Photo by: Sue Waters
When I was in college, my Dad printed off a sign that simply said “The future is now”. That simple sign, placed on the desk in my room, served as a constant reminder of why I was working so hard to get my degree. It kept me motivated, focused, and persevering during those sometimes all night coding projects and homework assignments (thanks Dad!)
Photo by: star5112
My wife recently sent me a link to a to a video clip from an episode of Oprah where where Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University reprized a lecture he did for his students call the last lecture. Carnegie Mellon asked their professors to do a lecture for their students, as if it where their very last lecture. Their intent was to inspire the students and allow the professors to share some life lessons with them. In fact for Randy Pausch, it really is probably one of his last lectures. Randy has pancreatic cancer and doctors have given Randy only a few months to live.
Photo by: code poet
This article is dedicated to my Dad who has always been there for me. Dad, thanks for your stories. I know I didn’t always appreciate them, but I do now. I am passing them onto my children who I hope will appreciate them and one day pass them on to their children.
Photo by: Björn Söderqvist
Mrs. Micah started a collective post that asked readers to share their best personal finance practices of the year. Here’s mine and it applies to those of you that are married:
Money problems and disagreements are the number one cause of marital strife and divorce in the US. The key to avoiding these problems is communication. I’ve discussed this topic before in these articles: How to get my wife or husband to follow a budget, In Financial Chaos? Pass the test, and 1 year ago today – 10 things we’ve done to regain financial control.
live. shop. die. is the saying I found on a small magnet displayed prominently on the outside of a cubical at my “real job“. I am sure this is just one of those “cute little sayings” people like to hang outside their cube, but it did make me think.
First it made me wonder how this person truly views life and made me wonder what is really important to them.
Second, it made me consider society as a whole and if this cute little sign, along with other cute little signs I’ve seen really accurately represented the mojority of society as a whole.
I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but over the past 2 months I slowly stopped tracking my budget. I made minimum payments on my debt and even forgot to make a couple of payments and incurred late penalties. To top things off, I screwed up and accidentally moved a little to much money into savings and incurred a couple of overdraft fees in my checking account. I am a little embarrassed to admit that my wife and I haven’t had a budget meeting in more than a month!
I remember high school like it was yesterday. While I had many good times, overall high school wasn’t one of the more fun times in my life. I preferred college far more. One of the negative things I vividly recall about high school was peer pressure. I always felt like I had to have the best name brand clothes and shoes. I was always jealous of the rich kid’s new Mustangs, Corvettes and Camaros. Not to mention the pressure to have girlfriend.
I was reflecting last night on how our lives have changed since we decided to get our finances under control. We strictly follow a budget, put as much money as we an towards paying off our debt and slashed our expenses. One thing in particular that I have done is to avoid temptation.
I intentionally avoid going to stores where I tend to spend money. Places like Best Buy, Circuit City, HHGregg, car dealerships, Auto Zone, etc. are all places where I am surrounded by temptation. It is extremely difficult for me to visit a place like this and not walk out with something.
I am not sure why, but every time I read MOMA Meme, my mind automatically does so with an Italian accent…”Moma Meme, it’s in there!”
Moving right along…It would seem I have been tagged with the MOMA Meme from Pinyo at Moolanomy. Actually, all of us in the M-Network were tagged last week. I am not a big Meme person, and wasn’t going to participate but Pinyo is a pretty persuasive guy and he said please so what was I supposed to do?
If you don’t know what a meme is, than read this article on Wikipedia. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t at first either, I mean…Meme…what a weird word…it looks like a typo.
While Gather Little By Little is a new blog, I have been surprised by the success and support it has received from the blogging community and from you the readers. I have recently noticed that I am getting more and more hits from Google as my content is starting to be indexed. At this point, the number one search that results in people finding my humble little site is “How to get my wife to follow a budget”. Given there seems to be a significant interest in this topic, I decided to address it directly; however, I will address both husbands or wives, not just wives.
