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Time and Money Management
Brolo
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
Some boring background info:
The road to fiduciary recovery is a long and painful, filled with fading hopes and the dread of inevitable doom. Let's suffer together!
TIME
Step 1: [vidURL="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n2IVF9a2IA"]Get a Calendar[/vidURL]
Google Calendar.
Is a really useful tool for figuring out exactly where your time goes, especially if you have the type of school/job where you have a pretty consistent schedule. It also plugs in very nicely with Google's other services, so you should probably be using this if you have a Google account.
Fortunately there are a bunch of other free, online tools to help you keep track of your time, even if you're a student or a freelancer with a strange schedule:
Manic Time tracks pretty much everything you do on your PC, and lets you see how long you've been working on it for. IT WILL ALSO SHOW YOU THAT YOU WASTE TOO MUCH TIME ON THE FORUMS.
Klok is especially good if you have a lot of personal projects or if you freelance, and want to keep track of clients, rates and hours.
Step 2: Analyze your time habits
So this is what my standard work week looks like. I do a 9-5 and spend about 3.5 hours commuting every day, which feels like it takes up all my time. But on closer inspection I actually work on my own projects for about two hours each day as I ride into and out of work.
I also have a big chunk of time free after work, some of which has to be used for chores, but is really pretty flexible, nearly 20 hours during the work week! Right now I spend a lot of it just surfing the web aimlessly and chatting with people, although I usually try and get some of my personal projects done in the evenings.
Here's the above data represented as a chart using Daytum, a nifty tool that makes it easy to track graphs. While this chart doesn't account for all the chores and social outings and errands and such that usually fill up your spare time, it's still a good indicator that it really isn't my job or my commute that's taking up the lion's share of my time!
Step 3: Re-organize and prioritize
I have a bunch of projects I want to get underway in the next few months, so I'm gonna start slotting them into some of these spare hours.
Update portfolio so I can take on more paying freelance work A big part of this is updating my online portfolio and starting up a blog/linked-in profile/actually using Facebook as a means of promotion. This is going to be a pretty big job, but I've been doing a pretty good job so far!
Actually start cooking Eating out is probably my greatest vice, and even when I eat in I tend to have horrible microwave meals. Devoting some time to actually eating a decent dinner and preparing a packed lunch could help a lot with project MONEY and project DON'T BE A FATTY.
Exercise. Well it's finally happened, I hit 25 and gained like ~50 something pounds over the course of a year. I actually needed a lot of that weight, but I can no longer deliberately treat my body like shit and expect my metabolism to take care of it. I fucking suck at sticking to an exercise schedule, so I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach this one.
Get a decent amount of sleep. Need to stop staying up past 11:00 PM on weeknights. I typically get to be by 12:00, but I find that combined with waking up at 6:30 really starts to impact my health and ability to concentrate if I do it multiple times a week. Speaking of which, it's like fucking 2:00 am and I'm still writing this. Fuck.
MONEY
Step 1: get a snapshot of your finances:
I've just stared using a web app called Pocketsmith, since it gives a nice idea of money forecasting, which is very useful to me.
But there are lots of tools that can do this, including but not limited to:
http://www.mint.com/
Mint is very good at connecting to your financial accounts so you can get a look at your financial habits and how you spend your money. Support for Canadian banks is pretty limited, but you Yanks should definitely check it out.
If you don't like online sites, you can download some simple Excel spreadsheets that will let you set up a simple budget for yourself.
Step 2: Figure out how broke you really are:
With my current spending habits my budget is really unbalanced, and with the way I pay bills there's a nasty part in the beginning of the month where a bunch of bills are due that crash my bank account into the negative numbers.
The real 'fat' here that can be trimmed is the amount of money I spend on food and just having cash in my wallet that goes towards spending on eating junk food, drinks or entertainment when I'm out. It's also the budget that'll be used for my Christmas spending.
Once my long-overdue hydro back payments are off I'll finally have some positive cashflow.
Step 3: Make some financial goals:
It's just that easy! Everybody go and fill this shit out and take a journey into being a responsible adult with me. Or just share your time and money-saving tips with me.
Up until very recently, I never really bothered managing either of these, and that landed me in a whole mess of trouble. I owe tens of thousands of dollars to various institutions, and I was working in a job that only had enough hours to keep me working once or twice a week.
So I quit the forums for a while, got myself a better job, and now things are slowly getting to the point where I'm not going to be selling my organs or sucking dicks for money, those activities are now strictly recreational.
So I quit the forums for a while, got myself a better job, and now things are slowly getting to the point where I'm not going to be selling my organs or sucking dicks for money, those activities are now strictly recreational.
The road to fiduciary recovery is a long and painful, filled with fading hopes and the dread of inevitable doom. Let's suffer together!
TIME
Step 1: [vidURL="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n2IVF9a2IA"]Get a Calendar[/vidURL]
Google Calendar.
Is a really useful tool for figuring out exactly where your time goes, especially if you have the type of school/job where you have a pretty consistent schedule. It also plugs in very nicely with Google's other services, so you should probably be using this if you have a Google account.
Fortunately there are a bunch of other free, online tools to help you keep track of your time, even if you're a student or a freelancer with a strange schedule:
Manic Time tracks pretty much everything you do on your PC, and lets you see how long you've been working on it for. IT WILL ALSO SHOW YOU THAT YOU WASTE TOO MUCH TIME ON THE FORUMS.
Klok is especially good if you have a lot of personal projects or if you freelance, and want to keep track of clients, rates and hours.
Step 2: Analyze your time habits
So this is what my standard work week looks like. I do a 9-5 and spend about 3.5 hours commuting every day, which feels like it takes up all my time. But on closer inspection I actually work on my own projects for about two hours each day as I ride into and out of work.
I also have a big chunk of time free after work, some of which has to be used for chores, but is really pretty flexible, nearly 20 hours during the work week! Right now I spend a lot of it just surfing the web aimlessly and chatting with people, although I usually try and get some of my personal projects done in the evenings.
Here's the above data represented as a chart using Daytum, a nifty tool that makes it easy to track graphs. While this chart doesn't account for all the chores and social outings and errands and such that usually fill up your spare time, it's still a good indicator that it really isn't my job or my commute that's taking up the lion's share of my time!
Step 3: Re-organize and prioritize
I have a bunch of projects I want to get underway in the next few months, so I'm gonna start slotting them into some of these spare hours.
Update portfolio so I can take on more paying freelance work A big part of this is updating my online portfolio and starting up a blog/linked-in profile/actually using Facebook as a means of promotion. This is going to be a pretty big job, but I've been doing a pretty good job so far!
Actually start cooking Eating out is probably my greatest vice, and even when I eat in I tend to have horrible microwave meals. Devoting some time to actually eating a decent dinner and preparing a packed lunch could help a lot with project MONEY and project DON'T BE A FATTY.
Exercise. Well it's finally happened, I hit 25 and gained like ~50 something pounds over the course of a year. I actually needed a lot of that weight, but I can no longer deliberately treat my body like shit and expect my metabolism to take care of it. I fucking suck at sticking to an exercise schedule, so I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach this one.
Get a decent amount of sleep. Need to stop staying up past 11:00 PM on weeknights. I typically get to be by 12:00, but I find that combined with waking up at 6:30 really starts to impact my health and ability to concentrate if I do it multiple times a week. Speaking of which, it's like fucking 2:00 am and I'm still writing this. Fuck.
MONEY
Step 1: get a snapshot of your finances:
I've just stared using a web app called Pocketsmith, since it gives a nice idea of money forecasting, which is very useful to me.
But there are lots of tools that can do this, including but not limited to:
http://www.mint.com/
Mint is very good at connecting to your financial accounts so you can get a look at your financial habits and how you spend your money. Support for Canadian banks is pretty limited, but you Yanks should definitely check it out.
If you don't like online sites, you can download some simple Excel spreadsheets that will let you set up a simple budget for yourself.
Step 2: Figure out how broke you really are:
With my current spending habits my budget is really unbalanced, and with the way I pay bills there's a nasty part in the beginning of the month where a bunch of bills are due that crash my bank account into the negative numbers.
The real 'fat' here that can be trimmed is the amount of money I spend on food and just having cash in my wallet that goes towards spending on eating junk food, drinks or entertainment when I'm out. It's also the budget that'll be used for my Christmas spending.
Once my long-overdue hydro back payments are off I'll finally have some positive cashflow.
Step 3: Make some financial goals:
My financial goals are as follows:
Stop living paycheque-to-paycheque. If something happens to me or I lose my job, I need to have some kind of savings available so I survive for at least as month.
Have some idea when money is coming out of my account. Sometimes I'm caught flat-footed and I simply have no idea when bills are due, or I feel I can't afford to pay them on time, and wonder how long I can play that out until my power/heat/phone/internet gets cut off. This really can't happen any more, I'm much too old to be afraid of my bank account.
Save up $1000 to pay back a no-interest cash loan that a friend gave me. As soon as I have my feet back under me, I have to pay my buddy back. He bailed me out of a situation that would have left me homeless, really I owe him a lot more than just money.
Limit my gadget spending once I actually have disposable income. There's all kinds of electronic crap that I want to blow my money on, and the last time I actually had positive cash flow I blew pretty much all the money I had on a bunch of junk that really ended up being a giant time sink.
Stop living paycheque-to-paycheque. If something happens to me or I lose my job, I need to have some kind of savings available so I survive for at least as month.
Have some idea when money is coming out of my account. Sometimes I'm caught flat-footed and I simply have no idea when bills are due, or I feel I can't afford to pay them on time, and wonder how long I can play that out until my power/heat/phone/internet gets cut off. This really can't happen any more, I'm much too old to be afraid of my bank account.
Save up $1000 to pay back a no-interest cash loan that a friend gave me. As soon as I have my feet back under me, I have to pay my buddy back. He bailed me out of a situation that would have left me homeless, really I owe him a lot more than just money.
Limit my gadget spending once I actually have disposable income. There's all kinds of electronic crap that I want to blow my money on, and the last time I actually had positive cash flow I blew pretty much all the money I had on a bunch of junk that really ended up being a giant time sink.
It's just that easy! Everybody go and fill this shit out and take a journey into being a responsible adult with me. Or just share your time and money-saving tips with me.
Brolo on
0
Posts
I should probably start using one of those finance programs to sort shit out.
I don't care about time management though.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
read everything, take note of interest rates, pay a little above the minimum or flat out pay it off if you can
don't exceed your output of money
leave yourself an out
Complain about being broke, that everyone refuses to pay and they are buying from some other asshole now.
The whole time you have several thousands of dollars in spending money sitting in your pocket and you ain't got no stinking bills to worry about.
She discovered she had about $400 more then she thought. got her out of some finical trouble.
and plan for the tax man
Amazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/BusterK/wishlist/3JPEKJGX9G54I/ref=cm_wl_search_bin_1
My advice: Finical Panther.
Not to be like them
dont stay together for the kids
Sometimes I need a schedule so that I don't waste my day looking at the internet and jerking off
Amazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/BusterK/wishlist/3JPEKJGX9G54I/ref=cm_wl_search_bin_1
we're all going to die anyways
i think the brain, with all of the problems that can encompass it is capable of recognizing ejaculate
Well, yeah. But they are already giving me what I think is bad advice.
Of course we're all going to die.
Life doesn't have any inherent value but that doesn't mean we should waste our time and not try to be the best.
The best
The Best there ever was
The Best of The Best
Starring Eric Roberts, Darth Vader and Sean Penn's fat brother.
YOU'RE THE BEST
AROUND
Then you listen, nod all polite like and do the opposite of what they advised.
Unless their advice was to smoke bowl and have some ice cream. That's a sure fire ticket to a supreme life.
Nothing's Gonna Keep You Down, MrMonroe
if you're really fucking boring, go ahead and make your earnings the focus of your life's endeavors and decide what level of comfort you'd like to live in
even if you don't want your finances to be something you think about, have arguments over or slave over until you die alone, it is still good to think of what level of comfort you want to live in so you feel alright
for example, personally i would be okay with being poor as fuck so long as i had some simple creature comforts and the ability to travel freely
No matter how much they dislike having erect johnsons up their bums
are you looking for a station in life
status? no status?
I'm just happy having my nieces and nephew in my life. Having fun with them is the best thing. Worrying about some fuckups problems can be a drag.
While they are freaking out over their third car payment, or how they are going to afford to bang some dope, me and the little monsters will be learning fake karate from action cartoons and hunting forest trolls in the park.
We're on an epic quest do enjoy our lives and not worry about all the shitheads around us. I should open a community center or something. Anything has got to be better than what the kids have these days. Which is a whole lot of nothing.
im going on about 2 per day total and its too much for me
except for the inevitable mass extinction represented by the biomass explosion and mass detrimental environmental effect of homo sapiens sapiens
gosh I just hate people, don't I?
c'est la vie
I'm just hoping I get to witness the first part of it
Yes buster but she is only giving you five dollars a week back saying there are bills to pay when in reality she is spending thousands of dollars on male gigalos with dongs as long as your leg.
Satans..... hints.....
Really you can do a pretty good job mentally, but it's surprising how some things like projecting your cash flow can still catch you off guard, especially when you get to things like trying to work out interest payments and how much that will come up to over time.
Things that seems like insignificant amount of money add up really quickly!
The best part is once you buy them you can sell them and make your own money too!!
Oh my god this would be so painful. You'd be doing one of those gigalos and then his dong would come out your mouth to say hello after rending a path through your organs
What spring does with the cherry trees.
What spring does with the cherry trees.