Done To Zen

John Cain over at SavingAdvice listed the seven deadly sins of personal finance. I thought it might be interesting to see how I’m doing in each of the 7 areas.

7. Failure to track expenses

I have never tracked expenses until I purchased my house. But then again, I was saving 95% of my salary. I was still living with my parents, so I think my expenses were less than $100 a month. But all this changed once I bought my house. Now, my expenses are significantly larger. However, I haven’t been tracking them as I should have been. While I know where I wasted money, I don’t have the exact dollar amounts. I’m trying to get better by creating a budget and actually sticking to it. Rating: 5 out of 10.

6. Emotional shopping

The only shopping I ever do is for e-books, which cost around $6. I purchase books on the spur of the moment, but this is very rare. Rating: 9 out of 10.

5. No savings

No problem in this area, though I could get better at budgeting so I can save even more. :-) Rating: 9 out of 10.

4. Failure to comparison shop

I think I do this, but (next to my house) my biggest purchase amounted to $30, maybe, so there isn’t much comparison shopping to do. I did get to tell people about exactly what I wanted for birthday gifts, though, and I think in one case I had them spend too much for something I don’t use enough, but otherwise, I usually do OK. Rating: a tentative 8 out of 10.

3. Paying for things you don’t use

Usually, I only pay for things I use. I can think of only two cases in my entire life where I bought something that I ended up not using much, but they did cost a lot (I didn’t buy them), so: Rating: 8 out of 10.

2. Nickel and diming

I eat out a lot. Does that count? Rating: 8 out of 10.

1. Failing to set priorities

I have a big-time problem in this area. I have “goals” in the back of my mind and tend to do whichever of them suits my mood. I’m working on it though. Rating: 6 out of 10 (because all my goals are “good enough” that it doesn’t matter so much which of them I work on).

Overall Rating: I think 7.5 - 8.5 out of 10.

What about you?

Wow, where did all the time go? It feels like July 4th just went by and all of a sudden, it’s July 15th. Anyway, since we’re halfway through July, it’s time for me to look at how I fared so far and what, if any, adjustments to course I should make over the next 15 days.

Finances - what I did right

1. I paid off July’s gas bill in June and decided to save the amount instead of wasting it on something or another.
2. I haven’t used my credit card for an entire 15 days, which is awesome.
3. I’ve successfully completed my 30 day trial of not eating out, and I plan to continue over the rest of the year, but maybe not so stringently. Maybe I will allow myself to eat out a couple of days a month; I don’t know yet.
4. I saved the full amount for my emergency fund.
5. Though I really wanted to work with a personal trainer, I forewent one as he was so expensive. For a while there, I thought I would be going for it despite the cost, but I fortunately decided otherwise soon thereafter.
6. I upped my 401K to 10% of my salary in June, and despite (perceived?) financial hardship, I kept it there through today; I don’t plan on changing it over the course of the year, but who knows? Thy mind is a very fickle thing.
7. Paid off all bills without procrastinating. I rarely ever pay bills late (and only when we have the roll-over functionality) but I for whatever reason keep waiting until the last minute to pay them.

Finances - what I did wrong

1. Haven’t been accurately tracking all my cash spendings. I know I spent around $60 on groceries, so far, but it’s a guesstimate.

Finances - what went right

1. I learned that I will be getting a bonus. Kill me if I touch a penny.
2. I landed an unexpected freelancing job that will earn me a couple of hundred dollars.
3. I landed another unexpected freelancing job that will also earn me a couple of hundred dollars.

Finances - what went wrong

1. There is an expense coming around December (where I do either an atrocious one-time pay or more reasonable monthly payments) that I knew about, but they are offering a pretty significant discount if I do it right now. But it means I have to cough up between five hundred and a couple of thousand dollars right now, depending on how I want to do it. Just so happens I have just enough in my emergency fund to cover this expense, but it will kill me to have to use it. I’m still struggling with what to do.
2. I really wanted to work with a personal trainer but his fees ended up being way too high and so I had to not do it and now I’m feeling bad.

Update on trials

I successfully finished my “stop eating out” trial, like I mentioned before. I also, and I continue to wake up at 4AM every day, though there was this one day when I didn’t because my alarm decided to not work.

I also did an unofficial trial over June that I haven’t listed anywhere (I think?): I stopped reading news; mainly, I stopped reading any and all political blogs that I was subscribed to. I used to be something of a political junkie, but I stopped depressing myself every day with, well, depressing news (it is far harder to find something positive on political blogs than it is to find even in news, if you can believe that).

Though I wasn’t really thinking about it, I also fell into the habit of not reading any “real” news (yeah, I go to digg and read some technology/finance stories occasionally). I realized it after maybe 10 days and from then on stayed away from newspapers consciously.

Another habit I wanted to try unofficially — which means that it’s OK if I slip up — is stop purchasing ice cream at Cold Stone. Having come upon it accidentally, I’ve been going to it pretty regularly the last two months or so. Yesterday marked the end of this trial, and I can’t say that it was particularly hard. Not getting to use my credit card for 15 of those 30 days might have helped. ;-)

On July 10, I’ve also quietly celebrated my 6 months of chocolate fasting with a big chocolate cake. Just kidding. I actually didn’t celebrate it at all — I didn’t even realize it until yesterday. I do think this is the longest I’ve ever went without eating chocolate. I still get the urges, especially when I’m blind-sided by pictures of and/or actual chocolate manifestations, but it’s hard to give up after so many days of staying strong. :-) My biggest fear is that I will accidentally eat something that has chocolate in it.

You might have remembered that I once upon a time (well, 15 days ago) informed you that I would be running/writing in the morning. This failed to happen. I haven’t written a single thing this month (on my book) and I did run a couple of times, but it was in the evening and not in the morning. This isn’t too great, but that’s life sometimes, and I’m OK with pushing them back to August. We shall see.

So: I completed 8 trials so far this year (chocolate and vending machine fastings, making my bed every day/morning, karate, waking up at 4AM, restaurant fasting, political blogs fasting, news fasting).

Ratings

Objectively-speaking: 9 out of 10
Emotionally-speaking: 4 out of 10

Start an emergency fund with 15% of my paycheck. Done. I actually saved a bit more, because I’ve saved the $30.99 I earned from an affiliate program. I have been depositing the $30 a week that I used to spend on eating out into my emergency, as well. So, in total, I have $120.99 extra in the account already.

Save 100% of rent payments. Done.

Open an ING Orange Savings account. Done.

Setup a recurring deposit of $50 a month. Done. (This would be the money I saved by canceling an online subscription.)

Cancel my gym membership. Not done. This is kind of interesting. I had already told my gym manager that I would not be coming back in July, but then I changed my mind again. More on this later.

Get a freelancing job. Not done. I started this but then became incredibly depressed at the thought of adding yet another commitment, so I stopped. The whole point of a freelancing job was to be able to save enough money, so as to feel less stressed. I figured that stressing out to be less stressed isn’t exactly the right way to go about things. I’ll have to figure out a better way.

Write a blog entry every day. Done. :-)

Become thin. Not sure. I mean, with a goal like this, nobody would ever be able to tell for sure whether I got thin or not. This was a vague goal that was in the back of my mind as I started this month. I should have spent more time to figure out what exactly “thin” meant, but I didn’t. I am thinner than I was at the start of the month (or so my family tells me, though I can’t really see any difference myself). Does that count?

Subscribe to 20 personal finance blogs. Done. I’m actually subscribed to 84 blogs. I usually skim through the 250+ unread articles a day and stop to read those that interest me. I typically do this for about 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes during lunch hour, and 1 hour at night, just before going to bed.

Run every day. Not done. I think I ran 5 times this month, and 4 of them only because I was forced to. Ah, well.

Wake up at 4AM every day. Done. Well, there’s one more day left, so I guess I can’t really call it done, but I’m fairly certain that I will manage to wake up at 4AM tomorrow, as well.

Volunteer at the library. Not done. I went to apply, but there was nothing interesting enough at my library to volunteer at. I was hoping to put to use my brilliant computer skills to help people out, but they said I had to travel 10 miles to be able to do so.

Overall, June was a good month. :-)

This post is dedicated to Steve Speirs for linking to my blog and sending tons of traffic my way. :-)

Waking up at 4AM Trial

Today marks the 22nd day of my “waking up at 4AM” trial. I can’t say that I’m thinking about it any longer. The alarm rings, and I’m up for at least 1/2 hour to 1 hour. No voice in the back of my head nagging me to go back to sleep. I feel pretty confident that I will be able to continue this through the rest of the year without any trouble. But as I worry about long-term commitments, I’m still telling myself that at the end of June, I’m only going to do it for yet another 30 days.

The whole point of waking up at 4AM was to get important things done early in the morning, but I dropped that at some point along the way. Not getting enough sleep was making just getting up at 4AM hard enough, and I really did not want to start the trial over.

On the other hand, I noticed something interesting over the past week. Even on days when I’m dead tired because I didn’t go to sleep until 12PM on the previous night, I still get up right away. As soon as my alarm rings. But that’s not the interesting part; the interesting part is that, for the first time in my life, I’m excited to start a new day. Not because my day job suddenly got more interesting, but because I’m doing things that make me feel good as soon as I wake up.

My morning routine for the previous week has been to wake up, check my blog statistics, my feed statistics, and read personal finance articles until I’m too tired to continue. I love watching my blog and feed readership going up, which it is doing in leaps and bounds, hence my excitement in waking up.

I’ve always woken up fairly early — between 5AM and 6AM — on weekdays, but I’ve always tried to stay in bed as long as possible. Even if I had gone to sleep at 9PM the previous night, I was tired and miserable the next morning. But the aforementioned routine puts me in immediate high-spirits, which is the yardstick by which I measure the rest of the day, so my whole day feels better, even though nothing else changed.

First impressions are the ones that stick with you.

Stop Eating Out Trial

I keep wanting to say “Not eating out” trial, but I’m trying to phrase all my goals and habits in the positive (not negative) sense. You know: “Lose weight” instead of “Don’t be overweight.” I still keep slipping up.

Anyway.

Today is day 8 of my “Stop eating out” trial.

The first thing I got to say about doing two trials at a time is that it’s not hard. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that I started my 2nd trial after I was about halfway done with my 1st trial. If I had started both of them on day 1, I’m sure I would have failed at one or both them.

The second thing is that this trial is going far easier than I thought. 8 days, and I can’t really say that I’ve ever had a day in which I felt suicidal about not getting to go out. In fact, most days, I didn’t even think about it. There are two main reasons for this: (1) I’m eating sustaining and tasty food at home, and (2) I now have a purpose in my life, so I just concentrate on that whenever I start to feel like eating out.

Trials and Confidence

More than any tangible benefits, the nicest things about doing 30 day trials is the confidence it gives you when you finish them. The 2 trials I’m doing now are my 4th and 5th trials this year. The first trial was to stop eating chocolate (now, that was hard) and the second trial was to stop buying at vending machines (I slipped on that one and had to restart, which sucked). My third trial was to go to karate 6 days a week. I missed only 1 day because I had to go to some work-related party, but I made up for it in advance by going to an extra class. From that week on, though, I’ve been going to 8 classes a week, so I’m happy.

Crystallizing the next 2 trials

For the next two trials, I want to do something hard and something easy. I already talked about what trials I want to do in July, and this is essentially what I’m going to be doing, but with some tweaks.

Trial #6: write from 5AM to 6AM and run from 6AM to 7AM. Trial #7: leave credit card at home for the whole month.

I expect #6 to be hard and #7 to be easy. (The reason for the latter is that I only have to have enough will-power to leave the credit card at home. For five minutes. That’s it. I won’t have to constantly battle with the temptation to use my credit card for the rest of the day because I won’t have it with me.)

And what do these trials have to do with personal finance?

Waking up at 4AM: gives me time to do the important things in my life. I am a wimp when it comes to evenings. I always want to get tons done, but I usually end up getting nothing done. Besides, I love getting the important stuff done and out of the way before I go to work so I don’t have to keep worrying the whole day about whether or not I’ll get them done. The things I’m doing will help me financially. Hence…

Not eating out: eating out costs more than not eating out. More than that, though, I’m also taking the $6 I spend every day and putting it in my bank account, which means that, every month, I will have saved $168 every month. That’s a lot of money. :-D

Writing from 5AM to 6AM: I’ve been writing a book since I was 15. I want to get it done this year. It’s a fabulous novel, in my humble opinion, and once I’m done with it, it will provide a nice source of passive income. That’s one of the two reasons. It’s also the secondary reason. The main reason is that I just want to get done with it and move on. I’m kind of sick of it at this point. It’s been 5 years in the works, and it’s a huge source of stress. Less stress = more happy = better health = fewer medical expenses = more money for me = less stress = more happy = better health = fewer medical expenses = more money for me…

Running from 6AM to 7AM: I’m not overweight (technically-speaking) but I want to convert about 30 pounds of fat into muscle. First of all, these 30 extra pounds are bad for my health. Second of all, they cause a lot of stress, which is also bad for my health. Third of all, running will improve my mood, which will reduce my negative thoughts, which are bad for my health. So running improves my health in three ways. Better health = more happy = fewer medical expenses = more money for me = better health = more happy = fewer medical expenses = more money for me…

Leaving credit card at home: for obvious reasons. Credit cards are the root of all evil. I’ve recently started stressing out because, while I still pay the card fully at the end of every month, I’m paying more and more money. (Mostly because of all the restaurant bills.) I don’t think that I’m addicted to credit card debt, but in case I am, it’s going to be easier to stop myself in the beginning than when it becomes an entrenched habit. Hence, the trial.

In Conclusion…

I’m excited. I want July to come already so that I can start the trials, which is something I’ve never felt before. Yes! Progress! :-D

You’re on a project with a ridiculously unrealistic deadline. Who would you rather work with? Somebody who complains about the deadline the whole time, or somebody who tries his best to complete it on time? I know who I would prefer. I also know which one of the two people I am. And hey, if you can’t, keep reading and you’ll find out soon enough.

Complaining sucks. For one thing, nobody likes people who do nothing but complain day in and day out. But that’s not it, either. A lot more importantly, complaining hurts you more than it hurts anybody else. When you complain, you’re giving up power over the situation. You’re saying that you’re unhappy because XYZ is happening and you have no way to get out of the situation, that the change has to come from outside. What does that mean? It means that you’ll remain unhappy as long as XYZ is happening; i.e., as long as the status quo doesn’t change, which it probably won’t, considering that if other people wanted to change the status quo, then it really wouldn’t have become the status quo in the first place.

Let me give you an example. Remember the question I asked you at the start of the article? The project that I’m currently on for work has a deadline about half what we asked for. I’m sitting there while manager tells us about how we have to sit down and get it done, no buts about it, wondering why he did this to us. From then on until now, I don’t think a day has gone by in which I haven’t complained about the stupid deadline. No, not to the manager, of course, because I know how futile that is, but to other people on the team. It hardly matters that other people do it, too. Unsurprisingly, the deadline is still what it was and I’m still unhappy. Nothing has changed, except that I feel worse and worse every day because I’m focusing on the negative aspects of the project and getting angrier and angrier every single day over the unfairness of it all.

Are my complaints unjustified? No, of course not. They are completely justified. But are they helping me? No, they’re not. The only thing complaining is doing is making me feel bad.

Complaining is what we use to make people feel bad for us. “You poor thing. All the troubles you’re going through. It sucks. Your life sucks.” Complaining, unlike positive responses to problems, doesn’t energize you. Think about it. Were you part of any complaining sessions after which you felt better — whether you were the one complaining or you were the one listening to complaints? Or did you feel even more dissatisfied with everything?

How to stop complaining

Knowing that complaining is bad is the first step to a happier life, but how does one go about breaking this habit (yes, that’s exactly what it is; if you find that you’re complaining about work, it is likely that you’re also complaining about other areas in your life, too)? It’s not easy. Complaining is rather addictive. You have to be really awake or it’s going to sneak up on you.

The thing to keep in mind when fighting complaining is that your problem is not XYZ (the thing that you don’t like) but rather how it is effecting you. Why do I feel bad about the short deadline?

1. Because it means 12 hour days for the next three months.
2. Because I’m worried we’ll have to cut corners to meet the date.
3. Because we’ll almost certainly be late.
4. Because I feel like it’s a managerial tactic used to ensure that none of us will ever get a bonus.
5. Because the manager asked us to estimate how long it will take and seems to have simply dumped it in the trash as soon as he got it.

There are other reasons, too, but those are the main ones. So if the first step to stop complaining is to acknowledge that complaining doesn’t help anyone, the next step is to list all the problems that XYZ is causing in your life. Once you do, you are able to focus on solving them. There is something very uplifting about focusing on solutions rather than problems. Solutions, you can control — they are coming from you, after all; problems, you might not. Even if you can’t solve anything, just the process of listing down the real problems is enough to make you feel better.

Let’s take a look at #1. I don’t want to work 12 hour days. I sat there, stumped for a moment, wondering how I can do this. Then I remember reading articles that said that average workers are productive only 3 hours a day and 3 days a week. Looking at my own schedule, I do better but not by much. So what if I increased productivity and efficiency for the 8 hours that I’m there so I can leave office at a reasonable time? The other thing, too, is that regardless of whether I come in at 7, 8, or 9, I seem to end up staying until 6 - 8PM. If so, then why not come in at 9 instead of 8?

Of course, increasing productivity and changing schedules are not the easiest things in the world, but they are something that I can concentrate on over the course of the project. The nice thing about this is that any increases in these two areas will not only help me in this project but in future projects as well.

When you complain…

…you also encourage other people to complain. You tell someone that your life sucks. They are not going to respond by saying how awesome their life is, if for no other reason than to not feel like a jerk. If they are complainers themselves, they will probably try to one-up you by telling you how lucky you are that your life sucks only that much and how their life sucks so much more. If they aren’t into complaining, they are unlikely to give you the responses that you seek and you’ll end up leaving, thinking they’re insensitive louts.

We already know that complaining causes unhappiness. It’s bad enough that we can’t control our own minds and make ourselves unhappy by complaining. Do we really want to listen to other people’s problems as well? As though we didn’t have enough problems of our own?

In the end, our thoughts are our world, and complaining isn’t making it any better.