A month's worth of wages for free!

We did a lazy money round up last Wednesday night. $55!!! We pulled together $55 that was just sitting around, doing nothing. We searched high and low, cars, desk drawers, change cups (filled from picking coins on the ground) that hadn't been emptied yet, couches, and so on. We ended up with 1 $5 bill, 6 $1 bills,3 rolls of quarters, 2 rolls of dimes, and 2 rolls of nickles. That was $55 sitting around doing nothing. It wasn't money actively being used, so it was lazy. Heck, the $5 bill was stuck under a book. Since we didn't even know it was there, we obviously didn't need it.

Our lives continued on in the ignorance of the $55 of lazy money just fine, so the next day the money was deposited into an investment vehicle earning 5%.

For the rest of our lives, as long as we don't touch that $55 we didn't even use, we get $2.75 per year! I NEVER have to work for that $2.75 again!! Each year, I will be handed $2.75 with no strings attached. Ahh, that feels good and nice. You know, after awhile, these $2.75's add up nicely. Heck, if next year I don't touch that free $2.75, it too will start to generate free money ... about $0.13 per year, and that too will start to generate even more free money!!!

While typing this up, I began to wonder about the U.S. Federal minimum wage and how much would be required to be put away so that every year I would get one free hour of minimum wage.

Currently, the U.S. minimum wage is $7.25 so that implies that if I put away $145 and never touch it, each year I will get $7.25 in interest, equalling 1 hour of work by a minimum wage earner. Now that is awesome!! One hour of labor ... mine, or buying another person's time. A mere $145. Nice!

Let's extend this a bit further. Let's assume a 40 hour work week. The minimum wage earner makes $290 in a week. Mathematically, if I put away $5,800 and never touch it, that gives me a free week of labor!! I could work for a whole week, at minimum wage, to make this amount or simply put away $5,800 and get that free week the rest of my life.

Okay, this is now really fun. How do we get a month of free labor? 4 times $5,800 = $23,200. So, for the price of a car, I could have an entire month of income! What takes someone busting their ass for an entire month at minimum wage, I get with zero work! All I have to do is not touch the $23,000! I like that. A whole month, I could be sitting on my rear while someone else is working and we would make the same amount of money!!! Imagine the compounding effect if one were to make that free month of money AND still hold their regular job. :)

If you are in the position that $5,800 is a lot, focus on the $145. Do the $145 units. From experience, I can tell you that by being diligent about putting $145 units away, you will hit $5,800.

Oh, as an aside, our investments are tied to inflation. :)

Warm and Cozy Project

I love this time of year. The nights are cooler and there is a nip in the air, but not cold. Perfect weather for cozing up with the ones you love. But it can be hard finding a blanket that will cover 4 people. So we made one.

The girls and I went to Hancock Fabrics and picked out a fleece print that we liked. Can you guess which print we picked? Ariel. Right! Then we picked out a coordinated solid color fleece for the other side. We purchased 3 1/2 yards of each, because we want to make a really long blanket. Then following the instructions found at http://www.exploringwomanhood.com/homelife/ideas/pom-jan03.htm we made the blanket, together. Well, Dy watched and ran up and down the blanket supervising as KJ helped me make tie the double knots.

It was a lot of fun! KJ learnt to make double knots and we had a fun afternoon activity for about a week. (It doesn't take a week to make the blanket, I could have made it in 3 hours.)

The blanket we made ended up costing us $45. That was because the Ariel fleece was expensive, but there are lots of fleeced to choose from and I could have made the same size blanket for $25.

Reframing Stress - It is all perspective

We all have stress in life and I've shared in the concept of, depending on experience, what constitutes a stressful situation for one person is different than for another. Even if it is the exact same situation! Recognizing this is one way to help extricate yourself from a stressful situation. This is part of a broader technique known as reframing.

Reframing is the approach of looking at your situation in a new light. It is actually very simple.

When I was a consultant on the road building large complex technology systems for big well known companies, the stress use to get quite high. My right eye would twitch, and my sleep would be non-existent. I learned to change my view. What I did was say to myself, "I'm one person, in this one building, in this one city, in this one state, in this one country, in this one hemisphere, on this one planet, in this one solar system, in this one galaxy, in this one universe." This statement helped me reframe ... the stress of getting system X up by a certain date and time was really inconsequential in the scheme of the universe! :)

Prepaid vs. Monthly Mobile Phone Service

Last month, my mobile service contract expired. It was time to really consider what to do with my mobile phone service. Should I cancel mobile phone service completely? Should I switch to a prepaid mobile phone?

If I could completely get rid of my mobile phone service, I would. But I'm not comfortable doing that given I have two small children, don't have a land line at home, and live in huge metro area.

Prepaid phone services are now offered by all the major provider. The variety of plans and options for prepaid service, revival that of monthly service. After reviewing the plans, I was able to determine that prepaid mobile phone service is an option for anyone who talks less than 200 minutes a month. However, if you talk more than 200 minutes the prepaid service become more expensive.

In the end, I decided to stay with my monthly service plan of 450 minutes for $34. It is cheaper than what I would be paying for the same service utilizing a prepaid mobile service plan.

Synchronize your life? Ready! Set! STOP!

Most of my years in computers have been spent writing programs. Although I've not written an actual production application in the past 5 years, my mind still thinks in a computer program sort of way. One of the interesting concepts of programing is "Threads."

Threads, in computer programming, are independent streams of program execution. One "Thread" may weave together one sequence of logic, just like one single thread may weave together pieces of fabric in a dress. In computer programming, it is possible to have multiple threads running at the same time... just like a dress may have multiple threads holding different pieces of fabric together. Interlacing independent threads in the right way makes a computer program work just as interlacing fabric threads in the right way makes a dress stay together.

In the world of computers, threads sometimes have to rendezvous together to share information and/or be started or stopped to avoid thread collisions. One thread executed a certain piece of logic and has a part of the overall result, and another thread executed another piece of logic and has another part of the overall result. Or 2 different threads may have to execute the same piece of logic and that particular piece of logic was not designed to operate with 2 threads in it.

These junctions and rendezvous of threads is called synchronization.

Human beings are like threads. Each of us is operating independently, each of us collecting results along the way. But we must synchronize at various points. While driving the car, that synchronization often happens at stop lights. Some threads are halted while other threads are allowed to proceed. Another synchronization happens each morning at 9AM, when people are expected to be at work. Or at noon, when people are to have lunch.

It becomes more clear that time is a huge synchronization mechanism for us human beings. We coordinate around each other based on time. What were to happen if we became truly independent and didn't have to synchronize? Would you execute more efficiently if you didn't have synchronize? That is, what if time didn't matter... what if it didn't matter what time you did anything? Talk about extreme processing! You could just operate and you wouldn't have to wait on, or synchronize, with anyone else. You moved at your pace. No stop lights! :)

Living in our society, removal of all synchronization wouldn't be possible. However, how many synchronization points have you inserted that you really don't need?

A friend of mine always ran her dishwasher at 8AM. No matter what, that is what she did. She created an artificial stress on herself to have that damn thing going at 8AM. She always had clean dishes for the day, but she was always rushing in the morning to get all the chores done. I boldly suggested that rather than do it at 8AM, that she simply do it when her thread had vacancy.

She did this, and the results have been dramatic. Her dishes are still clean each day, but she has so much less stress in her life, she spends more time with her kids, and finds she can accomplish more chores in the day (she applied this principle to many parts of her life). Extreme example? Maybe, but do you have a dishwasher in your life?