his house that transported the waste to an outdoor evaporator and used ‘purified’ water to water his lawn.

Anyone else got any good ones?  Ill leave you with a pic I got from JD at GRS.

Something I struggle internally about a lot, who should be paying for college: parents or kids? Some people think it’s the child’s own responsibility, others that the parents should pay for it. I have friends that paid for college and are in debt, friends that paid for college but aren’t in debt, friends that didn’t pay and are in debt and obviously friends that didn’t pay and aren’t in debt.

The truth of the matter is that I fall somewhere in the middle of the argument. I had to pay for my own schooling but I had the advantage of having a very good job while going to school. I also ended up with a nasty rate on a student loan when I was laid off which I do not want my children to be sattled with. I can’t say I didn’t have any help because my parents did help me out when I was laid off and did everything they could for me.

Another thing to consider is that college tuition has been increasing at a rate faster than ANYTHING else every year. In fact, its infuriating because even public universities which receive a ton of public funding are STILL increasing tuition at ridiculous rates.

So I did an assessment, if I pay for my children’s college education:

Good:

• They won’t have student loan debt
• If I invest when they are born, assuming decent returns on an account, I should be able to pay for their entire tuition with around $8000.00
• They can concentrate more.
• The do more extra curricular activities
• They can finish school sooner

Bad:

• They wont learn to handle money well
• They may not learn a good work ethic
• I pay for it
• They may not be grateful for education

So that leaves us somewhere in the middle. I came up with a couple middle ground solutions for you out there who are considering the same things:

-I will pay for your undergrad but graduate degree you pay for

-I will allow you to take out a 0% loan from me to pay for school

-I will pay for school, but anything else, you are on your own

-I will pay for school, as long as its in state tuition

-I will pay for school as long as you are involved in many small or one large (football, dancing, music, whatever) activity

Everyone likes spending. Well, ALMOST everyone likes spending. Need help controlling your desire to spend? I could just tell you “ahh young padowan, just get control of yourself.” But I wont. There are many different ways to insert financial self control into your life. One way that you may not have thought of is to take control of the power that America’s marketers have over you and your desire to spend your hard-earned money needlessly.

Some of the most talented marketers in the world ply their trade in America every day, crafting TV commercials, radio spots, print ads, billboards, Web ads, direct mail pieces, telemarketing scripts, and other forms of marketing communications to “inform” you about various products and services they want you to buy. If a talented marketer can attract and hold your attention for just a few precious seconds, that marketer can use powerful techniques to tempt you to voluntarily hand over your hard-earned money in exchange for the product or service the marketer has to sell to you. Unfortunately for you, most marketers are really, really good at what they do. They know how to attract your attention and then work their marketing magic on you – possibly without you even realizing it!

Nonetheless, you are not completely powerless in the marketing game. You can take specific actions to significantly reduce the power that marketers have over you and your desire to spend needlessly. Here are nine tips – some easy, some hard – that can help you insert financial self control into your life by holding America’s extremely talented marketers at bay.

1) Hide Your Telephone Number

The best way to put a stop to unwanted telemarketing calls at your home is to pay your local phone company a few extra dollars a month to make your telephone number unlisted and/or unpublished. You can’t receive unwanted telemarketing calls if telemarketers cannot get access to your telephone number.

2) Register Your Telephone Number

You can also place your telephone numbers on the Federal Trade Commission’s National Do Not Call Registry. By law, telemarketers must remove your telephone number from their call lists if you are on the federal registry list. If the telemarketers call you anyway, they could be subject to federal penalties. To add your telephone numbers to the Do Not Call Registry, call 1-888-382-1222 or go to www.donotcall.gov.

3) Mask Your Telephone Number

Do not give out your real phone number when filling out forms on a company’s website unless you already know in advance that you would like for the company to contact you in an emergency (e.g., so an airline can let you know your flight has been canceled) or to tell you more about a product or service you are considering but want to talk to a company representative about it first (e.g., a used car you saw at a car dealer’s website). Sometimes, an online form will require you to put in a phone number before you can submit the form. What to do? Simply enter your area code and then 999-9999.

4) Opt-Out Your Credit Report

If you wish to reduce U.S. Mail solicitations for credit card and insurance offers by companies that target you based on the information contained in your credit reports, there is an opt-out program operated by the four major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion. Once you opt-out, your name stays on a “do not contact” list for five years. There is also a permanent option. For more information, call 1-888-5OPT-OUT or go to www.optoutprescreen.com.

5) Tell them to screw off

The Direct Marketing Association also maintains a database of consumers who prefer not to receive U.S. Mail solicitations. DMA members must remove those consumers from their mailing lists. Once registered, your name stays on the list for five years. Send your name, address, and a request that the DMA add you to the opt-out list to:

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
P.O. Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

Or, for added convenience, you can pay a small fee and do it online at www.dmaconsumers.org.

6) Flag Your Account

Do you already do business with a company that continuously sends you offer after offer by U.S. Mail each week – or worse, several times a week? There are many credit card companies out there that do this all the time, sending out credit card offers, convenience checks, and short-term loan offers by the millions each and every week. The easiest way to get them to stop sending offer after offer is to mail a polite letter to the company’s Customer Service or Consumer Relations department simply asking them to put you on a “do not mail” list, if they have one. Be sure to include your account number in the letter so that they know you are an existing customer and can flag your account as being on a “do not mail list.” Do this once, being sure to make a photocopy or two of the signed letter before you mail it. Then, wait at least two months to see if the offers from the company reduce in volume or stop altogether.

If after two full months the company’s offers keep coming to you at the same rate as before, make your request more serious by writing a new letter addressed to the company’s General Counsel, the attorney the company keeps on staff or on retainer to handle its legal matters. You might be able to find his or her name on the company’s website. If not, just address it to “General Counsel” at the company’s headquarters address. Again, be polite in your letter to the General Counsel, and simply repeat your original request. Be sure to let the General Counsel know that you wrote the company about the request at least two months ago and experienced no change in the number of offers you received each week. For the General Counsel’s convenience, attach a photocopy of your original letter to the new letter. Getting the attention of the company’s attorney should help get you on an internal “do not mail” list at the company.

7) Monetize Your TV

You probably think your TV exists primarily to entertain you with your favorite TV shows, but you’re wrong. Your TV exists primarily to allow America’s marketers into your home where they can market products and services to you and your family while you are relaxed, in a safe place, and mentally open to a quick sales pitch. It is no surprise that TV has been the American marketer’s most effective marketing tool for over 50 years.

How best to cripple the marketing power of TV in your own home and render it useless to marketers? Simply turn off, unplug, and sell your TV sets for cash on craigslist.com, at a pawn shop, or at a local thrift store. Then, add the cash to your savings account or use it to pay down your debts – that’s an instant increase in your financial security. With all your TV sets out of your home, you will never even see all those pesky TV commercials “informing” you about new products and services you don’t really need and tempting you to go out and buy them.

Yes, at first you will miss your favorite TV shows, but not for long. You’ll soon forget that TV shows even exist because the principle of “out of sight, out of mind” really works. You’ll soon rediscover that there is so much more to life than sitting around on the couch watching the “boob tube.” Yes, your friends, family, and colleagues might think you’re a little strange for not having a TV set in your home and not knowing all the little details about all the latest TV shows they want to talk about, but so what? While they will possess useless TV knowledge and be tempted by hundreds of TV commercials every week, you will soon discover that TV ignorance is wealth-building bliss!

Kill your radio

What works for TV also works for radio. The morning drive shows on most major radio stations are designed to hold your attention while the on-air personalities talk about companies’ products and services in a clever, casual way. Take control by turning off the radio and putting in a CD or using an iPod containing your favorite music, audio books, or podcasts. You’ll arrive at work fully entertained and informed, yet none the wiser about what marketers want you to learn from their radio commercials and on-air plugs about products and services you probably don’t really need.

9) Put Down That Magazine

Mass media magazines like Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, People, InStyle, Time, Esquire, Vogue, US Weekly, Money, Sports Illustrated, and others are designed to be helpful to you and the lifestyle you lead. But, they can also leave you feeling insecure or inadequate about yourself as if something were missing from your life. Conveniently, within their very pages are advertisements – designed and paid for by marketers – that feature slick, high-quality photography showing happy, attractive people seemingly without a care in the world enjoying some great product or service that they supposedly just spent hundreds of dollars, maybe even thousands of dollars, to own or experience. Of course, the people in the advertisements are just actors and models, not real people like you, but the advertisements seem to tell your brain that you could be transformed to look and feel just like these shiny, happy people if only you were to plop down hundreds or thousands of your own hard-earned dollars for the same product or service the actors and models are enjoying.

How can you take control of the power that marketers have over your brain through their picture perfect advertisements? You guessed it – simply choose to not read mass media magazines. “But what about all the great content in those magazines?” you ask. Sure, the content may be fun, informative, and of interest to you. But, think about it: the content is only there to act as bait to get you to spend time with the marketers’ slick advertisements and be tempted to buy products and services that you probably don’t really need in the first place. So, decide which is more important to you: the content in mass media magazines or the contentment that you and your family will enjoy from knowing that you are well on your way to being financially secure thanks to you no longer being tempted by marketers’ slick advertisements in mass media magazines.

10) Practice self control

Yeah yeah this one seems obvious but the truth is you can cultivate self control through deliberate practice.  Take five minutes before you do anything to consider if it is really worth it to you.  You might be thinking “what difference will five minutes make?”  And the answer is, a world of difference.

The price of gas has been going crazy lately but even now gas is one of the cheaper liquids that we buy on a daily basis.  Sure we use more of it, but as a whole its still a lot cheaper in comparison.  If we were to take off the government’s piece of of the cost (up to a dollar in places) it would be even cheaper.  So I did a little research and few price comparisons to see just exactly what we pay per gallon for the rest of the things we buy in ascending order.

1 gallon of gas = $3.37 

Quart of Milk 16 oz for $1.59 = $6.32 per gallon (gallons can be found for cheaper - $4ish a gallon)

Gatorade 20 oz for $1.59 = $10.17 per gallon

Snapple 16 oz for $1.29 = $10.32 per gallon

Water 9 oz for $1.49 = $21.19 per gallon

Starbucks 8 ounce coconut almond mocha for $4.43(what I used to drink) = $70.88 per gallon

Good thing our cars don’t run on starbucks, eh?