Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

Home sweet home – I’ve always love that saying. There is something wonderful about coming to place where you can feel safe, peaceful and rejuvenated. With all of the known dangers out in the big world, home can be a wonderful respite. Sadly, we are bombarded on a daily basis with the news of things that can harm us. Unfortunately some of those things can be found in our safe haven…our home.

Instead of throwing up our hands in frustration, I believe in the power of getting educated and making small changes with big impact on or health and environment. Here are three small changes that can improve the quality of life in your home sweet home.

Cleaning

To maintain a healthy eco-friendly kitchen the first place to start is to get replace any products that contain ammonia and bleach. Both of these ingredients are clearly labeled as toxic and do not belong in the same room where you prepare food. While small exposures to these toxins may simply irritate your breathing, skin and eyes, it can be very harmful to young children and anyone with a compromised immune system. There is a reason the labels say “poison”. There are better, safer ways to clean up in green style.

Another very important reason to skip the commercial brand in your kitchen is that they wreak havoc on our environment. Just think of the runoff into our drains, water supply and eventually our local water systems, lakes, rivers and oceans.

Here are some safer alternatives that I use in my very own kitchen. Not only will you turn your kitchen green, but you will save some ‘green’ along the way.

• Borax – aka sodium borate, is a naturally occurring compound that disinfects when used as a cleaning agent– Simply use anywhere you would use commercial brand abrasive. You can make a pretty fabulous cleaning paste by mixing together a paste of borax and natural liquid soap.
• Distilled White Vinegar
• Baking Soda
• Plant-based liquid soap (with no fragrance)
• Lemons
• Olive Oil

Eating

The food choices you make every day can help to create a greener kitchen for you and your loved ones. One of the most profound changes you can make is to begin to educate yourself about what you are REALLY eating on a daily basis. The best tool you have to create a green healthy eating life is to read the labels on everything you buy and to choose more things that don’t even have labels, other than those cute little stickers, i.e. fruits and veggies.

When it comes to buying produce, there is a coding system that is universally used in the industry to indicate whether an item has been grown organically, conventionally (read: with pesticides), or in a lab. Here are the codes you will find in all stores:

• Organically grown food has five digits and starts with #9
• Conventionally grown food always has four digits
• Genetically grown food has five numbers and will start with the #8 or #3

To keep it simple, I always remember to look for the nine! And whether you choose organic or not, always remember to thoroughly wash your fruits and vegetables with either a store bought natural produce wash or simply use a bit of plant based soap and wash any residue or dirt away before eating.

Storing

When it comes to storing food in our fridge or pantry, we have been taught over the years that plastic is the way to go. We’ve learned that the “burp” of the trusty Tupperware is what we need to watch for to keep foods fresh and healthy. Today, we know about some of the dangers of plastic when it comes to food storage. The two main words that have come to light are Phthalates and BPA.

Phthalates are a type of additive that is used to make plastic softer and more flexible. They are also found in a wide variety of other places like cosmetics and cleaning materials. They are even found in some foods like milk, meat and butter! There has been much controversy as to the safety of phthalates and its effect as an endocrine disruptor, especially in younger children.

Personally, I understand that we are exposed to so many toxins in our environment, and you may ask “does this REALLY make a difference”. Well, as the mother of a young child I am always looking for ways to reduce the toxic burden in my home and in our lives. Choosing to eliminate plastics is a simple way to create a cleaner, greener kitchen in my home.

BPA – Bisphenol A – is used to make plastics such as water bottles, food can lining and sports equipment. BPA, another endocrine disrupter has been linked to obesity, neurological issues, and because of its levels of estrogen levels, has even been linked to breast cancer, among other conditions.

Yes, this seems like a pretty bad situation. However there is good news. Choosing alternative storage is healthier and actually less expensive. Here are some great ways to eliminate Phthalates and BPA in your kitchen.

• Choose stainless steel and glass containers – I like to keep glass jars from food products such as olive and pickle containers. These make wonderful storage containers for grains, nuts and anything else you can think of. I even use an apple sauce jar for my daily green smoothie on the go.
• Mason jars make great cups and storage jars.
• There are non-leaching PBA free plastic alternatives showing up at markets around the country due to high demand. If your store doesn’t carry one, make sure to let the manager know you are interested.

What are some ways you are “greening” your kitchen?

(Photo: elanaspantry)

3 Easy Steps to a Greener Kitchen from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Since my move to Spain, I’ve realized how freeing it can be to live with few possessions. Before I moved here I lived in Sweden. I did live a simple life in Sweden, but now it’s even simpler, and it feels good.

In Spain I rent a fully furnished apartment, which allows me to basically only own a laptop, clothes and a few other items. My happiness has greatly improved from consuming less and realizing that I do not need a lot of stuff to be happy.

When you consume, ask yourself, why are you consuming? What hole are you artificially trying to fill by purchasing more and more things?

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months in keeping my life simple and consuming less. Here are 7 of the strategies that I use to overcome the urge of consumption:

1. Pay with cash
   When you pay with cold hard cash, you’ll be more conscious of your spending. Paying with a debit or credit card is easier, because after all, it’s only a plastic card. I’ve talked with a few people who have drastically cut their spending by eliminating the use of any kind of cards.

   Why do you think banks and everyone else wants you to use these cards? Because it increases consumption, and that’s good for business. But what’s good for business might not be good for you, in the long-run.

2. Leave your wallet
   When I’m out roaming the streets I come across opportunities to buy all the time. Here in Southern Spain we have a lot of restaurants, so the smell of the food is constantly beckoning, wanting me to come and taste the delicious dishes that are available.

   I only take my wallet with me if I really need to. I decide beforehand what I need to buy and if I really need to buy it. I’m mostly spending money on food, rent and other necessities. If I bring my wallet everywhere I go, it’s too easy for me to go into a zombie-like state and start buying.

3. Realize what is important
   What do you really value in life? Examples from my own life would be relationships, doing what I love, and having fun. Yours might be completely different, but almost all human beings want to be happy and find passion in their life.

   We’ve been taught to consume and to buy. We’ve been programmed to believe that having a lot of nice stuff automatically equals success. But there’s something that has been left out, and that is the fact that success does not equal happiness. This is assuming that material wealth equals success.

   When you’re looking at that new phone, computer or car, do you really need it? If you already have one at home, use that, because there are more important things you can spend your money on.

4. Acknowledge the urge
   Whenever I feel the urge to buy something, I become aware of it and accept it. The only time you can get caught up in the urge to consume is when you’re unaware of its influence over you.

   When you shine the light on your need to purchase, you’re instantly conscious about your choices. You can go ahead and buy something, but you will be doing it consciously, while knowing the consequences.

5. Explore the deeper meaning
   Why do we consume? What are we trying to do? We all know people who never seem to stop hoarding and consuming. They fill up their houses with stuff. After a while, they need a bigger house to store all of their stuff in.

   It’s a never-ending cycle. What is the deeper meaning of your desire to consume? I know I want a nice phone, a car and a house, but I realize that they will not make me happy. They are merely preferences, not necessities.

6. Think strategically
   Now, just realizing that you do not need something will probably not help you fight the urge, which is why I like to think strategically and think about the costs of buying something. If you want to buy a car, it’s not just the car you’re buying. It’s the future fuel cost, repairs and everything else that comes with it.

   Minimizing your life will allow you to spend less, work less and have more free time to do what you want. We all work so we can finally realize our dreams. I have a radical thought: why not work less and spend less so you can do it now?

   If you want to buy a big house, then of course you have to work, but is that house really necessary for your happiness? Happiness does not come from external things. You might be happy for a moment, but it will pass. True happiness comes from the inside.

7. Ask
   I’ve found asking the right questions to be really powerful. I have gotten so good at it that I am able to fool myself into not buying something. I might look at something I want to buy and think “maybe I’ll buy it later”, which of course means that I’ll forget and never buy it. An excellent strategy, wouldn’t you say?

   Other questions I use are “Do I really need this?” and “How often am I going to use this?”

   I’ve noticed that I often want to buy things that I am probably not going to use more than a few times a month or even less. The only reason I want them is because they are pretty and they make me look good.

Increasing Your Happiness
For me, being a minimalist doesn’t mean relinquishing all of your material possessions, it simply means decluttering my life and realizing what truly makes me happy.

I don’t have to consume. I don’t have to look for happiness. I can do what I want to do right now. Most people can go after their dreams and passions, but they choose not to by making excuses and blaming something outside of them.

Don’t give away your power by whining, pointing and blaming. Take control of your life and start going after the things that matter to you. You may not succeed right away, but it’s a start.

According to a recent U.S. government study, seventeen million Americans manage their money without the use of a bank account. This means that they have no savings or checking account. Many look down upon this way of life, but it is difficult for me to say it is a bad thing given the fact that my grandparents live on a cash only basis. It seems to be working for them. So, what are the benefits of living without a bank account and managing your cold hard cash alone? Well, the main advantage is that you avoid unruly bank fees and the time it takes to manage and balance your checkbook each month. This makes living on a cash only basis very tempting for many consumers.

No Need For Commercial Banks! Tips For Cash Only Living

So, how does a person live without dealing with a commercial bank? Can you really live without the conveniences of high interest savings accounts and ignore the beckon of free high yield checking accounts? Well, let’s take a look here at some simple steps that show how you can live with a “cash only” system. Find out if this is something you can do!

1. Carry cash for groceries and gas.
Carrying cash for groceries and gas not only allows you to stick to your budget, but it also protects you from fraud against your bank account. Thieves are getting smarter and are now using special equipment to gather all of your debit and credit card information from the places you may swipe a credit or debit card. Using cash keeps your money safe.

2. Pay bills with money orders.
If you don’t have a checkbook, then how do you pay the plumber? Well, be careful: sending cash through the mail is not safe nor recommended. Therefore, a great way to pay your bills through the mail is to use money orders. You can get a money order at a grocery store, gas station, or the post office. You pay for the face value of the money order and a small additional fee for the service. Money orders are great for replacing the use of checks. In addition, you may actually save money because with a checking account you typically have to spend $20 or more on checks for your account. Money order fees may be much less than this for someone who does not have many bills to pay each month. But costs can add up and things may get impractical if you’ve got lots of bills to cover (you may have to be more organized to pull this off); still, going cash only may be the impetus to changing how you live. It may just encourage you to live on less (therefore generating fewer bills to pay!).

3. Use an envelope budgeting system.
Use envelopes to divide your funds for different categories of your budget. You can have an envelope for savings, food, gas, emergencies, utilities, and other bills. Divide your cash across envelopes so each category of your budget is fully funded. When money is removed, simply note your transactions on the outside of the envelope and write the new balance. This way, you know how much money you have available for each category at all times. Thus, it helps you to stick to your budget! More on the envelope budgeting system here.

4. Use a prepaid credit card for airline tickets and car rentals.
If you don’t have a credit card or a checking account with a debit card, you can always purchase a prepaid debit card online or from a drugstore or gas station for the purposes of paying for items that require a credit card such as airline tickets and rental cars.

5. Ask for receipts.
You may need to keep track of expenditures for tax purposes. When using cash, always ask for a receipt. Place all the receipts required for tax reporting in an envelope, file or organizer which you can turn to at the end of the year when you’re ready to work on your taxes. This will make it easier for you and your tax preparer to ensure that nothing is overlooked, plus these will come to your rescue in case of an audit.

Managing your money without a checking or even a high yield savings account can be done. I have been using “cash only” for food and gas for over 3 months now. It works wonderfully for me because I have better control of my budget. In the past, when I used a debit card, I would spend much more than I would budget for food. These days, when I run out of cash, I stop spending. It also makes it very easy for me to quickly see how much I have left in my budget. I just glance at my envelope and see the balance on the outside. Living on a cash only basis not only helps me save money, but also allows me to control my money. This should put me in a better position to be financially free. So is this something you’d consider doing? Brave enough to fire your banker?

 
Contributing Writer: Selena

Skip Commercial Banks! How Cash Only Living Can Work

Cockroaches are gross. I don’t know if it’s their relatively large size, their long antennae, those creepy looking legs, or the fact that their backs so disgustingly shiny. Oh… and they’re almost indestructible. It’s like you kill one and three more appear within days, each one having been grown from the pieces of the one you smashed with your shoe! As the saying goes, if you see one wandering around, chances are you have dozens more crawling around in your walls. It’s a disgusting thought that gives me goosebumps and fortunately we’ve been (knock on wood) lucky enough not to have any problems with roaches. (there’s a reason why this post has no picture )

However, we live in a townhouse, which means our house is physically connected to our neighbors on two sides. One of the first lessons you learn when you live in a townhome is that your neighbor’s problems soon become your own. If your neighbor has his or her house treated for an infestation, like a roach invasion, chances are you have the same problem, even if you don’t know it. If you don’t yet have an infestation, the survivors of your neighbor’s treatment may find themselves moving in.

So while we don’t have a roach invasion just yet, an ounce of prevention is said to be worth a pound of cure.

Preventing a Roach Invasion

There isn’t anything you can do that 100% prevents an infestation but there are some steps you can take that make your home less appealing to a roach family. Like killing ants, the key to preventing infestation is cleanliness. The kitchen is the number one room in your home where this is crucial because it’s like a buffet for them. Put food away, keep your counters clean, and empty your trash regularly. We keep our trash outdoors (we have a sliding door that opens to a “reviewing stand,” we keep the trash bin there) in our attempt to battle back against ants.

Put naphthalene balls (also known as moth balls) in the corners of your kitchen, little critters hate that smell and try to avoid it. Finally, if you can invest the time, try to seal all the external and internal cracks in your home. If they want to get in, they will, but doing this will make it just a little bit trickier for them.

What if the cockroaches have already invaded?

How to Kill Cockroaches

The big problem with cockroaches is that they reproduce very quickly and are notoriously difficult to kill. Each female roach can lay up to forty eggs at a time and produce over four hundred roaches in her lifetime, which is about a year. They can go a month without food, though they eat almost anything (like your dead skin flakes), and breathe using a series of tubes (trachea) in their body so you can chop off their legs or even their head… and they won’t die. Resilient little buggers. Heck, they can even survive the fallout of a nuclear explosion. So what can you use to kill these critters?

Borax. (or boric acid) The treat involves mixing borax with a lure that makes the roaches eat it. With ants, you can use a jelly or jam (we found they loved peanut butter) mixed with about 5% borax. They take the jelly poison back home, share it with their friends, and everyone dies. I’ve seen recipes that call for boric acid with flour and cocoa, I’ve seen it with jelly, and I’ve quickly learned the key is to mix it with something that is both sticky and appealing to the buggers. You want it to be weak enough (5%) so that it doesn’t kill them instantly, you want them to bring it back home and feed it to their friends.

Boric acid is going to be one of the least toxic (though it is still mildly toxic, just not highly toxic) option and is better than insecticides or other purchased remedies like sprays and roach bait. The tricky part about all these remedies is that pets (and kids) are liable to eat them. We have a pet beagle and the little guy absolutely loves all kinds of food, especially bread products, so anything that uses a jelly or a flour is out unless we are cordon off the treatment area.

Water Jars

Water jars have been said to provide a nice alternative. Put a jar with water and some coffee grounds (as bait) beside a wall. Stale beer is said to be a good lure too. Cockroaches feel most comfortable when they can touch a wall so you keep them in that comfort zone when you put the jar beside the wall. The water and the coffee grounds act as bait and the idea is that they crawl in but can’t crawl out (the glass jar’s walls are too slippery). This remedy is the safest but you need to remember to empty out the jar periodically.

How to Get Rid of Roaches (or) How to Kill a Cockroach Invasion from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.

For many people, mindful consumerism starts with questioning the desire to buy Stuff. The reason might be to save money or avoid clutter — maybe both. It’s the first part of a journey to differentiate needs from wants and make mindful decisions about where to spend our hard-earned money.

But at some point, most of us will consume. We’ll buy food or clothing or household items. We’ll need to replace something, fix something, or upgrade something. When we make these purchases, we’re playing a role in a process. Much goes into creating a product and getting it on the shelf, though as a consumer, we don’t see that process. We don’t know if the companies involved in bringing it to us have decent working conditions for employees, pollute water systems, or include additives that pose health risks to our families.

Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy, wrote about considering the global effects of our purchases in his essay, Making the Right Choice:

An organic cotton t-shirt may be called “green” because they didn’t use pesticides or chemical fertilizers when growing the cotton. That’s on the good side of the ledger, to be sure, but if we look into the life cycle of the t-shirt, we discover that organic cotton fibers are shorter than other fibers, so you need to grow a lot more cotton per t-shirt. Cotton is typically raised in arid parts of the world, and it’s a very thirsty crop, so a lot of water is implicated in the production of the t-shirt.

Also, if it’s a colored t-shirt, we have to take into account that textile dyes tend to be carcinogenic. When we consider all these angles, we may come to see that if you change one thing about a product and leave 999 unchanged, it’s not green.

It’s enough to make the average consumer’s head spin. Most people would like to make informed choices and reward companies whose processes make us feel good, but doing this in practice is daunting. If a busy parent is in the grocery store with two children to wrangle, it’s not feasible for that person to stop and trace the life cycles of Cheesy Poufs versus Cheddar Puffs. People can’t be expected to spend hours on the web researching the health, societal, and environmental effects of every purchase. Not gonna happen.

Technology provides the tools
Luckily, it’s getting easier to know what’s behind a brand. Skin Deep and GoodGuide are two web databases that provide the backstory on the Stuff we buy.

• Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products researched by the Environmental Working Group. You can search by product, ingredient, or company, and the site will return a hazard rating with the product broken down by ingredients.
• GoodGuide is a database of more than 70,000 food, toys, personal care, and household products that rates the products and companies based on the effects they have so that users can make informed decisions based on what is important to them.

For example, GoodGuide provides information about Quaker Quick Oats, which it rates a 7.3 overall (out of 10), and Nature’s Path Organic Instant Hot Oatmeal, which is rated 6.7. We might assume that the organic brand would be healthier, but in fact it’s higher in sugar than similar products. When it comes to environmental effects, Quaker Quick Oats scores lower for water and energy management. Users can delve deeper into how these ratings are determined by clicking on See All Data.

The brainchild of Dara O’Rourke, a professor at University of California-Berkeley, GoodGuide was developed with experts from Harvard and MIT, with tech input from talent at Google, eBay, Amazon, and Intuit. And the tech part is what makes GoodGuide great. The database is available as an iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad app that allows users to scan barcodes and compare products. Users also can create personalized shopping lists and lists of products to avoid, making it easier shop mindfully when you’re on the go.

Start small
If you’re interested learning more about where your Stuff comes from, make a few changes and build from there. Don’t feel like you have to throw out all of the “bad” Stuff you own and replace it with the “good” Stuff. To start, pick one product you’re curious about, and see if it’s listed on Good Guide or Skin Deep. How does it score? Is there a better alternative that will still meet your needs? Often the better-rated product also is the less expensive, which is a great bonus. In fact, I’ve slowly replaced my skin-care products with cheaper products that also rate better when it comes to health and societal effects. Sometimes the expensive products packaged in “green”-looking bottles rate surprising low.

I’m interested to know what you think about databases like Skin Deep and GoodGuide. Have you ever wondered how some of the products you buy get to the shelf? Would you use tools like these to learn more about the effects of the Stuff you buy?

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Obsessive Consumption
• Word2Word: Free Online Language Tools
• links for 2007-04-16
• Use a No-Spend Month to Become Mindful of Money
• links for 2006-11-21

Finance is a huge part of our lives yet it remains something that many people struggle with. Today, more than ever before, people are getting into financial difficulties and debt.

The recession has been going on for a few years now and people’s houses are still being repossessed. People are still losing their jobs. Worst of all, they’re losing their freedom and independence.

What’s saddest about people getting into debt is the ties it causes. It you’re in debt you’re often forced to stay in a job or an area you don’t like in order to repay the debt. There’s an incredible freedom that comes from being free of debt. Only when you’re debt free can you actually live the life you want and be the master of your own destiny.

So here are my tips on how you can avoid getting into debt, simplified and repackaged in a way that I hope makes you see the true value of living within your means.

• Never borrow money to buy unnecessary toys
  Living within your means brings happiness and freedom that expensive new gadgets don’t. If you can’t afford to buy the car or TV of your dreams then don’t buy it. Get what you can pay for in cash now and be happy with it. If you really need to buy a car to get from A to B then buy one you can easily afford.

  Don’t be tricked into finance plans that offer “18 months interest free”. If you can’t afford to buy the item for cash now you may not be able to in 18 months either. If you buy something on those crazy “free credit” terms, you’ll be paying over the odds for it and you won’t be free anymore. You’ll be tied down to making those repayments until they’re paid off. Much better to save up, pay cash and live free.

  Maybe you’re worried about what people will think about your unfashionable car or clunky TV? Don’t be. Anyone who judges you by that isn’t worth worrying about anyway.

• Non-Essentials
  Little things like clothes, skincare, & toiletries add up. Just get what you need. I'm sure that many of us in developed countries have many more clothes than we can actually wear. That's why I've classified clothes as non-essentials here. How many pairs of jeans and t-shirts does one person actually need? I'd be prepared to bet that it's not as many as you've already got, especially if you're female. Sorry girls!

  I’ve just spent a year without buying any new clothes, apart from some new sports socks when my old ones had gone to holes and a pair of shoes for a wedding. It wasn’t as if I was going to be naked. I had more than enough clothes to see me through the year and I think I even managed to look quite nice most of the time too.

  It was great not to bother going to shops and shopping centers and also good at the end of the year to evaluate what I actually needed clothes-wise and spend a few hours clothes shopping. If you can’t cut down your clothes shopping to once a year try shopping for clothes only twice a year, maybe when the sales are on.

  Or have a clothes and accessories swap party. Invite about 10 friends of varying sizes and tell them to bring the clothes and accessories they never wear. You’ll be laughing over each others’ disaster buys and amazed to see how good your unflattering trousers look on someone else. This is a cheap, fun night in and a great way to bond with friends.

  When it comes to skincare and toiletries get cheaper brands. The pricier ones aren’t worth it, you’re just paying for the expensive advertising campaigns and the supermodels who promote them. Now why would you want to do that?

  So you really need something?

  Do you really need it? Really? Truly? It’s amazing how many things I think I need and write on my list but never get round to buying because I don’t go to the shops very often. If you go shopping every week, apart from to the grocery store or food market, then you’re probably spending more than you need to just by being in the shopping mall. Avoid shopping malls like the plague, especially if you have kids with you.

  But let’s say you’ve convinced me there’s something you really need, your bike’s broken beyond repair and you really need a new one to get to work. Please, never buy anything, new or used, without taking the time to ask these two questions:
  What’s the best price you can do for me? Can you do a better deal for cash? You’ll probably get one discount this way but you might even get two price cuts.

  If you can wait until the annual sales, you might get a better deal. Or put a search on Ebay, go to garage sales and tell your friends and colleagues you’re in the market for a new bike to see if anything comes up.

• Housing
  Sometimes renting can be cheaper than buying, especially if house prices aren’t increasing. Don’t be pressurized into buying a house or buying a more expensive house than you can easily afford the mortgage repayments on. You’re not buying a better house, you’re buying worry and financial pressure.
• Grocery Shopping
  Forget silly food coupons, just make sure you bulk buy and buy the supermarkets own brands. With most items (basmati rice, virgin olive oil, canned tomatoes, pasta, etc.) some of the cheaper brands taste just as good as the more expensive brands to me. There are only a few things I’m fussy about - I have to have the more expensive brand of mayonnaise - but for most things you’ll probably find the no name brands are just as good. Pick and choose your products carefully.
• Be Patient
  For example, go to the movies on cheap Tuesdays or wait for the DVD to come out to the $1 RedBox. Most things have promotions at certain times of the year or on certain days, you’ve just got to wait for them.
• Banish takeouts
  I love eating out. I don’t do it as often as I’d like but it’s a real treat for me to go to a cafe or restaurant and eat a meal someone else has cooked and will clear away for me too. I just don’t get the idea of takeouts though. Most of them don’t taste as good as the food you’d make at home and it’s not that hard to wash up a chopping board and a couple of saucepans. Most healthy food is quick to make at home too (things like stir-fry and omelets) or can be prepared in bulk so you can freeze some to reheat on another day (curries and soups.)

  I know often you may want to socialize without feeling you need to kill yourself with cooking and shopping. Try having a curry night and asking everyone to bring along one dish. Or just a potluck and see what happens. Or a fun sushi night where everyone knuckles down and learns how to make their own sushi.

Start making these life changes to stay out of debt and save money today. There’s no time like the present. Like any addict you’ll suffer a bit at first, but when you get used to spending less you’ll be glad you did. Leave your credit cards at home and reassess how to cut down your spending and what you’ll do when you’ve controlled your spending and earned your own freedom.

What will you do when you’re out of debt and in control of your finances? Keep your prize on the goal and you’ll get there in the end.

A beggar falls asleep in a drunken stupor by the side of the road. A short while later, the lord of the manor passes by with his retinue and, seeing the beggar, decides to amuse himself by playing a trick.

The lord has his servants carry the beggar to the manor house, taking great care not to wake him. They place him in a an enormous bed in an elaborately decorated bedroom, have fine food and drink prepared for him and then stand by the bedside, waiting for the beggar to wake up.

When he does so, he is amazed to see his surroundings and asks where he is. The servants tell him that he is, in fact, the lord of the manor, and has been suffering from a fever during which he deliriously ranted about being a drunken beggar. At first, he protests, but the servants are astonished when he soon accepts their story and starts ordering them around. He even commands them to put on a play to lift his spirits after his terrible ordeal.

So begins Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the Shrew. The beggar, Christopher Sly, is a fool, of course, for being so credulous. But Shakespeare’s ridiculous character has lessons for us all.

It was, until quite recently, relatively difficult to move up from the financial and social situation into which you are born. Now, opportunities are more forthcoming, and it is not uncommon for people to become significantly wealthier or more successful than their parents or grandparents. But herein lies a danger. We can start to define our self worth – and that of others – by external things: money, possessions, success, academic qualifications, even the attractiveness of a partner.

This narcissism can lead the modern Christopher Sly into a life without center, shallow and egotistical. Consumerism, capitalism – not bad in themselves – can lead the unwary into dangerous waters. How can we navigate through?

• Remember that life is fragile and can end at any moment.
  How many people have died since you started reading this article? There is an ancient Indian form of meditation where monks observe corpses and contemplate on the fleeting and uncertain nature of life. Remembering our own mortality can keep things in perspective.
• Stop making distinctions between people.
  Lord of the manner or beggar, we all have intrinsic value. When you start making distinctions between the value of people based on externals, there is no end to the categories you can invent, and this can be a dangerous game, as the bloody history of the twentieth century showed.




• Don’t take yourself too seriously.
  In a sense, all life is a game. The ancient Indian spiritual texts describe the whole universe as the play of Brahman, God playing with God in myriad forms, as you and me, beggars and lords of the manner. To quote the bard, ‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.’




• Consider that the true meaning of life is to give service.
  The external trappings may come, but if you can be of service, then you will find your center. Einstein noticed this when he wrote, ‘Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.’

Interestingly, Shakespeare never returns to Christopher Sly, and we are left wondering what happens to him. Many commentators believe that this section of the play has been lost. In any case, we are left to wonder what happens to foolish Sly – how long can he carry on deluding himself before he gets dumped back on the street?

Without a true appreciation that external things, valuable and enjoyable though they are, have no fundamental meaning, we can find ourselves adrift and, in the end, alone. Let’s take a lesson from Christopher Sly.

This is a guest post from my wife. It’s a response to the debate on Erica’s recent article about outsourcing life.

J.D. and I have been employing an independent housekeeper for about 10 years. The one who’s been working for us for almost five years, Michele, is fantastic and we feel lucky to have her. (We found her through Craigslist). Housecleaning is her full-time job.

It took us some time to get over our self-imposed barrier of hiring some help with the house chores. I’m not lazy, and it struck me as a weak, self-indulgent thing to do. But, as J.D. freely admits, he’s a slob. We’d fight over the mess in the house, and time and time again would try to institute a “system” to keep it clean, only to fail once more and descend into arguments. With both of us working full-time, we wanted to spend our time at home in other ways than cleaning.

Still, I felt guilty for paying someone else to do work I didn’t want to do myself. I admit it: It feels weird to pay someone to clean your toilets! And I felt guilty for even being able to afford considering “outsourcing” the housework. After all, anyone can do housework, right?

The “housekeeper dilemma”
Over time, however, I’ve realized that my guilt is misplaced. (Although it still lingers a bit.) Why would I feel any guiltier paying someone for cleaning my house than cooking my food at a restaurant, or growing my food at a farmer’s market, or knitting a hat I buy at a cute store? I can cook; I can grow food; I can knit. But often I choose to pay someone else to do these tasks rather than do them myself. Why does the housekeeper, then, represent such obscene luxury in our debates on the complexities of social economics?

Primarily, I believe it’s because we see our housekeeper face-to-face. We invite her into our homes and our lives. We see the struggles in her life (she’s a divorced mom of two teenagers) in a way that is invisible for the many other jobs we outsource. The agricultural worker doesn’t deliver pears to my door, nor the factory worker bring inexpensive mass-produced products to personally stock the shelves in my pantry. I don’t directly pay the garbage-collector, the office custodian, or the guy who sweeps out the theater after J.D. spills all his candy on the floor. For these things, there’s an insulating layer of “a company” between the producer of the goods and the consumer. With housekeeping, no such dividing layer exists.

Professional housecleaning, like agricultural harvesting, child-care, and many service-industry jobs, is a job that is frequently performed by people without much higher education or unique skills. (Or they are choosing not to use that education or skills, or perhaps there is no market for their particular talents.) These jobs are typically low-paying, but that doesn’t mean the people who perform these jobs are unworthy. I’m all for a living wage, but the more specialized and rare your skills, the higher salary you can command if there is a market for those skills. It’s basic supply and demand. And just because a job doesn’t pay well does not mean that job is demeaning.

I won’t pretend my housekeeper has such a “passion for cleaning houses” that it led her to this profession, but she’s a survivor, and has chosen housecleaning for many personal reasons, not the least of which are the flexibility in her schedule, the freedom to choose the clients she serves, and the chance to be her own boss. The trade-offs include a physically-demanding job, inconsistent income, and a relatively low salary (due to not working 40 hours a week, although at $22, her hourly wage is decent).

I think another part of the “housekeeper dilemma” is the historical disregard for the value of work that has been “women’s work”, and the expectation that if there is a woman is in the house, she shouldn’t need to pay another person (usually another woman) to do the tasks she is supposed to be doing herself. If someone is cleaning a house that’s not their own, they must feel degraded, right? But any work can be found degrading, sustaining, fulfilling or mind-numbing. I doubt that those of you who clean your own toilets feel degraded by the process.

What matters is not so much the type of work but the working conditions and the self-respect possible for the worker. Michele knows her work is valued in our home. The days I come home after Michele has been at my house are like a treat to me! And she knows it — because I tell her. I’d gladly give up other expenses before I cut Michele out of my budget. For her part, I’m pretty sure she values having us a steady clients who always have the check ready on the table and share the garden produce in the summer months.

Everyone outsources
The popular opinion is that anyone can do housework (so you shouldn’t outsource this labor), but does that mean that everyone has to? As GRS readers know, we grow and preserve much of our own food. That’s something I truly enjoy. Housework? Not so much. Someone else might think canning applesauce in a hot kitchen on a 90-degree day sounds like pure drudgery; they’ll outsource the task and get their jar of applesauce at the store. No one gives that a second thought, but there are a lot of outsourced laborers between the apple tree and that jar. Me? I’ll outsource cleaning the kitchen instead.

In my mind, the bottom line is that everyone outsources. Unless you grow, harvest, and process your own food, make your own clothes from fibers you’ve produced and spun, build your own house, create your own power sources, and are completely independent from the long chain of people in the manufacturing economy, you’re paying other people to do that which you do not want to do, don’t want to make time to do, or lack the skills to do. In the modern word, specialization is the norm.

So, do what work works for you — I’ll be in the garden.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Ask the Readers: How Do You Find a Job?
• A Thanksgiving Poem
• The Prioritizer: A Unique Personal Finance Calculator
• A Brief Guide to Holiday Tipping
• links for 2006-08-26

How do you normally spend your lunch hour? Wait, let’s back up a bit: do you even take a lunch hour? A lot of us end up grabbing a sandwich at our desks, checking emails or maybe surfing the net a bit during our lunch break. Often, the best-case scenario sees us in a staff canteen or at a local sandwich shop with friends.

It’s easy to treat the lunch hour as dead time in your day – or as an opportunity to catch up with an overflowing inbox or to-do list. But treating your lunch hour well means setting yourself up for success in the rest of the day – and potentially your life.

Here’s how:

1. Make it a Full Hour
   When I was a teen, I had the occasional “free period” in school – an hour with no classes. I was always amazed at how much homework I could get through then, compared with at home. An hour is a great length of time to focus on something: long enough to get into it, not so long that your attention starts wandering.

   A great first step to making the most of your lunch hour is to actually take that full hour. This is easier in an office environment where others do too, but you can always start a new trend! If you really want people to respect your time and avoid interrupting you with work matters while you’re having your lunch break, then get as far from your desk as possible – head to the break room, the canteen or lobby, or right out of your building.




2. Think About Your Lunch
   Now, although you’re unlikely to spend a whole hour actually eating lunch, it’s called a “lunch” hour for a reason. The food you put into your body in the middle of the day is your fuel for the afternoon. If you find yourself feeling sleepy or lethargic mid-afternoon, there’s a good chance it’s to do with what you’re eating.

   You don’t need to be a nutritional expert to eat well at lunch. Focus on these key basics:

   • Eat a lighter lunch if you want to be more alert in the afternoon (and have a small snack two – three hours after lunch)
   • Avoid alcohol at lunch time – even a single beer or glass of wine is enough to make you less alert
   • Have some fiber and protein to keep you full for longer. Whole grains, fruit, veggies and lean meats are all great sources.
   • Avoid high-sugar foods which will give you a temporary energy boost, followed by a crash.
3. Get Some Exercise
   Sitting at a desk for eight hours straight isn’t good for anyone. Make a point of getting some exercise every lunch break – even if it’s just a fifteen minute brisk walk. If you’ve got a gym nearby, take advantage of it.

   I’m sure you’re well aware of the benefits of exercise, but so many of us struggle to fit it into our day. Getting some exercise at lunch time can:

   • Help you stay alert for the afternoon ahead
   • Be part of your exercise/weight-management program
   • Let you unwind and de-stress if you’ve had a hectic morning
   • Avoid back problems and other aches and pains from sitting at a desk all day

   You may even find that a colleague is willing to be a gym buddy or walking partner – meaning you can socialize at the same time as getting some healthy exercise in.




4. Learn Something New
   A lunch hour can be a great chance for a change of pace, and it’s a good opportunity to learn something new. This might not necessarily be something directly related to your job: for example, you could use your lunch hour to learn vocabulary for a foreign language.

   Lunch time is also a great chance for some reading. Many of us feel we don’t have time to read – even though books are one of the cheapest ways to learn about almost any topic. If pouring over a non-fiction book isn’t your idea of a fun lunch break, how about picking up a novel instead? (If you need some convincing that fiction is worthwhile, here’s eight reasons to read fiction.)




5. Pursue a New Career…?
   Finally, if your lunch hours are the one bright spot in a job that you don’t especially like, how about using them to plan your escape? This one needs approaching with a good bit of caution: be clear about your workplace’s rules on what you can and can’t do with company computers, for instance. If you get outside the office to a local coffee shop or park, and you have a laptop you can work on, you’ll probably be OK.

   I spent the lunch hours in one student summer job writing a novel. When I worked in my last day job, I sometimes wrote blog posts during my lunch breaks. If you’ve got a side project or even a small business, can you spend your lunch hours on it?

   That could mean:

   • Writing your business plan.
   • Looking up sources of funding and other information online.
   • Sending emails or making phone calls to clients or potential clients.
   • Doing freelance work (such as writing or designing).
   • Reading relevant books and blogs to learn about that career.
   • Spending time planning or brainstorming.

   Do be careful with this one, though – and make sure you’re not breaking any of the terms in your current employment contract.

Are your lunch hours helping you get to where you want to be in life? If not, what changes can you make?

This is a guest post from Robert Brokamp of The Motley Fool. Robert is a Certified Financial Planner and the advisor for The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement service. He contributes one new article to Get Rich Slowly every two weeks.

Let’s say it’s 8 p.m. on a weekday. Or 2 p.m. on a Saturday. Or maybe 3 a.m. in the middle of a night when you can’t sleep. Whatever time it is, assume it’s a time when you have an hour or two free — you can do whatever you want. What would you do?

If you’re like me, you don’t always do what you should do — something that would move your life forward, or at least relieve some stress, rather than something that just provides a temporary squirt of pleasure. I may read yet another book about World War II rather than work on an article that’s due. I’ll let myself get sucked down the email rabbit hole instead of transferring that IRA to a better broker. I’ll turn on ESPN and watch other people exercise instead of doing it myself.

Why is this? Why do we not do things we know would improve our lives?

When it comes to personal finances, we all know how less-than-optimal ways we spend our time can end up costing us money, or at least peace of mind. There’s late fees, a reluctance to tackle snowballing debt, putting off saving for retirement, missed opportunities to enhance our careers and human capital, not getting a will and other important documents — the list goes on until the break of dawn.

I’m fascinated by this, both as a guy who writes about personal finances as well as someone who doesn’t always do what makes the most sense. I don’t have a definitive answer yet, but here are some things I’ve run across recently that might provide some clues.

Blame it on the brain
In his article “Human Decision-Making: A Scary Thing,” Dr. Jim Phelps says that humans are wired to look for short-term risks and rewards:

Research by psychologists shows that we pay most attention to the risks that are right in front of us. Risks that won’t appear until later, even if they are huge, just don’t get to us the way a risk we face right now does…

People will start a heart exercise program after their heart attack, when the risk of having another attack is now very clear to them. Those people knew about the value of exercise before the heart attack. They aren’t stupid or foolish, they’re human…

Worse yet, solutions with immediate strong benefits strike us as much more attractive than solutions with less immediate results — even if those benefits will be many times greater later! Buy a new TV now instead of investing and letting that money compound interest…

Our minds evolved to handle immediate problems. Is there a saber-tooth tiger out there? Where are we going to find food today? Who can I trust in my social band? Does Joe still owe me a favor? That’s what we “grew up” thinking about.

We’re too tired
You just got home after a long day at the office, but your work isn’t done. You still have to cook the kids, wash the dinner, and put the dishes to bed — or something like that. And then you’re going to analyze that last year’s spending to find ways to save money? Not likely.

Of course, for many of us, nighttime isn’t the only tired time. And when you’re tired, it’s much more difficult to make the choice to do something that doesn’t have immediate rewards.

This is one of the main lessons of The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loeher and Tony Schwartz. As they write:

Every one of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors has an energy consequence, for better or for worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have. The premise of this book — and of the training we do each year with thousands of clients — is simple enough: Performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy.

To manage energy, Loeher and Schwartz suggest four principles:

• Principle 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
• Principle 2: Because energy diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
• Principle 3: To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
• Principle 4: Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

We’re hungry, scared, selfish, and horny
Like Dr. Phelps, marketing guru Seth Godin blames our difficulties on the primitive parts in our head, what Godin calls our “lizard brain” (and scientists would call the limbic system). In a speech (that you can watch here), he explained it thusly:

The idea of the lizard brain is this: It is hungry, it is scared, it is selfish, and it is horny. That’s its job. And that’s all it does. All it thinks about is, “How am I going to survive? How am I going to have kids? Get me out of here!”…

Every single time we get close to shipping [that is, completing and delivering a project], every single time the manuscript is ready to send to the publisher, the lizard brain speaks up. The lizard brain says, “They’re gonna laugh at me.” The lizard brain says, “I’m gonna get in trouble.” The lizard brain is screaming at the top of its lungs. So what happens is, we don’t do it. We sabotage it. We hold back. We have another meeting. You don’t need to be more creative. All of you are actually too creative. What you need is a quieter lizard brain.

It seems to me that the lizard brain comes into play when the things we know we should do involve a certain amount of personal risk (real or perceived), and where the stakes are potentially big. This isn’t why we don’t take out the garbage as much as it is about why we don’t take chances to do what we really want to do with our lives.

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art [J.D.'s review], calls this “Resistance.” Here’s a bit from an interview Pressfield did with Godin that I found simple but all too true:

Pressfield: Do you experience Resistance (meaning self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc.)? In what form does Resistance present itself?

Godin: Until you wrote about it in The War of Art, I didn’t know what to call it. For me, the resistance disguises itself as important, even urgent work that could and should be put aside. The resistance most often looks like checking my email. Email is the perfect distraction for me, because it’s fresh, new, and bite-sized. When I turn off email, even for an hour, my productivity triples.

One answer
Which brings us to the solutions portion of our show. I don’t have all the answers (yet), but Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits has a suggestion that I’ve been trying to implement: Identify, and focus on, your most important tasks (MITs):

It’s very simple: your MIT is the task you most want or need to get done today. In my case, I’ve tweaked it a bit so that I have three MITs — the three things I must accomplish today. Do I get a lot more done than three things? Of course. But the idea is that no matter what else I do today, these are the things I want to be sure of doing. So, the MIT is the first thing I do each day, right after I have a glass of water to wake me up. And here’s the key to the MITs for me: at least one of the MITs should be related to one of my goals. While the other two can be work stuff (and usually are), one must be a goal next-action. This ensures that I am doing something to move my goals forward that day.

As Babauta concedes, he didn’t come up with the idea, and he links to a post on Lifehacker that picks up on Godin’s advice:

Author of Never Check Email in the Morning Julie Morgenstern suggests spending the first hour of your workday email-free. Choose one task — even a small one — and tackle it first thing. Accomplishing something out of the gate sets the tone for the rest of your day and guarantees that no matter how many fires you’re tasked with putting out the minute you open your email client, you still can say that you got something done.

That’s just one idea, and may not help with all our sub-optimal behaviors. But this post is long enough. Plus, “The Simpsons” are on, and, well, I’m pretty tired.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Ask the Readers: Escaping from an Upside-Down Loan?
• Tomorrow I Will Blog for 24 Hours Straight
• Check Your Local Library for Summer Reading Activities
• Burn After Reading: The $22 Movie
• Blogathon Status: 21 Pledges for $466

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