Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

Do you use a to-do list? Most of us have some kind of running list of tasks which we want to get done (even if we keep this list in our heads). And I expect that at some point, like me, you’ll have had the experience of creating an extremely ambitious to-do list … only to end up completing just a fraction of the tasks on it.

A to-do list in itself isn’t any kind of magic. You might feel good about writing it, but on its own, it won’t get the work done! And sometimes, your list can end up being a hassle, draining your energy or just getting in the way.

I can’t give you a magic system, because the way you work is no doubt different from the way I work – we all have slightly different approaches which suit us. But these steps should all help you to get your to-do list under control:

Step 1: Try Different Mediums
Do you keep your to-do list on the computer, or on paper? For a week, try doing the opposite – and see what difference it makes. I’ve gone through various to-do list mediums including:

• Single sheets of lined paper (as a student – a whole week of tasks fitted on one sheet!)
• A notebook with a page per day (when I started freelancing)
• A computerized solution which uses templates to easily input recurring tasks (nowadays)

Your system will depend on how you like to plan and work, and on the types of tasks you have. My best suggestion here is to experiment – it’s very easy to get stuck in our ways and to assume that the system we have is effective just because it vaguely works.

Step 2: Don’t Over-Plan
The biggest mistake that most of us make with to-do lists is to get too ambitious. We write down all sorts of things which we want to get done – only to end up feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and annoyed at ourselves when we don’t achieve it all.

Many experts advise limiting your to-do list as much as possible: some suggest writing down just three-five tasks each day. When you put an item onto your list, ask yourself: Do I want to do this?

If not, can you delegate it? And does it really need to be done?

Don’t fill up your to-do list with “nice to do” items … if you want to track these, try keeping them on a separate page or in a different file, so that you can turn to them when you’ve completed the day’s work. That way, they’ll feel like bonus achievements rather than yet another thing to slog through!

Step 3: Make New Tasks Wait
Another common mistake is to plan out a perfect day or week, only to end up shoving new tasks in as they arise. Perhaps you’ve got your three key tasks for the day all planned, but then you check your email and a client is asking for some revisions on a project.

Unless a new task really needs to be done the same day, write it on tomorrow’s list. (Or on a different day later in the week.) I find that creating this buffer lets me focus on what’s important first, rather than just on what happens to catch my attention. Often, an emergent task can wait 24 hours without any problems at all.

Step 4: One Task At a Time
Finally, when you’re actually working from your to-do list, be clear about what item you’re tackling at any given moment. Flitting around trying to do five things at once won’t do you any favors: you’re more likely to forget things, make mistakes, or get distracted.

I like to annotate my list as I’m going along with “1″ against the task I’m going to tackle next, “2″ against the one after that, and “3″ against the third. This helps me to stay focused – if I’m tempted to switch to something else, I remind myself that I’ve chosen to work in a particular order so that I can get all the important things done while I’ve still got plenty of energy.

What does your to-do list look like? Is it working for you?

This guest post from Andrea is part of the new “reader stories” feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Some reader stories contain general “how I did X” advice, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure.

I am a graduate student, working towards a PhD, and I hope to graduate in 2012. Prior to starting my PhD program I acquired a significant amount of student loan debt while working on a Master’s degree. I also had a small amount of debt left over from my undergraduate degree. In total I had accumulated around $70,000 in student loans.

Some people might say that isn’t too bad considering that I already had completed my Master’s degree, and would not be acquiring any new loans while pursuing my PhD. But I had lived paycheck to paycheck for the two years I worked between college and graduate school, and I didn’t want to live that way anymore. I didn’t want that much debt hanging over me, potentially impacting my future career decisions, so I decided to start paying back the loans while still in school.

A rude awakening
While I wouldn’t say that I regret taking out so much in loans for a Master’s degree, and I’m not sure that I would do anything differently if I had the chance, it is different looking at that dollar amount from the other side. I think this is a potential trap that all students can fall into, both undergraduate and graduate, when deciding where to go to school: The financial implications of having to pay back those loans are so far outside your perspective when you sign a promissory note; it’s not until you graduate and have to figure out how you’re going to pay hundreds of dollars every month for the next decade or two that the weight of your decision finally hits you!

It was with the realization that I’d be paying $800 a month for 20 years according to the “standard repayment plan,” and would end up paying as much in interest as the original loan amount, that I decided to embark on a much more aggressive repayment plan. I am very lucky because I have a husband who works full time and is able to help support me while I am in school. I also was lucky to obtain a training grant that is paying both my tuition and a stipend for my PhD program. Not all graduate students are so lucky.

However, I also work very hard to find other sources of income, and for the past year or so I have budgeted my income very carefully to start paying back some of my debt. While my stipend is enough to live on, it would not provide much extra for paying off loans. So to earn extra money I work part time doing research for a professor in my department.

At times it has been difficult balancing work and school, but in addition to providing extra money it also teaches me time management, and gives me extra experience to put on my resume, which will hopefully help me get a better job when I graduate.

I also take advantage of opportunities to be a Teaching Assistant, which pays $1500 (pre-tax) for each 8-week course. Through the combination of my stipend, working part time, and being a teaching assistant, I was able to take home around $36,000 in 2009.

While this isn’t a huge amount of money, it is a pretty decent income for a graduate student. However, what was more important for me wasn’t how much I was making each month, but how I was budgeting that money. I used an Excel spreadsheet to carefully budget my money each month, allocating money for utilities, groceries, car insurance, my Roth IRA (which I max out each year, since it is the only retirement account I can have as a graduate student), and discretionary spending.

Destroying debt
I set a goal of allotting at least $1000 every month to go towards student loans. My budget was not super strict — my husband and I are careful with our spending, but we do go out to eat and to the movies, and we buy things when we really want them. We pay off our credit cards in full each
month, own just one car, and pack lunches.

By following this reasonable budget I was able to pay off $18,246.45 between May 2008 and September 2009. Here’s the break down of how I did it:

I used a combination of the debt snowball approach and paying off the highest interest loan first. I also chose to make payments in large chunks rather than a set amount on the same day each month. I knew I wanted to pay off the private loan early because it was accruing interest, but I also tackled one of my undergrad loans early on, because I could pay it off in one payment (the December 2008 payment). My final payment in September 2009 paid off the last of my undergraduate loans, just in time for my five-year reunion.

Back on track
For the last few months, I’ve taken a break from this aggressive loan paying, in part because the point I’m at in my degree program didn’t allow me to work as much recently. But I’m ready to tighten my budget again, and plan to devote at least $500 a month to my graduate student loans, comprised mostly of a Federal Direct loan now totaling just over $50,000 because about half of the amount is not subsidized and is accruing interest at 6.8% (a fixed rate — thanks a lot Uncle Sam!). In addition to putting money towards this loan I plan to save money in different “buckets” in my ING account for things like future travels and home improvements.

I wanted to share my story because I am an avid reader of Get Rich Slowly, and I hope I can inspire other young people out there struggling with student loan debt. You don’t have to stick to the “standard repayment plan” — most student loans have no prepayment penalties. Even if you don’t make a lot of money, it is possible to find extra money in your budget to pay down student loans early.

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Ask the Readers: So Much Debt, So Little Time?
• Reader Story: Tackling Debt Through Volunteer Work
• How One College Student Handles Credit Cards
• Federal Student Loan Consolidation Primer
• Ask the Readers: Can College Students Save Money?

I’m sure you’ve been there: in the middle of some endless meeting you promised to send an email or make a call or check some facts. By the time you returned to your desk, your main concern was “what am I having for lunch?” – and the details of the meeting had already become fuzzy.

Then at the next meeting, someone asked, “So, did you make that phone call?”

Whoops.

Or perhaps you’re not the one dropping the ball. Maybe you’re the frustrated person chairing a meeting full of people who keep saying that they’ll do something and never getting round to it. (If you’re on a volunteer committee of any sort, this might sound all too familiar.)

So how can you ensure that you follow up action points from meetings – and that other people do as well?

1. Keeping Yourself On Track
   You won’t need to use all of these techniques, but implementing two or three of them should ensure that post-meeting actions never slip your mind again.




2. Take Notes
   Even if someone else is taking the minutes of the meeting, make sure you’ve got paper and pen handy. Jot down notes of anything that’s especially relevant to you – and definitely include everything that conceivably requires action from you.

   I tend to put a big asterisk in the margin of my notes against action points, so that I can easily find them after the meeting.




3. Put Items Straight In Your Diary (or Task List)
   If you use a paper diary, take it to the meeting with you, and put any time-bound actions straight into it there and then.

   If you have a wall calendar, or an online diary that you can’t access from within the meeting room, then make sure you put any dates and deadlines into it straight after the meeting: as soon as you get back to your desk or, in the case of volunteer meetings, as soon as you get home.

4. File Your Notes Safely
   Do you ever end up with meeting notes in all sorts of odd places – scraps of paper, notebooks, jotters? Come up with a consistent way of filing your notes; it could be a series of folders or files, for instance, or one single notebook for each different type of meeting that you attend.

   If you lose your meeting notes, there’s little hope that you’ll remember everything that you were supposed to be doing as follow-up.

5. Keeping Others On Track
   However well organized you are, other people can cause chaos through their own lack of organization. If you’re the chair or a secretary at a meeting, you can help to increase the chances that other participants really will go ahead and do the things they’ve committed to.




6. Be Clear Who’s Taking Action
   Have you ever been in a meeting where some great idea was proposed, everyone agreed … and no-one took responsibility for it? This is a sure-fire way to ensure that nothing gets done! If you’re chairing a meeting, or even if you’re just a regular participant, don’t let the meeting move on to the next agenda point before it’s clear who is going to carry out an agreed action.

   In some cases, you’ll also want to get an explicit agreement on when action will be taken by – eg. “by the next meeting”.

7. List Actions in the Minutes
   There’s no one perfect way to take minutes, but if you want to help people with their meeting follow-up, good practice is to make it very clear what actions were agreed, and who is responsible. You could do this by:
   • Starting a new line with the word “Action” and a name in bold type, after any point where action was agreed
   • Putting a list of participants and “Follow up actions” at the top of the minutes
   • Highlighting any action points on each member’s individual copy of the minutes, before distribution
8. Distribute the Minutes Promptly
   Get the minutes circulated as soon as possible after the meeting, and add a note encouraging people to read them straight away to check up on any actions they should be taking. If you’re circulating minutes by email and there’s a long gap between meetings, you might want to send them again a day or two before the next meeting – it’s easy for messages to get buried in packed inboxes.




9. Email or Phone People
   If you really want to ensure that people take action, then follow up with them individually. Drop them an email to check up on progress, or make a phone call. Obviously, the extent to which you can do this depends on your relationship to them: if you’re their boss, chasing them up is fine; if you’re just another Joe at the local horticulture club meeting, it might seem pushy or annoying.

Do you have any tips for following up after meetings – whether at work or as part of a voluntary or community group? How do you encourage others to stick to their commitments?

What did you achieve last year? What progress did you make towards your goals?

Those are questions that, a few years ago, I’d have had trouble answering. Perhaps I could point to some money saved up, or to the next step of a qualification earned, but it was hard to see whether I’d really made much progress. Often, I’d feel bad that I hadn’t achieved more – even when I’d actually done quite a lot.

If you don’t already have some way of tracking your achievements, I’d urge you to adopt this as a habit. I’ll take you through the way I do it, and explain why it’s important.

• Step 1: Get a Notebook
  Buy yourself a really nice notebook; don’t feel bad about spending a bit more money than you normally would. If you have something beautiful to record your achievements in, it’ll mean more to you than a scrappy $1.00 pad. Plus, you’ll want to keep this for years to come!
• Step 2: Write Your Goals (optional)
  It’s up to you whether you want to combine your record of achievements with your goals. I find that this is useful, so long as I don’t get hung up on making sure that what I achieve is an exact match to what I hoped for!

  On the first page of your notebook, write down “2010: Goals” and list no more than three or four key goals for the year. Make them specific (e.g. “Lose 50lbs”, “Get three articles published”, etc.).




• Step 3: Write Your Achievements, Monthly
  A month is a good length of time to look at what you’ve achieved: it’s long enough to have accomplished something meaningful, but not so long that you’ve forgotten everything you’ve done!

  Sit down somewhere quiet, at the end of each month, for just five or ten minutes. Write down in bullet points anything that you feel qualifies as an achievement. You might like to record:

  • Anything you’ve tried for the first time (skiing was on my list last year!)
  • Any large projects you’ve completed
  • Progress in a particular area – eg. steps taken towards your business

  It’s useful to think about your work life, your personal life, and your family life. Hopefully, you’ll find that writing down your achievements puts you in a positive frame of mind – you’ll be able to see what you’ve accomplished, and even in slow months, you’ll be surprised what you can find to celebrate.

• Step 4: Celebrate Your Achievements
  When you’ve accomplished something big – perhaps a milestone on your way towards a goal – take time to celebrate! That might mean going for a meal out, opening a nice bottle of wine, buying a new book or DVD that you wanted, or simply giving yourself some guilt-free time to relax.

  The act of recording and celebrating what you’ve achieved will encourage you towards further growth. Rather than dwelling on things which went wrong or didn’t work out the way you hoped, keep your focus on the areas where you’re developing and learning.

• Step 5: Review the Year
  When you come to the end of a year, look back over your achievements. It’s almost certain that you’ll see some great patterns across those twelve months. Perhaps your first try at public speaking in January led to your first competition speech in June and your first win in September. Or maybe your first piano lesson in February saw you pass an exam in October.

In the day to day of life, it’s so easy to get discouraged and lose sight of the big picture. Taking some time to look over what you’ve achieved is a great reminder of how everything starts with a small step.

What have you achieved over the past 12 months? What are you hoping to achieve over the next 12?

This guest post from Maria is part of the new “reader stories” feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Some reader stories contain general “how I did X” advice, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. This story very much reminds me of the book for unmarried couples I reviewed earlier this week.

This is a story about a relationship between two people and some money.

Part 1
Boy meets girl. Boy moves in with girl. Household expenses are split and all seems well. Years pass. Boy wants to change cities for professional reasons. Girl wants to finish grad school. They make a deal: They’ll move when the degree is finished.

Warning signs: She is paying a greater share as the years go by and her career advances. He doesn’t take any concrete steps toward advancing his own career. He has sold his car ‘to save money’ and relies on her to drop him at the train station for his job. He has no real friends and his ‘project partners’ (in six years, there’s only one finished project) all seem to be women. And then:

Part 2
The degree is finished and true to the deal, she starts organizing a move. She researches new jobs cross-country. She rents a truck, makes hotel reservations, and arranges for a friend to drive the car in caravan with them. Oh, by the way, she’ll pay the friend’s airfare home. She puts down the money on an apartment. She lands a job, but he says he needs some time off work to get things going. They make a new deal: She’ll cover the rent for a while so he can concentrate on jump-starting his career. Years pass. His career hasn’t started. The subject comes up fairly often, but she hates to fight.

Warning signs: By the end of three years, not only is she paying all living expenses, she’s giving him an allowance to cover his “career-building” expenses. He hasn’t held a job since the move. His ‘project partners’ still all seem to be women. He has built no social or professional network and does not participate in her social life. (This didn’t bother her much when she was in grad school, but life is different now.) She doesn’t really want to live alone, and she tells herself he isn’t costing her much more than it would cost to live alone; but their relationship has become that of roommates. And then:

Part 3
She takes up an activity she’s passionate about. He isn’t interested. She meets someone new and tells her roommate she wants to pursue the new relationship. He panics. He asks her to marry him. He argues. He threatens. He marches her into the bank and stands at her back while she takes cash advances on six credit cards, a total of $30,000. He deposits the money in his own account. She tells him that they can’t continue to live together, and she can’t afford to move because she doesn’t have the money for a deposit. He won’t move out. She starts spending most nights and weekends away.

Warning signs: The whole situation.

Part 4
After months of misery, she is able to finally get him out by renting a truck, packing it with almost all their possessions, and driving it to his sister’s home nearby. With the expenses of the move, her own living expenses, and the extortion debt, she is barely making ends meet. She has no savings and no assets. She talks things over with the new partner. They decide bankruptcy may be the best solution. She asks around and gets the name of a firm of attorneys.

Part 5
The attorneys hear the story, go through all the paperwork, and agree that going after the ex in court would be both expensive and unlikely to result in restitution. A bankruptcy petition is prepared and filed, at a cost of a few hundred dollars. She has to appear in court. She feels like an idiot, a failure, a disappointment to herself. The judge hears a brief statement of her reasons for the petition, nods, signs off. That’s all. Ten years later, the bankruptcy is off the credit report. Had she not filed, she would still be making payments on the debt.

Author’s note
This is a true story. I’ve heard similar stories from half a dozen women, and a couple of men, in my city. At least I never married him. At least I didn’t have to smuggle my belongings to my office and store them under my desk until I had all the essentials together, and leave for a new state from the office, like one of my friends did. At least I wasn’t that scared.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have either moved out immediately or had the bank call the police. But I didn’t want to feel responsible if he hurt himself, I surely didn’t want him to hurt anyone else, and his behavior was sufficiently frightening that I believed one of those outcomes was possible. So I bought him off.

What is the moral of this story?
Don’t cover expenses for another able-bodied adult without a contract, and don’t make financial deals that only favor one party.

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Reader Success Story: Debt Free on $2,000 a Month
• Sometimes Free is Expensive: A Cautionary Tale
• You Can Learn a Lot From a Rich Girl
• This American Life: Something for Nothing
• Blogathon Theme: Funny Money

Have you ever said “Yeah, I’ll do that” – and then completely failed to? I bet you have, and I’d also bet that you felt kinda bad about it. Whether it was doing the dishes or visiting a sick relative, getting back to someone by email or finishing that report by Friday, saying that you’ll do something and then not doing will knock your reputation in the eyes of those around you.

There are all sorts of reasons why we sometimes fail to do what we say we’ll do. Perhaps:

• We overcommitted ourselves, and ran out of time and energy
• We found that we really didn’t want to do it
• We simply forgot all about it, until it was too late

So how can you make sure that you always follow through on what you’ve said you’ll do?

1. Stop and Think Before Taking on a New Commitment
   First, don’t be too quick to say “yes”. Some of us (myself included!) find it hard to turn down a friend or colleague’s request. But in the long run, it’s much better to tell people that you don’t have the time or energy to commit to helping them rather than promising to do it, only to leave them in the lurch.

   I often ask for some breathing space when I’m asked to take on something new. I explain that I’d like to take a day or two to think about it, to make sure I can be fully and wholeheartedly committed. I’ve never had anyone react badly to this – if anything, people are usually glad that I’m taking my commitment to them seriously.

   Next time you’re about to blurt out “Yes, sure, I’ll do that,” stop. Do you really need to make a decision on the spot? Can you offer to get back to the person after the weekend?

   Remember, it’s OK to say no!

2. Delegate and Ask for Help Where Possible
   When you do take on an extra task or piece of work, don’t get too hung up on the idea of doing it all yourself. In many cases, you don’t have to complete the whole thing alone – you’ve just promised to make sure that it gets done.

   If you’ve told your spouse that you’ll get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned, why not rope in the kids to help? If you’ve offered to put together a presentation for next week’s meeting, can you get colleagues to provide you with some of the figures and diagrams that you’ll need?

   Many of us aren’t very confident about delegating – but the truth is that it empowers both us and the people who we delegate to. Trust your children, or your junior employees, with progressively bigger tasks – and they’re likely to rise to your expectations. By learning to delegate, you’ll accomplish more, and you’ll be much more likely to see your commitments through.




3. Keep Good Notes and Records
   Finally, a big reason for failing to follow through is simple forgetfulness. It’s easy to say “Yep, I’ll take care of it” during a meeting or a chat or a phone call – only for the task to slip completely out of your mind. This is particularly the case on small, simple actions: perhaps sending an email, lending a friend a book, taking out the garbage, etc. and screwing up on these can be just as embarrassing and potentially damaging as messing up on bigger things. (After all, if you can’t be trusted to handle little jobs, people aren’t going to want you taking care of the bigger ones.)

   Some of the best advice I had on keeping track of commitments was from Dave Navarro’s program 30 Hours a Day. In one of the modules he talks about the concept of a “funnel” – somewhere for all your new commitments to pour into. This might be a notebook, your email account, your phone, anything which you can access pretty much anywhere, anytime. At the end of the day, you sit down with the “funnel” and make sure that all those commitments get transferred into your diary or whatever to-do list system you use.

4. If All Else Fails … Back Out With Grace
   Finally, sometimes you can’t keep all your commitments. You may come to the point where you realize something has to slide. Maybe you’ve got the option of battling through, working late, whatever – but you value your health and your sanity!

   There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’ve overcommitted yourself. It’s not something you should be doing on a regular basis (if it is, go back to step one) – but if it happens occasionally, people will respect you for standing up and saying that you need to drop something or that you need a bit more time.

   If things do look rocky, try to give people as much warning as possible: don’t pull out at the last minute.

How do you make sure you follow through with everything you’ve committed to? Have you got any embarrassing stories to share of times when you screwed up (either through overcommitment or just forgetfulness)?

This guest post from Michelle is part of a new feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Every Sunday will include a reader story (in the new “reader stories” category). Some will be general “how I did X” stories, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success.

In 2001, I got a new job. Not just any job — this job was for a former employer who wanted me to come back to work for them after about two years of working for a nonprofit agency. Their offer was very, very tempting. It meant a 50% raise. (Yes, 50%. Take your current income, divide it half and add it to your salary. Fun, huh?)

The money got to me, and I left my nonprofit job for this new opportunity. I was happy with my old job and had good friends at both organizations, so my motivation for the change was purely the increased income.

The lure of money
About four months into this new job, I was sitting in a beige cube and wondering where all my money was. I had been collecting checks that were indeed 50% more (in terms of my gross income at least — I was paying more in taxes, so it didn’t calculate out as a 50% raise in my take-home pay). But it was still significantly more money than I thought I would ever earn, and I couldn’t figure out why I still felt broke.

Looking around those beige walls, I despaired at the idea of living the rest of my life like this. If this huge salary increase wasn’t the answer to happiness, what was?

I went home and went through my financial statements. My husband and I have joint accounts and have used Quicken since the beginning of our relationship, so this part was easy. After looking through Quicken for about 20 minutes, I could see where that extra money had gone. We’d taken a couple of trips. We were eating out a lot more. We joined a gym. We bought a new car. We were spending my 50% raise almost as I got it.

My husband and I had struggled with credit card debt early in our marriage and overcome it. When we spent money, we used debit cards and had cash in the bank to cover it. Big expenses (those vacations) went on a credit card, but were paid off right away. But we had $20,000 in student loans from both our college educations and a new car in the driveway with a $21,000 loan on it. Those debts felt like anvils hanging around my neck.

My job was okay, but I was finding the work a little tedious and dull. The bigger paychecks did not completely make up for the loss of creativity and the corporate hassles that came with my new responsibilities.

I thought what I wanted my life to look like: It wasn’t sitting in a beige cube.

Debt is slavery
I realized that I’d basically sold myself into slavery doing a job that paid well but didn’t give me a great deal of satisfaction in order to have more money to spend. But spending the money wasn’t bringing me happiness. I felt worse, not better.

So I decided my best option was to reconfigure my life so that I didn’t need to earn as much money as I did currently, thereby giving me more freedom to pursue work that made me happy, no matter what my paycheck looked like.

And that’s what I did. Over the next two-and-a-half years, I paid off the student loans and the car loan by reducing my expenditures and doubling my monthly payments (using the same advice you can find right here at Get Rich Slowly). Every extra bit of money my husband or I got in from freelance work or bonuses went straight on the loans.

After three years at that job, I got laid off in 2004 when the company moved our office to the East Coast. Instead of being stressed and worried about finding a job that would pay well enough to replace my income level, I rejoiced in the fact that I had no debt except my reasonable mortgage payment. I was free at last to do what I wanted to do.

I happily collected my unemployment insurance and severance pay while I worked on setting up my own business. Now I work as a writer, editor, and website developer for small businesses. I’m doing things I enjoy, and after five years, my part-time income matches that full-time salary I earned while staring at those beige walls.

Buying freedom
What I’d done was decide to spend my increased income from that job on buying myself freedom. It took more than just money. It took a paradigm shift on my part to determine what I really wanted from my life and my money. It turned out that what I wanted wasn’t more money after all. Helping my clients succeed and spending more time with my family bring me more happiness than money can buy.

I’d like to say that this process is a journey, not a destination. I still struggle sometimes with strong desires to have more money to buy things like vacations for my family or a slightly bigger home. Remembering this experience helps keep me grounded, and I can refocus on what I truly value. I’ve recently decided more freedom is more desirable, and my husband and I are working towards paying off our 15-year mortgage early, too. I know that nothing I can buy is going to feel as good as holding the deed to my own home in my hand. I’m looking forward to working towards that goal next.

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• The Seven Enemies of Financial Success
• links for 2007-06-15
• Working Dollars: Investment Lessons from 1957
• Daily Links: Calm Before the Storm Edition
• The Best of Get Rich Slowly: August 2008

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 guest post from Rich is part of a new feature here at Get Rich Slowly. Every Sunday will include a reader story (in the new “reader stories” category). Some will be general “how I did X” stories, and others will be examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success. Today’s is a romantic story of saving money on insurance. (Okay, no romance. That’s just a joke.)

As a long-time reader of Get Rich Slowly, I have really appreciated the tips J.D., guest writers, and regular readers in comments have shared with me over the years. Now it’s my turn to pay it forward.

About a year ago, I was laid off in Minnesota, right before Christmas. Oh no! Fortunately I was able to find a new job quickly, but it was out in San Francisco. What to do with the home we owned in Minnesota? We decided to rent it out, and we were also very fortunate to find good tenants very quickly.

However, as a newbie landlord I was quite surprised to find that homeowners insurance on your primary residence is quite different than insurance on a home you rent out. We went from $1,500 a year insurance premium (while living in the home) to $3,100 annual premium. Not being a savvy landlord, I sucked it up and thought “Well, hey, at least I’m employed, and I got the house rented, so be grateful.” And I was.

This year, my insurance company informed me the annual premium on my rental property would be going up to $3,650. Wow! I finally decided to shop around, and I’m really glad I did. I simply googled “landlord insurance” and easily found websites where I could type in my information (securely) and get a number of quotes. Different insurers seem to calculate premiums very differently from each other! Quotes ranged from around $1,350 to $2,000 for the exact same property, but nothing near the $3,650 my current insurer wanted.

In the end, I switched to an insurance provider that quoted me $1,345, saving me $2,305 on my rental property each year! While I was at it, I asked this same insurance provider to give me an auto quote. With my previous insurer, I had been paying $1,811 for two cars in northern California. With the new insurer, it came to $1,277. That’s another savings of $534 on annual auto insurance premiums. If you’re keeping track, that’s $2,839 in annual savings on my insurance needs.

My point isn’t that only people with rental properties should look into their insurance costs. My point is that everyone should look into their insurance costs. Just like calling up the cable company and negotiating a discount off your monthly bill (which I recently did, saving $35/month), for a few hours of investment, you too can get new quotes on your insurance needs and save hundreds, possibly thousands a year as I have done. It’s really very easy.

What am I going to do with this extra $2,839 this year, you ask? Sock it away in my short-term savings account, like every good GRS reader! Later in the year it could go toward my annual IRA contribution, or the 529 college fund for my teenager, or just sit around as a bit of extra financial cushion for the unexpected.

I’d love to hear other stories of readers saving a boatload on their insurance by shopping around a bit!

Reminder: This is a story from one of your fellow readers. Please be nice. After nearly a decade of blogging, I have a thick skin, but it can be scary to put your story out in public for the first time. Remember that this guest author isn’t a professional writer, and is just learning about money like you are.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Insurance
• Use Your Grocery Receipt as a Cue to Save
• More Cheap Travel: Where the Hell is Matt?
• Reader Story: Two Approaches to Car-Buying
• How to Drive a Great End-of-Summer New Car Deal

This might seem like an odd question. Who’s in charge of your life? Who tells you what to do? Who says which choices are valid, and which are silly or self-indulgent?

On the surface of it, if you’re an adult, there’s probably no-one standing next to you and telling you exactly what you should be doing. But many of us have ceded control of our lives to someone else. Often unconsciously, we’ve taken on their values, even their likes and dislikes, and we’ve made them their own.

Do you ever feel that you “should” be doing something that you aren’t? Why? Is that impulse really from within you, or is it from your family, friends, or the society around you?

I’ll take you through some of the common people who we put in charge of our lives – and I’ll show you how to make sure the right person is in charge!

So, who’s controlling how you live your life? Is it…

…Your Parents?
Now, if you’ve left home, you might think that your parents don’t have any control over you any more. Well, they don’t have legal or physical control – but they can still be a huge influence.

Here are some typical ways in which people let their parents stay in control of their lives. Are you falling into any of these patterns?

• Taking a college course that your parents wanted, rather than doing what you want
• Going into the career that your parents recommend for you, instead of following your dreams
• Seeking parental approval and resisting making choices which might upset or anger your parents
• Ditching a partner who your parents don’t approve of
• Bringing up your kids in the way which your parents suggest

If you think your parents are having an undue influence on the way you live, then remember that you’re an adult. If you’re dependent on them for finances or other resources, start working to become independent. Your parents probably do want the best for you – and even if following your dreams leads to some initial conflict (mine were a bit shocked when I quit my job to freelance!) you’ll find that they’re often even more proud of you for striking out on your own.

…Your Peers?
How often are your choices dictated by your friends and colleagues? Again, you’ll want to give this some thought – it isn’t always obvious. But your peer group can be a huge influence on:

• How you spend your money – perhaps you all buy lunch out each day, or you end up getting a new phone just because all your friends have one
• How you spend your time – what group activities do you engage in? Are these meaningful to you – or would you rather do something else?
• Whether you drink too much, overeat, or smoke. We often match our behavior to the people around us: statistically, if you have overweight friends, you’re likely to be overweight too.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you should ditch your friends. Rather, you should start standing up for what you want to do. Think about your own values. If you’d rather spend less, drink less, party less (or do all of these things more!) than your friends, then you need to give yourself permission – no-one else is going to. True friends won’t care, they’ll celebrate your differences. And false friends will drop away.

…Society?
Sometimes, the people controlling our lives aren’t even people we know. They’re media moguls, or celebrities, or journalists. They might even be bloggers or a particular community around one of your hobbies.

When society’s in control, it can look like this:

• You often buy products because you’ve seen them advertised
• You feel pulled in several directions at once – you’re trying to follow conflicted messages
• Some of your choices feel like they’re “wrong”: you might even remember a specific article or TV program which made you feel that way
• The thought of following a different path to most folk (perhaps working for yourself, or traveling the world, or homeschooling your kids) is almost unthinkable – you can’t imagine it working

We’re all social creatures, and it’s natural for us to look at what other people do to figure out what works. But don’t get caught up in the herd. You’re a unique person, with your own skills, talents, likes and dislikes. The world can’t decide what’s right for you – only you can do that.

…You?
Finally, maybe you’ve already got it sorted, and you’re fully in control. Or perhaps you’re definitely on the road to being there. If so, congratulations! Here’s how things might be for you:

• You can enjoy activities which others might find boring, strange or silly
• You don’t have to spend money to be happy
• When you do spend money, you make conscious decisions about what will make you happy
• Your life is designed the way you want it to be
• You don’t feel under pressure to keep doing more, or earning more
• When you have a new idea or want to do something a bit different, you go ahead and do it even when you’re worried what other people might think

So, who’s in charge of your life? Do you need to make some changes?

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