Looks like I've been putting my money in the right place to date...

So I just signed up with Mint.com. It's a pretty sweet site that lets you manage all your money accounts & credit cards, does spending trending, helps you track your investments, generates cool graphics automatically, etc -- all with minimal work on your end.

Here's a pretty interesting infographic that it made for me...



So I've been (relatively) smart so far with where I've put my money. Now all I have to do is figure out where it should go when the economy reverses itself.

And save more. That's a concept our generation is going to have to put their heads around. They haven't thus far.

You can't tell who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.

I live in a very picturesque neighborhood. It's has a very wholesome quality -- all the homes are modest sized, and the lawns are flawlessly maintained--although most of them have snowmen on them now. This is an archetypal American neighborhood, but since it's in Edina, the cheapest houses are like $500, 000. Since I rent, I'm walking the same sidewalks for a fraction of the price.

When driving home to my apartment, I usually duck into these back streets to avoid traffic. There's been a couple homes for sale on these two blocks for the last 5 months; some say "PRICE REDUCED!"

Today I drove past 3 more new homes for sale on those same two blocks.

Today's lesson: Just because somebody has lots of nice things doesn't mean that they actually have black numbers in the bank. In fact, that is becoming the exception to the rule-- particularly in our generation. Most of us are up to our eyeballs in debt.

Would you believe it?

Would you believe it if I told you that my heart rate monitor and one of my kitchen table chairs broke this week?

I'm really hoping the squeak on my road bike is nothing.

Good news, Bad News

Completely unrelated, but I figured they could both go here anyways.

Good news:
I've payed off more than 80% of my trip to Canada AND the work to my car without touching savings. I'm going to try making the trip to Norway--my work has approved 2.5 weeks of vacation time!

Bad news.
Kurt Vonnegut is dead, and Fox News slimed him. Throw down some lightning from the heavens on Bill O'Reilly, will you Kurt?

RIP Ollie

Current mood: nothin's gonna breaka my stride

My Olympus c-765 ultrazoom, Ollie, is dead.

He took a last gasp downloading photos to my computer before he died. His lens was permanently extended and wouldn't retract, respond to any buttons, or power off.

I took him in to the camera doctors at National Camera Exchange, who told me it would cost a minimum of $180, and 8 weeks turnaround from the factory. I purchased Ollie for about $230.

I took him home and did emergency screwdriver surgery. "Shit, I'm a mechanical engineer, and this appears to be a mechanical malfunction." Surgery did not have a postive outcome.

Ollie lived well. He took about 3500 photos, travelled to Michigan's UP, North Dakota's Badlands, the Boundary waters, the tops of mountains in Utah, Colorado, and British Colombia, Whidbey Island in Puget sound, the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Miami, and the desert of Arizona. He might've even taken naked pictures of girls...

No way I'm going without a camera. I was thinking about buyin a nice canon 20D, but I can't afford it with that Norway trip coming up, so minutes ago I bought Ollie's successor, SP-510 at Buydig.com. About the same price with more features. Buydig.com is also one of the highest rated online electronic stores according to consumer reports. Free Shipping!

Seriously. This year is getting expensive.....

Confessions of a Spendthrift

I've been trying to figure out for the past couple weeks where all my money goes. Although my parents were very disciplined with money, the most advice I'd ever got from them was......"save your money"

Is it my parents fault I suck with money? I don't think so. Before the age of 21, I rarely heeded any advice from my parents.

But it would have been nice to know HOW to save money. I will tell my snot-nose children to save money by building a well thought out budget, withdrawing your planned savings from your account before you pay rent or buy anything, and learning to invest at a young age. And I will make them read The Millionaire Next Door.

Anyways, back to my financial analysis.

I've started building spreadsheets and charts to understand exactly which directions my money flows and in what quantity.

I've come to a very sad realization that my most expensive possession is the roll of fat on my waist. It's easily worth more than the book on my car, and over the past several years, I've contributed to building it much faster than I have to my 401(k) and my savings account combined. I'm estimating that I've spent close to 7% of my take-home earnings going out to eat(including drinks), probably another 7% at the grocer, and probably another 5-6% on drinks at bars. I'll let you figure out how much that is.

It's too bad that you don't get hangovers from overspending.

Three years ago, I went out to eat almost as or more often as I ate at home. My consumption has slowed, but not as much as it should have. Surely going out to eat costs 3 times what it does to cook for myself. Even worse, I hardly know HOW to cook outside a handfull of dishes , which are extremely simple & quick to make.

Perhaps even more depressing is the monetary effort I've gone to decrease it's size. A gym membership, 2 nice bikes and equipment to support them, health supplements, healthy food that goes bad in my fridge while I eat crappy stuff at restaruants......

Change is on the way, and I will be in better shape physically and financially in 2007.