Seth Godin, noted author, has put together an electronic book in Adobe Acrobat format called What Matters Now; it has contributions from over seventy “big thinkers”, including folks like Gina Trapani (of Lifehacker fame), Merlin Mann (43 Folders), Kevin Kelly (Cool Tools), and many more.
You can get it free off of Seth’s blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
It’s a great, quick read.
No, this is not a story about my needing to exchange something and actually having the receipt as opposed to the many folks who can never find the receipt when they need it. What this is is a story about habit and how sometimes they can really pay off.
Since I’ve long been in the habit of not just keeping my receipts, but also logging them, when I’m on a business trip like I was last week and I need to keep receipts for reimbursement or tax purposes, it’s totally not a problem.
This unlike my many counterparts on the trip, who had to return to restaurants or cafeterias pleading for copies of receipts more than once–or twice.
Some people may call my behavior obsessive. To me, it just makes life a little easier–like right then.
On my recent trip to Oakland, I (ashamedly, as a Geek) never thought about checking in online until a lady in front of me at Honolulu International Airport said she checked in online. I’m not sure her boarding process–through the maze of agricultural, baggage, and TSA checkpoints–was any quicker, but it made me think about trying it on the return leg of my trip.
The morning of my flight, before I left my hotel, I logged into United.com and used their online check in. It was pretty quick and allowed me to print my boarding pass (although since I had no access to a printer, I didn’t do so), but it also offered me a bit of a savings on a checked bag: $2 off of $20.
Now, $2 is not a huge amount of money by anyone’s standards, but $2 is still $2, and a ten percent discount is still a reasonable discount for quickly doing something online I’d have to do in person anyway. Sure, I wish it was $4, $5, or $10 instead, but $2 in my pocket is better than $2 more to the airlines.
Argh. I’m annoyed with myself.
I ordered a bunch of mini style (or “Moo” style, although I did not buy these from Moo) cards printed with info on my Livestrong Challenge effort, to ask people I met in real life to contribute to the cause. It took a few days but the cards–a thousand of them!–showed up at home.
And the URL to my Livestrong Challenge page… was misspelled.
I have no one to blame but the guy in the mirror. I didn’t proofread well enough.
What to do? I thought about ordering a new batch, but that seemed wasteful–not just in spending more money but in throwing out these cards that were otherwise perfectly usable. So instead, I decided to cover up the incorrect URL with a correct one by printing out the correct URL on self adhesive labels–which costs me about $8 and used the cards that were otherwise inaccurate, solving the problem and not wasting the cards, but still costing me lots of time, effort, and $8.
But of course, the best thing to do would have been to not make the error in the first place.
So in the end, I had a choice between a lot of waste and just some waste. I chose just some. If I had been more careful, there could have been no waste at all.
Today’s guest post is by Jennifer Lohan, who is living proof that Uncommon Cents is very open to new bloggers; she just emailed me out of the blue and asked if she could post, asking for nothing in return, not even a link back to another blog! Thanks Jennifer!
Is it very difficult to get out of debt? It is easier to fall into debt than get out of it. However, if you are in debt, you can still get rid of them although it’ll take sometime to do so. This is because there are no shortcuts to a debt free life or you cannot stabilize your finances overnight. So, if you see billboards shouting out advertisements of debt relief companies claiming to make you debt free in few days, it is a trap.
If you enroll in a debt settlement, debt consolidation or any other debt help program, neither settlement nor debt consolidation companies can eradicate your debts in a jiffy! You have to allow the debt relief program to take its own course.
If you intend to consolidate your debts, you will find many debt consolidation companies operating in the debt help industry that have successfully helped debtors get out of debt.
How will debt consolidation companies help you to get out of debt?
These companies will talk to your creditors so that the rate of interest according to which you make payments is reduced. Reduction in interest rates means lowering of the monthly payments. In this way your debts become manageable and you can offload debts with ease. You will also get a payment plan that needs to be followed. The repayment schedule helps you to keep track of payments.
For-profit and non-profit debt consolidation firms – How do they affect you?
Debt consolidation companies may be for-profit or non-profit in nature. The for-profit firms will charge fees from you but the non-profit firms will charge minimum fees from you or will take a meager amount as donation.
Prior to taking help of a particular debt consolidation company, you can check the credentials from the Reliability report of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Check the past records. A good debt consolidation firm will never send mails to you urging you to enroll in their program. If at all they promote their services they do so on a large scale which reaches the common people, not individually.
How will debt consolidation stabilize your finances?
Debt consolidation makes your debts manageable. As you start paying off your debts, your debt load decreases. In due course you get rid of debts. You are now able to manage your finances better. This gives you financial stability.
Debt consolidation companies will undoubtedly help you to get out of debt and stabilize your finances. Just make sure that you maintain regular payments and don’t fall behind or drop out of the debt consolidation program midway.
On my trip to Oakland, I brought my beloved GPS to help me get around an area I wasn’t used to. It worked perfectly, but its operator didn’t.
Because there are no toll roads where I live, I didn’t pay attention to the setting to avoid toll roads. In order to avoid $4 tolls going over the bridges in the bay area, the GPS sent me driving as many as 40 miles out of my way!
Once I figured it out, a trip of well over an hour turned into one of less than 15 minutes.
That’s not exactly the frugal way to go.
I don’t blame the GPS. The blame for this one belongs totally to the guy in the mirror.
Now, the option to avoid tolls on my Garmin is firmly set to off.
Despite the many months long rally in the stock market, lets face it: it’s still tough economic times out there for many. But what’s amazing is that even in these difficult times, people are still willing to give to causes.
The recent natural disaster in Haiti has caused a surge in giving. More than $22 million dollars was raised just by people donating with text messaging–an amazing number, and now people (including me) are also donating via iTunes, as well as many other ways.
All of this while we are still having much financial difficulty as time goes on.
I also include in this my Livestrong Challenge effort, which has not even included my friends who I know in real life (as opposed to virtually) yet. All of the over $1K in donations I’ve received have been from the online world–an amazing number.
People still, even in tough times, know others have it more difficult than they do and give–and that gives me hope for the entire human race.
The stock market had been cruising upwards at a nice clip in January month until the latter part of two weeks ago, where it gave up just about all of its gains for the month (and therefore the year). This is the kind of time when Chicken Littles start running around declaring how the stock market is about to self destruct.
Yes, it’s true, just about all of the gains in my portfolio for 2010 went poof just now. But at the same time, we’re less than four weeks into the new year and it’s not like I’m investing for four weeks–this is a many year long process. What’s interesting is despite all of the changes that have occurred over the years, the market is still the market, and doing the smart, time tested things works out: invest in quality products, keep expenses down, use whatever tax advantages you can, and hold on for years if not decades.
Three days this past week doesn’t change decades upon decades of reinforcement.
I’m headed to California on a business trip; expect posts to be sporadic until Monday. Hope all is well!
It appears I got my submissions correct; I got a check in the mail today reimbursing me for my prescription medication and doctor’s visit earlier this month, as well as mileage. Since I also submitted to Ceridian the paperwork to have future payments be direct deposited into my account with ING Direct, I think I’ll be even happier with future payments.
It did take about a week for the check to get to me from its claimed mail date; I believe Ceridian (the branch administering this program, anyway) is in Florida. Hopefully the direct deposit will remedy this issue.
All I can say is I’m happy to have gotten some of my money back!
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The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp