4 Ways Win By Quitting

Posted on August 31, 2007

Sometimes we get to the end of our rope and realize that what we are currently doing isn’t working. Take heart, despite how we may feel at the time, it might be the best thing that ever happened to us. So many successful people have the rock bottom story that changed their lives. Whether it is when the creditors started calling, the death of someone close, a sunken business, failed college course, or even the loss of a close friend to a huge mistake; they all hold opportunities for growth. Opportunities to change our lives. No matter how we get there, sometimes giving up and admitting that we are sinking is a huge step. Here are a few ways to that you can benefit and deal with ‘giving up’:

Realize that we all make mistakes. Sure some are bigger than others, but it doesn’t matter how we got there. We need to use that experience to change, not to keep ourselves trapped in self-pity and remorse.

Change Your Strategy. The perspective that comes from giving up often reveals the futility of our current course of action. When we are in the midst of the muck and mire, we continue to trudge the current path for lack of a better idea. Once we step back from our problems, we can start to think in solutions rather than problems. When you realize that your current income just isn’t cutting it, you can step back and look for answers. Rather than try and juggle your bills on too little money, we get a second job until we can turn it around. Maybe we sell a car to cut expenses, or even ask for a raise.

Talk to, learn from, and lean on others. The dose of humility that comes with admitting defeat often helps us realize that the task is bigger than us at this time. Talk to you wife, family, and best friends. Find support on a blog, or in an internet community. Give you best friend you credit card, if you can’t stop going into debt. Someone has been in your situation, and in worse. Find some common ground, and let others feed into you. Accept the help, it is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of humility and intelligence.

Divide and conquer. Often we spread ourselves so thin that we aren’t doing anything well, and the house of cards crumble. Sit done, come up with your priorities, and focus on the most important tasks. For example, if you are in over your head in debt, make sure the lights stay on and a roof over your head. Pay the minimum on all the debts, and focus your intensity on getting rid of one.

We have all been faced with turning point moments; the key is how we respond. I have often found that giving up, can be the right choice to turn things around. To wrap up, I wanted to share a small experience from two years ago. I happened to start my MBA, just two weeks before unexpectedly adopted our first son. Being a father to a newborn was quite an adjustment in and of itself, but throw a notoriously undisciplined and unorganized person trying to take two graduate classes on top of that, and I was bruised and beaten to say the least. I trudged through the first quarter, until my wife said this has got to stop. I really felt called to stay in school, but the current strategy(or lack of on) wasn’t working at all. I sat down with my wife, asked for some advice, and got her input on what would make her happy. She helped me lay out a plan for success, and I told her that if it didn’t work after this quarter I would call it quits. To my delight with some prayer and some help, that semester went providentially well. Amen, for giving up!

» Filed Under About Me, Accountability, Positive Thinking

Gender Affects Salaries, But Maybe Not How You Think

Posted on August 29, 2007

“Women working full time earn about 77 percent of the salaries of men working full time”. That number is a little misleading, as it doesn’t take into account education and employee status, but the difference is still 11% when equal employees are studied across genders.

We all know the gender differences in salary still exists in business and so does the glass ceiling to some extent. The common explanation is sexism and deliberate underpayment of women. Linda Babcock, professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, has been studying the issue at length and has produced some interesting findings. Time and again her research shows that women are much less aggressive, and their finances take a hit because of it. An 11% hit in starting salary could end up costing a women over half a million dollars or more during a 30 year career.

Do the readers agree with this assessment?

Is the solution to teach women to be more aggressive?

This is one of those situations were the surface facts may not tell the whole truth. This type of topic calls us to look past our stereotypes and prejudices and look at the reality of the matter. Are there reasons that women are less aggressive then men? Do the men in business positions react differently to an aggressive man vs. an aggressive woman? Are there other factors at work?

Hannah Riley Bowles, who studies psychology at Harvard, offered research supporting the notion that aggressive men are treated differently than women. “While both men and women were penalized for negotiating, Bowles found that the negative effect for women was more than twice as large as that for men.”

Do women feel that this is an accurate view of the business world for them? It makes sense to me. Even the language we use to describe aggressive, pushy men is much better then the language used for a aggressive, pushy women. Men are called pushy and go-getters, while women are nagging and b****y. Women are expected to be nice, but the same rule doesn’t apply to men. How does Martha Stewart get described vs. how does Jack Welch famous GE CEO or Donald Trump?

Personally, I will admit to judging women by different standards in the business world. Research like this really helps illuminate the subtle ways in which I may carry a sexist world view around with me. It’s time to take notice, and start changing.

What are the reader’s experience with this issues

Source : Washington Post Article

» Filed Under Salary, Women

Tricks The Banks Play To Make You Pay

Posted on August 27, 2007

This is a guest post form Linda Bustos. Linda is an editor for CreditorWeb, where you can learn about credit cards, compare offers, and apply for a business credit card online.

We all know that banks are not on our side. They offer us products and services to make our lives more convenient and pull us through financial jams, but we end up paying for them through interest charges…and bank fees…and late payment fees…and overdraft charges…and NSF check fees…the list goes on.

Banks have no shame in trying to squeeze as many cents and dollars from their clients. Financial institutions have many games and tactics, but their only power over you is your ignorance to them. Here are 6 tips that banks will never outright tell you but that will keep your hard earned cash in your pocket.

1. Late Credit Card Bill Trick

Some credit card companies will send bills out late in the billing cycle, reducing the amount of time you have to actually pay the thing — sometimes with only a couple days. They’re legally required to send your bill at least 14 days before payment is due, but with mail eating up to three days each way, you have an eight day window to send in your payment. Online banking can shave three days off that time. But remember that sometimes your payment won’t go through the same day depending on which bank you’re using, so it’s just best to pay up the day you get the statement or set up automatic checking account withdrawals. But be careful if you choose that option, always make sure you have enough cash in the account. But, making only minimum payments is gonna cost you dearly in interest fees, so it’s best to just discipline yourself to pay right away.

2. Accidental Overdraft

You can ask your bank to monitor your checking account so that if you happen to overdraw your account, they’ll call you right away. Number one, you stop spending - and number two, you can request that they give you until the end of the day to replenish your account and avoid the $15-$25 overdraft penalty and the inconvenience of a bounced check.

3. Loan Insurance - Just Say No

Additional life or disability insurance on a loan only protects the bank in the event you die or cannot work anymore and can’t make your payments. You’re paying their premiums for them, plus they’re getting a commission on the insurance policy that originates from an insurance company. Bad, bad, bad. Life and disability insurance is fine, just get it from an insurance agency yourself and make sure the policy benefits YOU.

4. You Can Have Loan Fees Waived

Your mortgage loan or home equity loan is a great source of revenue for the bank. To save you from going elsewhere, the bank can stand to relieve you of a few hundred dollars worth of fees to keep your business - but you have to ask.

5. Interest Rates are Always Negotiable

“The rate for this type of loan is X%.” Wrong! There is always room for negotiation, and don’t be fooled by the banker’s tactics of not mentioning the rate at all and just filling it in on the note, or suggesting that because you need the money immediately you should take X% and you’ll negotiate it later.

6. Low Interest Credit Cards Could Cost You More

There are two common ways banks make up for the lower rate: annual fees and no grace period. If you’re paying $35-$50 for the privilege of a few percentage points less, that’s still a type of interest - a lot of interest if you don’t normally carry a balance anyway. And if the conditions of the lower rate involves no grace period, you will pay interest even if you pay faithfully in-full each month.

» Filed Under Banks, Credit Cards, Guest Posts

88th Festival of Frugality - About Me Edition

Posted on August 21, 2007

Welcome to the 88th Festival of Frugality! The Festival of Frugality is a blog carnival, which is a periodic round up of blogger’s best posts related to a specific topic hosted by various blogs.

Below are the 5 articles that I enjoyed the most, followed by the rest of the 35 entries that were accepted to the festival. For each entry I included a link to selected article and a link to the author’s ‘About Me’ page. For those blogs without an easy to find ‘About Me’ I will link to the main page. The posts are listed in the order they were received. Enjoy the wealth of knowledge.

Top Picks

Other Great Articles

The 89th Festival of Frugality will be hosted at FILAM Personal Finance. Submit your articles by Monday night at 9pm EST using the Festival of Frugality submission form @ blogcarnival.com.

» Filed Under Frugality, Money Savers

Festival Hosting and Helping Redesign The Happy Rock

Posted on August 20, 2007

I will not be posting an article Monday, because on Tuesday morning I will be hosting my first blog carnival. The 88th Festival of Frugality will be jam packed with some great frugal advice.

Second, for a while now I have been working on a redesign of the site. I hoped to release it this weekend, but caught an ugly cold that kept me down.

I am having trouble deciding on the column colors for the new theme and wanted to enlist your help. Click through to the Picasa album below, have a look at the six pictures provided, and cast your vote in the comments section. Reference the pictures as they are numbered in the album; 1 on the left 6 on the right. I would like to get 25 votes to get a good sense of the community choice. Feel free to add any comments or color suggestions that I may have overlooked. Thank you for the help.

The Happy Rock Redesign

» Filed Under Frugality, Misc.

Contest Winner : Quicken Deluxe 2007

Posted on August 16, 2007

Remember the second round of contests I posted last week in the learning from others post. Well, yours truly, won a copy of Quicken Deluxe 2007. Shelley Elmblad @ The Personal Budgeting section of Suite 101 sent me the good news yesterday. I quickly responded with my address, and the software will ship tomorrow. Perfect, just as I was having some troubles with Microsoft Money I will get to try out its main competitor. Hopefully the Money import feature works well!

Who says they never win anything? A couple of minutes returned a $39.99 piece of software. Did any other readers win a copy, there were 10 to give away?

» Filed Under Finance Software

My Sitemeter and pMetrics Addiction And Other Things We Do Too Much

Posted on August 15, 2007

Hi, my name is Frank and I have a problem! I am addicted to Sitemeter and any other web site tracking package. My new love is pMetrics. The statistics are tailored for blogs and it lets you easily track your visitor’s movement within your site. It combines my favorite reports from other sites into one visitor overview page. Plus it is much faster than loading than everything else I have tried. I haven’t needed to visit SiteMeter or anything else since I signed up. I know The Happy Rock is a small site, but that just means that there is more chance I haven’t received a new hit since I last checked. It is a shame that doesn’t stop me from checking.

Every blogger can probably relate to this type of stat fascination. The real problem is that incessantly checking these stats adds no value. I would even go so far as to say that it probably hurts my overall productivity in life and for The Happy Rock. Here is how:

Wasted Time - Time spent doing something that I could easy do just a few times, rather then a few times an hour is a real waste. I really don’t have time to waste either.
Lost Focus - The preoccupation with stats and interruptions that the addiction causes probably has the biggest impact on my daily life.
Lost Perspective - Constantly focusing on one task can shape our strategy to revolve around only small piece of the puzzle. The usually translates into bad decisions.

For the blogger and non-blogger, the bigger question is what do we do when we can’t stop ourselves from getting too much of a good thing or too much of things that provide little or no value? We all have plenty of these things in their life.

The start of the process is getting the problem out in the open, like I am doing here. It has been a day since I have written this, and just by sharing and listing the negative consequences the lure of stat checking has already lost some of its power.

What things do you know in the back of your mind you should avoid altogether or drastically cut back? J.D @ Get Rich Slowly shared yesterday that he recently got bitten by an old Magic The Gathering addiction to the tune of $161. Let’s start by getting the problem out in the open and listing the negative ways that it affects our lives and our money in the comments section. In a future post I will post reader tips and some concrete ways that I am going to deal with my pMetrics addiction.

Disclosure: pMetrics is an affiliate link, although that doesn’t change how good it is!

» Filed Under Accountability, Bloggers, Productivity

5 Key Strategies For Getting Out Of Debt

Posted on August 12, 2007

Being debt free has been more amazing than I thought, and I want others to be able to share in a similar joy. For those who are trying to get out of debt or entertaining the thought, here is some ammunition. As my wife and I and slowly hacked our way out of $70,000 in debt, there were a few key strategies that were extremely helpful:

1. Find Your Passion – Finding your passion is my number tip for anything that requires a large amount of energy and commitment. I started thinking about being debt free, because I realized that I wanted more in life. I wanted freedom to change careers, financial freedom for my family and children(and for their children), security for my family, freedom to pursue my dreams, and to be able to give abundantly. Those are the types of things that get my juices flowing, and the real goals that propelled me to being debt free. What are the things that resonate with you and how does being debt free help you achieve them? Figure that out, and you will be able to harness a powerful motivating force and a set yourself up for some strong endurance.

2. Change Your Behavior – If you are like me, you were in debt because your beliefs and actions towards money got you there. Becoming debt free will require you to change those behaviors and belief structures. Cut up or cancel those credit cards, change how you handle stress or depression, cancel the cable, cut down on your golf, change your ideas on how many toys your kids need. These are the types of things that will heal the financial bleeding. I mention this mainly because people can get caught up in the math of getting out of debt and lose sight of actually changing their behavior. Debt is a behavior problem, not a math problem. We need to stop spending money we don’t have; you won’t get out of debt unless you do.

3. Simplify and Focus – This one is paramount for changing you behavior. Just like multi-tasking isn’t the most efficient way to get things done, spreading yourself/money thin doesn’t work for getting out of debt either. Use your passion to develop a plan that divides your debt up into small steps, and conquer them one at a time. We had $70,000 in debt, so this step was extremely important. $70,000 in debt is a mountain, but we chose to focus on climbing several mole hills.

We focused all of our extra money on debt. And when I say ALL, I mean all. We stopped our monthly savings, 401K, everything. We usually focused the extra money on the smallest debt, unless a higher interest debt made more sense. The reason we started with the smallest debt, was for focus. Each debt you eliminate helps you focus more on the next. Just as the focus on small conquerable pieces gives you more energy and encourages the ever elusive change in behavior.

4. Believe You Can Do It – If you can believe that you will be debt free, you will probably make it. But for those of us who lack self-confidence or have a mountain of debt, dividing the overwhelming task into small manageable tasks helps to breed confidence. With each victory, you can begin to picture yourself debt free. Picturing yourself debt free gets you closer to passion and breeds more energy which creates better focus. Creating such a positive cycle will only help to increase your results.

5. Have An Emergency Fund – Before you start paying down your debt, save a small cushion that shields you from the ups and downs of everyday life. One financial expert, Dave Ramsey, suggests $1,000, and this is a reasonable number. I know that we dipped into the emergency fund a couple times over the three and a half years it took to get out of debt. Things like unexpected car repairs that might have gone on your credit card can come from the emergency fund. The emergency serves as your shield so that you can stay focused.

For those of you in debt, I hope that these tips are helpful. I know they helped me. For those of you feeling beat down: step back, regroup, and come out with your guns blazing. If you need some support, feel free to drop me an email.

If you liked this post, I highly recommend our benefits of getting out of debt and our personal debt story.

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If you haven’t found a solution to your credit card debt, maybe its time you did some research. Consider looking into debt consolidation. Even if you have tax debt, we may be able to help.

» Filed Under Debt Elimination, Favorites, Motivation, Positive Thinking, Psychology of Debt

Learning From Others : Finance Community Round Up

Posted on August 11, 2007

There was some great stuff out there this week. Here are my favorites :

Saving Advice offers a beautifully pictographed list of 25 personal money confessions.

Blueprint For Financial Prosperity gives as a quick description of 10 top personal finance books. The description on Your Money Your Life makes me want to read it even more.

One Frugal Girl starts a discussion on whether or not debt is an integrity problem. Bankruptcy usually is in my opinion, and I can see consumer debt bordering on an integrity issue. Even if we don’t come to conclusions, I think the discussion is useful. Integrity needs to be talked about more

Consumerism Commentary takes a through a misleading statistics example revolving around consumer debt. Again I love the discussion. Being critical about statistics is utterly important in our age of media bombardment. Like the 50% of marriages that end in divorce statistic that gets tossed around so much. I haven’t found the basis for that one yet.

Philip at Wise Bread challenges us on what to do when you aren’t happy with our current job. I though the interview questions were brilliant, I hadn’t done that thinking yet!

Finally, two more contests one for a copy of Quicken and one for $300 or more in cash.

» Filed Under Links

Recovering From The Microsoft Money Server Upgrade

Posted on August 10, 2007

I cleared a hurdle I had been putting off for about three weeks now; I spent about two hours tonight bringing my Microsoft Money records back up to date. It was two hours I didn’t have, but two hours that were sorely needed. In mid July Microsoft decided that their Money servers need a complete overhaul. Since that time I haven’t been able to download my transactions for my ING Electric Orange checking, savings, or my one credit card. With the July Cash Spending Experiment in full swing, I wasn’t too worried about it since my normal way of operating wasn’t needed. Now with July over, I finally needed to bite the bullet and fix what they broke.

To be honest I did spend about 20 minutes searching for better personal finance software options, and thought about upgrading from Money 2005 to 2007. I didn’t switch or upgrade, because I honestly don’t have the time and energy to invest in learning a new tool. Plus I have three years of budgeting and finance information in Money format. I would love to entertain any reader suggestions about possible good transition software from Money. With that said, Money suites my needs fine.

After some minor frustration and keyboard pounding I was able to trick Money into being able to access my accounts again. The big tip was to go to the financial institutions and download the transactions manually to help Money learn. Believe it or not, it really helped. Once that was done, I had probably 100 transactions to reconcile and categorize. That is my favorite feature of personal finance software. It really helps my conceptualize and track how much money we are spending and were it is going. Money can also do some simple charts which not only look pretty, but can serve as good marriage communication tool. I finally finished up by taking care of some bills.

I could have really used the two hours for other activities, but it really feels good to have that squared away again. The next big task is to square away the pile of receipts from all the July cash spending, and see if we actually saved any money.

» Filed Under Experiments, Finance Software, Personal Finance Systems, Productivity(Financial)

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