2009 February (2)

Monthly Archives: February 2009

7 Rules Of Credit Card Ownership

Posted by Grant on February 12, 2009 – 2:56 am

People have very mixed feelings when it comes to the subject of credit cards.

Some people love them. Some people claim they can’t live without them. And of course you have everyone in between these two extremes.

That would be where I would land.

Two years ago my wife and I began a journey to become debt free and credit card debt was a large part of that problem. When we first got married, we had a credit card for “emergencies” but then found ourselves using it in other situations. We justified this because we were consistently paying it off each month. Eventually, we even started an online business that was completely, 100% funded by credit cards. We would buy our products at wholesale, sell them online, and use the money to pay off the purchase of the product.

But happens when you lose money on the sale? This began to happen and before long, we ended up with several thousand dollars of credit card debt.

Today, we’ve made dramatic changes in how we handle our money. No longer do we depend on credit cards for emergencies…that’s why we have an emergency fund (thus the name) in the form of a savings account.

We have one credit card that I use for business travel expenses and pay off monthly. I use this to book flights, car rentals, hotel rooms, etc.

So while I don’t love credit cards, I wouldn’t say I completely hate them either. Having said that, if you ARE going to have a credit card, follow these rules…

Pay It Off Every Month – Don’t get a credit card with the idea that you’ll just make the minimum payments and think you’re getting free money. You’re a moron. If you can’t afford to pay it off every month, then keep reading.
The First Month You Can’t Pay It Off, Cut It Up - You remember growing up how your parents would increase your privileges as you proved you could handle them? A credit card is a privilege. The first time you can’t pay it off, you’ve shown that you can’t handle it, and you need to shred it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t ever have that “privilege” back, but at this point in your life, it won’t work for you.
Keep A Low Credit Limit - Just because you’re approved for a credit limit of $5,000 doesn’t mean you should spend that amount. By having a lower credit limit, you will be less likely to spend more than you should.
Get Rewards Or Cash Back – If you are going to use a credit card, at least get something out of the deal. There are plenty of cards today that offer various types of rewards or cash back bonuses. Because of how much I travel, I use a card that earns airline miles, which is valuable to me.
Be Responsible – We all know people that have a credit card that shouldn’t. If you lack self-control when you possess that piece of plastic, you don’t need a credit card. If you charge stupid purchases on your card with the idea that you’ll figure out some way to pay for it later, you’re not ready for a credit card. Grow up first and then maybe you’ll be ready.
Don’t Become Dependent – Having a credit card is kind of like drinking. I personally don’t drink, but I don’t have a problem if someone has a beer or a glass of wine. But if they start drinking a beer with breakfast, I’ve got a problem with that. If you start using your credit card to buy a $.75 pack of M&M’s from Wal-Mart, you may need to reevaluate some things.
Be Choosey About What You Charge – Before you get a credit card, create some boundaries for how you will use it. Will it be used for only groceries or gas? What about just for budgeted purchases? What about only for purchases less than $100? What are the ground rules for how you will use your card?

What would your advice be? What would you add to the list? Agree or disagree with any of these items?

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How To Be The Best In The World

Posted by Grant on February 11, 2009 – 1:25 am

Filed under Books, Thinking Out Loud...

I’m in the process of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers (you should also get The Tipping Point and Blink by Gladwell). It is a fascinating look at why certain people are successful and others are not. Often times we think people just got lucky or had a series of big breaks or were simply in the right place at the right time. And while all those may be individual factors, they are not what ultimately causes someone to be successful.

A key idea he presents early in the book is that in order to achieve a certain level of mastery of a skill that would qualify you as a world-class expert, it requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. He uses various case studies to back up that figure and while there are certainly exceptions to the rule (if you can call the “10,000 hour” idea a rule), it’s interesting to think about.

10,000 hours of practice at anything is an insane amount of time. Let’s put it into perspective with some examples…

If you practiced 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would take you about 19 years to reach 10,000 hours.

If you practiced 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would take you about 5 1/2 years to reach 10,000 hours.

If you practiced 12 hours a day, 365 days per year, it would still take you about 27 months to reach 10,000 hours.

If you…ok, you get the idea.

10,000 hours doesn’t happen overnight. It takes literally years and years of practice.

In the book, Gladwell writes this about practice: “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s what you do that makes you good.”

While that seems very commonsense, it stood out to me. So often we try to short cut our way to success and the fact is that it doesn’t work like that.

You don’t become the best in the world by waiting for your big breakthrough. You don’t become world-class by being lucky. You don’t arrive at success by chance or accident.

You become the best in the world by working your butt off…when no one is watching…when you don’t feel like it…when there are other things you would rather be doing…when others aren’t practicing.

That’s how you become the best in the world.

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Putting Progress Before Perfection (CHANGES Update)

Posted by Grant on February 10, 2009 – 2:51 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

At the beginning of the year, I created a list of simple little changes I wanted to make that I thought would improve and enhance the quality of my life. (To see the full list and a better explanation of this process, you can read the original post here: Introducing Small Changes To Your Life.)

Let me first share a few thoughts of what I’m learning and then I’ll give you an update for how things are going so far…

Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight – You’ll see below that one of the changes for January was to get a physical at the doctor’s office. While this is important, it’s only the beginning. If I just get a physical once every 5 years (which was the case this time!), that’s not healthy. I have to become more consistent and proactive, which again, doesn’t happen overnight. When you implement changes into your life, it will take time for those changes to occur.
Change Isn’t Easy – Most people would prefer to leave things as they are and not rock the boat. We get into our ruts and routines, so change goes against the grain of just maintaining the status quo. Although change isn’t easy, it is necessary.
Change Happens In Steps – Change is more about the journey than the destination. Most changes are not instantaneous, but happen in phases. If you rush the process, you miss out on the journey.

CHANGES for January:

Get a physical at the Dr’s office – I did go get a physical, which took a little bit of research. I’m lucky because I’m rarely sick and haven’t been to the doctor in years, so I really have no idea who my doctor would be. I ended up going to a local walk-in clinic, and I passed their inspection. (Grade: A)
Organize digital photos (back up files) – Glad I got this done. I’m sure like most people, I’ve got hundreds of digital pictures on my computer, but there is no rhyme or reason to how they are organized. So I went through and relabeled all the folders by date and what the pictures were from in that folder. That process took about 4 hours. Then I loaded all of them onto Picasa, which is Google’s picture site. This backed them all up and gives me a central place to access them from. (Grade: A)
Organize my closet - This one actually wasn’t on my list for January, but as some of you know, our house is for sale, and we recently had an open house. So in an effort to make the closet seem bigger than it really is, I cleaned out a ton of clothes I don’t wear any more and took them to Goodwill. This is one of those situations where I made the change several weeks ago, but keeping it up to par is a bit more of a challenge. (Grade: A-)
Wake up earlier – Most days my wake-up time is determined by the rest of the family. Currently, my home office is shared with our master bedroom (I told you we were out of space), so to get up and get started on my day risks waking my wife (not a good risk). Our oldest daughter who is almost 3 usually sleeps in the living room (strange I know), so even if I wake up early, I haven’t really had a good place to go in the house! Excuses, excuses I know… (Grade: B)

CHANGES for February:

Make a will – About a year ago, we talked about this and even got the paperwork to make a will but just haven’t done it. Need to get this taken care of…
Take vitamins – It’s one of those things that we all know we should be doing but most of us probably don’t. I already picked up a multi-vitamin and have been taking it daily, so I’m doing well so far.
Get my passport - The application has been completed and printed out, but is just sitting on my desk. You never know when the Russian embassy is going to call and want me to come speak.

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22 Reasons Why I Love My Wife

Posted by Grant on February 9, 2009 – 2:23 am

Filed under Family, Personal

Seven years ago today, I married a really hot babe.

Romantic huh?

But beyond being a really hot babe (which she is), I’m one of the lucky ones who got to marry their best friend.

We started dating when I was a freshman in high school, and she was a junior. That’s right kids. I was a freshman dating an upper class woman.

We dated for several years and got married on our 5 year anniversary. So not only is today our wedding anniversary, but it’s also the anniversary of our first date…12 YEARS AGO!

I’m really blessed to be married to such a wonderful woman. So I wanted to share with you 22 reasons why I love her…

She makes me waffles.
She lets me sleep when the kids are crying.
She puts up with me.
She’s really hot.
She laughs at my jokes.
She is extremely caring.
She is an amazing mother to our daughters.
She is patient.
She has a nice butt.
She’s honest with me.
She believes in me.
She has great legs.
She lets me dream.
She is generous.
She produces cute kids.
She is good with money.
She is sweet.
She’s really, really hot.
She’s fun to be with.
She is supportive.
She has a cute smile.
She is a wonderful person.

For those of you that know my wife, you know I married way out of my league. Sheila is an absolutely wonderful wife, mother, and friend.

Happy Anniversary Sheila…I love you.

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In Case You’re Bored This Weekend…Episode 2

Posted by Grant on February 6, 2009 – 3:02 am

Filed under Blogs, In Case You're Bored This Weekend..., Websites

Here’s your weekly dose of interesting websites, blog posts, and articles for you to check out…

Websites:

• PayScale.com – Get salary reports based on your location, job, and experience…are you getting paid what you’re worth?
Mint.com – I’ve played some in the past with this site but just started using it again. It is considered one of the best online personal money management tools on the internet. Best part…it’s FREE!
Picasa – This is Google’s digital photo tool. I used it this week to back up all the digital pictures on my computer. Like most Google products, it’s simple to use, easy to figure out, and free.

Blog Posts/Articles:

• Top 10 Social Networks for Gen-Y – Interesting list that doesn’t show the typical sites you would think of like Facebook or MySpace. More individual sites where Gen-Y is meeting at…
The Best Colleges For Making Money – Article from Smart Money…good comparison of public vs private schools. I referenced this article in my post this week, “3 Things You Must Know About Your College Tuition Investment…”
Finding Balance – This was an article in the FFA Horizons magazines where they interviewed me about students and life balance. Pretty cool!
Speed Reading Successfully – One of the things on my CHANGES list for 2009 is to learn to speed read. I read a lot so I figure: Learn to speed read = More books I can get through.
7 Hours For Healthier Finances – We’re just over a month into the new year so stop now and get your finances in order. Good place to start…
The Key To Success: Define Your Strengths – I think it’s critically important for people to take the time to determine where they excel and also figure out where they suck.
The 20 Worst Supermarket Foods – My mom got us a book from this series for Christmas, and it is really fascinating. These books identify actual products in stores/restaurants and not some generic category of food you should eat or avoid.
Bigger Numbers Trick Your Mind Into Buying – A summary of a study for why we would buy something at $.99 but our brain isn’t interested if it’s $1.00. Interesting…

Have a great weekend!

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The Joys of Travel…

Posted by Grant on February 5, 2009 – 12:45 pm

Filed under Funny, Travels

I’m sitting on the plane in Dallas waiting to head out to Newark. Here are some tidbits from the day…

– Original flight to Newark was canceled but then got on later option only to be moved to a flight that was supposed to go out before my original flight but was delayed..get all that?
– We are now sitting on the Tarmac where they just announced another 30 minute delay.
– There is a girl behind me who is about 8 or 9 and hasn’t stopped talking since she sat down. Her dad dropped her off and warned the guy she was next to that “she will talk your ear off”…he wasn’t kidding. She even asked the guy if she could borrow his laptop to play games! HA!
– The guy next to me is snoring and grunting in his sleep…nice. Wishing I could record the audio of this moment.

Just wanted to give you a live update of my life on the airplane at this moment!

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Why The Recession Is Your Fault…

Posted by Grant on February 5, 2009 – 2:41 am

Filed under Current Events, Money & Finances

Of course there are a lot of reasons the economy may be the way that it is right now…

Bad housing market
Mass job layoffs
Rising costs of everything
Ryan Seacrest (not sure why but it’s a theory)

But I think there’s another simple factor that we may all be guilty of and it’s this…

Spending what we don’t have on things we don’t need

We’ve all done it. You see something you just have to have and even better, it’s on sale. But unfortunately you don’t get paid for another 4 days, so you bust out your trusty Visa card, swipe it, and commit to figure out later how to pay for it.

But unfortunately by the time you do actually pay for it (in the form of paying off your credit card) not only did you pay more for it than you can even imagine (because of credit card interest), but six months or a year has gone by since you purchased that item, and you don’t even use it anymore!

Stop right now and go through your closet and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Browse around your office, your garage, your dresser, or even under your bed, and you’re bound to find something that would fall into this category.

So how do you change this?

Pay Cash – When you buy something with cash, you are spending money that you currently own, and not buying things based on money you may (or may not) have at some point.
Think It Through – Stores are incredible at enticing you with impulse purchases. We justify it by saying things like, “It’s a great deal,” or “This special won’t last,” or the classic, “I need it.” If there’s any doubt whether or not you actually need it, you don’t.
Don’t Shop If You’re Not Buying – If you have a tough time spending money you don’t have, I’ve got an idea…quit shopping. Don’t go to stores or online just to browse around if you’re not planning on making a purchase.

The bottom line is this: Quit spending money you don’t have to buy crap you don’t need.

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How To Organize Blogs With An RSS Reader…

Posted by Grant on February 4, 2009 – 3:57 am

Filed under Blogs, Time Management/Organization

Writing, reading, and following blogs has quickly become one of the best ways to get information and content not only from the internet, but through all forms of media.

Blogs give everyone the opportunity to be an expert, and we all have the chance to display that expertise to a virtual audience on the world wide web.

So first of all, if you’re not reading blogs, you’re really missing out on some valuable content that may exist for your industry or your interests. But for the sake of today’s post, I’m going to assume you already know what a blog is and that you keep tabs on a handful of the ones that exist out there.

You’re probably finding that going back to those sites on a regular basis, just to see if they have any new posts can get a little old and tedious. So I want to walk you through how to organize your blogs with an RSS Reader.

A what? (Is that similar to a bird feeder?)

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a way to gather new content from blogs or other websites without having to continue checking that site for updates. You’ve probably seen the symbol at the top of this post before which is the RSS logo. If you see this on a website, it is telling you…”if you want to know when we add anything new to this site, we can keep you updated so you don’t have to keep coming here.”

That’s my interpretation of course.

In order to do that, you need some kind of RSS Reader, of which there are several. I just converted to Google Reader from Bloglines, but there are also sites like Yahoo, AOL, MSN, or NewsGator.

Once you set up an account with one of these services (all free), you can go around to the blogs that you’re interested in (such as this one – wink, wink), click the RSS logo and add the blog feed into your RSS reader. Then instead of going to each individual blog on a daily basis, you go to one site (your RSS Reader) which will automatically collect anything new and have it ready for you to read.

One of the cool things about RSS is more and more types of websites provide an RSS feed, so you can keep up on updates as they happen. For example, my wife and I have a little field trip to Maui coming up, so we’ve been on the look out for bargains and deals for while we’re out there. I have an RSS feed on Craiglist-Maui-Tickets, so that any time anyone posts anything new in that category, I know about it immediately.

So what do you need to do now? Follow these 3 simple steps…

Set up a free account with an RSS Reader (I recommend Google Reader)
Add the links/feeds of your favorite blogs and websites to your Reader.

3. Add in Grant Baldwin’s Blog. At the top of the right column, you can subscribe to this blog with one click or you can receive email updates for the blog (sorry I couldn’t help myself).

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3 Things You Must Know About Your College Tuition Investment…

Posted by Grant on February 3, 2009 – 2:56 am

Filed under Money & Finances, Students

BREAKING NEWS: College is expensive.

Just remember…you heard it here first.

Ok, so you probably already realized that. Especially if you’re a high school student searching through the sea of colleges or better yet, if you’re the parent of a high school student who plans on helping foot the bill.

There was a recent article in Smart Money Magazine that did some research into whether or not elite universities provided a solid “return on tuition investment.”

The article states that the average public university runs around $7,700 per year, while the average private school is closer to $18,600. Pretty big difference huh?

If you’re going to pursue a private college, you have to ask yourself, not only will the education be better (term used loosely), but will it be nearly $11,000 better?

The article partnered with PayScale.com (which recently published a survey on alumni salaries) with the goal to determine the relationship between tuition costs and graduates’ earning power. The bottom line…

A private school does NOT offer the return on investment that a public school does.

Again, this isn’t my opinion or my take on the college economy…this is what the numbers tell us. That being said, let me make 3 observations about the cost of college…

The More You Spend Doesn’t Equate To The More You Will Earn – You can go to an English 101 class at Harvard or an English 101 class at your local community college, and the information covered will be virtually the same. Just because you took the class at Harvard doesn’t guarantee that you will earn any more or any less than someone who took the same class at the community college.
The Knowledge Is Valuable, Not The Name On The Degree – We live in a knowledge-based economy, so today you are paid based less on what you can produce but more on what you know. Employers don’t care where that knowledge came from as long as you are applying it in your work.
What You Do With The Knowledge Is Up To You – No school and no education can guarantee you success in life. Success is up to you. There are “successful” people in the world who have masters and doctorate degrees from some of the world’s most prestigious universities and other “successful” people that are high school dropouts.

For another good post on this subject, read 10 Ways To Stretch Your College Fund by Just Plain Joy over at the Frugal Dad site.

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Why You Won’t Be Perfect…

Posted by Grant on February 2, 2009 – 1:46 am

Filed under Thinking Out Loud...

Nobody is perfect at anything.

Sorry to burst your bubble, even though I know you’re the man at Guitar Hero.

Whether you are striving for perfection in a skill, a responsibility, or just in every day life, you won’t get there.

(Wow, this guy is depressing.)

Again, none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. We all screw up.

But we can be excellent. We can live life with absolute excellence and yet still make mistakes.

Tiger Woods plays golf with excellence but he still misses putts. Michael Jordan was excellent at basketball, but he still lost games.

You may be excellent in school, but you still can get the answers wrong. You may be excellent in your relationships, but you still say things you shouldn’t.

Give up on being perfect and strive to be excellent.

When that happens, life becomes more enjoyable, because you can admit your shortcomings.

Be excellent today.

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