If you have ever managed people then the manager-tools.com podcast series is for you. Why does this relate to money management? Because if you’re looking to get ahead to increase your income then you will need to be a better communicator and more than likely a manager of people as well as finances. The advice on that site is free (with for-money advice also available), the advice is practical, and it is sure to at least begin to prepare you for life in the wide-weird-world of management.

If you’re currently just an employee then you’ll want to listen to this stuff simply to learn how your manager may be trying to communicate to you. Sometimes managers don’t know that they’re doing a bad job of communicating and you may learn from these audio lessons how to help your manager manage better - heck, you may even want to pass them along to your manager.

If you’re a parent these are valuable because they even apply some things to rearing a child. And let me tell you: rears of children should always be managed. If you’re a manager you should listen to these because odds are you’ve never been trained to be a manager, you’ve just been thrown into it. I have recently been chucked in front of the wheels of an oncoming management train myself and this sort of thing is going to be handy.

I would recommend starting at the bottom of the page and working your way up so that you can get a feel for their methodology. Its not difficult to listen to and you’ll want to keep a pencil & paper or a word processor open to take notes. I have a page of notes from one podcast already and am just starting my second. This stuff is dynamite strapped to the body of a dead manager - go ahead and light the fuse… its attached to you.

So we’re going to play the credit hard ‘price shopping’ trick around here for a while. We’re working aggressively to pay off all of our debts and rather than use a credit counseling service (which others recommend and I don’t have a problem with in principle) we’re going to attempt to just get aggressive about paying things off and attempt to dump this debt for a life of freedom. Right. Freedom is a great concept, but I’m not naive enough to think we’ll get there in two days.

That being said, there’s lots to be free from in the world of finance and I want to set my mind on those goals for the short term and on financial independence in the longer term. I’m reading a book right now (a review will more than likely be forthcoming) called Seven Years to Seven Figures. In the first chapter it has a quote that I really want to share with you my readership:

“[Dale Carnegie] …said that while it is true that most people don’t succeed because they don’t have clearly defind goals, some people fail to make progress because they have too many.”

So we’re trimming down the goals that we have. They’re distractions. They’re the things that illusionists use to keep you from seeing how their tricks work. They cause you to fail to understand what is happening and instead keep you in a suspended state of mediocrity. This requires me to set my goals out in a list and hone them down into the one thing I’m going to focus on. I’m not going to worry about anything but nailing my debt down to zero for the next several months. Like Trent at the Simple Dollar I’m going to restrain myself and live with as few expenditures as possible so that November shines as the first month of focus [that conclusion was independent of Trent's but nearly exact in timing]. This is the first step in the race.

Bang - the gun sounds - I’m off!

Today after church I got the opportunity to talk to another fellow at church who is older than me and I asked what he was up to.  He said he was cleaning out his house before he dies.  This was a little disconcerting in that you usually don’t hear of people preparing to die.  However, as he went on to explain his thinking I was both impressed and I thought, “I will need to do that, and I want to tell others about this great mindset.”  You see my friend has had to clean up after three older relatives who died.

He had to go into the houses of people who have collected things their whole lives and,  with the help of others who were appropriately involved, attempt to throw out the unwanted, pass out the sentimental things, and give away or sell things of value that are still not wanted by others.  He said he’s just trying to do some of these things before he gets so old that he can’t do them.  He’s thinking of his son and daughter who are not in need of that burden, but would much rather go through the grieving process being able to focus on the good memories of their parents rather than sifting through stuff.

If you have parents who are getting old take a moment to discuss this idea with them.  You might choose to pick up the book ‘It’s All Too Much!‘ so that they have some good motivation. The idea is not to get rid of everything, but to get rid of any clutter or excess items that are not going to be valuable to family members.  I recently had another friend tell me that they moved their parents across town and they had several weeks of garage sales to get rid of stuff as well as finding things like fifty gallon drums that were empty but there because at some point in time they’d been ‘left’ there… nobody needed them, nobody wanted them, but they’d been collected and forgotten.  Take the time now to go through those things while everyone is hopefully cognizant, and get ahead of the potential stress.  You may enjoy the memories reminisced now together rather than having more reminders of past times later, but diminished by the distraction of ‘junk.’

Only a tiny, tiny percentage of young baseball players make it into professional baseball. Our local home team is the Colorado Rockies, they’ve just now, moments ago, made their way into the playoffs vying for the position of representing their league in the World Series. What continues to amaze me in all of this is the salaries of the players. The players are signing multi-million, multi-year contracts that should allow them to retire at whatever age they choose and take up coaching, broadcasting or sitting on their backsides. I was just looking on the CBS sports site at the Rockie’s Roster and salaries for their players.

For example if Matt Holliday had no endorsements, no external cash flow from bonuses resulting from post-season playoff action, he would make $4,400.000.00 this year. With a salary that big you know he has to be paying a lot in taxes (though maybe a smaller percentage than we would think) , but after taxes he’s got money that he can put into investments that should help him clear a good chunk of interest every year until his grand-kids inherit a piece of the action. Assuming a 10% investment of that money ($440,000.00) at 12% interest for the year that would earn Matt$52,800.00 in interest. Ten years, without adding any more money to the investment (at 12%) would give Matt a compounded value of 1,366,573.21. Now, lets assume that he adds $100,000.00 to that every year between now and his retirement in ten years (which may or may not be reasonable… but we’re just playing with numbers) that would have him earning a grand total of $3,332,031.54 in his investment account. The good thing is that the number is going to continue to grow. Assuming that he makes 12% from that point forward from interest for do years, but lives off of 4% of that interest (effectively only earning 8% in compound interest) he’d end up with $15,530,456.21 at the end of 30 more years. Living off of the four percent interest the first year he’d get $133,281.26 to spend on whatever he wanted. Assuming he’s already got a paid for home and set of vehicles that’s a lot of money to do whatever you want with - and its also assuming he’s not working for a salary as a coach or as some sort of public personality.

Sports is amazing world to look into, a tiny percentage of the players make it big, a smaller percent can demand such huge salaries, but if you look at players like Alex Rodriguez who got paid $22,708,525.00 for this last season (again, just for the regular season and without any endorsements or other bonuses) it jumps to even more astronomical numbers. Ten percent of that salary is $2,270,852.50. That is to say that one tenth of A-Rod’s salary covers more than 50% of Matt Holliday’s salary. In essence the same assumptions made earlier about Holliday’s income and investment potential can be multiplied five times to represent A-Rod.

To set it all into a greater contrast evaluate this: The best paid team in the Major Leagues is the New York Yankees. They get paid a collective $189,639,045.00 a year to play professional baseball. The lowest paid team in the league is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays who get paid $24,123,500.00 collectively. One player on the Yankees gets paid almost as much as the entire team of the lowest paid players. The three best paid Yankees make a collective $67.7 million. The Devil Rays paid their top three paid players a collective 8 million dollars for the season.

All of that is to say: don’t sweat your income in contrast to others: even in the big leagues there’s a disparity. Get your job done right, get your job done well and look for opportunity. You never know when someone may be looking for a professional in your arena to pay a quarter of a billion dollars for the next ten years

I’m working on the online grocery price comparison application (no name yet, if you can think of one, let me know… and I don’t want something missing a vowel, please).  I’m hoping to have something for people to beta test in the coming weeks.  Features planned include the following:

• Personal staples
• Personal store locations
• Optimized shopping list based on store locations you’ve chosen for your shopping trip.  Buy items at the store with the best recent price
• Price history charts (look at pricing trends)
• Adding prices as a community so that it operates as more of a grocery wiki than just a one-person tool
• Item tags/categories for faster searches
• [hopefully] mobile device oriented so that you don’t have to use it at home but can use it in the store
• Find stores in your area with google search & maps if the store isn’t already in the database

What’s missing?  Can anyone make a suggestion based on what you’re after?  Currently its oriented to the US, but I do hope to make it internationalized in the future.

Sometimes people switch jobs often as they pursue the next higher paying salary, the next cool status symbol oriented position or the next ‘dream work scenario.’  I have worked with one company for seven year now and am loyal.  I’m loyal because the company does what I like to do, the company pays me well, the company management respects me and my opinion, and they treat me like a human being.  I’m a long term relationship for this company and in my reviews it shows.  They consistently give me raises that reflect my value to the company.  It should be noted that long term loyalty may be an important aspect in what can be a high quality life.  If you can work long term with consistent benefits, low stress, reasonable financial reward and a positive morale at the company you may have the chance for a better financial situation as well, here’s why:

A company that keeps your ‘maintained’ in a state of happiness as an employee or contractor or some sort of working relationship is going to be able to let you focus on finances when you go home at night, or any other task you need to focus on.  The company isn’t killing your life outside of work and that company is going to help you have a balanced emotional wellbeing.  There is very little that stress is going to add to in your life but the chances of a medical problem or worse.  If you can focus on your finances, even if its not for stellar wages that would make everyone jealous, but instead are for reasonable wages that keep your needs met then you can devote the appropriate time to maximizing your return on investments, stay out of debt, and prepare for the future.

A good company standard for employee morale is going to help the company have (potentially) more productive employees.  Employees are less likely to call in sick when they’re not really sick as well.  Look for long term employment opportunities.  Seek out companies that have good, strong values that match your own.  Consider all of the benefits for sticking around in contrast to the ‘greener grasses’ of other companies.  Its not that leaving a company is a stupid idea, but you have to consider the cost of that moving on verses sticking with your current situation so that you can focus on other things that will have longer term benefits.

Why else should you stick around at an employer?  Why should you move onto another job?

Since writing about medical school stuff based on a reader comment before I’ve had a sprinkling of hits from various search engines when people type in medical school and student loans. The title of this post reflects one of those search queries that lead people here. What is interesting about this phrase is that it indicates two independent parties operating without unity in a relationship that desperately needs unity.  Your husband should have asked you if you wanted to go to your parent.  Period.

If you feel burdened or overwhelmed by loans for school or whatever type they are: don’t roll the loan into a loan from a family member!  These sorts of loans destroy relationships and as Dave Ramsey says, “Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you’re eating it as a slave with your master right there at the table with you.”  I’m not sure how this particular situation worked out, but I can imagine that you should talk to your parent and confirm that such a situation didn’t cause a blow-up and confirm that you are going to talk to your husband.

When you talk to your husband make it clear that the debt is something that you own together.  Because your marriage makes you one person you need to attack debt together.  Don’t let the concept of co-habitation enter a marriage: its not fifty-fifty, its one hundred percent from either party.  Marriage vows often contain some element of, “For richer or poorer.”  This is for good reason: your finances can impact your marriage, but there is no reason to let them direct your marriage.  You take control of your marriage as two adults who are passionate about unity and bring your finances together, unified, owned and rested on.  If you can’t sleep at night due to bills then the two of you need to bring your situation into control so that you are able to rest, keep unity, and allow for your marriage to be solid.

If your parent chooses to contribute to your debt payment make sure that it is a gift - because otherwise your relationship as parent and child will simply flounder.

I just read this article and found it highly interesting that Google could single-handedly effect international electric bills.  Also, check out Blackle.com which turns Google black for you!

My wife and I read to our children daily, often several times a day. Our reading habits as adults are moving more and more online, but for our children we have many, many books that we have collected (my wife used to teach at a day care and went to school to become a teacher so she’s been collecting for a long time), and we read them to them over and over. We’re working on being more disciplined with the library (unfortunately all libraries are ten or more minutes away and next to no other destinations we frequent so we are often late returning books because of slothfulness. Yup, I’m lazy when it comes to driving ten minutes. Gotta work on it.) so that we can read even more books to our children.

Reading to your children can have a lifetime of impact that you need to not forget. Shows like Dora the Explorer or whatever your children may watch that are ‘educational’ cannot replace the time that you might spend with your child. If you think about it, that time is going to help them develop emotionally, develop intellectually, and also cost you no money. Not only are you not spending money while you read, but you’re gaining a deeper understanding of how your child operates when they ask questions or interact with you and the book. If you’re not spending money for that twenty minutes and you are not spending money because you’re checking out books from the library, and you’re not spending money because you’re learning from reading that happiness doesn’t come from ’stuff’ but experiences - you’re getting a benefit from your child that you can teach them and your potential grand children.

Your child will probably want you to read the same book to them over and over so you might consider doing something to ‘mix things up’ if your child has patience or likes it when you’re silly. My daughters have both had to endure my randomness in reading by putting up with the books backwards, super fast, or super slow. Let me tell you that “Not the Hippopotamus” is just as fun when its read fast, but you’ll get through it sooner and onto the next book.

We’ve also helped use the book reading times as an opportunity to teach them about putting things back: once the book is done being read it goes back onto the shelf - right where it belongs so that we don’t have to scurry to clean up all of the books later on when my mom shows up unexpectedly.

On September 11th, 2000 I started a new job for a company that I now do contract work for.  At that point in time I was new to the tech industry and my job was to help the guy in documentation handle the heavy load that he had.  Unfortunately a few weeks after I started I was moved onto a web project and I never went back to doing full time documentation.  I helped in a few areas but for the most part the web development took over my position.  A year later I drove into work oblivious to the world events that had taken place and feeling excited that I had been working for the company for a year.  It had been a tough, but good year.  My co-worker walked into my office and asked, “Did you hear about the plane that crashed into one of the twin towers?”  I had not.  What was an exciting day turned into one of the most emotionally intense days of my life aside from marriage and having children.

September 11th rolls around every year and I have a small personal celebration.  September 11th this year will be seven years with the company (though now as a contractor), but I will recall the life altering events of my first year anniversary with great intensity.  That single event helped me refocus my life so that when I think about what I have to do every day I remember my priorities.

I focus on my relationship with God first, my relationship with my wife and family second, and I take the duties of my job to be integrated with my provision for my family.  Finances are a part of my serving my family - they’re a priority because my family matters.  I don’t worship the money, I don’t focus on the money as a priority over my family, but I focus on them because my family is a priority.  I blog about what I’m learning here because I think that there are others like me who have been distracted by ‘the pursuit of happiness’ but forgetting life and liberty.  This blog serves the Internet in an attempt to help remind people that happiness is not through finances, finances are part of life and liberty with an end result that will hopefully include happiness.

Don’t get distracted by advertisements, social pressures, or extended family to be pursuing the ‘new’ American Dream.  The drive for stuff.  Instead recall the old American dream of independence coupled with interdependence.  Take a moment to go encourage someone today.  Encourage them to be vigorous and passionate about what they’ve got going on in life.  Help remind them of liberty, help remind them about what life is about, and remind them to be focused on their priorities - their children’s children will more than likely be effected.