Gather Little by Little

I have to be honest, I’m not a big fan of the whole “new year” concept. To me January 1st is just another day, no different than December 31st or any other day of the year. I realize many people consider this to be a fresh start and a time to re-energize themselves, set new resolutions and start with a clean slate. Call me a curmudgeon, but you can do this on any day, it certainly doesn’t have occur on the first day of some man-made time schedule.

I recently posted the following on twitter:

Tweet #1: Call me a party-pooper, but I just don’t get this new years thing. just another day,no different than any other day…ok,except that I’m off

Tweet #2: I don’t get new years resolutions either. Why wait until the new year? Start immediately. No time like the present

I received a number of replies to this, some agreeing some disagreeing, but I think the best reply was from sforzley who replied:

Ah because NY resolutions give you a fake perception (and perception is reality right?) of resetting and forgetting what happened.

What are your thoughts?

The one thing I DID start on the new year was a new budget. Over the past couple of months I really fell off the wagon on updating and managing like I should have. So I spent about 3-4 hours yesterdays updating my budget spreadsheet and I’ll begin updating it daily. Just to be clear, I didn’t do this due to the new year, but just wanted to start it the first day of the month after Christmas.

Follow me on Twitter

By the way, this is just one of the many different discussions that I have on Twitter with the people I follow and who follow me. I’ve really recently become huge fan of Twitter and find that I get news, updates, great links and great discussion from twitter. Interested? Then follow me, I’ve updated more than 1,000 times and update often throughout the day. I post links to articles I like, what’s going on in my day and offer my thoughts to other people’s tweets as well.

The Gathering

Here are my favorite articles from my blogroll and the M-Network over the past week:

• Introducing the Newest Member of the Caveman Family – Head over and congratulate him and his wife. What a beautiful little baby girl!
• Taking Responsibility of Ownership @ Responsibills
• looking for good personal finance books @ Plonkee Money – Plonkee responds to a discussion provoking article published by Trent from the Simple Dollar.
• DON’T Set Any Resolutions @ The Wisdom Journal
• Start The New Year Off Right With Some Budgeting Tips. @ My Two Dollars
• Does Money Equal Happiness? @ Jay Peroni
• Financial Plans for 2009 @ Mrs Micah
• New Years Resolution Two: Wake Up At 4:30AM @ Frugal Dad
• A Series Of Unfortunate Events @ Paid Twice
• What is Frugality? @ CleverDude – I wrote a similar article sometime back.
• 2009: What’s Ahead at Beingfrugal.net @ Being Frugal
• On being a part-time property manager”¦ @ Don’t Feed The Alligators – I really enjoyed this article as I might very soon be a property manager as we look to put our house up for rent in the next few days.
• MacBook Vs. PC: Why I Chose PC @ Cash Money Life – Good write-up. Personally, my next personal machine is most likely going to be a MacBook. I want to focus on my blog, not on technical issues with my laptop and I’m willing to pay more for that.

Photo by: mugley